John Bagnell Bury

“ The true statement is that the Fourth Crusade was only an incident (not in itself decisive) in a world-movement which doomed the Eastern Empire to extinction—namely, the eastward movement of western Europe which began in the 11th century with the rise of the Normans and the First Crusade. Henceforward the Empire was a middle state, pressed between expanding forces on the east and on the west, and its ultimate disappearance was inevitable. ”

“ Fortunately Constans II., grandson of Heraclius, was a man of eminent ability and firmness. The state owed to him the preservation of Asia Minor, and the creation of a powerful fleet (see below) which protected the Aegean coasts and islands against the naval power which the Mahommedans created. He was responsible for completing a new, efficient military organization, which determined the lines of the administrative reforms of Leo III. (see below) . In his last years he turned his eyes to Italy and Africa. He dreamed of restoring Old Rome as the centre of the Empire. ”

“ Constantinople was the first city in the world. The influence which the Empire exerted upon its neighbours, especially the Slavonic peoples, is the second great role which it fulfilled for Europe—a rôle on which perhaps the most speaking commentary is the doctrine that the Russian Tsar is the heir of the Roman Caesar. ”

“ The escape of the eastern provinces from the fate of the western illustrates the fact that the strength of the Empire lay in the east. These provinces were more populous and presented greater obstacles to the invaders, who followed the line of least resistance. But it was of immense importance that throughout this period the Empire was able to preserve a practically unbroken peace with its great eastern rival. ”

“ He looked to the interests of Venice from the narrowest point of view, and in founding the new Latin Empire, which was to replace the Greek, it was his aim that it should be feeble, so as to present no obstacles to Venetian policy. The Latin Empire of Romania was a feudal state like the kingdom of Jerusalem; the emperor was suzerain of all the princes who established themselves on Greek territory; under his own immediate rule were Constantinople, southern Thrace, the Bithynian coast, and some islands in the Aegean. ”

“ Administration.—Three principles underlay the administrative reform of Diocletian: the separation of civil from military functions; the formation of small provincial units; and the scalar structure which deepened on the interposition of the vicar of a diocese and the praetorian prefect between the provincial governor and the emperor. This system lasted unchanged for three and a half centuries. The few unimportant alterations that were made were in harmony with its spirit, until the reign of Justinian, who introduced certain reforms that pointed in a new direction. ”

“ The development of events was complicated by the sudden growth of the transient empire of the Huns (q.v.) in central Europe, forming a third great power, which, reaching from the Rhine to the Caucasus, from the Danube to the Baltic, might be compared in the extent of its nominal supremacy, but in nothing else, to the empires of Rome and Persia. The Huns, whose first appearance had precipitated the Germans on the Empire, now retarded for some years the process of German expansion, while they failed in their own attacks upon the Empire. ”

“ But otherwise the new political situation created by the Crusade was dangerous, ultimately fatal, to the Empire. For its lands and seas became a highway from western Europe to the Latin colonies in Syria; the Byzantine government was forced to take precautions to protect itself against the crusading expeditions which travelled to the Holy Land; and these precautions were regarded by the western powers as a hindrance to the sacred objects of the crusades. The bitter religious antagonism between the Greek and Latin Christians increased the mutual distrust and the danger. ”

“ A Germanization of the Empire, or part of it, in some shape was inevitable, but, if the rulers of the 5th century had been men of the same stamp as the rulers of the 4th, the process might have assumed a different form. The sons of Theodosius were both incapable; and in their reigns the future of the state which was divided between them was decided. The dualism between the east (under Arcadius) and the west (under Honorious) developed under the rule of these brothers into antagonism verging on hostility. ”

“ Manuel Comnenus during the first part of his reign was the close friend and ally of the western emperor Conrad III., but after Conrad's death, he formed the ambitious plan of realizing in Europe a sovereignty like that of Justinian, and hoped to compass it in conjunction with Rome, the enemy of the Hohenstaufen. His forward policy carried war into Italy; he seized Ancona. But his strength was unequal to such designs. His Latin sympathies, no less than his financial extravagance, made him highly unpopular at home ”

“ Under the early Empire, as Rome had no rival in the Mediterranean, it was natural that the navy and naval theory should be neglected. When Constantine the Great decided to besiege Byzantium by sea, both he and his opponent Licinius had to create fleets for the struggle. Even when the Vandals in Africa made transmarine conquests and became a naval power, the Romans did not seriously address themselves to building an efficient navy and securing their own thalassocracy ”

“ We have already seen how the disasters and losses of the 7th century led to a radical change in the military organization, and how the Empire was divided into themes. The preponderant influence which Asia Minor won and retained till the 11th century is reflected in the military establishment, which mainly depended on the Asiatic provinces. The strategos of a large theme commanded a corps of 10,000 and the scheme of the divisions and subordinate commands has a remarkable resemblance to the organization of some of the armies of modern Europe. ”

“ While the administration of justice was one of the best features of the Eastern Empire, its fiscal system, likewise inherited from the early Empire, was one of its worst. If the government had been acquainted with the principles of public economy, which have not been studied till comparatively recent times, a larger revenue might have been raised without injuring the prosperity of the inhabitants. ”

“ In the 10th century we have again the means of observing how the government conducted its foreign policy on Carefully thought out principles. The Empire was then exposed to constant danger from Bulgaria, to inroads of the Magyars, and to attacks of the Russians. The key to the diplomatic system, designed to meet these dangers, was the cultivation of friendly relations with the Petchenegs, who did not menace the provinces either by land or sea and could be incited to act against Russians, Bulgarians or Magyars. ”

“ It is to be noted that the year 630 marks the beginning of a period of literary (and artistic) sterility in the Greek world (see Greek Literature, section Byzantine) .
With the rise of Islam (see Caliphate; Mahomet) two universal religions, for the first time, stood face to face, each aspiring to win the universe. The struggle therefore which then began was not only a new phase of the “Eternal Question,” the strife between Europe and Asia, but was one in which the religious element was fundamental. Fire-worship was only a national religion and did not present the danger of Islam. ”

“ It is significant that Constantinople, which had become a second Rome politically, with its senate and capitol, became then a second Rome ecclesiastically, and that the elevation of the see of Constantinople to patriarchal rank next to the Roman see was due to Theodosius (381) , who gave a permanent form to the dualism of the Empire. The patriarch became a state minister for religion. The character of the Church as a state institution is expressed above all in the synods. The general councils are not only summoned by the emperor, but are presided over by him or by his lay deputies. ”

“ The peace on the frontiers was maintained not only by strong military defences, but by more or less skilful management of the frontier peoples. In the later Empire this kind of diplomacy, which we may define as the science of managing the barbarians, was practised as a fine art; its full development was due to Justinian. Its methods fall under three general heads. (1) One people was kept in check by means of another. The imperial government fomented rivalry and hatred among them. Thus Justinian kept the Gepidae in check by the Lombards, the Kuturgurs by the Utigurs, the Huns by the Avars. ”

“ In war, when the emperor did not assume the chief command himself, he might entrust it to any commander, and he often entrusted it to the Domestic. In the 11th century, after the conquest of Bulgaria, there were two Domestics, one for the east and one for the west, and under Alexius Comnenus the Domestic of the west received the title Great Domestic. Under the Palaeologi the Great Domestic was superior in rank to all other ministers. ”

“ In a synod held at Constantinople in the reign of Justinian II. numerous rules were enacted, differing from the existing laws and based on ecclesiastical doctrine and Mosaic principles, and these were sanctioned as laws of the realm by the emperor. Thus Church influence and the decline of Roman tradition, in a state which had become predominantly Greek, determined the character of the ensuing legislative epoch under the auspices of Leo III., whose law book (A.D. 740) , written in Greek, marks a new era and reliects the changed ideas of the community. ”

“ The most important vassal state was the kingdom of Thessalonica, including Thessaly, which was assigned to Boniface of Montferrat. But it was conquered by the Greeks of Epirus in 1222. The chief of the territories taken by Venice was Crete. For the Latin states in Greece and the Aegean see Greece. The first Latin emperor, Baldwin of Flanders, was captured and put to death by the Bulgarians in 1205. He was succeeded by his brother Henry, an able statesman, after whose death (1216) the decline began.
Three Greek states emerged from the ruin of the Roman Empire. ”

“ Slavs occupied Moesia and a large part of Macedonia, even close to Thessalonica, which they besieged; they penetrated southward into Greece and made large settlements in the Peloponnesus (see Greece, History, “Roman period,” ad fin.) . They occupied the north-western provinces, which became Croatia and Servia, as well as Dalmatia (except some of the coast towns) . In the northern part of the peninsula the Slavonic element remained dominant, but in Greece it was assimilated to the Greek (after the 9th century) and has left little record of itself except in place names. ”

“ A new formula of union was discovered (One Will and One Energy) . This doctrine of monotheism would never have been heard of but for political exigencies. The Egyptians and Syrians would perhaps have accepted this compromise; but it was repudiated by the fanatical adherents of Chalcedon. Heraclius sought to impose the doctrine by an edict (Ecthesis, 638) , but the storm, especially in Italy and Africa, was so great that ten years later an edict known as the Type was issued by Constans forbidding all disputation about the number of wills and energies. ”

“ The Autocracy and its Constitutional Forms.—With Diocletian the Principate of Augustus had become undisguisedly an absolute monarchy, and this constitution prevailed to the end. There is virtually no constitutional history in the proper sense of the term in the later Roman Empire, for there was neither evolution nor revolution. ”