Byzantine Empire

“ Alike from any such complete change, complete degeneracy, or ultimate attainment of life and perfection, the genuine Greek style of the Byzantine empire was exempted. That Oriental splendour of gold and colour by which so early as the days of Justinian the Great, it sought to gloss over the feebleness of its reminiscences of classical beauty, remained the unchanged leading characteristic of its illuminations down to the final extinction of the empire in 1453. ”

“ The later Byzantine Empire was, therefore, essentially a Greek Empire, and as such it appeals most vividly to the national consciousness of the Greek of our own time. The restoration of this empire, with the little kingdom of free Greece as the nucleus, is the vision which inspires the more aggressive and venturesome school of modern Greek politicians. In the twelfth century the bulk of Asia Minor had been wrested from the Byzantine Empire by the Turks, but it was the Crusaders, not the Turks, who overthrew the first empire. ”

“ As everybody knows, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire resulted from the profligacy and incapacity of the emperors, luxurious living and vice among the people, tyranny of an overbearing soldiery at home, and the attacks of barbarian foes gradually increasing in strength. Rome fell quickly into the hands of the barbarians, and her power was broken. In A.D. 395, was founded the Byzantine Empire, also styled the East Roman, Greek, or Lower Empire, which lasted for more than a thousand years, and took its name from the capital, Byzantium or Constantinople. ”

“ Byzantium might be in decadence, her provinces falling away, her glory wasting; the follies of the court and emperors, the best manhood of the empire lost in cloisters and hermitages, the preference of the nobility for intrigue and diplomacy might be all working their deplorable results—nay, the results might be at hand! Still the passion of the people for fetes and holidays remained. Tastes are things of heredity. In nothing is a Byzantine of this day so nearly a classic Greek as in his delicacy and appreciation where permitted to indulge in the beautiful. ”

“ The more ancient a nation is, the more liable is it to be overwhelmed by this dreadful evil. The Byzantine empire, during a thousand years of civilisation and opulence, did not produce one work of original thought; five hundred years after the light of Athenian genius had been extinguished, the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. ”

“ The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their allies, do not exceed a moderate province of France or England; but after the trophies of Salamis and Platea, they expand in our fancy to the gigantic size of Asia, which had been trampled under the feet of the victorious Greeks. But the subjects of the Byzantine empire, who assume and dishonor the names both of Greeks and Romans, present a dead uniformity of abject vices, which are neither softened by the weakness of humanity, nor animated by the vigor of memorable crimes. ”

“ The Byzantine Empire was no genuine continuation of it; it was a resumption of the Hellenic Empire of Alexander; it spoke Greek; its monarch had a Roman title no doubt, but so for that matter had the late Tsar of Bulgaria. During its four centuries of life the empire of Rome had phases of division and complete chaos; its prosperous years, if they are gathered together and added up, do not amount in all to a couple of centuries. ”

“ Their army and their navy with its strategoi and drungariuses (generals and admirals) cost them a lot of money and so did their extravagant ambassadors. The church with its own mighty army of high officials and lesser functionaries was very expensive too.
But as long as the Byzantines were not only able to support emperor, army, navy, diplomats, and the church, but were willing to do so, the Byzantine Empire flourished and was great. It was only after they began to economize, when a lot of Byzantines decided they were spending too much on the army, that their troubles began. ”

“ CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY [3] The Byzantine peninsula has been regarded from a very early date as an ideal situation for a capital city. Placed at the junction of two great seas which wash the shores of three continents, and possessed of a safe and extensive anchorage for shipping, it might become the centre of empire and commerce for the whole Eastern hemisphere. Yet, owing to an adverse fate, the full realization of this splendid conception remains a problem of the future. Byzantium as an independent city was little more than an outpost of civilization ”

“ Both the barbarians, with their hard-riding horsemen, and the valiant border lords played an important part in defending the Byzantine Empire from its enemies, but the Byzantines never really trusted either group. A barbarian chieftain was far too likely to ride off with his hordes and found a kingdom of his own as Theodoric had done in Italy. A border lord from Asia Minor was too likely to try to become emperor himself. ”

“ His army was increased by a treaty with the Patzinaks and an alliance with the Hungarians, so that they began to dream of the conquest of Constantinople, and hoped to transfer the empire of the East from the Romans of Byzantium to the Russians. It was fortunate for the Byzantine Empire that it was ruled by a soldier who knew how to profit by its superiority in tactics and discipline. ”

“ On the whole, the arrangements for the administration of justice in these treaties prove that the Byzantine empire still enjoyed a greater degree of order than the rest of Europe.
The state of civilization in the Eastern Empire rendered the public finances the moving power of the government, as in the nations of modern Europe. ”

“ It met with a sympathetic reception in ever widening circles, until it gradually attained the rank, if not of a feast of obligation, at any rate, of a simple feast of devotion, and, finally, it obtained both ecclesiastical and civil authorisation.
The Byzantine Empire comprised during the whole of the period of which we have been speaking, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. In the eighth century Byzantium was no longer able to retain its hold over the duchy of Rome and the Exarchate of Ravenna ”

“ There was an empire, but it was now a Latin empire and no one but the crusaders recognized it. Even they did not leave it all its territory. Venice took over a third of Constantinople and most of the Byzantine islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas. Every knight or baron who wanted it was given a fief or a principality in southern Greece. Besides that, three Byzantine “governments in exile,” each claiming to be the real one, sprang into being. ”

“ In view of the entrance of this new enemy we may note the extent of the territory belonging at this time to the eastern branch of the old Roman world, the Byzantine Empire, as it is termed (from Byzantium, the ancient name of Constantinople) . The Eastern Emperors had recovered some of their lost ground in Asia, and at the close of the tenth century they held all Asia Minor, Armenia, a part of Syria, a considerable portion of Italy, and all the Balkan Peninsula. ”

“ The Byzantine Empire had fallen with its capital Constantinople, and the Latin Empire of Romania had taken its place. But the rule of the Franks was too weak to take an abiding hold on the provinces, and, after a brief and flickering existence, 1204-1261, it passed away, and a Greek dynasty was once more established in New Rome. While the Ottoman power was gaining strength, the Greek Empire was suffered to exist ”

“ In all this we have a good example of the Byzantine attitude of that time. There is, first, frank acknowledgement that originally the sees of Southern Italy and Sicily were under the Pope (whether as Patriarch or as Metropolitan) ; but, because he is no longer in the Roman Empire (of the East, the Empire whose capital was Constantinople) , therefore he has lost all his rights. He is in the hands of Lombards, Goths, or Normans, whom the Byzantines pleasantly dismiss as Barbarians. We see also the typically Byzantine idea that politics must settle the whole question of ecclesiastical order. ”

“ The old-world civilisation of the Byzantine realm was infinitely more hide-bound than the feudal system of the Franks. It was impossible to combine French feudalism with Byzantine officialism. The Greek despised the rude and uncultivated ‘barbarians’ who now ruled the heritage of Rome. The Latin scorned the cunning and effeminate Eastern who had succumbed so readily to his sword. It had been hard enough for the Comneni to keep together the decaying fortunes of the Eastern Empire. It was quite impossible for the French and Flemings to succeed where they had failed.
The Greek revival. ”

“ Of all ways of making a living, farming probably came first. Rich or poor, almost every Byzantine had an eye for the land, that is, everyone except the city mobs who couldn’t bear to be too far away from the excitement of the Circus.
In fact, many people say that the reason the Byzantine Empire finally lost its wealth was because the average Byzantine preferred to invest his money in an estate rather than in foreign trade. The Byzantines let foreign trade fall into the hands of the Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans. ”

“ It was the commercial decline of the empire that made a reform of the administration so hopeless. The Paleologi were never able to reassert the old dominion over the seas which had made their predecessors the arbiters of the trade of Christendom. The wealth of the elder Byzantine Empire had arisen from the fact that Constantinople was the central emporium of the trade of the civilized world. All the caravan routes from Syria and Persia converged thither. Thither, too, had come by sea the commodities of Egypt and the Euxine. ”

“ The Norman adventurers in possession of Palermo and Naples perpetually tended to look for their aggrandizement to the Byzantine Empire. In the interests of their temporal dominion, the 12th-century popes could not suffer an Italian power to dominate on the other side of the Adriatic and instal itself at Constantinople. This contingency explains the vacillating and illogical character of the papal diplomacy with regard to the Byzantine problem, and, inter alia, the opposition of Eugenius III. in 1150 to Roger II.’s projected crusade, which was directed towards the conquest of the Greek state. ”

“ After the recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks in 1261, Byzantine politics entered into a new phase; the feeble and distracted empire, unable to make head against the Turks, was compelled to lean for support upon the European powers, which it sought to obtain by patching up the long-standing religious schism. Greeks and Latins, however, were equally resolved to concede nothing save in appearance, and the history of the time is to a great extent that of hollow negotiations, meant only to deceive. ”

“ The exiled prince besought them to turn aside once more before they sailed to the East, and to rescue his blind father from the dungeon into which he had been cast by his cruel brother Alexius III. If they would drive out the [pg 281] usurper and restore the rightful ruler to his throne, they should have anything that the Byzantine Empire could afford to help them for their Crusade—money in plenty, stores, a war fleet, a force of mercenary troops, and his own presence as a helper in the war with Egypt. ”

“ Henceforth the Byzantine war-navy was insignificant, and without a war-navy the Paleologi could not drive away the intruders and restore the free navigation of the Levant to their own mercantile marine.
The emperors who succeeded each other on the restored throne of Constantinople were, without exception, men more fitted to lose than to hold together an exhausted and impoverished empire. ”

“ But it is not my intention to expatiate with the same minuteness on the whole series of the Byzantine history. At our entrance into this period, the reign of Justinian, and the conquests of the Mahometans, will deserve and detain our attention, and the last age of Constantinople (the Crusades and the Turks) is connected with the revolutions of Modern Europe. From the seventh to the eleventh century, the obscure interval will be supplied by a concise narrative of such facts as may still appear either interesting or important. ”

“ There was neither vigor nor virtue in the descendants of Heraclius; and when the last of them was destroyed by a popular rising against his vicious tyranny (711) , revolution followed revolution so quickly that three reigns were begun and ended in six years. The so-called Byzantine Empire. Then came to the throne a man of strong character, who redeemed it at least from contempt ”

“ Such were the hardships the Byzantine population had to suffer as a consequence of the obligations imposed on them directly by the Imperial government, but these were largely aggravated by their being forced to minister to the private needs and even lustful passions of all those in power throughout the Empire. ”

“ Thus, by the enthusiasm of faith, was called into existence that really primitive School of Painting which has received the name of Byzantine; because at the very time when it obtained the liberty of displaying itself, Constantine, transferring the seat of empire to Byzantium, necessarily took with him the body of artists of whom he was the protector; because, too, as we have before observed, Byzantium henceforth became for many centuries the sole focus whence light radiated towards the West, which was now plunged in barbarism. ”