A new, even more serious threat arose in the form of Islam , founded by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca in In , Muslim armies began their assault on the Byzantine Empire by storming into Syria. During the eighth and early ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors beginning with Leo III in spearheaded a movement that denied the holiness of icons, or religious images, and prohibited their worship or veneration. Though it stretched over less territory, Byzantium had more control over trade, more wealth and more international prestige than under Justinian.
The strong imperial government patronized Byzantine art, including now-cherished Byzantine mosaics. Rulers also began restoring churches, palaces and other cultural institutions and promoting the study of ancient Greek history and literature. Greek became the official language of the state, and a flourishing culture of monasticism was centered on Mount Athos in northeastern Greece.
Monks administered many institutions orphanages, schools, hospitals in everyday life, and Byzantine missionaries won many converts to Christianity among the Slavic peoples of the central and eastern Balkans including Bulgaria and Serbia and Russia. The end of the 11th century saw the beginning of the Crusades , the series of holy wars waged by European Christians against Muslims in the Near East from to As armies from France, Germany and Italy poured into Byzantium, Alexius tried to force their leaders to swear an oath of loyalty to him in order to guarantee that land regained from the Turks would be restored to his empire.
After Western and Byzantine forces recaptured Nicaea in Asia Minor from the Turks, Alexius and his army retreated, drawing accusations of betrayal from the Crusaders. During the subsequent Crusades, animosity continued to build between Byzantium and the West, culminating in the conquest and looting of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in Many refugees from Constantinople fled to Nicaea, site of a Byzantine government-in-exile that would retake the capital and overthrow Latin rule in During the rule of the Palaiologan emperors, beginning with Michael VIII in , the economy of the once-mighty Byzantine state was crippled, and never regained its former stature.
In , Emperor John V unsuccessfully sought financial help from the West to confront the growing Turkish threat, but he was arrested as an insolvent debtor in Venice. Four years later, he was forced—like the Serbian princes and the ruler of Bulgaria—to become a vassal of the mighty Turks. As a vassal state, Byzantium paid tribute to the sultan and provided him with military support.
Murad revoked all privileges given to the Byzantines and laid siege to Constantinople; his successor, Mehmed II, completed this process when he launched the final attack on the city. The fall of Constantinople marked the end of a glorious era for the Byzantine Empire. This project was begun in , and is continually updated as more seals from our collection of 17, are catalogued.
The designs of the imperial seals in this exhibition provide an insight into the minds and policies of the rulers whose image they bore. In former times, when the constitution followed a different system, the order of affairs was also differently arranged.
Today, however, everything depends on the wisdom of the emperor, and all things are supervised and managed, with the aid of heaven, by the providential care of his wisdom. Rulers of Byzantium. From History of the Wars, I, xxiv, translated by H. Dewing, Macmillan, through Fordham University Website. Justinian had to call in troops to put down the rioters, but he took advantage of the situation to build something grand. The dome is feet 33 meters in diameter and its crown rises some feet 55 meters above the pavement.
In addition to building an incredible cathedral, Justinian oversaw a major territorial expansion of the empire, winning back territory in North Africa, Italy including Rome , and parts of Western Europe. The spread and impact of the plague may have been aided by a food shortage brought about by cooler weather conditions. It has also been suggested that a volcanic eruption in El Salvador contributed to the cooler weather. In the west, much of the territory that Justinian had captured was lost.
This put the empire in a bad spot. These difficult times perhaps contributed to iconoclasms that occurred in the eighth and ninth centuries A. During these periods, much Byzantine religious artwork was destroyed in fear that they were heretical.
Nevertheless, the military situation stabilized in the ninth century and by the 11th century, Byzantium had gained back a considerable amount of territory that it had lost. Thus, although the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its history, and preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions, it became identified by its western and northern contemporaries with its increasingly predominant Greek element and its own unique cultural developments.
This is the oldest surviving map of the city and the only one that predates the Turkish conquest of the city in CE. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts.
These are all based on medieval stereotypes about the Byzantine Empire that developed as western Europeans came into contact with the Byzantines, and were perplexed by their more structured government. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire.
It is a matter of debate when the Roman Empire officially ended and transformed into the Byzantine Empire. Most scholars accept that it did not happen at one time, but that it was a slow process; thus, late Roman history overlaps with early Byzantine history. He was responsible for several major changes that would help create a Byzantine culture distinct from the Roman past.
As emperor, Constantine enacted many administrative, financial, social, and military reforms to strengthen the empire. The government was restructured and civil and military authority separated. A new gold coin, the solidus , was introduced to combat inflation. It would become the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. As the first Roman emperor to claim conversion to Christianity, Constantine played an influential role in the development of Christianity as the religion of the empire.
In military matters, the Roman army was reorganized to consist of mobile field units and garrison soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians—, and even resettled territories abandoned by his predecessors during the turmoil of the previous century.
The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire. It would later become the capital of the empire for over one thousand years; for this reason the later Eastern Empire would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire. His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children, and for centuries after his reign. The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference, and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity.
Constantine the Great: Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great presents a representation of the city of Constantinople as tribute to an enthroned Mary and Christ Child in this church mosaic. St Sophia, c. Constantine moved the seat of the empire, and introduced important changes into its civil and religious constitution. In , he founded Constantinople as a second Rome on the site of Byzantium, which was well-positioned astride the trade routes between east and west; it was a superb base from which to guard the Danube river, and was reasonably close to the eastern frontiers.
Constantine also began the building of the great fortified walls, which were expanded and rebuilt in subsequent ages. Constantine built upon the administrative reforms introduced by Diocletian.
He stabilized the coinage the gold solidus that he introduced became a highly prized and stable currency , and made changes to the structure of the army. Under Constantine, the empire had recovered much of its military strength and enjoyed a period of stability and prosperity. He also reconquered southern parts of Dacia, after defeating the Visigoths in , and he was planning a campaign against Sassanid Persia as well.
To divide administrative responsibilities, Constantine replaced the single praetorian prefect, who had traditionally exercised both military and civil functions, with regional prefects enjoying civil authority alone. In the course of the 4th century, four great sections emerged from these Constantinian beginnings, and the practice of separating civil from military authority persisted until the 7th century.
Constantine was the first emperor to stop Christian persecutions and to legalize Christianity, as well as all other religions and cults in the Roman Empire. The edict stated that Christians should be allowed to follow the faith without oppression. This removed penalties for professing Christianity, under which many had been martyred previously, and returned confiscated Church property.
The edict protected from religious persecution not only Christians but all religions, allowing anyone to worship whichever deity they chose. Scholars debate whether Constantine adopted Christianity in his youth from his mother, St. Helena,, or whether he adopted it gradually over the course of his life. According to Christian writers, Constantine was over 40 when he finally declared himself a Christian, writing to Christians to make clear that he believed he owed his successes to the protection of the Christian High God alone.
Throughout his rule, Constantine supported the Church financially, built basilicas, granted privileges to clergy e. The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the emperor as having great influence and ultimate regulatory authority within the religious discussions involving the early Christian councils of that time most notably, the dispute over Arianism, and the nature of God.
Constantine himself disliked the risks to societal stability that religious disputes and controversies brought with them, preferring where possible to establish an orthodoxy. One way in which Constantine used his influence over the early Church councils was to seek to establish a consensus over the oft debated and argued issue over the nature of God.
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