Justinian also reformed and codified Roman law, establishing a Byzantine legal code that would endure for centuries and help shape the modern concept of the state.
Debts incurred through war had left the empire in dire financial straits, however, and his successors were forced to heavily tax Byzantine citizens in order to keep the empire afloat. During the seventh and eighth centuries, attacks from the Persian Empire and from Slavs, combined with internal political instability and economic regression, threatened the vast empire.
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. In the centuries leading up to the final Ottoman conquest in , the culture of the Byzantine Empire—including literature, art, architecture, law and theology—flourished even as the empire itself faltered.
Byzantine culture would exert a great influence on the Western intellectual tradition, as scholars of the Italian Renaissance sought help from Byzantine scholars in translating Greek pagan and Christian writings. This process would continue after , when many of these scholars fled from Constantinople to Italy. Long after its end, Byzantine culture and civilization continued to exercise an influence on countries that practiced its Eastern Orthodox religion, including Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, among others.
Start your free trial today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Persian Empire is the name given to a series of dynasties centered in modern-day Iran that spanned several centuries—from the sixth century B.
The Ottoman Empire was one of the mightiest and longest-lasting dynasties in world history. The chief leader, known as the Sultan, was given absolute For them, Byzantium was a continuation of the Roman The Goths were a nomadic Germanic people who fought against Roman rule in the late s and early s A. The ascendancy of the Goths is said to have marked the Beginning in the eighth century B. Among the many legacies Attila the Hun was the leader of the Hunnic Empire from to A.
The western part is considered as definitely finished by the year , when its last ruler was dethroned and a military leader, Odoacer, took power. In the course of the fourth century, the Roman world became increasingly Christian, and the Byzantine Empire was certainly a Christian state. It was the first empire in the world to be founded not only on worldly power, but also on the autority of the Church. Paganism, however, stayed an important source of inspiration for many people during the first centuries of the Byzantine Empire.
When Christianity became organized, the Church was led by five patriarchs, who resided in Alexandria , Jerusalem , Antioch , Constantinople, and Rome. The Council of Chalcedon decided that the patriarch of Constantinopel was to be the second in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Only the pope in Rome was his superior. After the Great Schism of the eastern Orthodox church separated form the western Roman Catholic church.
The centre of influence of the orthodox churches later shifted to Moscow. Since the age of the great historian Edward Gibbon, the Byzantine Empire has a reputation of stagnation, great luxury and corruption.
Most surely the emperors in Constantinopel held an eastern court. That means courtlife was ruled by a very formal hierarchy. There were all kinds of political intrigues between factions. However, the image of a luxury-addicted, conspiring, decadent court with treacherous empresses and an inert state system is historically inaccurate. On the contrary: for its age, the Byzantine Empire was quite modern. Its tax system and administration were so efficient that the empire survived more than a thousand years.
The culture of Byzantium was rich and affluent, while science and technology also flourished. Old literary genres were practiced again: the art of epistolography is just one exemple e.
Very important for us, nowadays, was the Byzantine tradition of rhetoric and public debate. Philosophical and theological discources were important in public life, even emperors taking part in them. The debates kept knowledge and admiration for the Greek philosophical and scientific heritage alive.
Byzantine intellectuals quoted their classical predecessors with great respect, even though they had not been Christians. And although it was the Byzantine emperor Justinian who closed Plato 's famous Academy of Athens in , the Byzantines are also responsible for much of the passing on of the Greek legacy to the Muslims, who later helped Europe to explore this knowledge again and so stood at the beginning of European Renaissance.
Byzantine history goes from the founding of Constantinople as imperial residence on 11 May until 29 May , when the Ottoman sultan Memhet II conquered the city. Most times the history of the Empire is divided in three periods. The first of these, from till , saw the creation and survival of a powerful empire.
During the reign of Justinian , a last attempt was made to reconquer provinces of the former Roman Empire under one ruler, the one in Constantinople. This plan largely succeeded: the wealthy provinces in Italy and Africa were reconquered, Libya was rejuvenated , and money bought sufficient diplomatic influence in the realms of the Frankish rulers in Gaul and the Visigothic dynasty in Spain. The refound unity was celebrated with the construction of the church of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia , in Constantinople.
The price for the reunion, however, was high. Justinian had to pay off the Sasanian Persians, and had to deal with firm resistance, for instance in Italy. Under Justinian, the lawyer Tribonian created the famous Corpus Iuris. The Code of Justinian, a compilation of all the imperial laws, was published in ; soon the Institutions a handbook and the Digests fifty books of jurisprudence , were added.
The project was completed with some additional laws, the Novellae. The achievement becomes even more impressive when we realize that Tribonian was temporarily relieved of his function during the Nika riots of , which in the end weakened the position of patricians and senators in the government, and strengthened the position of the emperor and his wife.
After Justinian, the Byzantine and Sasanian empires suffered heavy losses in a terrible war. In the end, the Byzantine armies were victorious under the emperor Heraclius r. For a moment, Syracuse on Sicily served as imperial residence. At the same time, parts of Italy were conquered by the Langobards , while Bulgars settled south of the Danube. The ultimate humiliation took place in , when the leader of the Frankish barbarians in the West, Charlemagne, preposterously claimed that he, and not the ruler in Constantinople, was the Christian emperor.
The second period in Byzantine history consists of its apogee. It fell during the Macedonian dynasty After an age of contraction, the empire expanded again and in the end, almost every Christian city in the East was within the empire's borders.
On the other hand, wealthy Egypt and large parts of Syria were forever lost, and Jerusalem was not reconquered. In the mighty Bulgarian empire, which had once been a very serious threat to the Byzantine state, was finally overcome after a bloody war, and became part of the Byzantine Empire. The northern border now was finally secured and the empire flourished.
Throughout this whole period the Byzantine currency, the nomisma , was the leading currency in the Mediterranean world. It was a stabil currency ever since the founding of Constantinopel. Its importance shows how important Byzantium was in economics and finance. Constantinople was the city where people of every religion and nationality lived next to one another, all in their own quarters and with their own social structures.
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