Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

by Judith Herrin

  20. Mosaic panel from the church of San Vitale, Ravenna, showing Justinian and Bishop Maximian, who completed the building in 547, with priests and soldiers.

  21. Icon of Christ from the Holy Monastery of St Catherine’s, Mount Sinai, painted in encaustic on wood (85cm × 45cm), sixth or seventh century. Christ as Pantokrator, the ‘Ruler of All’, is shown in an architectural setting, holding a thick Gospel book with jewelled covers and raising his hand in blessing. The asymmetrical treatment may reflect theological definitions of his two natures, human and divine: one eye appears to judge while the other is more forgiving.

  22a. Gold coin of Constantine I (306–37) with a Victory on the back (right) minted at Nikomedeia (diameter 21mm, weight 4.5 gr).

  22b. Gold coin of Basil II (976–1025) with a portrait of Christ on the front (left) and Basil and Constantine holding a cross (right) minted in Constantinople (diameter 21.5mm, weight 4.38 gr). Byzantium preserved a gold coinage of reliable fineness over 700 years.

  23. Chalice of Romanos II, sardonyx, gold, cloisonné enamel plaques, with representations of Christ and saints, and pearl decoration, c. 960. This is the type of Byzantine luxury gift sent to foreign powers. It might have formed part of the loot taken to Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

  24. A sixth- or seventh-century earring made of gold decorated with semi-precious stones on nine loops that hang from a circular frame of notched gold wire enclosing two peacocks flanking a monogram with the letters N A E T O (probably a family name, not deciphered). The suspension loop is missing.

  25. ‘Greek fire’ from the manuscript of John Skylitzes’ Chronicle, probably made in Sicily in the twelfth or thirteenth century. The caption for the image reads, ‘The fleet of the Romans setting on fire the fleet of the enemies’, and shows the Byzantine mechanism of the siphon and its projection of burning liquid.

  26. Mosaic of Theodore Metochites from the Chora monastery in Constantinople, restored by him between 1316–21. He is identified by the inscription on the left as the founder and chief minister, logothetes tou genikou. Wearing his court costume and turban, he presents the church to Christ. The central inscription identifies the church as ‘the dwelling place of the living’.

  27. The ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’, an icon painted in Constantinople, c. 1400 (39cm × 31cm). It is a copy of an earlier icon that commemorated the restoration of icon veneration in 843. On the upper level, Empress Theodora and her young son Michael III (left) and Patriarch Methodios and priests (right) flank an image of the Virgin and Child. Below, a group of iconophile martyrs and holy figures, including the fictitious nun Theodosia (bottom left) carrying a cross and an icon.

  28. Frontispiece of the Psalter of Basil II (976–1025), probably painted in c. 1000 in Constantinople. The emperor is shown blessed by God, crowned and armed by the archangels and surrounded by military saints. Below him, courtiers or defeated enemies fall prostrate at his feet.

  29. The west front of San Marco, Venice, completed in the twelfth century, largely in Byzantine style. The horses (see below) stand on plinths above the central door.

  30. Two of the four ancient classical bronze horses brought to Constantinople probably by Theodosius and set up over the entrance to the Hippodrome, and then taken by the Venetians after 1204 and erected on the west front of San Marco.

  32. The poor widow appeals to Emperor Theophilos while he rides out to the Palace of Blachernai. An illustration from the Chronicle of John Skylitzes probably made in the twelfth or thirteenth century in Sicily. The emperor shown with a halo is identified by an inscription, as is the Palace. The widow is one of two women presenting their petitions.

  31. The monastery of Hosios Loukas, Steiris, central Greece, eleventh century, with the domes of the two adjacent churches: the earlier foundation dedicated to St Barbara and the main church enriched with mosaic and marble decoration.

  33. The Chora monastery in the north-west corner of Constantinople, in a photograph taken in the early twentieth century. Founded in the sixth century, the buildings were restored, expanded and redecorated by Theodore Metochites in 1316–21.

  34. The monastic church at Daphni, central Greece, dedicated to the Mother of God. Founded in the late eleventh century, it was extended with a Gothic exonarthex and cloister by Cistercian monks (1207–11) and remained under Latin control until the Ottoman conquest of 1458.

  35. Exterior of the church of the Virgin Paregoritissa at Arta, constructed by the Despot Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas in c. 1290.

  36. Interior of the church, showing the mosaic of Christ Pantokrator in the central dome.

  38. Illustration from a Commentary on the Book of Job, copied by Manuel Tzykandeles in 1362, probably in Mistras, depicting four people in a rural setting observed by Christ. The letters between the two couples refer to chapter 27 of Job’s tribulations, when he defends his own faith in God: ‘Men shall clap their hands at him and hiss him out of his place.’ The hats, cowl, long-sleeved tunic and the woman’s dress suggest clothes worn at the time of painting.

  37. View of the castle of Mistras, founded by William II Villehardouin in 1247, with buildings of the late Byzantine city on the slopes of Mount Taygetos.

  39. John VI Kantakouzenos presiding at the Church Council of 1351 that condemned the anti-hesychast writings of Barlaam of Calabria and others. He is surrounded by four bishops (Kallistos, Patriarch of Constantinople, Philotheos Kokkinos of Herakleia, Gregory Palamas of Thessalonike and Arsenios of Kyzikos), monks, soldiers and courtiers. One of the rare pictures of Byzantine church councils.

  40. Manuel II Palaiologos and his wife Helena blessed by the Mother of God, with their three children, the porphyrogennetoi, John, Theodore and Andronikos. They all wear their imperial costumes and hold crosses. The image occurs in the manuscript of the writings of Pseudo-Dionysus, copied for King Charles VI of France, which Manuel Chrysoloras presented in the emperor’s name to the monastery of St Denis, north of Paris, in 1408.

  41. ‘Making Lead’, a page from an Arabic translation of the pharmaceutical treaty of Dioscorides, De materia medica, copied in 1224 by the scribe ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Fadl. Many Greek copies of this famous text have annotations in Arabic, indicating that they were read in Muslim countries, such as the copy that Romanos II sent to the Caliph of Cordoba in the tenth century.

  Conclusion:

  The Greatness and Legacy of Byzantium

  The most striking characteristic of Byzantium was not its Christianity, spelled out in its historic councils and conversions, and celebrated in immense churches like Hagia Sophia or in the domestic intimacy of household icons; nor its Roman organization and administration and imperial self-belief; nor its enduring ancient Greek inheritance and system of education: it was their combination. This dated back to the fourth century with the creation of the new capital, its monuments and harbours, which rooted Byzantium in a rich ecology of traditions and resources.

  Yet the modern stereotype of Byzantium is tyrannical government by effeminate, cowardly men and corrupt eunuchs, obsessed with hollow rituals and endless, complex and incomprehensible bureaucracy. Montesquieu developed these caricatures during the seventeenth century as he tried to explain the reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire, and Voltaire gave them greater prominence, adding his own passionate elevation of reason above religion. While the former dismissed ‘the Greek Empire’, as he called it, because of the excessive power of monks, attention to theological dispute and an absence of the recommended separation of ecclesiastical from secular matters, the latter could condemn it utterly as ‘a disgrace for the human mind’. Perhaps both were also provoked by Louis XIV’s use of Byzantine models as a means of celebrating despotic kingly rule.

  Gibbon’s more familiar account in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which extended to 1453, built on these features and identified Byzantium as a ‘passive’ link with Graeco-Roman antiquity. In itself, he argued, it was of no interest except that it connected the classical per
iod to the barbarian nations of Western Europe and ‘the most splendid and important revolutions which have changed the state of the world’. Perhaps the most forthright expression of Byzantium’s negative reputation belongs to the nineteenth-century Irish historian William Lecky. In a withering, misogynistic judgement, he claimed:

  Of that Byzantine empire, the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed. There has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely destitute of all forms and elements of greatness, and none to which the epithet ‘mean’ may be so emphatically applied… The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude.

  As I hope to have shown, far from being passive, Byzantium was active, surprising and creative, as it reworked its prized traditions and heritage. It bequeathed to the world an imperial system of government built upon a trained, civilian administration and tax system; a legal structure based on Roman law; a unique curriculum of secular education that preserved much of classical, pagan learning; orthodox theology, artistic expression and spiritual traditions enshrined in the Greek Church; and coronation and court rituals that had many imitators. In the sixth century, the merchant Cosmas Indicopleustes also noted:

  There is another mark of the power of the Romans, which God has given them, I mean that every nation conducts its commerce with their nomisma, which is acceptable in every place from one end of the earth to the other… In no other nation does such a thing exist.

  For centuries after the fall of the Queen City to the Turks, the term ‘bezant’ was still used, redolent of the famed reliability of Byzantine gold. Despite the eleventh-century devaluation, the name bezant provides an echo of the gold coin’s powerful contribution to trade in the early Middle Ages, when Byzantium protected the growth of Venice and other Italian city-states.

  Artistically, its silks and ivories set standards for beauty and craftsmanship, while its images still continue to inspire icon painters in orthodox communities throughout the world. Theologically, its intense, century-long inner struggle with the iconoclast strictures of the Ten Commandments, precipitated by their forceful adoption by Islam, became a reference point for Puritans nearly a thousand years later. Its ability to conquer and, above all, to defend itself and its magnificent capital was to shield the northwestern world of the Mediterranean during the chaotic but creative period that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. Without Byzantium there would have been no Europe.

  During this critical early-medieval period, when the Arabs stormed out of the desert to capture the Holy Places of the Jews and the Christians and the granaries of Egypt, only Constantinople stood in the way of their ambitions. Had the fortifications of the Queen City and the determination and skills of its inhabitants – emperor, court and people – not ensured the security of this defensive system, Islam would have supplanted Byzantium in the seventh century. Having accomplished the conquest of Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria and the Persian empire, the Muslims would surely have overrun the Mediterranean empire created by Rome, once they had incorporated Constantinople with its resources and revenues, its shipyards and commercial networks. In the same way that they progressed along the southern littoral of the Mediterranean into Spain, they would have advanced across the Balkans to dominate the northern shore as well.

  Byzantium was thus partly defined in rivalry with successive Arab states, and relations between Christianity and Islam had a formative influence in the empire’s development. As we have seen, its initial contact with Islam in the seventh century came as a complete surprise. Byzantium’s historic defeat of Persia distracted attention from what seemed at first no more than tribal marauders, if with a chiliastic twist. Instead, the appearance of the Arabs under the banner of the Prophet turned into a long trauma. The impact of their immediate military triumphs in the decade 632/42 forced Byzantium to withdraw into Asia Minor, abandoning the most holy centres of Christianity, as well as some of the earliest monastic sites in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Yet it was also able to beat off many Muslim sieges of its capital and to hold a border at the Taurus Mountains. The rise and frustration of Islam resulted in a formative three-way division of the ancient world into unequal parts: the Muslim east which extended from Syria and Egypt across the coast of Africa and deep into Spain; the western part which adopted the name ‘Europa’; and the eastern part which remained the core of Byzantium.

  During the first protracted encounter with Islam, Byzantine consternation at the Muslims’ enduring military success was coupled with condemnation of their theology. It was considered a heresy, albeit rather different from other seventh-century doctrinal errors. While Byzantium later accepted that Islam was a revelation from the same one God, they were slow to develop any detailed knowledge of the Qur’an, or the claim that Islam had replaced Christianity as the true revelation. Instead, arguments long used in Christian polemics with Judaism were refashioned and turned against the new opponent; vigorous dialogues were produced to reassure the Christian side while condemning the Muslim. In the eighth and ninth centuries, these took on even more strident forms with the development of Byzantine iconoclasm – both a reaction to Islam and a means of consolidating the empire to combat the Islamic challenge.

  After 750, internal strife and civil war among the Muslims led the Abbasid dynasty to move the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, on the banks of the Tigris in Persia. The rise of the Abbasids split the Islamic world into rival caliphates, leaving the Umayyads based in Spain. This eased pressure on Byzantium. Although the new centres of Muslim power in Baghdad and Cordoba were now more distant from Constantinople than Damascus, they remained a focus of constant negotiation. Byzantium tried to maintain diplomatic relations with all the rival Islamic authorities.

  From the eleventh century onwards, other Muslim peoples reshaped the Islamic world. In their long journey west from Mongolia, the main activity of the Seljuk Turks was to defeat all opposing forces and capture and sack major cities for booty. In the eleventh century, as they conquered Baghdad and made it their capital, they first came into contact with Byzantium. Their Sunni beliefs made them hostile to all Shi’ite authorities in Islam, such as the Fatimid dynasty based in Cairo. When Fatimid control over Jerusalem was broken by the Seljuks, Byzantium and the Christian West were inspired to regain the Holy Places. And the triumphant recapture of the city for Christianity in 1099 was achieved in part by the crusaders’ exploitation of the divisions between many local Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims. Finally, after nearly eighty years, Christian control was reversed by the Kurdish general Saladin in 1187.

  For Byzantium the differences between Arabs and Turks were clear. The Seljuk Turks were a Mongol people speaking an ancient Uighur language (which is a common tongue still in use today from Turkey to the Far East, where it is spoken by the Muslim minority in northern China). The Seljuk and later Ottoman Turks were not Arabs by culture or history, and initially they demonstrated their determination to challenge established Muslim authorities rather than Christian ones. Their move into Asia Minor and towards the Queen City occurred almost as a detour, when they realized that there was no serious opposition to prevent their advance. As they gradually replaced imperial control in Asia Minor during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, Byzantium recognized them as a new hostile force, divided into several distinct emirates, and tried to come to terms with their military victories. Eventually the Ottoman Turks united a larger force that crossed the Dardanelles in 1354 and began the conquest of the western provinces of the empire.

  Soon after this dramatic event, Constantinople found itself surrounded on all sides by the Ottomans, in quite different circumstances from the Arab besiegers of the city seven hundred years before. Their long exposure to the empire had helped to transform the Ottomans from nomadic tribes to a settled people. While they built mosques for prayer and
caravanserais to assist overland trade with the Far East, they had adapted Byzantine administrative traditions and imperial norms, absorbing ancient skills. At the same time, Byzantine centres surrounded by the Turks flourished for centuries in a symbiotic relationship with them, for instance in Trebizond, where the Grand Komnenoi maintained Christian rule by making alliances with their Muslim neighbours and later overlords. Considerable intermarriage among the rulers of these states engendered continuing tolerance and exchange.

  In 1391 the newly installed emperor, Manuel II Palaiologos, had inherited from his father the status of an Ottoman vassal and was obliged to pay considerable taxes and to campaign by the side of Sultan Bayezid I. After military operations that summer, the emperor accompanied the sultan to a camp near Ankyra in Anatolia, where they went out hunting by day and feasted by night. This happened several years before Manuel’s visit to London and Paris, discussed in the previous chapter. As the winter drew in, with the first snowfall, low temperatures and long dark nights, Manuel and his companions devised a way to pass the time. They would debate with the local Muslim müderris (a technical name for a religious judge or teacher, qadi) about the relative merits of their religions. In this philosophical way, they would fill the evenings and provide some thoughtful entertainment. Manuel II was a prolific writer of letters and rhetorical exercises in the ancient Greek style, and he later set out his version of the wintry discussions held near Ankyra in a considerable volume of 300 pages.

  This aspect of Byzantium’s legacy was picked up by Pope Benedict XVI in the special lecture he gave in Regensburg, his old university town, on 12 September 2006. He chose to cite a particularly harsh attack on Islam from the seventh section of Manuel II’s Dialogue with a Persian, written some time after 1391. He quotes the emperor as saying: