Demetrios J. Constantelos
Byzantium
From Encyclopedia of "HISTORIANS AND HISTORICAL WRITING", Volume I, Editor Kelly Boyd,
Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, London Chicago.
Byzantium (Greek Byzantion), a. small Greek city-state by the straits of Bosporos founded c. 675 AD by Byzas of Megara, and recolonized in the 5th century by the Spartans, like ancient Babylon and Rome, lent its name to an empire (330-1453 AD). The citizens of the city were called Byzantines, but in the 16th century the Frenchman Jerome Wolf applied the term to include all the people of the empire ruled from Byzantium, now renamed Constantinople. Its inhabitants however called it Basileion ton Romaion, Kingdom of the Romans, and themselves Rhomaioi (Romans). Since 112. AD, when all the free people of the Roman empire were enfranchised and became Roman citizens, the "Byzantines" viewed themselves as Romans and their state as a continuation of the Roman empire.
But Western European (Latin, Germanic, Frankish), Russian, Khazarian Hebrew,and other non-Greek sources speak of the "Byzantines" as Greeks, and of their state as Graecia, or "land of the Greeks." Near Eastern people, Armenians, Georgians, and Semites of several nations called the "Byzantines" Yoyn, Yavani or Yunani (lonians) and their empire as Yunastan, Yavan, Yawan (Ionia).
The chronology of the empire is conventionally divided into three periods. The early period -from Byzantium's inauguration as the new capital of the Roman empire in 330AD to 610- were years of transition. In the middle centuries, from the beginning of the 7th century to the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the empire went through several reforms, .revivals, and readjustments, reaching its golden age between the 9th and the 11th centuries. The period between 1204 and 1453 was one of decline and fall, even though it witnessed some brilliance in learning, the arts, theology and the sciences.
During the proto-Byzantine period, Christianity became the dominant religion and contributed to the formation of the empire's new ethos. During the first three centuries, the empire retained much of the past inheritance and remained a multiethnic, multi-religious, and multilingual empire. Beginning with the 7th century, when several less Hellenized provinces were lost to the Arabs and to Slavic tribes in the Balkans, ethnologically, linguistically, and religiously the empire became more homogeneous. The dominant Greek and Hellenized population's unity was strengthened through a common language and a common religion. Ethnic and religious minorities in the empire • were called by their ethnic and sectarian names (Armenian, Slav, Jew, Paulician, Monophysite, and the like). But after the sack of Constantinople in 1104, even though Constantinople was recovered by the Greeks and Greek kingdoms and principalities were reunited in 1261, the empire declined.
Through eleven centuries, the Byzantine empire remained in a constant state of alarm to defend itself against old and new formidable enemies -Persians and Arabs, Huns, Goths, Slavs, Bulgarians, Russians, Petchenegs, Magyars, Franks, and Venetians, Turks, and other lesser known tribes. The Byzantine Empire included most of the territories that had been under Roman rule before Constantine the Great's reign. But over eleven centuries, the empire expanded and condensed, and was at its largest under Justinian in the 6th century. From the 7th to the 12th centuries the empire included the Balkan peninsula, from the Danube river in the north to the island of Crete in the south, parts of the Italian peninsula, and Asia Minor in the east.
With the invasion of Turkish nomadic tribes in the east and the Normans in the west, the empire began shrinking again. After its dismemberment by the Fourth Crusade the empire fragmented into principalities and kingdoms never to be united again. The restoration of the empire in 1261 was ephemeral and did not prevent its final collapse.
The scholarship of the last 75 years has demonstrated that the Byzantine empire was great in several respects: political, military, economic, intellectual. It produced great statesmen, diplomats, generals, law givers, renowned scholars, and reformers. Its highly developed system of law and an admirable administrative machinery enabled it not only to maintain order and stability, but also helped it to endure for more than a millennium, although it was subject to changes and reforms, renewals and continuities. The noted historian P.M. Powicke summarized die modern view as: "Far from being a moribund society ... it was the greatest, most active and most enduring political organism that the world has yet seen, giving for centuries that opportunity for living which we associate with the spacious but transitory peace of Augustus or Hadrian." Among the scholars of die Byzantine empire, historians occupied a prominent position.
The historiography of the Byzantine Empire starts in the 4th century with Eusebius of Caesarea. His Ecclesiastical History (311-25) exerted an enormous influence and contributed greatly to the kind of relationship that existed between church and state in the Byzantine millennium. Socrates Scholasticus' Ekklesiastike Historia (The Ecclesiastical History) surpassed Eusebius in objectivity and documented historical research, and remains an invaluable source for both church and secular history of the period from 305 to 439AD.
Zosimus' Nea Historia (c.450-502; New History, 1982.) treated the history of the 4th century down to 410 from a non-Christian point of view. He was perhaps the last pagan historian. More important for the historiography of the early Byzantine period is Procopius, whose history of his own time in eight books described Justinian's wars against the Persians, Vandals, and Ostrogoths. His preference for secular over religious causation brings him closer to Thucydides than Herodotus.
The historiography of the period between the 7th and the 15th centuries includes historical works whose authors used the terms historia and chronographia as synonyms. There were some important historians and some who are more properly designated as chronographoi or chroniclers. Agathias' works imitated those of Procopius, but he concentrated on general Narses' campaigns in Italy. His account remains valuable for the attention he paid to events of social and intellectual significance. Theophylact Simocatta's Oikoumenike Historia (7th century; The History of Theophylact Simocatta, 1986) is the main source for the reign of Maurice. Theophanes the Confessor's Chronographia (9th century; The Chronicle of Theophanes, 1997) is the most important source for the 7th and 8th centuries. He incorporated in his work much information from other sources no longer extant. The Chronographies of George Hamartolos, Joseph Genesios, Leo Diakonos, John Skylitses, George Kedrenos, John Zonaras, and Michael Glykas have not been translated, but all include valuable information on cultural, religious, prosopographical, and artistic history of the 9th to the 12th centuries. Michael Psellos' Chronographia (11th century; Fourteen Byzantine Rulers:, The Chronographia, 1966) is a history of the emperors from the accession of Basil II (976) to the reign of Michael VII (1071-78), Equally important is Anna Komnene's The Alexiad (1138-48; translated 1969), the history of her father's reign (1081-1118) modeled after the classical Greek style of historiography. John Kinnamos' Chronikai (12th century; Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus, 1976) took over where Anna Komnene left off and treated the reigns of both John, II and Manuel II (1118-80). He consciously imitated the methods of classical Greek historians including Procopius. His style was more forceful than that of his predecessors.
The historiography of the last centuries of the Byzantine empire (1204-1453) consciously imitated the ancient historians. The Fourth Crusade and the fragmentation of the .Empire into Greek kingdoms and Latin municipalities provoked much interest and promoted a nostalgia for the glories of the past. Niketas Choniates' Chronike Diegesis (12th century; Ο City of Byzantium, 1984) is the most important source for the period, and for the capture of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade in particular. Important authors not yet translated into English include George Akropolites, whose 13th-century chronicle covers one of the most critical periods of the empire's history (1203-61); George Pachymeres' account, the most detailed source for the second half of the 13th century; Nikephoros Gregoras' analytical history for 1320-59; and one of the most important historians on economic and administrative aspects of the period, loannes Kantakouzenos' chronicle, a source of information for 1320-56, Two historians of the last century of Byzantium must also be noted. Doukas's Historia (15th century; Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, 1975) is a valuable source for Greek and Turkish affairs, especially between 1204 and 1391, and the siege of Constantinople down to 1462. George Sphrantzes' 15th-century Chronikon is a combination of two Chronika. The part known as Chronikon minus is authentic and has been translated as The Fall of the Byzantine Empire (1980) and it is an important eyewitness source for the events between 1413 and 1477.
Interest in the study of the Byzantine empire in Western Europe began in the fifth century with Wolf's edition of the series Corpus Byzantinae Historiae (1645-70). Next, Charles Du Cange (1610-88) produced not only a series of major volumes on history, genealogies, families, topographies, and numismatics, but also an indispensable thesaurus of the Greek language in the Byzantine era. Palaeography, diplomacy, and topography continued to interest several successors of Du Cange. Byzantine studies declined as a result of the dismissive analysis of the empire by writers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire; Gibbon, and Charles Le Beau. Georges Finlay, and Barthold G. Niebuhr, the founder of the Bonn edition of Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, revived interest in the study of Byzantium in the 19th century.
Therefore, Byzantine studies as a respected academic discipline was established only at the end of the i9th century when Karl Krumbacher became professor of Byzantine studies in Munich and published the monumental and still useful Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (History of Byzantine Literature, 1891). The Munich School of Byzantinology inaugurated the leading journal Byzantinische Zeitschrift, and it has produced several influential specialists, including Franz Dölger and Hans Georg Beck.
In addition to Munich, there are today major schools of Byzantine studies in Paris, Palermo, Brussels, London, Birmingham, Athens, Belgrade, Moscow, Thessaloniki, and Washington, DC. The first Byzantine studies chair in Paris was occupied by Charles Diehl, a pioneer in the study of the women of Byzantium. Under the leadership of Paul Lemerle, the School of Byzantine studies in Paris has trained several leading Byzantinists. Also in Paris, the Assumptionist Fathers research center made major contributions in the study of chronology, topography, sigillography, codicology, and related fields.'' In Russia, whose religion and religious culture owe much to Byzantium, a school under the leadership of Vasilii Grigor'evich Vasilievskii, an outstanding editor of sources and the founder of Vizantijskij Vremennik, trained several scholars including A.A. Vasiliev, whose Istoriia Vizantii (1923; History of the Byzantine Empire, 1918-29) remains a valuable text to the present day.
Interest in Byzantine studies among the Greeks, for whom the story of Byzantium is part of the history of their nation, developed soon after the end of the first phase of the Greek War of Independence in 1832.. The monumental 6-volume work of Konstantinos Paparregopoulos, Historia tou hellenikou ethnous (History of the Greek People, 1860-77) - some 3,685 pages -was continued by Spyridon Lampros who prepared the way for the establishment of two centers for Byzantine studies in Greece: Athens and Thessaloniki. Konstantinos Amantos and Dionysios Zakythinos of the University of Athens trained several Byzantinists including John Karayannopoulos, the founder of the Center for Byzantine Studies in Thessaloniki. Italy's centers include Palermo under Bruno Lavagnini, Ravenna under G. Bonini, and the Vatican City through its Institute for Oriental Studies; each made major contributions with the publication of original works, critical editions, or monographs and periodical literature. In the United States, it was Vasiliev who introduced the study of Byzantium as an autonomous discipline. He was followed by his first student, Peter Charanis, who trained several Byzantinists. Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, the center par excellence for research in the history and civilization of the Byzantine Empire, has published several outstanding books, original sources, and the annual Dumbarton Oaks Papers.
Byzantine historiography of the last 50 years has contributed much to a revision and a better understanding of all facets of Byzantium's development. The demographic issue and the question of continuity versus discontinuity between the Byzantine Empire and the ancient Greek world were extensively researched in the second half of our century. Charanis' Studies on the Demography of the Byzantine Empire (1972.) has been the authority on the subject and today - according to Kazhdan and Cutler - the prevailing opinion is that:
Notwithstanding the various tribes and peoples that settled on the territory of the [Byzantine] Empire … the prevailing population was as Greek or Hellenized as it had been in the Balkans and Asia Minor during the 4th through 6th centuries (AD). Certainly, there were ethnic minorities there … (Italians, Bulgarians, Armenians and so on), but the main ethnic substratum consisted, throughout Byzantine history, of Greek and Hellenized constituents. The language [Greek] remained unchanged.
Even though the name "Byzantine" has been accepted today, scholars from as early as the 17th century have described the Byzantine Empire as the Greek empire. More recent historians have treated the history of the Byzantine Empire as a portion of the history of the Greek nation. In Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates (1940; History of the Byzantine State, 1956; revised 1969) George Ostrogorsky noted that "Byzantine history properly speaking is the history of the medieval Greek Empire." The Hellenistic character of the empire's civilization and the continuity between the ancient and the Byzantine Greek worlds has been convincingly resolved in favor of continuity, in The "Past" in Medieval and Modern Greek Culture (1978), edited by Speros Vryonis.
Contemporary Byzantine historiography has demonstrated that the Byzantine empire's economic, intellectual, administrative, and spiritual powers, although differing from century to century, kept it vigorous and alive, and helped it to exert permanent influences on many nations and peoples of Eastern and Western Europe, and the Near East. Byzantium's social structure, its attitude toward war and peace, its kind of government, diplomacy, defenses, administration, and administrative machinery, its religion and church, its education and art, its ' domestic and external problems, its economy and daily life, its strengths and weaknesses, and above all its influence and contribution to its people and to others have become subjects of intensive study.
Much has been done by Nicolas Svoronos in the area of law and legislation as it applied to taxation and the economic reforms of the middle Byzantine centuries, and by John Karayannopoulos in terms of economy, diplomacy, and finances. Palaeography and manuscript catalogs have been continued while much attention has been given to vernacular literature by Herbert Hunger. Learning and education have had a long history in Byzantine studies and in the last fifty years major contributions have been made.
But life and civilization in the Byzantine world was never static and Byzantine scholars, though never unanimous in several areas of research, have emphasized certain important traits of the empire's institutions, ideologies, and practices. Throughout its history, the empire was ruled by an emperor, or Basileus, a system of monarchy checked by several institutions, providing more flexibility and preventing the evolution of the monarchy into an absolute power. The divine right of the emperor was curtailed by the divine right of the people, who insisted that the government was a form of ennomos basileia, a kingship subject and obedient to the law. In the eyes of the people, the emperor who violated and abused the law was subject to deposition and even death. Authority that rested with the people implied that no body, civil or ecclesiastical, could act in violation of established creed, law, or custom. Moral, legal, and religious barriers prevented the emperor from becoming an absolute monarch.
In the spirit of equality under the law, the relations between church and state, civil and ecclesiastical, were determined by the principle of harmonia (harmony) with a specific definition of roles. Spiritual authority oversaw the spiritual needs of the empire's people, while civil authority was responsible for the secular aspects. This principle does not mean that some emperors did not attempt or practice Caesaropapism. Some patriarchs aspired to introduce Papocaesarism, placing ecclesiastical authority over imperial authority. The rule that governed both was the principle of diarchy (diarchia).
The administrative relationship between the central and provincial governments was closer to the Greek than the Roman model. When Constantine the Great transferred the capital to a Greek city, he followed Greek models in several of the government's reforms. He made civil and military authorities separate. His administrative structure allowed more autonomy to each branch of the government. In contrast to the Roman imperial system of centralized authority, the Byzantine empire's organization was founded on the Greek experience which allowed cities to function as political entities, retaining their civic pride, their individuality, even though politically parts of the empire. Furthermore, provincial governors had purely civil responsibilities leaving military functions to military commanders.
While in the first and last centuries of the empire's existence there were disparities and a wealthy class in contrast to a very poor class, in the middle Byzantine centuries there was a strong middle class of artisans and farmers. Social mobility allowed a poor peasant to move to the capital for work and ultimately emerge as emperor or patriarch. A free agricultural peasantry, as well as artisans and technicians organized in guilds, were supervised by governmental appointees. Western European feudalism was introduced in the East by the Crusades, but free small landholders survived to the very end of the empire's existence, argued Angeliki Laiou in Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire (1977).
In terms of culture and civilization, Byzantine historiography of the last fifty years, such as the work of Phaideon Koukoules, has concentrated on daily life, popular religiosity, lives of saints as sources for the' study of daily life, social institutions, and the social ethos of Byzantine society. The study of Byzantine civilization and its influence on the Slavic and Western European world has preoccupied several leading Byzantinists including Dmitri Obolensky and John Meyendorff. The nature of civilization has been revealed in its art and architecture, literature, religious thought and theology, hymnology and epic poetry. All these subjects have received much attention, which has resulted in outstanding contributions. Other aspects of Byzantine history such as topography, institutions, and the cities, have been extensively treated.
Attacked from east and west, north and south, the empire fought many wars and ultimately it succumbed. Relations with both allies and enemies have been the areas of much scholarly research with first-rate monographs and original studies such as that of Speros Vryonis.
Byzantine theological thought, church hymnography, ecclesiastical liturgies and music have been greatly influential and of interest to the Christian world down to the present time. Scholars such as Hans Georg Beck and John Meyendorff have devoted their lives to the study of the church and theology of the Byzantine world. Unlike archaeology and architecture -both relatively young fields of scholarly research- art has become the subject of many important studies. Although it has been viewed as one of Byzantium's original contributions, Ernst Kitzinger argued that art, too, manifested a "perennial Hellenism." It did not originate in the Iranian world, as some earlier historians maintained, but in the Hellenic and hellenized Greek world. In the light of this, the iconoclastic controversy of the 8th century has been seen not only as a religious issue, but also as a conflict between the Hellenic and the Semitic worldviews. If concern for human welfare and the vulnerable members of society is a measure of a civilized people, Demetrios Constantelos argued, Byzantium must have been a more civilized state than its critics would have us believe.
Our knowledge of Byzantine history and civilization has been greatly enriched and enlarged by many critical editions of sources by devoted philologists, historians, theologians, and others. The student of the Byzantine empire should constantly consult the bibliographies in professional journals such as Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Byzantion, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, Byzantina, Epeteris Etairias Byzantinon Spoudon, Vizantijskij Vremennik, and The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.
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Ses also Brown; Bury; Cameron; Cassiodorus; Eastern Orthodoxy; Halecki; Kazhdan; Komnene; Lopez; Middle East; Obolensky; Ostrogorsky; Procopius; Psellos; Roman; Runciman; Russia: Medieval; Russia: Early Modern; Vasiliev.
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