Byzantium [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION what was the Byzantine empire? What was its place in history, and what was it that made it a historical unit? The reader who asks these questions will find that there are no simple answers. He will even find that, in a sense, there never was such a thing as a Byzantine empire; that had he lived, let us say in the 10th Century, in some provincial town of the so-called Byzantine empire and referred to its inhabitants as Byzantines, they would not have known what he was talking about. For in truth the expression "Byzantine empire" (derived from Byzantium, the ancient town on whose site Constantinople was built) is of comparatively modern origin, unknown to those who dwelled within the borders of the empire to which it refers. Nor would the inhabitants have understood a visitor if he had referred to them as Greeks, though the language they spoke was Greek. For them, the empire in which they lived was the Roman Empire and they were Romans. The Byzantine empire was indeed a phase of the Roman Empire. It began with the triumph of Christianity and Constantine the Great's transfer of his capital from Rome to Byzantium early in the Fourth Century. Despite the loss of its western provinces, and its geographical restriction to those of the east, it perpetuated without a break the political structure which the Romans had fashioned. Although the Byzantine empire subsequently underwent changes which substantially altered its character, it retained much that was Roman in ideology, government and law. As a continuation of the Roman Empire it considered itself—and at times it actually was—the one empire in the world. An impressive political organism which endured for over a thousand years, the Byzantine empire was also a great cultural unit at a time when, in a Europe broken up into numerous feudal units, intellectual activity was at a minimum. It continued without a break the culture of the ancient world as that culture had evolved following the conquests of Alexander the Great, the establishment first of the Hellenistic monarchies and then of the Roman Empire. The principal ingredients of that culture were Greek, but blended with them in the final result, the great Christian synthesis, were many Oriental elements. Christianity itself, the core of Byzantine life, was, in its most primitive form. Eastern in origin. So too, as the author notes, was the absolutism of the emperor, deriving his power from God and surrounded by ceremonial. And Eastern features of Byzantium's magnificent art—its abstract character, its flatness, its brilliant colors, its elaborate ornamentation—are everywhere apparent. This synthesis of cultures, dominated by Christianity, Byzantium passed on to surrounding barbarians, such as the Balkan Slavs and the Russians, and so made civilized nations out of them. At the same time Byzantium preserved the great secular literature of classical antiquity which served as inspiration for the emerging Europe of the Renaissance. The cultural influence of Byzantium was worldwide. It is with this empire, great both as a political organism and as a synthesizer and preserver of culture, that the following pages deal. If in the treatment of his subject the author is somewhat general, that is a matter dictated by the very nature of his assignment. The stimulating style in which he writes, however, should induce further study. If the reading of this book indeed does that, it will have achieved its purpose. PETER CHARANIS Voorbees Professor of History, Rutgers, The State University, New Jersey