Here’s a fun little test. Name a major mainstream movie, television show, or novel that has the Byzantine Empire as a setting and from the Byzantine perspective. No, really, name one.
I mean, we have movies set in ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Rome, Medieval Japan, Medieval China, South America, the Mayan Empire, Antarctica, Mars, Middle-Earth, and Tatooine. And yet, the vast and exotic Byzantine Empire seems to be “redacted.” Seriously. Why?
Most of our perception of Byzantine culture comes indirectly through our fascination with the mysticism of Eastern Europe. We see it in stories like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which takes place in Romanian Transylvania and has an occultic Byzantine feel, or Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. We see the Hagia Sophia in movies like From Russia with Love, The International¸ or Tom Hank’s Inferno. And most recently, Millennials walked on the streets of 16th Century Constantinople in the critically acclaimed video game, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. But these are just scant traces of Byzantium in our modern culture.
(Above) Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). (Below) Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (2011)
For 25 years, I’ve read about the Byzantine Empire and only a few of my closest friends and family members know about my unusual side passion. Even they don’t ask “why” anymore. Whenever I do end up mentioning something about the Byzantine Empire, or that the capital was Constantinople, the most common response I get (and I’m not kidding) is a pause and then a cheery rendition of Istanbul Not Constantinople. So now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, and we all get that.
But how did this particular time and place in the world come to capture my imagination so entirely? Like many things for me, the culprit was a book.
I can actually tell you the exact day my fascination with the Byzantine Empire began. It was in March of 1993. I know this because the library card is still inside the book cover to this day. The book was a non-fiction work called Constantinople: Birth of an Empire by Harold Lamb, and it was published way back in 1957. During my 1993 study hall, though, I just needed a book to pass the time because I surely wasn’t going to do my Algebra homework. So, I flipped through the pages, and the musty scent of old paper really set the tone. There were some black & white pictures on a few pages depicting a mosque-like building of some kind, various mosaics, and stone reliefs. I turned back to the first page and started reading…
The author opens with:
This is the story of a city built by survivors. As often happens in a great disaster, these survivors were not one people ethnically, but a fusion of many peoples. They gathered together to defend not so much their lives and property as their way of life. In so doing, they displayed a certain perversity; they refused to surrender their city. They kept on refusing for nearly a thousand years. History has named them the Byzantines…
So, wait a minute, I thought. This sounds nothing like the Roman Empire I learned about in any schoolroom. The Romans were of one people ethnically, you know…the Romans? So, this account baffled me. The Roman Empire was a civilization built by brute conquerors, not desperate survivors.
The author goes on:
They were alone in their survival. In the West, a long twilight fell on the Roman Empire during the centuries between A.D. 200 and 450. It ended in the darkness of the first Middle Age. In the East, however, the inhabitants of this city learned the hard lessons of disaster, and they managed to hold back the night.
Images of invincible Roman legionnaires, of architectural splendor, and ancient decadence all seemed at odds with the rather morbid tone the book struck. What the hell was this guy talking about? I flipped to a map in the index and got a better idea. The Roman Empire had been split in two at some point, a west and an east empire. I remembered hearing something about the split but then also realized that I never heard about what happened to that eastern portion of the empire. It was like the weird old uncle you meet at a family reunion and never hear from again.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
So, apparently, the Roman Empire we all study in school is the green part, the western part, the European part with its iconic boot of Italy kicking Sicily, and with the familiar shapes of France, Spain, and England facing the Atlantic Ocean. But there’s that whole red side, the less European side, the more Middle-Eastern side, which clearly includes Greece, the Balkans, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and some of Libya. Even today, that red side includes a rare fusion of diverse cultures that actually encompasses three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The author then launches into a spellbinding account of the late Roman Empire—not in its glory—but in the spasms of a violent death throe. He painted a picture of an absolute catastrophe. I still get goosebumps remembering my first impression of this tale.
Civilization had failed in totality.
Rome was sacked. Pillaging went on uncontested and tiny villages were left to fend for themselves. Barbarians migrated freely through the once secure interior of the empire. Imperial highways fell into disrepair. Stray cows milled about in the ruins of monuments, where nature crept back to reclaim the space. Roman soldiers deserted and joined the enemy. Noble families sailed out to escape their doom, only to be captured and sold into slavery. My seventeen-year-old self beheld a disaster on a scale so great that my imagination filled with epic oil painting-like scenes. And the story kept getting worse.
Thomas Cole’s ‘The Course of Empire’ series
Various people made radical attempts at survival in remote pockets…and failed. Desperate Roman emperors passed equally desperate policies in hopes of staving off the ruin of the empire…and failed. Finally, the black shadow of the Dark Ages truly descended upon a world that had actually lost the ability to function or even exist. I was amazed at such a thorough regression of a flagship human civilization.
In one quick stroke, my study hall that day shattered everything I thought I knew about the Roman Empire, of Western civilization. My belief that history represented steady upward progress fell short. I never considered that we could regress so decisively.
But in the East, on the side of the world we rarely talked about in class, I suddenly discovered that half of the Roman Empire survived. That “red section” had a history of its own, and it deviated quite a bit from the Roman Empire I understood.
The eastern empire was a second, bizarre Roman Empire, divorced from Europe, which didn’t even include the ancestral capital of Rome. The citizens spoke mostly Greek, not Latin. They were Christian, not pagan. They were the former conquered provinces, not the founding homeland. And from the ashes of the fallen western empire, I discovered that this eastern Frankenstein remnant of the Roman Empire would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire. These people and their empire would come to dominate the Medieval Era as the superpower of the world, exploding in culture, influence, and art.
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The Byzantines had little in common with the Dark Age barbarism and stagnation occurring in Europe. Moreover, the Byzantine Empire would go on ‘surviving’ for over a thousand years, making it one of the longest-lived civilizations ever.
I was so enchanted by the world I found in those pages that I pretended to lose the library book rather than return it. I paid the $18 lost fee and proceeded to horde this book my whole life.
In these pages, I met a beautiful cast of historical figures I’d otherwise never heard of, heroes and heroines who called themselves Roman but wore Asian or Russian-looking gowns and gaudy bejeweled crowns. I discovered a Byzantine general, named Belisarius. He was Justinian’s prime general and is considered a military genius. He’s considered one of the top military minds in all human history. See for yourself. Google ‘top 100 generals of all time.
(http://www.worldhistoria.com/the-top-100-generals-of-history_topic124028.html
Again, to my shock, I learned something that I never heard about in school. Remember that colorful map above, half-green and half-red? Well, Belisarius manages to reconquer the entire green section, single-handedly reuniting the Roman Empire for a generation. Impossible to believe! The civilized world fought back against the barbaric dark age.
I also read about a peasant named Petrus, who left his pig-farming village in modern Macedonia to go on to become arguably the greatest Byzantine Emperor in history. He takes on the name of his adopted father and becomes Justinian.
And then there’s his wife, Empress Theodora, whom history has never been more uncomfortable acknowledging. She had been a lowly prostitute, well known for her infamy in the seedy entertainment districts of Constantinople. She was essentially a medieval stripper and sex performer, who goes on to become a powerful intellectual contributor to Byzantine law and culture. Theodora’s undeniable influence on a sweeping legal overhaul represents some of the first Western laws designed specifically for the betterment of women and directed by a woman. The body of laws she influenced, the Corpus Juris Civilis are considered to be among the founding documents of the Westen legal tradition.
Mosaic of Empress Theodora in St. Vitale (Ravenna, Italy)
So, that one book opened me up to all of these aspects. This wasn’t the Dark Ages of Europe. This was a golden age of Byzantium. Sometimes, learning about Byzantine history feels like I’m unearthing a deep historical secret ala The Da Vinci Code or the lost city of Atlantis. And this is made all the more maddening that so few know much about it.
And yet history is incomplete without the Byzantines. For example, I was always told that Western Europe just kind of ‘woke up’ from the Dark Ages. But that’s simply not true. The Italian Renaissance began as the last generation of Byzantines made their way into Europe to escape subjugation. They brought with them their Greek culture, their literacy, legalism, and ideas. It’s well documented that the Renaissance has an unmistakable flair for Greek revivalism and that’s because of the Greek-speaking Byzantines. Within the next few decades, the Protestant Reformation began against the Catholic Church, to whom the Orthodox Byzantines had always been a rival.
Raphael’s Renaissance painting ‘The School of Athens’
Secondly, the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453. This closed the trade routes from Europe to Asia. Did you know that the fall of the Byzantine Empire is the exact event that sent desperate European explorers across the Atlantic to find the New World? This obviously led to the Western discovery of America in 1492, a mere 39 years after the Byzantine Empire vanished from the map. Talk about shock waves. These are rapid geopolitical developments that literally set the stage for the modern world.
Thirdly, Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican are considered the center of Christendom. But this is a relatively modern development. While Rome has always been central to the Christain world, Constantinople had Christianity’s greatest church, the Hagia Sophia. The great church still exists today but has since been converted into a mosque and museum in modern-day Istanbul. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. And wow! It’s pretty spectacular for a building built 1,500 years ago. Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453 and the construction of Saint Peter’s Basilica went into rapid motion and was completed in 1506. The timing makes perfect sense if you understand the role the Byzantine Empire played in the drama.
Scholars mostly agree that the Medieval Era spanned the one-thousand years between 500-1,500 C.E. The Byzantines emerged when Rome fell in 476 C.E., and it ended when Constantinople fell in 1453. I mean, the Byzantine lifespan is the Middle Ages. Therefore, the Byzantine Empire literally bridges a misunderstood gap in time between you and me today, and our world’s most ancient societies.
Flags of the Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian Empire
Geographically, the Byzantine Empire merged into the Islamic Ottoman Empire, while culturally, it migrated northeast and into the Russian Empire, and geopolitically, the Byzantines became the Hapsburg Empire (the latter two even adopted the Roman-Byzantine ‘double-eagle’ on its flag). The Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires vanished in 1918, after World War 1. The Russian Empire, however, became the Soviet Union. The so-called “eastern bloc” of the Soviet Union included many of the former Byzantine states. Therefore, the mysterious lands of the Byzantines didn’t truly open up to the West again until 1991, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed. Amazingly, this is right around the time I checked out that library book that day in 1993.
So, why don’t we know more about the Byzantine Empire? I’ve never heard a good answer to this question. I’m a 43-year old man who’s still caught up in the thrill of a book I found when I was 17. I feel like an explorer who discovered a strange and exotic land, a kind of doppelganger to Western civilization as fantastic as Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, yet part of real history. Hopefully, we can finally take a look at the lost civilization that set the table for our modern age.
If you love history, I encourage you to read about Byzantium. Go down a rabbit hole or two. You just might discover a new passion too.
Douglas A. Burton is the author of the award-winning novel, ‘Far Away Bird,’ which comes out February 6th, 2020 and details Empress Theodora’s early life. The novel is available for pre-order in paperback (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) and as an amazing audiobook (Audible.com, iTunes, Author Republic). Learn more at douglasaburton.com.
Wonderful work! Byzantium is a passion of mine also. When I taught history I always tried to get a world history class so that I could involve the Byzantine Empire in the conversation.
I hope to write an historical fiction book about this magical realm!
Thank you for the article. However, I think that you make the common mistake among many history-lovers, i.e. you romanticize the topic.
While the renaissance has been definitely influenced by the influx of Byzantines, protestantism and the discovery of the Americas definitely haven‘t!
Btw, if the BE was that good, why did dissolve?! It cannot be just the-others-fault… Also, orthodox countries are still far less behind the western ones so the fascination might be displaced. But still I agree that the BE is a topic that is ignored on purpose… unfortunately.
Read Byzantium: Greatness and Decline by Charles Diehl. He explains in great detail Byzantium’s strengths and weaknesses and how those weaknesses finally caught up with them.
It was really interesting to read your original and vibrant text regarding the “Byzantine Empire”.
I will try below to explain shortly your justified question:
So, why don’t we know more about the “Byzantine Empire”?
The answer is because the winner writes the history.
In the case of the “Byzantine Empire”, the winners were mainly the Germanic states established in the medieval Western Europe.
The so called Byzantine Empire was actually the Eastern Roman Empire and since the Western part collapsed under the barbaric invasions, it was the only Roman Empire left. Due to its geographical position though, it gradually grew Greek in language and civilization by continuing the Hellenic Roman heritage that Rome established on the foundations of Alexander the Great’s Empire, and incorporated various peoples and cultures of its area under the uniting element of Christianity.
As such, the Roman Empire with its capital the Constantinople, withstood continuous multi-faceted attacks from East and West and managed not only to survive but also to create a magnificent culture.
The problem is that the barbaric nations that destroyed the Western part of the Empire coveted the prestigious title of the Roman Emperor for themselves. Charlemagne was proclaimed Roman Emperor although he was just a Franko-German king. Of course the true heirs of Rome, the so-called “Byzantines” never accepted this and continued to fight for their Italian territories. The Germanic states though started to call the Roman Empire, Empire of the Greeks so as to keep for themselves the title of the Roman Emperor. On 1204 the pillage of Constantinople by the Crusaders was a major event in this fight. Later on, the fictitious term Byzantine was made up by Western historians as a convenient solution as the Greeks now would not be able to claim any rights to the Empire.
Moreover, the Eastern Roman Empire was described with the darkest colours as a decadent state.
Therefore, the “Byzantine Empire” remained an Empire without heirs and successors as the Greeks when liberated from the Turks, did not manage to recapture Constantinople and resurrect the “Byzantine Empire” as the Great Powers preferred a small state easy to control.
On the other hand, the Ottomans that conquered Constantinople when the “Byzantine Empire” was a shadow of its former self, initially styled themselves as Kings of Romans for political reasons but did nothing else but destroy its precious heritage.
Sorry for the long post. It really did not come out short as intended but I was really motivated by your genuine interest for one of the greatest World civilizations that ever existed and is a great loss for all mankind to remain unnoticed.
All best,
Please send me if you would like any clarifications regarding my message and also please read some books by Steven Runciman who was the first modern historian to unveil this huge cover-up as you correctly said.
Outstanding summary! Very accurate. I enjoyed reading it.
Thanks, an enjoyable read!
I think I can help answer your question of why we don’t know more about the Byzantine empire. Firstly, we do! Books and articles are being published weekly on Byzantine history! However, you are certainly right that it has not garnered the same attention as the high empire. The reasons for this is, of course, complicated. Part of the answer is historical. Those who rose to prominence in the west after the collapse of the empire had a vested interest in portraying themselves as the inheritors of the Roman project (i.e. The Holy Roman Empire). It was therefore not in their interest to acknowledge that those in the east were Rome’s true heirs. Naturally, the English-Germanic-Latin speaking world, desiring to chart the origin of their own peoples and nations have focussed on these western specific sources, while what is going on in the east is treated as peripheral. It is therefore a product of cultural prejudice – if you grew up in a Greek-speaking country you most certainly would have learned Byzantine history in school. Part of it also comes down historiography. While we can thank Edward Gibbon for giving birth to the study of the later empire he was also putting forward a deeply partial image underpinned by his political and religious beliefs. Gibbon believed that the empire of the 2nd century was the height of human achievement and all that came after was a deterioration of this ideal, in particular he blamed Christianity for screwing things up! This view set the agenda for many centuries. To see the impact of Gibbon’s work on popular conceptions of the eastern empire you only have to consider the word Byzantine’s double meaning as something that is excessively complicated. We must also consider the long impact that such beliefs have had on the academic system. Most universities have a Classics or Ancient History department which deals with the Republic and Imperial era empire and a separate History Department that deals with the Middle Ages…where then does a Byzantinist sit in this? The Classicists think they should be in the History department and the historians think that they should be with the Classicists. Thankfully, over the last few decades the rise of late antiquity as a separate field of study has seen this monolithic idea of a historical break slowly overturned. Finally, at least within the field of history, the Byzantine empire is viewed as part of an evolution or transformation of the ancient world into the Christian one that followed. The religion, art, and philosophy of the Byzantines (just as those of the barbarian kingdoms of the west) is viewed as a bridge between the classical world and the world of the middle ages, rather than a break with it.
I ordered the book today from Abe books!
When Constantinople fell, then India was doomed as it fell under a Muslim invasion and was never the same again. You may look this up.
You didn’t mention what I consider the most important legacy of Byzantine civilization; namely, the preservation of Ancient Greek literature and philosophy. Without the Renaissance spurred by the 9th century patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, we would probably know next to nothing of Homer, Aeschylus, or Plato, to name just a few. Photius was also instrumental in converting the Slavs to Christianity through the comission of Cyril and Methodius, who translated the Bible into old Slavonic.
So much in common with how I became a huge fan of the Eastern Roman Empire! Except I became something of a map maker, creating the maps displayed on http://www.WorldHistoryMaps.info (will hopefully be fixed and available again soon!)
I must begin by saying that I am humbled to meet another whom I can relate to in mindset. We are few in the world who know how much deeper the mysteries yet go. And yet even in this great age of technology, where the words of the Wise lie ready for the ones who seek it, devoid of any context, they lose the value of their truth. The flame of civilization has been reborn many times, and each time quite different then before. Do not give up your search, there are still answers to those who seek. Cerca Trova.
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this matter to be actually something that I think I would never understand. It seems too complex and extremely broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I’ll try to get the hang of it!
Thank you for writing this article. It’s one of the best on Byzantium I’ve ever seen. Can’t wait to buy your book! 🙂
Wow! Thank you for the feedback! And please enjoy the book. I think fans of the Byzantine Empire will recognize the love that went into bringing that world o life. Please reach out to me when you’ve finished…
Douglas, great write up! I fell the same way – a book. Mine was A Short History of Byzantium by the great English scholar John Julius Norwich. Its a abridged version of his 3 volume Byzantine history. It was like 20-30 movies waiting to be made. Norwich more then implies, openly states, the reason we know little of Byzantium is the Catholic church used its power to make it so. A shame because reading it, as you allude, gives us the other half of the story of us.
If you still are interested in Byzantine history, you may want to visit my home town in Greece which has not lost its heritage and its castle has many Byzantine churches and the fortress is preserved and under the protection of the ministry of archaeology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monemvasia
Penny, I’ve been to Monemvasia twice, it is magical. You’re lucky to be able to live there!
The Western Roman Empire may have failed politically but it lived on culturally. economically, socially, linguistically and of course religiously. Ditto the Eastern Roman Empire, but its legacy is even more immediate and present that that of the West. The scholars of the Islamic Elightment possessed a progressive and inquisitive cast of mind that the Romans lacked. They absorbed Greek and Roman knowledge and worked on it, recording and passing down their findings for subsequent generations to improve still further and, centuries before Constantinople actually fell, gave us modern science, especially in the fields of chemistry and mathematics. Most modern Americans probably wouldn’t believe it, but the science of distilling fermented liquor to extract near-pure alcohol was founded by a Persian chemist called Jabir Ibn Hayyan in about 800AD. No Jabir, no JD!
The Muslims were blessed by having several very talented thinkers…most of them Persians. But this is nothing new, the Persians had been progressive people for centuries already before Islam.
St. Theodora wasn’t a “sex worker.” That comes from the slanderous Procopius who set out to defame her. She *did* come from the bottom classes but there is no evidence, other than Procopius clearly biased and perverse accusations, that she was actually a sex worker.
Check out Robin Pearson’s “The History of Byzantium” podcast.
This was a delightful read. As a Catholic convert to the Antiochian Orthodox Church, I have become much more aware of the history of the Eastern Roman Empire and it is truly fascinating! My introduction to the subject came by way of a study of the history of the early church. One point I have learned is that the term “Byzantine” was not coined by those people modern historians dub “Byzantines.” In fact, Miriam-Webster cites 1651 as the year the term was first used as an adjective. So, the Roman Empire fell in 474? I loved that you mentioned Justinian because evidently someone forgot to tell him. No, Rome fell, not the empire. Citizens of the Eastern Empire considered themselves Roman citizens, not “Byzantine citizens,” and as you so aptly pointed out, it lasted another millennium after Rome fell. Byzantium was a name all but forgotten by the citizens of Rome who inhabited Constantinople. There is much political maneuvering and intrigue involved, all revolving around the balance of church and state. History has a distinctly different flavor from the Eastern perspective.
You are 100% correct. The people of the empire definitely called themselves “Romans” and viewed themselves as Romans. I realize that there is controversy around the name “Byzantine.” But at least for now, it’s the word I know that people understand. I think over time, as this era and these people come more to the forefront, we’ll all recognize that the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) played one of the largest roles possible in setting up our modern world. Thanks for sharing your thought and opinions.
I am usually to blogging and i actually admire your content. The article has really peaks my interest. I’m going to bookmark your website and keep checking for brand spanking new information.
The Byzantine Empire never existed. There was a Roman Empire, whose capital changed from Old Rome to New Rome, and there were, starting from Charlemagne, western usurpers of the title of Roman Emperor.
Restoration of proper names matter. For as long as it’s called “the byzantine empire” it will remain foreign and oriental, instead of our common heritage.
Thank you all for your contributions. I have thoroughly and proudly enjoyed reading them. As an Eastern Roman (Byzantine) myself, it is fantastic to see that there are people finding all historical eras fascinating to study.
Having grown up immersed in Byzantine history, three full years from elementary through high-school, I had never realized how much people didn’t know about it till I listened to Lars Brownworth’s podcasts about the 12 Emperors of Byzantium which by the way I recommend. He expressed the same surprise as Mr. Burton about the general ignorance of such an important part of world history.
Regardless of the impossibility of it, many of us wish for its return. I have recently been pleasantly surprised to find out that large numbers of people, in Syria for example, still call themselves Romans, identify as citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire and also wish for its return. What can I say, we are obsessed with history and as such we can dream the impossible, after all, I liked your “Tolkien” simile…
I’m buying your book.
May I also recommend Helene Glykatzi-Ahrweiler for your studies, the expert of the field.
Loved your commentary. This blog has been connecting me to so many other people who share this passion for the Byzantine Empire. I can’t believe how many of us there truly are. I did listen to Lars Brownworth’s podcasts a while back. LOVED THEM! For a while, there was so few sources of information. It felt like being part of a secret society lol. I’ll look into Helene Glykatzi-Ahrweiler! Thanks for the tip. Appreciate ya!
A small piece of the empire lives on at Mt. Athos. I’ve seen remnants of the Empire there, in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Crimea and Russia. Tsarist Russia (especially before Catherine the Great) was basically Northern Rome, with a Slavic language. So much in common. Today, the civilization is perpetuated by these echoes, the Greek language and the Orthodox Tradition. There WAS a deliberate campaign to denigrate or dismiss this mighty civilization. It has a specific spirit that you can still see and smell and touch around he world, and participate in intellectually and spiritually. It may yet survive.
Dear Writer , I read your article because being in quarantine I enjoy also read from internet, that usually I do not! I must say you must be really a fan of Byzantium. But most of the books you mention they are not serious publications, and some information are totally wrong. Moreover, many picture you have posted they have are wrong (as flags etc).Try to read more scholarly books, you will learn and enjoy more! best wishes
First of all there was never a state in existence in history called the “Byzantine” Empire. What you are talking about is the Roman Empire, the state that was born on the Tiber, once ruled by Octavian Augustus, and died on the Bosporus in 1453.
As several here have written, the term “Byzantine” was coined after the fall of the Roman Empire (in 1453) by a German historian who, in the by then, long tradition of the Western European states, of trying to wrest Roman history from the Romans by not calling them Roman.
That historian did not use the “Greek Empire”, a designation that could get you thrown in jail, by enraged Roman Emperors, if you used it on diplomatic missions to the Roman capital Constantinople. Instead he came up with “Byzantine” after Byzantium, the name of the small town that had occupied the same spot, before Constantine I had founded his new capital; New Rome, there. This new Rome came to be called Constantinople (i.e. Constantine’s city).
The ”Byzantine” term was then popularized by French enlightenment writers and eventually laden with negative connotations such as; devious, complicated, intrigue, untrustworthy and so on, much like the saying: “Be ware of Greeks baring gifts”.
At the same time the western historians also came up with the idea that the Roman Empire somehow had been divided in 395 CE, and that the, in their minds, “real” Roman Empire (the western part i.e.) fell in 476 CE. This to cut off any possibility of Romaness to the, post 5th c., thriving half of the Roman state.
To be fair, this idea was not new, it was an invention of the Papacy, who (in the 8th-9th c. CE) falsified something called “Constantine’s Donation”, a document in which Constantine I had donated the west to the Papacy. For that to be true a sort of division had to occur, and they found a perfect one in 395 CE, when the emperor Theodosius I placed one of his sons administrating the western half of the Roman state (Empire) and the other son the eastern half.
This had happened many times before, for instance, Constantine I had four heirs dividing the imperial duties of the state, but no one talks about the Roman Empire splitting then. And of course, no one at the time did when Theodosius I did the same. Coins were being minted with both emperors, laws were being issued by joint imperial decree etc etc. I.e there was no split of the Roman Empire into an eastern and western Empire, therefore there could be no fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th c. CE, because half the state was still in possession of the Romans (i.e. citizens of the Roman Empire). What would be historically accurate is to talk about the Roman Empire’s gradual loss of the western territories during the 5th c. CE.
This ”burial” of the real Roman Empire (what you call Byzantine Empire) started when the Pope crowned and appointed Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans in 800 CE. The Pope, who was still just one bishop among others in the united Roman state church who’s head was the Roman ruler in Constantinople, had no legal right or traditional right to appoint an emperor, that was the right of the Roman citizens and their representative, the head of the Roman church, the Roman ruler in Constantinople.
This had been the way ever since Constantine I became a Christian. So this appointment led almost to war between the Germanic Emperor and the Roman state. Charlemagne backed off and in a treaty he stopped using the Roman part of his title, and the Roman Empire agreed to let him keep the title Emperor (just not of the Romans). But that treaty was not held up by Charlemagne’s successors. Ever since that day in 800, the west, mostly the Papacy but also others, started to try and wrest Roman history and Romanness from the Roman Empire. Calling it, its population and its rulers, everything but Roman, despite 600 years of preserved protests from the Roman Empire’s rulers.
Since the Roman Empire fell in the second half of the 15th c. CE, there was no one to protest this continued propaganda campaign from the west. The survivor or the winner writes the history, and that is what happened. Even when dead the west continued trying to bury the medieval Roman Empire, and they have succeeded. Most people know nothing about half of Roman history, they think the Roman Empire split, they think, with absolute certainty, that the Roman Empire fell in 476 CE. It is sad, when you think of it. It is also very sad that the historians still are taking part in this medieval propaganda campaign, on the side of the falsifiers, by using the term ”Byzantine”.
Why are there no movies or TV-series or for that matter, so few books of historical fiction about a thousand years of Roman history. Because no one, except a very few, knows there are a thousand more years of exciting Roman history to be had. And that, is because of the term ”Byzantine” and the, by know 1220 year long, running propaganda campaign of trying to bury the medieval non-western part of the history of the Roman Empire.
By Patric Nilsson
Admin’ RomeNotByzantium on FB.
Did the Roman (Byzantine) Empire entirely fall? Could Mt Athos be considered the last domain of the Roman Empire?
According to Ottoman tax records and Athonite archives, the total population of Mount Athos was 1442 in 1525/30, 2966 (2908 monks + 58 laymen) in 1764, and 2705 (2390 monks + 315 laymen) in 1808. With regard to the monks, however, the figures should be augmented by at least thirty per cent, for there is considerable evidence that approximately a third of their number would be away from the Mount at any given time, either for Alms-begging or serving on one of the monastic estates.
The ethnic composition of this monastic population had always been mixed, although in the early years the number of foreign monks was fairly limited. Their numbers began to grow and their presence to have a much greater impact during the period 1480-1530, for reasons that are not fully explained. By the end of the fifteenth century a number of the foundations were largely occupied by foreign monks: these included the Monasteries of Iviron (Georgians), Panteleimon (Russians), Chelandari, Gregoriou, St Paul (Serbs), and Zographou, Philotheou and Simonopetra (Bulgarians). But their numbers gradually began to wane, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century the only Slav monasteries remaining were those of Chelandari, Zographou, St Paul and Xenophontos.
It should be noted that, despite the presence of so many monks from so many different nations, Mount Athos never gave the impression of a multi-national community, but rather remained part of the ecclesiastical, cultural and geographical territory of the ‘Roman nation’. Foreigners were welcome, but were always considered as being ‘from foreign parts’, in the words of Patriarch Joachim I (1501).