Byzantine Empire

Though the beginnings of the Byzantine Empire are unclear, its demise is not. The history of the Eastern Roman Empire, from its foundation in 324 to its conquest in 1453, is one of war, and plague, BYZANTINE EMPIRE

The Byzantine empire means different things to different people. Some associate it with gold: the golden tesserae in the mosaics of Ravenna, the golden background in icons, and of course, the golden coins. Others think of court intrigues, poisonings, and eunuchs. Most will think of Constantinople, which used to be Byzantium and is now Istanbul,

To pinpoint the beginning is tricky. Did the empire begin when the emperor Constantine moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople in 324? When both pagan and Christian priests consecrated the city in May 330? Or did it begin in 395 when the two halves of the vast Roman empire were officially divided into East and West, or even later in the late 5th century when Rome was sacked, conquered and governed by the Goths, leaving Constantinople and the East as the sole heir of the empire?

If its beginning is unclear, its demise is not: on 29 May 1453, the armies of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II entered the city and ended the existence of this state after more than a millennium. The Byzantine state was, more or less from

the beginning, a Christian Roman empire. After the edict of Milan in 313 ended the persecutions and made Christianity a tolerated religion, Constantine showed a marked (though not exclusive) preference for Christianity.

In the eleven hundred years that separate the first Constantine from the last emperor, another Constantine (the XI), the empire underwent many and significant changes. First came expansion. From the fourth to the early sixth centuries the East flourished: population boomed, cities proliferated and Constantinople itself grew to be the largest city in Europe with over 400,000 inhabitants.

To support this growth, its city walls were again enlarged between 404 and 413, a triple system of inner wall, outer wall and moat that did not fail to protect it until the very end (large parts of which are still visible, albeit over-restored, today). The ecclesiastical head of the city, the patriarch of the new Rome, had risen to the second position in the hierarchy of the Church just below the old Rome, the result of political pressure that was to breed discontent between the two sees in the centuries to come. Together with Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem they formed the Pentarchy, the ultimate authority of the Church as decided by councils bringing together the senior clergy of the five sees.

While the city expanded, the empire underwent a transformation. In 395, Theodosius I (r. 347-95) divided the vast empire stretching from Britain to North Africa and from Spain to Mesopotamia and harassed by the Persians in the East and Germanic tribes in the North. A demarcation line running roughly from Belgrade to Libya turned, in the fifth century, into a true frontier. In the West, disaster: Huns and Goths overran the Roman world. In the East, Germanic officials were integrated into the government and occupied important positions in the state machinery up until the reign of the emperor Zeno (r. 474-91), when they were gradually excluded by his own people, the Isaurians from the mountains of Asia Minor.

The Eastern Empire was an unbroken continuation of the Roman state, though with Greek as the dominant language. The West was now divided into several Germanic kingdoms who adopted Latin for their administration.

Romanos Lekapenos

On 25 March 919 the Byzantine fleet sailed into the port of Constantinople. As the admiral of the Empire’s navy, Romanos Lekapenos was invited to the city as protector of its young ruler, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (‘born in the purple’). The admiral’s thinking was clear on how to resolve the current political crisis in the capital: he planned to seize the imperial throne from Constantine and the Macedonian dynasty. Romanos’ daughter, Helena, was married to the young Constantine in 919, further evidence of the usurper’s intent to topple the Macedonians. Constantine could do little but submit to his father-in-law’s demands as Romanos consolidated his power.

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Constantine was an important figure in 10th-century Byzantine intellectual life. Bolstered with the knowledge stored in monastic and imperial libraries, he was able to organize and publish a number of scholarly texts. Through his own writings and his power as a royal sponsor, Constantine’s work covered a broad set of topics that spanned complex ceremonial procedures, imperial biography, military strategy, diplomacy and even agriculture.

Constantine’s intellectual work helped to revitalise the empire’s foreign relations in the 10th century and beyond. As the new Chosen People and legitimate heirs of Constantine the Great’s Roman Empire, the Byzantines sought to project power in former Roman territories with renewed energy and assertiveness. Following Constantine’s return to the throne and his death in 959, the three emperors who followed him were able military leaders, who fielded armies and went on to incorporate large swathes of territory into the Empire.

By 1025, Byzantium had reached its zenith, in influence, power and territory. These achievements might not have been undertaken – let alone attained – without the impetus of Constantine’s ideological program of the mid-10th century. As a medieval ruler, Constantine may have tapped into a universal principle of governing that embraced ideology as a way to embolden the aspirations of the state on the world stage.

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