A miracle of hope for Romania’s pensioner underclass

At Precupeti Vecchi Church in inner city Bucharest with Father Gheorghe Tudor (centre) of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Revd James Ramsay (right) of the Anglican Church of the Resurrection

Letter from Bucharest
Patrick Comerford

The main shopping streets of Bucharest are now lined with elegant boutiques and department stores, with fine restaurants, full banking services and even casinos vying with each other.

The elegance and prosperity in the heart of the Romanian capital are a sharp contrast to the visible poverty when I first visited the city immediately after the collapse of the Ceausescu regime, or the struggling economy I witnessed when I returned during the 1996 election campaign.

But today Romanian society faces new problems because of the continuing devaluation of the Romanian currency and spiralling inflation. According to the president of Volksbank Romania, Mr Laurentiu Mitrache, the average income of working families is 3-4 million lei (€100) a month, leaving them unable to meet living costs, despite Romania's low prices. Old people are on fixed pensions, which have not kept pace with inflation and have lost their spending power due to devaluation. He told of one couple - a retired judge and a retired pharmacist - living on a monthly pension of €60. A priest told of a parishioner who is a former energy minister and is now living on €40 a month.

According to Mr Mitrache, many pensioners, unable to pay their electricity and heating bills or buy enough food, have been forced to sell their apartments and move out. The new underclass in Romania is made up of these once-respectable old people, now a regular sight, quietly and humbly begging in streets, in the subways and on the steps of the Metro stations.

Until the revolution in 1990, the churches in Romania were not allowed to engage in social witness and outreach. Today, despite their best intentions, most Orthodox parishes are unable to begin social projects because of a shortage of money, space and organisational skills.

However, at the inner city parish of All Saints' Church, the Romanian Orthodox parish priest, Father Gheorghe Tudor, has built an old people's centre and started a project that includes three-storey sheltered housing and a food programme. The project began two years ago and is now feeding up to 100 people three times a week, with a further 25 families receiving food parcels with food donated by local restaurants. The sheltered housing will provide a new home for 20 old people on fixed pensions who have lost their apartments and short-term respite for old people who cannot afford to pay for their heating and lighting.

Romanian tradition expects a wake and burial within three days of death, but many old people find their flats are too small for the traditional Romanian wake, and too hot during the summer months to allow mourners to file through the cramped rooms.

Now the new mortuary chapel built by Father Gheorghe serves these needs too. The modern chapel interior is decorated in traditional Orthodox style, and all the work and craftsmanship have been provided by voluntary local labour.

“The closer you are to people, the closer you are to God,” Father Gheorghe says. However, a lot of work remains before the project building is complete. Present priorities include the installation of heating, at an estimated cost of $10,000. He puts the total cost for completing the building at $50,000, with an annual running cost of $36,000.

The project is only one of a handful of such projects so far in the Romanian Orthodox Church. However, Father Gheorghe believes it could inspire similar outreach and witness - a hope echoed by a neighbouring parish priest, Father Mihail Spatarelu of the Church of the Dormition, who is also Project Co-ordinator of AIDRom, the Ecumenical Association of Churches in Romania.

The project at All Saints is also attracting ecumenical interest. The Anglican Church of the Resurrection, just off the busy shopping streets and close to many of the Romanian capital's embassies, has a unique record as the only Anglican church to maintain a presence in the Eastern Bloc throughout the post-war years of communism. The chaplains during those bleak days have included the Rev Dr David Hope, now Archbishop of York, and the Rev Ian Sherwood, a former curate of the Saint Patrick's Cathedral group in Dublin.

In the 1980s, Ian Sherwood found his flat had been bugged by Ceausescu's secret police. Today, the Anglican Church in Bucharest finds itself working in a more open climate. Father Gheorghe's determination has moved the present chaplain, the Rev James Ramsey, to work more closely with his Orthodox neighbours. “The project is a sign of discipleship in Christ, a miracle of the love of God,” he says.

This ‘Letter from Bucharest’ was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 20 February 2004.

Byzantine Studies, Kilkenny, 2004: 6: Byzantine Literature and the Arts

Tertullian asked, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Liberal Studies Group,

Maynooth University Campus

Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny,

Monday, 16 February 2004

6, Byzantine Literature and the Arts

The recovery of learning in another mediaeval society

Outside the Augustaeum, in Constantinople, one would notice a statue of Justinian wearing what was known at the time as the armour of Achilles. But the Emperor carried no weapon. Instead he held in his left hand the symbol of power of the Christian Roman Emperor, the globe, which signified his dominion over land and sea, and on the globe was a cross, the emblem of the source of his rule.

Justinian as Achilles was a natural example of the fusion of classical culture with Christianity in the Eastern Roman Empire. This fusion began before Justinian's time, but was to continue to be one of the distinguishing marks of education and literature in the age of Justinian. Along with the legal and architectural splendours, the reign of Justinian also saw a flowering of literature such as the Greco-Roman world had not enjoyed for many years.

The earliest Christians avoided the worldly learning of the Greeks with their ‘philosophy and deceit,’ and saw no way in which the blasphemous literature could be brought into any sort of relationship with Christian teaching. This reaction of many Christians, as late as the second century, could be summed up in Tertullian’s famous phrase: ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’

In time, however, Christian thinkers began to realise that there was much to be carried over into Christian teaching from the Classical Greeks. Socrates and Plato, for example, often seemed to approximate Christian thought. Likewise, many of the writings of Aristotle could be fit right into the teachings of the Church. Indeed, after the adoption of Christianity people such as Saint Basil and the other fathers of the Church, all trained in Greek literature, were able to show that Pagan literature contained a wealth of teaching that was in accord with the philosophies, dogmas and symbolisms of Christianity.

It is true that such literary themes as the loves of the Olympians, and the witty humour of Aristophanes, represented views of life that Christianity came to replace. However, the fathers of the Christian Church and other later thinkers had the insight to perceive that it was possible to make some basic distinctions, and separate those elements from classical literature that were not in accord with Christianity, keeping all the rest.

The writings of the Fathers of the Church, and many others after them show an established conviction that was vital for the future of the Byzantine civilization, and indeed, all Christian cultures. This conviction brought about the establishment of a ‘new’ Christian culture, one utilising all the best writings of the classical Greek thought and fusing it into the writings and teachings of the Orthodox Church. The process of such a fusion took centuries, and its final step was not to be completed till the age of Justinian.

Even after Christianity had grown to the point where numbers of prominent people were Christians, public life was still in the hands of people who had a classical education. By this time, the educational system had come to be viewed as the embodiment of the ancient heritage, political and philosophical as well as literary. In the Greek East, even under Roman subjugation, Greek literature kept alive for centuries the tradition of the political, philosophical and artistic achievements of the classical Hellenic world.

For a Greek Christian to give up all the classical teachings simply because parts of them were indelicate would have meant losing a great deal. It would have meant, had he chosen to accept only the teachings of the early Christians, that he would be cut off from a major part of his cultural heritage. Most people were not prepared for this.

It was into a world founded on this ideology that Justinian came. Indeed, Justinian immediately recognised the meaning of the classical spirit and set himself to absorb it and be absorbed by it. The Greek language itself also fascinated him and he took great pleasure in composing state papers in it, although he had a skilled secretariat for this purpose. A humorous anecdote in this vein comes to us in Procopius’s Secret History, where he tells us rather wickedly that the Emperor took great pleasure in performing public readings of his works, in spite of his provincial accent, which he never lost when speaking Greek (of course, who was to tell the Emperor that his accent was provincial?).

Justinian decided to put an end to the idea of Paganism as heresy. He saw, however, that there was a major problem in the manner in which Pagan writing was being taught in the schools and universities. In particular, it was being taught in two different ways.

In the schools of Constantinople, Gaza and Alexandria, the classics were being taught by teachers who were themselves Christians. Procopius was typical of such Christian teachers steeped in the classics. He and his pupils and colleagues composed great ecclesiastical works based on the classical style. The theatres of Gaza were often filled with Christian professors who would give public exhibitions in which they declaimed before enthusiastic audiences their rhetorical compositions. Another such teacher, alive in Justinian’s day, was John Philoponus. His works included both theological treatises and polemics, as well as commentaries on Aristotle.

One centre of learning that even until Justinian’s time had never associated itself with Christianity was Athens. There the professors were still Pagan and were teaching the classics from entirely the Pagan point of view. This was found unacceptable. Not the fact that they were teaching classical works, but that they were not Christians. Justinian gave them the opportunity to become Christian but they refused. As a result, Justinian closed down their schools in 529, his second year as emperor. Of course, one could still continue to study the classics at Alexandria, Gaza, or Constantinople, where the teachers were Christians. Most of the Athenian professors went as refugees to the court of the King of Persia.

However, in time, they found conditions there even worse and they petitioned to be allowed to return home. For better or for worst, this action of Justinian’s was to be symbolic of what the ‘new’ Christian education and literature, based on the classics, was to be like.

The poetry of Byzantium

As well as his interests in law-giving, architecture, sculpture and philosophy, Justin was a poet: one of his hymns is incorporated into the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, and was included in the Romanian Orthodox liturgy I took part in yesterday.

Much of the new poetry of Byzantium, as might expect, was religious, some of it was part of the effort to recover the Hellenic world and the world of Greek philosophy. Later poetry would continue to maintain Byzantine cultural expressions despite Frankish and Ottoman occupation

The favourable atmosphere of Constantinople produced a number of distinguished literary figures in Justinian’s time. Many of their works were largely influenced by the teachings of Aristotle, Plato and other ancient Greek philosophers and play writers, whom they had all studied. Indeed, men in public life were frequently scholars and poets.

The work entitled The Greek Anthology, for instance, preserves selected specimens of the verses of nine such poets. Included in this list is John the Lydian, who wrote some autobiographical passages about the scholarly side of the government, and also a history of the Persian war. Procopius the historian and Paul the Silentiary were also in this list of distinguished scholars at the time of Justinian.

Procopius studied at Gaza, then a university town, and learned to mimic the style of the great Greek historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides. In 527 he went to Constantinople where he was to assume new heights as the leading historian of the day, as well as a legal adviser to Belissarius, the most brilliant of Justinian’s generals. He also wrote a panegyric in which Justinian’s vast construction program was described with the resources of literary art. After Procopius’s death another of his works, The Secret History, was published, in which he libelled the Emperor Justinian who, he believed, had failed to do justice to his hero Belissarius.

[*** hand out excerpt from Paul the Silentiary ***]

While Procopius went back to the classic Greek historians, Paul the Silentiary went back to Homer. He wrote a famous description of Aghia Sophia in 887 hexameters, about the length of one of the longer books of Homer. Homer became the vehicle for the praise of the noblest church in the empire. Like Procopius’s earlier work, Paul’s monograph on Aghia Sophia reflects a real Christian feeling via the subtlety and similes of the Homeric style. It was not only for his praise of Aghia Sophia that Paul is known for, however. In his day and later Paul was one of the most appreciated writers of occasional verses in the Classical style.

The 78 of his epigrams that are preserved in The Greek Anthology show that he was an accomplished practitioner of the classical style, with an intimate knowledge of classical literature and a delicate feeling for language and meter.

In the age of Justinian, Greek classical literature was a part of the ancient heritage, and Christianity, as a custodian of this heritage, was well able to absorb the classical literary tradition so long as it was understood that the tradition now played a vital role as an element in the new and larger Christian way of life that Hellenism and the entire Eastern Roman Empire had gradually evolved into.

Justinian knew that true patriotism and national pride would come from the teaching of the record of achievements of ancient Greece. Indeed, the Greek-speaking citizens of the empire were very conscious of their decent from the Greeks of ancient times who had produced the likes of Homer, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. They saw no essential discontinuity between themselves and classical Greece. It was now Justinian’s responsibility to see that the essential base of such a classical pedagogical system was maintained. Classical literature had proven its worth over many centuries, and was to survive alongside with Christianity. In the Christian Roman Empire Justinian hoped to shape what one could read and learn, and teach the classics, but only if he or she was Christian first

Other Byzantine arts

This inter-mingling of creativity in the architecture, poetry, piety and folksongs of Byzantium is reflected in the anonymous poem or folksong translated as The Last Mass in Santa Sophia [refer to handout]. The architecture of Byzantium provided the space for mosaics and frescoes, and inspired the poetry and literature of this great civilisation. But apart from architecture, literature and poetry, the Byzantine world of art was creative in many other fields too.

The Byzantine museums in Athens, Thessaloniki, Mystras, and on the islands, or the exhibitions such as the Treasures of Mount Athos, organised as part of the programme for Thessaloniki’s Year as European Cultural Capital in 1997 contain rich display of Byzantine works in sculpture, painting, marble, wood carvings, mosaic floors and tiles, frescoes and wall paintings, illuminated manuscripts, paper icons, portable icons, religious vestments, liturgical vessels, jewellery, decorative tiles, architectural embellishments, pottery, coins, objects worked in silver and other precious metals …

The architecture of Byzantium was to be seen not only in Constantinople but also in Alexandria, for long the second city of the Empire, in the Palace of the Grand Masters, for long associated with the Knights of Saint John or the idiosyncrasies of Mussolini, but the citadel of the fortified Byzantine city of Rhodes from the late seventh century to 1309.

Byzantine culture survives:

After the last mass in Aghia Sophia and the fall of Byzantium, Byzantine culture did not come to an end. Byzantium did not disappear when Constantinople fell to the Turks and was transformed into Istanbul. There was a cultural continuity with Byzantium in the cultural lives of Cyprus, until it fell to the Turks in 1571, and on Crete, the island of Candia, for almost another century after that

With the arrival of a new wave of scholars, artists and writers from Byzantium after 1453, in Crete, then the island of Candia, Byzantine culture was guaranteed its survival and prosperity on the island and its capital, Kastro (present-day Iraklion) until it was captured by the Turks in 1669.

And so, for example, the link between Byzantine literature and Renaissance literature, between late Byzantium and late Venice, the place where West looks East and East looks West in early modern Europe, is provided by the Cretan poet Vitsentzos Kornaros (1553-ca 1613/14), an immediate contemporary of El Greco, whose poem Erotokritos, is the best-known and the most admired work of Cretan Renaissance literature.

This 10,000-verse epic is more than a poem, it is a love story, it is a great work of fiction, it is narrative poetry and drama. In this poem, we find the balance of Greek culture is found in the balance between Athens and Byzantium, the city of philosophers and the city of emperors. It has inspired poets and musicians into the 20th century, such as this track from the Cretan songwriter Paradosiako.

[*** play track from Erotokrtios ***]

To put it into its cultural landscape, this poem is almost contemporaneous with Edmund Spencer’s The Fairie Queen (1596). It was written after 1595 and before 1610 in Kastro.

The tradition of Byzantine iconography was not only maintained, but it was nurtured and developed, for example among the exiles from Byzantium who found refuge in Crete, especially in the school that grew up in a church in Kastro (present-day Iraklion) associated with the Byzantine monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai.

There the leading writer of icons was Mikhailis Damaskinos (ca 1530-1591), whose better-known works include the Last Supper. The best-known of his pupils was young Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614). A contemporary of Cornaros, he left Crete at the age of 26 in 1597 and moved first to Venice and Rome and then to Toledo in Spain, where he earned fame as El Greco. Many western critics have tried to explain his style by suggesting various eye diseases, but, undoubtedly, he was totally influenced in his work by the Byzantine style of iconography brought from the City to Crete. His pictures are theological rather than religious in character; they make a clear distinction between the divine world and the material world, which are seen as separate but mutually accessible areas. But more of that in two weeks time!

On other islands, the Byzantine tradition of iconography was maintained by painters such as Nikolaos Koutouzis and Nikolaos Kantounis on Zakynthos.

Byzantine art, from the past and today, can be seen in museums and galleries throughout Greece, the most notable being those in Athens, Thessaloniki and Rhodes, but especially in Mystras, and it is also worth visiting the Byzantine museums in Zakynthos, Chania, Chios, Spetses and many other islands to see not a tradition from the past but a living tradition that is part of a living creativity and spirituality today

The poetry of Byzantium continued too.

Byzantium in literature and poetry today:

On our first morning [2 February 2004], I read W.B. Yeats’s poem, Sailing to Byzantium. But while Yeats was romancing about Byzantium as an El Dorado or Tír na nÓg of the past, Byzantium continued to be a living presence, a place of the present, in Greek poetry after the last mass in Aghia Sophia.

In the geography of the Greek poet, Byzantium was not the only Byzantine city. Alexandria, which had been won and lost so many times in the Hellenic and Byzantine conflicts, came to symbolise the sensuality of all Greeks. This had been primarily a Greek city from the days of Alexander the Great until the rise of Nasser and the Suez Crisis in the mid-20th century, and the cycle of the loss and redemption of Alexandria represented the losses and the hopes of all Greeks.

Alexandria was the second city of Byzantium, it was the sensual Byzantium, and the loss of Alexandria, for Byzantines, as for Hellenes before them and modern Greeks after them, symbolises the loss of cultural riches, the loss of cultural diversity, the loss of sensuality and pleasure, the very pain of losing love itself

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, who romanticised the Hellenic and Byzantine world, wrote many of his poems on themes provided by Byzantium. Anna Komnina (1083-1146) was ‘a power hungry woman’ driven by the consuming regret of never having managed to gain the throne; Anna Dalassini is eulogised for never having uttered ‘those cold words “mine” or “yours”.’ Cavafy discovers a remnant of royal Byzantine pride in the fact that John Kantakuzinos and his wife Irini chose to wear bits of coloured glass in place of jewels during their coronation, which came at a time when ‘our afflicted empire was extremely poor.’ And Cavafy comments on the occasion:

… I find
nothing humiliating or undignified
in those little pieces of coloured glass.
Just the opposite: they seem
a sad protest against
the unjust misfortune of the couple being crowned,
symbols of what they deserve to have,
of what surely it was right they should have
at their coronation – a Lord John Kantakuzinos,
a Lady Irini, daughter of Andronikos Asan.

In the poem, ‘Theophilos Paliologos,’ Cavafy laments the fall of Byzantium in 1453, and with it the death of Hellenism as the mediaeval world knew it. But Cavafy was from Alexandria, and the loss of Alexandria to the Byzantine world symbolised the loss of sensuality and pleasure, the loss of the lover, the loss of life itself.

This is beautifully expressed in his poem ‘The God abandons Antony.’ In this poem, Antony was losing Alexandria to Caesar, just as 20th century Greeks would mourn the loss of Byzantium – the poem was written in 1911, just 10 years before the disastrous attempt by Venizelos to recapture or liberate Constantinople – the loss of Byzantium, or perhaps even the looming, inevitable cultural loss of Alexandria too.

[*** distribute the handout (say the translation is by Edmund Keeley and the Irish-born Greek scholar Philip Sherrard), play the reading (the narrator is the Cypriot-born actor John Ioannou). *** ]

The poem has influenced many other modern poets and songwriters. Compare it with the poem on the other side of the sheet by Leonard Cohen.

[*** Play track 7 from his 2001 album Ten New Songs ***]

Appendix 1:

‘The god abandons Antony,’ CP Cavafy:

At midnight, when suddenly you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive – don’t mourn them uselessly:
as one long prepared, and full of courage,
say goodbye to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceive you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty promises like these.
As one long prepared, and full of courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion,
but not with the whining, the please of a coward;
listen – your final pleasure – to the voices,
to the exquisite music of the strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

‘Alexandra Leaving,’ Leonard Cohen

Suddenly the night has grown colder.
The god of love preparing to depart.
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
They slip between the sentries of the heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine;
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine.

It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust –
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for this to happen,
Go firmly to the window. Drink it in.
Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing.
Your firm commitments tangible again.

And you who had the honor of her evening,
And by the honor had your own restored –
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving;
Alexandra leaving with her lord.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for the occasion;
In full command of every plan you wrecked –
Do not choose a coward’s explanation
That hides behind the cause and the effect.

And you who were bewildered by a meaning;
Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed –
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Next 7, Byzantine theology and Church life (1 March 2004).

Byzantine Studies, Kilkenny, 2004: 5: Byzantine Culture and the Arts

Patrick Comerford

Liberal Studies Group,

Maynooth University Campus

Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny,

Monday, 16 February 2004

5, Byzantine Culture and the Arts

Opening:

*** Music for El Greco ***

The music I have been playing in the background is part of a symphony by the great modern Greek composer Vangelis Papathanassiou, with Montserrat Caballe as the soprano, inspired by and written to commemorate of one of the great Greek painters of the Renaissance, El Greco.

In El Greco, we find inspiration for modern Greek music. But in him, Byzantium met Europe of the Renaissance, our Byzantine world met the modern world, the East turned West and the West was able to look East. The cultural life of Byzantium continued, survived, prospered, long after the fall of Byzantium in 1453 and continues to live today. This is the cultural world that nurtured, enlightened and informed the paintings of El Greco in Venice, Rome and Toledo, the writings of Doestoevsky and the music of Rachmaninov in Russia, the poetry of Cavafy in Egypt at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the music of Vangelis Papathanassiou in Greece or John Tavener in Britain today.

Byzantium did not die with the fall of the City in 1453. Its cultural creativity continued in the immediate aftermath in Crete, blossomed in Eastern Europe, in the centuries that followed, and continues to live today.

This morning, let us sail once again to Byzantium and explore some of those riches together.

Byzantine culture:

Let us look at the architecture and art, the poetry and the literature of Byzantium: the world of Aghia Sophia and the world that gave us El Greco.

Architecture

Many of you are familiar with pictures of the interior of Aghia Sophia, even if you have never visited Istanbul.

[*** Handout of architectural cutaway of Byzantine architecture ***]

Every city of the eastern Roman Empire required an ample number of churches and it was only fitting that the capital should have more than usual. We have the names of 34 churches that the Emperor Justinian built or rebuilt.

The most famous of these was Aghia Sophia (the Church of Holy Wisdom) rebuilt after a fire brought the old one down on 13 January 533. There was also Aghia Eirene (the church of the Peace of God); four churches to the Virgin Mary; one of Saint Anna; four churches of the Archangel Michael, who had a special cult in Constantinople and was venerated as a wonder worker; a church of Saint John the Baptist; one of All the Apostles and another of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; and churches of joint dedication to Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus; to Saint Priscus and Saint Nikolaos.

Justinian built other churches for Panteleimon, Tryphon, Ia, Zoe, and Laurentius.

The list also includes the Church of the Holy Apostles, replacing a building of Constantine the Great. This church occupied a special place among churches in that it had been intended by Constantine the Great as a burial place for his dynasty, and a mausoleum had been built outside the apse of the church. Here lay the tomb of Constantine surrounded by members of his family and successors. By Justinian’s time the mausoleum had become full, and so Justinian constructed a new tomb near it for himself and his successors. As a result, the church of the Holy Apostles was regarded as second in importance after Aghia Sophia.

Architecturally, Justinian’s churches illustrate the final development of a design in church building that was to be typical of Greek Christianity. After the official recognition of Christianity, the first churches to be built were based mainly on the plans of the Roman public basilicas. But slowly this fashion went out of style in the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire, in favour of the building of square or cruciform plan designed around a central dome. This design gave the church both liturgical function and a symbolical significance which were much more congenial than the basilica to the Greek religious mind. It was in churches of this design that Justinian’s architectural ambition reached its fullest realisation, and set an example for future builders.

The church of this type was essentially either a square or a cross surmounted by a central dome. The structure below the dome might be conceived as a cube or a cross with equal arms that could be inscribed geometrically within the cube. Occasionally there might be a cross with a lower member longer than the others. The octagonal plan was also developed. [HERE DRAW ON FLIPCHART]

The dome stood alone over the centre of the square, or over the intersection of the arms of the cross; or a great central dome might have been accompanied by smaller domes built over the arms of the cross. But it was in the central dome that the significance of this new design lay. The dome unified the whole structure of the church and brought all its areas and spaces together around one central focus. The hemisphere of the dome, which rose above this central spot symbolised heaven. It was meant to be visible, at least partially, to all worshipers in the church and served to bind the entire congregation.

The altar or holy table (or even ‘throne’, θρόνος, thrónos) in Greek Orthodox language) was usually placed in an apse in the east of the building, and in the square or cruciform plan, the congregation was closer to the altar than they had been in churches of the elongated basilica plan. In some buildings the altar stood under the central dome, giving an even greater feeling of unity to the congregation.

The dome also created an impression of vast space, and gave the whole interior of the church a majesty and dignity that inspired a sense of inner peace and intellectual detachment. On the dome was usually painted a great portrait of Christ Pantocrator (Christ the Almighty).

The architecture and imagery of the dome conspired with one's mind to give the illusion of bringing heaven to earth. In many ways the dome created the sensation of exposing a realm, the realm of the divine, to which we could look to for truth and holy wisdom. In this sense the design of the Byzantine church incorporated much of the imagery of the Platonic realm of absolute ideals, the ultimate of which was the Holy Wisdom of God.

The Church of Aghia Sophia

In none of the churches of Constantinople could the mind reach a greater sense of spiritual depth and nobility than in the so-called ‘Great Church’ of Aghia Sophia. This was almost certainly Justinian's greatest architectural achievement. It is very characteristic of the spiritual life in the Eastern Roman Empire in the days of Justinian that the Emperor chose to build, as his own greatest church – which was also intended to be the greatest church in the world – a shrine dedicated to ‘Aghia Sophia’ or the Holy Wisdom of God. Christ, the Wisdom (Sophia) and Power (dynamis) of God, in the Apostle Paul’s words, was a manifestation of the Holy Trinity, projecting the action of God from the realm of the divine to the world of humanity.

But Sophia could also mean the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God, following the Septuagint and Philo of Alexandria.

It is by no means a coincidence that the chief temples of Pagan Athens and Christian Constantinople were both dedicated to Wisdom. The Parthenon as the shrine of the Goddess Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and Justinian’s Great Church both showed respect for ‘Sophia,’ which has always been one of the chief traits of the Greek mind. Christ as the Wisdom of God was a familiar idea to Greek Christianity; the ‘Hymn of the Resurrection’, sung during the Eucharist, invokes Christ as ‘the Wisdom and the Word and Power of God.’

Near Aghia Sophia stood Aghia Eirene, representing the Peace of God. Like Aghia Sophia, Aghia Eirene had been originally built by Constantine the Great. It is highly indicative of the Eastern Roman Empire’s connection with its Classical Greek roots, that when both Aghia Sophia and Aghia Eirene were burnt down and rebuilt, Wisdom was given first place.

Just as Justinian had found skilled legal scholars (Tribonian) to recodify the laws, as well as skilled generals to recapture lost lands (Belisarius), so too he was fortunate enough to have found two builders of the highest talents to build Aghia Sophia: Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Melitus. As well as builders they were also noted mathematicians, which was to be of basic importance in the accomplishing the task Justinian set for them.

Aghia Sophia was built in the traditional Greco-Roman style, but it represented a design and scale never before attempted. The main area of the interior, designed for the services, was a great oval 250 by 107 ft; with side aisles, the main floor made almost a square, 250 by 220 ft. The nave was covered by a dome 107 feet in diameter, rising 180 ft high above the ground.

The design created the impression of a vast enclosed space. This was made possible by an intricate series of supports, all arranged so to lead the observer’s eye from the ground level up to the dome. At the east and west of the nave were hemicycles crowned by semi-domes, which provided some support for the superstructure. Each hemicycle was flanked and supported by two semicircular exedras carrying smaller semi-domes. At the eastern end the hemicycle opened into the apse with its semi-dome. With rows of columns supporting the upper galleries on the north and south of the naive, and numbers of clear windows in the walls, in the semi-domes, and around the base of the main dome, the supporting elements looked incredibly slender and light. The ring of 42 arched windows placed close side by side at the springing of the main dome seemed almost to separate the dome itself from the main building.

The historian Procopius in his accounts of Aghia Sophia, tells of the astonishing effect of these details. The weight of the upper part of the building appeared to be borne on terrifyingly inadequate supports, although it was very carefully braced. The dome itself, Procopius tells us, seemed not to rest upon solid masonry at all; instead it appeared to be suspended by a golden chain from heaven. The bold conception and design of the building were matched by the skill with which it was constructed. A structure of such size and plan were never again attempted in Constantinople.

As with the design and fabric of the building, its decoration was chosen to produce a transcendent spiritual effect. Typically, in Greek Orthodox churches, applied ornament was concentrated on the inside leaving the outside to show the mass of the structure and bring out its geometric patterns of curves and lines, which the Byzantine mind so greatly appreciated. The interior decoration was sumptuous but risked being gaudy. It contained a richness indicative of the prosperity of the empire as a whole.

Paul the Silentiary, one of the members of Justinian’s court, wrote an elaborate description of the church in verse which shows what the magnificence of the decoration must have been like when Aghia Sophia was in its original state. Many lands, Paul tells us, sent their own characteristic marbles, each of with its distinct features; black stone from the Bosphorus region; green marble from mainland Greece; polychrome stone from Phrygia; and porphyry from Egypt and yellow stone from Syria. The different stones were used in carefully planned combinations in the columns, in the pavement, and in the revetments of the walls.

Rising above was the main dome, showing the cross outlined against a background of gold mosaic. The semi-domes were also finished in gold mosaic, and the pendentives beneath the dome were filled with mosaic figures of Seraphim, their wings like peacock feathers. Against the background of marbles and mosaics the church was filled with objects of shining metal, gold, silver, and brass. From the rim of the dome hung brass chains supporting innumerable oil lamps of silver, containing glass cups in which the burning wick floated in oil. Beside the side colonnades, which separated the aisles from the nave, hung other rows of silver lamps.

It was in the sanctuary that the precious metal was used to its fullest. The visitor would first see an iconostasis, the screen that stood in front of the altar. The screen itself was made of silver plated with gold. Depicted on it were Christ, the Virgin Mary and the apostles. At intervals in front of the screen were lamp stands shaped like trees, broad at the base, tapering at the top. In the centre of the screen was Christ, brightly illuminated. The gates leading into the sanctuary bore the monogram of Justinian and the empress Theodora.

Within the sanctuary was the Holy Table, a slab of gold inlaid with precious stones, supported by four gold columns. Behind the altar, in the semicircular curve of the apse, were the seven seats of the priests and the throne of the Patriarch, all of gilded silver. Over the altar hung a cone-shaped ciborium or canopy, with nielloed designs. Above the ciborium was a globe of solid gold, weighing 118 lb, surmounted by a cross, inlaid with precious stones. The eucharistic vessels – chalices, patens, spoons, basins, ewers, fans – were all of solid gold set with precious stones and pearls, as were the candelabra and censors.

Around the altar hung red curtains bearing woven figures of Christ, flanked by the Apostle Paul, full of divine wisdom, and the Apostle Peter, the mighty doorkeeper of the gates of heaven. One holds a book filled with sacred words, and the other the form of the Cross on a staff of gold. On the borders of the curtain, the poet Paul the Silentiary tells us, indescribable art has ‘figured the works of mercy of our city’s rulers.’ Here one sees hospitals for the sick, there sacred churches, while on either side are displayed the miracles of Christ. On the other curtains you see the kings of the earth, on one side joined with their hands to those of the Virgin Mary, and on the other side joined to those of Christ. All this design is cunningly wrought by the threads of the woof with the sheen of a golden wrap.

To the feeling of space and of regal splendour there was also joined the magnificent impression of light. If one entered Aghia Sophia by day the building seemed flooded by sunlight. Procopius tells us that the reflection of the sun from the marbles made one think that the building was not illuminated from without but that the light was created within the building. At night the thousands of oil lamps, all hung at different levels, gave the whole building a brilliant illumination without any shadows.

This effect of light had perhaps the highest effect on the worshipers. As Procopius puts it, ‘Whenever anyone comes to the church to pray, he realises at once that it is not by human power or skill, but by divine influence that this church has been so wonderfully built. His mind is lifted up on high to God, feeling that he cannot be far away but must love to dwell in this place he has chosen. And this does not happen only when one sees the church for the first time, but the same thing occurs to the visitor on each successive occasion, as if the sight were ever a new one. No one has ever had a surfeit of this spectacle, but when they are present in the building men rejoice in what they see, and when they are away from it, they take delight in talking about it.’

Paul the Silentiary also records us how that the Great Church, with its light shining through its windows at night, dominated the whole of Constantinople. The lighted building, he tells us, rising above the dark mass of the promontory, cheered the sailors who saw it from their ships in the Bosphorus or the Sea of Marmara.

It took five years to complete Aghia Sophia. Tradition has it that it took 10,000 workers, under the direction of 100 foremen. Before it was completed, Justinian fixed the staff of the church at 60 priests, 100 deacons, 40 deaconesses, 90 subdeacons, and 100 readers and 25 singers to assist in the services. There were also 100 custodians and porters.

The story of the dedication of the church is that when the building was ready to be consecrated, the Emperor walked in procession from the gate of the palace across the Augustaeum to the outer doors of the church. Preceded by the Cross, Justinian and the Patriarch then entered the vestibule. Then the Emperor passed into the building alone and walked to the pulpit, where he stretched his hands to heaven and cried, ‘Glory be to God, who has thought me worthy to finish this work! Solomon, I have surpassed thee!’

Next: 6, Byzantine Literature and the Arts

Byzantine Studies, Kilkenny, 2004: 4: Heroes, anti-heroes and the women of Byzantium: some biographical sketches

The Court of Justinian in a mosaic in San Vitale, Ravenna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Liberal Studies Group,

Maynooth University Campus

Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny,

Monday, 9 February 2004

4, Heroes, anti-heroes and the women of Byzantium: some biographical sketches

We have already discussed this morning to the Emperor Constantine and his rile in building or rebuilding the City of Byzantium and moving the capital of the Empire there.

For the rest of his morning, I want to introduce to some of the heroes, anti-heroes and women of Byzantium.

Justinian (527-560):
• Succeeded in restoring order to a state riven by social and religious strife (notably the Nika riots in 532).

• His military campaigns restored the Empire to its former borders, but at a crippling price.

• Oversaw sweeping reforms in the law.

• Renovated and reconstructed the cities of the Byzantine Empire.

• Initiated immense public works.

• Above all, he created the architectural masterpiece that is Aghia Sophia.

Heraclius (610-641):

• Founder of the Heraclid dynasty.

• Reorganised the defences of Byzantine Egypt.

• Forced the Persians to retreat from Egypt, which they had conquered.

• Fought the first ‘Holy War’ to reclaim Jerusalem and the ‘True Cross.’

• Promoted the Hellenisation of the empire.

Leo the Isaurian (717-741):

• Developed new military techniques against Arab invaders.

• Reformed law.

• Rebuilt government and administration.

• Limited capital punishment.

But he also:

• Persecuted the Jews.

• Launched a crusade against icons.

• And so split the Empire in two.

Constantine VII Porphyrogentius (912-959):

• The last emperor of the Macedonian dynasty.

• Legislative, educational and administrative reforms.

• Active promoter of arts and letters, encyclopaedia.

• Cultural life rich, literacy widespread.

• Excelled as a military leader.

The women of Byzantium.

Helen, or Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine:

Helen stands at a turning point in history. After years of persecution under the Roman Empire, Christianity had become respectable and the mainstream religion. Helena is linked firmly with the story of the new Empire and its new state religion.

Helen was born in 248 in Drepanum, later known as Helenopolis, in Bithynia in Asia Minor. The church historian Philostorgius says she was ‘a common woman not different from strumpets’. Later she would become the mother of an emperor, a divorcee, a pilgrim, a souvenir hunter, and a saint.

In the year 270, she married Constantius Chlorus, who came from a lowly background but was an up-and-coming young officer in the Roman army. Religiously, he was attracted to the cult of Mithras.

In 289, Constantius became of the Caesar of the western empire, and with this new status promptly ditched Helen for a more socially acceptable wife, divorcing her and marrying Theodora, step-daughter of the Emperor Maximian. At this stage, Contantine was a 17-year-old. When his father died in York in 306, the soldiers proclaimed Constantine as Emperor, and soon after he was probably joined by his mother as he moved his official residence first to Trier and later to Rome.

Consantine’s conversion on Milvian Bridge on 28 October 312 is a key date in the story of the Byzantine secular and religious world. The cross appeared against the sun, and he is said to have heard the words ‘In hoc signo vinces.’ Although, surprisingly, Constantine was not baptised until shortly before his death in 337, became a Christian at an early stage.

In the year 326, she visited the Holy Land, where she where she founded basilicas on the Mount of Olives and in Bethlehem. According to later tradition, she also discovered the True Cross on which Christ had been crucified, and in Eastern Orthodoxy she is often represented holding the cross with her son Constantine. She died in 330 and is buried in Rome, rather than in Constantinople, yet she remains one of the principal women saints respected in Orthodoxy. In Orthodox iconography she is usually seen with her son, the two holding the True Cross between them.

Women in Purple

From an early stage, women were a force to be considered in the politics of Byzantium. Eudoxia is the first in a long line Byzantine Empresses whose names were to become bywords for luxury and sensuality – she was said to wear a fringe low over her forehead, the trademark of a courtesan.

Pulcheria was only 15 when she was proclaimed Augusta in 414. But in contrast to Eudoxia, she combined her lust for power with excessive piety, and was said that her palace was more like a cloister than a court.

Theodora (ca 500-547), wife of Justinian:

Perhaps the most amazing of all the empresses, who managed to match her earlier sexual exploits with her later lust for power, was Theodora, wife of the Emperor Justinian I.

Justinian I, who built the great basilica of Aghia Sophia and codified the law of the empire, was a champion of Orthodoxy, but should also be remembered by women as the emperor whose law weakened the power of the father in the family and favoured a wife against her husband.

Justinian’s reforming zeal seems to have been inspired at many points by his wife Theodora I, who was crowned as his co-regnant Empress in 527. She exercised great influence on the theological controversies of the time, seeking to conciliate the Monophysites.

But earlier in his career, Justinian was not regarded as having found an ideal match when he first fell for Theodora. Her father had been a bear keeper in the Hippodrome and her mother an acrobat. While still a child, Theodora had joined her elder sister on the stage, playing in farce and burlesque, and before long she had become Constantinople’s most notorious courtesan. In surely one of the most outspoken pieces of vilification ever directed against a queen or an empress in all history, her contemporary Procopius wrote:

‘When Theodora was still too immature to sleep with a man or to have intercourse like a woman, she acted at night like a male prostitute to satisfy those dregs of humanity who remained some considerable time in a brothel, given over to such unnatural traffic of the body … But as soon as she reached maturity she became a harlot. Never was a woman so completely abandoned to pleasure. Many a time she would attend a banquet with ten young men or more, all with a passion for fornication and at the peak of their powers, and with lie with all her companions the whole night long; and when she had reduced them all to exhaustion she would go to their attendants – sometimes as many as thirty of them – and copulate with each in turn; and even then she could not satisfy her lust. And although she made use of three apertures in her body, she was wont to complain that Nature had not provided her with larger openings in her nipples, so that she might have contrived another form of intercourse there.

‘Often in the theatre too, in full view of all the people … she would spread herself out and lie on her back on the ground. And certain slaves whose special task it was would sprinkle grains of barley over her private parts; and geese trained for the purpose would pick them off one by one with their beaks and swallow them.’

Theodora and Justinian were married in Aghia Sophia 525, and two years later were crowned co-Emperor and Empress.

During the so-called Nika rebellion, when Justinian was on the verge of running away, it is said Theodora stopped him and told the frightened emperor: ‘I do not choose to flee. Those who have worn the crown should never survive its loss. Never shall I see the day when I am not saluted as empress. If you mean to flee, Caesar, well and good. You have the money, the ships are ready, the sea is open. As for me, I shall stay.’

In another account she says: ‘If you my Lord, wish to save your skin, you will have no difficulty in doing so. As for me, I stand by the ancient saying: the purple is the noblest winding-sheet.’

The emperor stayed and put down the rebellion.

Women in Purple:

Judith Herrin, in her book Women in Purple: Rulers of medieval Byzantium, tells the stories of three further imperial wives who stand out above many others: Irene, wife of Leo IV (775-780); Euphrosyne, wife of Michael II (820-829); Theodora, wife of Theophilos (829-842).

They had power, first through their husbands, and then, as widows, still wearing the imperial purple, through their sons. Although she is not mentioned in many standard Western reference works, Irene stands out even today in Greek minds as the Empress who triumphed in the iconoclastic controversy. On the whole, the imperial women and perhaps women throughout the Empire were in favour of the veneration of icons. This was one of the ways in which they could be spiritually active in a Church that excluded them from leadership in its official activities than did the Church in the West.

After the death of her husband, Leo IV, the Empress Irene was co-regent for her son and reversed the policies of her predecessors who had declared that icons were idols and had to be destroyed. Irene dramatically pursued the iconophile cause and had her own son blinded to secure her power. She called the second Council of Nicaea in 787.

Ten years later, in 797, Irene gained power after having her son – the rightful but incompetent heir – blinded in the very room in which she had given him birth. Irene then became the first woman to rule the empire in her own name. She could neither win widespread support for her pro-icon policies, nor could she put together a marriage alliance with the newly proclaimed western emperor Charlemagne, a union that would have brought east and west together. As Irene spent the treasury into bankruptcy, her enemies increased. Finally, in 802, they deposed her and exiled her to the island of Lesbos.

The story of Irene’s granddaughter Euphrosyne, wife of Michael II (820-829), emphasises the interesting questions about role played by the leading women in the controversies over icons in of Byzantium. She was brought back from exile to legitimise the usurping iconoclast emperor

Theodora, wife of the Emperor Theophilos (829-842), was chosen by her husband in a bride show organised by his stepmother Euphrosyne, Having reaffirmed once and for all the traditional role of icons in the Christian East, she too is celebrated as an Orthodox saint, and her victory in the controversy in the year 843 is celebrated as ‘The Triumph of Orthodoxy,’ commemorated in a special service on ‘Orthodox Sunday,’ the first Sunday in Lent.

From their own Queen City, these empresses governed Byzantium like men, conducting diplomacy across the known world, negotiating with Charlemagne, Roman Popes and the great Arab caliph, Harun al-Rashid.

Ever since Edward Gibbon, in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, dismissed the emperors of Byzantium as effeminate rulers, the west has never fully understood either these heroes or these heroines. Mind you, as Judith Herrin points out, no records were left by these women themselves, recording their own thoughts, likes or sayings. They have come down to us in story as a social and political force, but not as intellectual force.

Next week:

Byzantine Culture and the Arts, Monday 16 February 2004

5, Byzantine culture: The architecture and the art of Byzantium: the world of Aghia Sophia and the world that gave us El Greco;

6, Literature and the Arts: The recovery of learning in another mediaeval society; the poetry of Byzantium; Byzantium in literature and poetry today: WB Yeats, CP Cavafy, William Dalrymple, even Leonard Cohen.

Byzantine Studies, Kilkenny, 2004: 3: A brief history of Byzantium and the Byzantine Empire

Patrick Comerford

Liberal Studies Group,

Maynooth University Campus

Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny,

Monday, 9 February 2004

3, A brief history of Byzantium and the Byzantine Empire

Introduction:

Recap of last week’s introduction:

Last week we had an introduction to Byzantium as a great civilisation:

1, It is often depicted as the El Dorado of the East, the Tír na nÓg of the Classical world, the Hidden Gateway to the Orient, a civilisation and empire that lasted for 11 centuries.

2, It is the cultural bedrock for many of our new immigrants, including Russians, Belarussians, Romanians and Bulgarians, and the new member states of the EU.

3, It is the world view that shaped and formed the paintings of El Greco, the writings of Dostoevsky, or in today’s world the music of John Tavener.

Refer to handouts (map, reading list, outline history). Any questions?

3, A brief history of Byzantium and the Byzantine Empire:

Introduction:

When we speak of the fall of the Roman Empire, we should not forget that only the western portion of the empire succumbed to the Germanic invaders. In the Greek-speaking east, the eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire stood for over 1,000 years as a citadel against the threat of expansion firstly by the Persians and then by the Muslims – Arabs, and later Turks.

During those 11 centuries, the Byzantine Empire made great contributions to civilisation:

• Greek language and learning were preserved for posterity;

• The Roman imperial system was continued and Roman law codified;

• The Greek Orthodox Church converted the Slavic peoples, especially the Russians;

• And Orthodoxy fostered the development of a splendid new art dedicated to the glorification of the Christian religion.

Situated at the crossroads of east and west, Constantinople acted as the disseminator of culture for all peoples who came in contact with the empire.

Called with justification ‘The City,’ this rich and turbulent metropolis was to the early Middle Ages what Athens and Rome had been to classical times. By the time the empire collapsed in 1453, its religious mission and political concepts had borne fruit among the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, and especially among the Russians. The Russians were to lay claim to the Byzantine tradition and to call Moscow the ‘Third Rome.’

The beginnings of Byzantium

Historians disagree about the real date at which we can begin to introduce Byzantine studies. The end, in 1453, is less contentious date – although it marked only the end of Byzantium as the capital of an empire and not the end of Byzantine culture.

But what point marks the transition from the later Roman to the Byzantine Empire? Of course, the Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire in the east, and Romanians and Greeks both see themselves today as continuing the culture of Rome in the East.

I suppose a good starting point comes soon after Constantine the Great finally gained sole authority as Roman Emperor when he defeated Licinius in 324. Constantine’s dramatic conversion to Christianity ended the period of persecution of Christians in the Empire, and marks the beginning of both the Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire.

The Byzantine Empire

At the southern extremity of the Bosphorus stands a promontory that juts out from Europe toward Asia, with the Sea of Marmares to the south and a long harbour known as the Golden Horn to the north. On this peninsula, the Hellaspont, stood the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, which Constantine the Great enlarged considerably and formally named the ‘New Rome’ in AD 330.

Constantine’s decision to found an administrative capital, or ‘New Rome,’ at the site of the ancient city of Byzantion shifted the centre of gravity eastwards in the empire. Constantine had chosen the site for his new capital with care and appears to have been motivated by a number of ideas:

• He placed Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) on the frontier of Europe and Asia, dominating the waterway connecting the Mediterranean and Black seas, so that Constantinople represented a link between all the territories of the Roman world.

• Nature protected the site on three sides with cliffs, and on the fourth side, the emperors fortified the city with an impenetrable three-wall network, so that during the fourth and fifth centuries Visigoths, Huns, and Ostrogoths unsuccessfully threatened the city. In the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, first Persians, then Arab forces, and finally the Bulgarians besieged – but failed to take – Constantinople. Until 1453, with the exception of the Fourth Crusade’s treachery, the city withstood all attacks.

• Constantine probably saw political advantages in distancing himself from the power structures and traditions of the Old Rome. In the New Rome he was able to establish a new order, with a newly-appointed senate and administration.

Henceforth, Constantinople would represent the centre of the largely Greek-speaking, Eastern Roman Empire, which slowly and inexorably became separated, both culturally and politically from the Latin West.

But the security and wealth provided by its setting helped Byzantium survive for more than 1,000 years. Constantinople was a state-controlled, world trade centre that enjoyed the continuous use of a money economy – in contrast to the localised systems found in the west.

The city’s wealth and taxes paid for a strong military force and financed an effective government. Excellent sewage and water systems supported an extremely high standard of living. Food was abundant, with grain from Egypt and Anatolia and fish from the Aegean. Constantinople could support a population of a million, at a time when it was difficult to find a city in Europe that could sustain more than 50,000.

Unlike Rome, Constantinople had several industries producing luxury goods, military supplies, hardware, and textiles. After silkworms were smuggled out of China about AD 550, silk production flourished and became a profitable state monopoly. The state paid close attention to business, controlling the economy: A system of guilds to which all tradesmen and members of the professions belonged, set wages, profits, work hours, and prices and organised bankers and doctors into compulsory corporations. Security and wealth encouraged an active political, cultural, and intellectual life. The widespread literacy and education among men and women of various segments of society would not be matched in Europe until, perhaps, eighteenth-century France.

Until its fall in 1453, the Byzantine Empire remained a shining fortress, attracting both invaders and merchants.

Constantinople after Constantine

The Christianisation of the Roman Empire continued after the death of Constantine. Laws that date back to Constantine’s successors, such as his son Constantius, reveal increasing restrictions on pagans and more favourable conditions for Christians. The conversion of the masses to Christianity did not happen immediately, however, and the Emperor Julian, known as Julian the Apostate (361-363), initiated a brief return to paganism as the official state religion.

By the end of the fourth century, and with the return of Christian rulers, legislation in favour of Christianity became increasingly pronounced. The Codex Theodosianus, published between 429 and 438, but incorporating laws promulgated during the reign of Constantine the Great and his successors, reveals an ever-increasing attempt on the part of the emperors to promote Christianity and eradicate paganism. Sundays and important Christian feast days were declared holidays, with the prohibition of secular lawsuits and business transactions.

The Latin Phase

Constantine and his successors had struggled to renew the Empire. Rome collapsed under the pressure of the Germanic invaders in 476. Thanks to its greater military and economic strength, Constantinople survived for almost another 1,000 years, despite revolutions, wars, and religious controversy.

Justinian (527-565) was the last emperor to attempt seriously to return the Roman Empire to its first-century grandeur. Aided by his forceful wife Theodora and a corps of competent assistants, he made lasting contributions to Western civilisation and gained short-term successes in his foreign policy.

The damage caused by devastating earthquakes – a perennial problem in the area – in the 520s and 530s gave Justinian the opportunity he needed to carry out a massive project of empire-wide urban renewal.

The ruler as builder was one of the oldest ideals of a sovereign. Public buildings and other structures were, in principle, gifts to be used by the ruler's subjects, but also monuments of the greatness of the ruler. Justinian strove hard to realize this ideal. The greatest buildings he erected or rebuilt were in Constantinople, the city that was now the embodiment of the civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Numerous magnificent and artistically beautiful structures were constructed or rebuilt during his reign. They included statues, churches and various other monuments. His crowning achievement was the building of Aghia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom.

[How many of you saw Christy Kennealy’s programme on television last night, where Aghia Sophia was the ‘eighth wonder of the world’?]

This building was considered by many an architectural wonder of the Middle Ages, and is still standing strong today. Its design, size, artwork, name and its significance made it a building that symbolised the religious and philosophical epicentre of Constantinople and Byzantine civilisation.

Even before he came to power, during his uncle’s reign, Justinian had already set about to rehabilitate and rebuild many churches in Constantinople and its suburbs. This work began mostly in a private capacity and reflected the piety that was to show itself further when Justinian became emperor.

The reign of Justinian would have been incomplete if it had not brought with it some new monuments to the glory of the empire, and Justinian was eager to have a permanent literary record of his building achievements. To this end Justinian had at his disposal the famous historian Procopius who wrote, at the Emperor’s command in the years 559-560, the famous panegyrical treatise On the Buildings of the Emperor Justinian.

Far from being displays of megalomania, Justinian’s works constituted a well-balanced plan. First, he wished to provide the people of the capital with much needed public buildings. Second, to create a new architectural setting for the institutions that represented the chief political and spiritual resources of the empire and its civilisation. Justinian surpassed the work of Constantine, who up to that point had been the greatest builder among the Christian emperors of the Empire.

One of Justinian’s best-known benefactions was the rebuilding of a hospital for the poor, which had been constructed in the early days of Constantinople. Well outside Constantinople, at a place called Argyronium, on the shore of the Bosphorus, there had been a free hospital for people with incurable diseases. This hospital had been neglected until Justinian rebuilt it. Procopius tells us of three other hospitals reconstructed by the Justinian and the Empress Theodora, acting together.

Justinian improved numerous other public works. For example, work was done for the water supply into the city. The most difficult problem was to maintain an adequate supply of water in the city year round. In the area of the Augustaeum, general repairs were undertaken of the colonnades, which lined the main street leading from the Augustaeum to the palace of Constantine. The public bath of Zeuxippus was embellished. In Justinian’s day this bath, going back to the Greco-Roman days of Byzantium, was one of the show places of the city. It had a collection of eighty classical statues, which were described by poets and copied by various artists.

In the suburbs, a general programme of development was carried out at Hebdomon, on the shore of the Sea of Marmara. A market place, public baths, and colonnades – some of the chief needs of municipal life in a city very much in contact with its classical roots – were built.

As well, the emperor had an artificial harbour built at Hebdomon, which, along with the artificial harbours of Julian and Theodosius, provided refuge to ships in stormy weather.

Great as all these building operations were they still were small in comparison to Justinian;s churches. Architecturally, Justinian’s churches illustrate the final development of a design in church building that was to be typical of Greek Christianity. In none of the churches of Constantinople could the mind reach a greater sense of spiritual depth and nobility than in the ‘Great Church’ of Aghia Sophia. This was almost certainly Justinian's greatest architectural achievement.

Near Aghia Sophia stood Aghia Eirene, representing the peace of God. Like Aghia Sophia, Aghia Eirene was built originally by Constantine the Great. It is highly indicative of the Eastern Roman Empire’s connection with its Classical Greek roots, that when both Aghia Sophia and Aghia Eirene were burnt down and rebuilt, Wisdom was given first place.

Just as Justinian had found skilled legal scholars (Tribonian) to recodify the laws, as well as skilled generals to recapture lost lands (Belisarius), so too he was fortunate enough to have found two builders of the highest talents to build Aghia Sophia. They were Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Melitus.

As well as builders they were also noted mathematicians, which was to be of basic importance in the accomplishing the task Justinian set for them. When the building was consecrated, Justinian entered the building alone and walked to the pulpit, where he stretched his hands to heaven and cried, ‘Glory be to God, who has thought me worthy to finish this work! Solomon, I have surpassed thee!’

Justinian and the Law

Perhaps the most lasting monument of Justinian’s reign was his codification of Roman law. By this time, it had become necessary to rewrite many of the laws as they had become obsolete since their last codification by Theodosius is 348. In an absolute monarchy the people ceased to be the source of the laws. It was now the monarch, by virtue of his office, who was responsible for putting into effect a new law, as well as the way in which it was interpreted and enforced.

The heritage of Roman law represented an unbroken tradition that continued down to the time of Justinian. Preservation and renewal of the laws, Justinian felt, offered the possibility of emphasising one of major roots of the empire’s strength. This immense accomplishment far outlasted the Byzantine Empire and survived to form the basis of European jurisprudence.

On 13 February 528, Justinian appointed 10 jurists to compile a new codification of the statute law. The commission appointed to the task of compiling the new code included two men of particular significance: Tribonian, a jurist in the civil service; and Theophilus, a professor of law at the university of Constantinople. Under their diligent supervision, the new Codex Iustinianus was published in little over one year, on 7 April 529. With the writing of this code, the administration of the law was put on a new basis.

However, no sooner was this work completed than an even more ambitious undertaking was begun. This was the compilation of a digest of the jurisprudence of the great Roman lawyers of the second and third centuries AD, something never before attempted on such a scale.

The order to start work on the Digest was given on 15 December 530. In December 533, the Digest, the Digesta Iustiniani Augusti was completed. It was expected to take 10 years but was finished in less than three. Its writing involved the reading of 2,000 books, representing 39 authors. The final code was reduced from 3 million to 150,000 lines. Many of the authors read came from Tribonian’s private library.

With both law and jurisprudence now established, any further commentary on the law was forbidden. The Code and the Digest represented the whole of the valid law, along with its interpretation – with the exception of imperial legislation.

The old teaching manuals, now obsolete, were replaced by new ones. While the Digest was being compiled Tribonian started work on an introductory manual, the Institutes, which was to take the place of the classic manual of Gaius. The new manual was published on 21 November 533, and came into effect on the same day as the Digest, 30 December 533.

The teaching of law was also overhauled. To ensure better control of instruction, the teaching of law was allowed only at the universities in Constantinople and Beyrouth and the schools at Alexandria and Caesarea were closed, their teaching declared unsatisfactory.

By the end of 533, it was apparent that the original Code of April 533 had already been rendered obsolete by the publication of a large amount of legislation. As a result, Tribonian and his colleagues were once again summoned, after the completion of the Digest, to compile a new Code.

This work was to be done by Tribonian, Dorotheus of Beyrouth and three lawyers, all of whom had been engaged on the Digest. The work was published on 16 November 534 and went into effect of 30 December of the same year. This edition of the Code is divided into 12 books. Book I deals with ecclesiastical law; the sources of the law; and the duties of higher officials. Ecclesiastical law was given a place of honour it did not have in the Code of Theodosius. Books 2-8 deal with private law, Book 9 with criminal law, and Books 10-12 with administrative law. There are 4,652 laws in total in this collection.

Following this, any new legislation, when needed, was from that point onward issued in the form of ‘New Constitutions,’ known as ‘Novels.’ These dealt with such issues as ecclesiastical and public affairs, private law, and one very long Novel in particular constitutes a code of Christian marriage law.

A sign of the change between the Roman Empire of old and the Eastern Roman Empire at the time of Justinian was the fact that all Novels were now written in Greek. While the Codes were in Latin, the traditional language of the law, this was not the natural language of judges, lawyers, litigants, and the general populace in the Eastern Roman Empire.

Also, while Justinian was guided by old tradition in the recodifying of the law, he saw that he could not automatically perpetuate all laws of the old Roman Empire. Many Roman laws had never been popular in the Greek East, and local preferences, both Hellenic and oriental in origin, were now brought within the new legal system to replace old Roman doctrines.

The influence of Greek philosophical thought, which was at the heart of the educational system, was manifest in many of the classifications and reasonings of Justinian’s legislation. A definite Hellenic and oriental shade in the new legislation can also be seen in the laws concerning family, inheritance and dowry. The power of the father, traditional in old Roman thought, was now considerably weakened.

Also attesting to the difference in the times was the fact that the new laws had a definite Christian sense about them. There was a desire to make the laws more humane in some ways, in line with the emperor’s current emphasis on the concept of Philanthropia, or love of mankind. There was a marked increase in laws aiming to protect persons of weaker social position against persons whose position gave them increased power. Justinian’s law, for instance, favoured slave against master, debtor against creditor and wife against husband.

Of course, there still existed laws that seem, by today’s standards quite cruel, and there were still laws that differentiated between different classes of society, but it was a definite advance in the legal system since the days of the old Roman Empire.

Justinian’s Expansion

Justinian’s expensive and ambitious projects triggered outbreaks of protest among the political gangs of Constantinople, the circus crowds of the Greens and Blues. Much like contemporary urban gangs, members of the circus factions moved about in groups and congregated at public events.

In Constantinople, the Circus took place in the Hippodrome, a structure that could hold 80,000 spectators at contests of various types, including chariot races. The Blues and Greens backed opposing drivers and usually neutralised each other’s efforts. In 532, however, the Blues and Greens united to try to force Justinian from the throne.

The so-called Nike rebellion, named after the victory cry of the rioters, nearly succeeded. In his Secret Histories, Procopius relates that Justinian was on the verge of running away, until Theodora stopped him and told the frightened emperor: ‘I do not choose to flee. Those who have worn the crown should never survive its loss. Never shall I see the day when I am not saluted as empress. If you mean to flee, Caesar, well and good. You have the money, the ships are ready, the sea is open. As for me, I shall stay.’

Assisted by his generals, the emperor remained and put down the rebellion.

Justinian momentarily achieved his dream of re-establishing the Mediterranean rim of the Roman Empire. To carry out his plan for regaining the lost half of the empire from the Germanic invaders, he first had to buy the neutrality of the Persian kings who threatened not only Constantinople but also Syria and Asia Minor. After securing his eastern flank through diplomacy and bribery, he took North Africa in 533 and the islands of the western Mediterranean from the Vandals.

The next phase of the conquest was much more exhausting, and Justinian had a difficult time taking the Italian peninsula. After 20 years, he gained his prize from the Ostrogoths, but at the cost of draining his treasury and ruining Rome and Ravenna. Justinian’s generals also reclaimed the southern part of Spain from the Visigoths, but no serious attempt was ever made to recover Gaul, Britain, or southern Germany.

By a decade after Justinian’s death, most of the reconquest had been lost. The Moors in Africa, Germanic peoples across Europe, and waves of Asiatic nomadic tribes threatened the imperial boundaries. Ancient enemies such as the Persians, who had been bribed into a peaceful relationship, returned to threaten Constantinople when the money ran out.

In addition, the full weight of the Slavic migrations came to be felt. Peaceful though they may have been, the primitive Slavs severely strained and sometimes broke the administrative links of the empire. Finally, the empire was split by debates over Christian doctrine. Two of Justinian’s successors succumbed to madness under the stress of trying to maintain order in the empire.

Heraclius: The Empire Redefined

Salvation appeared from the west when Heraclius (610-641), the Byzantine governor of North Africa, returned to Constantinople to overthrow the mad emperor Phocas. Conditions were so dismal, and the future appeared so perilous when Heraclius arrived in the capital, that he considered moving the government from Constantinople to Carthage in North Africa.

The situation did not improve soon. The Persians marched through Syria, took Jerusalem – capturing the ‘True Cross’ – and entered Egypt. When Egypt fell to the Persians, the Byzantine Empire lost a large part of its grain supply. Two Asiatic invaders, the Avars and the Bulgars, pushed against the empire from the north. Pirates controlled the sea-lanes and the Slavs cut land communication across the Balkans. At this moment of ultimate peril, the emperor decided to throw out the state structure that had been in place since the time of Diocletian and Constantine.

Heraclius created a new system that strengthened his army, tapped the support of the church and people, and erected a more efficient, streamlined administration. He determined that the foundation for the redefined empire would be Anatolia (present-day Turkey) and that the main supply of soldiers for his army would be the free peasants living there, rather than mercenaries. In place of the sprawling realm passed on by Justinian, Heraclius designed a compact state and administration to deal simultaneously with the needs of government and the challenges of defence.

Heraclius’ system, known as the theme system, had been tested when the emperor had ruled North Africa. Acting on the lessons of the previous four centuries, he assumed that defence was a constant need and that free peasant soldiers living in the theme (district) they were defending would be the most effective and efficient force. He installed the system first in Anatolia, and his successors spread it throughout the empire for the next two centuries.

Heraclius’ scheme provided sound administration and effective defence for half of the cost formerly required. As long as the theme system with its self-supporting, land-owning, free peasantry endured, Byzantium remained strong. When the theme system and its free peasantry were abandoned in the 11th century, the empire became weak and vulnerable.

Heraclius fought history’s first holy war to reclaim Jerusalem from the Persians. By 626 he stood poised to strike the final blow and refused to be distracted by the Avar siege of Constantinople. He defeated the Persians at Nineveh, marched on to Ctesiphon, and finally reclaimed the ‘True Cross’ and returned it to Jerusalem in 630.

Heraclius was unable to savour his victory for long, because the Muslim advance posed an even greater threat to Byzantium. The Muslims took Syria and Palestine at the battle of Yarmuk in 636. Persia fell the following year, and Egypt in 640. Constantinople's walls and the redefined Byzantine state withstood the challenge, enduring two sieges in 674-678 and in 717.

When Byzantium faced a three-sided invasion from the Arabs, Avars, and Bulgarians in 717, the powerful Leo the Isaurian (717-741) came forward to save the empire. The Byzantines triumphed by using new techniques such as Greek fire, a sort of medieval equivalent of napalm. The substance, a powerful chemical mixture whose main ingredient was saltpetre, caught fire on contact with water and stuck to the hulls of the Arabs’ wooden ships.

Over the next 10 years, Leo rebuilt those areas ruined by war and strengthened the theme system. He reformed the law, limiting capital punishment to crimes involving treason. He decreed the use of mutilation for a wide range of common crimes, a harsh but still less extreme punishment than execution.

The Iconoclastic Controversy

From the beginning, the Byzantine emperors played active roles in the calling of church councils and the formation of Christian doctrine. Leo the Isaurian took seriously his role as religious leader of the empire. He vigorously persecuted heretics and Jews, ordering that the latter must be baptised.

In 726, he launched a theological crusade against the use of icons, images or representations of Christ and other religious figures. The emperor was concerned that icons played too prominent a role in Byzantine life and that their common use as godparents, witnesses at weddings, and objects of adoration violated the Old Testament prohibition of the worship of graven images. Accordingly, the emperor ordered the army to destroy all icons.

This image-breaking, or iconoclastic, policy sparked a violent reaction in the western part of the empire, especially in the monasteries. The government responded by mercilessly persecuting those opposed to the policy. The eastern part of the empire, centred at Anatolia, supported the breaking of the images. By trying to remove what he considered an abuse, Leo split his empire in two.

In Byzantium’s single-centred society, this religious conflict had far-reaching cultural, political, and social implications. In 731, Pope Gregory II condemned iconoclasm. Leo's decision to destroy icons stressed the fracture lines that had existed between east and west for the past four centuries, expressed in the linguistic differences between the Latin West and the Greek East.

Leo’s successors continued his religious and political policies, and in 754 Pope Stephen II turned to the north and struck an alliance with the Frankish king Pepin. This was the first step in a process that half a century later would lead to the birth of the Holy Roman Empire and the formal political split of Europe into the east and west.

There was a brief attempt under the regent, later empress, Irene (797-802), in 787, to restore icons. Irene became the first woman to rule the empire in her own name, but as she spent the treasury into bankruptcy, her enemies increased. Finally, in 802, they deposed her and exiled her to the island of Lesbos.

The conflict over iconoclasm and Irene's ineptitude placed the empire in jeopardy once again. Her successor, Nicepherous (802-811), after struggling to restore the bases of Byzantine power, was captured in battle with the Bulgarians in 811. The Khan Krum beheaded him and had his skull made into a drinking mug. Soon the iconoclasts made a comeback, but this phase of image-breaking lacked the vigour of the first, and by 842 the policy had been abandoned.

The iconoclastic controversy marked a period when the split between east and west became final. Eastern emperors were strongly impressed by Islamic culture, with its prohibition of images. The Emperor Theophilus (829-842), for example, was a student of Muslim art and culture, and Constantinople’s painting, architecture, and universities benefited from the vigour of Islamic culture. This focus on the east may have led to the final split with the west, but it also produced an eastern state with its theological house finally in order and its borders fairly secure by the middle of the ninth century.

The Golden Age: 842-1071

For two centuries, roughly coinciding with the reign of the Macedonian dynasty (867-1056), Byzantium enjoyed political and cultural superiority over its western and eastern foes. Western Europe staggered under the blows dealt by the Saracens, Vikings, and Magyars. The Arabs lost the momentum that had carried them forward for two centuries. Constantinople enjoyed the relative calm, wealth, and balance bequeathed by the theme system and promoted by a series of powerful rulers. The time was marked by the flowering of artists, scholars and theologians as much as it was by the presence of great warriors. It was during this golden age that Constantinople made its major contributions to Eastern Europe and Russia.

Missionaries from Constantinople set out in the 860s to convert the Bulgarian and Slavic peoples and in the process organized their language, laws, aesthetics, political patterns, and ethics, as well as their religion. But such transformation did not take place without struggle. Conflict marked the relationship between the Roman and Byzantine churches. The most significant indication of this competition was seen in the contest between the Patriarch Photius and Pope Nicholas I in the middle of the ninth century.

Photius excelled both as a scholar and religious leader. He made impressive contributions to universities throughout the Byzantine Empire and worked to increase the area of Orthodoxy’s influence. Nicholas was his equal in ambition, ego, and intellect. They collided in their attempts to convert peoples such as the Bulgarians, who were caught between their spheres of influence.

The Bulgarian Khan Boris, as cunning and shrewd as either Photius or Nicholas, saw the trend toward conversion to Christianity that had been developing in Europe since the sixth century and realised the increased power he could gain by the heavenly approval of his rule. He wanted his own patriarch and church and dealt with the side that gave him the better bargain.

Between 864 and 866, Boris changed his mind three times over the issue of which holy city to turn to. Finally, the Byzantines gave the Bulgarians the equivalent of an autonomous church, and in return the Bulgarians entered the Byzantine cultural orbit. The resulting schism between the churches set off a sputtering sequence of Christian warfare that went on for centuries.

The work of the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius was more important than Bulgarian ambitions or churchly competition. The two brothers were natives of Thessaloniki, a city at the mouth of the Vardar-Morava waterway that gave access to the Slavic lands. They learned the Slavic language and led a mission to Moravia, which was ruled by King Rastislav. The king no doubt wanted to convert to Orthodoxy and enter the Byzantine orbit in order to preserve as much independence for his land as he could in the face of pressure from his powerful German neighbours.

Cyril and Methodios went north, teaching their faith in the vernacular Slavic language. Cyril devised an alphabet for the Slavs, adapting Greek letters. The two brothers translated the liturgy and many religious books into Slavic. Although Germanic missionaries eventually converted the Moravians by sheer force, the efforts of Cyril and Methodius profoundly affected all the Slavic peoples, whose languages are rooted in the work of the two brothers.

Byzantium continued its military as well as its theological intensity. Arab armies made continual thrusts, including one at Thessaloniki in 904 that led to the Byzantine loss of 22,000 people through death or slavery. But during the tenth century the combination of the decline in Muslim combativeness and the solidarity of Byzantine defences brought an end to that conflict.

Basil II (963-1025), surnamed Bulgaroctonus, or Bulgar-slayer, stopped the Bulgarians at the battle of Balathista in 1014. At the same time, the Macedonian emperors dealt from a position of strength with western European powers, especially in Italy, where their interests clashed. Western diplomats visiting the Byzantine court expressed outrage at the benign contempt with which the eastern emperors treated them, but this conduct merely reflected Constantinople’s understanding of its role in the world.

By the 11th century, succession to the Byzantine throne had degenerated into a power struggle between the civil and military aristocracies. On the other hand, the secular and theological universities flourished despite the political instability, and the emperors proved to be generous patrons of the arts. Basil I (867-886) and Leo VI (886-912) oversaw the collection and reform of the law codes.

Leo, the most prolific lawgiver since Justinian, sponsored the greatest collection of laws of the medieval Byzantine Empire, a work that would affect jurisprudence throughout Europe. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912-959) excelled as a military leader, lover of books, promoter of an encyclopaedia, and surveyor of the empire's provinces. At a time when scholarship in Western Europe was almost nonexistent, Byzantine society featured a rich cultural life and widespread literacy among men and women of different classes.

The greatest contribution to Western civilisation made during the golden age was the preservation of ancient learning, especially in the areas of law, Greek science, Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, and Greek literature. Unlike the West, where the church maintained scholarship, the civil servants of Constantinople perpetuated the Greek tradition in philosophy, literature, and science. Byzantine monasteries produced many saints and mystics but showed little interest in learning and teaching.

Decline and Crusades

As long as Constantinople strengthened the foundations laid by Heraclius – the theme system and reliance on the free peasant-soldier – the empire withstood the military attacks of the strongest armies. When the Byzantine leaders abandoned the pillars of their success, the empire began to falter.

Inflation and narrow ambition ate away at the Heraclian structure. Too much money chased too few goods during the golden age. Land came to be the most profitable investment for the rich, and the landowning magnates needed labour. As prices went up, taxes followed. The peasant villages were collectively responsible for paying taxes, and the rising tax burden overwhelmed them. In many parts of the empire, villagers sought relief by placing themselves under the control of large landowners, thus taking themselves out of the tax pool and lowering the number of peasant-soldiers.

Both the state treasury and the army suffered. Until the time of Basil II, the Macedonian emperors tried to protect the peasantry through legislation, but the problem was not corrected. Even though the free peasantry never entirely disappeared, and each free person was still theoretically a citizen of the empire, economic and social pressures effectively destroyed the theme system. Exacerbating the problem was the growth of the church's holdings and the large percentage of the population entering church service, thus becoming exempt from taxation.

In the 50 years after the death of Basil II in 1025, the illusion that eternal peace had been achieved encouraged the opportunistic civil aristocracy, which controlled the state, to weaken the army and ignore the provinces. When danger next appeared, no strong leader emerged to save Byzantium. Perhaps this was because no enemies appeared dramatically before the walls of Constantinople.

Instead, a new foe arose, moving haphazardly across the empire. Around the sixth century, the first in a series of waves of Turkish bands appeared in southwest Asia. These nomads converted to Islam and fought with, then against, the Persians, Byzantines, and Arabs. When the Seljuk Turk leader Alp Arslan (‘Victorious Lion’) made a tentative probe into the empire’s eastern perimeter near Lake Van in 1071, the multilingual mercenary army from Constantinople fell apart even before fighting began at the battle of Manzikert. With the disintegration of the army, the only limit to the Turks’ march for the next decade was the extent of their own ambition and energy.

Byzantium lost the heart of its empire, and with it the reserves of soldiers, leaders, taxes, and food that had enabled it to survive for the past four centuries. From its weakened position, the empire confronted Venice, a powerful commercial and later political rival. By the end of the 11th century, the Venetians took undisputed trading supremacy in the Adriatic Sea and turned their attention to the eastern Mediterranean. The Byzantines also faced the challenges of the Normans, led by Robert Guiscard, who took the last Byzantine stronghold in Italy.

In 1081, the Comnenus family claimed the Byzantine throne. In an earlier time, with the empire in its strength, this politically astute family might have accomplished great things. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, though, the best they could do was play a balance-of-power game between east and west. Fifteen years later, in 1096, the first crusaders appeared, partially in response to the Council of Clermont, partially in response to the opportunity for gold and glory.

Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) had appealed to Pope Urban II for help against the Turks, but the emperor had not bargained on finding a host of crusaders, including the dreaded Normans, on his doorstep. Alexius sent them quickly across the Dardanelles where they won some battles and permitted the Byzantines to reclaim some of their losses in Asia Minor. Subsequent crusades, however, failed to bring good relations between east and west, whose churches had excommunicated each other in 1054.

By the time of the Fourth Crusade, the combination of envy, hatred, and frustration that had been building up for some time led to an atrocity. The Venetians controlled the ships and money for this crusade and persuaded the fighters to attack the Christian city of Zara in Dalmatia – a commercial rival of Venice – and Constantinople before going on to the Holy Land. Venice wanted a trade monopoly in the eastern Mediterranean more than a fight with the Muslims. Constantinople was paralysed by factional strife, and for the first time, an invading force captured the city and devastated it far more than the Turks would 250 years later.

A French noble described the scene: ‘The fire ... continued to rage for a whole week and no one could put it out ... What damage was done, or what riches and possessions were destroyed in the flames was beyond the power of man to calculate ... The army ... gained much booty; so much, indeed, that no one could estimate its amount or its value. It included gold and silver, table-services and precious stones, satin and silk, mantles of squirrel fur, ermine and miniver, and every choicest thing to be found on this earth ... so much booty had never been gained in any city since the creation of the world.’

The Venetians made sure they got their share of the spoils, such as the bronze horses now found at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, and played a key role in placing a new emperor on the throne. The invaders ruled Constantinople until 1261. The Venetians put a stranglehold on commerce in the region and then turned their hostility toward the Genoese, who threatened their monopoly.

Decline and fall

The Paleologos Dynasty (1261-1453), which ruled the empire during its final two centuries, saw the formerly glorious realm become a pawn in a new game. Greeks may have regained control of the church and the state, but there was little strength left to carry on the ancient traditions. The free peasant became ever rarer, as a form of feudalism developed in which nobles resisted the authority of the emperor and the imperial bureaucracy. The solidus, the Byzantine coin that had resisted debasement from the fourth through the eleventh century, now fell victim to inflation.

The Church, once a major support for the state, became embroiled in continual doctrinal disputes. Slavic peoples such as the Serbs, who had posed no danger to the empire in its former strength, became threats. After the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century destroyed the exhausted Seljuk Turks, a new, more formidable threat appeared – the Ottoman, or Osmanli, Turks.

Blessed after 1296 with a strong line of male successors and good fortune, the Ottomans rapidly expanded their power through the Balkans. They crossed the Straits into Europe in 1354 and moved up the Vardar-Morava valleys to take Serres (1383), Sofia (1385), Nish (1386), Thessaloniki (1387), and finally Kosovo from the South Slavs in 1389. The Turks won their victories by virtue of their overwhelming superiority in both infantry and cavalry. But their administrative effectiveness, which combined strength and flexibility, solidified their rule in areas they conquered.

In contrast to the Christians, both Roman and Byzantine, who were intolerant of religious differences, the Turks allowed monotheists, or any of the believers in a ‘religion of the book’ (the Bible, Torah, or Koran), to retain their faith and be ruled by a religious superior through the millet system, a network of religious ghettoes.

In response to the Ottoman advance, the west mounted a poorly conceived and ill-fated crusade against the Turks at Nicopolis on the Danube in 1396 that led to the capture and slaughter of 10,000 knights and their attendants. Only the overwhelming force of Tamerlane (Timur the Lame), a Turko-Mongol ruler who devastated the Ottoman army in 1402, gave Constantinople and Europe some breathing space.

The end came finally in May 1453. The last emperor, Constantine XI, led his forces of 9,000, half of whom were Genoese, to hold off the 160,000 Turks for seven weeks. Finally, the Ottomans, with the help of Hungarian artillerymen, breached the walls of the beleaguered city. After 1123 years, the Christian capital fell.

Next: 4, Heroes, anti-heroes and the women of Byzantium: some biographical sketches.