History

Early History of the Roman Empire

The Roman army succeeded in conquering a vast collection of territories

covering the entire Mediterranean region and much of Western Europe.
Generally speaking, the eastern Mediterranean provinces were more urbanized
and socially developed. In contrast, the western regions were still largely rural
and less developed.

Division of the Roman Empire

In 293, Diocletian created a new administrative system (the tetrarchy).

After the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian, the tetrarchy collapsed
and Constantine I replaced it with the dynastic principle of hereditary succession.

In 330, he founded Constantinople as a second Rome on the site of

Byzantium, which was well-positioned astride the trade routes between East and
West.

Constantine built upon the administrative reforms introduced by

Diocletian. He stabilized the coinage (the gold solidus that he introduced became
a highly prized and stable currency), and made changes to the structure of the
army. Under Constantine, the Empire had recovered much of its military strength
and enjoyed a period of stability and prosperity.

Under Constantine, Christianity did not become the exclusive religion of

the state, but enjoyed imperial preference, since the Emperor supported it with
generous privileges. Constantine established the principle that emperors should
not settle questions of doctrine, but should summon general ecclesiastical
councils for that purpose. The Synod of Arles was convened by Constantine, and
the First Council of Nicaea showcased his claim to be head of the Church.

The state of the Empire in 395 may be described in terms of the outcome
of Constantine's work. The dynastic principle was established so firmly that the
emperor who died in that year, Theodosius I, could bequeath the imperial office
jointly to his sons: Arcadius in the East and Honorius in the West. Theodosius
was the last emperor to rule over the full extent of the empire in both its halves.

The Eastern Empire was largely spared the difficulties faced by the West
in the third and fourth centuries, due in part to a more established urban culture
and greater financial resources, which allowed it to placate invaders
with tribute and pay foreign mercenaries. Theodosius II further fortified the walls
of Constantinople, leaving the city impervious to most attacks; the walls were not
breached until 1204. To fend off the Huns of Attila, Theodosius II gave them
subsidies. Moreover, he favored merchants living in Constantinople who traded
with the Huns and other foreign groups.
 His successor Marcian, refused to continue to pay this exorbitant sum.
However, Attila had already diverted his attention to the Western Roman Empire.
After he died in 453, his empire collapsed and Constantinople initiated a
profitable relationship with the remaining Huns, who would eventually fight as
mercenaries in Byzantine armies.

After the fall of Attila, the Eastern Empire enjoyed a period of peace, while
the Western Empire collapsed.

To recover Italy, the emperor Zeno could only negotiate with

the Ostrogoths of Theodoric, who had settled in Moesia. He sent the gothic king
to Italy as magister militum per Italiam ("commander in chief for Italy"). After the
fall of Odoacer in 493, Theodoric, who had lived in Constantinople during his
youth, ruled Italy on his own. Thus, by suggesting that Theodoric conquer Italy as
his Ostrogothic kingdom, Zeno maintained at least a nominal supremacy in that
western land while ridding the Eastern Empire of an unruly subordinate.

In 491, Anastasius I, an aged civil officer of Roman origin, became

emperor, but it was not until 498 that the forces of the new emperor effectively
took the measure of Isaurian resistance. Anastasius revealed himself to be an
energetic reformer and an able administrator. He perfected Constantine I's
coinage system by definitively setting the weight of the copper follis, the coin
used in most everyday transactions. He also reformed the tax system, and
permanently abolished the hated chrysargyron tax.

Reconquest of the Western provinces

The reign of Justinian I, which began in 527, saw a period of extensive

Imperial conquests of former Roman territories (indicated in green on the map
below). The 6th century also saw the beginning of a long series of conflicts with
the Byzantine Empire's traditional early enemies, such as the Persians, Slavs
and Bulgars.

Theological crises, such as the question of Monophysitism, also

dominated the empire.Justinian I had already probably exerted effective control
under the reign of his predecessor, Justin I (518-527).

Justinian would become one of the most refined spirits of his century,
inspired by the dream of the re-creation of Roman rule over the entire
Mediterranean world. He reformed the administration and the law, and, with the
help of brilliant generals such as Belisarius and Narses, temporarily regained
some of the lost Roman provinces in the west, conquering much of Italy, North
Africa, and a small area in southern Spain.
 In 532 Justinian secured for the Empire peace on the Eastern frontier by
signing an "eternal peace" treaty with the Sassanid Persian king Khosrau I;
however this required in exchange the payment of a huge annual tribute in gold.

Justinian's conquests in the West began in 533, when Belisarius was sent
to reclaim the former province of Africa with a small army of some 18,000 men,
mainly mercenaries. Whereas an earlier 468 expedition had been a dismaying
failure, this new venture was to prove a success, the kingdom of the Vandals at
Carthage lacking the strength of former times under King Gaiseric.

The Vandals surrendered after a couple of battles, and Belisarius returned

to a Roman triumph in Constantinople with the last Vandal king, Gelimer, as his
prisoner. However the reconquest of North Africa would take a few more years to
stabilize and it was not until 548 that the main local independent tribes were
subdued.

In 535 Justinian launched his most ambitious campaign, the reconquest of

Italy, at that time still ruled by the Ostrogoths. He dispatched an army to march
overland from Dalmatia while the main contingent, transported on ships and
again under the command of Belisarius, disembarked in Sicily and conquered the
island without much difficulty.

The marches on the Italian mainland were initially victorious and the major
cities, including Naples, Rome and the capital Ravenna, fell one after the other.

The Goths seemingly defeated, Belisarius was recalled to Constantinople

in 541 by Justinian, bringing with him the Ostrogoth king Witiges as a prisoner in
chains.

However, the Ostrogoths and their supporters were soon reunited under
the energic command of Totila.

The ensuing Gothic Wars were an exhausting series of sieges, battles and
retreats which consumed almost all the Byzantine and Italian fiscal resources,
impoverishing much of the countryside.

Belisarius was recalled by Justianian, who had lost trust in his preferred
commander. At a certain point the Byzantines seemed on the verge of losing all
the positions they had gained.

After having neglected to provide sufficient financial and logistical support

to the desperate troops under Belisarius's former command, in the summer of
552 Justinian gathered a massive army of 35,000 men, mostly Asian and
Germanic mercenaries, to be applied to the supreme effort.

The astute and diplomatic eunuch Narses was chosen for the command.
 Totila was crushed and killed at Busta Gallorum; Totila's successor, Teias,
was likewise defeated at the Battle of Mons Lactarius (central Italy, October 552).

Despite of continuing resistance from a few Goth garrisons, and two

subsequent invasions by the Franks and Alamanni, the war for the reconquest of
the Italian peninsula was at an end. Justinian's program of conquest was further
extended in 554 when a Byzantine army managed to sieze a small part of Spain
from the Visigoths. All the main Mediterranean islands were also now under the
Byzantine control.

Aside from these conquests, Justinian updated the ancient Roman legal
code in the new Corpus Juris Civilis (although it is notable that these laws were
still written in Latin, a language which was becoming archaic and poorly
understood even by those who wrote the new code).

By far the most significant building of the Byzantine Empire is the great
church of Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople (532-37),
which retained a longitudinal axis but was dominated by its enormous central
dome. Seventh-century Syriac texts suggest that this design was meant to show
the church as an image of the world with the dome of heaven suspended above,
from which the Holy Spirit descended during the liturgical ceremony.

The precise features of Hagia Sophia's complex design were not repeated
in later buildings; from this time, however, most Byzantine churches were
centrally planned structures organized around a large dome; they retained the
cosmic symbolism and demonstrated with increasing clarity the close
dependence of the design and decoration of the church on the liturgy performed
in it.

Under Justinian's reign, the Church of Hagia Sofia ("Holy Wisdom") was
constructed in the 530s. This church would become the centre of Byzantine
religious life and the centre of the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity. The
sixth century was also a time of flourishing culture (although Justinian closed the
university at Athens), producing the epic poet Nonnus, the lyric poet Paul the
Silentiary, the historian Procopius and the natural philosopher John Philoponos,
among other notable talents.

The conquests in West meant the other parts of the Empire were left
almost unguarded, although Justinian was a great builder of fortifications
throughout all his reign and the Byzantine territories. Khosrau I of Persia had as
early as 540 broken the pact previously signed with Justinian, destroying
Antiochia and Armenia: the only way the emperor could devise to forestall him
was to increase the sum paid out every year.

The Balkans were subjected to repeated incursions, where Slavs had first
crossed the imperial frontiers during the reign of Justin I, taking advantage of the
sparsely-deployed Byzantine troops to press on as far as the Gulf of Corinth. The
Kutrigur Bulgars had also attacked in 540.

The Slavs then invaded Thrace in 545 and in 548 assaulted Dyrrachium,
an important port on the Adriatic Sea.

In 550 the Sclaveni pushed on as far to reach within 65 kilometers of

Constantinople itself.

In 559 the Empire found itself unable to repel a great invasion of Kutrigurs
and Sclaveni: divided in three columns, the invaders reached the Thermopylae,
the Gallipoli Peninsula and the suburbs of Constantinople. The Slavs come back
worried more by the intact power of the Danube Roman fleet and of the Utigurs,
paid by the Romans themselves, than the resistance of an ill-prepared Imperial
army.

This time the Empire was safe, but in the following years the Roman
suzerainty in the Balkans was to be almost totally overwhelmed. Soon after the
death of Justinian in 565, the Germanic Lombards, a former imperial foederati
tribe, invaded and conquered much of Italy.

The Visigoths conquered Cordoba, the main Byzantine city in Spain, first
in 572 and then definitively in 584: the last Byzantine strongholds in Spain were
swept away twenty years later.

The Turks, one of the deadliest enemies of future Byzantium, had

appeared in Crimea, and in 577 a horde of some 100,000 Slavs had invaded
Thrace and Illyricum. Sirmium, the most important Roman city on the Danube,
was lost in 582, but the Empire managed to maintain control of the river for
several more years, though it increasingly lost control of the inner provinces.

Justinian's successor, Justin II, refused to pay the tribute to the Persians.
This resulted in a long and harsh war which lasted until the reign of his
successors Tiberius II and Maurice, and focused on the control over Armenia.

Fortunately for the Byzantines, a civil war broke out in the Persian
Kingdom: Maurice was able take advantage of his friendship with the new king
Khosrau II (who disputed accession to the Persian throne had been assisted by
Maurice) in order to sign a favorable peace treaty in 591, which gave the Empire
control over much of Persian Armenia.

Maurice reorganized the remaining possessions in the West into two

Exarchates, those of Ravenna and Carthage, attempting to increase their
capability in self-defense and delegating them much of the civil authority.
 The Avars and later the Bulgars overwhelmed much of the Balkans, and in
the early 7th century the Persians invaded and conquered Egypt, Palestine, Syria
and Armenia. The Persians were defeated and the territories were recovered by
the emperor Heraclius in 627, but the unexpected appearance of the newly-
converted and united Muslim Arabs took by surprise an empire exhausted by the
titanic effort against Persia, and the southern provinces were all overrun.

The Empire's most catastrophic defeat of this period was the Battle of
Yarmuk, fought in Syria. Heraclius and the military governors of Syria were slow
to respond to the new threat, and Byzantine Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and the
Exarchate of Africa were permanently incorporated into the Muslim Empire in the
7th century, a process which was completed with the fall of Carthage to the
Caliphate in 698.

The Lombards continued to expand in northern Italy, taking Liguria in 640

and conquering most of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751, leaving the Byzantines
with control only of small areas around the toe and heel of Italy, plus some semi-
independent coastal cities like Venice, Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta.

The shrinking borders

Heraclian dynasty

After Maurice's murder by Phocas, Khosrau used the pretext to reconquer

the Roman province of Mesopotamia. Phocas, an unpopular ruler who was
invariably described in Byzantine sources as a "tyrant", was the target of a
number of senate-led plots. He was eventually deposed in 610 by Heraclius, who
sailed to Constantinople from Carthage with an icon affixed to the prow of his
ship. Following the ascension of Heraclius, the Sassanid advance pushed deep
into Asia Minor, also occupying Damascus and Jerusalem and removing the True
Cross to Ctesiphon. The counter-offensive of Heraclius took on the character of a
holy war, and an acheiropoietos image of Christ was carried as a military
standard. The main Sassanid force was destroyed at Nineveh in 627, and in 629
Heraclius restored the True Cross to Jerusalem in a majestic ceremony.The war
had exhausted both the Byzantine and Sassanid Empire, and left them extremely
vulnerable to the Arab Muslim forces which emerged in the following
years.The Romans suffered a crushing defeat by the Arabs at the Battle of
Yarmuk in 636, and Ctesiphon fell in 634.

Byzantine Empire by 650; by this year it lost all of its southern provinces
except the Exarchate of Carthage.

The Arabs, now firmly in control of Syria and the Levant, sent frequent
raiding parties deep into Anatolia, and between 674 and 678 laid siege to
Constantinople itself. The Arab fleet was finally repulsed through the use
of Greek fire, and a thirty-years' truce was signed between the empire
and Ummayyad Caliphate.The Anatolian raids continued unabated, and
accelerated the demise of classical urban culture, with the inhabitants of many
cities either refortifying much smaller areas within the old city walls, or relocating
entirely to nearby fortresses.Constantinople itself dropped substantially in size,
from 500,000 inhabitants to just 40,000-70,000, as the city lost the free grain
shipments in 618 after the loss of Egypt to the Persians (province regained in
629, but lost to Arabs invaders in 642). The void left by the disappearance of the
old semi-autonomous civic institutions was filled by the theme system, which
entailed the division of Anatolia into "provinces" occupied by distinct armies
which assumed civil authority and answered directly to the imperial
administration. This system may have had its roots in certain ad hocmeasures
taken by Heraclius, but over the course of the seventh century it developed into
an entirely new system of imperial governance.

The withdrawal of large numbers of troops from the Balkans to combat the
Persians and then the Arabs in the east opened the door for the gradual
southward expansion of Slavic peoples into the peninsula, and, as in Anatolia,
many cities shrank to small fortified settlements. In the 670s, the Bulgars were
pushed south of the Danube by the arrival of the Khazars, and in 680 Byzantine
forces which had been sent to disperse these new settlements were defeated. In
the next year Constantine IV signed a treaty with the Bulgar khan Asparukh, and
the new Bulgarian state assumed sovereignty over a number of Slavic tribes
which had previously, at least in name, recognized Byzantine rule. In 687–688,
the emperor Justinian II led an expedition against the Slavs and Bulgars which
made significant gains, although the fact that he had to fight his way
from Thrace to Macedonia demonstrates the degree to which Byzantine power in
the north Balkans had declined.

The final Heraclian emperor, Justinian II, attempted to break the power of
the urban aristocracy through severe taxation and the appointment of "outsiders"
to administrative posts. He was driven from power in 695, and took shelter first
with the Khazars and then with the Bulgars. In 705 he returned to Constantinople
with the armies of the Bulgar khan Tervel, retook the throne, and instituted a
reign of terror against his enemies. With his final overthrow in 711, supported
once more by the urban aristocracy, the Heraclian dynasty came to an end.

Isaurian dynasty to the ascension of Basil I

Leo III the Isaurian, turned back the Muslim assault in 718, and achieved
victory with the major help of the Bulgarian khan Tervel, who killed 32,000 Arabs
with his army. He also addressed himself to the task of reorganizing and
consolidating the themes in Asia Minor. His successor, Constantine V, won
noteworthy victories in northern Syria, and thoroughly undermined Bulgar
strength.
 In 826, the Arabs captured Crete, and successfully attacked Sicily, but on
3 September 863, general Petronas gained a huge victory against Umar al-Aqta,
the emir of Melitene. Under the leadership of Krum the Bulgar threat also
reemerged, but in 814 Krum's son, Omortag, arranged a peace with the
Byzantine Empire.

The eighth and ninth centuries were also dominated by controversy and
religious division over Iconoclasm. Icons were banned by Leo and Constantine,
leading to revolts by iconodules (supporters of icons) throughout the empire.
After the efforts of Empress Irene, the Second Council of Nicaea met in 787, and
affirmed that icons could be venerated but not worshipped. Irene is said to have
endeavored to negotiate a marriage between herself and Charlemagne, but,
according to Theophanes the Confessor, the scheme was frustrated by Aetios,
one of her favourites. In 813, Leo V the Armenian restored the policy of
iconoclasm, but in 843 Empress Theodora restored the veneration of the icons
with the help of Patriarch Methodios. Iconoclasm played its part in the further
alienation of East from West, which worsened during the so-called Photian
Schism, when Pope Nicholas I challenged Photios' elevation to the patriarchate.

Macedonian dynasty and resurgence

Wars against the Muslims

The process of reconquest began with variable fortunes. The temporary

reconquest of Crete (843) was followed by a crushing Byzantine defeat on
the Bosporus, while the emperors were unable to prevent the ongoing Muslim
conquest of Sicily (827–902). Using present day Tunisia as their launching pad,
the Muslims conquered Palermo in 831, Messina in 842, Enna in
859, Syracuse in 878, Catania in 900 and the final Byzantine stronghold, the
fortress of Taormina, in 902.

These drawbacks were later counterbalanced by a victorious expedition

against Damietta in Egypt (856), the defeat of the Emir of Melitene (863), the
confirmation of the imperial authority over Dalmatia (867), and Basil I's offensives
towards the Euphrates(870s). Unlike the deteriorating situation in Sicily, Basil I
handled the situation in southern Italy well enough and the province would
remain in Byzantine hands for the next 200 years.

In 904, disaster struck the empire when its second city, Thessaloniki, was
sacked by an Arab fleet led by the Byzantine renegadeLeo of Tripoli. The
Byzantine military responded by destroying an Arab fleet in 908, and sacking the
city of Laodicea in Syria two years later. Despite this revenge, the Byzantines
were still unable to strike a decisive blow against the Muslims, who inflicted a
crushing defeat on the imperial forces when they attempted to regain Crete in
911.
 The situation on the border with the Arab territories remained fluid, with
the Byzantines alternatively on the offensive or defensive. The Varangians, who
attacked Constantinople for the first time in 860, constituted another new
challenge. In 941 they appeared on the Asian shore of the Bosporus, but this
time they were crushed, showing the improvements in the Byzantine military
position after 907, when only diplomacy had been able to push back the
invaders. The vanquisher of the Varangians was the famous general John
Kourkouas, who continued the offensive with other noteworthy victories in
Mesopotamia (943): these culminated in the reconquest of Edessa (944), which
was especially celebrated for the return to Constantinople of the
veneratedMandylion.

The soldier-emperors Nikephoros II Phokas (reigned 963–969) and John I

Tzimiskes (969–976) expanded the empire well into Syria, defeating the emirs of
north-west Iraq and reconquering Crete and Cyprus. At one point under John, the
empire's armies even threatened Jerusalem, far to the south. The emirate
of Aleppo and its neighbours became vassals of the empire in the east, where
the greatest threat to the empire was the Fatimid caliphate.[53] After much
campaigning, the last Arab threat to Byzantium was defeated when Basil II
rapidly drew 40,000 mounted soldiers to relieve Roman Syria. With a surplus of
resources and victories thanks to the Bulgar and Syrian campaigns, Basil II
planned an expedition against Sicily to re-take it from the Arabs there. After his
death in 1025, the expedition set off in the 1040s and was met with initial, but
stunted success.

Wars against the Bulgarian Empire

A great imperial expedition under Leo Phocas and Romanos

Lekapenos ended again with a crushing Byzantine defeat at theBattle of
Acheloos (917), and the following year the Bulgarians were free to ravage
northern Greece as far as Corinth. Adrianople was captured again in 923 and in
924 a Bulgarian army laid siege to Constantinople. The situation in the Balkans
improved only after Simeon's death in 927. In 968, Bulgaria was overrun by
the Rus' under Sviatoslav I of Kiev, but three years later, the emperorJohn I
Tzimiskes defeated the Rus' and re-incorporated eastern Bulgaria into the
Empire.

Bulgarian resistance revived under the rule of the Cometopuli dynasty, but
the new emperor Basil II (reigned 976–1025) made the submission of the
Bulgarians his primary goal. Basil's first expedition against Bulgaria however
resulted in a humiliating defeat at theGates of Trajan. For the next few years, the
emperor would be preoccupied with internal revolts in Anatolia, while the
Bulgarians expanded their realm in the Balkans. The war was to drag on for
nearly twenty years. The Byzantine victories of Spercheios and Skopjedecisively
weakened the Bulgarian army, and in annual campaigns, Basil methodically
reduced the Bulgarian strongholds. Eventually, at the Battle of Kleidion in 1014
the Bulgarians were completely defeated. The Bulgarian army was captured, and
it is said that 99 out of every 100 men were blinded, with the remaining
hundredth man left with one eye so as to lead his compatriots home. When
Tsar Samuil saw the broken remains of his once gallant army, he died of shock.
By 1018, the last Bulgarian strongholds had surrendered, and the country
became part of the Byzantine empire. This victory restored the Danube frontier,
which had not been held since the days of the emperor Heraclius.

Relations with the Kievan Rus'

Between 850 and 1100, the Empire developed a mixed relationship with a
new state that emerged to the north across the Black Sea, that of the Kievan
Rus'. This relationship would have long-lasting repercussions in the history
of East Slavs. Byzantium quickly became the main trading and cultural partner
for Kiev, but relations were not always friendly. The most serious conflict
between the two powers was the war of 968–971 in Bulgaria, but several Rus'
raiding expeditions against the Byzantine cities of the Black Sea coast and
Constantinople itself are also recorded. Although most were repulsed, they were
concluded by trade treaties that were generally favourable to the Rus'.
Rus'-Byzantine relations became closer following the marriage of
the porphyrogenita Anna to Vladimir the Great, and the
subsequent Christianization of the Rus': Byzantine priests, architects and artists
were invited to work on numerous cathedrals and churches around Rus',
expanding Byzantine cultural influence even further. Numerous Rus' served in
the Byzantine army as mercenaries, most notably as the famous Varangian
Guard.

The apex

The Byzantine Empire then stretched from Armenia in the east

to Calabria in Southern Italy in the west. Many successes had been achieved,
ranging from the conquest of Bulgaria, to the annexation of parts of Georgia and
Armenia, to the total annihilation of an invading force of Egyptians
outside Antioch. Yet even these victories were not enough; Basil considered the
continued Arab occupation of Sicily to be an outrage. Accordingly, he planned to
reconquer the island, which had belonged to the Roman world since the First
Punic War. However, his death in 1025 put an end to the project.

The eleventh century was also momentous for its religious events. In
1054, relations between the Eastern and Western traditions within the Christian
Church reached a terminal crisis. Although there was a formal declaration of
institutional separation, on 16 July, when three papal legates entered the Hagia
Sophia during Divine Liturgyon a Saturday afternoon and placed
a bull of excommunication on the altar, the so-called Great Schism was actually
the culmination of centuries of gradual separation.
Crisis and fragmentation

Byzantium soon fell into difficulties, by the undermining of the theme

system and the neglect of the military. Nikephoros II (963–969), John Tzimiskes
and Basil II changed the military divisions from a rapid response, primarily
defensive, citizen army into a professional, campaigning army increasingly
manned by mercenaries however, were expensive. Basil II left a burgeoning
treasury upon his death, but none of his immediate successors had any particular
military or political talent and the administration of the Empire increasingly fell
into the hands of the civil service. The army was now seen as both an
unnecessary expense and a political threat.

At the same time, Byzantine provinces in southern Italy faced the

Normans. Normans began to advance, slowly but steadily, into Byzantine Italy. It
was in Asia Minor that the greatest disaster took place. The Seljuq Turks made
their first explorations across the Byzantine frontier into Armenia in 1065 and in
1067. In the summer of 1071, Romanos Diogenes undertook a massive eastern
campaign to draw the Seljuks into a general engagement with the Byzantine
army. Sultan Alp Arslan treated him with respect, and imposed no harsh terms on
the Byzantines.

Komnenian dynasty and the crusaders

The Byzantine Empire or Byzantium is the Greek-speaking Roman

Empire of the Middle Ages, centered around its capital of Constantinople. Having
survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire during Late Antiquity, the
Byzantine Empire continued to function until its conquest by the Ottoman Turks
in 1453. The Komnenian or Comnenian period was after the Komnenos
dynasty, the five Komnenian emperors (Alexios I, John II, Manuel I, Alexios II and
Andronikos I) ruled for 104 years, presiding over a sustained, though ultimately
incomplete, restoration of the military, territorial, economic and political position
of the Byzantine Empire. As a human institution, Byzantium under the
Komnenoi played a key role in the history of the Crusades in the Holy Land,
while also exerting enormous cultural and political influence in Europe, the Near
East, and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. The Komnenian emperors,
particularly John and Manuel, exerted great influence over the Crusader states of
Outremer, whilst Alexios I played a key role in the course of the First Crusade,
which he helped bring about.

During the Komnenian period that contact between Byzantium and the
'Latin' Christian West, including the Crusader states, was at its most crucial
stage. Venetian and other Italian traders became resident in Constantinople and
the empire in large and their presence together with the numerous Latin
mercenaries who were employed by Manuel helped to spread Byzantine
technology, art, literature and culture throughout the Roman Catholic west.
Above all, the cultural impact of Byzantine art on the west at this period was
enormous and of long lasting significance.

The Komnenoi planted the foundations of the Byzantine successor states

of Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond. Meanwhile, their extensive programme of
fortifications has left an enduring mark upon the Anatolian landscape, which can
still be appreciated today.

Alexios I and the First Crusade

The Komnenian restoration was made possible by the efforts of the

Komnenian dynasty. The first emperor of this dynasty was Isaac I (1057–1059)
and the second Alexios I. At the very outset of his reign, Alexios faced a
formidable attack by the Normans under Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund
of Taranto, who captured Dyrrhachium and Corfu, and laid siege to Larissa in
Thessaly. By his own efforts, Alexios defeated the Pechenegs; they were caught
by surprise and annihilated at the Battle of Levounion on 28 April 1091.
Alexios still did not have enough manpower to recover the lost territories in Asia
Minor and to advance against the Seljuks. Alexios' envoys spoke to Pope Urban
II about the suffering of the Christians of the East, and underscored that without
help from the West they would continue to suffer under Muslim rule. On 27
November 1095, Pope Urban II called together the Council of Clermont, and
urged all those present to take up arms under the sign of the Cross and launch
an armed pilgrimage to recover Jerusalem and the East from the Muslims.
Alexios' vassal under the Treaty of Devol in 1108, which marked the end of
Norman threat during Alexios' reign.

John II, Manuel I and the Second Crusade

Alexios' son John II Komnenos succeeded him in 1118, and was to rule
until 1143. John was a pious and dedicated emperor who was determined to
undo the damage his empire had suffered at the Battle of Manzikert. John was
an exceptional example of a moral ruler, at a time when cruelty was the norm. He
has been called the Byzantine Marcus Aurelius. John made alliances with the
Holy Roman Empire in the West, decisively defeated the Pechenegs at the Battle
of Beroia, and personally led numerous campaigns against the Turks in Asia
Minor. He also thwarted Hungarian, and Serbian threats during the 1120s, and in
1130 allied himself with the German emperor Lothair III against the Norman King
Roger II of Sicily. John marched into the Holy Land at the head of the combined
forces of Byzantium and the Crusader states; yet despite the great vigour with
which he pressed the campaign, John's hopes were disappointed by the
treachery of his Crusader allies. He died in the spring of 1143 following a hunting
accident.
 John's chosen heir was his fourth son, Manuel I Komnenos, who
campaigned aggressively against his neighbours both in the west and in the east.
In Palestine, he allied himself with the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and sent
a large fleet to participate in a combined invasion of Fatimid Egypt. Manuel
reinforced his position as overlord of the Crusader states, to restore Byzantine
control over the ports of southern Italy, he sent an expedition to Italy in 1155.
Manuel's armies successfully invaded the Kingdom of Hungary in 1167, defeating
the Hungarians at the Battle of Sirmium. Manuel made several alliances with the
Pope and Western Christian kingdoms, and successfully handled the passage of
the Second Crusade through his empire.
Manuel suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Myriokephalon, in 1176, against
the Turks. Yet the losses were quickly made good, and in the following year
Manuel's forces inflicted a defeat upon a force of "picked Turks". Byzantine army
remained strong and that the defensive program of western Asia Minor was still
successful.
Twelfth century Renaissance

Despite the defeat at Myriokephalon, the Komnenian army assured the

empire's security, enabling Byzantine civilization to flourish. This allowed the
Western provinces to achieve an economic revival which continued until the
close of the century. It has been argued that Byzantium under the Komnenian
rule was more prosperous than at any time since the Persian invasions of the
seventh century. In artistic terms, there was a revival in mosaic, and regional
schools of architecture began producing many distinctive styles that drew on a
range of cultural influences. During the twelfth century the Byzantines provided
their model of early humanism as a renaissance of interest in classical authors.

Decline and disintegration

Dynasty of the Angeloi

Manuel's death on 24 September 1180 left his 11-year-old son Alexios II

Komnenos on the throne. Alexios was highly incompetent at the office, but it was
his mother, Maria of Antioch, and her Frankish background that made his
regency unpopular. Eventually, Andronikos I Komnenos, a grandson of Alexios I,
launched a revolt against his younger relative and managed to overthrow him in
a violent coup d'état. He had himself crowned as co-emperor in September 1183;
he eliminated Alexios II and even took his 12-year-old wife Agnes of France for
himself. Andronikos began his reign well. Andronikos was determined to root out
corruption: Under his rule the sale of offices ceased; selection was based on
merit, rather than favoritism; officials were paid an adequate salary so as to
reduce the temptation of bribery. In the provinces Andronikos' reforms produced
a speedy and marked improvement. Andronikos seems to have become
increasingly unbalanced; executions and violence became increasingly common,
and his reign turned into a reign of terror. Andronikos seemed almost to seek the
extermination of the aristocracy as a whole. He was finally overthrown when
Isaac Angelos, surviving an imperial assassination attempt, seized power with
the aid of the people and had Andronikos killed.

The reign of Isaac II saw the collapse of what remained of the centralized
machinery of Byzantine government and defense. Byzantine authority was
severely weakened, and the growing power vacuum at the center of the empire
encouraged fragmentation. "the dynasty of the Angeloi, Greek in its origin,
accelerated the ruin of the Empire, already weakened without and disunited
within.

Fourth Crusade

In 1198, Pope Innocent III stated intent of the crusade was to conquer Egypt,
now the centre of Muslim power in the Levant. The crusader army that arrived at
Venice in the summer of 1202 was somewhat smaller than had been anticipated,
and there were not sufficient funds to pay the Venetians. Innocent, who was
informed of the plan but his veto disregarded, was reluctant to jeopardize the
Crusade, and gave conditional absolution to the crusaders—not, however, to the
Venetians.

The crusaders arrived at the city in the summer of 1203. The crusaders
took the city on 13 April 1204. Constantinople was subjected by the rank and file
to pillage and massacre for three days. A prostitute was even set up on the
Patriarchal throne. When Innocent III heard of the conduct of his crusaders, he
castigated them in no uncertain terms. He had absolved the crusaders from their
vow to proceed to the Holy Land. When order had been restored, the crusaders
and the Venetians proceeded to implement their agreement; Baldwin of Flanders
was elected emperor and the Venetian Thomas Morosini chosen patriarch

Fall

Empire in exile

After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Latin Crusaders, two

Byzantine successor states were established: the Empire of Nicaea, and the
Despotate of Epirus. A third one, the Empire of Trebizond was created a few
weeks before the sack of Constantinople by Alexios I of Trebizond. Of these
three successor states, Epirus and Nicaea stood the best chance of reclaiming
Constantinople. The Nicaean Empire struggled, but lost much of southern
Anatolia.[96] The weakening of the Sultanate of Rûm following the Mongol
Invasion in 1242–43 allowed many Beyliks and ghazis to set up their own
principalities in Anatolia, weakening the Byzantine hold on Asia Minor.

Reconquest of Constantinople
 The Empire of Nicaea, founded by the Laskarid dynasty, Michael VIII
Palaiologos maintain his campaigns against the Latins, Michael pulled troops
from Asia Minor, and levied crippling taxes on the peasantry, causing much
resentment.[98] Massive construction projects were completed in Constantinople
to repair the damages of the Fourth Crusade. Michael chose to expand the
Empire, gaining only short- term success. He forced the Church to submit to
Rome, again a temporary solution for which the peasantry hated Michael and
Constantinople.

Rise of the Ottomans and fall of Constantinople

Things went worse for Byzantium during the civil wars that followed after
Andronikos III died. A six-year long civil war devastated the empire, and an
earthquake at Gallipoli in 1354 devastated the fort, allowing the Ottomans (who
were hired as mercenaries during the civil war by John VI Kantakouzenos) to
establish themselves in Europe.[101] Much of the Balkans became dominated by
the Ottomans.

The Emperors appealed to the west for help, but the Pope would only
consider sending aid in return for a reunion of the Eastern Orthodox Church with
the See of Rome. Church unity was considered. Some western troops arrived to
bolster the Christian defence of Constantinople, but most Western rulers,
distracted by their own affairs, did nothing as the Ottomans picked apart the
remaining Byzantine territories.

Constantinople was underpopulated and dilapidated. The population of the

city had collapsed so severely that it was now little more than a cluster of villages
separated by fields. Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans after a two-month
siege on 29 May 1453. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos,
was last seen casting off his imperial regalia and throwing himself into hand-to-
hand combat after the walls of the city were taken.

Aftermath

The nephew of the last Emperor, Constantine XI, Andreas Palaeologos

had inherited the defunct title of Byzantine Emperor and used it from 1465 until
his death in 1503. The Ottoman Empire had established its firm rule over Asia
Minor and parts of the Balkan peninsula. Mehmed II and his successors
continued to consider themselves proper heirs to the Byzantine Empire until the
demise of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. At his death, the
role of the emperor as a patron of Eastern Orthodoxy was claimed by Ivan III,
Grand Duke of Muscovy. Their successors supported the idea that Moscow was
the proper heir to Rome and Constantinople. The idea of the Russian Empire as
the new, Third Rome was kept alive until its demise with the Russian Revolution
of 1917.
Culture

Economy

The Byzantine economy was among the most advanced in Europe and the
Mediterranean for many centuries. Europe, in particular, was unable to match
Byzantine economic strength until late in the Middle Ages. Constantinople was a
prime hub in a trading network that at various times extended across nearly all of
Eurasia and North Africa, in particular being the primary western terminus of the
famous Silk Road. The tenth century until the end of the twelfth, the Byzantine
Empire projected an image of luxury, and the travelers were impressed by the
wealth accumulated in the capital. All this changed with the arrival of the Fourth
Crusade, which was an economic catastrophe. The Palaiologoi tried to revive the
economy, but the late Byzantine state would not gain full control of either the
foreign or domestic economic forces. One of the economic foundations of the
empire was trade. Textiles must have been by far the most important item of
export; silks were certainly imported into Egypt, and appeared also in Bulgaria,
and the West. The government exercised formal control over interest rates, and
set the parameters for the activity of the guilds and corporations, in which it had a
special interest. The emperor and his officials intervened at times of crisis to
ensure the provisioning of the capital, and to keep down the price of cereals.
Finally, the government often collected part of the surplus through taxation, and
put it back into circulation, through redistribution in the form of salaries to state
officials, or in the form of investment in public works.

Science, Medicine and Law

Byzantine science was in every period closely connected with ancient

philosophy, and metaphysics. Although at various times the Byzantines made
magnificent achievements in the application of the sciences (notably in the
construction of the Hagia Sophia). the final century of the Empire, Byzantine
grammarians were those principally responsible for carrying, in person and in
writing, ancient Greek grammatical and literary studies to early Renaissance
Italy. During this period, astronomy and other mathematical sciences were taught
in Trebizond; medicine attracted the interest of almost all scholars.
In the field of law, Justinian I's reforms had a clear effect on the evolution of
jurispr.

Religion

Byzantine culture and Orthodoxy are one and the same. The survival of
the Empire in the East assured an active role of the Emperor in the affairs of the
Church. The Byzantine state inherited from pagan times the administrative and
financial routine of administering religious affairs, and this routine was applied to
the Christian Church. The Byzantines viewed the Emperor as a representative or
messenger of Christ, responsible particularly for the propagation of Christianity
among pagans, and for the "externals" of the religion, such as administration and
finances. The imperial role, however, in the affairs of the Church never
developed into a fixed, legally defined system. Christianity was never fully united
and the Christians in the Byzantine Empire were diverse throughout the Empire's
history. The state church of the Roman Empire, which came to be known as the
Eastern Orthodox Church, never represented all Christians in the Empire.
Christian sects existed in the early Empire, although by the time of Rome's fall in
the fifth century Arianism was mostly confined to the Germanic peoples of
Western Europe. By the Empire's late stages, though, Eastern Orthodoxy
represented most Christians in what remained of the Empire. Jews were a
significant minority in the Empire throughout its history. Despite periods of
persecution, they were generally tolerated, if not always embraced, during most
periods. With the decline of Rome, and internal dissension in the other Eastern
patriarchates, the church of Constantinople became, between the sixth and
eleventh centuries, the richest and most influential center of Christendom.

Government and bureaucracy

The Byzantine state, the emperor was the sole and absolute ruler, and his
power was regarded as having divine origin By the end of the eighth century, a
civil administration focused on the court was formed as part of a large-scale
consolidation of power in the capital (the rise to pre-eminence of the position of
sakellarios is related to this change). The most important reform of this period is
the creation of themes, where civil and military administration is exercised by one
person, the strategos. The Byzantine bureaucracy had a distinct ability for
reinventing itself in accordance with the Empire's situation. The Byzantine system
of titulature and precedence makes the imperial administration look like an
ordered bureaucracy to modern observers. Officials were arranged in strict order
around the emperor, and depended upon the imperial will for their ranks. In the
eighth and ninth centuries, civil service constituted the clearest path to
aristocratic status, but, starting in the ninth century, the civil aristocracy was
rivaled by an aristocracy of nobility. According to some studies of Byzantine
government, eleventh century politics were dominated by competition between
the civil and the military aristocracy.
Tagum Doctors College, Inc.
College of Nursing

A Written Report in
Byzantine Empire
And
Mongol Empire

Submitted to:

Instructor

Submitted by:

Palaca, Cheer Ann

Placido, Norlan
Quesada, Shiela May
Renomeron, Girly
Rina, Dyan Bebs
Sato, Clark
Segovia, Cherry Ann
Serra, Marlunee
Sison, Maricris
BSN III

August 12, 2010