What is the significance of the byzantine empire to civilization in europe

The Byzantine Empire, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in the east during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople modern-day Istanbul, originally founded as Byzantium.

It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE, and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Although the people living in the Eastern Roman Empire referred to themselves as Romans, they were distinguished by their Greek heritage, Orthodox Christianity, and their regional connections.

Over time, the culture of the Eastern Roman Empire transformed. Greek replaced Latin as the language of the empire. Constantine I r. Under Theodosius I r. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius r.

Therefore, the Iconoclasm widened the growing divergence and tension between east and west, though the church was still unified at this time. It also decisively ended the so-called Byzantine Papacy, under which, since the reign of Justinian I a century before, the popes in Rome had been nominated or confirmed by the emperor in Constantinople.

The deference of the Western Church to Constantinople dissolved, and Rome would maintain a consistently iconodule position meaning it supports or is in favor of religious images or icons and their veneration. Regent Irene convened the Second Council of Nicaea in CE, which temporarily restored image worship, in an attempt to soothe the strained relations between Constantinople and Rome—but it was too late.

It was also a message that the popes were now loyal to the Franks, who could protect them, instead of the Byzantines, who had only caused trouble. To the Byzantines, this was an outrage, attacking their claim to be the true successors of Rome. With two Roman empires, the Byzantines and the Franks, the authority of the Byzantine Empire was weakened. The Byzantines, however, continued to consider themselves Romans, and looked to the patriarch of Constantinople, not the pope, as the most important religious figure of the church.

The differences in practice and worship between the Church of Rome in the west and the Church of Constantinople in the east only increased over time. In , the first step was taken in the process that led to formal schism; the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael I Cerularius, ordered the closure of all Latin churches in Constantinople, in response to the Greek churches in southern Italy having been forced to either close or conform to Latin practices.

According to the historian J. Finally, in CE, relations between the Eastern and Western traditions within the Christian Church reached a terminal crisis. The main purpose of the papal legation was to seek help from the Byzantine emperor in view of the Norman conquest of southern Italy, and to deal with recent attacks by Leo of Ohrid against the use of unleavened bread and other Western customs, attacks that had the support of Cerularius. Historian Axel Bayer contends that the legation was sent in response to two letters, one from the emperor seeking assistance in arranging a common military campaign by the Eastern and Western Empires against the Normans, and the other from Cerularius.

On the refusal of Cerularius to accept the demand, the leader of the legation, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, excommunicated him, and in return Cerularius excommunicated Humbert and the other legates. This was only the first act in a centuries-long process that eventually became a complete schism.

The gradual separation of the last several centuries culminated in a formal declaration of institutional separation between east, into the Orthodox Church now Eastern Orthodox Church , and west, into the Catholic Church now Roman Catholic Church. This was known as the East-West Schism.

The church split along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographical lines, and the fundamental breach has never been healed, with each side sometimes accusing the other of having fallen into heresy and of having initiated the division.

Distinguish between the different threats that the Byzantines faced around the turn of the millennium. It was founded circa , when Bulgar tribes led by Asparukh moved to the northeastern Balkans. There they secured Byzantine recognition of their right to settle south of the Danube, by defeating—possibly with the help of local South Slavic tribes—the Byzantine army led by Constantine IV.

As the state solidified its position in the Balkans, it entered into a centuries-long interaction, sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, with the Byzantine Empire. The two powers also enjoyed periods of peace and alliance, most notably during the Second Arab siege of Constantinople, where the Bulgarian army broke the siege and destroyed the Arab army, thus preventing an Arab invasion of southeastern Europe.

Byzantium had a strong cultural influence on Bulgaria, which also led to the eventual adoption of Christianity in After the adoption of Christianity, Bulgaria became the cultural center of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was further consolidated with the invention of the Glagolitic and Early Cyrillic alphabets shortly after in the capital of Preslav, and literature produced in Old Bulgarian soon began spreading north.

Old Bulgarian became the lingua franca of much of eastern Europe and it came to be known as Old Church Slavonic. In , the fully independent Bulgarian Patriarchate was officially recognized. The Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars were a series of conflicts fought between the Byzantines and Bulgarians, which began when the Bulgars first settled in the Balkan peninsula in the 5th century, and intensified with the expansion of the Bulgarian Empire to the southwest after CE. The Byzantines and Bulgarians continued to clash over the next century with variable success, until the Bulgarians, led by Krum, inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Byzantines.

After Krum died in , his son, Omurtag, negotiated a thirty-year peace treaty. The traditional struggle with the See of Rome continued through the Macedonian period, spurred by the question of religious supremacy over the newly Christianized state of Bulgaria.

Ending 80 years of peace between the two states, the powerful Bulgarian tsar, Simeon I, invaded in but was pushed back by the Byzantines, who used their fleet to sail up the Black Sea to attack the Bulgarian rear, enlisting the support of the Hungarians. The Byzantines were defeated at the Battle of Boulgarophygon in , however, and agreed to pay annual subsidies to the Bulgarians.

There were rebellions against Byzantine rule from to , and in the s and the s, but these failed. In , however, Theodore Peter and Ivan Asen started a revolt, and the weakening Byzantine Empire, facing internal dynastic troubles of its own, was unable to prevent the revolt from being successful. In , the rebels suffered a defeat, but Isaac II Angelos failed to exploit his victory and returned to Constantinople. With the help of the chiefly Cuman population north of the Danube, Peter and Asen recovered their positions and raided into Thrace.

Fighting continued until , when Bulgaria fell to the Ottoman Turks, and , when Constantinople was captured. Since both became part of the Ottoman Empire, this was the end of the long series of Bulgarian-Byzantine Wars.

Bulgarians Fighting the Byzantines: A Byzantine painting depicting Bulgarians slaughtering Byzantines, who can be seen with halos on their head. In , the Byzantine Empire suffered two important defeats, against the Turks in the Battle of Manzikert, and against the Normans in Bari.

These are sometimes called the Double Disasters. A number of wars between the Normans and the Byzantine Empire were fought from until , when the last Norman invasion of Byzantine territory was defeated. At the end of the conflict, neither the Normans nor the Byzantines could boast much power.

A Byzantine defeat in proved decisive for the disintegration and collapse of the empire. The premature death of the former, and the overthrow of the latter, led to further collapse as the Normans consolidated their conquest of Sicily and Italy.

Reggio Calabria, the capital of the tagma of Calabria, was captured by Robert Guiscard in At the time, the Byzantines held a few coastal towns in Apulia, including the capital of the catepanate of Italy, Bari. Otranto was besieged and fell in October ; in the same year, the Normans besieged Bari itself, and, after defeating the Byzantines in a series of battles in Apulia, and after any attempt of relief had failed, the city surrendered in April , ending the Byzantine presence in southern Italy.

Guiscard was incredibly successful, and he turned his eye to conquering the entire Byzantine Empire. He crossed over into Greece, pillaged the countryside, and defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Dyrrhachium in CE. He died before he could complete his conquests, but southern Italy would never again be ruled by the Byzantine Empire.

Even more dangerous than the Normans was a new enemy from the steppe, the Turks. These former pastoral nomads converted to Islam and ushered in a new phase of Islamic conquests. Emperor Romanos Diogenes moved the Byzantine army to meet them. It was perhaps the most severe military disaster in Byzantine history. With this defeat, Anatolia fell into the hands of the Turks.

Anatolia had been the heartland of the Byzantine Empire, the home of most of its soldiers and farmers. This defeat at Manzikert meant that the theme system, which had effectively supplied Byzantium with its army, was destroyed.

The Byzantine Empire was now vulnerable to conquest. Battle of Manzikert: In this 15th-century French miniature depicting the Battle of Manzikert, the combatants are clad in contemporary western European armor. The brunt of the battle was borne by the professional soldiers from the eastern and western tagmata, as large numbers of mercenaries and Anatolian levies fled early and survived the battle.

This led to the mass movement of Turks into central Anatolia—by , an area of 78, square kilometers 30, sq. It took three decades of internal strife before Alexius I to restored stability to Byzantium. Years and decades later, Manzikert came to be seen as a disaster for the empire; later sources, therefore, greatly exaggerate the numbers of troops and the number of casualties.

It was not an immediate disaster, but the defeat showed the Seljuks that the Byzantines were not invincible—they were not the unconquerable, millennium-old Roman Empire as both the Byzantines and Seljuks still called it. The usurpation of Andronikos Doukas also politically destabilized the empire, and it was difficult to organize resistance to the Turkish migrations that followed the battle. Tensions between eastern and western European powers boiled over during the Komnenian Dynasty; the west destroyed Constantinople and, with it, the Byzantine Empire.

In CE, with the attacks from the Normans and Turks reaching their height, a new emperor, Alexios I, came to the throne. His dynasty, the Komnenian Dynasty, would oversee a restoration of the empire after these disasters.

But for the first time, the Byzantines would have to look west for help, to their estranged fellow Christians in western Europe. Although western Europe had a history of religious disagreements with the Byzantines, they now realized that the Byzantine Empire was all that was holding back the Muslims from invading Europe.

However, he still did not have enough manpower to recover the lost territories in Asia Minor, and to advance against the Seljuks. At the Council of Piacenza in , envoys from Alexios 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 November 27, , 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.

The response in western Europe was overwhelming. Alexios had anticipated help in the form of mercenary forces from the west, but he was totally unprepared for the immense and undisciplined force which soon arrived in Byzantine territory.

It was no comfort to Alexios to learn that four of the eight leaders of the main body of the Crusade were Normans, among them Bohemund.

Relations were rocky from the start. To the Byzantines, the crusaders were dirty, uneducated brutes. To the crusaders, the Byzantines were untrustworthy, over-pampered schemers. Still, they tried to work together. The Byzantines and crusaders agreed that whatever formerly Byzantine lands the crusaders recaptured from the Turks would be returned to Byzantine control. The crusaders went back on this agreement, however, and took the lands for themselves.

The crusaders succeeded in conquering Jerusalem in CE, but the Byzantines had come to regard them as just as big a threat as the Muslims. Still, thanks to the Crusades, the Byzantines were able to reassert control of Anatolia. Emperor Alexios created a new system of leasing land in exchange for military service, called the Pronoia System, which was similar to the old theme system. At the same time, in order to secure military aid from the western powers, the Byzantine emperors had granted financial and trade concessions to Italy.

Large numbers of Italian merchants settled in Constantinople and put the local merchants out of business. Tensions between them and the Byzantines of the city worsened. In CE, these tensions spilled over into riots and a massacre of Latins the people from western Europe by an angry mob.

In , the barbarian Odoacer overthrew the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus , and Rome had fallen. The eastern half of the Roman Empire proved less vulnerable to external attack, thanks in part to its geographic location.

It also benefited greatly from a stronger administrative center and internal political stability, as well as great wealth compared with other states of the early medieval period.

As a result of these advantages, the Eastern Roman Empire, variously known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium, was able to survive for centuries after the fall of Rome.

Though Byzantium was ruled by Roman law and Roman political institutions, and its official language was Latin, Greek was also widely spoken, and students received education in Greek history, literature and culture. In terms of religion, the Council of Chalcedon in officially established the division of the Christian world into separate patriarchates, including Rome where the patriarch would later call himself pope , Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.

Even after the Islamic empire absorbed Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in the seventh century, the Byzantine emperor would remain the spiritual leader of most eastern Christians. Justinian I, who took power in and would rule until his death in , was the first great ruler of the Byzantine Empire.

Many great monuments of the empire would be built under Justinian, including the spectacular domed Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia. Justinian also reformed and codified Roman law, establishing a Byzantine legal code that would endure for centuries and help shape the modern concept of the state.

Debts incurred through war had left the empire in dire financial straits, however, and his successors were forced to heavily tax Byzantine citizens in order to keep the empire afloat.

During the seventh and eighth centuries, attacks from the Persian Empire and from Slavs, combined with internal political instability and economic regression, threatened the vast empire. A new, even more serious threat arose in the form of Islam , founded by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca in In , Muslim armies began their assault on the Byzantine Empire by storming into Syria.

During the eighth and early ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors beginning with Leo III in spearheaded a movement that denied the holiness of icons, or religious images, and prohibited their worship or veneration. Though it stretched over less territory, Byzantium had more control over trade, more wealth and more international prestige than under Justinian.

The strong imperial government patronized Byzantine art, including now-cherished Byzantine mosaics. Rulers also began restoring churches, palaces and other cultural institutions and promoting the study of ancient Greek history and literature. Greek became the official language of the state, and a flourishing culture of monasticism was centered on Mount Athos in northeastern Greece. Monks administered many institutions orphanages, schools, hospitals in everyday life, and Byzantine missionaries won many converts to Christianity among the Slavic peoples of the central and eastern Balkans including Bulgaria and Serbia and Russia.

The end of the 11th century saw the beginning of the Crusades , the series of holy wars waged by European Christians against Muslims in the Near East from to As armies from France, Germany and Italy poured into Byzantium, Alexius tried to force their leaders to swear an oath of loyalty to him in order to guarantee that land regained from the Turks would be restored to his empire.

After Western and Byzantine forces recaptured Nicaea in Asia Minor from the Turks, Alexius and his army retreated, drawing accusations of betrayal from the Crusaders. During the subsequent Crusades, animosity continued to build between Byzantium and the West, culminating in the conquest and looting of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in Many refugees from Constantinople fled to Nicaea, site of a Byzantine government-in-exile that would retake the capital and overthrow Latin rule in