The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire (63 page)

His hands-on approach and desire to systemize everything extended into both secular and religious practices. He attempted to enforce his version of orthodoxy throughout the Empire, and vigorously persecuted all (especially Jews and Monophysites) who wouldn't fall into line. He was, in today's colloquialism, a control freak (albeit a capable one!) along the lines of emperors such as Diocletian.

Justinian's greatest failure was his determined attempt to reconquer and hold the full extent of the Roman Empire. Starting with a deceptively easy campaign against the Vandals in 532, his great general Belisarius quickly reconquered all of North Africa. The campaign bogged down in the quagmire of Gothic and Germanic Italy. Roman commanders were divided in their aims, Gothic armies could not be constrained from transferring alliances and raising trouble under new chieftains, and Justinian considerably underfunded the war effort. Persians, Huns, and Bulgars all took advantage of the Empire's stretched resources to attack in the east.

 
Roamin' the Romans
You can find portraits of Justinian and Theodora in the famous mosaics of San Vitale, in Ravenna, Italy. Justinian attempted to make Ravenna, which had served as an imperial residence and stronghold since Honorius, into the new capital of the west.

Nevertheless, Justinian was momentarily able to retake Spain and the Balkans, and to impose an imperial settlement on Italy. This attempt, however, bankrupted the Empire and left it so strained that it began to fragment immediately upon his death. It was as if the Empire suddenly sat up from its deathbed and grabbed the world once more by the throat, only to collapse and die.

The eastern emperors continued to assert that they rightfully ruled over the whole, but this was an assertion without teeth and without basis. The time of universal empire was past. If Justinian had concentrated his energy and resources on building up what he had, he could have made an enormous difference over the course of his long reign. He didn't, but perhaps we shouldn't fault him too deeply given his proximity to a unified Roman state. He wasn't the last leader to let the siren's song of reestablishing the Empire put his ship of state upon the rocks. There's been a lot more wrecks on those shoals since Justinian.

Justinian left no clear successor, which put the eastern Empire into a period of crisis after his death in 565. A new dynasty under Heraclitus (610–641) established itself just in time, but by then, the eastern Empire was surrounded on all sides by hostile or dangerously unstable states. The emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople clung to their identity as the continuation of Rome and citizens knew themselves as
Romanoi.
We know them, however, as “Byzantine” for the distinct civilization that grew up and inward from Justinian's time.

There are three intertwining facets that made up the distinct character of the Byzantine Empire: First, it was a Christian empire; second, its law and administration were Roman in form and heritage; and third, it was based on Greek (not Latin) language, literature, and culture. The last of these facets was largely responsible for the dogged preservation of Greek learning by scholars and copyists in Constantinople and the various Greek communities in southern Italy, Sicily, and Greece. They preserved this heritage until the Turks sacked Constantinople in 1453 and drove the accumulated remains of Greek and Roman civilization into the waiting arms of the Italian Renaissance in Venice, Florence, and Rome.

Between Justinian and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, however, Byzantine history can be thought of as falling into roughly four periods (610–711; 717–867; 867–1200; 1200–1453). During these centuries, Islamic armies, religion, and culture spread from Arabia; conquered the richest parts of the eastern Empire; and spread along Africa up through Spain. Ties with the western Latin church, which were always strained, continued to fray as the bishop of Rome looked to alliances with the Franks for protection in the west.

The popes came to assert primacy over the western church and eventually over all of Christendom. But by then, an iron curtain of differing orthodoxies had settled over Eurasia. Rome had Christianized in Latin as far as Scandinavia and Britain and Constantinople in Greek up through Russia. East was east and west was west. The pope of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other in 1054 and set the stage for the west's reconquest of the east, including the Byzantines, in the name of Christ and the crusades.

The first centuries of Byzantium were occupied by fighting to keep from being overrun by the Bulgars from the north and by Muslims from the south and east. With the death of Muhammad in 632, Muslim armies set out to conquer the world for Islam. By 680, Muslim armies were raiding all the way up to the city of Constantinople cutting it off from the rest of eastern Christianity. A series of energetic emperors were kept busy fending off the Slavs, Bulgars, and Muslims. With developments in military tactics and equipment (including the use of
Greek Fire
), along with the best navy of the time, Constantinople was able to maintain its hold over its heartland and the trade that kept it vital.

 
When in Rome
Liquid Fire, more commonly known as
Greek Fire,
was the secret weapon of the Byzantine Empire that turned the tide of battle for Byzantium against the Muslim fleets in 678 and 718. A Syrian refugee to Constantinople, Calinicus, created a chemical mixture that could be shot from a tube on a boat at an enemy warship. The gelatinous mixture would burst into flames like napalm, stick to boat and enemy, and burn fiercely even in water. The recipe was a state secret—so secret that the formula was eventually lost and never recovered. We still don't know what it was made of or how it was ignited when deployed.

This period of Byzantine history ends in the tumultuous reign of Justinian II, the son of the emperor Constantius IV. Justinian was emperor from 685–695, but his loss of Asia Minor to the Arabs and his despotism triggered a revolt. The rebels cut off his nose and sent him into exile. Justinian “Rhinotmetus” (Greek for “guy with the cutoff nose”) came back 10 years later with Bulgar forces, retook the throne from 705–711, and wreaked revenge upon his enemies. In the words of the proverb, however, this was “cutting off your nose to spite your face”: Justinian was again deposed in 711 and this time his enemies made sure that he lost his whole head.

Emperor Leo II repulsed the last serious attack of the Muslims on Constantinople in 717. For several centuries thereafter, Byzantium remained strong enough externally to keep it safe from foreign attacks. Doctrinal disputes, however, continued to damage its internal stability. In addition to the Monophysite controversies between the various national orthodox churches (Greek, Armenian, Syrian, Egyptian), a particularly violent controversy erupted over the use of sacred images (icons) in worship.

One side, which was particularly influenced by beliefs in the far eastern portion of the old Empire, contended that venerating images was idolatry and that these images should be destroyed. That's how they got the name “iconoclasts” (icon smashers). This approach was especially prevalent among the well-educated and upper crust of the clergy. The other, which was more identified with the west and with the practices of Christians in Greece and Italy, fought to maintain a cherished tradition of worship that still exists today. And, as it was more connected with a contemporary practice,
those that defended the use of icons tended to be the monks and clergy associated with these practices and the people who admired them.

This controversy, then, was fueled by regional and class, as well as by theological, antagonisms. Violent clashes between the iconoclasts and their opponents occurred as bishops, emperors, and empresses (such as Constantius Copronymous and the famous Empress Irene) on both sides took power and persecuted each other.

During this period, relations between east and west hardened. The east, under the bishop Photius, worked to head off the pope's influence with the Illyrians and the recently Christianized Bulgars. Byzantine emperors and patriarchs still claimed authority over the whole west of the ancient Empire, but with the Muslims taking Byzantine, Sicily to the south, and Spain and the Lombards pressing hard from the north, the popes needed real protection. They also needed secular muscle to back up their ecclesiastical wrestling match with the patriarchs. They found it in the Frankish kings, and in 800, the popes established the west on equal footing with the east by getting an emperor of their own in Charlemagne. Two nationalistic Church/State systems, one Latin, one Greek, both claiming to be the legitimate heir to the restoration of Christian “Rome,” were now fully in place.

 
Veto!
Orthodox Christians do not worship icons although they do
venerate
them. Icons are holy objects that serve as a focus for meditation, contemplation, and prayer and provide a means through which to respond respectfully to that which the icon represents.

In this period, Constantinople acquired a Macedonian dynasty and a series of military emperors who reestablished Byzantine control over a vast territory eastward into Palestine and into the Balkans and Caucuses. Constantinople now controlled most of the east of the old Roman Empire, but its harsh treatment of these “liberated” lands was so cruel that the inhabitants were eventually inclined either (like the Bulgarians) to break away or (like in Armenia) to have the Turks back.

Although it lost Sicily to the Muslims in 902 and later to the Normans, Constantinople recaptured southern Italy all the way to Naples, where the emperors opened relationships with the west. The first crusades drove out the Arabs; the disarray of European crusading aristocracy, Germanic emperors, and papacy gave Byzantium an opportunity to reassert control. For a while, the emperor Michael IV the Paphlagonian (1034–1041) attempted to recapture Justinian's dream, but it slipped away. The rift that had been growing between Greek and Latin churches was unable to be crossed; when the western representatives came to Constantinople, there was no common ground. Both sides excommunicated each other in what is known as the Great Schism in 1054.

Meanwhile, Greek antipathy against the Latin crusaders and against the Italian city-states (Venice, Florence, Genoa), which began to prey on the Empire, was also starting to grow. The loss of Bulgaria and Greece had weakened Constantinople. The Byzantines, who had hoped that the Latins would help them regain these territories, were incensed when the crusaders intervened in an internal dispute and set up their own emperor. A rebellion against the Latins brought massacre and counter massacre, with rival factions competing to establish an emperor in the capital. And so, weakened internally and externally, the Byzantine Empire was poised for its decline.

 
Great Caesar's Ghost!
One of the most interesting writers of this period is Anna Comnena (1083–ca 1150), the daughter of the emperor Alexius Comnenus (ruled from 1081–1118). After her husband failed to win the throne, Anna retired to her mother's monastery and wrote the
Alexiad
, 15 books of history concerning her father's reign. This work is a daughter's work, to be sure, but also the work of a historian who used a wide variety of source material in addition to her own personal knowledge of the Byzantine court and the events of the day. Her work is also interesting for a Byzantine perspective on the Latins and the Crusaders, who (according to Anna) entered Byzantium with all the grace of a motorcycle gang and proceeded to occupy her father's time.

Nevertheless, at the height of Byzantine power, Constantinople and its lands developed in regal splendor. Great landed families and barons grew in the regions, and in the capital, the emperor ruled amid a maze of ceremony and wonder complete with mechanical lions that roared and birds that sang. The splendor, however, masked the Empire's growing dependence of the land power of foreign mercenaries and upon the sea power and commerce of the growing navies of the city-states of Italy. By the end of this period, the Turks had taken Armenia, and the Normans had taken southern Italy and Sicily. This left Byzantium caught in a pincer movement between the forces of Islam and western Christendom.

Constantinople was sacked by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Latins set up their own emperor and patriarch confirmed by Pope Innocent II, and although
the Byzantines were able to retake their city, they had to play off of three powers who continued to seek the capital as its prize. The first was, of course, the Turks themselves. The second were the powers in the Bulgarians and the Serbs, who would have taken Byzantium for the Slavs if they hadn't lost to the Turks in the famous battle of the Field of Blackbirds (1389). The third were the Normans, who continued to try to take the Holy Land and to govern Byzantium. Normans such as Charles of Anjou tried to become a Norman Justinian, but Byzantine emperors such as Michael Paleologus (1259–1282) kept him at bay by negotiating with the papacy for a reconciliation with Rome.