The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire (64 page)

As this process dragged on, the Byzantine Emperor became more and more reliant on western military and monetary help to fend off the ever-encroaching power of the Ottoman Turks. The Council of Florence (1438–1439) declared a reunification of eastern and western churches but too late for Byzantium: the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453. From that time on, Roman dreams of empire without end would move among the kaisars and czars of Rome's former barbarian enemies.

 
Lend Me Your Ears
“[The Emperor Alexius] feared the [Frankish crusaders'] arrival, for he already knew of their raging and unstoppable attacks, their thoroughly unstable and violently capricious character, their insatiable hunger for money, and their readiness to betray a truce for their own momentary advantage.”

—Anna Comnena,
Alexiad
10.5

The fallen Byzantine Empire left behind a strong regional structure of orthodox churches throughout the east. This was a legacy of Constantine's establishment of the close link between Christian state and church authority. Over the course of Byzantine history, some national churches became autocephalous, or under their own authority and empowered to elect their own head. These churches retained, just as the Byzantine empire did, their fiercely independent and nationalist character. They also maintained the use of many rituals and vestments (clothes) that the ancient Byzantine emperors and patriarchs used. Several orthodox churches refused to recognize the unification between Constantinople and Rome decreed in the council of Florence. When Constantinople fell, they continued under their own authority.

 
Roamin' the Romans
If you want to see some of the treasures of Constantinople, visit Venice, Italy. The Venetians were one of the major naval powers in the Aegean in the 1200s and ferried many crusader armies to the Holy Land. Venice's magnificent Basilica of San Marco is home to some of the spoils from the Crusader's sack of the Byzantine capital.

 
Veto!
If you ever doubt the way tradition colors history, compare historical accounts from both Greek (eastern) and Latin (western) perspective. Whether you're reading the contemporary accounts of Anna Comnena or Geoffrey de Villehardouin's
Conquest of Constantinople
(a crusader's account of the Fourth Crusade) or whether you're reading online resources such as
OrthodoxInfo
or the
New Catholic Encyclopedia,
you'll be struck by the similarity of facts and the dissimilarity of interpretation.

 
Veto!
Medieval European scholars also received a great deal through Muslim and Jewish scholars living in Spain and in the Holy Lands, who were far advanced beyond their European counterparts in many areas. Some works of Aristotle, for example, survived only in Arabic translations; St. Thomas Aquinas (fl. 1260s) needed Aristotle translated from Arabic into Latin in order to complete his monumental and still influential works.

In the waning centuries of the Byzantine Empire, and especially after the fall of the capital, Greek refugees fled to the West bringing the Greek language, learning, and texts that had been preserved as a part of the eastern Empire's heritage. This included works of classical Greek literature and history that were virtually unknown until that time. It's no accident that Italian cities who had large Greek refugee populations, such as Venice and Florence, became the centers for the infusion of Greek learning into the west. Without this influx, we would have had Virgil but no Homer, nor the works of the famous Greek historians and tragedians. In this way, the fall of Byzantium helped to ignite the growing Italian Renaissance and led to the combined study of both Latin and Greek traditions that still is the hallmark of a Western liberal education.

Ironically, the classical heritage preserved by the Roman east has served as a kind of cultural Trojan horse within the idea of “Roman” civilization in the West. The legacy of classical Greece became a revolutionary idea for those who found hierarchic authorities to equate with Rome's legacy. German and English Romanticism, Protestants who equated Rome with the Pope, and strains of American politics have tended to equate Rome with a stultifying tyranny of authority and tradition.

The interior of Hagia Sophia, which was converted into a Mosque and is now a world heritage site.

American culture, focused on individualism, youth, and vitality, finds something more alluring in Calvin Klein–like athletic Greek statues than the furrowed brows of middle-aged Roman ancestors. And I've got to admit, however, that there's something sexier in individual excellence (Greek
arete
) than duty (Latin
officium
) to others. Nevertheless, to read some Western Civ. outlines, you would think civilization submerged after Pericles (the famous fifth century
B
.
C
.
E
. Athenian leader) caught a quick breath in the Renaissance and Reformation and finally reemerged in Thomas Jefferson! This is, as you now know, an oversimplification of a very complicated history.

• The Byzantine Empire is the continuation of the eastern half of the Roman Empire figured roughly after the reign of Justinian.
  
• Three things distinguish the Byzantine Empire: It was Christian, it had Roman law and administration, and it was based on Greek (not Latin) language, literature, and culture.
  
• The Byzantine emperors maintained that they had authority over the west, but this was never realized.
  
• Byzantine civilization flourished between the ninth and eleventh centuries
  C
  .
  E
  .
  
• Pressure from the Slavs, Bulgarians, Franks, Crusaders, and Turks contributed to the decline of Byzantine civilization.
  
• The Turks conquered Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 1453.
  
• Byzantine refugees brought Greek literature and culture to the West. This had a profound impact upon western history and culture.
  

Chapter 24
 
Nothing Quiet on the Western Front

• The history of the west after the “fall”
  
• The papacy and the Holy Roman Empire
  
• Crusades and crusaders
  
• The ambiguous legacy of Rome in the west
  

And so, at last, we come back home to “old” Rome in the west for our concluding chapter. It's fitting—after all, this half of the Empire is the reason most readers are interested in Rome.

What a long, strange trip it's been! But we can't leave off just yet. We've traveled together over the fortunes of Rome—the city, Republic, and Empire—and followed the continuation of that Empire in the east after the west fell. Now it's time to pick up the ashes of Rome itself and show how the Western orthodox church, under the leadership of the popes, breathed life back into the coals of the old Empire and ignited the dreams, culture, conquests, and learning of Europe.

Instead of a super-condensed “history of the West” chapter, we'll take a look at some of the legacies that Rome has left the West over the course of the centuries.

The city of Rome was not as damaged by the sacks of Alaric and the Vandals as you might imagine, but after Odoacer and Theodoric (see Chapter 18, “Barbarians at the Gates: The Fall of the Western Empire”), it became progressively a backwater. There
was still a class of powerful and incredibly wealthy pagan nobles who owned huge estates throughout Italy. Pagan hostility to the Christianization of the Empire helped lead to Rome's isolation from Constantinople. These people could afford to continue with their ways and traditions even though the world was changing around them. Nevertheless, the aristocratic traditions of patronage and civic involvement became an important facet of the western church as the aristocracy gradually became Christianized.

 
When in Rome
The
Lombards
were a Germanic people from west-central Germany who invaded over the Alps in the sixth century, settled, and established a kingdom along the northern part of modern Italy (still called Lombardy).

Meanwhile, the western emperors had been building Ravenna and Milan into leading cities. Justinian, in his attempted reconquest of the west (see Chapter 19, “Roman Mass Culture of the Imperial Period”), ignored Rome altogether and made Ravenna into the new capital. It was here that Rome had to look for assistance from the east. When the
Lombards
(sixth century) invaded from the north, they virtually cut Rome off from Ravenna. By then, many residents had fled the city and pagan Rome fell into ruins, a moldering pile of abandoned monuments around the ancient forum.

Around the geographical periphery of the city, however, the bishops of Rome were taking up the role that the pagan aristocracy had played. Popes were instrumental in providing for the material needs of both Rome and the needy of the less wealthy bishops. Endowed by Constantine with the Basilica of St. Peter and the Lateran palace, the popes created a network between these and the other major churches to care for both the spiritual and physical needs of their central Italian flock.

Constantine had allowed the church to own, sell, and manage property. As the nobility came into the Christian fold, they brought with them the riches of their estates and their experience at administration. It's no accident that the vestments of the Roman Catholic Church are those of the old Romans! The popes used revenues from these possessions to stabilize and oversee an area that the Empire had largely abandoned. In a time of extreme crisis and dislocation, the Church of Rome grew largely on its ability to meet people's pressing needs. Catholic social services have a long and well-documented tradition.

From their relative position of isolation, the popes had to fend for themselves and fill a number of important roles left in the power vacuum. Without the rod of military might, they established direct relations with the western barbarian kings, and negotiated among them for the protection of Rome, church possessions, and Christian communities. They sent out missionaries to Christianize them to orthodoxy and established bishops with lines of authority back to Rome. Efforts that began as attempts at
self-preservation and practical administration grew into autonomy and then dominance in the west. By 800, the bishop of Rome was in the position to challenge the authority of Constantinople by crowning Charlemagne his own western emperor.

 
Roamin' the Romans
When you visit the Vatican City, you're not in Italy—you're in the capital of an independent state. Papal estates and territories in parts of northern Italy held out against the Lombards and became the so-called Papal States in the early Middle Ages. The Papal States grew throughout the Middle Ages and large sections of Italy remained state lands of the Roman Catholic Church until 1870 when Rome fell to republican forces. Italy as a modern country was born, but the question of just who owns just what remains unresolved. The Vatican and two other properties (the Lateran in Rome and the pope's summer quarters at Castel Gondolfo outside of Rome) remain “extraterrestrial” to Italy and Italian jurisdiction to this day.

The popes' independent authority over the west continued to grow until they established themselves as the preeminent authority in spiritual—and often temporal—matters in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Besides the church, they controlled vast territories and, at times, armies. So powerful and pervasive was their reach that from the late Middle Ages until the present day, “Rome” has more often meant “the Holy See” (Vatican, the pope) than either the city or the ancient Romans.

Pope Gregory the Great (pope from 590–604) was from an ancient, aristocratic, and wealthy Roman family. Trained for a career of Roman civil service, Gregory changed tracks and became a determined Benedictine monk. He sought a life of secluded spirituality, but his talents brought him appointment first as deacon, papal legate, abbot, and finally (against his will) pope.

Gregory is rightly known as the father of the medieval papacy. His noble Roman roots and training gave him a deeply embedded commitment to the prominence of Rome as well as the abilities and practical civil outlook of a Roman civil administrator. Working largely in isolation, Gregory effectively managed church estates (including the import and export of trade goods) to strengthen the church and serve the needs
of his flock. He took on negotiations and the defense of Rome from the Lombards in 592–593. Among the churches, he established a system of strong bishops with strong ties to Rome and promoted Rome's authority against attempts by the capital to intervene. Gregory was an influential teacher and theologian. His works on theology and liturgy firmly established him as a founding father of the western church, and his instructions to bishops, the
Regula Pastoralis,
served as an influential guide for ecclesiastics well into the Middle Ages.

Gregory is perhaps best known for sending St. Augustine and 40 monks to Britain in 597. He allowed a certain amount of flexibility in converting the Anglo-Saxons and other pagans to Christian practices in terms that they could understand and accept. Over 800 of Gregory's letters as well as other works survive. All in all, he achieved pretty impressive accomplishments for a man who thought that he was living in the last days and yet established the future of his office for centuries!

The popes were faced with a host of problems in the sixth and seventh centuries. As you read in Chapter 18, Arian missionaries had tremendous success among the Goths and Ostrogoths who eventually plundered their way to the west and settled in Italy, Gaul, and Spain. This left the orthodox papacy in a sea of Arian barbarians and without an army. What's more, a Germanic people known as the Lombards crossed the Alps and began to conquer northern Italy. The popes, cut off from the east, found an ally in the Frankish king Clovis (466–511), who converted to orthodoxy and established a vast kingdom centered on Paris. Although Clovis's Merovingian dynasty dissolved into anarchic infighting, his descendants continued to expand Frankish influence and domination over most of France and Germany.

 
Great Caesar's Ghost!
Charles Martel's victory at Tours is charged with symbolism even today. Jean-Marie le Pen (the leader of the extreme right-wing party, le Front-Nationale) ignited a furor by appearing at Poitiers in recent years to deliver inflammatory speeches concerning Algerians and immigration from (Islamic) North Africa.

The Franks became important allies to the popes and to the rebirth of Roman dreams in the west. They were directly linked with the “Roman” pope through orthodoxy and papal missions. Moreover, they were isolated from developments around the Mediterranean, such as the influence of either the eastern Empire or Islam. Frankish kings replaced the missing secular/military element for the western papacy that was present in the emperor/patriarch formula in the east and eventually gave the popes the power not only to establish their independence but to claim primacy over the east.

As the Merogingian dynasty disintegrated, their powerful “Mayors of the Palace” (commanders of the royal forces) at Paris became dominant in holding things together and in furnishing protection to
the popes. A major threat, not just to European stability, but to Frankish rule of Europe, was coming from the Muslims, who controlled Spain. As the Muslim army crossed the Pyranees into France under the Spanish governor Abd-er-Rahman, the Mayor of the Palace, Charles (688–741), brought Frankish forces against him. Charles had introduced a major innovation to his cavalry—the stirrup, against which a man could brace for using his sword or for striking with a lance (as in jousting) instead of throwing it. He routed the Muslims at Poitiers in 732, one of the history's decisive battles, and received the title
Martel,
or “The Hammer.”

It wasn't long before history conceded to reality, and the Mayors of the Palace became the kings. Pepin the Short (714–768) was recognized by the pope in 749 and became the founder of the Carolingian dynasty. The popes appealed for his help against the Lombards, who were continually threatening their possessions in Italy. Pepin took care of the Lombards and formally recognized the pope's right as
ducatus Romanus
(Roman overlord) to central Italy. Evidence for the pope's claim to these lands was further established by the
Donation of Constantine,
an imperial decree in which Constantine the Great established papal possessions and rights in Italy.

 
When in Rome
The
Donation of Constantine
is one of the most famous forgeries in history. It was probably produced to bolster Pope Stephen II's claims on Italy with Pepin. The new king and pope each needed something from one another. Pepin needed to be recognized as king, and the pontiffs needed an enforcer to rid them of the Lombards
and
a recognized claim to their territories. Pope Stephen II made the journey over the Alps (he barely got through the Lombards) and crowned Pepin in 754; Pepin came back over the Alps and “restored” the papal lands to Rome in 756. In the Renaissance, Lorenzo Valla, using philological and historical analysis, proved that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. We do not know if either Pepin or Pope Stephen knew this document was false.