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The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred in Constantinople during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The eastern half of the Empire survived the conditions that caused the fall of the West in the 5th century AD, and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople ...
3 days ago · The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire, and it survived over a thousand years after the western half dissolved. A series of regional traumas—including pestilence, warfare, social upheaval, and the Arab Muslim assault of the 630s—marked its cultural and institutional transformation from the Eastern Roman Empire to the ...
- The Byzantine Empire existed from approximately 395 CE—when the Roman Empire was split—to 1453. It became one of the leading civilizations in the w...
- Modern historians use the term Byzantine Empire to distinguish the state from the western portion of the Roman Empire. The name refers to Byzantium...
- At its greatest extent, the Byzantine Empire covered much of the land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, including what is now Italy, Greece, and T...
- Citizens of the Byzantine Empire strongly identified as Christians, just as they identified as Romans. Emperors, seeking to unite their realm under...
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The term “Byzantine” derives from Byzantium, an ancient Greek colony founded by a man named Byzas. Located on the European side of the Bosporus (the strait linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean), the site of Byzantium was ideally located to serve as a transit and trade point between Europe and Asia. In A.D. 330, Roman Emperor Constantine I cho...
The eastern half of the Roman Empire proved less vulnerable to external attack, thanks in part to its geographic location. With Constantinople located on a strait, it was extremely difficult to breach the capital’s defenses; in addition, the eastern empire had a much smaller common frontier with Europe. It also benefited greatly from a stronger adm...
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 Gre...
In terms of religion, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 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 Islamicempire absorbed Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in the seventh century, the Byzan...
Justinian I, who took power in 527 and would rule until his death in 565, was the first great ruler of the Byzantine Empire. During the years of his reign, the empire included most of the land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, as Justinian’s armies conquered part of the former Western Roman Empire, including North Africa. Many great monuments of t...
During the eighth and early ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors (beginning with Leo III in 730) spearheaded a movement that denied the holiness of icons, or religious images, and prohibited their worship or veneration. Known as Iconoclasm—literally “the smashing of images”—the movement waxed and waned under various rulers, but did not end definitiv...
During the late 10th and early 11th centuries, under the rule of the Macedonian dynasty founded by Michael III’s successor, Basil, the Byzantine Empire enjoyed a golden age. 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...
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 1095 to 1291. With the Seijuk Turks of central Asia bearing down on Constantinople, Emperor Alexius I turned to the West for help, resulting in the declaration of “holy war” by Pope Urban II at Cl...
During the rule of the Palaiologan emperors, beginning with Michael VIII in 1261, the economy of the once-mighty Byzantine state was crippled, and never regained its former stature. In 1369, Emperor John V unsuccessfully sought financial help from the West to confront the growing Turkish threat, but he was arrested as an insolvent debtor in Venice....
In the centuries leading up to the final Ottoman conquest in 1453, the culture of the Byzantine Empire–including literature, art, architecture, law and theology–flourished even as the empire itself faltered. Byzantine culture would exert a great influence on the Western intellectual tradition, as scholars of the Renaissancesought help from Byzantin...
The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire that survived for 1,000 years after the fall of the west. It was a powerful and influential civilization that shaped Christianity, art, law and trade in the medieval world.
Sep 19, 2018 · The Byzantine Empire was the longest-lasting medieval power, and its influence continues today, especially in the religion, art, architecture, and laws of many Western states, Eastern and Central Europe, and Russia.
- Mark Cartwright
The Byzantine Empire reached its height under the Macedonian emperors (of Greek descent) of the late 9th, 10th, and early 11th centuries, when it gained control over the Adriatic Sea, southern Italy, and all of the territory of tsar Samuel of Bulgaria. The cities of the empire expanded, and affluence spread across the provinces because of the ...
Byzantine Empire, Empire, southeastern and southern Europe and western Asia. It began as the city of Byzantium, which had grown from an ancient Greek colony founded on the European side of the Bosporus. The city was taken in 330 ce by Constantine I, who refounded it as Constantinople.
Feb 21, 2013 · The ancient city of Byzantium was founded by Greek colonists from Megara around 657 BCE. According to the historian Tacitus, it was built on the European side of the Strait of Bosporus on the order of the “god of Delphi ” who said to build “opposite the land of the blind”.
