Chapter 9
Civilizations in Eastern Europe:
Byzantium and Orthodox Europe
The Basics
• The Word Byzantine
– Suggests the distinction from Rome itself
• Political heir to Rome but still its own thing
• Constantinople
Constantinople
• Constantine names capital after himself
– moves capital there 340 CE
• 1453 falls to Turks, renamed Istanbul
– Major event in WH and the impact with be
resounding
• Song
• One of the most important cities at the time
– Located on a trading route
Meet Justinian
Justinian (527-565 CE)
• The “sleepless emperor”
• Wife Theodora as advisor
– Background: circus performer
• Uses army to contain tax riots, ambitious
• construction program
– Hagia Sophia
• Law Code
– Codification of Roman Law
– Body of Civil Law: made Roman law coherent basis for
political and economic life
Meet Theodora
Hagia Sophia
• First built by Constantine
• Rebuilt by Justinian
• The greatest surviving example of Byzantine
Architecture
• It is an example of Eastern Orthodox, Roman
Catholic and Islam
• It was the seat of the Orthodox patriarch
Byzantine Conquests
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General Belisarius recaptures much of western
Roman Empire under Justinian
Unable to consolidate control of territories
Withdrew to defend empire from Sassanids,
Slavs
The Byzantine empire and its
neighbors 527-554 C.E.
The Byzantine empire and its
neighbors about 1100 C.E.
Islam and Arab Pressure
• Constant vigilance against Muslim Invaders
• The Byzantine Empire had to focus on
protecting the borders
• This pressure from the Muslim world is going
to be one of the issues that brings about the
split between east and west
The Eastern Schism
Split
• In 1054 a longstanding disagreement came to
a head, and the Christian church split into two
groups.
• The Western or Roman Catholic, and Eastern
or Orthodox Catholic.
• The Byzantine Empire goes into slow decline
Disagreements
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Papal attempts to interfere over icons
Charlemagne claims to be Roman Emperor
Rituals in Latin not Greek
Pope as first bishop
Religious art
Celibacy for priests
Eastern Orthodox
• Requires services to be in Greek
• Patriarch and bishops were head of the church
– The emperor was above the patriarch
• Believed in a different interpretation of the
Bible
• Eastern Orthodox missionaries spread
northward into Russia and the Balkans
Cyrillic
• Cyril and Methodius are the two most famous
of the missionaries.
• Slavic language/alphabet derived from Greek
letters
• Allowed for literature to be spread
– HOW?
Icons
• Images of religious figures venerated by
byzantine Christians
• Iconoclasm
– The breaking of images
– Religious controversy of the 8th century
– Byzantine emperors attempted but failed to
suppress icon veneration
– Believed it was the worship of idols
Decline
• 1071 Byzantine defeat in Asia
• 1204 Constantinople sacked by Crusaders
• 1453 Constantinople taken by Ottoman Turks
Very Similar to China
• The Byzantine political system had remarkable
similarities to China.
• The emperor was held to be ordained of God.
• He was head of the church as well as state.
• Women could and did serve as emperor.
• They had an elaborate bureaucracy to
administer the government.
KIEVAN RUSSIA
Who were the Slavs?
• People who migrated from Asia
– Mix with earlier populations
– Family tribes, villages
• Trade
– with Byzantines
– Trade with Northerners
Scandinavian merchants
• Vikings
• During the 6th and 7th centuries moved into
the region
• c. 855, monarchy under Rurik (Danish)
– Center at Kiev
• Prosperous
commercial center
Meet Vladimir I
•(980-1015)
•Converts to Orthodoxy due
to contact with Byzantium
•Controls church
Meet Yaroslav I
• Issued a unifying code of laws, while not as
advanced as Constantinople it still had nobles
called Boyars.
– Boyars: Russian landholding aristocrats
• Possessed less political power than their western
European counterparts (feudalism)
The Tarters
• The Russian name for the Mongols. The
Invasion of Russia by the Mongols and the
destruction of Constantinople by Muslims,
isolated Russia.
• The region was cut off from western contacts,
stifling economic, political, and cultural
sophistication.