The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centered 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 to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire remained the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in the Mediterranean world. The term "Byzantine Empire" was only coined following the empire's demise; its citizens referred to the polity as the "Roman Empire" and to themselves as "Romans". Due to the imperial seat's move from Rome to Byzantium, the adoption of state Christianity, and the predominance of Greek instead of Latin, modern historians continue to make a distinction between the earlier Roman Empire and the later Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantine economy was among the most robust economies in the Mediterranean for many centuries. Constantinople was a prime hub in a trading network that at various times extended across nearly all of Eurasia and North Africa. Some scholars argue that, up until the arrival of the Arabs in the 7th century, the Eastern Roman Empire had the most powerful economy in the world. The Arab conquests, however, would represent a substantial reversal of fortunes contributing to a period of decline and stagnation. Constantine V's reforms (c. 765) marked the beginning of a revival that continued until 1204. From the 10th century until the end of the 12th, the Byzantine Empire projected an image of luxury, and the travelers were impressed by the wealth accumulated in the capital. All this changed with the arrival of the Fourth Crusade, which was an economic catastrophe. The Palaiologoi tried to revive the economy, but the late Byzantine state would not gain full control of either the foreign or domestic economic forces.
One of the economic foundations of the empire was trade. The state strictly controlled both the internal and the international trade, and retained the monopoly of issuing coinage. Constantinople remained the single most important commercial centre of Europe for much of the Medieval era, which it held until the Republic of Venice slowly began to overtake Byzantine merchants in trade; first through tax exemption under the Komnenoi, then under the Latin Empire. (Full article...)
The Despotate was centred on the region of Epirus, encompassing also Albania and the western portion of Greek Macedonia and also included Thessaly and western Greece as far south as Nafpaktos. Through a policy of aggressive expansion under Theodore Komnenos Doukas the Despotate of Epirus also briefly came to incorporate central Macedonia, with the establishment of the Empire of Thessalonica in 1224, and Thrace as far east as Didymoteicho and Adrianople, and was on the verge of recapturing Constantinople and restoring the Byzantine Empire before the Battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230 where he was defeated by the Bulgarian Empire. After that, the Epirote state contracted to its core in Epirus and Thessaly, and was forced into vassalage to other regional powers. It nevertheless managed to retain its autonomy until being conquered by the restored PalaiologanByzantine Empire in ca. 1337. In the 1410s, the Count palatine of Cephalonia and ZakynthosCarlo I Tocco managed to reunite the core of the Epirote state, but his successors gradually lost it to the advancing Ottoman Empire, with the last stronghold, Vonitsa, falling to the Ottomans in 1479. (Full article...)
A group of Andalusian exiles led by Abu Hafs Umar al-Iqritishi conquered Crete in either 824 or 827/828, and established an independent Islamic state. The Byzantines launched a campaign that took most of the island back in 842-43 under Theoktistos, but the reconquest was not completed and would soon be reversed. Later attempts by the Byzantine Empire to recover the island failed, and for the approximately 135 years of its existence, the emirate was one of the major foes of Byzantium. Crete commanded the sea lanes of the Eastern Mediterranean and functioned as a forward base and haven for Muslim corsair fleets that ravaged the Byzantine-controlled shores of the Aegean Sea. The emirate's internal history is less well known, but all accounts point to considerable prosperity deriving not only from piracy but also from extensive trade and agriculture. The emirate was brought to an end by Nikephoros Phokas, who successfully campaigned against it in 960–961, re-annexing the island to the Byzantine Empire. (Full article...)
Image 4
The Byzantine Empire was ruled by emperors of the dynasty of Heraclius between 610 and 711. The Heraclians presided over a period of cataclysmic events that were a watershed in the history of the Empire and the world. Heraclius, the founder of his dynasty, was of Armenian and Cappadocian (Greek) origin. At the beginning of the dynasty, the Empire's culture was still essentially Ancient Roman, dominating the Mediterranean and harbouring a prosperous Late Antique urban civilization. This world was shattered by successive invasions, which resulted in extensive territorial losses, financial collapse and plagues that depopulated the cities, while religious controversies and rebellions further weakened the Empire.
By the dynasty's end, the Empire had been transformed into a different state structure: now known in historiography as medieval Byzantine rather than (Ancient) Roman, a chiefly agrarian, military-dominated society that was engaged in a lengthy struggle with the MuslimRashidun Caliphate and successor Umayyad Caliphate. However, the Empire during this period became also far more homogeneous, being reduced to its mostly Greek-speaking and firmly Chalcedonian core territories, which enabled it to weather these storms and enter a period of stability under the successor Isaurian dynasty. (Full article...)
The Byzantine navy was the naval force of the Byzantine Empire. Like the state it served, it was a direct continuation from its Roman predecessor, but played a far greater role in the defence and survival of the state than its earlier iteration. While the fleets of the Roman Empire faced few great naval threats, operating as a policing force vastly inferior in power and prestige to the army, command of the sea became vital to the very existence of the Byzantine state, which several historians have called a "maritime empire".
The first threat to Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean Sea was posed by the Vandals in the 5th century, but their threat was ended by the wars of Justinian I in the 6th century. The re-establishment of a permanently maintained fleet and the introduction of the dromon galley in the same period also marks the point when the Byzantine navy began departing from its late Roman roots and developing its own characteristic identity. This process would be furthered with the onset of the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century. Following the loss of the Levant and later Africa, the Mediterranean was transformed from a "Roman lake" into a battleground between the Byzantines and a series of Muslim states. In this struggle, the Byzantine fleets were critical, not only for the defence of the Empire's far-flung possessions around the Mediterranean basin, but also for repelling seaborne attacks against the imperial capital of Constantinople itself. Through the use of the newly invented "Greek fire", the Byzantine navy's best-known and feared secret weapon, Constantinople was saved from several sieges and numerous naval engagements resulted in Byzantine victories. (Full article...)
Image 7
The second Arab siege of Constantinople was a combined land and sea offensive in 717–718 by the Muslim Arabs of the Umayyad Caliphate against the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. The campaign marked the culmination of twenty years of attacks and progressive Arab occupation of the Byzantine borderlands, while Byzantine strength was sapped by prolonged internal turmoil. In 716, after years of preparations, the Arabs, led by Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, invaded Byzantine Asia Minor. The Arabs initially hoped to exploit Byzantine civil strife and made common cause with the general Leo III the Isaurian, who had risen up against Emperor Theodosius III. Leo, however, tricked them and secured the Byzantine throne for himself.
After wintering in the western coastlands of Asia Minor, the Arab army crossed into Thrace in the early summer of 717 and built siege lines to blockade the city, which was protected by the massive Theodosian Walls. The Arab fleet, which accompanied the land army and was meant to complete the city's blockade by sea, was neutralized soon after its arrival by the Byzantine navy through the use of Greek fire. This allowed Constantinople to be resupplied by sea, while the Arab army was crippled by famine and disease during the unusually hard winter that followed. In spring 718, two Arab fleets sent as reinforcements were destroyed by the Byzantines after their Christian crews defected, and an additional army sent overland through Asia Minor was ambushed and defeated. Coupled with attacks by the Bulgars on their rear, the Arabs were forced to lift the siege on 15 August 718. On its return journey, the Arab fleet was almost completely destroyed by natural disasters. (Full article...)
Taking advantage of the situation, the SeljukSultanate of Rum began seizing territory in western Anatolia, until the Nicaean Empire was able to repulse the Seljuk Turks from the remaining territories still under Byzantine rule. Eventually Constantinople was re-taken from the Latin Empire in 1261 by the Nicaean Empire. The position of the Byzantine Empire in Europe remained uncertain due to the presence of the rivals in Epirus, Serbia and Bulgaria. This, combined with the declining power of the Sultanate of Rum (Byzantium's chief rival in Asia Minor) led to the removal of troops from Anatolia to maintain Byzantium's grip on Thrace. (Full article...)
The Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite or the Rite of Constantinople, is a liturgical rite that is identified with the wide range of cultural, devotional, and canonical practices that developed in the Eastern Christian church of Constantinople.
The canonical hours are extended and complex, lasting about eight hours (longer during Great Lent) but are abridged outside of large monasteries. An iconostasis, a partition covered with icons, separates the area around the altar from the nave. The sign of the cross, accompanied by bowing, is made very frequently, e.g., more than a hundred times during the divine liturgy, and there is prominent veneration of icons, a general acceptance of the congregants freely moving within the church and interacting with each other, and distinctive traditions of liturgical chanting. (Full article...)
Image 11
The Arab–Byzantine wars were a series of wars between a number of MuslimArab dynasties and the Byzantine Empire from the 7th to the 11th century. Conflict started during the initial Muslim conquests, under the expansionist Rashidun and Umayyadcaliphs, in the 7th century and continued by their successors until the mid-11th century.
The emergence of Muslim Arabs from Arabia in the 630s resulted in the rapid loss of Byzantium's southern provinces (Syria and Egypt) to the Arab Caliphate. Over the next fifty years, under the Umayyad caliphs, the Arabs would launch repeated raids into still-Byzantine Asia Minor, twice besiege the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, and conquer the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa. The situation did not stabilize until after the failure of the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople in 718, when the Taurus Mountains on the eastern rim of Asia Minor became established as the mutual, heavily fortified and largely depopulated frontier. Under the Abbasid Empire, relations became more normal, with embassies exchanged and even periods of truce, but conflict remained the norm, with almost annual raids and counter-raids, sponsored either by the Abbasid government or by local rulers, well into the 10th century. (Full article...)
Image 12
The first Arab siege of Constantinople in 674–678 was a major conflict of the Arab–Byzantine wars, and the first culmination of the Umayyad Caliphate's expansionist strategy towards the Byzantine Empire, led by Caliph Mu'awiya I. Mu'awiya, who had emerged in 661 as the ruler of the Muslim Arab empire following a civil war, renewed aggressive warfare against Byzantium after a lapse of some years and hoped to deliver a lethal blow by capturing the Byzantine capital of Constantinople.
As reported by the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes the Confessor, the Arab attack was methodical: in 672–673 Arab fleets secured bases along the coasts of Asia Minor, and then proceeded to install a loose blockade around Constantinople. They used the peninsula of Cyzicus near the city as a base to spend the winter, and returned every spring to launch attacks against the city's fortifications. Finally, the Byzantines, under Emperor Constantine IV, managed to destroy the Arab navy using a new invention, the liquid incendiary substance known as Greek fire. The Byzantines also defeated the Arab land army in Asia Minor, forcing them to lift the siege. The Byzantine victory was of major importance for the survival of the Byzantine state, as the Arab threat receded for a time. A peace treaty was signed soon after, and following the outbreak of another Muslim civil war, the Byzantines even experienced a brief period of ascendancy over the Caliphate. The siege was the first major Arab defeat in 50 years of expansion and temporarily stabilized the Byzantine Empire after decades of war and defeats. (Full article...)
Image 13
The sack of Amorium by the Abbasid Caliphate in mid-August 838 was one of the major events in the long history of the Arab–Byzantine Wars. The Abbasid campaign was led personally by the Caliph al-Mu'tasim (r. 833–842), in retaliation to a virtually unopposed expedition launched by the Byzantine emperorTheophilos (r. 829–842) into the Caliphate's borderlands the previous year. Mu'tasim targeted Amorium, an Eastern Roman city in western Asia Minor, because it was the birthplace of the ruling Byzantine dynasty and, at the time, one of Byzantium's largest and most important cities. The caliph gathered an exceptionally large army, which he divided in two parts, which invaded from the northeast and the south. The northeastern army defeated the Byzantine forces under Theophilos at Anzen, allowing the Abbasids to penetrate deep into Byzantine Asia Minor and converge upon Ancyra, which they found abandoned. After sacking the city, they turned south to Amorium, where they arrived on 1 August. Faced with intrigues at Constantinople and the rebellion of the large Khurramite contingent of his army, Theophilos was unable to aid the city.
Amorium was strongly fortified and garrisoned, but a local inhabitant revealed a weak spot in the wall, where the Abbasids concentrated their attack, effecting a breach. Unable to break through the besieging army, Boiditzes, the commander of the breached section, privately attempted to negotiate with the Caliph without notifying his superiors. He concluded a local truce and left his post, which allowed the Arabs to take advantage, enter the city, and capture it. Amorium was systematically destroyed, never to recover its former prosperity. Many of its inhabitants were slaughtered, and the remainder driven off as slaves. Most of the survivors were released after a truce in 841, but prominent officials were taken to the caliph's capital of Samarra and executed years later after refusing to convert to Islam, becoming known as the 42 Martyrs of Amorium. (Full article...)
Initially built by Constantine the Great, the walls surrounded the new city on all sides, protecting it against attack from both sea and land. As the city grew, the famous double line of the Theodosian Walls was built in the 5th century. Although the other sections of the walls were less elaborate, they were, when well-manned, almost impregnable for any medieval besieger. They saved the city, and the Byzantine Empire with it, during sieges by the Avar–Sassanian coalition, Arabs, Rus', and Bulgars, among others. The fortifications retained their usefulness after the advent of gunpowder siege cannons, which played a part in the city's fall to Ottoman forces in 1453 but were not able to breach its walls. (Full article...)
From the start, the regime faced numerous problems. The Turks of Asia Minor had begun conducting raids and expanding into Byzantine territory in Asia Minor by 1263, just two years after the enthronement of the first Palaiologos emperor Michael VIII. Anatolia, which had formed the very heart of the shrinking empire, was systematically lost to numerous Turkic ghazis, whose raids evolved into conquering expeditions inspired by Islamic zeal, the prospect of economic gain, and the desire to seek refuge from the Mongols after the disastrous Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243. The Palaiologoi were engaged on several fronts, often continually, while the empire's supply of food and manpower dwindled. In this period, the Byzantine Empire found itself continually at war, both civil and interstate, with most interstate conflicts being with other Christian empires. Most commonly, these comprised the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Empire, the remnants of the Latin Empire and even the Knights Hospitaller. (Full article...)
Image 16
The Byzantine Empire was ruled by emperors of the Komnenos dynasty for a period of 104 years, from 1081 to about 1185. The Komnenian (also spelled Comnenian) period comprises the reigns of five emperors, Alexios I, John II, Manuel I, Alexios II and Andronikos I. It was a period of sustained, though ultimately incomplete, restoration of the military, territorial, economic and political position of the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantium under the Komnenoi played a key role in the history of the Crusades in the Holy Land, while also exerting enormous cultural and political influence in Europe, the Near East, and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. The Komnenian emperors, particularly John and Manuel, exerted great influence over the Crusader states of Outremer, whilst Alexios I played a key role in the course of the First Crusade, which he helped bring about. (Full article...)
Image 17
The Byzantine Iconoclasm (Ancient Greek: Εἰκονομαχία, romanized: Eikonomachía, lit. 'image struggle', 'war on icons') were two periods in the history of the Byzantine Empire when the use of religious images or icons was opposed by religious and imperial authorities within the Ecumenical Patriarchate (at the time still comprising the Roman-Latin and the Eastern-Orthodox traditions) and the temporal imperial hierarchy. The First Iconoclasm, as it is sometimes called, occurred between about 726 and 787, while the Second Iconoclasm occurred between 814 and 842. According to the traditional view, Byzantine Iconoclasm was started by a ban on religious images promulgated by the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, and continued under his successors. It was accompanied by widespread destruction of religious images and persecution of supporters of the veneration of images. The Papacy remained firmly in support of the use of religious images throughout the period, and the whole episode widened the growing divergence between the Byzantine and Carolingian traditions in what was still a unified European Church, as well as facilitating the reduction or removal of Byzantine political control over parts of the Italian Peninsula.
Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious images and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, Greek for 'breakers of icons' (εἰκονοκλάσται), a term that has come to be applied figuratively to any person who breaks or disdains established dogmata or conventions. Conversely, people who revere or venerate religious images are derisively called "iconolaters" (εἰκονολάτρες). They are normally known as "iconodules" (εἰκονόδουλοι), or "iconophiles" (εἰκονόφιλοι). These terms were, however, not a part of the Byzantine debate over images. They have been brought into common usage by modern historians (from the seventeenth century) and their application to Byzantium increased considerably in the late twentieth century. The Byzantine term for the debate over religious imagery, iconomachy, means 'struggle over images' or 'image struggle'. Some sources also say that the Iconoclasts were against intercession to the saints and denied the usage of relics; however, it is disputed. (Full article...)
Thessalonica's ascendancy was brief, ending with the disastrous Battle of Klokotnitsa against Bulgaria in 1230, where Theodore Komnenos Doukas was captured. Reduced to a Bulgarian vassal, Theodore's brother and successor Manuel Komnenos Doukas was unable to prevent the loss of most of his brother's conquests in Macedonia and Thrace, while the original nucleus of the state, Epirus, broke free under Michael II Komnenos Doukas. Theodore recovered Thessalonica in 1237, installing his son John Komnenos Doukas, and after him Demetrios Angelos Doukas, as rulers of the city, while Manuel, with Nicaean support, seized Thessaly. The rulers of Thessalonica bore the imperial title from 1225/7 until 1242, when they were forced to renounce it and recognize the suzerainty of the rival Empire of Nicaea. The Komnenodoukai continued to rule as Despots of Thessalonica for four more years after that, but in 1246 the city was annexed by Nicaea. (Full article...)
The work as planned had three parts: the Code (Codex) is a compilation, by selection and extraction, of imperial enactments to date; the Digest or Pandects (the Latin title contains both Digesta and Pandectae) is an encyclopedia composed of mostly brief extracts from the writings of Roman jurists; and the Institutes (Institutiones) is a student textbook, mainly introducing the Code, although it has important conceptual elements that are less developed in the Code or the Digest. All three parts, even the textbook, were given force of law. They were intended to be, together, the sole source of law; reference to any other source, including the original texts from which the Code and the Digest had been taken, was forbidden. Nonetheless, Justinian found himself having to enact further laws; today these are counted as a fourth part of the Corpus, the Novellae Constitutiones (Novels, literally New Laws). (Full article...)
Image 21
The Byzantine Empireunder the Macedonian dynasty underwent a revival during the late 9th, 10th, and early 11th centuries. Under the Macedonian emperors, the empire gained control over the Adriatic Sea, Southern Italy, and all of the territory of the TsarSamuil of Bulgaria. The Macedonian dynasty was characterised by a cultural revival in spheres such as philosophy and the arts, and has been dubbed the "Golden Age" of Byzantium.
The cities of the empire expanded, and affluence spread across the provinces because of the newfound security. The population rose, and production increased, stimulating new demand for trade. (Full article...)
The building is an example of Byzantine architecture. In the 16th century, during the Ottoman era, it was converted into a mosque; it became a museum in 1945, and was turned back into a mosque in 2020 by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The interior of the building is covered with some of the finest surviving Byzantine Christian mosaics and frescoes, which were left in plain sight during Muslim worship throughout much of the Ottoman era. They were restored after the building was secularized and turned into a museum. (Full article...)
Image 23
The Empire of Nicaea (Greek: Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων) or the Nicene Empire was the largest of the three Byzantine Greekrump states founded by the aristocracy of the Byzantine Empire that fled when Constantinople was occupied by Western European and Venetian armed forces during the Fourth Crusade, a military event known as the Sack of Constantinople. Like the other Byzantine rump states that formed due to the 1204 fracturing of the empire, such as the Empire of Trebizond and the Despotate of Epirus, it was a continuation of the eastern half of the Roman Empire that survived well into the medieval period. A fourth state, known in historiography as the Latin Empire, was established by an army of Crusaders and the Republic of Venice after the capture of Constantinople and the surrounding environs.
Founded by the Laskaris family, it lasted from 1204 to 1261, when the Nicenes restored the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople after its recapture. Thus, the Nicene Empire is seen as a direct continuation of the Byzantine Empire, as it fully assumed the traditional titles and government of the Byzantines in 1205. (Full article...)
Image 24
Byzantine law was essentially a continuation of Roman law with increased Orthodox Christian and Hellenistic influence. Most sources define Byzantine law as the Roman legal traditions starting after the reign of Justinian I in the 6th century and ending with the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. Although future Byzantine codes and constitutions derived largely from Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis, their main objectives were idealistic and ceremonial rather than practical. Following Hellenistic and Near-Eastern political systems, legislations were tools to idealize and display the sacred role and responsibility of the emperor as the holy monarch chosen by God and the incarnation of law "nómos émpsychos", thus having philosophical and religious purposes that idealized perfect Byzantine kingship.
Though during and after the European Renaissance Western legal practices were heavily influenced by Justinian's Code (the Corpus Juris Civilis) and Roman law during classical times, Byzantine law nevertheless had substantial influence on Western traditions during the Middle Ages and after. (Full article...)
Image 25
Byzantine music (Greek: Βυζαντινή μουσική, romanized: Vyzantiné mousiké) originally consisted of the songs and hymns composed for the courtly and religious ceremonial of the Byzantine Empire and continued, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, in the traditions of the sung Byzantine chant of Eastern Orthodox liturgy. The ecclesiastical forms of Byzantine music are the best known forms today, because different Orthodox traditions still identify with the heritage of Byzantine music, when their cantors sing monodic chant out of the traditional chant books such as the Sticherarion, which in fact consisted of five books, and the Irmologion.
Underdrawing of Basil I in the Paris Gregory, c. 879–883
Basil I, nicknamed "the Macedonian" (Greek: Βασίλειος ὁ Μακεδών, translit.Basíleios ō Makedṓn; 811 – 29 August 886), was Byzantine emperor from 867 to 886. Born a lowly peasant in the theme of Macedonia, he rose to prominence in the imperial court after entering into the service of Theophilitzes, a relative of Emperor Michael III (r. 842–867). He was given a fortune by the wealthy Danielis and gained Michael's favour, whose mistress he married on his emperor's orders. In 866, Michael proclaimed him co-emperor, but Basil ordered his assassination the next year, thus installing himself as sole ruler of the empire. Despite his humble origins, he showed great ability in running the affairs of state, and founded the Macedonian dynasty. He was succeeded upon his death by his son (perhaps actually Michael III's son) Leo VI. (Full article...)
Leo III the Isaurian (Greek: Λέων ὁ Ἴσαυρος, romanized: Leōn ho Isauros; Latin: Leo Isaurus; c. 685 – 18 June 741), also known as the Syrian, was Byzantine Emperor from 717 until his death in 741 and founder of the Isaurian dynasty. He put an end to the Twenty Years' Anarchy, a period of great instability in the Byzantine Empire between 695 and 717, marked by the rapid succession of several emperors to the throne, along with ending the continual defeats and territorial losses the Byzantines had suffered during the 7th century. He also successfully defended the Empire against the invading Umayyads and forbade the veneration of icons. (Full article...)
Maurice's reign was troubled by almost constant warfare. After he became emperor, he brought the war with Sasanian Persia to a victorious conclusion. The empire's eastern border in the South Caucasus was vastly expanded and, for the first time in nearly two centuries, the Romans were no longer obliged to pay the Persians thousands of pounds of gold annually for peace. (Full article...)
Theodore was the scion of a distinguished Byzantine aristocratic family related to the imperial Komnenos, Doukas, and Angelos dynasties. Nevertheless, nothing is known about Theodore's life before the conquest of Constantinople and dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Following the fall of Constantinople, he served Theodore I Laskaris, founder of the Empire of Nicaea, for a few years before being called to Epirus, where his half-brother Michael I Komnenos Doukas had founded an independent principality. When Michael died in 1215, Theodore sidelined his brother's underage and illegitimate son Michael II and assumed the governance of the Epirote state. Theodore continued his brother's policy of territorial expansion. Allied with Serbia, he expanded into Macedonia, threatening the Latin Kingdom of Thessalonica. The capture of the Latin EmperorPeter II of Courtenay in 1217 opened the way to the gradual envelopment of Thessalonica, culminating in the city's fall in 1224. (Full article...)
Nikephoros II Phokas (Greek: Νικηφόρος Φωκᾶς, Nikēphóros Phōkãs; c. 912 – 11 December 969), LatinizedNicephorus II Phocas, was Byzantine emperor from 963 to 969. His career, not uniformly successful in matters of statecraft or of war, nonetheless greatly contributed to the resurgence of the Byzantine Empire during the 10th century. In the east, Nikephoros completed the conquest of Cilicia and retook the islands of Crete and Cyprus, opening the path for subsequent Byzantine incursions reaching as far as Upper Mesopotamia and the Levant; these campaigns earned him the sobriquet "pale death of the Saracens". (Full article...)
In his early life, Maximus was a civil servant, and an aide to the Byzantine EmperorHeraclius. He gave up this life in the political sphere to enter the monastic life. Maximus had studied diverse schools of philosophy, and certainly what was common for his time, the Platonic dialogues, the works of Aristotle, and numerous later Platonic commentators on Aristotle and Plato, like Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus. When one of his friends began espousing the Christological position known as Monothelitism, Maximus was drawn into the controversy, in which he supported an interpretation of the Chalcedonian formula on the basis of which it was asserted that Jesus had both a human and a divine will. Maximus is venerated in both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. He was eventually persecuted for his Christological positions; following a trial, his tongue and right hand were mutilated. (Full article...)
Gold solidus struck during the revolt of the Heraclii, depicting Heraclius the Elder and his son, the future Emperor Heraclius, wearing consular robes.
Heraclius the Elder (Greek: Ἡράκλειος, Herákleios; died 610) was a Byzantine general and the father of Byzantine emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641). Generally considered to be of Armenian origin, Heraclius the Elder distinguished himself in the war against the Sassanid Persians in the 580s. As a subordinate general (or hypostrategos), Heraclius served under the command of Philippicus during the Battle of Solachon and possibly served under Comentiolus during the Battle of Sisarbanon. Circa 595, Heraclius the Elder is mentioned as a magister militum per Armeniam sent by Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) to quell an Armenian rebellion led by Samuel Vahewuni and Atat Khorkhoruni. Circa 600, he was appointed as the Exarch of Africa and in 608, he rebelled with his son against the usurper Phocas (r. 602–610). Using North Africa as a base, the younger Heraclius managed to overthrow Phocas, beginning the Heraclian dynasty, which would rule Byzantium for a century. Heraclius the Elder died soon after receiving news of his son's accession to the Byzantine throne. (Full article...)
Donor portrait of the megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, from a collection of the "Works of Hippocrates" commissioned by him in the early 1340s. Alexios is depicted in the garb of his office, wearing a richly decorated kabbadion and the skaranikon, a ceremonial headdress depicting the reigning emperor.
Harald Sigurdsson (Old Norse: Haraldr Sigurðarson; c. 1015 – 25 September 1066), also known as Harald III of Norway and given the epithet Hardrada (harðráði; modern Norwegian: Hardråde, roughly translated as "stern counsel" or "hard ruler") in the sagas, was King of Norway from 1046 to 1066. Additionally, he unsuccessfully claimed both the Danish throne until 1064 and the English throne in 1066. Before becoming king, Harald had spent around fifteen years in exile as a mercenary and military commander in Kievan Rus' and as a chief of the Varangian Guard in the Byzantine Empire. In his chronicle, Adam of Bremen called him the "Thunderbolt of the North".
In 1030 aged fifteen, Harald fought in the Battle of Stiklestad together with his half-brother Olaf Haraldsson (later Saint Olaf). Olaf sought to reclaim the Norwegian throne, which he had lost to the Danish king Cnut the Great two years prior. In the battle, Olaf and Harald were defeated by forces loyal to Cnut, and Harald was forced into exile to Kievan Rus' (the sagas' Garðaríki). Thereafter, he was in the army of Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise, becoming captain, until he moved on to Constantinople with his companions around 1034. In Constantinople, he rose quickly to become the commander of the Byzantine Varangian Guard, seeing action on the Mediterranean Sea, in Asia Minor, Sicily, possibly in the Holy Land, Bulgaria and in Constantinople itself, where he became involved in the imperial dynastic disputes. Harald amassed considerable wealth during his time in the Byzantine Empire, which he shipped to Yaroslav in Kievan Rus' for safekeeping. In 1042, he left the Byzantine Empire, returning to Kievan Rus' in order to prepare to reclaim the Norwegian throne. Possibly to Harald's knowledge, in his absence the Norwegian throne had been restored from the Danes to Olaf's illegitimate son Magnus the Good. (Full article...)
Image 15
Manuel the Armenian (Greek: Μανουήλ ὁ Ἀρμένιος), was a prominent Byzantine general of Armenian origin, active from c. 810 until his death. After reaching the highest military ranks, a palace conspiracy forced him to seek refuge in the Abbasid court in 829. He returned to Byzantine service the next year, receiving the position of Domestic of the Schools from Emperor Theophilos, who had married his niece Theodora. Manuel remained in the post throughout Theophilos's reign, and reportedly saved the emperor's life in the Battle of Anzen in 838. According to one report, he died on 27 July 838 of wounds received during the battle, but other sources record his survival past this date, ascribing him a major role in the regency that governed the empire after Theophilos's death, and report that he died some time around 860. (Full article...)
Image 16
15th-century portrait of Constantine XI (from a codex containing a copy of the Extracts of History by Joannes Zonaras)
Constantine was the fourth son of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and Helena Dragaš, the daughter of Serbian ruler Konstantin Dejanović. Little is known of his early life, but from the 1420s onward, he is repeatedly demonstrated to have been a skilled general. Based on his career and surviving contemporary sources, Constantine appears to have been primarily a soldier. This does not mean that Constantine was not also a skilled administrator: he was trusted and favored to such an extent by his older brother, Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, that he was designated as regent twice during John VIII's journeys away from Constantinople in 1423–1424 and 1437–1440. In 1427–1428, Constantine and John fended off an attack on the Morea (the Peloponnese) by Carlo I Tocco, ruler of Epirus, and in 1428 Constantine was proclaimed Despot of the Morea and ruled the province together with his older brother Theodore and his younger brother Thomas. Together, they extended Roman rule to cover almost the entire Peloponnese for the first time since the Fourth Crusade more than two hundred years before and rebuilt the ancient Hexamilion wall, which defended the peninsula from outside attacks. Although ultimately unsuccessful, Constantine personally led a campaign into Central Greece and Thessaly in 1444–1446, attempting to extend Byzantine rule into Greece once more. (Full article...)
Image 17
Symeon the New Theologian (Greek: Συμεὼν ὁ Νέος Θεολόγος; 949–1022) was an Eastern Orthodox monk and poet who was the last of three saints canonized by the Eastern Orthodox Church and given the title of "Theologian" (along with John the Apostle and Gregory of Nazianzus). "Theologian" was not applied to Symeon in the modern academic sense of theological study; the title was designed only to recognize someone who spoke from personal experience of the vision of God. One of his principal teachings was that humans could and should experience theoria (literally "contemplation," or direct experience of God).
Symeon was born into the Byzantine nobility and given a traditional education. At age fourteen he met Symeon the Studite, a renowned monk of the Monastery of Stoudios in Constantinople, who convinced him to give his own life to prayer and asceticism under the elder Symeon's guidance. By the time he was thirty, Symeon the New Theologian became the abbot of the Monastery of Saint Mamas, a position he held for twenty-five years. He attracted many monks and clergy with his reputation for sanctity, though his teachings brought him into conflict with church authorities, who would eventually send him into exile. His most well known disciple was Nicetas Stethatos who wrote the Life of Symeon. (Full article...)
Alexios Komnenos (Greek: Ἀλέξιος Κομνηνός; c. 1135/42 – after 1182) was a Byzantine aristocrat and courtier. A son of Andronikos Komnenos and nephew of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, he rose to the high rank of prōtostratōr in 1167. In 1176 he participated in the Myriokephalon campaign where, following the death of his older brother John, he was raised to the titles of prōtosebastos and prōtovestiarios. Following Manuel's death in 1180, he won the favour, and reportedly became the lover, of Empress-dowagerMaria of Antioch. Through her he ruled the Byzantine Empire for two years as de facto regent of the underage emperor Alexios II Komnenos. The aristocracy challenged his dominance, led by the princess Maria Komnene, who plotted to assassinate the prōtosebastos. The plot was discovered and most conspirators arrested, but Maria and her husband fled to the Hagia Sophia, protected by Patriarch Theodosios Borradiotes and the common people of Constantinople.
Mounting tensions resulted in a popular uprising against Alexios' regime on 2 May 1181, (modern scholars have proposed other dates as well), which ended in a mutual reconciliation. His power shaken, the prōtosebastos reacted by punishing Borradiotes for his role in the affair. Overwhelming opposition, both among the people and the aristocracy, forced him to recall Borradiotes soon after. These events left Alexios in poor shape to oppose the advance of the adventurer Andronikos I Komnenos, who moved against Constantinople from the east. The generals dispatched against Andronikos were defeated or defected, and the usurper entered the city in April 1182. The prōtosebastos Alexios was deposed, publicly humiliated, and mutilated. His fate thereafter is not known. (Full article...)
Image 19
John VI presiding over a synod, c. 1370–1375
John VI Kantakouzenos or Cantacuzene (Greek: Ἰωάννης Ἄγγελος Παλαιολόγος Καντακουζηνός, Iōánnēs Ángelos Palaiológos Kantakouzēnós; Latin: Johannes Cantacuzenus; c. 1292 – 15 June 1383) was a Byzantine Greeknobleman, statesman, and general. He served as grand domestic under Andronikos III Palaiologos and regent for John V Palaiologos before reigning as Byzantine emperor in his own right from 1347 to 1354. Deposed by his former ward, he was forced to retire to a monastery under the name Joasaph Christodoulos (Greek: Ἰωάσαφ Χριστόδουλος) and spent the remainder of his life as a monk and historian. At age 90 or 91 at his death, he was the longest-lived of the Roman emperors. (Full article...)
Image 20
Constantine VII crowned by Christ, detail of an ivory plaque, Pushkin Museum, AD 945
Most of his reign was dominated by co-regents: from 913 until 919 he was under the regency of his mother, while from 920 until 945 he shared the throne with Romanos Lekapenos, whose daughter Helena he married, and his sons. Constantine VII is best known for the Geoponika (τά γεοπονικά), an important agronomic treatise compiled during his reign, and three, perhaps four, books; De Administrando Imperio (bearing in Greek the heading Πρὸς τὸν ἴδιον υἱὸν Ῥωμανόν), De Ceremoniis (Περὶ τῆς Βασιλείου Τάξεως), De Thematibus (Περὶ θεμάτων Άνατολῆς καὶ Δύσεως), and Vita Basilii (Βίος Βασιλείου), though his authorship of the Vita Basilii is not certain. (Full article...)
Theodosius I (Greek: ΘεοδόσιοςTheodosios; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also called Theodosius the Great, was a Roman emperor from 379 to 395. During his reign, he succeeded in a crucial war against the Goths, as well as in two civil wars, and was instrumental in establishing the creed of Nicaea as the orthodox doctrine for Christianity. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule the entire Roman Empire before its administration was permanently split between the West and East.
Born in Hispania, Theodosius was the son of a high-ranking general, Theodosius the Elder, under whose guidance he rose through the ranks of the Roman army. Theodosius held independent command in Moesia in 374, where he had some success against the invading Sarmatians. Not long afterwards, he was forced into retirement, and his father was executed under obscure circumstances. Theodosius soon regained his position following a series of intrigues and executions at Emperor Gratian's court. In 379, after the eastern Roman emperor Valens perished at the Battle of Adrianople against the Goths, Gratian appointed Theodosius as a successor with orders to take charge of the current military emergency. The new emperor's resources, and depleted armies, were not sufficient to drive the invaders out; in 382 the Goths were allowed to settle south of the Danube as autonomous allies of the empire. In 386, Theodosius signed a treaty with the Sasanian Empire which partitioned the long-disputed Kingdom of Armenia and secured a durable peace between the two powers. (Full article...)
Image 22
Anna Dalassene (Greek: Ἄννα Δαλασσηνή; ca. 1025/30 – 1 November 1100/02) was an important Byzantine noblewoman who played a significant role in the rise to power of the Komnenoi in the eleventh century. She exercised great influence over her son, the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who gave her the title Augusta. She also administered the empire as regent during his many absences from Constantinople on long military campaigns during the early part of his reign. As empress-mother, she exerted more influence and power than the empress-consort, Irene Doukaina, a woman whom she hated because of past intrigues with the Doukai. (Full article...)
Image 23
A mosaic in Hagia Sophia showing Leo VI paying homage to Christ
Leo VI, also known as Leothe Wise (Greek: Λέων ὁ Σοφός, romanized: Léōn ho Sophós, 19 September 866 – 11 May 912), was Byzantine Emperor from 886 to 912. The second ruler of the Macedonian dynasty (although his parentage is unclear), he was very well read, leading to his epithet. During his reign, the renaissance of letters, begun by his predecessor Basil I, continued; but the empire also saw several military defeats in the Balkans against Bulgaria and against the Arabs in Sicily and the Aegean. His reign also witnessed the formal discontinuation of several ancient Roman institutions, such as the separate office of Roman consul. (Full article...)
A polymath whose fields of interest and contribution included law, theology, philosophy, and music, he was given the by-name of Chrysorroas (Χρυσορρόας, literally "streaming with gold", i.e. "the golden speaker"). He wrote works expounding the Christian faith, and composed hymns which are still used both liturgically in Eastern Christian practice throughout the world as well as in western Lutheranism at Easter. (Full article...)
Image 25
John Kourkouas (Greek: Ἰωάννης Κουρκούας, romanized: Ioannes Kourkouas, fl. c. 900–946), also transliterated as Kurkuas or Curcuas, was one of the most important generals of the Byzantine Empire. His success in battles against the Muslim states in the East reversed the course of the centuries-long Arab–Byzantine wars and set the stage for Byzantium's eastern conquests later in the century.
Kourkouas belonged to a family of Armenian descent that produced several notable Byzantine generals. As commander of an imperial bodyguard regiment, Kourkouas was among the chief supporters of EmperorRomanos I Lekapenos (r. 920–944) and facilitated the latter's rise to the throne. In 923, Kourkouas was appointed commander-in-chief of the Byzantine armies along the eastern frontier, facing the Abbasid Caliphate and the semi-autonomous Muslim border emirates. He kept this post for more than twenty years, overseeing decisive Byzantine military successes that altered the strategic balance in the region. (Full article...)
... that in the nocturnal Battle of Kapetron, the Byzantines in the flanks defeated their Seljuk opponents, but on the next morning learned of their Georgian allies' defeat in the centre?
... that under the Byzantine Empire, the Arab Christian tribe of Bahra' were tasked with guarding the Syrian holy city of Rusafa?