Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin was an odd read. It was a bit disjointed.  

So, this is broken down into pivotal events in Byzantine history. And even before the Byzantine empire rose, there was Constantinople. Before Rome fell, it had essentially split itself in to two empires, which were ruled jointly. In the East was Rome proper. In the west was western Europe. The two empires were ruled in conjunction, meaning the two emperors were supposed to talk to each other, and their two heirs—who were not necessarily the sons of the sitting emperors. And it was that not blood inheritance that caused the collapse of this scheme. Constantine was the son of the Western emperor Constantius Chlorus. And after achieving military victory in the west, in York actually, he went to Rome, where he received accolades for his military success. Then he continued on to the Bosphorus and found an ideal spot to found a city, and thus was Constantinople built. And it truly is a naturally fortified location, with a deep harbor across which chains were drawn to prevent attacks by sea, with naturally occurring rock formations, which were easily built up in to true fortifications. So this was in the 4th century, about 330 AD. Rome did not fall and the Byzantine empire did not rise for about 100 years. So even before Byzantium, we had Constantinople.

 The major differences between east and west empire seems to be…language. Byzantine in the east interpreted everything through Greek. Rome in the West interpreted everything through Latin. In this way was the Greek Orthodox vs Roman Catholic churches formed, with Byzantium eventually inheriting the core historical in the east, when Rome finished its collapse in the 5th century. And while the Roman Catholic church rose to ascendancy as a political power, insisting that heads of state, i.e. royalty, must be invested through the church in Rome, the Byzantine empire in the east focused more on educating and feeding the people. This sounds high ideals. And citizens of Byzantium were guaranteed a portion of bread every day. But you did have to prove your citizenship, in order to collect on the daily ration. So, Byzantium was civic minded, to some degree. But more important, Constantinople’s position on the Bosphorus made it a prize to be fought over and won from the time of it’s beginning until it finally fell to Ottoman Turks in 1453.

And because it was already a growing and sprawling metropolis, when Rome fell, the Byzantine empire rose out of Constantinople, becoming the center of learning, religion, and culture, as well as the gateway to the Asia, North Africa, and eastern Europe, leaving the barbarian tribes of western Europe to form their own countries. Which they did. The author makes the argument that without the rise of Islam, which pushed back against Byzantine rule and swept across North Africa, the Mediterranean, and into Spain, the European countries of France, England, Italy, Germany might not exist. Especially France, with the rise of Charles Martel and Charlemagne. Not sure I can comment on that, but it’s certainly a plausible theory.

But like all things, the biggest split between east and west was religious. The Byzantine church took the Greek translation of the bible. The Roman’s took the Latin. And this changed history. And while Rome was certainly no slouch in commissioning new churches, in Constantinople, they built Hagia Sophia, in 537. Which still stands today, as a world heritage site, and is currently used as a Mosque in Istanbul. And while Byzantine was concentrated in the east, right after Rome collapsed, the Byzantine emperors did make a claim to the whole of the Roman empire, including Italy, which resulted in many Byzantine mosaics of the Byzantine royal family being created in Italy. And one of the things Byzantine kept from Europe, after being pushed back and concentrated in Constantinople, was Roman Law. And the Rule of Law was important to Byzantine culture, as important as education. Because most of the Roman Patricians refused to leave Italy, Byzantium became one of the first empires where it was entirely possible to advance based on merit alone. You did not have to be born in a wealthy family, to advance and become wealthy yourself.

So, during the 7th century, the Arabian tribes discovered a new religion, which unified them, and caused them to push back against the Christianity of Byzantium. Islam was a unifying force, and initially, it was perfectly acceptable to be a Christian or a Jew in Islamic lands. You had to pay higher taxes for your belief, but there was no law against it, being that all were considered people of the book. The lingering paganism in parts of Italy and across northern Europe would not have been acceptable, but Arabian forces never got that far, leaving the Christian churches to deal with the heathen hordes.

During this time, the orthodox church went through a period of struggle on how to worship, meaning do we allow icons, or not. And apparently, this was a hotly debated topic, with long periods where icons of the church, meaning images of the saints, were not allowed, and were actively destroyed. Paganism may actually have been a contributing factor of this, as people wanted portraits of say Apollo, but as the artists were not allowed to paint portraits of Apollo, only religious symbiology, images of Apollo were painted anyway, under the guise of being an image of Jesus. So whether or not iconography would be allowed was debated for over a century, with the Iconophiles winning out over the iconoclasts, which results in incredibly beautiful images of the saints being available today…however the oldest are from approximately 800 A.D., as anything prior was destroyed during one of the periods of iconoclasm.

All of the arguments over iconography was argued hotly by everyone, as Byzantium had a very high rate of literacy and education. Even women could and would read, although they were not always taught how to write. But the Byzantine educational system tended to focus on classical topics, “based on the seven liberal arts of antiquity: three literary topics (grammar, rhetoric, logic), followed by four mathematical ones (arithmetic, geometry, harmonics, and astronomy.) (p. 120). So they were probably better educated than your average 21st century college undergrad. And they took that education and used it to reach out to the Slavic people of Western Russia and Eastern Europe. And they created alphabets, which became the Cyrillic alphabet still used today. This allowed them to create written bibles and versus for the Slavic people, and helped to expand the Byzantine empire north and east during the medieval period.

There is a lot of information so far, and it’s not always in a linear timeline, kind of jumping around a bit, which makes it a bit confusing for me. Like, I may add a shorter feature discussing each Byzantine ruler. Maybe. I don’t know. This is a lot. And I’m only halfway done with the book. Wonder what I’ll learn next.

Among the many things any nation/state can do to protect itself, creating weapons of war remains high on the list. I know, I know…we’re all supposed to be peace loving hippies and can’t we all just get along? The History of Humanity says that’s a solid NO. And Byzantium had one of the most effective weapons for it’s time: Greek Fire. This was an incendiary weapon used mostly for ship battles in the bay, the formula for which has been lost since at least the fall of Constantinople. Almost like napalm, water only made it burn more, making it an excellent weapon to use at sea. And the Byzantines used it most effectively to secure the harbor, which in turn protected trade.

Speaking of trade, the Byzantine economy managed to keep a strict gold standard for just about 1,000 years out of the 1,100 it was in operation. And the weird century where the gold standard was devalued was somewhere in the middle, only regaining it’s value with the rise of a new imperial family, the Komnene’s. Basically, for 700 years, a gold coin minted in Byzantium was minted of pure 24 karat gold. And was the standard currency for all trade within the empire. Then around 1000, the emperor at the time began devaluing the coin by mixing in silver in the smelting, eventually dropping the once 24k gold coins to about 5% gold, the balance being silver. These coins were known to be junk, and most merchants would not accept coins that did not meet the original gold standard. When the Komnene family rose to power with Alexios I, he reinstated the gold standard and the Byzantine currency once again became the trading standard. Interestinly, we know all this from the book written by Alexios I daughter, Anna Komnene. Alexiad (in English translation) was written between 1137 and her death in 1153, and is the history of the Komnene family, but specifically of her father. This is one of the few historical texts written by absolute contemporary, not written 100-200 years after the events took place, and while I haven’t read it, the author assures us it is invaluable in understanding Byzantium at that point in time. And I have no reason to doubt that assertion. Books written at the moment of historical events hold a specific relevance from a birds eye perspective. And it speaks to the level of education provided to Byzantine women. Granted, Anna Komnene was royalty, and so her education may have been higher even than most men’s, but it’s an interesting historical perspective that should not be overlooked.

Most interesting during this time, and only rarely seen in the West, was the use of Eunuchs. Typically, they are thought to be something found only among the Arab tribes and Islamic states, used to protect the Sultan’s harems. This is grossly inaccurate, as Eunuchs existed throughout the Byzantine empire, and in parts of the west, most notably the famed Castrati choir in Venice, which existed in to the early part of the 20th century. But being a Eunuch did not preclude you from anything but having kids, and voluntarily undergoing this process was often a path to power, which was very confusing to the west, and one of the reasons western knights used to sack and take over Constantinople in 1204…Eunuchs only being half men, they could not possibly be effective fighter. This, despite several of Byzantiums greatest generals being Eunuchs.

And as in any empire, the imperial court set the tone for how things were run. But they were by no means the be all/end all of the empire. One of Byzantine’s contributions to posterity was a large civil administration, which allowed for more or less seamless transitions between emperor’s. And one of the Byzantine’s most effective conceits was the concept of porphyrogennetos…being born in the purple. Not just meaning of the royal family, to whom the color purple was exclusively reserved, but in the royal palace, there was literally an all purple birthing chamber. To be born porphyrogennetos was to confer a special level of imperialism, and one emperor made it illegal to export Byzantine princesses who were born porphyrogennetos, wanting to reserve those royal matches to significant followers within the empire. Some were still exported, notably to Vladimir of Kiev, when Basil II married his sister to the Rus king to secure alliance, resulting ultimately in Harald Hardrada being a Varangian guard 40 years later. But to be “born in the purple” was an especially exalted status and a clever bit of marketing. So much so that incoming imperial families, even if NOT born in the purple, would claim the status of porphyrogennetos as a matter of course.

The advent of crusades to win back the holy land from the Arab infidels created opportunity to unite the Christian churches of east and west, or to divide them. Since the church in Rome kept insisting that the orthodox church of Byzantium acknowledge Rome’s ascendancy, and the orthodox churches continually refused, this led to the sacking of Constantinople by western knights in 1204, and a roughly 60 year period where the Byzantine empire began to crumble, as the west took over Constantinople. This is not insignificant. You might think 60 years out of 1,100 is a blip, a blink of the eye timewise. But this 60 year period allowed for many of the smaller cities to break away and become their own city/states. This weakened the unification of Byzantium, which ultimately led to the fall of the empire to Ottoman Turks in 1453. Especially as several of those city/states became vassals to the Ottomans.

And much like other empires, including the Empire of America, eventually wealth disparity became a thing. Now, I’m not going to go into capitalism versus feudalism here, because the systems are wildly different. But in Byzantium, eventually a semi-feudal state, along the lines of what was seen in western Europe, rose up. However, while in the west the people would rarely revolt against the status-quo, in the east, since education was so freely given, many people started to rebel against this. And much like today (no, not a direct comparison, I just appreciate the irony) those who claimed to speak for the peasant class were rarely actually peasants. But they sure liked to stoke the fires of discontent, resulting in rebellion and mob rule throughout the last two centuries of Byzantine rule.

Then in 1451, the Ottoman Turks, who had been slowly creeping up across the Byzantine empire, made their way to the walls of Constantinople. And with the help of new weaponry, large cannon hurling multi-ton cannon balls at the walls, they were able to breach Constantinople in 1453, ending the Byzantine empire, and cementing the rise of the Ottoman’s as the dominant power in the east, which would last until the end of World War I.

The Byzantine empire started with Constantine the I and ended with Constantine the XI, and there were like 80 emperors in between those two points. This book was not linear in it’s timeline, it kind of jumped around a bit, making the story seem disjointed. Overall there was good history, but the fractured nature of the telling made it hard to follow along and see where the author was going with anyone point.

This book was initially reviewed on YouTube on January 9, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.