World History

Unit 3: The World in Transition

Chapter 8: The Byzantine Empire, Kievan Russia, and the Mongols

Mon, Oct 28, 2013

17. Tue, Oct 29, 2013

What we today call the Byzantine Empire never used that term; they were, after all, the Roman Empire — still. Enduring for almost exactly a thousand years after the fall of Rome itself, the empire founded on Constantinople survived civil war, invasion, conquest, and betrayal before finally collapsing. Yet reading about it, one frequently gets the impression of faded and crumbling grandeur. Was the "Byzantine" Empire a true extension of Rome, or was it just a relic that didn't know when to die?

Taking a closer look at the eastern empire may not give us a definitive answer to this question, but it's invaluable for understanding Eastern Europe to this day. Russians calling Moscow the "Third Rome" makes perfect sense examined in the context of Constantinople.

• If we add together the Roman Republic, the empire built by Augustus, and the Byzantine Empire, we have almost two thousand years of mostly-continuous authority, which is debatably a record. Is it fair to trace the later Byzantine emperors to the Republic, however, or even to Augustus? Is it even reasonable to count the last 250 years of the Byzantines, after losing Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade?
• How did religion play into the persistence of Byzantium? At times it could prove deeply divisive, as with the iconoclasm controversy, and certainly the divisions between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches divided the empire from their otherwise natural allies in the rest of Europe. Did the common cause of Christendom against Islam ultimately outweigh the Christian tendency toward schism and heretical controversy?

Contents of this page © Copyright 2011, 2012 by Paul Christiansen and Bruce A. McMenomy.
Permission to download or print this page is hereby given to members of Scholars Online for purposes of personal study only. All other use constitutes a violation of copyright.