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Byzantium Was A World
By Pál Kelemen
Two continents on two tongues of land face each other across the Bosporus, where the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea form a narrows. Six centuries before Christ, Greek colonists settled there under a leader named Byzaz and called the place Byzantion--now more familiar as Byzantium. It developed into an important harbor for the shipment of wheat from the Black Sea to Athens and beyond. In A.D. 330 the Emperor Constantine removed his capital there from Rome, and created a city which for more than a thousand years stood as a center not only of commerce but also of Christian culture.
Constantine was born in the Balkans. As a general of the Roman Empire, he fought in Gaul and Britain. In a military campaign in the spring of 312, Constantine had a vision. The Chi Rho, the Greek monogram of Christ, appeared in the sky, accompanied by the admonition in Greek, "By this conquer." Thereafter he favored the Christian religion, and the sign became his personal device.
To Constantine, the site of Byzantium, surrounded by the lands of early Christianity, may well have seemed more propitious for his capital than Rome, where the pagan gods had still a large following. In Constantinople the Hellenic heritage that was preserved in Syria and Egypt came to flower. The Greeks have always been a nation of mariners. Greek was the common tongue of the Mediterranean world, though Latin remained for some time the official language of the administration. Many colonies of pagan Rome whence valued trade flowed lay in the eastern Mediterranean and never spoke Latin. At least up to the end of the second century of the Christian era, the inscriptions in the catacombs even of Rome--pagan or Christian, and those of the large Jewish colony there--were largely in Greek. When Christianity began to spread, the Gospel was translated from the original Aramaic, a Jewish dialect, into Greek. Thus language was a major factor in disseminating the teachings of Christ through the known world, while at the same time Greek philosophy aided in formulating the new religion.
The emperor gathered at Constantinople all talent to make the new capital supreme. In Constantinople the great engineering and architectural achievements of the fabulous East were utilized. The city set the patterns of taste also in jewelry, ivory- and enamelwork, and other crafts. Manuscripts of ancient and modern authors were carefully copied and multiplied. Constantinople was known as "the City" not only throughout the empire but also throughout the medieval world. Istanbul, as the Turks renamed it, means also "the City." And when Greeks today use the word "polis," they mean Constantinople.
The western part of the ancient Roman Empire--from Britannia to Dacia, from Germania to Hispania--weakened through the disintegration of a centralized administration, staggered under the various waves of barbarian invasion. In the Byzantine Empire, since the time that Constantine established his capital up to its fall to the Turks, uninterrupted contact was maintained with those lands beyond the eastern borders of Christianity, already famed as fabulous, sophisticated in more than one way. In the Byzantine Empire, Christianity achieved body and character. The expression "Dark Ages," if justified at all, applies only to the westward lands of Europe.
The Byzantine emperors embodied the supreme authority of both state and church. Approval of appointments to the rank of patriarch (bishop) depended upon the emperor--including the choice of the Bishop of Rome. From this early power date the "apostolic rights" of later sovereigns, of which more will be said later. From Byzantium also stems the custom of bestowing medals on those who had proved themselves especially worthy of commendation. These were usually crosses of silver, with the head of Christ on one side and an expression of the appreciation of the emperor on the other; distributed at religious festivals, they are forerunners of the Victoria Cross, the Leopold Cross, and many others.
The bishops or patriarchs at the head of the council represented Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome. When voting in council among the ecclesiastics, the Bishop of Rome cast the first vote. This privilege became a prerogative, and in later centuries, when schism developed, it was a ground for claims. At the start of the controversy, the Orthodox part of the Christian world was the larger in territory, more numerous in believers, and more influential. Not only the geographical situation of the four bishops residing in the East but also the different mentality represented made the Bishop of Rome the rallying point of opposition.
Meanwhile, from the Arabian Peninsula, the standard-bearers of another religion and another civilization rode forward victoriously. The rise of the Mohammedan Arabs in the seventh century also shook the Byzantine Empire, which lost Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Under a centralized rule, the Arabs developed impressive knowledge in mathematics, astronomy, physics, and medicine. They absorbed much of classical Greek and Jewish culture; Moslem and later Byzantine profited mutually from each other's architectural achievements. All this the Arabs were to transmit directly into Spain, Portugal, Sicily, in succeeding centuries, and indirectly into France and more northern lands--reviving the interest of Western Europe in the almost forgotten civilization of the Greeks.
Though the Byzantine Empire did not suffer so much as Europe from the migration of the peoples, it had to wage long wars to maintain its position. The emperors came to depend for their armies on the feudal lords, who grew into a powerful caste. At the same time the Orthodox monasteries, in possession of "miraculous" icons (from eikon, image) that drew masses of pilgrims, extended their influence over the common people and gained immense power which could be turned against the emperor. Beginning with the early eighth century, for more than a hundred years iconoclastic edicts forbade the worship of images and decreed their destruction, in an attempt to deprive the religious authorities of their most effective means of propaganda. In the end, however, the position of the monasteries may have been strengthened by the resistance centered in them. The popes of this time never accepted iconoclastic decrees, and always defended the cult of images, thus increasing the incentives of schism. Continually growing differences between the Orthodox and Roman denominations over matters of dogma harassed the once "Universal Church."
Source: El Greco Revisited: Candia, Venice, Toledo
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