Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Professor Judith Herrin

Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

by Professor Judith Herrin

Professor Judith Herrin was born in the United Kingdom in 1942, she was educated at Bedales School and studied history at the University of Cambridge and was awarded her Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham. She would also train in Paris, Athens, and Munich. Dr. Herrin, would work as an archaeologist with the British School at Athens and on-site in Istanbul. Between 1991 and 1995 she would serve as Professor of Byzantine History at Princeton University. Afterward, she was appointed Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King College London and also the head of the college's, Center for Hellenic Studies. She would retire from the post in 2008 becoming Professor Emeritus. She would in 2011 become President of the International Congress of Byzantine Studies. In 2015 she would win the Dr. A.H Heineken Prize for History for her work. She would also be awarded a Golden Cross by the Republic of Greece, a Medal from the College de Franc and become a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. To boil it all down folks, this woman has not only spent a good chunk of her life studying the Byzantine Empire, she is one of, if not the authoritative voice on Byzantine history.

Course some of you might be wondering, what the hell is the Byzantine Empire? It's a legitimate question since even the people of that state wouldn't have recognized that title. It was given to them by outsiders and only became popular after their conquest by the Ottoman Turks. For the majority of that state's long existence and to the majority of the people who knew of and interacted with it, it was the Roman Empire. What we call the Byzantine Empire is the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Basically, in the latter half of what we call the Classical period of history (when you could divide Europe into Roman and not Roman parts), the Emperors of Rome began to realize that they couldn't effectively administer and govern the Empire. It was just too large, that seems odd to us today but remember, they didn't have the internet, radio, or even telegraphs. Every message could only travel at the speed of a physical messenger. Which means that it could take months to get information from one side of the Empire to another, which can be fatal if that message is “huge army pouring over the border and killing everyone, send help!” In response to this, the Empire was divided and an Eastern Emperor was appointed to run affairs in the east. The western empire would be gone by the 400s AD. The Eastern Empire would endure for another 1000 years until finally meeting its fate in 1453. For much of that thousand years, it would be considered a titan among nations and the final word on art, culture, power, and civilization in Europe and much of the Middle East. Even the Islamic states (who would hold most European and Christian states in disdain, to be honest with good reason), viewed and spoke of it in glowing terms. Even while they openly desired it's conquest. For many of them, the conquest of the Byzantine Empire would be the great milestone in their mission to bring the word of their Prophet to the world, because for generations that same empire was the biggest obstacle to that goal. This conquest was thwarted for centuries by a combination of military strength, brilliant diplomatic maneuvering, technological and social innovation and depending on what you believe the grace of Almighty God or pure dumb luck.

Americans tend not to know much about this stage of history because it's popularly assumed that the Byzantine Empire doesn't have a lot of impact on American history and history teachers already have a lot to cover and little time to do it in. For that matter, your average western European doesn't know much more of the Empire's history for much of the same reasons. On top of that, there is often the view that the Byzantine Empire was a relic of a bygone age. A moribund, decaying state that did nothing but slowly collapse for centuries, soaked in degeneracy and overly complex and prone to self-defeating scheming and backbiting. The very word byzantine is used to communicate this. Dr. Herrin, however, has taken the field to not only combat this viewpoint but give us an overview of the history, economy, and culture of the Eastern Roman Empire.

The book starts us with Emperor Constantine selecting the city of Byzantine as his new capital and describes his efforts to build a grand city worthy of being the capital of a massive Empire. The city of Constantinople would grow to be one of the greatest cities of the Mediterranean and a major port that not only connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean but would be a major crossroad between the east and the west. Throughout the vast majority of the empire's history, the city of Constantine would be the heart of imperial power and the seat of the ruling family, whoever they were at the time. From there, we get a look at the Byzantine Empire before the medieval period, this Byzantine Empire ruled the entire Eastern Mediterranean, from Egypt in the south to the river of the Danube in the north. At it's greatest extent, it would rule from Naples and Carthage in the west to Jerusalem and Damascus in the east. In this period the Byzantines would struggle with the Persian Empire and barbarians coming from the north and west. Emperors would often encourage these barbarians to go settle in western Europe and pick over the remains of the western empire. Which is a bit cold-blooded perhaps but there wasn't much they could do to save the western empire, so they focused on preserving the east. During this period they build a system for feeding Constantinople with grain from Egypt and using resources from the southern parts of the empire to feed crafts and trade in the north. This was also a time of intense religious discussion, as Christianity moved from a widespread but disorganized movement to an organized, hierarchical, national religion. The Emperors of the time would organize the church and host meetings of church leaders to decide just what the newly organized Christian Church would believe and preach. This was not an easy question either! Debates over the nature of Christ and God raged alongside questions of Church organization and whether not priests would marry (in the east priests can marry, in the Latin West, they can't) the role of women in the church and more would explode into violence and rioting. This shows that this wasn't just a preoccupation of the elites but a pressing question to the common men and women of the empire. The efforts to enforce Orthodoxy at all costs, however, would end up causing some Christian groups to prefer Muslim rule, as while they might charge an extra tax, they wouldn't imprison you for your beliefs.

The emergence of the armies of Islam from the Arabic desert is where Dr. Herrin marks the change of the Byzantine Empire from an empire of the classic period to a medieval state. The Arabic armies would conquer Egypt, Syria, and Palestine from an empire already reeling from plague and war. This shattered the old economic system and forced the Byzantines to develop new sources of raw materials and food, most of them in the European provinces of the Empire. It also led the Emperors of Byzantines to develop new military and administrative systems that were not only successful in holding off Arabic conquest but began to push them back and reclaim ground. While reduced in territory, the empire remained powerful and wealthy and the Arabs would look to it as a model, alongside the conquered Persian Empire and eventually the Caliphs would treat the Emperor of the Byzantines as an equal in diplomacy, trade and cultural exchange. The Byzantines did have a rich culture, it was incredibly literate with a lot of effort put into teaching people how to read and write. Their literacy rate was nowhere near modern standards but compared to the standards of the time, their educational system was amazing in its reach and depth. It was focused on teaching people how to read and write Greek and Latin would gradually die out. The death blow came when the Eastern Church decided that all services would be given in the native languages of the congregation instead of Latin (the western church would continue Latin services as the norm until 1967). This led to them calling western Europe and the people of Western Europe Latins (or Franks if they wanted to remind that they were a bunch of johnny come lately jumped up barbarians)

In fact, Byzantine Church was so devoted to this that it bankrolled the creation of the Slavic alphabet and wrote the first bibles in Slavic languages. This would create a 3 part division in the old Roman world, where you had the Latin West, the Byzantine East and the Muslim South. However, it was the Byzantines who would most successfully bridge the practices and ideas of the ancient world and the Medieval world of Christianity and Islam. While western access to classical works was spotty at best, in the east entire libraries were preserved (many of these would be lost later, as many to western invaders as to Muslim ones to be blunt but I'll get there) and this influenced religious and secular thought very deeply. One example is the practice of hesychasm, which is a type of meditative prayer. This is done to practice a strict mental discipline, where the mind is focused by repeating the Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner." ) to still the mind and remove all temptation, until the person making the prayer can experience God directly, even if only for a moment. This moment is described as seeing uncreated light (we just don't have space to get into this but it's an intriguing piece of eastern theology). If my Buddhist readers feel some similarities to their own practices, that should give you an idea of how radically different the evolution of the Eastern Orthodox church was from the Latin western church. One point of interest to me was that literacy was so widespread that not only were there novel series written about adventurers on the frontiers but there were book reviewers and critics such as the church official Photios (also called Photios I of Constantinople), who wrote letters for circulation among a large group of friends and family where he discusses different books he's read and whether he thought they were any good or not. As you can imagine I'm somewhat tickled to find a kindred soul so many centuries ago and so many miles away. He is also a major historical figure but I'll let you find out more about him on your own.

Dr. Herrin also discussed the fall of Constantinople but points out that the real fatal blow came from the betrayal of the Republic of Venice. I call this betrayal because the book shows us that trade with Byzantine is very responsible for Venice rise in the first place. In fact, the merchants of Venice didn't have to pay any taxes on goods bought and sold in the empire. This gave them a huge advantage even over native Byzantine merchants. This betrayal occurred in the 4th Crusade, also called the one where they didn't even fight any Muslims (I don't approve of religious warfare but if there's something that smacks of spectacular failure when you declare a war and then march off to fight... Anyone but the people you declared war on). Instead at the urging of Venetian money lenders, they attacked the Christian city of Zora and then assaulted Constantinople... Twice. The first time to place a puppet emperor on the throne and when he refused to pay the Crusaders, they sacked the city and placed a Latin (western) Emperor on the throne in 1204. This split the Byzantine Empire into a trio of rump states and the Turks, already steadily pushing into Byzantine territory began to flood in. While the Byzantines would manage to fight back, retaking the city in 1261... The damage was done and it would be mainly a city-state with a long history until it's final conquest by the Turks. Interestingly enough the Turks didn't see themselves as killing the Byzantine Empire but as inheriting it. The Ottomans would repeatably lay claim to the glories of Rome as their rightful inheritance, even if no one else would agree with them. Which shows the allure and power of the Roman Empire, one that holds true today as you'll hear people compare nations like the United States to the Romans, proving that even half a millennia later they remain the benchmark for civilization in the west. And the Byzantines? I think this book makes a powerful case that they were the true carriers of the Roman flame during the Dark Ages and the Medieval Era. They didn't let themselves be trapped by tradition but they did honor it and learned from it as well as fusing it with new practices to create a powerful state that stood as a model of civilization, art and military strength for centuries. That's something to be proud of. Dr. Herrin manages to give us a good overview of the empire while keeping at a level that a layman could understand and follow. It's a great text for anyone who wants to learn more but isn't sure where to start or someone with some knowledge of the state but who wants to go deeper Byzantium the Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin gets an A. Go take a look.

It's been a busy week for me, so we're going to indulge a bit next week. Join me for Log Horizon: Homesteading the Noosphere. Thank you and Keep Reading!

No editor this week, he took an early vacation but don't worry my hunting parties assure me he will rejoin us soon.