The Byzantine Empire, one of the longest-surviving empires the world has known, takes its name from its capital, the ancient city of Byzantium (Istanbul). Yet this is a misnomer, for the label of the 'Byzantines', like that of the 'Hittites', never really existed in their own time. The rulers and subjects of the Empire never used the term, but referred to themselves as Romaioi (Romans), as did their contem poraries; and they saw themselves as the legitimate successors of the Caesars. Indeed, the Eastern Roman Empire, to give its more correct title, is generally accepted as taking its foundation from AD 395, when Theodosius I (379-395) divided the Roman Empire into its Eastern and Western parts. The Eastern already possessed a capital; the old Byzantium had been renamed Constantinople on its comple tion as a new city in AD 330 and created as Rome's second capital by Constantine (324-337) as a deliberate and conscious 'Christian' contrast to 'heathen' Rome. And, in reality, Latin West and Hellenis tic East possessed two very different world views, a divergence that widened with the spread of Christianity and thence made itself visible in the political as well as in the religious realm.
The aspect of Christianity as the official religious faith of the Eastern Romans was an important one from the foundation of Constantinople as the second, Christian, capital of the Roman Empire by the Emperor Constantine—who himself was eventually baptized on his death-bed in 337—throughout the long and turbulent history of the succeeding Eastern Roman Empire until its final displacement by that of the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Indeed, the nine principal dynasties (from that of Heraclius to that of Palaeologus) of the Eastern Romans spanned the entire middle ages and juxtaposed with the period that saw the rise of a newer monotheistic faith, Islam and the competition for political domination between the adherents of the two religions. Moreover, this was a struggle in which the greatest damage was inflicted on the Byzantine Empire and especially her capital by her co-religionists during the Crusades; the wealthy city of Constantinople was sacked thoroughly over three days in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, and up to the very eve of the Empire’s demise the bishops of Constantinople adamantly opposed the reunification of the Church in return for military support, with the declaration by a high official that, 'It would be better to see the royal turban of the Turks in the midst of the city than the Latin mitre. On the other side, Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, in an address to the King of France, delivered shortly after the Council of Pisa (1409), affirmed that the Byzantines 'prefer Turks to the Latins'.
The origins of such deep antagonism between eastern and western branches of the Church lie back in the years surrounding the partition of the Roman Empire between Theodosius' two sons in AD 395. The Western Roman Empire rapidly declined in the face of waves of invasions from the north and east, chiefly by the Germanic tribes, the Goths and, most importantly, the Turco-Mongolian peoples known as the Huns under Attila; and finally collapsed in 476 The Eastern Roman Empire incorporated all the old Hellenistic lands of the eastern Mediterranean, comprising arguably the most civilized part of the Roman Empire, with its ancient traditions and urban development, its rich economic resources and strategic value for political, military and economic relations to the west as well as to the east. Thus, from the earliest days, the Eastern Romans considered themselves the true successors of the Roman Empire—a conviction that persisted through change of religion from the old paganism and through change of language from Latin to Greek from the 6C.
In 451, at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon, Con stantinople was formally recognized as the second in importance, after Rome itself, of the five Patriarchates of the Christian Church— the other three being Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem; this was a decision that confirmed and extended what had in effect been agreed in 381 at the Second Council in Constantinople. The eastern part of the Empire was thus well-placed to take advantage of the collapse of the western part, even though the primacy of the Patriarchate of Rome was to continue unabated. For the Patriarchates were embroiled in dogmatic controversies from the start, with the first major schism between Rome and Constantinople as early as 482 and lasting for 35 years; and the separatist, monophysite heresies of Antioch and Alexandria (condemned at the Fourth Council) were to continue unresolved until Syria and Egypt were conquered by Iran and incorporated into the Islamic world in the 7C. With these losses, despite the major territorial acquisitions of Justinian (527-565), the eastern part of the Empire was reduced virtually to the land mass of Anatolia, first referred to as Asia Minor by the Latin historian Orosius in the early 5C. Within these straitened boundaries, it assumed for the first time a fairly homogeneous form—with religious orthodoxy and Hellenistic tradition acting as the binding forces of this auto chthonous Anatolian culture, compounded as it was with heavily Asiatic elements. At the same time, relations with Rome and the western lands became increasingly distant. With the contemporary Christian belief in the indivisibility of Church and State, the Pope remained theoretically the subject of the Emperor, but the strength and independent spirit of the Papacy was clearly evinced in, for example, its uncompromising rejection of Constantinople's attempt to impose its own uniform practices on all ecclesiastical ritual and discipline at the Quinisextum Council of Constantinople in 692. And the gulf between the Latin and Orthodox Churches, as they came to be known, widened still further in 800 when Pope Leo III (795-816) crowned Charlemagne (800-814) emperor in Rome—thus symbolizing the divergence between the Churches as well as the political division between the now rival Empires centered on Rome (Western Roman) and Constantinople (Eastern Roman). But the final schism (Great Schism) between the Western and Eastern Churches was not to occur until 1054; and subsequent attempts at reunion—such as the Council and Union of Lyons in 1245 and of Florence in 1439—were doomed to failure.
The Eastern Roman Empire was faced with the implacable hostility of her co-religionists in the west, as perceived for example in Latin aims to acquire for themselves Muslim Syria and Palestine—once part of the Eastern Empire—and their willingness to ally with Islamic rulers against the Eastern Empire when it suited them.
In other directions, the Empire faced, during its thousand-year history, enemies on more than one front, often at the same time, and on a number of occasions Constantinople itself came under direct attack. Especially from the north, through the Balkans, came wave after wave of invasion and migration by various Turkish clans—Avars, Bulgars, Peceneks, Uz (Oguz), Kuman-Kipcaks—vast numbers of whom were gradually, from the 6C onwards, converted from their 'sky-god' religion with its shamanistic accretions and relocated by the Byzantines. These Turks were settled en masse in different parts of Anatolia (including the sparsely populated border zones in the south and south-east) in the Byzantine policy of the Christianization and repopulation of Anatolia, and were in time incorporated into the congregation of the Anatolian Orthodox Churches. Similarly, Slavic tribes headed south—in waves of invasion and migration—to add further to the racial and cultural mixture that was the Byzantine Empire. The 13C saw the establishment of the Altin Ordu branch of the Turco-Mongol Empire in Russia, with the consequent further pressure of migrating peoples south, and the conquest by the Ilhanli branch of Baghdad, successors to a long history of Muslim (and chiefly Arab) states against whom the Byzantines had intrigued and fought. The Sassanid Empire of Iran had twice advanced on Con stantinople early in the 7C; and the Caliphates of first the Umayyad and then the Abbasid dynasties organized, from Damascus and Baghdad respectively, numerous Muslim armies, predominantly Turkish in composition and usually under Turkish commanders— fighting with all the zeal of the newly converted. Their advances into Anatolia included further huge influxes of Turkish settlers who were established around the border zones in south-east and east Anatolia and Azerbaycan (Azerbaijan) as a counterpoise to the Byzantine settlement policies. It was these settlers who were to bear the brunt of the Christian attacks when the Muslim armies were themselves pushed back, particularly with the onset of the Crusades from Latin Europe in 1096—Crusades which had the fundamental intention of eradicating Islam, not simply the reconquering of Jerusalem and the territories of Palestine and Syria.
From Egypt, too, came strong counter-offensives to the Crusader and Byzantine incursions, from first the Ayyubids and then their successors, the Mamelukes. Yet this mutual antagonism did not pre vent alliances from being concluded by the Eastern Romans with the Altin Ordu and with the Mamelukes against the Ilhanlis in 1271, thus creating the short-term stability of a balance of power.
The predominantly Christian-Turkish presence in Anatolia had existed, as we have seen, for some centuries before the Selcuk victory over the Eastern Romans at Manzikert (Malazgirt) in 1071 firmly established the Anatolian Muslim Selcuk state there, as an offshoot of the larger Selcuk Empire to the east. And the quarter-century immediately following the battle of Manzikert saw the migration of over a million people—chiefly clans of newly converted Muslim Turks spreading from Central Asia; a number thought to have exceeded the existing, depleted population and which, there fore, turned Anatolia into a virtual Turkish homeland. From then on, almost continuous migrations of mainly Turkish peoples were to stream into Anatolia from the east, under pressure from the turbulent new Turco-Mongol states forming and expanding westward from Central Asia. And in just over a hundred years the Byzantine Empire turned from an offensive to a defensive empire, with the defeat of Manuel I Comnenus (1143-80) by the Selcuk sultan, Kilic Arslan (1156-92), at the battle of Myriocephalon (one of the passes of the Sultandag range, possibly Karamikbeli, north of Egridir Golu) in western Anatolia in 1176.
In the meantime, however, a new Mongol wave began its own occupation of eastern Anatolia from Erzurum, defeating the Selcuks at the battle of Kosedag (east of Sivas) in 1243 and establishing Ilhanli domination. Thus it disrupted Turkish unity in Anatolia—a unity that was not to be re-established until after the emergence of a new Turkish state, the Ottoman, at the end of the 13C.
We have seen, then, the range of racial and cultural, religious and linguistic influences acting upon and inevitably being absorbed into the Empire of the Eastern Romans. And that the land mass of Anatolia was no stranger to such infiltrations is evident from its previous history and prehistory. Yet what held together this nebulous mass of humanity centered around the Anatolian heartland of the Byzantine Empire? As I have pointed out, it was the religious orthodoxy of a dogmatic and increasingly isolated center of Chris tianity and the Hellenistic tradition derived from its Roman parent age. For the Roman Empire of the first three centuries AD had not simply transmitted the Hellenistic civilization it found in Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean; it had used what it found to develop its own traditions. And, indeed, in aspects of government, the Romans had laid down the framework of law and administrative organization that was, in all its essential features, to maintain the Eastern Empire for the first few centuries of its existence. Yet although the Byzantine conception of its Roman ideological and political heritage was to endure, its character did alter over the course of time, due mainly to the Christian ethic of the developing Empire and its gradual imposition of this Christianity on every aspect of the society, and to the substitution, during the reign of Heraclius (610—641), of Greek for Latin as the official language. Thus, in time, a system of government evolved in response to these and other political and economic developments, which came to have very little if anything in common with that of its predecessor, the Roman Empire.
The structure of the Eastern Roman Empire was a monarchal one in that the Emperor's authority was absolute, and his temporal and spiritual roles so closely identified that he was believed to embody political legitimacy and God's will in his own person—any form of disrespect to him warranting the death penalty. Respect for the laws, a very Roman preoccupation, thus characterized also the behavior of the Byzantine emperors, even though this might come to acquire only a formal sense. A new Emperor, for example, had to be accepted by the army, the people and the chief administrative and legislative organ—the Senate—in order to acquire legitimacy; but this pro cedure rapidly dwindled to the merest formality as the tradition was established that the Patriarch of Constantinople enthroned the new Emperor in the church of Hagia Sophia (or Ayasofya), thus bestow ing on him the highest spiritual legitimacy. A fair exchange, it might be argued, since the Patriarch was himself selected by the Emperor. In this way developed the doctrine of the Emperor's right and duty to protect the Church and defend Christians, not only in his temporal role by maintaining and extending the territories of the Christian Empire and actively encouraging the spread of the faith (through mass conversions of subject peoples), but also in his spiritual role by ensuring the maintenance of sound doctrine and the suppression of heresy- Yet while the Emperor possessed, and indeed acted upon, this extent of authority over the affairs of the Church, the counterpart was of course that the Church developed huge power in the adminis tration of the state and enormous influence among the imperial population as its authority was extended. This was primarily due to the intimate relationship between the foundation of the Empire and the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, as we have seen, but was compounded with the economic well-being of the Church which owned large tracts of land and much property; indeed, a wide network of monasteries covered the Empire. Yet the weakening of the Empire in its declining years was reflected in a weakening of the Church, as the loss of imperial territory involved the loss of Church territory. As the number of bishoprics reduced from 450 at their peak to 67 in the 15C, with the Empire's diminishing political dominion, it is interesting to observe that the bishoprics thus territor ially reduced all retained their titles. Indeed, to this day, the Istanbul Patriarchate retains its position and continues its traditional function under the Republic of Turkey's secular government.
Succession was, in theory, hereditary and joint emperors were not unknown—the second usually a high commander or the son of the first and nominated as his successor. Throughout the millennium of the Empire, there seems never to have been any attempt to move towards a constitutional monarchy or republic; all the popular uprisings and assassinations were evidently related to specific griev ances or a specific ruler, and never rejected the system itself or aimed at governing power.
The Emperor was also head of the judiciary, with all justice dispensed in his name. In the 14C the Emperor's court was the highest, with the higher officials as members, and dealt with major criminal offences as well as acting as the court of appeal for lesser crimes tried in the lower courts. The lower courts were headed by senior officials and provincial courts were maintained in the major cities. The initial severity of punishments was reduced slightly with the growing entrenchment of the official religion but increased once more under the Isaurian dynasty. For example, crucifixion was abolished but replaced by the cutting off of hands, feet or ears, and by blinding; punishments such as banishment and consignment to monasteries came to be used more extensively.
Administratively, the Empire was divided into the center and the provinces, both with a strong military disposition. The central admin istration was staffed by high military and civil personnel whose rivalry was a constant source of faction and struggle for control. The highest minister, the Magister Officiorum (Master of Offices), exerted authority in domestic and foreign affairs alike: he supervised the imperial machinery, controlled the palace guards, all frontier units, communications and security, and introduced and negotiated with ambassadors. But in the course of time this central ministry was dismantled and the heads of most of its departments developed into separate officials responsible directly to the Emperor. The chief institution was the Senate, based on the Roman model, whose most important role lay in exercising its authority in the selection and recognition of the Emperor—a role that was never removed, even though reduced to a formality. The Senate, whose membership comprised the economically important land-owning aristocracy of the provinces, inevitably gained and lost influence according to the strength and power of the incumbent Emperor. The other major central institution was the Imperial Council (Concilium Principis; later Sacrum Consistorium) composed of high civil servants based at the capital, whose lack of significance may be deduced from their meetings being called silentium (silence) and their being expected to listen respectfully, and standing, to the words of the Emperor. The term silentium was later adopted as the proper name of the Imperial Council, which gradually lost its status as a permanent body, meet ing only irregularly, at the behest of the Emperor. Opportunities for the Emperor to communicate directly with his subjects were provided by sessions in the Hippodrome (Sultan Ahmet Meydani) in Con stantinople.
In the provinces, the early civil and military administration was abandoned by Heraclius for a division of Anatolia into military provinces (themes), each under the command of a strategus who exercised, under the direct control of the Emperor, supreme military and civil command within his theme. The soldiers responsible for the defense of an area were given grants of land there on which to settle in return for hereditary service, and came to form the backbone of the Empire's defensive system. Over the centuries, various Slavic and Turkish populations were transplanted to parts of Anatolia by the government and settled in the themes as stratiotai (soldier-farmers), alongside local peasants likewise endowed with small-holdings in return for undertaking military obligations. By the 11C, the old structure of the theme system had collapsed and given way to two principal types of land-holding (the large hereditary estate of the civil or military magnate and the pronoia). The latter was a method of tenure whereby crown land was granted to secular magnates together with its entire revenue and rights of administration, often with exemptions from taxation and other public obligations and normally in return for military service. At first granted for fixed periods and inalienable, in the course of time the pronoia became hereditary, although the obligation of service generally remained. This fief-like pronoia, which centered on the relationship between land tenure and military service, and between the peasants and the local landed lord on whom they were economically dependent, was an important factor in the process of 'feudalization'—a process that tended to increase the power of the landed military (and even civil) aristocracy at the expense of the central administration, certainly in the later Byzantine period.
The imperial armed forces were well-trained and organized in the early period, with units maintained at the frontiers and the central army deployed wherever required. The early structure underwent considerable reorganization in the 7C with the introduction of the theme system bringing the provincial soldiery under the command of strategi. The army was composed of foot-soldiers and cavalry, plus some irregular troops at the frontiers, armed with swords, shields, spears, battle-axes and massive catapults for siege warfare. Increas ing numbers of foreign mercenaries were also employed.
Naval forces were established in the 7C in response to the establishment and successes of the navies of the Muslim states in the eastern Mediterranean. After this, the structure was reorganized from time to time, Heraclius combining all naval forces into a single theme and Leo III (717-741) dividing them into a central navy at Constantinople and provincial navy of the themes, while in the 10C they were further divided into units of three to five warships. After the 11C, the Byzantine naval forces fell into decline and were abolished by Andronicus II Palaeologus (1282-1328). With the ensu ing passage of maritime superiority to Venice and Genoa, his successor, Andronicus III Palaeologus (1328-41) tried to restore the navy but without success. And on the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, the Byzantine naval defense comprised five rented battleships, four of which were deployed in the Golden Horn (Halic).
As the Eastern Roman Empire was well placed in territory that controlled the major trade routes, both land and sea, between Asia, Europe and Africa, for centuries it dominated international trade—an important source of revenue. Byzantine gold coinage appears to have been much prized up to the middle of the 11C, but then gradually lost its value as the Empire declined—indeed, in the final years, the Empire was unable to mint any gold coins at all, so desperate were its financial straits. Moreover, from the later 13C, the still-substantial trade of Constantinople was largely controlled by foreigners who enjoyed numerous privileges and were generally exempt from taxa tion. Principal exports were manufactured goods, all industries being organized in guilds under state control and concentrated in Con stantinople. Of particular importance were the crafts in metal, glass and jewellery, but above all the textile industry in cotton, silk and linen-flax. It was during the reign of Justinian 11(527-565) that two priests are reputed to have smuggled the eggs of silk-worms inside a hollow cane from China and cultivation of silk was begun in Constantinople. From this time on, the export of silk constituted a very profitable trade in addition to meeting a substantial home demand from the wealthy, the Church and the Palace. Yet the centralization of the economy, as in most aspects of the society, is particularly evident in the contrast between the position of Con stantinople as the dominant (indeed at times the only) active urban center in the Empire with the numerous thriving cities acting as trade and cultural centers throughout Anatolia and beyond during the Hellenistic (and early Roman) period.
Meanwhile, the basis of the economy continued, as throughout Anatolian history, to be agriculture, with wheat as the staple crop, followed by fruit and cotton, and widespread animal husbandry. According to Byzantine thought, the soil belonged to God and was dispensed through the Emperor. Hence, all land belonged to the state and could be distributed in return for tax. Thus, in the early period, the nobility possessed the bulk of the land, the rest being worked by independent laborers; and later, with the introduction first of the theme and subsequently of the pronoia system, most of the land was distributed as military holdings. But throughout the Byzan tine period, the most important state income was derived from the land; agriculturalists, it appears, consistently bore the greater burden of taxation.
Turning to the intellectual side of Byzantine life, education was not widespread but concentrated mostly on the sons of the well-to-do, with the aim of recruiting bureaucratic personnel—the administration, like the Church, offering suitable career prospects likely to command considerable wealth and patronage. To this end, by the 10C, there had been set up in Constantinople ten schools teaching about 200-300 boys in all. Constantinople was early established as a center of learning as scholars from Alexandria, Antioch and Athens flocked to the new capital on its foundation; its university was established during the reign of Theodosius II (408-450) with, eventually, a total of 31 chairs—in Latin, Greek grammar, Greek science and philosophy, Latin rhetoric, philosophy, and law. Clearly, a strong classical tradition continued well into the Byzantine period. Nor were the teachers obliged to be Christians until Justinian's reign. At the height of the Iconoclastic controversy (726-843)—a long and bitter struggle between proponents of the cult of images and its opponents, eventually to be won by the former—the university was closed down, and remained closed for over 200 years until 863. After this, its fortunes waxed and waned in accordance with the interest and support of the reigning Emperor. Other centers of learning also existed, but of lesser importance and influence. And in all the schools, one might surmise that the emphasis on religious teaching and the participation of religious dignitaries as teachers increased as the Empire declined.
Intellectual life in general may be said to have been, from the first, closely connected with the inter-relations between the Christian Eastern and Western Roman and the Hellenistic worlds. It took several centuries for Christianity to establish itself thoroughly enough to permeate the whole of society. Yet the adoption of Greek as the official language of the Empire affected intellectual life in no small measure, and the Islamic conquest of Egypt, Syria and Pal estine in the 7C displaced much intellectual activity towards Con stantinople. However, it must be noted that such intellectual fields as astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, botany, zoology and medicine showed minimal development during the Byzantine period. At first, classical Latin and Greek texts were studied; and from the 9C, when the Empire opened up to Islamic civilization and learning, some works were translated from Arabic. Nor was geography well studied. The few works that were written tended to concentrate on the practical aspects of travel and pilgrimage and included lists of Church dignitaries. There was no interest in cartography.
As for creative literature, the early continuance of the old pagan tradition was in time replaced by the complete domination of Christian thinking, although the classical forms were long retained. Knowledge of the Bible came to be of principal importance for Byzantine authors, whether in Anatolia, Syria, Palestine or Egypt, all of which contained, in the early period, lively centers of literature— pride of place belonging, however, to Constantinople. Poetry was the preferred genre, taking as its subject-matter the weighty themes of history, law and theology, while all kinds of prose works were converted into poetry. Some poets took mythological tales as their topics and used the classical meter. Rhythmical poetry developed steadily from the 2C, with perhaps its most important practitioner being Romanus the Melode ('Hymn-Writer'), the simple language of whose hymns (especially his 'Nativity' hymn) conveys a profundity in sense. The 'Akathistos' hymn, still in use in the liturgy of the Orthodox Church, is attributed to the 6C Byzantine Empire. Rhetoric developed as an art and as a taught subject in the various Byzan tine schools from the 4C. Justinian's tutor, Agapetus, the Deacon of Hagia Sophia, wrote for him a book of 'advice literature' (‘Mirrors for Princes') outlining the religion, morals and political duties of a Christian king, entitled 'Ekthesis kephalaion parainetikon pros Basilea lustinianon' ('Advice to the Emperor Justinian'); the work found much favor and was translated into several lan guages.
From the 4C, the taste for religious fables and hagiography also grew, but about the middle of the 7C there set in a general stagnation of literature, as the Iconoclastic controversy decimated holy paintings and created a nervousness and timidity that was to affect intellectual pursuits in general. Only hagiography appears to have thrived, as those who suffered and died for the sake of the religious art were revered as saints by the populace, and their hagiographies, with those of priests, were much sought after.
With the re-establishment of the University of Constantinople in 863, the literary revival included a renewal of interest in classical literature. Ancient and early Byzantine works were collected, studied and summarized in encyclopedic volumes, of which perhaps one of the best examples is Photius' (the Patriarch of Constantinople) 'Myriobiblon ('Library'). About this time a taste for epigrams, didac tic and allegorical poetry developed—a taste indulged by numerous well-known and popular authors. The famous epic tale of the Byzantine struggles against the Muslim states, 'Basileus Digenis Akritas' ('King Digenis Akritas'), combined secular and religious themes; and the 11C also produced religious drama in verse and continued to meet the market for hagiographies. The military and political decline of the Empire juxtaposed, as is not unusual, with a revival in literature. In particular, after the Latin occupation of Constantinople from 1204, the influence of Latin literary subjects and the form of the epic, or tale in verse, popular with the Latin Crusaders, became fashionable. The kind of language used in literature began to be courtly; it is quite clear that no important literature ever appeared in the language and idiom of the people.
The two most important branches of scholarship in the Byzantine Empire were philosophy and history. Both, as with so many aspects of Eastern Roman culture and statecraft, continued the old traditions of Rome and the Hellenistic era for some centuries. Philosophy soon became embroiled with the divergent views of Christian thinkers on the possible utilization by Christianity of the old pagan culture in a harmonious way. Some encouraged this while others vehemently opposed it, yet, in general, one might argue that by the 9C Christian dogma dominated philosophy. Indeed, by the 11C the transfer of the products of Islamic civilization and of ancient Hellenistic civilization was fully realized by the Muslims of the Selcuk Turkish territories, so that the birth of the Renaissance and Reformation was chiefly assisted by the Islamic scholarship of the Selcuk period. Before the 6C, philosophy had been taught in the Christian centers of learning, often using the ancient traditions as a basis; for example, John Philoponus, teaching at Alexandria in the 6C, explained Christian belief by using Aristotelian logic and categories. This type of Chris tian thinking relying upon classical philosophy was long to continue; the 8C John of Damascus—one of the most outstanding Byzantine philosopher-theologians—argued that reality was revealed by God and that classical philosophy was the tool by which man might understand this revelation. Indeed, probably the most complete works of Orthodox dogma that we know is his "Pege gnoseos ('Fount of knowledge'). The independent philosophers gained ground from the mid 9C, their greatest representative, Michael Psellus, regarding Aristotelian logic and physics merely as a preliminary study to that of metaphysics. The independents, therefore, favored Plato, Plotinus and Proclus over Aristotle. But orthodox Byzantine philosophy, right up to the 14C, remained largely under Aristotelian influence.
Byzantine historiography, of which probably Procopius of Caesarea and Michael Psellus are the best-known practitioners, tended to concentrate on its own history and that of the peoples with whom the Empire had relations. Thus, their histories provide much informa tion on, for example, the Turkish clans and states of the Huns, Avars, Kuman-Kipcaks, Uz (Oguz), Hazars, Peceneks, Selcuks and Otto mans. The histories fall into three main categories—the 'Historia' (history), the 'Chronographia' (world history or chronicle) and the 'Ecclesiastica historia' (ecclesiastical history). But there seems to have been no major development in historiography under Byzantine rule.
As for the visual arts and architecture, the blending of the style of the preceding Roman and Hellenistic eras of Anatolia with the local traditions of far greater antiquity, within the context of an increas ingly Christian interpretation, inspired that distinctive art we call Byzantine. Yet under the broad temporal and spatial umbrella of the Eastern Roman Empire there existed a number of local schools with their own, more or less differing, styles. Indeed, while Constantino ple stood out as the main center of artistic and other activities, the moving force in art remained, as always, Anatolia. The peoples of Anatolia adopted the Christianity of their rulers, and their traditions and beliefs, never totally lost, adapted to suit this new faith.
Those aspects of Byzantine art which were fairly immovable—walls, buildings, architectural sculpture and reliefs, murals and mosaics—are liberally scattered throughout the major towns and cities of Anatolia. But of the more easily transportable arts—gold and silver artifacts, ivory and enamel, materials woven in silk, illumi nated manuscripts and icons—very little escaped the looting of the Crusades or the avid collecting of the Renaissance and modern periods; and a great deal is to be found gracing the museums of the European capitals—a testament to 19C imperial rivalry and imperial pomp. Indeed, that the buildings, especially those of a religious nature, still remain (a certain amount of disfiguration notwithstand ing) is due only to the tolerance of the succeeding Ottoman dynasty of the Turks and of the Islamic faith, which, while they may have converted many churches into mosques, did not raze to the ground all vestiges of the alien religion as has been the case in so many countries which found themselves heirs to an Islamic society.
In Constantinople lie the remains of the Byzantine Empire's only really outstanding defensive walls—the city walls constructed under Theodosius II to contain the rapidly expanding capital, and running for over 5km from the Marmara Sea to the Golden Horn. In general, Byzantine defensive architecture was unambitious and rather undistinguished, contributing no real innovations in style or effective ness. But central Anatolia is an interesting area for military architec ture, with citadels, defensive walls and fortresses at Kotaion (Kutahya), Ancyra (Ankara) and Akroenos (Afyonkarahisar). Of other secular architecture, Constantinople is the chief source, with its magnificent triumphal arch, the Golden Gate, and various monuments such as Constantine's Hooped Column (Cemberlitas) still standing. Of the numerous public squares and their linking colonnaded streets none remains, although the site of the famous Hippodrome—alongside Hagia Sophia and the Imperial Palace—and three of its monuments are still extant. The Palace itself comprised a huge complex of buildings that were continually improved and enlarged from the 6th to the 10C; after this, the imperial residence was transferred to the north-east of the city, the Blachernae quarter, where a sumptuous high pavilion dominated the Golden Horn. Excavation has also revealed some private palaces. But it was in the construction of aqueducts and cisterns to meet the water requirements of the capital s populace that Byzantine utilitarian architecture excelled, as evinced in the huge aqueduct of Valens (Roman Emperor in the East, AD 375—378) which extends for nearly a kilometer and the underground cistern (Yerebatan Sarayi) of Justinian with its 336 columns.
But given the religious complexion of the Byzantine Empire, it comes as no surprise that great attention was paid to church architec ture, and a clear development may be discerned from the period of Justinian. It was during this time that the distinctive Byzantine style began to emerge, with the domination of the basilical form which was to become the basis of a universal church plan. This kind of longitudinal hall with central and flanking naves separated by columns directed the gaze of the congregation to the altar at one end. The earliest Christian basilicas in Anatolia include the Church of St. John Studios (Imrahor Camii) in Istanbul, the Church of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus and some 5C churches in Pergamum and Cilicia. This basilical form gradually began to incorporate a dome over the central nave at the apse, in place of the old vaulted roof. And as the temper of religious thinking evolved to emphasize the direct ing upwards toward heaven of the worshippers' gaze, so the archi tectural tenor evolved towards a centralized structure of a square, or even octagonal plan supporting a central dome. Examples of this style include the Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus (Kucuk Ayasofya Camii) in Istanbul and, most notably, the Church of Hagia Sophia, constructed during Justinian's reign by two Anatolian architects-Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus. The 9th to 13C, after the stagnation of the Iconoclastic period, witnessed the pre dominance of the cruciform style in which the central square was surmounted by a dome and surrounded by four arms forming a cross, as can be observed, for example, in the 10C Church of the Myralaion Convent (Bodrum Camii) and the Church of St. Savior Pantepoptes (Eski Imaret Camii), both in Istanbul. After the demise of the Latin occupation of Constantinople and the accession of the Palaeologus dynasty from 1261 to the conquest of Constantinople, restoration rather than new building was the chief activity, using old building materials and cheaper, easier forms of decoration, such as fresco in place of mosaics. But the period shows much greater variety and vivacity in design and technique.
Away from the capital, every old pagan temple was converted sooner or later into a basilica as the Empire established itself. This transformation was sometimes achieved by ingenious innovations as at the Temple of Zeus Olbios at Diocaesarea (Uzuncaburc), but more often required no architectural alterations, the basilica simply being built around the existing temple, as at Side. In addition, numerous churches were built with their distinctive regional characteristics of style, technique and form. In western Anatolia, Ephesus became a prominent Byzantine city, its ancient cult of Artemis being replaced by that of the Virgin, who had her own basilica—the Church of the Virgin Mary—built and rebuilt on the remains of a huge ancient building. Also in Ephesus is the church built on what is said to be the tomb of St. John the Evangelist. Hierapolis became another major urban center with a number of important buildings. Southern Anat olia, along the Mediterranean shore, holds a wealth of Byzantine monuments, for almost every ancient city became a Byzantine town of some importance, and religious and secular buildings abound. The Iconium (Konya) region of central Anatolia was the location of numerous monastic foundations including troglodyte rock churches —normally associated with Cappadocia. Ancient Cappadocia is famous for its churches, homes, chapels, hermits cells and even convents hollowed out of the soft volcanic tufa that forms what are commonly known as 'fairy chimneys' (peri bacalari). In the eastern regions of Anatolia, around Lake Van, the Armenians developed an artistic style, particularly in architecture, so distinctive that it cannot really be included with the Byzantine.
What we know of the decorative arts of Byzantine Anatolia is, as I have pointed out, limited, but the bulk of our knowledge relates to architectural ornamentation such as frescoes and mosaics—of which numerous examples again trace a clear course through the long period of Byzantine history. As in the development of architecture, so the distinct Byzantine style of artistic decoration was evolving by Justinian's reign into low relief and rather abstract design, replacing the classical high relief and naturalistic designs. Yet the classicism of the naturalistic mosaics so well exemplified in the 5C mosaic pave ments of Antioch, portraying hunting scenes, animals and trees, clearly lingered on well into the 6C, as in the mosaic pavement of the Great Palace of Constantinople with its rural scenes of hunting, fishing, playful children and various wild and domestic animals. But gradually mosaic decoration, particularly in religious architecture, was becoming more symbolic, blending into the spatial conception of the building. From about the middle of the 6C the icon, or holy personage depicted on a panel, began to dominate both art and religious devotion. The importance of the icon lay not in its symbolic or instructive purpose but in its role as representing the actual presence of the saintly personage, and it was against this aspect—the idolatrous worship of images—that the imperial Iconoclasts reacted so harshly, prompting the century-long period of Iconoclastic strug gle. For this reason, little remains or is known of the art of the periods just preceding and during the century of Iconoclasm; but its final defeat in 843 on the grounds that rejection of the representation of the holy figure of Christ denied his humanity and thus made a nonsense of the Incarnation, opened the way to a flowering of Byzantine art from the 9th to the 11C.
This 'Golden Age' of Byzantine art developed most fully in wall mosaics and, in particular, the large-scale mosaic decorations cre ated under the patronage of the court, the finest of which are to be found in Hagia Sophia. The richness and depth of the mosaics of this period can be attributed to the undulating technique combined with the mixture of reflecting glass, stone and even silver and gold pieces with matt terracotta, thus allowing light to play over the surface to give the brightly-colored designs an effect of animation.
One of the most important regional developments in figurative art was that of the Cappadocian rock churches—the frescoes of Goreme, Urgup and Nigde being of particular interest for their narrative form and distinctive style and technique.
The final period of Byzantine art, dating from the regaining of Constantinople from the Latins in 1261 by the new Palaeologian dynasty until its conquest by the Ottomans, juxtaposed the severe political and economic decline of the Empire with a new humanistic vigor and creativity in the decorative arts. Among the fairly numer ous works ascribed to this period, including the Deesis mosaic panel in the Hagia Sophia, probably the most outstanding is the Church of St. Savior in Chora (Kariye Camii) in Istanbul, whose early 14C mosaics depict a series of scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and whose frescoes portray scenes of the afterlife and Resurrection; all are vivid, expressive and animated in their detail, and both frescoes and mosaics have been preserved and restored to their original beauty.
In the minor arts, secular works have been discovered, or are known through historical sources. Particularly interesting are the early ivories and silver plates which bore a strong Hellenistic character as late as the 7C. Figurative sculpture, however, so promi nent a genre in the Hellenistic period, seems to have sunk into a decline from the 5C, discouraged by the Church and lingering only in monuments to emperors until about the end of the 8C. Jewellery and textiles indicate closer links with eastern or pre-Hellenistic Anatolian designs, with motifs such as the lion-headed bird reminis cent of the Urartian fantastic-animal figures and the stylized tree between two birds or animals—the Tree of Life—dating back as far as the Late Hittite/Urartian period, if not further. But in time the minor arts, particularly ivories and work in metal and enamel, came to be as preoccupied with religious themes as the other branches of art—notably miniatures and manuscript illustra tion—and scholarship in the Byzantine Empire. Precious materials like onyx and rock crystal were also used only for religious vessels, as was glass. Only metal and pottery seem to have been employed for household use.
Thus, the overwhelming image cast by the Byzantine Empire is one of intense, even brooding, religiosity in the arts and intellectual pursuits—but a religiosity combined, in statecraft and relations both domestic and foreign, with an overweening desire for temporal power and wealth, and a cruelty and deception astonishing even by the standards of the age. Yet these characteristics allowed the Empire to endure for nearly a thousand years and to produce a distinctive style of art and religious outlook that continues to this day in areas where the Eastern Orthodox Church survives. But despite its idiosyncratic Christianity, and conviction of its place as the legitimate successor to the Roman Empire—with Justinian's ambition in the 6C to restore the old Roman boundaries in their entirety—the sheer physical geography and ethnic composition of the Empire rooted it definitively in its Anatolian past. The Byzantine Empire, then, with its pivotal position amidst numerous cultural influences—both spatial and temporal—could never be considered a truly European state; drawing on its Anatolian heritage, the Byzantine Empire was but one in a series of Anatolian civilizations.
