what events and circumstances led to the rise of the byzantine empire
The Byzantine Empire was a vast and powerful civilization with origins that can be traced to 330 A.D., when the Roman emperor Constantine I defended a "New Rome" on the site of the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium. Though the western half of the Roman Empire crumbled and fell in 476 A.D., the eastern half survived for one,000 more years, spawning a rich tradition of fine art, literature and learning and serving as a military machine buffer between Europe and Asia. The Byzantine Empire finally fell in 1453, later an Ottoman ground forces stormed Constantinople during the reign of Constantine 11.
Byzantium
The term "Byzantine" derives from Byzantium, an ancient Greek colony founded by a man named Byzas. Located on the European side of the Bosporus (the strait linking the Black Bounding main to the Mediterranean), the site of Byzantium was ideally located to serve equally a transit and merchandise bespeak betwixt Europe and Asia.
In 330 A.D., Roman Emperor Constantine I chose Byzantium as the site of a "New Rome" with an eponymous majuscule city, Constantinople. 5 years before, at the Council of Nicaea, Constantine had established Christianity — one time an obscure Jewish sect — as Rome's official religion.
The citizens of Constantinople and the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire identified strongly as Romans and Christians, though many of them spoke Greek and non Latin.
Though Constantine ruled over a unified Roman Empire, this unity proved illusory after his expiry in 337. In 364, Emperor Valentinian I once again divided the empire into western and eastern sections, putting himself in power in the west and his brother Valens in the e.
The fate of the two regions diverged greatly over the adjacent several centuries. In the west, constant attacks from German invaders such as the Visigoths broke the struggling empire down piece by slice until Italian republic was the just territory left under Roman control. In 476, the barbarian Odoacer overthrew the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, and Rome had fallen.
Byzantine Empire Flourishes
The eastern half of the Roman Empire proved less vulnerable to external attack, thanks in part to its geographic location.
With Constantinople located on a strait, information technology was extremely hard to alienation the capital letter'due south defenses; in addition, the eastern empire had a much smaller common borderland with Europe.
It also benefited greatly from a stronger administrative eye and internal political stability, also as great wealth compared with other states of the early medieval menses. The eastern emperors were able to exert more command over the empire'southward economic resource and more finer muster sufficient manpower to combat invasion.
Eastern Roman Empire
Equally a upshot of these advantages, the Eastern Roman Empire, variously known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium, was able to survive for centuries after the autumn of Rome.
Though Byzantium was ruled by Roman police force and Roman political institutions, and its official language was Latin, Greek was as well widely spoken, and students received educational activity in Greek history, literature and culture.
In terms of organized religion, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 officially established the segmentation of the Christian globe into separate patriarchates, including Rome (where the patriarch would later telephone call himself pope), Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.
Even after the Islamic empire absorbed Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in the seventh century, the Byzantine emperor would remain the spiritual leader of most eastern Christians.
Justinian I
Justinian I, who took power in 527 and would rule until his death in 565, was the outset great ruler of the Byzantine Empire. During the years of his reign, the empire included about of the state surrounding the Mediterranean Ocean, as Justinian'due south armies conquered part of the former Western Roman Empire, including North Africa.
Many great monuments of the empire would be built under Justinian, including the spectacular domed Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia. Justinian also reformed and codification Roman law, establishing a Byzantine legal code that would suffer for centuries and help shape the mod concept of the state.
At the fourth dimension of Justinian's expiry, the Byzantine Empire reigned supreme as the largest and almost powerful state in Europe. Debts incurred through war had left the empire in dire financial straits, however, and his successors were forced to heavily tax Byzantine citizens in order to go along the empire afloat.
In addition, the royal regular army was stretched too thin, and would struggle in vain to maintain the territory conquered during Justinian's dominion. During the seventh and eighth centuries, attacks from the Persian Empire and from Slavs, combined with internal political instability and economic regression, threatened the vast empire.
A new, even more serious threat arose in the form of Islam, founded by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca in 622. In 634, Muslim armies began their attack on the Byzantine Empire by storming into Syrian arab republic.
By the end of the century, Byzantium would lose Syria, the Holy Land, Egypt and Due north Africa (among other territories) to Islamic forces.
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Iconoclasm
During the eighth and early ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors (get-go with Leo III in 730) spearheaded a movement that denied the holiness of icons, or religious images, and prohibited their worship or veneration.
Known as Iconoclasm—literally "the smashing of images"—the movement waxed and waned nether various rulers, but did non end definitively until 843, when a Church building council under Emperor Michael Iii ruled in favor of the display of religious images.
Byzantine Art
During the late 10th and early on 11th centuries, under the dominion of the Macedonian dynasty founded by Michael III's successor, Basil, the Byzantine Empire enjoyed a golden age.
Though information technology stretched over less territory, Byzantium had more control over trade, more than wealth and more international prestige than under Justinian. The strong imperial government patronized Byzantine art, including now-cherished Byzantine mosaics.
Rulers also began restoring churches, palaces and other cultural institutions and promoting the study of aboriginal Greek history and literature.
Greek became the official language of the country, and a flourishing culture of monasticism was centered on Mountain Athos in northeastern Greece. Monks administered many institutions (orphanages, schools, hospitals) in everyday life, and Byzantine missionaries won many converts to Christianity among the Slavic peoples of the central and eastern Balkans (including Bulgaria and Serbia) and Russian federation.
The Crusades
The end of the 11th century saw the first of the Crusades, the series of holy wars waged by European Christians against Muslims in the Near Due east from 1095 to 1291.
With the Seijuk Turks of central Asia bearing down on Constantinople, Emperor Alexius I turned to the West for help, resulting in the declaration of "holy war" by Pope Urban Two at Clermont, France, that began the Offset Cause.
As armies from France, Frg and Italy poured into Byzantium, Alexius tried to force their leaders to swear an adjuration of loyalty to him in order to guarantee that land regained from the Turks would be restored to his empire. After Western and Byzantine forces recaptured Nicaea in Asia Minor from the Turks, Alexius and his regular army retreated, cartoon accusations of betrayal from the Crusaders.
During the subsequent Crusades, animosity continued to build between Byzantium and the West, culminating in the conquest and annexation of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
The Latin regime established in Constantinople existed on shaky ground due to the open up hostility of the city'due south population and its lack of money. Many refugees from Constantinople fled to Nicaea, site of a Byzantine authorities-in-exile that would retake the capital and overthrow Latin dominion in 1261.
Fall of Constantinople
During the dominion of the Palaiologan emperors, beginning with Michael Viii in 1261, the economic system of the once-mighty Byzantine state was crippled, and never regained its former stature.
In 1369, Emperor John V unsuccessfully sought financial help from the West to confront the growing Turkish threat, but he was arrested as an insolvent debtor in Venice. Four years later, he was forced–like the Serbian princes and the ruler of Republic of bulgaria–to become a vassal of the mighty Turks.
As a vassal state, Byzantium paid tribute to the sultan and provided him with military support. Under John's successors, the empire gained desultory relief from Ottoman oppression, but the rise of Murad II every bit sultan in 1421 marked the finish of the final respite.
Murad revoked all privileges given to the Byzantines and laid siege to Constantinople; his successor, Mehmed II, completed this process when he launched the concluding attack on the urban center. On May 29, 1453, after an Ottoman army stormed Constantinople, Mehmed triumphantly entered the Hagia Sophia, which would soon exist converted to the city'due south leading mosque.
The autumn of Constantinople marked the end of a glorious era for the Byzantine Empire. Emperor Constantine Xi died in battle that twenty-four hours, and the Byzantine Empire complanate, ushering in the long reign of the Ottoman Empire.
Legacy of the Byzantine Empire
In the centuries leading up to the terminal Ottoman conquest in 1453, the civilisation of the Byzantine Empire–including literature, art, architecture, police and theology–flourished even equally the empire itself faltered.
Byzantine culture would exert a great influence on the Western intellectual tradition, as scholars of the Italian Renaissance sought help from Byzantine scholars in translating Greek infidel and Christian writings. (This process would continue after 1453, when many of these scholars fled from Constantinople to Italy.)
Long after its end, Byzantine civilisation and culture continued to do an influence on countries that expert its Eastern Orthodox religion, including Russian federation, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, among others.
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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-middle-east/byzantine-empire
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