One of the greatest state formations of antiquity, in the first centuries of our era fell into decay. Numerous tribes standing at the lowest levels of civilization destroyed much of the heritage of the ancient world. But the Eternal City was not destined to perish: it was reborn on the banks of the Bosphorus and for many years amazed contemporaries with its splendor.
Second Rome
The history of the emergence of Byzantium dates back to the middle of the 3rd century, when Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantine, Constantine I (the Great), became Roman emperor. In those days, the Roman state was torn apart by internal strife and besieged by external enemies. The condition of the eastern provinces was more prosperous, and Constantine decided to move the capital to one of them. In 324, the construction of Constantinople began on the banks of the Bosphorus, and already in 330 it was declared New Rome.
This is how Byzantium began its existence, whose history goes back eleven centuries.
Of course, there was no talk of any stable state borders in those days. Throughout its long life, the power of Constantinople either weakened or regained power.
Justinian and Theodora
In many ways, the state of affairs in the country depended on the personal qualities of its ruler, which is generally typical for states with an absolute monarchy, to which Byzantium belonged. The history of its formation is inextricably linked with the name of Emperor Justinian I (527-565) and his wife, Empress Theodora - a very extraordinary and, apparently, extremely gifted woman.
By the beginning of the 5th century, the empire had become a small Mediterranean state, and the new emperor was obsessed with the idea of reviving its former glory: he conquered vast territories in the West and achieved relative peace with Persia in the East.
History is inextricably linked with the era of Justinian's reign. It is thanks to his care that today there are such monuments of ancient architecture as the mosque in Istanbul or the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna. Historians consider one of the emperor's most notable achievements to be the codification of Roman law, which became the basis of the legal system of many European states.
Medieval mores
Construction and endless wars required huge expenses. The emperor endlessly raised taxes. Discontent grew in society. In January 532, during the appearance of the emperor at the Hippodrome (a kind of analogue of the Colosseum, which accommodated 100 thousand people), riots began that grew into a large-scale riot. The uprising was suppressed with unheard-of cruelty: the rebels were convinced to gather in the Hippodrome, as if for negotiations, after which they locked the gates and killed every single one.
Procopius of Caesarea reports the death of 30 thousand people. It is noteworthy that his wife Theodora retained the emperor’s crown; it was she who convinced Justinian, who was ready to flee, to continue the fight, saying that she preferred death to flight: “royal power is a beautiful shroud.”
In 565, the empire included parts of Syria, the Balkans, Italy, Greece, Palestine, Asia Minor and the northern coast of Africa. But endless wars had an unfavorable effect on the state of the country. After the death of Justinian, the borders began to shrink again.
"Macedonian Renaissance"
In 867, Basil I, the founder of the Macedonian dynasty, which lasted until 1054, came to power. Historians call this era the “Macedonian Renaissance” and consider it the maximum flowering of the world medieval state, which Byzantium was at that time.
The story of the successful cultural and religious expansion of the Eastern Roman Empire is well known to all states of Eastern Europe: one of the most characteristic features of the foreign policy of Constantinople was missionary work. It was thanks to the influence of Byzantium that the branch of Christianity spread to the East, which after 1054 became Orthodoxy.
European Capital of Culture
The art of the Eastern Roman Empire was closely connected with religion. Unfortunately, for several centuries, political and religious elites could not agree on whether the worship of sacred images was idolatry (the movement was called iconoclasm). In the process, a huge number of statues, frescoes and mosaics were destroyed.
History is extremely indebted to the empire; throughout its existence, it was a kind of guardian of ancient culture and contributed to the spread of ancient Greek literature in Italy. Some historians are convinced that it was largely thanks to the existence of New Rome that the Renaissance became possible.
During the reign of the Macedonian dynasty, the Byzantine Empire managed to neutralize the two main enemies of the state: the Arabs in the east and the Bulgarians in the north. The story of the victory over the latter is very impressive. As a result of a surprise attack on the enemy, Emperor Vasily II managed to capture 14 thousand prisoners. He ordered them to be blinded, leaving only one eye for every hundredth, after which he sent the crippled people home. Seeing his blind army, the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel suffered a blow from which he never recovered. Medieval morals were indeed very harsh.
After the death of Basil II, the last representative of the Macedonian dynasty, the story of the fall of Byzantium began.
Rehearsal for the end
In 1204, Constantinople surrendered for the first time under the onslaught of the enemy: enraged by the unsuccessful campaign in the “promised land,” the crusaders burst into the city, announced the creation of the Latin Empire and divided the Byzantine lands between the French barons.
The new formation did not last long: on July 51, 1261, Constantinople was occupied without a fight by Michael VIII Palaiologos, who announced the revival of the Eastern Roman Empire. The dynasty he founded ruled Byzantium until its fall, but it was a rather miserable reign. In the end, the emperors lived on handouts from Genoese and Venetian merchants, and naturally plundered church and private property.
Fall of Constantinople
By the beginning, only Constantinople, Thessaloniki and small scattered enclaves in southern Greece remained from the former territories. Desperate attempts by the last emperor of Byzantium, Manuel II, to gain military support were unsuccessful. On May 29, Constantinople was conquered for the second and last time.
The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II renamed the city Istanbul, and the main Christian temple of the city, St. Sofia, turned into a mosque. With the disappearance of the capital, Byzantium also disappeared: the history of the most powerful state of the Middle Ages ceased forever.
Byzantium, Constantinople and New Rome
It is a very curious fact that the name “Byzantine Empire” appeared after its collapse: it was first found in the study of Jerome Wolf in 1557. The reason was the name of the city of Byzantium, on the site of which Constantinople was built. The inhabitants themselves called it nothing less than the Roman Empire, and themselves - Romans (Romeans).
The cultural influence of Byzantium on the countries of Eastern Europe is difficult to overestimate. However, the first Russian scientist who began to study this medieval state was Yu. A. Kulakovsky. “The History of Byzantium” in three volumes was published only at the beginning of the twentieth century and covered events from 359 to 717. In the last few years of his life, the scientist was preparing the fourth volume of his work for publication, but after his death in 1919, the manuscript could not be found.
To understand the reasons for the fall of the Byzantine Empire, a brief excursion into history should be taken. In 395, after the death of the ruler Theodosius I and the collapse of the great Roman state, its western part ceased to exist. In its place the Byzantine Empire was formed. Before the collapse of Rome, its western half was called “Greek”, since the bulk of its population were Hellenes.
general information
For almost ten centuries, Byzantium was the historical and cultural follower of Ancient Rome. This state included incredibly rich lands and a large number of cities located in the territories of present-day Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece. Despite the corrupt management system, unbearably high taxes, a slave-type economy and constant court intrigues, the economy of Byzantium for a long time was the most powerful in Europe.
The state traded with all former western Roman possessions and with India. Even after the conquest of some of its territories by the Arabs, the Byzantine Empire remained very rich. However, the financial costs were high, and the country’s well-being aroused great envy among its neighbors. But the decline in trade, which was caused by the privileges granted to Italian merchants, (the capital of the state) by the crusaders, as well as the onslaught of the Turks, caused the final weakening of the financial condition and the state as a whole.
Description
In this article we will tell you the reasons for the fall of Byzantium, what were the prerequisites for the collapse of one of the richest and most powerful empires of our civilization. No other ancient state existed for such a long time - 1120 years. The fabulous wealth of the elite, the beauty and exquisite architecture of the capital and large cities - all this took place against the backdrop of the deep barbarism of the peoples of Europe in which they lived during the heyday of this country.
The Byzantine Empire lasted until the mid-sixteenth century. This powerful nation had a huge cultural heritage. During its heyday, it controlled vast territories in Europe, Africa and Asia. Byzantium occupied the Balkan Peninsula, almost all of Asia Minor, Palestine, Syria and Egypt. Her possessions also covered parts of Armenia and Mesopotamia. Few people know that she also owned possessions in the Caucasus and the Crimean Peninsula.
Story
The total area of the Byzantine Empire was more than one million square kilometers with a population of approximately 35 million people. The state was so large that its emperors in the Christian world were considered the supreme overlords. Legends were told about the unimaginable wealth and splendor of this state. The peak of Byzantine art came during the reign of Justinian. It was a golden age.
The Byzantine state included many large cities in which a literate population lived. Due to its excellent location, Byzantium was considered the largest trading and maritime power. From it there were routes even to the most remote places at that time. The Byzantines traded with India, China, and Ceylon, Ethiopia, Britain, Scandinavia. Therefore, the gold solidus - the monetary unit of this empire - became an international currency.
And although Byzantium strengthened after the Crusades, after the massacre of the Latins there was a deterioration in relations with the West. This was the reason that the fourth crusade was already directed against herself. In 1204, its capital, Constantinople, was captured. As a result, Byzantium broke up into several states, including the Latin and Achaean principalities created in the territories captured by the crusaders, the Trebizond, Nicaean and Epirus empires, which remained under the control of the Greeks. The Latins began to suppress Hellenistic culture, and the dominance of Italian traders prevented the revival of cities. It is impossible to briefly name the reasons for the fall of the Byzantine Empire. They are numerous. The collapse of this once flourishing state was a huge blow for the entire Orthodox world.
Economic reasons for the fall of the Byzantine Empire
They can be presented point by point as follows. It was economic instability that played a decisive role in the weakening and subsequent death of this richest state.
A divided society
There were not only economic, but also other internal reasons for the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The ruling feudal and church circles of this once flourishing state failed not only to lead their people, but also to find with them mutual language. Moreover, the government proved unable to restore unity even around itself. Therefore, at the moment when the consolidation of all was required to repel the external enemy internal forces state, in Byzantium, enmity and schism, mutual suspicion and distrust reigned everywhere. The attempts of the last emperor, who (according to the chroniclers) was known as a brave and honest man, to rely on the residents of the capital turned out to be late.
The presence of strong external enemies
Byzantium fell due not only to internal but also external reasons. This was greatly facilitated by the selfish policy of the papacy and many Western European states, which left her without help at the time of threat from the Turks. The lack of goodwill of her long-time enemies, of whom there were many among Catholic prelates and sovereigns, also played a significant role. All of them dreamed not of saving the huge empire, but only of seizing its rich inheritance. This can be called the main reason for the death of the Byzantine Empire. The lack of strong and reliable allies contributed greatly to the collapse of this country. Alliances with the Slavic states located on the Balkan Peninsula were sporadic and fragile. This occurred both due to a lack of mutual trust on both sides and due to internal disagreements.
Fall of the Byzantine Empire
The causes and consequences of the collapse of this once mighty civilized country are numerous. It was greatly weakened by clashes with the Seljuks. There were also religious reasons for the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Having converted to Orthodoxy, she lost the support of the Pope. Byzantium could have disappeared from the face of the earth even earlier, even during the reign of the Seljuk Sultan Bayezid. However, Timur (Central Asian Emir) prevented this. He defeated the enemy troops and took Bayazid prisoner.
After the fall of such a fairly powerful Armenian crusader state as Cilicia, it was the turn of Byzantium. Many people dreamed of capturing it, from the bloodthirsty Ottomans to the Egyptian Mamelukes. But they were all afraid to go against the Turkish Sultan. Not a single European state started a war against him for the interests of Christianity.
Consequences
After the establishment of Turkish rule over Byzantium, a persistent and lengthy struggle of the Slavic and other Balkan peoples against the foreign yoke began. In many countries of the South-Eastern Empire, economic decline followed and social development, which led to a long regression in the development of productive forces. Although the Ottomans strengthened the economic position of some of the feudal lords who collaborated with the conquerors, expanding the internal market for them, nevertheless, the peoples of the Balkans experienced severe oppression, including religious oppression. The establishment of conquerors in Byzantine territory turned it into a springboard for Turkish aggression directed against Central and Eastern Europe, as well as against the Middle East.
Much of this tone was set by the 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon, who devoted at least three-quarters of his six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to what we would unhesitatingly call the Byzantine period.. And although this view has not been mainstream for a long time, we still must start talking about Byzantium as if not from the beginning, but from the middle. After all, Byzantium has neither a founding year nor a founding father, like Rome with Romulus and Remus. Byzantium quietly sprouted from within Ancient Rome, but never broke away from it. After all, the Byzantines themselves did not think of themselves as something separate: they did not know the words “Byzantium” and “Byzantine Empire” and called themselves either “Romeans” (that is, “Romans” in Greek), appropriating the history of Ancient Rome, or “ a race of Christians,” appropriating the entire history of the Christian religion.We do not recognize Byzantium in early Byzantine history with its praetors, prefects, patricians and provinces, but this recognition will increase as emperors acquire beards, consuls turn into ipates, and senators into synclitics.
Background
The birth of Byzantium will not be understandable without returning to the events of the 3rd century, when a severe economic and political crisis broke out in the Roman Empire, which actually led to the collapse of the state. In 284, Diocletian came to power (like almost all third-century emperors, he was just a Roman officer of humble birth - his father was a slave) and took measures to decentralize power. First, in 286, he divided the empire into two parts, entrusting control of the West to his friend Maximian Herculius, and leaving the East for himself. Then, in 293, wanting to increase the stability of the system of government and ensure the succession of power, he introduced a system of tetrarchy - a four-part government, which was carried out by two senior emperors, the Augustans, and two junior emperors, the Caesars. Each part of the empire had an Augustus and a Caesar (each of whom had their own geographical area of responsibility - for example, the Augustus of the West controlled Italy and Spain, and the Caesar of the West controlled Gaul and Britain). After 20 years, the Augusti had to transfer power to the Caesars, so that they would become Augusti and elect new Caesars. However, this system turned out to be unviable and after the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian in 305, the empire again plunged into an era civil wars.
Birth of Byzantium
1. 312 - Battle of the Milvian Bridge
After the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian, supreme power passed to the former Caesars - Galerius and Constantius Chlorus, who became Augusti, but, contrary to expectations, neither Constantius's son Constantine (later Emperor Constantine I the Great, considered the first emperor of Byzantium) nor Maximian's son Maxentius. Nevertheless, both of them did not abandon imperial ambitions and from 306 to 312 alternately entered into a tactical alliance in order to jointly confront other contenders for power (for example, Flavius Severus, appointed Caesar after the abdication of Diocletian), or, on the contrary, entered into the struggle. Constantine's final victory over Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber River (now within Rome) meant the unification of the western part of the Roman Empire under the rule of Constantine. Twelve years later, in 324, as a result of another war (this time with Licinius, Augustus and ruler of the East of the empire, who was appointed by Galerius), Constantine united East and West.
The miniature in the center depicts the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. From the homilies of Gregory the Theologian. 879-882
MS grec 510 /
The Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the Byzantine mind was associated with the idea of the birth of a Christian empire. This was facilitated, firstly, by the legend of the miraculous sign of the Cross, which Constantine saw in the sky before the battle - Eusebius of Caesarea tells about this (though in completely different ways) Eusebius of Caesarea(c. 260-340) - Greek historian, author of the first church history. and Lactantium Lactantium(c. 250---325) - Latin writer, apologist for Christianity, author of the essay “On the Deaths of the Persecutors,” dedicated to the events of the era of Diocletian., and secondly, the fact that two edicts were issued about the same time Edict- normative act, decree. on religious freedom, legalizing Christianity and equalizing rights for all religions. And although the publication of edicts on religious freedom did not have direct relationship to the fight against Maxentius (the first was published by Emperor Galerius in April 311, and the second by Constantine together with Licinius in February 313 in Milan), the legend reflects the internal connection of the seemingly independent political steps of Constantine, who was the first to feel that state centralization impossible without the consolidation of society, primarily in the sphere of worship.
However, under Constantine, Christianity was only one of the candidates for the role of a consolidating religion. The emperor himself was for a long time an adherent of the cult of the Invincible Sun, and the time of his Christian baptism is still the subject of scientific debate.
2. 325 - First Ecumenical Council
In 325, Constantine summoned representatives of local churches to the city of Nicaea Nicaea- now the city of Iznik in Northwestern Turkey., to resolve the dispute between the Alexandrian bishop Alexander and Arius, a presbyter of one of the Alexandrian churches, about whether Jesus Christ was created by God The Arians' opponents summed up their teachings succinctly: "There was a time when [Christ] was not.". This meeting became the first Ecumenical Council - a meeting of representatives of all local churches, with the right to formulate doctrine, which would then be recognized by all local churches It is impossible to say exactly how many bishops participated in the council, since its acts have not been preserved. Tradition calls the number 318. Be that as it may, talking about the “ecumenical” nature of the council can only be done with reservations, since in total there were more than 1,500 episcopal sees at that time.. The First Ecumenical Council is a key stage in the institutionalization of Christianity as an imperial religion: its meetings were held not in a temple, but in the imperial palace, the cathedral was opened by Constantine I himself, and the closing was combined with grandiose celebrations on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his reign.
First Council of Nicaea. Fresco from the Stavropoleos Monastery. Bucharest, 18th century
Wikimedia Commons
The First Council of Nicaea and the subsequent First Council of Constantinople (meeted in 381) condemned the Arian teaching about the created nature of Christ and the inequality of hypostases in the Trinity, and the Apollinarian teaching about the incompleteness of the perception of human nature by Christ, and formulated the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which recognized Jesus Christ not created, but born (but at the same time eternal), and all three hypostases have the same nature. The Creed was recognized as true, not subject to further doubts and discussions. The words of the Nice-Constantinopolitan Creed about Christ, which caused the most fierce debate, in the Slavic translation sound like this: “[I believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten, who was born of the Father before all ages; Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, uncreated, consubstantial with the Father, by whom all things were.”.
Never before has any school of thought in Christianity been condemned by the fullness of the universal church and imperial power, and no theological school has been recognized as heresy. The era of the Ecumenical Councils that has begun is an era of struggle between orthodoxy and heresy, which are in constant self- and mutual determination. At the same time, the same teaching could alternately be recognized as a heresy, then as a right faith - depending on the political situation (this was the case in the 5th century), however, the very idea of the possibility and necessity of protecting orthodoxy and condemning heresy with the help of the state was questioned in Byzantium has never been installed before.
3. 330 - transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople
Although Rome always remained the cultural center of the empire, the tetrarchs chose cities on the periphery as their capitals, from which it was more convenient for them to repel external attacks: Nicomedia Nicomedia- now Izmit (Türkiye)., Sirmium Sirmium- now Sremska Mitrovica (Serbia)., Milan and Trier. During the period of Western rule, Constantine I moved his residence to Milan, Sirmium, and Thessalonica. His rival Licinius also changed his capital, but in 324, when a war began between him and Constantine, his stronghold in Europe became the ancient city of Byzantium on the banks of the Bosphorus, known from Herodotus.
Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror and the Serpent Column. Miniature of Naqqash Osman from the manuscript of “Hüner-name” by Seyyid Lokman. 1584-1588 Wikimedia Commons
During the siege of Byzantium, and then in preparation for the decisive battle of Chrysopolis on the Asian shore of the strait, Constantine assessed the position of Byzantium and, having defeated Licinius, immediately began a program to renew the city, personally participating in the marking of the city walls. The city gradually took over the functions of the capital: a Senate was established in it and many Roman Senate families were forcibly transported closer to the Senate. It was in Constantinople, during his lifetime, that Constantine ordered the construction of a tomb for himself. Various wonders of the ancient world were brought to the city, for example, the bronze Serpent Column, created in the 5th century BC in honor of the victory over the Persians at Plataea Battle of Plataea(479 BC) — one of the most important battles of the Greco-Persian wars, as a result of which the ground forces of the Achaemenid Empire were finally defeated..
The 6th century chronicler John Malala says that on May 11, 330, Emperor Constantine appeared at the solemn ceremony of consecration of the city wearing a diadem - a symbol of the power of eastern despots, which his Roman predecessors avoided in every possible way. The shift in the political vector was symbolically embodied in the spatial movement of the center of the empire from west to east, which, in turn, had a decisive influence on the formation of Byzantine culture: the transfer of the capital to territories that had been speaking Greek for a thousand years determined its Greek-speaking character, and Constantinople itself became at the center of the Byzantine's mental map and became identified with the entire empire.
4. 395 - division of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western
Despite the fact that in 324 Constantine, having defeated Licinius, formally united the East and West of the empire, ties between its parts remained weak, and cultural differences grew. No more than ten bishops (out of approximately 300 participants) arrived from the western provinces at the First Ecumenical Council; Most of the arrivals were not able to understand Constantine's welcoming speech, which he delivered in Latin, and it had to be translated into Greek.
Half a silicone. Flavius Odoacer on the obverse of a coin from Ravenna. 477 Odoacer is depicted without the imperial diadem - with a bare head, a mop of hair and a mustache. Such an image is uncharacteristic of emperors and is considered “barbaric.” The Trustees of the British Museum
The final division occurred in 395, when Emperor Theodosius I the Great, who for several months before his death became the sole ruler of East and West, divided the power between his sons Arcadius (East) and Honorius (West). However, formally the West still remained connected with the East, and at the very end of the Western Roman Empire, at the end of the 460s, the Byzantine Emperor Leo I, at the request of the Senate of Rome, made the last unsuccessful attempt to elevate his protege to the Western throne. In 476, the German barbarian mercenary Odoacer deposed the last emperor of the Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, and sent the imperial insignia (symbols of power) to Constantinople. Thus, from the point of view of the legitimacy of power, the parts of the empire were again united: Emperor Zeno, who ruled at that time in Constantinople, de jure became the sole head of the entire empire, and Odoacer, who received the title of patrician, ruled Italy only as his representative. However, in reality this no longer had any effect on the real political map Mediterranean.
5. 451 - Council of Chalcedon
IV Ecumenical (Chalcedonian) Council, convened for the final approval of the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ in one hypostasis and two natures and the complete condemnation of Monophysitism Monophysitism(from the Greek μόνος - the only one and φύσις - nature) - the doctrine that Christ did not have a perfect human nature, since his divine nature replaced it or merged with it during the incarnation. The opponents of the Monophysites were called Dyophysites (from the Greek δύο - two)., led to a deep schism that has not been overcome by the Christian Church to this day. The central government continued to flirt with the Monophysites both under the usurper Basiliscus in 475-476, and in the first half of the 6th century, under the emperors Anastasia I and Justinian I. Emperor Zeno in 482 tried to reconcile supporters and opponents of the Council of Chalcedon, without going into dogmatic issues . His conciliatory message, called the Henotikon, ensured peace in the East but led to a 35-year schism with Rome.The main support of the Monophysites were the eastern provinces - Egypt, Armenia and Syria. In these regions, uprisings on religious grounds regularly broke out and an independent Monophysite hierarchy parallel to the Chalcedonian (that is, recognizing the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon) and their own church institutions were formed, which gradually developed into independent, non-Chalcedonian churches that still exist today - Syro-Jacobite, Armenian and Coptic. The problem finally lost its relevance for Constantinople only in the 7th century, when, as a result of the Arab conquests, the Monophysite provinces were torn away from the empire.
The Rise of Early Byzantium
6. 537 - completion of the construction of the Church of Hagia Sophia under Justinian
Justinian I. Fragment of the mosaic of the church San Vitale in Ravenna. 6th century
Wikimedia Commons
Under Justinian I (527-565), the Byzantine Empire reached its greatest prosperity. The Code of Civil Law summarized the centuries-long development of Roman law. As a result of military campaigns in the West, it was possible to expand the borders of the empire to include the entire Mediterranean - North Africa, Italy, part of Spain, Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily. Sometimes they talk about Justinian's Reconquista. Rome again became part of the empire. Justinian launched extensive construction throughout the empire, and in 537 the creation of a new Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was completed. According to legend, the plan of the temple was suggested to the emperor personally by an angel in a vision. Never again in Byzantium had a building of such a scale been created: a grandiose temple, which in Byzantine ceremonial received the name “Great Church,” became the center of power of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The era of Justinian simultaneously and finally breaks with the pagan past (in 529 the Athens Academy closes Athens Academy - philosophical school in Athens, founded by Plato in the 380s BC. e.) and establishes a line of continuity with antiquity. Medieval culture contrasts itself with early Christian culture, appropriating the achievements of antiquity at all levels - from literature to architecture, but at the same time discarding their religious (pagan) dimension.
Coming from the lower classes, who sought to change the way of life of the empire, Justinian met with rejection from the old aristocracy. It is this attitude, and not the historian’s personal hatred of the emperor, that is reflected in the malicious pamphlet on Justinian and his wife Theodora.
7. 626 - Avar-Slavic siege of Constantinople
The reign of Heraclius (610-641), glorified in court panegyric literature as the new Hercules, marked the last foreign policy successes of early Byzantium. In 626, Heraclius and Patriarch Sergius, who directly defended the city, managed to repel the Avar-Slavic siege of Constantinople (the words opening the akathist to the Mother of God tell precisely about this victory In the Slavic translation, they sound like this: “To the chosen Voivode, victorious, as having been delivered from the evil, let us write thanks to Thy servants, the Mother of God, but as having an invincible power, free us from all troubles, let us call Thee: Rejoice, Unmarried Bride.”), and at the turn of the 20-30s of the 7th century during the Persian campaign against the Sassanid power Sasanian Empire- a Persian state centered on the territory of present-day Iraq and Iran, which existed in 224-651. The provinces in the East that had been lost several years earlier were recaptured: Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine. In 630, the Holy Cross, stolen by the Persians, was solemnly returned to Jerusalem, on which the Savior died. During the solemn procession, Heraclius personally brought the Cross into the city and laid it in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Under Heraclius, the scientific and philosophical Neoplatonic tradition, coming directly from antiquity, experienced its last rise before the cultural break of the Dark Ages: a representative of the last surviving ancient school in Alexandria, Stephen of Alexandria, came to Constantinople at the imperial invitation to teach.
Plate from the cross with images of a cherub (left) and the Byzantine emperor Heraclius with the Sassanid Shahinshah Khosrow II. Meuse Valley, 1160-70s Wikimedia Commons
All these successes were nullified by the Arab invasion, which within a few decades wiped out the Sassanids from the face of the earth and forever separated the eastern provinces from Byzantium. Legends tell how the Prophet Muhammad offered Heraclius to convert to Islam, but in the cultural memory of Muslim peoples, Heraclius remained precisely the fighter against the nascent Islam, and not against the Persians. These wars (generally unsuccessful for Byzantium) are described epic poem The 18th century “Book of Heraclius” is the oldest monument of writing in Swahili.
Dark Ages and iconoclasm
8. 642 - Arab conquest of Egypt
The first wave of Arab conquests in Byzantine lands lasted eight years - from 634 to 642. As a result, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt were torn away from Byzantium. Having lost the ancient Patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria, the Byzantine Church, in fact, lost its universal character and became equal to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which within the empire had no church institutions equal to it in status.
In addition, having lost the fertile territories that provided it with grain, the empire plunged into a deep internal crisis. The middle of the 7th century saw a reduction in monetary circulation and the decline of cities (both in Asia Minor and in the Balkans, which were no longer threatened by the Arabs, but by the Slavs) - they turned either into villages or into medieval fortresses. Constantinople remained the only major urban center, but the atmosphere in the city changed and the ancient monuments brought there back in the 4th century began to instill irrational fears in the townspeople.
Fragment of a papyrus letter in Coptic by the monks Victor and Psan. Thebes, Byzantine Egypt, approximately 580-640 Translation of a fragment of the letter into English on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Constantinople also lost access to papyrus, which was produced exclusively in Egypt, which led to an increase in the cost of books and, as a consequence, a decline in education. Many literary genres disappeared, the previously flourishing genre of history gave way to prophecy - having lost their cultural connection with the past, the Byzantines grew cold towards their history and lived with a constant feeling of the end of the world. The Arab conquests, which caused this breakdown in the worldview, were not reflected in contemporary literature; their sequence of events is conveyed to us by the monuments of later eras, and the new historical consciousness reflects only the atmosphere of horror, and not the facts. The cultural decline continued for more than a hundred years; the first signs of revival occurred at the very end of the 8th century.
9. 726/730 year According to 9th-century iconoclastic historians, Leo III issued an iconoclastic edict in 726. But modern scientists doubt the reliability of this information: most likely, in 726, Byzantine society began talking about the possibility of iconoclastic measures, and the first real steps date back to 730.- the beginning of iconoclastic disputes
Saint Moky of Amphipolis and the angel killing the iconoclasts. Miniature from the Psalter of Theodore of Caesarea. 1066 The British Library Board, Add MS 19352, f.94r
One of the manifestations of the cultural decline of the second half of the 7th century was the rapid growth of disordered practices of venerating icons (the most zealous scraped and ate the plaster from the icons of saints). This caused rejection among some clergy, who saw in this a threat of a return to paganism. Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (717-741) used this discontent to create a new consolidating ideology, taking the first iconoclastic steps in 726/730. But the most fierce debate about icons occurred during the reign of Constantine V Copronymus (741-775). He carried out the necessary military-administrative reforms, significantly strengthening the role of the professional imperial guard (tagmas), and successfully contained the Bulgarian threat on the borders of the empire. The authority of both Constantine and Leo, who repelled the Arabs from the walls of Constantinople in 717-718, was very high, therefore, when in 815, after the doctrine of icon worshipers was approved at the VII Ecumenical Council (787), a new round of war with the Bulgarians provoked a new political crisis, the imperial power returned to iconoclastic policies.
The controversy over icons gave rise to two powerful schools of theological thought. Although the teaching of the iconoclasts is known much less well than the teaching of their opponents, indirect evidence suggests that the thought of the iconoclasts Emperor Constantine Copronymus and the Patriarch of Constantinople John the Grammar (837-843) was no less deeply rooted in the Greek philosophical tradition than the thought of the iconoclastic theologian John Damascene and the head of the anti-iconoclast monastic opposition, Theodore Studite. In parallel, the dispute developed on the ecclesiastical and political plane; the boundaries of the power of the emperor, patriarch, monasticism and episcopate were redefined.
10. 843 - Triumph of Orthodoxy
In 843, under the Empress Theodora and Patriarch Methodius, the final approval of the dogma of icon veneration took place. It became possible thanks to mutual concessions, for example, the posthumous forgiveness of the iconoclast emperor Theophilus, whose widow Theodora was. The holiday “Triumph of Orthodoxy,” organized by Theodora on this occasion, ended the era of the Ecumenical Councils and marked a new stage in the life of the Byzantine state and church. In the Orthodox tradition, he continues to this day, and anathemas of the iconoclasts, named by name, are heard every year on the first Sunday of Lent. Since then, iconoclasm, which became the last heresy condemned by the entire church, began to become mythologized in the historical memory of Byzantium.
The daughters of Empress Theodora learn to venerate icons from their grandmother Theoktista. Miniature from the Madrid Codex Chronicle of John Skylitzes. XII-XIII centuries Wikimedia Commons
Back in 787, at the VII Ecumenical Council, the theory of the image was approved, according to which, in the words of Basil the Great, “the honor given to the image goes back to the prototype,” which means that worship of the icon is not idolatry. Now this theory has become the official teaching of the church - the creation and worship of sacred images was now not only allowed, but was made a Christian duty. From this time on, an avalanche-like growth of artistic production began, the familiar appearance of an Eastern Christian church with iconic decoration took shape, the use of icons was integrated into liturgical practice and changed the course of worship.
In addition, the iconoclastic dispute stimulated the reading, copying and study of sources to which the opposing sides turned in search of arguments. Overcoming the cultural crisis is largely due to philological work in the preparation of church councils. And the invention of the minuscule Minuscule- writing in lowercase letters, which radically simplified and reduced the cost of book production., may have been related to the needs of the icon-worshipping opposition that existed under the conditions of “samizdat”: icon-worshippers had to quickly copy texts and did not have the means to create expensive uncial Uncial, or majuscule,- letter in capital letters. manuscripts.
Macedonian era
11. 863 - the beginning of the Photian schism
Dogmatic and liturgical differences gradually grew between the Roman and Eastern Churches (primarily regarding the Latin addition to the text of the Creed of words about the procession of the Holy Spirit not only from the Father, but “and from the Son”, the so-called Filioque Filioque- literally “and from the Son” (lat.).). The Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Pope fought for spheres of influence (primarily in Bulgaria, Southern Italy and Sicily). The proclamation of Charlemagne as Emperor of the West in 800 dealt a sensitive blow to the political ideology of Byzantium: the Byzantine emperor found a competitor in the person of the Carolingians.
The miraculous salvation of Constantinople by Photius with the help of the robe of the Mother of God. Fresco from the Assumption Princess Monastery. Vladimir, 1648 Wikimedia Commons
Two opposing parties within the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the so-called Ignatians (supporters of Patriarch Ignatius, deposed in 858) and Photians (supporters of the erected - not without scandal - Photius in his place), sought support in Rome. Pope Nicholas used this situation to assert the authority of the papal throne and expand his spheres of influence. In 863, he withdrew the signatures of his envoys who approved the erection of Photius, but Emperor Michael III considered that this was not enough to remove the patriarch, and in 867 Photius anathematized Pope Nicholas. In 869-870, a new council in Constantinople (and to this day recognized by Catholics as the VIII Ecumenical Council) deposed Photius and restored Ignatius. However, after the death of Ignatius, Photius returned to the patriarchal throne for another nine years (877-886).
Formal reconciliation followed in 879-880, but the anti-Latin line laid down by Photius in the District Epistle to the episcopal thrones of the East formed the basis of a centuries-old polemical tradition, echoes of which were heard both during the break between the churches in, and during the discussion of the possibility of church union in the XIII and XV centuries.
12. 895 - creation of the oldest known codex of Plato
E. D. Clarke manuscript page 39 of Plato's writings. 895 The rewriting of the tetralogies was carried out by order of Arethas of Caesarea for 21 gold coins. It is assumed that the scholia (marginal comments) were left by Arethas himself. At the end of the 9th century there was a new discovery of the ancient heritage in Byzantine culture. A circle formed around Patriarch Photius, which included his disciples: Emperor Leo VI the Wise, Bishop Arethas of Caesarea and other philosophers and scientists. They copied, studied and commented on the works of ancient Greek authors. The oldest and most authoritative list of Plato's works (it is stored under the code E. D. Clarke 39 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University) was created at this time by order of Arefa.
Among the texts that interested the era's scholars, primarily high-ranking church hierarchs, were pagan works. Arefa ordered copies of the works of Aristotle, Aelius Aristides, Euclid, Homer, Lucian and Marcus Aurelius, and Patriarch Photius included them in his “Myriobiblion” "Myriobiblion"(literally “Ten Thousand Books”) - a review of the books Photius read, which, however, in reality there were not 10 thousand, but only 279. annotations to Hellenistic novels, assessing not their seemingly anti-Christian content, but the style and manner of writing, and at the same time creating a new terminological apparatus of literary criticism, different from that used by ancient grammarians. Leo VI himself created not only solemn speeches on church holidays, which he personally delivered (often improvising) after services, but also wrote Anacreontic poetry in the ancient Greek manner. And the nickname Wise is associated with the collection of poetic prophecies attributed to him about the fall and reconquest of Constantinople, which were remembered back in the 17th century in Rus', when the Greeks tried to persuade Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to campaign against the Ottoman Empire.
The era of Photius and Leo VI the Wise opens the period of the Macedonian Renaissance (named after the ruling dynasty) in Byzantium, which is also known as the era of encyclopedism or the first Byzantine humanism.
13. 952 - completion of work on the treatise “On the Administration of the Empire”
Christ blesses Emperor Constantine VII. Carved panel. 945
Wikimedia Commons
Under the patronage of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913-959), a large-scale project was implemented to codify the knowledge of the Byzantines in all areas of human life. The extent of Constantine's direct involvement cannot always be determined with precision, but the personal interest and literary ambitions of the emperor, who knew from childhood that he was not destined to rule, and for most of his life was forced to share the throne with a co-ruler, are beyond doubt. By order of Constantine, the official history of the 9th century was written (the so-called Successor of Theophanes), information was collected about the peoples and lands adjacent to Byzantium (“On the Administration of the Empire”), on the geography and history of the regions of the empire (“On Themes”) Fema- Byzantine military administrative district."), about agriculture ("Geoponics"), about the organization of military campaigns and embassies and about court ceremonials ("On the ceremonies of the Byzantine court"). At the same time, the regulation of church life took place: the Synaxarion and Typikon of the Great Church were created, defining the annual order of commemoration of saints and church services, and several decades later (about 980), Simeon Metaphrastus began a large-scale project to unify hagiographic literature. Around the same time, a comprehensive encyclopedic dictionary, “The Court,” was compiled, including about 30 thousand entries. But the largest encyclopedia of Constantine is an anthology of information from ancient and early Byzantine authors about all spheres of life, conventionally called “Excerpts” It is known that this encyclopedia included 53 sections. Only the section “On Embassies” has reached its entirety, partially “On Virtues and Vices”, “On Conspiracies against Emperors”, “On Opinions”. Among the chapters that have not survived: “On Nations”, “On the Succession of Emperors”, “On Who Invented What”, “On the Caesars”, “On Exploits”, “On Settlements”, “On Hunting”, “On Messages”, “ About speeches”, “About marriages”, “About victory”, “About defeat”, “About strategies”, “About morals”, “About miracles”, “About battles”, “About inscriptions”, “About public administration”, “On church affairs”, “On expression”, “On the coronation of emperors”, “On the death (deposition) of emperors”, “On fines”, “On holidays”, “On predictions”, “On ranks”, “On the cause of wars” ", "About sieges", "About fortresses"..
The nickname Porphyrogenitus was given to the children of the reigning emperors, who were born in the Scarlet Chamber of the Great Palace in Constantinople. Constantine VII, the son of Leo VI the Wise from his fourth marriage, was indeed born in this chamber, but was technically illegitimate. Apparently, the nickname was supposed to emphasize his rights to the throne. His father made him his co-ruler, and after his death, the young Constantine ruled for six years under the tutelage of the regents. In 919, power, under the pretext of protecting Constantine from rebels, was usurped by the military leader Romanus I Lecapinus, he became related to the Macedonian dynasty, marrying his daughter to Constantine, and was then crowned co-ruler. By the time he began his independent reign, Constantine had been formally considered emperor for more than 30 years, and he himself was almost 40.
14. 1018 - conquest of the Bulgarian kingdom
Angels place the imperial crown on Basil II. Miniature from the Psalter of Basil, Bibliotheca Marciana. 11th century Ms. gr. 17 / Biblioteca Marciana
The reign of Vasily II the Bulgarian Slayers (976-1025) is a time of unprecedented expansion of the church and political influence of Byzantium on neighboring countries: the so-called second (final) baptism of Russia takes place (the first, according to legend, occurred in the 860s - when the princes Askold and Dir they were allegedly baptized with the boyars in Kiev, where Patriarch Photius sent a bishop specifically for this purpose); in 1018, the conquest of the Bulgarian kingdom leads to the liquidation of the autonomous Bulgarian Patriarchate, which had existed for almost 100 years, and the establishment in its place of the semi-independent Ohrid Archdiocese; As a result of the Armenian campaigns, Byzantine possessions in the East expanded.
In domestic politics, Vasily was forced to take tough measures to limit the influence of large landowning clans, which actually formed their own armies in the 970-980s during civil wars that challenged Vasily’s power. He tried to take tough measures to stop the enrichment of large landowners (the so-called dinates Dinat ( from Greek δυνατός) - strong, powerful.), in some cases even resorting to direct confiscation of land. But this brought only a temporary effect; centralization in the administrative and military sphere neutralized powerful rivals, but in the long term made the empire vulnerable to new threats - the Normans, Seljuks and Pechenegs. The Macedonian dynasty, which ruled for more than a century and a half, formally ended only in 1056, but in fact, already in the 1020-30s, people from bureaucratic families and influential clans received real power.
Descendants awarded Vasily the nickname Bulgarian Slayer for his cruelty in the wars with the Bulgarians. For example, after winning the decisive battle near Mount Belasitsa in 1014, he ordered 14 thousand captives to be blinded at once. It is not known exactly when this nickname originated. It is certain that this happened until the end of the 12th century, when, according to the historian of the 13th century George Acropolite, the Bulgarian Tsar Kaloyan (1197-1207) began to ravage Byzantine cities in the Balkans, proudly calling himself a Roman fighter and thereby opposing himself to Vasily.
Crisis of the 11th century
15. 1071 - Battle of Manzikert
Battle of Manzikert. Miniature from the book “On Misfortunes” famous people» Boccaccio. 15th century
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The political crisis that began after the death of Vasily II continued in the middle of the 11th century: clans continued to compete, dynasties constantly replaced each other - from 1028 to 1081, 11 emperors changed on the Byzantine throne, a similar frequency did not exist even at the turn of the 7th-8th centuries . From the outside, the Pechenegs and Seljuk Turks put pressure on Byzantium In just a few decades in the 11th century, the power of the Seljuk Turks conquered the territories of modern Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and became the main threat to Byzantium in the East.- the latter, having won the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 Manzikert- now the small town of Malazgirt on the easternmost tip of Turkey next to Lake Van., deprived the empire of most of its territories in Asia Minor. No less painful for Byzantium was the full-scale rupture of church relations with Rome in 1054, which later became known as the Great Schism. Schism(from Greek σχίζμα) - gap., because of which Byzantium finally lost church influence in Italy. However, contemporaries almost did not notice this event and did not attach due importance to it.
However, it was precisely this era of political instability, fragility of social boundaries and, as a consequence, high social mobility that gave birth to the figure of Michael Psellus, unique even for Byzantium, an erudite and official who took an active part in the enthronement of emperors (his central work “Chronography” is very autobiographical) , thought about the most complex theological and philosophical questions, studied pagan Chaldean oracles, created works in every imaginable genre - from literary criticism to hagiography. The situation of intellectual freedom gave impetus to a new typically Byzantine version of Neoplatonism: in the title of “ipata of philosophers” Ipat of philosophers- in fact, the main philosopher of the empire, the head of the philosophical school in Constantinople. Psellus was replaced by John Italus, who studied not only Plato and Aristotle, but also such philosophers as Ammonius, Philoponus, Porphyry and Proclus and, at least according to his opponents, taught about the transmigration of souls and the immortality of ideas.
Komnenian revival
16. 1081 - Alexei I Komnenos came to power
Christ blesses Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Miniature from “Dogmatic Panoplia” by Euthymius Zigaben. 12th century In 1081, as a result of a compromise with the clans of Douk, Melissena and Palaiologi, the Comneni family came to power. It gradually monopolized all state power and, through complex dynastic marriages, absorbed its former rivals. Beginning with Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118), Byzantine society became aristocratized, social mobility decreased, intellectual freedoms were curtailed, and the imperial government actively intervened in the spiritual sphere. The beginning of this process was marked by the church-state condemnation of John Italus for “Palatonian ideas” and paganism in 1082. This is followed by the condemnation of Leo of Chalcedon, who opposed the confiscation of church property to cover military needs (at that time Byzantium was at war with the Sicilian Normans and Pechenegs) and almost accused Alexei of iconoclasm. Massacres of Bogomils take place Bogomilism- a doctrine that arose in the Balkans in the 10th century, largely going back to the religion of the Manichaeans. According to the Bogomils, the physical world was created by Satan cast down from heaven. The human body was also his creation, but the soul was still a gift from the good God. The Bogomils did not recognize the institution of the church and often opposed the secular authorities, raising numerous uprisings., one of them, Vasily, was even burned at the stake - a unique phenomenon for Byzantine practice. In 1117, Aristotle's commentator Eustratius of Nicea was put on trial for heresy.
Meanwhile, contemporaries and immediate descendants remembered Alexei I rather as a ruler who was successful in his foreign policy: he managed to conclude an alliance with the crusaders and deal a sensitive blow to the Seljuks in Asia Minor.
In the satire “Timarion” the narration is told from the perspective of the hero who has made a journey to the afterlife. In his story, he also mentions John Italus, who wanted to take part in the conversation of ancient Greek philosophers, but was rejected by them: “I also witnessed how Pythagoras sharply pushed away John Italus, who wanted to join this community of sages. “You rabble,” he said, “having put on the Galilean robe, which they call the divine holy vestments, in other words, having received baptism, do you strive to communicate with us, whose life was given to science and knowledge?” Either throw off this vulgar dress, or leave our brotherhood right now!’” (translation by S. V. Polyakova, N. V. Felenkovskaya).
17. 1143 - Manuel I Komnenos came to power
The trends that emerged under Alexios I were further developed under Manuel I Komnenos (1143-1180). He sought to establish personal control over the church life of the empire, sought to unify theological thought and himself took part in church disputes. One of the questions in which Manuel wanted to have his say was the following: which hypostases of the Trinity accept the sacrifice during the Eucharist - only God the Father or both the Son and the Holy Spirit? If the second answer is correct (and this is exactly what was decided at the council of 1156-1157), then the same Son will be both the one sacrificed and the one who accepts it.
Manuel's foreign policy was marked by failures in the East (the worst was the disheartening defeat of the Byzantines at Myriokephalos in 1176 at the hands of the Seljuks) and attempts at diplomatic rapprochement with the West. The ultimate goal Western policy Manuel saw unification with Rome on the basis of recognition of the supreme power of a single Roman emperor, who was to become Manuel himself, and the unification of the churches that were officially divided in . However, this project was not implemented.
In the era of Manuel, literary creativity became a profession, literary circles emerged with their own artistic fashion, elements of the folk language penetrated into aristocratic court literature (they can be found in the works of the poet Theodore Prodromus or the chronicler Constantine Manasses), the genre of the Byzantine love story emerged, the arsenal of expressive means expanded and the measure of the author's self-reflection is growing.
Decline of Byzantium
18. 1204 - fall of Constantinople at the hands of the crusaders
The reign of Andronikos I Komnenos (1183-1185) saw a political crisis: he pursued a populist policy (reduced taxes, broke off relations with the West and brutally dealt with corrupt officials), which turned a significant part of the elite against him and aggravated the foreign policy situation of the empire.
The Crusaders attack Constantinople. Miniature from the chronicle of “The Conquest of Constantinople” by Geoffroy de Villehardouin. Around 1330, Villehardouin was one of the leaders of the campaign. Bibliothèque nationale de France
An attempt to establish a new dynasty of Angels did not bear fruit; society was deconsolidated. Added to this were failures on the periphery of the empire: an uprising broke out in Bulgaria; the crusaders captured Cyprus; The Sicilian Normans ravaged Thessalonica. The struggle between contenders for the throne within the Angel family gave European countries a formal reason to intervene. On April 12, 1204, participants in the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople. The brightest artistic description We read about these events in the “History” of Niketas Choniates and the postmodern novel “Baudolino” by Umberto Eco, which sometimes literally copies the pages of Choniates.
On the ruins of the former empire, several states arose under Venetian rule, only to a small extent inheriting Byzantine state institutions. The Latin Empire, centered in Constantinople, was more of a feudal formation on the Western European model, and the duchies and kingdoms that arose in Thessalonica, Athens and the Peloponnese had the same character.
Andronikos was one of the most eccentric rulers of the empire. Nikita Choniates says that he ordered a portrait of himself to be created in one of the churches of the capital in the guise of a poor farmer in high boots and with a scythe in his hand. There were also legends about the bestial cruelty of Andronicus. He organized public burnings of his opponents at the hippodrome, during which the executioners pushed the victim into the fire with sharp lances, and threatened to roast the reader of Hagia Sophia, George Disipata, who dared to condemn his cruelty, to roast him on a spit and send him to his wife instead of food.
19. 1261 - recapture of Constantinople
The loss of Constantinople led to the emergence of three Greek states that equally claimed to be the rightful heirs of Byzantium: the Nicaean Empire in northwestern Asia Minor under the Lascarean dynasty; the Empire of Trebizond in the northeastern part of the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, where the descendants of the Komnenos settled - the Great Komnenos, who took the title "emperors of the Romans", and the Kingdom of Epirus in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula with the dynasty of Angels. The revival of the Byzantine Empire in 1261 took place on the basis of the Nicene Empire, which pushed aside its competitors and skillfully used the help of the German emperor and the Genoese in the fight against the Venetians. As a result, the Latin emperor and patriarch fled, and Michael VIII Palaiologos occupied Constantinople, was re-crowned and proclaimed “the new Constantine.”
In his policy, the founder of the new dynasty tried to reach a compromise with the Western powers, and in 1274 he even agreed to a church union with Rome, which alienated the Greek episcopate and the Constantinople elite.
Despite the fact that the empire was formally revived, its culture lost its former “Constantinople-centricity”: The Palaiologists were forced to put up with the presence of the Venetians in the Balkans and the significant autonomy of Trebizond, whose rulers formally abandoned the title of “Roman emperors”, but in reality did not abandon their imperial ambitions.
A striking example of the imperial ambitions of Trebizond is the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia of the Wisdom of God, built there in the mid-13th century and still making a strong impression today. This temple simultaneously contrasted Trebizond with Constantinople with its Hagia Sophia, and on a symbolic level transformed Trebizond into the new Constantinople.
20. 1351 - approval of the teachings of Gregory Palamas
Saint Gregory Palamas. Icon of the master of Northern Greece. Early 15th century
The second quarter of the 14th century marks the beginning of the Palamite disputes. Saint Gregory Palamas (1296-1357) was an original thinker who developed the controversial doctrine of the difference in God between the divine essence (with which man can neither unite nor know it) and the uncreated divine energies (with which union is possible) and defended the possibility contemplation through the “mental sense” of the Divine light, revealed, according to the Gospels, to the apostles during the transfiguration of Christ For example, in the Gospel of Matthew this light is described as follows: “And after six days Jesus took Peter, James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain alone, and was transfigured before them: and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes They became white as light” (Matthew 17:1-2)..
In the 40s and 50s of the 14th century, theological dispute was closely intertwined with political confrontation: Palamas, his supporters (patriarchs Callistus I and Philotheus Kokkin, Emperor John VI Cantacuzene) and opponents (the philosopher Barlaam of Calabria, who later converted to Catholicism, and his followers Gregory Akindinus, Patriarch John IV Kalek, philosopher and writer Nicephorus Grigora) alternately won tactical victories and suffered defeat.
The Council of 1351, which confirmed the victory of Palamas, nevertheless did not put an end to the dispute, echoes of which were heard in the 15th century, but forever closed the path for anti-Palamites to the highest church and state power. Some researchers follow Igor Medvedev I. P. Medvedev. Byzantine humanism of the XIV-XV centuries. St. Petersburg, 1997. They see in the thoughts of the anti-Palamites, especially Nikephoros Gregoras, tendencies close to the ideas of the Italian humanists. Humanistic ideas were even more fully reflected in the work of the Neoplatonist and ideologist of the pagan renewal of Byzantium, George Gemistus Plitho, whose works were destroyed by the official church.
Even in serious scientific literature, you can sometimes see that the words “(anti)Palamites” and “(anti)Hesychasts” are used as synonyms. This is not entirely true. Hesychasm (from the Greek ἡσυχία [hesychia] - silence) as a hermitic prayer practice that provides the opportunity for direct experiential communication with God, was substantiated in the works of theologians of earlier eras, for example, by Simeon the New Theologian in the 10th-11th centuries.
21. 1439 - Ferraro-Florentine Union
Union of Florence by Pope Eugene IV. 1439 Compiled in two languages - Latin and Greek. British Library Board/Bridgeman Images/Fotodom
By the beginning of the 15th century, it became obvious that the Ottoman military threat was calling into question the very existence of the empire. Byzantine diplomacy actively sought support in the West, and negotiations were held on the unification of churches in exchange for military assistance from Rome. In the 1430s, a fundamental decision on unification was made, but the subject of bargaining was the location of the council (on Byzantine or Italian territory) and its status (whether it would be designated in advance as “unification”). Eventually the meetings took place in Italy - first in Ferrara, then in Florence and Rome. In June 1439, the Ferraro-Florentine Union was signed. This meant that formally the Byzantine Church recognized the correctness of Catholics on all controversial issues, including the issue. But the union did not find support from the Byzantine episcopate (the head of its opponents was Bishop Mark Eugenicus), which led to the coexistence of two parallel hierarchies in Constantinople - Uniate and Orthodox. 14 years later, immediately after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans decided to rely on the anti-Uniates and installed the follower of Mark Eugenicus, Gennady Scholarius, as patriarch, but the union was formally abolished only in 1484.
If in the history of the church the union remained only a short-lived failed experiment, then its mark on the history of culture is much more significant. Figures like Bessarion of Nicea, a disciple of the neo-pagan Pletho, a Uniate metropolitan, and later a cardinal and titular Latin patriarch of Constantinople, played a key role in the transmission of Byzantine (and ancient) culture to the West. Vissarion, whose epitaph contains the words: “Through your labors, Greece moved to Rome,” translated Greek classical authors into Latin, patronized Greek emigrant intellectuals, and donated his library, which included more than 700 manuscripts (at that time the most extensive private library in Europe), to Venice. which became the basis of the Library of St. Mark.
The Ottoman state (named after the first ruler, Osman I) arose in 1299 from the ruins of the Seljuk Sultanate in Anatolia and throughout the 14th century increased its expansion in Asia Minor and the Balkans. A brief respite for Byzantium was given by the confrontation between the Ottomans and the troops of Tamerlane at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries, but with the coming to power of Mehmed I in 1413, the Ottomans again began to threaten Constantinople.
22. 1453 - fall of the Byzantine Empire
Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror. Painting by Gentile Bellini. 1480
Wikimedia Commons
The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, made unsuccessful attempts to repel the Ottoman threat. By the early 1450s, Byzantium retained only a small region in the vicinity of Constantinople (Trebizond was virtually independent of Constantinople), and the Ottomans controlled both most of Anatolia and the Balkans (Thessalonica fell in 1430, the Peloponnese was devastated in 1446). In search of allies, the emperor turned to Venice, Aragon, Dubrovnik, Hungary, the Genoese, and the Pope, but only the Venetians and Rome offered real help (and very limited). In the spring of 1453, the battle for the city began, on May 29 Constantinople fell, and Constantine XI died in battle. Many incredible stories have been told about his death, the circumstances of which are unknown to scientists; In popular Greek culture for many centuries there was a legend that the last Byzantine king was turned into marble by an angel and now rests in a secret cave at the Golden Gate, but is about to awaken and expel the Ottomans.
Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror did not break the line of succession with Byzantium, but inherited the title of Roman Emperor, supported the Greek Church, and stimulated the development of Greek culture. His reign was marked by projects that at first glance seem fantastic. The Greek-Italian Catholic humanist George of Trebizond wrote about building a worldwide empire led by Mehmed, in which Islam and Christianity would unite into one religion. And the historian Mikhail Kritovul created a story in praise of Mehmed - a typical Byzantine panegyric with all the obligatory rhetoric, but in honor of the Muslim ruler, who, nevertheless, was called not a sultan, but in the Byzantine manner - basileus.
STATE AND BYZANTINE LAW
In 395, the Roman Empire was divided into the Western (capital - Rome) and Eastern (capital - Constantinople). The first empire ceased to exist in 476 under the blows of the Germanic tribes. The Eastern Empire, or Byzantium, existed until 1453. Byzantium received its name from the ancient Greek colony of Megara, a small town of Byzantium, on the site of which Emperor Constantine
in 324-330 he founded the new capital of the Roman Empire - Constantinople. The Byzantines themselves called themselves “Romans”, and the empire – “Romanian”, therefore for a long time the capital was called “New Rome”.
Byzantium was in many ways a continuation of the Roman Empire, preserving its political and state traditions. At the same time, Constantinople and Rome became two centers of political life - the “Latin” West and the “Greek” East.
The stability of Byzantium had its reasons, hidden
in the features of socio-economic and historical development. Firstly, the Byzantine state included economically developed regions: Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, the Balkan Peninsula (the territory of the empire exceeded 750,000 sq. km
with a population of 50-65 million people), who conducted brisk trade
with India, China, Iran, Arabia and North Africa. The decline of an economy based on slave labor was not felt as strongly here as in Western Rome, since the population was
in a free or semi-free state. Agriculture was not built on forced labor in the form of large slave-owning latifundia, but on small peasant farming (communal peasantry). Therefore, small farms responded more quickly to the changing market conditions and more quickly, compared to large farms, restructured their activities. And in the craft here, the main role was played by free workers. For these reasons, the eastern provinces suffered less than the western ones from the economic crisis of the 3rd century.
Secondly, Byzantium, having large material resources, had a strong army, navy and a strong, ramified state apparatus, which made it possible to restrain the raids of the barbarians. There was a strong imperial power with a flexible administrative apparatus.
Thirdly, Byzantium was built on the basis of a new Christian religion, which, in comparison with the pagan Roman one, had a progressive meaning.
The Byzantine Empire reached its greatest power
during the reign of Emperor Justinian I (527-565), who carried out extensive conquests, and again the Mediterranean Sea became an inland sea, this time of Byzantium. After the death of the monarch, the state entered into a long crisis. The countries conquered by Justinian were quickly lost. In the VI century. clashes with the Slavs begin,
and in the 7th century. - with the Arabs, who at the beginning of the 8th century. captured North Africa from Byzantium.
At the beginning of the same century, Byzantium began to emerge from the crisis with difficulty. In 717, Leo III, nicknamed the Isaurian, came to power and founded the Isaurian dynasty (717-802). He carried out a number of reforms. To find funds for their implementation, as well as for the maintenance of the army and administration, he decided to liquidate monastic land ownership. This was expressed in the fight against icons, because the church was accused of paganism - worship of icons. The authorities used iconoclasm to strengthen their political and economic positions, to subjugate the church and its wealth. Laws are issued against the veneration of icons, considering it as idolatry. The fight against icons made it possible to appropriate church treasures - utensils, icon frames, shrines containing the relics of saints. 100 monastic estates were also confiscated, the lands of which were distributed to peasants, as well as in the form of rewards to soldiers for their service.
These actions strengthened the internal and external position Byzantium, which again annexed Greece, Macedonia, Crete, Southern Italy and Sicily.
In the second half of the 9th century, and especially in the 10th century, Byzantium achieved a new rise, as the powerful Arab Caliphate gradually disintegrated into a number of independent feudal states and Byzantium conquered Syria and numerous islands in the Mediterranean Sea from the Arabs, and at the beginning of the 11th century . annexes Bulgaria.
At that time, Byzantium was ruled by the Macedonian dynasty (867-1056), under which the foundations of a socially centralized early feudal monarchy took shape. Under her, Kievan Rus adopted Christianity from the Greeks in 988.
Under the next dynasty, Comneni (1057-1059, 1081-1185),
In Byzantium, feudalization intensifies and the process of enslavement of peasants is completed. Under her, the feudal institution was strengthened penetration("care"). Feudalization leads to the gradual disintegration of the state, and small independent principalities appear in Asia Minor. The foreign policy situation was also becoming more complicated: the Normans were advancing from the west, the Pechenegs from the north, and the Seljuks from the east. The first crusade saved Byzantium from the Seljuk Turks. Byzantium managed to return part of its possessions. However, soon Byzantium and the crusaders began to fight among themselves. Constantinople was taken by the crusaders in 1204. Byzantium broke up into a number of states, loosely connected with each other.
With the coming to power of the Palaiologan dynasty (1261-1453), Byzantium managed to strengthen itself, but its territory decreased noticeably. Soon a new threat loomed over the state from the Ottoman Turks, who extended their power over Asia Minor, bringing it to the shores of the Sea of Marmara. In the fight against the Ottomans, the emperors began to hire foreign troops, who often turned their weapons against their employers. Byzantium was exhausted in the struggle, aggravated by peasant and urban uprisings. The state apparatus was in decline, which leads to the decentralization of power and its weakening. The Byzantine emperors decide to turn to the Catholic West for help. In 1439, the Union of Florence was signed, according to which the eastern Orthodox Church submitted to the Pope. However, Byzantium never received real help from the West.
Upon the return of the Greeks to their homeland, the union was rejected by the majority of the people and the clergy.
In 1444, the crusaders suffered a severe defeat from the Ottoman Turks, who dealt the final blow to Byzantium. Emperor John VIII was forced to seek mercy from Sultan Murad II. In 1148, the Byzantine emperor dies. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, entered into a fight with the new Sultan Mehmed II Fatih (the Conqueror). On May 29, 1453, under the attacks of Turkish troops, Constantinople was taken, and with its fall, the Byzantine Empire actually ceased to exist. Türkiye is turning into one
of the powerful powers of the medieval world, and Constantinople becomes the capital of the Ottoman Empire - Istanbul (from “Islambol” - “abundance of Islam”).
The content of the article
BYZANTINE EMPIRE, the name of the state that arose in the 4th century, accepted in historical science. on the territory of the eastern part of the Roman Empire and existed until the mid-15th century. In the Middle Ages, it was officially called the “Empire of the Romans” (“Romans”). The economic, administrative and cultural center of the Byzantine Empire was Constantinople, conveniently located at the junction of the European and Asian provinces of the Roman Empire, at the intersection of the most important trade and strategic routes, land and sea.
The emergence of Byzantium as an independent state was prepared in the depths of the Roman Empire. It was a complex and lengthy process that lasted for a century. Its beginning goes back to the era of the crisis of the 3rd century, which undermined the foundations of Roman society. The formation of Byzantium during the 4th century completed the era of development of ancient society, and in most of this society tendencies to preserve the unity of the Roman Empire prevailed. The process of division proceeded slowly and latently and ended in 395 with the formal formation of two states in place of the unified Roman Empire, each headed by its own emperor. By this time, the difference in internal and external problems facing the eastern and western provinces of the Roman Empire had clearly emerged, which largely determined their territorial demarcation. Byzantium included the eastern half of the Roman Empire along a line running from the western Balkans to Cyrenaica. The differences were reflected in spiritual life and ideology, as a result, from the 4th century. in both parts of the empire, different directions of Christianity were established for a long time (in the West, orthodox - Nicene, in the East - Arianism).
Located on three continents - at the junction of Europe, Asia and Africa - Byzantium occupied an area of up to 1 mln sq. It included the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Cyrenaica, part of Mesopotamia and Armenia, the Mediterranean islands, primarily Crete and Cyprus, strongholds in the Crimea (Chersonese), in the Caucasus (in Georgia), some areas of Arabia, islands of the Eastern Mediterranean. Its borders extended from the Danube to the Euphrates.
The latest archaeological material shows that the late Roman era was not, as previously thought, an era of continuous decline and decay. Byzantium went through a rather complex cycle of its development, and modern researchers consider it possible to even talk about elements of “economic revival” during its historical path. The latter includes the following steps:
4th–early 7th century. – the time of the country’s transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages;
second half of the 7th–12th centuries. – the entry of Byzantium into the Middle Ages, the formation of feudalism and corresponding institutions in the empire;
13th – first half of the 14th century. - the era of economic and political decline of Byzantium, which ended with the death of this state.
Development of agrarian relations in the 4th–7th centuries.
Byzantium included densely populated areas of the eastern half of the Roman Empire with a long-standing and high agricultural culture. The specifics of the development of agrarian relations were influenced by the fact that most of the empire consisted of mountainous regions with rocky soil, and the fertile valleys were small and isolated, which did not contribute to the formation of large territorial economically unified units. In addition, historically, from the time of Greek colonization and further, during the Hellenistic era, almost all land suitable for cultivation turned out to be occupied by the territories of ancient city-polises. All this determined the dominant role of medium-sized slaveholding estates, and as a consequence, the power of municipal land ownership and the preservation of a significant layer of small landowners, communities of peasants - owners of different incomes, the top of which were wealthy owners. Under these conditions, the growth of large land ownership was difficult. It usually consisted of tens, rarely hundreds of small and medium-sized estates, geographically scattered, which was not conducive to the formation of a single local economy, similar to the Western one.
Distinctive features of the agrarian life of early Byzantium in comparison with the Western Roman Empire were the preservation of small-scale, including peasant, land ownership, the viability of the community, a significant share of average urban landownership with the relative weakness of large landownership. State land ownership was also very significant in Byzantium. The role of slave labor was significant and clearly visible in legislative sources of the 4th–6th centuries. Slaves were owned by wealthy peasants, soldiers by veterans, urban landowners by plebeians, and municipal aristocracy by curials. Researchers associate slavery mainly with municipal land ownership. Indeed, the average municipal landowners constituted the largest stratum of wealthy slaveholders, and the average villa was certainly slaveholding in character. As a rule, the average urban landowner owned one estate in the urban district, often in addition a country house and one or several smaller suburban farms, proastia, which together constituted the suburbia, a wide suburban zone of the ancient city, which gradually passed into its rural district, the territory - choir. The estate (villa) was usually a farm of quite significant size, since it, being multicultural in nature, provided the basic needs of the city manor house. The estate also included lands cultivated by colony holders, which brought the landowner cash income or a product that was sold.
There is no reason to exaggerate the degree of decline of municipal land ownership at least until the 5th century. Until this time, there were virtually no restrictions on the alienation of curial property, which indicates the stability of their position. Only in the 5th century. the curials were forbidden to sell their rural slaves (mancipia rustica). In a number of areas (in the Balkans) up to the 5th century. the growth of medium-sized slave-owning villas continued. As archaeological material shows, their economy was largely undermined during the barbarian invasions of the late 4th–5th centuries.
The growth of large estates (fundi) was due to the absorption of medium-sized villas. Did this lead to a change in the nature of the economy? Archaeological material shows that in a number of regions of the empire, large slave-owning villas remained until the end of the 6th–7th century. In documents of the late 4th century. on the lands of large owners, rural slaves are mentioned. Laws of the late 5th century. about marriages of slaves and colons they talk about slaves planted on the land, about slaves on peculia, therefore, we are talking, apparently, not about a change in their status, but about the curtailment of their own master's economy. The laws regarding the slave status of children of slaves show that the bulk of slaves were “self-reproducing” and that there was no active tendency to abolish slavery. We see a similar picture in the “new” rapidly developing church-monastic land ownership.
The process of development of large land ownership was accompanied by the curtailment of the master's own economy. This was stimulated by natural conditions, the very nature of the formation of large land ownership, which included a mass of small territorially scattered holdings, the number of which sometimes reached several hundred, with sufficient development of exchange between the district and the city, commodity-money relations, which made it possible for the owner of the land to receive from them and cash payments. For the Byzantine large estate in the process of its development, it was more typical than for the Western one to curtail its own master's economy. The master's estate, from the center of the estate's economy, increasingly turned into a center for the exploitation of the surrounding farms, the collection and better processing of the products coming from them. That's why characteristic feature evolution of the agrarian life of early Byzantium, as medium and small slaveholding farms declined, the main type of settlement became a village inhabited by slaves and colons (koma).
An essential feature of small free land ownership in early Byzantium was not just the presence of a mass of small rural landowners, who also existed in the West, but also the fact that the peasants were united into a community. In the presence of different types of communities, the dominant one was the metrocomia, which consisted of neighbors who had a share in communal lands, owned common land property, used by fellow villagers or rented out. The Metropolitan Committee carried out the necessary joint work, had its own elders who managed the economic life of the village and maintained order. They collected taxes and monitored the fulfillment of duties.
Having a community is one of the the most important features, which determined the uniqueness of the transition of early Byzantium to feudalism, while such a community has certain specifics. Unlike the Middle East, the early Byzantine free community consisted of peasants - full owners of their land. It has gone through a long path of development on the polis lands. The number of inhabitants of such a community reached 1–1.5 thousand people (“large and populous villages”). She had elements of her own craft and traditional internal cohesion.
The peculiarity of the development of the colony in early Byzantium was that the number of columns here grew mainly not due to slaves planted on the land, but was replenished by small landowners - tenants and communal peasants. This process proceeded slowly. Throughout the entire early Byzantine era, not only did a significant layer of communal property owners remain, but colonate relations in their most rigid forms were formed slowly. If in the West “individual” patronage contributed to the fairly rapid inclusion of small landowners in the structure of the estate, then in Byzantium the peasantry defended their rights to land and personal freedom for a long time. The state attachment of peasants to the land, the development of a kind of “state colony” ensured for a long time the predominance of softer forms of dependence - the so-called “free colony” (coloni liberi). Such colones retained part of their property and, as personally free, had significant legal capacity.
The state could take advantage of the internal cohesion of the community and its organization. In the 5th century it introduces the right of protimesis - preferential purchase of peasant land by fellow villagers, and strengthens the collective responsibility of the community for the receipt of taxes. Both ultimately testified to the intensified process of ruin of the free peasantry, the deterioration of its position, but at the same time helped to preserve the community.
Spread from the end of the 4th century. the transition of entire villages under the patronage of large private owners also influenced the specifics of large early Byzantine estates. As small and medium-sized holdings disappeared, the village became the main economic unit, this led to its internal economic consolidation. Obviously, there is reason to talk not only about the preservation of the community on the lands of large owners, but also about its “regeneration” as a result of the resettlement of former small and medium-sized farms that had become dependent. The unity of communities was greatly facilitated by the barbarian invasions. So, in the Balkans in the 5th century. The destroyed old villas were replaced by large and fortified villages of colones (vici). Thus, in early Byzantine conditions, the growth of large land ownership was accompanied by the spread of villages and the strengthening of village rather than manorial farming. Archaeological material confirms not only the increase in the number of villages, but also the revival of village construction - the construction of irrigation systems, wells, cisterns, oil and grape presses. There was even an increase in the village population.
Stagnation and the beginning of the decline of the Byzantine village, according to archaeological data, occurred in the last decades of the 5th – early 6th century. Chronologically, this process coincides with the emergence of more rigid forms of colonata - the category of “attributed colons” - adscriptits, enapographs. They became former estate workers, freed slaves and planted on the land, free colons who were deprived of their property as tax oppression intensified. The assigned colonies no longer had their own land, often they did not have their own house and farm - livestock, equipment. All this became the property of the master, and they turned into “slaves of the land”, recorded in the estate’s qualifications, attached to it and to the person of the master. This was the result of the evolution of a significant part of the free colons during the 5th century, which led to an increase in the number of adscriptive colons. One can argue about the extent to which the state and the increase in state taxes and duties were to blame for the ruin of the small free peasantry, but a sufficient amount of data shows that large landowners, in order to increase income, turned colones into quasi-slaves, depriving them of the remainder of their property. Justinian's legislation, in order to fully collect state taxes, tried to limit the growth of taxes and duties in favor of the masters. But the most important thing was that neither the owners nor the state sought to strengthen the ownership rights of the colons to the land, to their own farm.
So we can state that at the turn of the 5th–6th centuries. the way for further strengthening of small peasant farming was closed. The result of this was the beginning of the economic decline of the village - construction was reduced, the village population stopped growing, the flight of peasants from the land increased and, naturally, there was an increase in abandoned and empty land (agri deserti). Emperor Justinian saw the distribution of land to churches and monasteries not only as a matter pleasing to God, but also as a useful one. Indeed, if in the 4th–5th centuries. the growth of church land ownership and monasteries occurred through donations and from wealthy landowners, then in the 6th century. The state increasingly began to transfer low-income plots to monasteries, hoping that they would be able to use them better. Rapid growth in the 6th century. church-monastic landholdings, which then covered up to 1/10 of all cultivated territories (this at one time gave rise to the theory of “monastic feudalism”) was a direct reflection of the changes taking place in the position of the Byzantine peasantry. During the first half of the 6th century. a significant part of it already consisted of ascriptions, into which an increasing part of the small landowners who had survived until then were transformed. 6th century - the time of their greatest ruin, the time of the final decline of average municipal land ownership, which Justinian tried to preserve by bans on the alienation of curial property. From the middle of the 6th century. The government found itself forced to increasingly remove arrears from the agricultural population, record the increasing desolation of land and the reduction of the rural population. Accordingly, the second half of the 6th century. - a time of rapid growth of large land ownership. As archaeological material from a number of areas shows, large secular and ecclesiastical and monastic possessions in the 6th century. have doubled, if not tripled. Emphyteusis, an everlasting lease on preferential terms associated with the need to invest significant effort and resources in maintaining the cultivation of the land, has become widespread on state lands. Emphyteusis became a form of expansion of large private land ownership. According to a number of researchers, peasant farming and the entire agrarian economy of early Byzantium during the 6th century. lost the ability to develop. Thus, the result of the evolution of agrarian relations in the early Byzantine village was its economic decline, which was expressed in the weakening of ties between the village and the city, the gradual development of more primitive but less costly rural production, and the increasing economic isolation of the village from the city.
The economic decline also affected the estate. There was a sharp reduction in small-scale land ownership, including peasant-communal land ownership, and the old ancient urban land ownership actually disappeared. Colonation in early Byzantium became the dominant form of peasant dependence. The norms of colonate relations extended to the relationship between the state and small landowners, who became a secondary category of farmers. The stricter dependence of slaves and adscripts, in turn, influenced the position of the rest of the colons. The presence in early Byzantium of small landowners, a free peasantry united in communities, the long and massive existence of the category of free colons, i.e. softer forms of colonate dependence did not create conditions for the direct transformation of colonate relations into feudal dependence. The Byzantine experience once again confirms that colony was a typically late antique form of dependence associated with the disintegration of slave relations, a transitional form doomed to extinction. Modern historiography notes the almost complete elimination of kolonat in the 7th century, i.e. he could not have a significant impact on the formation of feudal relations in Byzantium.
City.
Feudal society, like ancient society, was basically agrarian, and the agrarian economy had a decisive influence on the development of the Byzantine city. In the early Byzantine era, Byzantium, with its 900–1200 city-polises, often spaced 15–20 km from each other, looked like a “country of cities” in comparison with Western Europe. But one can hardly talk about the prosperity of cities and even the flourishing of urban life in Byzantium in the 4th–6th centuries. compared to previous centuries. But the fact that a sharp turning point in the development of the early Byzantine city came only at the end of the 6th – beginning of the 7th centuries. – undoubtedly. It coincided with attacks by external enemies, the loss of part of the Byzantine territories, and the invasion of masses of new populations - all this enabled a number of researchers to attribute the decline of cities to the influence of purely external factors that undermined their previous well-being for two centuries. Of course, there is no reason to deny the enormous real impact of the defeat of many cities on the overall development of Byzantium, but the own internal trends in the development of the early Byzantine city of the 4th–6th centuries also deserve close attention.
Its greater stability than Western Roman cities is explained by a number of circumstances. Among them is the lesser development of large magnate farms, which were formed in the conditions of their increasing natural isolation, the preservation of medium-sized landowners and small urban landowners in the eastern provinces of the empire, as well as the mass of a free peasantry around the cities. This made it possible to maintain a fairly wide market for urban crafts, and the decline of urban land ownership even increased the role of the intermediary merchant in supplying the city. On the basis of this, a fairly significant layer of the trade and craft population remained, united by profession into several dozen corporations and usually amounting to at least 10% of the total number of city residents. Small towns, as a rule, had 1.5–2 thousand inhabitants, medium-sized ones – up to 10 thousand, and larger ones – several tens of thousands, sometimes more than 100 thousand. In general, the urban population accounted for up to 1/4 of the country’s population.
During the 4th–5th centuries. cities retained certain land ownership, which provided income for the city community and, along with other income, made it possible to maintain city life and improve it. An important factor was that a significant part of its rural district was under the authority of the city, the urban curia. Also, if in the West the economic decline of cities led to the pauperization of the urban population, which made it dependent on the urban nobility, then in the Byzantine city the trade and craft population was more numerous and economically more independent.
The growth of large land ownership and the impoverishment of urban communities and curials still took their toll. Already at the end of the 4th century. the rhetorician Livanius wrote that some small towns were becoming “like villages,” and the historian Theodoret of Cyrrhus (5th century) regretted that they were unable to maintain their former public buildings and were “losing” among their inhabitants. But in early Byzantium this process proceeded slowly, although steadily.
If in small cities, with the impoverishment of the municipal aristocracy, ties with the intra-imperial market weakened, then in large cities, the growth of large land ownership led to their rise, the resettlement of rich landowners, merchants and artisans. In the 4th–5th centuries. major urban centers are experiencing a rise, which was facilitated by the restructuring of the administration of the empire, which was the result of shifts that took place in late antique society. The number of provinces increased (64), and state administration was concentrated in their capitals. Many of these capitals became centers of local military administration, sometimes - important centers of defense, garrisoning and large religious centers - metropolitan capitals. As a rule, in the 4th-5th centuries. Intensive construction was underway in them (Livanius wrote in the 4th century about Antioch: “the whole city is under construction”), their population multiplied, to some extent creating the illusion of general prosperity of cities and urban life.
It is worth noting the rise of another type of city - coastal port centers. Where possible, an increasing number of provincial capitals moved to coastal cities. Externally, the process seemed to reflect the intensification of trade exchanges. However, in reality, the development of cheaper and safer sea transportation took place in conditions of weakening and decline of the extensive system of internal land routes.
A peculiar manifestation of the “naturalization” of the economy of early Byzantium was the development of state-owned industries designed to meet the needs of the state. This kind of production was also concentrated mainly in the capital and largest cities.
The turning point in the development of the small Byzantine city, apparently, was the second half - the end of the 5th century. It was at this time that small towns entered an era of crisis, began to lose their importance as centers of craft and trade in their area, and began to “push out” the excess trade and craft population. The fact that the government was forced in 498 to abolish the main trade and craft tax - the chrysargir, an important source of cash receipts for the treasury, was neither an accident nor an indicator of the increased prosperity of the empire, but spoke of the massive impoverishment of the trade and craft population. As a contemporary wrote, city residents, oppressed by their own poverty and oppression by the authorities, led a “miserable and miserable life.” One of the reflections of this process, apparently, was the beginning of the 5th century. a massive outflow of townspeople to monasteries, an increase in the number of city monasteries, characteristic of the 5th–6th centuries. Perhaps the information that in some small towns monasticism accounted for from 1/4 to 1/3 of their population is exaggerated, but since there were already several dozen city and suburban monasteries, many churches and church institutions, such an exaggeration was in any case small.
The situation of the peasantry, small and medium-sized urban owners in the 6th century. did not improve, the majority of whom became adscripts, free colons and peasants, robbed by the state and land owners, did not join the ranks of buyers in the city market. The number of wandering, migrating craft population grew. We do not know what the outflow of the craft population from the decaying cities to the countryside was, but already in the second half of the 6th century the growth of large settlements, “villages,” and burgs surrounding the cities intensified. This process was also characteristic of previous eras, but its nature has changed. If in the past it was associated with increased exchange between the city and the district, the strengthening of the role of urban production and the market, and such villages were a kind of trading outposts of the city, now their rise was due to the beginning of its decline. At the same time, individual districts were separated from the cities and their exchange with the cities was curtailed.
The rise of early Byzantine large cities in the 4th–5th centuries. also largely had a structural-stage character. Archaeological material clearly paints a picture of a real turning point in the development of a large early Byzantine city. First of all, it shows the process of gradual increase in property polarization of the urban population, confirmed by data on the growth of large land ownership and the erosion of the layer of average urban owners. Archaeologically, this finds expression in the gradual disappearance of neighborhoods of the wealthy population. On the one hand, the rich quarters of the palaces and estates of the nobility stand out more clearly, on the other – the poor, who occupied an increasing part of the city’s territory. The influx of trade and craft population from small towns only aggravated the situation. Apparently, from the end of the 5th to the beginning of the 6th century. One can also talk about the impoverishment of the mass of the trade and craft population of large cities. This was probably partly due to the cessation in the 6th century. intensive construction in most of them.
For large cities there were more factors that supported their existence. However, the pauperization of their population aggravated both the economic and social situation. Only manufacturers of luxury goods, food traders, large merchants and moneylenders flourished. In a large early Byzantine city, its population also increasingly came under the protection of the church, and the latter was increasingly embedded in the economy.
Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, occupies a special place in the history of the Byzantine city. The latest research has changed the understanding of the role of Constantinople and amended the legends about the early history of the Byzantine capital. First of all, Emperor Constantine, concerned with strengthening the unity of the empire, did not intend to create Constantinople as a “second Rome” or as a “new Christian capital of the empire.” The further transformation of the Byzantine capital into a giant supercity was the result of the socio-economic and political development of the eastern provinces.
Early Byzantine statehood was the last form of ancient statehood, the result of its long development. The polis - municipality until the end of antiquity continued to be the basis of social and administrative, political and cultural life society. The bureaucratic organization of late antique society developed in the process of decomposition of its main socio-political unit - the polis, and in the process of its formation was influenced by the socio-political traditions of ancient society, which gave its bureaucracy and political institutions a specific antique character. It was precisely the fact that the late Roman regime of dominance was the result of centuries of development of the forms of Greco-Roman statehood that gave it an originality that did not bring it closer either to the traditional forms of eastern despotism, or to the future medieval, feudal statehood.
The power of the Byzantine emperor was not the power of a deity, like that of the eastern monarchs. She was power “by the grace of God,” but not exclusively so. Although sanctified by God, in early Byzantium it was viewed not as a divinely sanctioned personal omnipotence, but as an unlimited, but delegated to the emperor, the power of the Senate and the Roman people. Hence the practice of “civil” election of each emperor. It was no coincidence that the Byzantines considered themselves “Romans”, Romans, custodians of Roman state-political traditions, and their state as Roman, Roman. The fact that the heredity of imperial power was not established in Byzantium, and the election of emperors remained until the end of Byzantium’s existence, should also be attributed not to Roman customs, but to the influence of new social conditions, the class non-polarized society of the 8th–9th centuries. Late antique statehood was characterized by a combination of government by state bureaucracy and polis self-government.
A characteristic feature of this era was the involvement of independent property owners, retired officials (honorati), and the clergy in self-government. Together with the top of the curials, they constituted a kind of official collegium, a committee that stood above the curiae and was responsible for the functioning of individual city institutions. The bishop was the “protector” of the city not simply because of his ecclesiastical functions. His role in the late antique and early Byzantine city was special: he was a recognized defender of the city community, its official representative before the state and the bureaucratic administration. This position and responsibilities reflected the general policy of the state and society in relation to the city. Concern for the prosperity and well-being of cities was declared as one of the most important tasks of the state. The duty of the early Byzantine emperors was to be “philopolis” - “lovers of the city,” and it extended to the imperial administration. Thus, we can talk not only about the state maintaining the remnants of polis self-government, but also about a certain orientation in this direction of the entire policy of the early Byzantine state, its “city-centrism.”
With the transition to the early Middle Ages, state policy also changed. From “city-centric” - late antique - it turns into a new, purely “territorial” one. The empire, as an ancient federation of cities with territories under their control, died completely. In the state system, the city was equalized with the village within the framework of the general territorial division of the empire into rural and urban administrative and tax districts.
The evolution of church organization should also be viewed from this point of view. The question of which municipal functions of the church, obligatory for the early Byzantine era, has died out has not yet been sufficiently studied. But there is no doubt that some of the surviving functions lost their connection with the activities of the city community and became an independent function of the church itself. Thus, the church organization, having broken the remnants of its former dependence on the ancient polis structure, for the first time became independent, territorially organized and unified within the dioceses. The decline of cities obviously contributed greatly to this.
Accordingly, all this was reflected in the specific forms of state-church organization and their functioning. The Emperor was the absolute ruler - the supreme legislator and chief executive, the supreme commander and judge, the highest court of appeal, the protector of the church and, as such, the "earthly leader of the Christian people." He appointed and dismissed all officials and could make sole decisions on all issues. The State Council, a consistory consisting of senior officials, and the Senate, a body for representing and protecting the interests of the senatorial class, had advisory and advisory functions. All threads of control converged in the palace. The magnificent ceremony raised the imperial power high and separated it from the mass of its subjects - mere mortals. However, certain limitations of imperial power were also observed. Being a “living law,” the emperor was obliged to follow existing law. He could make individual decisions, but on major issues he consulted not only with his advisers, but also with the Senate and senators. He was obliged to listen to the decisions of the three “constitutional forces” - the Senate, the army and the “people”, involved in the nomination and election of emperors. On this basis, city parties were a real political force in early Byzantium, and often, when elected, conditions were imposed on emperors that they were obliged to observe. During the early Byzantine era, the civil side of election was absolutely dominant. The consecration of power, in comparison with election, was not significant. The role of the church was considered to some extent within the framework of ideas about state cult.
All types of service were divided into court (palatina), civil (militia) and military (militia armata). Military administration and command were separated from civil ones, and the early Byzantine emperors, formally the supreme commanders, actually ceased to be generals. The main thing in the empire was civil administration, military activity was subordinate to it. Therefore, the main figures in the administration and hierarchy, after the emperor, were the two praetorian prefects - the “viceroys”, who stood at the head of the entire civil administration and were in charge of managing provinces, cities, collecting taxes, performing duties, local police functions, ensuring supplies for the army, court, etc. The disappearance in early medieval Byzantium of not only the provincial division, but also the most important departments of prefects, undoubtedly indicates a radical restructuring of the entire system of public administration. The early Byzantine army was staffed partly by forced recruitment of recruits (conscription), but the further it went, the more it became mercenary - from the inhabitants of the empire and barbarians. Its supplies and weapons were provided by civilian departments. The end of the early Byzantine era and the beginning of the early medieval era were marked by a complete restructuring of the military organization. The previous division of the army into the border army, located in the border districts and under the command of the duxes, and the mobile army, located in the cities of the empire, was abolished.
Justinian's 38-year reign (527–565) was a turning point in early Byzantine history. Having come to power in conditions of social crisis, the emperor began by attempting to forcibly establish the religious unity of the empire. His very moderate reform policy was interrupted by the Nika Revolt (532), a unique and at the same time urban movement characteristic of the early Byzantine era. It focused the entire intensity of social contradictions in the country. The uprising was brutally suppressed. Justinian carried out a series of administrative reforms. He adopted a number of norms from Roman legislation, establishing the principle of the inviolability of private property. Justinian's code would form the basis of subsequent Byzantine legislation, helping to ensure that Byzantium remained a “rule of law state”, in which the authority and force of law played a huge role, and would further have a strong influence on the jurisprudence of all medieval Europe. In general, the era of Justinian seemed to sum up and synthesize the trends of previous development. The famous historian G.L. Kurbatov noted that in this era all serious possibilities for reforms in all spheres of life of early Byzantine society - social, political, ideological - were exhausted. During 32 of the 38 years of Justinian's reign, Byzantium waged grueling wars - in North Africa, Italy, with Iran, etc.; in the Balkans she had to repel the onslaught of the Huns and Slavs, and Justinian’s hopes for stabilizing the position of the empire ended in collapse.
Heraclius (610–641) achieved well-known success in strengthening central power. True, the eastern provinces with a predominant non-Greek population were lost, and now his power extended mainly over Greek or Hellenized territories. Heraclius adopted the ancient Greek title "basileus" instead of the Latin "emperor". The status of the ruler of the empire was no longer associated with the idea of the election of the sovereign, as a representative of the interests of all subjects, as the main position in the empire (magistrate). The Emperor became a medieval monarch. At the same time, the entire state business and legal proceedings were translated from Latin into Greek. The difficult foreign policy situation of the empire required the concentration of power locally, and the “principle of separation” of powers began to disappear from the political arena. Radical changes began in the structure of provincial government, the boundaries of the provinces changed, and all military and civil power was now entrusted to the governor by the emperors - the strategus (military leader). The strategos received power over the judges and officials of the provincial fiscus, and the province itself began to be called “fema” (previously this was the name of a detachment of local troops).
In the difficult military situation of the 7th century. The role of the army invariably increased. With the emergence of the feminine system, mercenary troops lost their importance. The femme system was based on the village, free peasants-stratiots became the main military force countries. They were included in the stratiot catalogues, and received certain privileges in relation to taxes and duties. They were assigned land plots that were inalienable, but could be inherited subject to continued military service. With the spread of the theme system, the restoration of imperial power in the provinces accelerated. The free peasantry turned into taxpayers of the treasury, into warriors of the feminine militia. The state, which was in dire need of money, was largely relieved of the obligation to maintain the army, although the stratiots received a certain salary.
The first themes arose in Asia Minor (Opsiky, Anatolik, Armeniak). From the end of the 7th to the beginning of the 9th century. they also formed in the Balkans: Thrace, Hellas, Macedonia, Peloponnese, and also, probably, Thessalonica-Dyrrachium. So, Asia Minor became the “cradle of medieval Byzantium.” It was here, under conditions of acute military necessity, that the femme system was the first to emerge and take shape, and the stratiot peasant class was born, which strengthened and raised the socio-political significance of the village. At the end of the 7th–8th century. tens of thousands subjugated by force and submitted voluntarily Slavic families were resettled to the north-west of Asia Minor (to Bithynia), allocated land on the terms of military service, they were made taxpayers of the treasury. The main territorial divisions of the theme are increasingly clearly military districts, turms, and not provincial cities, as before. In Asia Minor, the future feudal ruling class of Byzantium began to form from among the fem commanders. By the middle of the 9th century. The feminine system was established throughout the empire. New organization military forces and control allowed the empire to repel the onslaught of enemies and move on to returning lost lands.
But the feminine system, as it was later discovered, was fraught with danger for the central government: the strategists, having acquired enormous power, tried to escape from the control of the center. They even waged wars with each other. Therefore, the emperors began to split up large themes, causing discontent among the strategists, on the crest of which the theme strategist Anatolicus Leo III the Isaurian (717–741) came to power.
Leo III and other iconoclast emperors, who succeeded in overcoming centrifugal tendencies and for a long time turned the church and the military-administrative system of tribal government into the support of their throne, have an exceptional place in strengthening imperial power. First of all, they subjugated the church to their influence, arrogating to themselves the right of a decisive vote in the election of the patriarch and in the adoption of the most important church dogmas at ecumenical councils. Rebellious patriarchs were deposed, exiled, and Roman governors were also dethroned, until they found themselves under the protectorate of the Frankish state from the mid-8th century. Iconoclasm contributed to the discord with the West, serving as the beginning of the future drama of the division of churches. Iconoclast emperors revived and strengthened the cult of imperial power. The same goals were pursued by the policy of resuming Roman legal proceedings and reviving what had experienced a deep decline in the 7th century. Roman law. The Eclogue (726) sharply increased the responsibility of officials before the law and the state and established the death penalty for any speech against the emperor and the state.
In the last quarter of the 8th century. The main goals of iconoclasm were achieved: the financial position of the opposition clergy was undermined, their property and lands were confiscated, many monasteries were closed, large centers of separatism were destroyed, the femme nobility was subordinated to the throne. Previously, the strategists sought complete independence from Constantinople, and thus a conflict arose between the two main groups of the ruling class, the military aristocracy and the civil authorities, for political dominance in the state. As Byzantium researcher G.G. Litavrin notes, “this was a struggle for two different ways of developing feudal relations: the capital bureaucracy, which controlled the treasury funds, sought to limit the growth of large landownership and strengthen tax oppression, while the femme nobility saw prospects for its strengthening in all-round development private forms of exploitation. The rivalry between the “commanders” and the “bureaucracy” has been the core of the internal political life of the empire for centuries...”
Iconoclastic policies lost their urgency in the second quarter of the 9th century, since further conflict with the church threatened to weaken the position of the ruling class. In 812–823, Constantinople was besieged by the usurper Thomas the Slav; he was supported by noble icon-worshipers, some strategists of Asia Minor and some of the Slavs in the Balkans. The uprising was suppressed, it had a sobering effect on the ruling circles. The VII Ecumenical Council (787) condemned iconoclasm, and in 843 icon veneration was restored, and the desire for centralization of power prevailed. The fight against adherents of the dualistic Paulician heresy also required a lot of effort. In the east of Asia Minor they created a unique state with its center in the city of Tefrika. In 879 this city was taken by government troops.
Byzantium in the second half of the 9th–11th centuries.
The strengthening of the power of imperial power predetermined the development of feudal relations in Byzantium and, accordingly, the nature of its political system. For three centuries, centralized exploitation became the main source of material resources. The service of stratiot peasants in the fem militia remained the foundation of the military power of Byzantium for at least two centuries.
Researchers date the onset of mature feudalism to the end of the 11th or even the turn of the 11th–12th centuries. The formation of large private land ownership occurred in the second half of the 9th–10th centuries; the process of ruin of the peasantry intensified during the lean years of 927/928. The peasants went bankrupt and sold their land for next to nothing to the dinates, becoming their wig holders. All this sharply reduced the tax revenues and weakened the fem militia. From 920 to 1020, emperors, concerned about the massive decline in income, issued a series of decrees in defense of peasant landowners. They are known as the "legislation of the emperors of the Macedonian dynasty (867–1056)". Peasants were given preferential rights to purchase land. The legislation primarily had the interests of the Treasury in mind. Fellow villagers were obliged to pay taxes (by mutual guarantee) for abandoned peasant plots. Deserted community lands were sold or leased.
11th–12th centuries
The differences between different categories of peasants are being smoothed out. From the middle of the 11th century. conditional land ownership is growing. Back in the 10th century. Emperors granted the secular and ecclesiastical nobility so-called “immoral rights,” which consisted of transferring the right to collect state taxes from a certain territory in their favor for a specified period or for life. These grants were called solemnias or pronias. Pronias were envisaged in the 11th century. performance by the recipient of military service in favor of the state. In the 12th century Pronia shows a tendency to become hereditary and then unconditional property.
In a number of regions of Asia Minor, on the eve of the IV Crusade, complexes of vast possessions were formed, virtually independent of Constantinople. The registration of the estate, and then its property privileges, took place in Byzantium at a slow pace. Tax immunity was presented as an exceptional benefit; a hierarchical structure of land ownership did not develop in the empire, and the system of vassal-personal relations did not develop.
City.
The new rise of Byzantine cities reached its apogee in the 10th–12th centuries, and covered not only the capital Constantinople, but some provincial cities - Nicaea, Smyrna, Ephesus, Trebizond. The Byzantine merchants developed extensive international trade. The capital's artisans received large orders from the imperial palace, the highest clergy, and officials. In the 10th century the city charter was drawn up - Book of the Eparch. It regulated the activities of the main craft and trading corporations.
Constant government intervention in the activities of corporations has become a brake on their further development. A particularly severe blow to Byzantine craft and trade was dealt by exorbitantly high taxes and the provision of trade benefits to the Italian republics. Signs of decline were revealed in Constantinople: the dominance of Italians in its economy was growing. By the end of the 12th century. The very supply of food to the capital of the empire ended up mainly in the hands of Italian merchants. In provincial cities this competition was weakly felt, but such cities increasingly fell under the power of large feudal lords.
Medieval Byzantine state
developed in its most important features as a feudal monarchy by the beginning of the 10th century. under Leo VI the Wise (886–912) and Constantine II Porphyrogenitus (913–959). During the reign of the emperors of the Macedonian dynasty (867–1025), the empire achieved extraordinary power, which it never knew subsequently.
From the 9th century The first active contacts between Kievan Rus and Byzantium begin. Beginning in 860, they contributed to the establishment of stable trade relations. Probably, the beginning of the Christianization of Rus' dates back to this time. Treaties 907–911 opened a permanent path for her to the Constantinople market. In 946, the embassy of Princess Olga to Constantinople took place; it played a significant role in the development of trade and monetary relations and the spread of Christianity in Rus'. However, under Prince Svyatoslav, active trade-military political relations gave way to a long period of military conflicts. Svyatoslav failed to gain a foothold on the Danube, but in the future Byzantium continued to trade with Russia and repeatedly resorted to its military assistance. The consequence of these contacts was the marriage of Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Vasily II, with Prince Vladimir, which completed the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of Rus' (988/989). This event brought Rus' into the ranks of the largest Christian states in Europe. Slavic writing spread to Rus', theological books, religious objects, etc. were imported. Economic and church ties between Byzantium and Rus' continued to develop and strengthen in the 11th–12th centuries.
During the reign of the Komnenos dynasty (1081–1185), a new temporary rise of the Byzantine state took place. The Comneni won major victories over the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor and pursued an active policy in the West. The decline of the Byzantine state became acute only at the end of the 12th century.
Organization of public administration and management of the empire in the 10th century. 12th century has also undergone major changes. There was an active adaptation of the norms of Justinian's law to new conditions (collections Isagogue, Prochiron, Vasiliki and the publication of new laws.) The synclitus, or council of the highest nobility under the basileus, genetically closely related to the late Roman Senate, was generally an obedient instrument of his power.
The formation of personnel of the most important governing bodies was entirely determined by the will of the emperor. Under Leo VI, the hierarchy of ranks and titles was introduced into the system. It served as one of the most important levers for strengthening imperial power.
The power of the emperor was by no means unlimited, and was often very fragile. Firstly, it was not hereditary; the imperial throne, the place of the basileus in society, his rank were deified, and not his personality itself and not the dynasty. In Byzantium, the custom of co-government was established early: the ruling basileus hurried to crown his heir during his lifetime. Secondly, the dominance of temporary workers upset management at the center and locally. The authority of the strategist fell. Once again there was a separation of military and civil power. The leadership in the province passed to the judge-praetor, the strategists became the commanders of small fortresses, the highest military power was represented by the head of the tagma - a detachment of professional mercenaries. But at the end of the 12th century. There was still a significant layer of free peasantry, and changes gradually took place in the army.
Nikephoros II Phocas (963–969) singled out from the mass of strategists their wealthy elite, from which he formed a heavily armed cavalry. The less wealthy were obliged to serve in the infantry, navy, and wagon trains. From the 11th century the obligation of personal service was replaced by monetary compensation. The funds received were used to support the mercenary army. The army fleet fell into decay. The Empire became dependent on the help of the Italian fleet.
The state of affairs in the army reflected the vicissitudes of the political struggle within the ruling class. From the end of the 10th century. the commanders sought to wrest power from the strengthened bureaucracy. Representatives of the military group occasionally seized power in the mid-11th century. In 1081, the rebel commander Alexius I Komnenos (1081–1118) took the throne.
This marked the end of the era of the bureaucratic nobility, and the process of forming a closed class of the largest feudal lords intensified. The main social support of the Komnenos was already the large provincial landowning nobility. The staff of officials in the center and in the provinces was reduced. However, the Komnenos only temporarily strengthened the Byzantine state, but they were not able to prevent feudal decline.
Economy of Byzantium in the 11th century. was on the rise, but its socio-political structure found itself in a crisis of the old form of Byzantine statehood. The evolution of the second half of the 11th century contributed to the recovery from the crisis. – the growth of feudal land ownership, the transformation of the bulk of the peasantry into feudal exploitation, the consolidation of the ruling class. But the peasant part of the army, the bankrupt stratiots, was no longer a serious military force, even in combination with feudal shock troops and mercenaries; it became a burden in military operations. The peasant part was increasingly unreliable, which gave a decisive role to the commanders and the top of the army, opening the way for their revolts and uprisings.
With Alexei Komnenos, more than just the Komnenos dynasty came to power. A whole clan of military-aristocratic families came to power, already in the 11th century. connected by family and friendly ties. The Comnenian clan pushed the civilian nobility out of governing the country. Its importance and influence on the political destinies of the country was reduced, management was increasingly concentrated in the palace, at court. The role of the Synclite as the main body of civil administration declined. Nobility becomes the standard of nobility.
The distribution of pronias made it possible not only to strengthen and strengthen the dominance of the Komnenian clan. Part of the civil nobility was also satisfied with the pronias. With the development of the institution of pronys, the state created, in fact, a purely feudal army. The question of how much small and medium-sized feudal landownership grew under the Komnenians is controversial. It is difficult to say why, but the Komnenos government placed significant emphasis on attracting foreigners to the Byzantine army, including by distributing pronias to them. This is how a significant number of Western feudal families appeared in Byzantium. The independence of the patriarchs tried in the 11th century. to act as a kind of “third force” was suppressed.
By asserting the dominance of their clan, the Komnenos helped the feudal lords ensure the quiet exploitation of the peasantry. Already the beginning of Alexei's reign was marked by the merciless suppression of popular heretical movements. The most stubborn heretics and rebels were burned. The Church also intensified its fight against heresies.
The feudal economy in Byzantium is experiencing a rise. Moreover, already in the 12th century. the predominance of privately owned forms of exploitation over centralized ones was noticeable. The feudal economy produced more and more marketable products (the yield was fifteen, twenty). The volume of commodity-money relations increased in the 12th century. 5 times compared to the 11th century.
In large provincial centers, industries similar to those in Constantinople (Athens, Corinth, Nicaea, Smyrna, Ephesus) developed, which hit capital production hard. Provincial cities had direct contacts with the Italian merchants. But in the 12th century. Byzantium is already losing its monopoly of trade not only in the western, but also in the eastern part of the Mediterranean.
The Komnenos' policy towards the Italian city-states was entirely determined by the interests of the clan. Most of all, the Constantinople trade and craft population and merchants suffered from it. State in the 12th century received considerable income from the revitalization of city life. The Byzantine treasury, despite an active foreign policy and huge military expenditures, as well as the costs of maintaining a magnificent court, did not experience an urgent need for money throughout much of the 12th century. In addition to organizing expensive expeditions, emperors in the 12th century. They carried out extensive military construction and had a good fleet.
The rise of Byzantine cities in the 12th century. turned out to be short-lived and incomplete. Only the oppression placed on the peasant economy increased. The state, which gave the feudal lords certain benefits and privileges that increased their power over the peasants, did not actually strive to significantly reduce state taxes. The telos tax, which became the main state tax, did not take into account the individual capabilities of the peasant economy and tended to turn into a unified tax of the household or household tax type. The state of the internal, city market in the second half of the 12th century. began to slow down due to a decrease in the purchasing power of peasants. This doomed many mass crafts to stagnation.
Intensified in the last quarter of the 12th century. The pauperization and lumpen-proletarianization of part of the urban population was especially acute in Constantinople. Already at this time, the increasing import into Byzantium of cheaper Italian goods of mass demand began to affect his position. All this strained the social situation in Constantinople and led to massive anti-Latin, anti-Italian protests. Provincial cities are also beginning to show signs of their well-known economic decline. Byzantine monasticism actively multiplied not only at the expense of the rural population, but also the trade and craft population. In Byzantine cities of the 11th–12th centuries. there were no trade and craft associations like Western European guilds; artisans did not play an independent role in public life cities.
The terms “self-government” and “autonomy” can hardly be applied to Byzantine cities, because they imply administrative autonomy. In the charters of the Byzantine emperors to cities, we speak of tax and partly judicial privileges, which, in principle, take into account the interests not even of the entire city community, but of individual groups of its population. It is not known whether the urban trade and craft population fought for “their own” autonomy, separately from the feudal lords, but the fact remains that those elements of it that strengthened in Byzantium put feudal lords at their head. While in Italy the feudal class was fragmented and formed a layer of urban feudal lords, which turned out to be an ally of the urban class, in Byzantium the elements of urban self-government were only a reflection of the consolidation of the power of the feudal lords over the cities. Often in cities, power was in the hands of 2-3 feudal families. If in Byzantium 11–12 centuries. If there were any trends towards the emergence of elements of city (burgher) self-government, then in the second half - the end of the 12th century. they were interrupted - and forever.
Thus, as a result of the development of the Byzantine city in the 11th–12th centuries. In Byzantium, unlike Western Europe, there was no strong urban community, no powerful independent movement of citizens, no developed urban self-government and even its elements. Byzantine artisans and merchants were excluded from participation in official political life and city government.
The fall of the power of Byzantium in the last quarter of the 12th century. was associated with the deepening processes of strengthening Byzantine feudalism. With the formation of the local market, the struggle between decentralization and centralization tendencies inevitably intensified, the growth of which characterizes the evolution of political relations in Byzantium in the 12th century. The Comneni very decisively took the path of developing conditional feudal land ownership, not forgetting about their own family feudal power. They distributed tax and judicial privileges to the feudal lords, thereby increasing the volume of privately owned exploitation of the peasants and their real dependence on the feudal lords. However, the clan in power did not at all want to give up centralized income. Therefore, with a reduction in tax collection, state tax oppression intensified, which caused sharp discontent among the peasantry. The Komneni did not support the tendency to transform the pronias into conditional but hereditary possessions, which was actively sought by an ever-increasing part of the proniaries.
A tangle of contradictions that intensified in Byzantium in the 70s–90s of the 12th century. was largely the result of the evolution that Byzantine society and its ruling class underwent in this century. The strength of the civil nobility was sufficiently undermined in the 11th–12th centuries, but it found support among people dissatisfied with the policies of the Komnenos, the dominance and rule of the Komnenos clan in the localities.
Hence the demands to strengthen central power and streamline public administration - the wave on which Andronicus I Komnenos (1183–1185) came to power. The masses of the Constantinople population hoped that a civilian, rather than a military government would be able to more effectively limit the privileges of the nobility and foreigners. Sympathy for the civil bureaucracy also increased with the emphasized aristocracy of the Komnenos, who to some extent dissociated themselves from the rest of the ruling class, and their rapprochement with the Western aristocracy. The opposition to the Komnenos found increasing support both in the capital and in the provinces, where the situation was more complicated. IN social structure and the composition of the ruling class during the 12th century. there have been some changes. If in the 11th century. The feudal aristocracy of the provinces was mainly represented by large military families, large early feudal nobility of the provinces, then during the 12th century. a powerful provincial stratum of “middle-class” feudal lords grew up. She was not associated with the Comnenian clan, actively participated in city government, gradually took local power into her hands, and the struggle to weaken the government’s power in the provinces became one of her tasks. In this struggle, she rallied local forces around herself and relied on the cities. It had no military forces, but local military commanders became its instruments. Moreover, we are not talking about the old aristocratic families, which had enormous strength and power of their own, but about those who could act only with their support. In Byzantium at the end of the 12th century. Separatist uprisings and entire regions leaving the central government became frequent.
Thus, we can talk about the undoubted expansion of the Byzantine feudal class in the 12th century. If in the 11th century. a narrow circle of the country's largest feudal magnates fought for central power and was inextricably linked with it, then during the 12th century. a powerful layer of provincial feudal archons grew up, becoming an important factor in truly feudal decentralization.
The emperors who ruled after Andronicus I to some extent, although forced, continued his policy. On the one hand, they weakened the strength of the Comnenian clan, but did not dare to strengthen the elements of centralization. They did not express the interests of the provincials, but with their help the latter overthrew the dominance of the Comnenian clan. They did not pursue any deliberate policy against the Italians, they simply relied on popular protests as a means of putting pressure on them, and then made concessions. As a result, there was no decentralization or centralization of government in the state. Everyone was unhappy, but no one knew what to do.
There was a fragile balance of power in the empire, in which any attempts at decisive action were instantly blocked by the opposition. Neither side dared to reform, but all fought for power. Under these conditions, the authority of Constantinople fell, and the provinces lived an increasingly independent life. Even serious military defeats and losses did not change the situation. If the Komnenos could, relying on objective trends, take a decisive step towards establishing feudal relations, then the situation that developed in Byzantium by the end of the 12th century turned out to be internally insoluble. There were no forces in the empire that could decisively break with the traditions of stable centralized statehood. The latter still had a fairly strong support in real life countries, in state forms of exploitation. Therefore, in Constantinople there were no those who could decisively fight for the preservation of the empire.
The Comnenian era created a stable military-bureaucratic elite, viewing the country as a kind of “estate” of Constantinople and accustomed to not taking into account the interests of the population. Its income was wasted on lavish construction and expensive overseas campaigns, while the country's borders were poorly protected. The Komnenos finally liquidated the remnants of the thematic army, the feminine organization. They created a combat-ready feudal army capable of winning major victories, eliminated the remnants of the feudal fleets and created a combat-ready central fleet. But the defense of the regions was now increasingly dependent on the central forces. The Komnenians consciously ensured a high percentage of foreign knighthood in the Byzantine army; they just as consciously inhibited the transformation of proniyas into hereditary property. Imperial donations and awards turned the Proniars into the privileged elite of the army, but the position of the bulk of the army was not sufficiently secure and stable.
Ultimately, the government had to partially revive elements of the regional military organization, partially subordinating the civil administration to local strategists. The local nobility with their local interests, the proniars and archons, who were trying to strengthen the ownership of their possessions, and the urban population, who wanted to protect their interests, began to rally around them. All this was sharply different from the situation in the 11th century. the fact that behind all the local movements that arose from the mid-12th century. there were powerful trends towards feudal decentralization of the country, which took shape as a result of the establishment of Byzantine feudalism and the processes of the formation of regional markets. They were expressed in the emergence of independent or semi-independent entities on the territory of the empire, especially on its outskirts, ensuring the protection of local interests and only nominally subordinate to the government of Constantinople. This became Cyprus under the rule of Isaac Komnenos, the region of central Greece under the rule of Kamathir and Leo Sgur, Western Asia Minor. There was a process of gradual “separation” of the regions of Pontus-Trebizond, where the power of the Le Havre-Taronites, who united local feudal lords and trade and merchant circles, was slowly strengthening. They became the basis of the future Trebizond Empire of the Great Komnenos (1204–1461), which turned into an independent state with the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders.
The growing isolation of the capital was largely taken into account by the Crusaders and Venetians, who saw real opportunity turn Constantinople into the center of his dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean. The reign of Andronikos I showed that the opportunities to consolidate the empire on a new basis were missed. He established his power with the support of the provinces, but did not live up to their hopes and lost it. The break of the provinces with Constantinople became a fait accompli; the provinces did not come to the aid of the capital when it was besieged by the crusaders in 1204. The nobility of Constantinople, on the one hand, did not want to part with their monopoly position, and on the other, they tried in every possible way to strengthen their own. The Comnenian “centralization” made it possible for the government to maneuver large funds and quickly increase either the army or the navy. But this change in needs created enormous opportunities for corruption. At the time of the siege, the military forces of Constantinople consisted mainly of mercenaries and were insignificant. They could not be increased instantly. The “Big Fleet” was liquidated as unnecessary. By the beginning of the siege by the Crusaders, the Byzantines were able to “fix 20 rotten ships, worn out by worms.” The unreasonable policy of the Constantinople government on the eve of the fall paralyzed even trade and merchant circles. The impoverished masses of the population hated the arrogant and arrogant nobility. On April 13, 1204, the crusaders easily captured the city, and the poor, exhausted by hopeless poverty, together with them smashed and plundered the palaces and houses of the nobility. The famous “Devastation of Constantinople” began, after which the capital of the empire could no longer recover. The “sacred booty of Constantinople” poured into the West, but a huge part of the cultural heritage of Byzantium was irretrievably lost during the fire during the capture of the city. The fall of Constantinople and the collapse of Byzantium were not a natural consequence of objective development trends alone. In many ways, this was a direct result of the unreasonable policy of the Constantinople authorities.”
Church
Byzantium was poorer than the West, priests paid taxes. Celibacy existed in the empire from the 10th century. obligatory for clergy, starting from the rank of bishop. In terms of property, even the highest clergy depended on the favor of the emperor and usually obediently carried out his will. The highest hierarchs were drawn into civil strife among the nobility. From the middle of the 10th century. they began to more often go over to the side of the military aristocracy.
In the 11th–12th centuries. the empire was truly a country of monasteries. Almost all noble persons sought to found or endow monasteries. Even despite the impoverishment of the treasury and the sharp decrease in the fund of state lands by the end of the 12th century, the emperors very timidly and rarely resorted to the secularization of church lands. In the 11th–12th centuries. In the internal political life of the empire, the gradual feudalization of nationalities began to be felt, which sought to secede from Byzantium and form independent states.
Thus, the Byzantine feudal monarchy of the 11th–12th centuries. does not fully correspond to its socio-economic structure. The crisis of imperial power was not completely overcome by the beginning of the 13th century. At the same time, the decline of the state was not a consequence of the decline of the Byzantine economy. The reason was that socio-economic and social development came into insoluble conflict with inert, traditional forms of government, which were only partially adapted to new conditions.
Crisis of the late 12th century. strengthened the process of decentralization of Byzantium and contributed to its conquest. In the last quarter of the 12th century. Byzantium lost the Ionian Islands and Cyprus, and during the 4th Crusade the systematic seizure of its territories began. On April 13, 1204, the crusaders captured and sacked Constantinople. On the ruins of Byzantium in 1204, a new, artificially created state arose, which included lands stretching from the Ionian to the Black Sea, belonging to Western European knights. They were called Latin Romagnia, it included the Latin Empire with its capital in Constantinople and the states of the “Franks” in the Balkans, the possessions of the Venetian Republic, the colonies and trading posts of the Genoese, the territories that belonged to the spiritual knightly order of the Hospitallers (Johnnites; Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands (1306–1422) But the crusaders failed to carry out the plan to seize all the lands belonging to Byzantium. An independent Greek state arose in the northwestern part of Asia Minor - the Nicene Empire, in the Southern Black Sea region - the Trebizond Empire, in the western Balkans - the Epirus state. They considered themselves the heirs of Byzantium and sought to reunite her.
Cultural, linguistic and religious unity, historical traditions determined the presence of tendencies towards the unification of Byzantium. The Nicene Empire played a leading role in the fight against the Latin Empire. It was one of the most powerful Greek states. Its rulers, relying on small and medium-sized landowners and cities, managed to expel the Latins from Constantinople in 1261. The Latin Empire ceased to exist, but the restored Byzantium was only a semblance of the former powerful power. Now it included the western part of Asia Minor, part of Thrace and Macedonia, islands in the Aegean Sea and a number of fortresses in the Peloponnese. The foreign political situation and centrifugal forces, weakness and lack of unity in the urban class made attempts at further unification difficult. The Palaiologan dynasty did not take the path of a decisive struggle against the large feudal lords, fearing the activity of the masses; it preferred dynastic marriages and feudal wars using foreign mercenaries. The foreign policy situation of Byzantium turned out to be extremely difficult; the West did not stop trying to recreate the Latin Empire and extend the power of the Pope to Byzantium; economic and military pressure from Venice and Genoa increased. The attacks of the Serbs from the north-west and the Turks from the East became more and more successful. The Byzantine emperors sought to obtain military assistance by subordinating the Greek Church to the pope (Union of Lyons, Union of Florence), but the dominance of Italian merchant capital and Western feudal lords was so hated by the population that the government could not force the people to recognize the union.
During this period, the dominance of large secular and ecclesiastical feudal land ownership became even more consolidated. Pronia again takes the form of hereditary conditional ownership, and the immune privileges of feudal lords are expanded. In addition to granted tax immunity, they are increasingly acquiring administrative and judicial immunity. The state still determined the amount of public rent from the peasants, which it transferred to the feudal lords. It was based on a tax on a house, land, and a team of livestock. Taxes were applied to the entire community: livestock tithes and pasture fees. Dependent peasants (wigs) also bore private duties in favor of the feudal lord, and they were regulated not by the state, but by customs. Corvée averaged 24 days a year. In the 14th–15th centuries. it increasingly turned into cash payments. Monetary and in-kind collections in favor of the feudal lord were very significant. The Byzantine community turned into an element of a patrimonial organization. The marketability of agriculture was growing in the country, but the sellers on foreign markets were secular feudal lords and monasteries, who derived great benefits from this trade, and the property differentiation of the peasantry increased. Peasants increasingly turned into landless and land-poor people; they became hired workers, tenants of other people's land. The strengthening of the patrimonial economy contributed to the development of handicraft production in the village. The late Byzantine city did not have a monopoly on the production and marketing of handicraft products.
For Byzantium 13–15 centuries. characterized by the increasing decline of urban life. The Latin conquest dealt a heavy blow to the economy of the Byzantine city. The competition of the Italians and the development of usury in the cities led to the impoverishment and ruin of broad layers of Byzantine artisans who joined the ranks of the urban plebs. A significant part of the state's foreign trade was concentrated in the hands of Genoese, Venetian, Pisan and other Western European merchants. Foreign trading posts were located in the most important points of the empire (Thessalonica, Adrianople, almost all cities of the Peloponnese, etc.). In the 14th–15th centuries. the ships of the Genoese and Venetians dominated the Black and Aegean Seas, and the once powerful fleet of Byzantium fell into decay.
The decline of urban life was especially noticeable in Constantinople, where entire neighborhoods were desolate, but even in Constantinople economic life did not completely die out, but at times revived. The position of large port cities (Trebizond, in which there was an alliance of local feudal lords and the commercial and industrial elite) was more favorable. They took part in both international and local trade. Most medium-sized and small towns turned into centers of local exchange of handicraft goods. They, being the residences of large feudal lords, were also church and administrative centers.
By the beginning of the 14th century. Most of Asia Minor was captured by the Ottoman Turks. In 1320–1328, an internecine war broke out in Byzantium between Emperor Andronikos II and his grandson Andronikos III, who sought to seize the throne. The victory of Andronikos III further strengthened the feudal nobility and centrifugal forces. In the 20–30s of the 14th century. Byzantium fought grueling wars with Bulgaria and Serbia.
The decisive period was the 40s of the 14th century, when, during the struggle of two cliques for power, a peasant movement flared up. Taking the side of the “legitimate” dynasty, it began to destroy the estates of the rebellious feudal lords, led by John Cantacuzene. The government of John Apokavkos and Patriarch John initially pursued a decisive policy, sharply speaking out both against the separatist-minded aristocracy (and at the same time resorting to confiscation of the estates of the rebellious), and against the mystical ideology of the hesychasts. The citizens of Thessalonica supported Apokavkos. The movement was led by the Zealot Party, whose program soon took on an anti-feudal character. But the activity of the masses frightened the Constantinople government, which did not dare to use the chance that the popular movement gave it. Apokavkos was killed in 1343, and the government’s struggle against the rebellious feudal lords virtually ceased. In Thessalonica, the situation worsened as a result of the transition of the city nobility (archons) to the side of Cantacuzene. The plebs who came out exterminated most of the city nobility. However, the movement, having lost contact with the central government, remained local in nature and was suppressed.
This largest urban movement of late Byzantium was the last attempt by trade and craft circles to resist the dominance of the feudal lords. The weakness of the cities, the absence of a cohesive urban patriciate, social organization craft guilds and traditions of self-government predetermined their defeat. In 1348–1352, Byzantium lost the war with the Genoese. Black Sea trade and even the supply of grain to Constantinople were concentrated in the hands of the Italians.
Byzantium was exhausted and could not resist the onslaught of the Turks, who captured Thrace. Now Byzantium included Constantinople and its surroundings, Thessalonica and part of Greece. The defeat of the Serbs by the Turks at Maritsa in 1371 actually made the Byzantine emperor a vassal of the Turkish Sultan. Byzantine feudal lords compromised with foreign conquerors in order to maintain their rights to exploit the local population. The Byzantine trading cities, including Constantinople, saw their main enemy in the Italians, underestimating the Turkish danger, and even hoped to destroy the dominance of foreign trading capital with the help of the Turks. A desperate attempt by the population of Thessalonica in 1383–1387 to fight against Turkish rule in the Balkans ended in failure. The Italian merchants also underestimated the real danger of the Turkish conquest. The defeat of the Turks by Timur at Ankara in 1402 helped Byzantium to temporarily restore independence, but the Byzantines and South Slavic feudal lords failed to take advantage of the weakening of the Turks, and in 1453 Constantinople was captured by Mehmed II. Then the rest of the Greek territories fell (Morea - 1460, Trebizond - 1461). The Byzantine Empire ceased to exist.
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