Probably not long before this blog began, I, on the advice of a friend of mine, read through John Julius Norwich's Byzantium: The Early Centuries. Then promptly forgot the authors name and only recently, when the original comment thread came up, went and found book 2 of the trilogy, Byzantium: The Apogee.
The first book covered roughly 500 years from Diocletian to the crowing of Charlemagne. Book 2 starts right after and guides up until the beginning of the reign of Alexius I, not long after the Turks have come into Asia minor and much of the Western Mediterranean has fallen to other hands, which is about 300 years, 3 or 4 dynasties, several Patriarchs of Constantinople, and one big schism between the Roman Church and the Eastern Church.
So, even though some of the concepts in the above title were discussed in the first book and the reason behind a few councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon, here are a few definitions, since heretical notion keep coming back into play. Arianism contends that the Son was created by the Father and therefore not OF the father, thus God would not be a trinity. Monophysitism contends that the Son, rather than being both fully divine and fully human, was instead fully divine and given flesh. (These beliefs still show up in the modern era. However, since Christology is above and beyond my scope here, I'll point out that wikipedia has a couple fine articles discussing which branches of Christendom still have these in practice.)
Here in Book 2, we get more into the wars between the Iconoclasts and the Iconodules, as different Patriarchs either start smashing iconography or allowing it to flourish, generally depending on which Emperor is on the throne at any given point in time. One thing of interest to me in this war is that when the Iconodules eventually won out, the icons created were generally mosaic works or painting. Sculpture never really made a comeback in Byzantium. I should also note that when the Iconoclasts were in power, friction was increased with the Western Church, who venerated Icons much more prodigiously than the Eastern Sees ever did.
While we're speaking of religious matters, I should also discuss The East West Schism of 1054, which is chronicled near the end of the book. The roots of this lie in a host of issues that had long been simmering between the Latin speaking Western Church and the Greek speaking Eastern Church. When the Sees were first formed, all the Patriarchs were on equal footing, with the Roman Patriarch (Pope) First among Equals. However, particularly following the fall of Rome, the Latin speaking Roman See started doing things much differently from the much more inclined to debate Eastern Sees. (As I recall, of the Eastern Sees, Constantinople was the furthest West.) The Latins enforced celibacy among the clergy (or at least claimed to), where the Greeks would ordain married men. The Latin church used unleavened bread in the Eucharist, the Greeks did not. The Latin church inserted the Filioque into the Nicaean Creed, the Greeks thought the concept was heretical. (For the record, the Filioque concerned language that suggested that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the both the Father and the Son. Those not in favor of this believed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone.) And the Western belief of Papal Supremacy, which the other Sees weren't particularly inclined to support. (A few Emperors did, since it reinforced the notion that the Byzantine Empire was still the Roman Empire.) Although, honestly, the actual Schism happened because 3 Bishops visiting Constantinople who had axes of their own to grind and empowered by a Pope who happened to die prior to their arrival excommunicated the Patriarch, who returned the favor. Somehow, this translated into the Latins and the Greeks excommunicating each other.
As for the Imperial Dynasties, I'm beginning to understand why Surveys generally only hit the highlights and lowlights of long term governments, since honestly, most of the dynasties bleed together, with the more interesting parts having to do with how any one leader gained or lost the throne. (There's a lot of Tonsuring, castration, blinding, and plotting involved in most of the successions.) While the author (who may just be following the lead of the few extant sources left) seems to favor the more Military aligned Emperors, more than a few here in the Apogee also revise the civil life of the Empire. Usually not living to see the person replacing them reverse those changes.
We hear of wars on the Western borders with the Bulgars and the Magyars, the Saracean capture of Sicily, the Eastern adoption of Venice, ad wars with several Caliphates to the East, where the Imperial breadbasket really came from.
These have been fascinating reads to me, particularly since most Western Histories mention the split between the East and West, then really don't mention Byzantium again until the Crusades. Given exactly how much knowledge survived in the East, this is almost criminal. Then again, most Western histories, particularly here in the US try to present history as inexorably leading to the US's founding, the apex of Western Civilization, skipping over other cultures entirely as unimportant.
No comments:
Post a Comment