The Byzantine World (565–1095)

Heraclius

After Justinian’s death the Byzantine Empire was torn by internal disorder and threatened on every side. Avars and Slavs crossed the Danube, Persians prepared assaults on western Asia, Spain had fallen to the Visigoths, and the Lombards seized half of Italy in 568. Plague struck in 542 and again in 566; famine followed in 569. Poverty, barbarism, and war severed communications, ruined trade, and stifled literature and art.

Justinian’s successors were capable men, but the problems required more than ordinary effort. Justin II (565–578) fought bravely against Persian expansion. Tiberius II (578–582) ruled with justice but died after a short reign. Maurice (582–602) attacked the invading Avars with courage and skill yet received little popular support. Thousands fled military service into monasteries; when Maurice ordered the monasteries to stop accepting new members until the danger passed, the monks cried out for his deposition. A Roman centurion named Phocas stirred soldiers and populace against the aristocracy and government (602). Maurice’s five sons were butchered before his eyes; the aged emperor refused to let a nurse substitute her own child for his youngest son. Maurice’s head and those of his sons were displayed on poles, their bodies thrown into the sea. Empress Constantina and her three daughters, together with many nobles, were executed after trial or without trial, usually under torture. Eyes were gouged out, tongues cut, limbs severed. Scenes later enacted in the French Revolution were rehearsed here.

Chosroes II took advantage of the chaos to renew the ancient war between Iran and Greece. Phocas made peace with the Arabs and moved all Byzantine forces to Asia, but he was defeated everywhere. Meanwhile the Avars, meeting no resistance, seized almost all the cultivated lands around Constantinople. The capital’s aristocracy appealed to Heraclius, the Greek governor of Africa, to save the empire and their property. Heraclius at first refused on grounds of age, but sent his son. The young Heraclius fitted out a fleet, reached the Bosporus, overthrew Phocas, and had the usurper’s mangled body hung up for public view. The people acclaimed him emperor (610).

Heraclius was worthy of his Herculean name. With Herculean energy he rebuilt the shattered Byzantine state. Ten years were spent restoring public morality, strengthening the army, and replenishing the treasury. He granted free land to farmers on condition that the eldest son of each family enter military service. During this period Persian forces captured Jerusalem (614) and advanced to Chalcedon (615). Only the Byzantine navy, still master of the seas, saved the capital and Europe. Soon afterward hordes of Avars moved toward the Golden Horn, ravaged the suburbs of Constantinople, and carried off thousands of Greeks into slavery. With the loss of the interior provinces and Egypt, grain shipments ceased and the government was forced to abolish the free distribution of bread (618). In despair Heraclius considered moving his forces to Carthage and attempting the reconquest of Egypt from there. The people and clergy prevented his departure; Patriarch Sergius agreed to place the wealth of the Greek Church at Heraclius’s disposal in return for interest, enabling him to finance a religious war for the recovery of Jerusalem. Heraclius made peace with the Avars and finally (622) set out against the Persians.

The campaigns that followed were masterpieces of strategy and endurance. For six years Heraclius repeatedly defeated Chosroes II. In his absence a combined Persian and Avar force, joined by Bulgars and Slavs, besieged Constantinople (626). The army Heraclius had dispatched routed the Persians at Chalcedon, while the garrison and citizens, inspired by the Patriarch, destroyed the barbarian host. Heraclius advanced to the gates of Ctesiphon; Chosroes fell; Persia sued for peace and returned all territories previously taken from the empire. After seven years’ absence Heraclius returned to Constantinople in triumph.

He did not deserve the misfortunes that disgraced his old age. Worn by illness, he labored to strengthen the administration when suddenly Arab tribes poured into Syria (634), routed the exhausted Greek army, captured Jerusalem (638), and took Egypt while the emperor lay dying (641). The long wars between the two empires had exhausted both. Under Constans II (642–668) Arab conquests continued. Constans, despairing of holding the empire, spent his last years in the West and was murdered at Syracuse. His son Constantine IV, called Pogonatus (the Bearded), proved more capable. When the Muslims attempted another siege of Constantinople (673–678), “Greek fire” saved Europe for the first time. The new weapon, invented by Callinicus of Syria, resembled modern flame-throwers; it was a mixture of naphtha, quicklime, sulphur, and pitch. The blazing liquid was shot from tubes or hurled in flaming projectiles; the secret was guarded for two centuries. The Saracens later discovered the formula and used “Saracen fire” against the Crusaders. Until the invention of gunpowder, this was the most dreaded weapon of the Middle Ages.

In 717 the Muslims launched another assault on the Greek capital. An army of eighty thousand Arabs and Persians under Maslama crossed the Hellespont at Abydos and besieged Constantinople from the rear. At the same time a fleet of 1,800 ships entered the Bosporus. Thanks to the able leadership of Leo the Isaurian, who replaced the incompetent Theodosius III, the small Byzantine navy was skillfully deployed and every vessel equipped with Greek fire. Within a short time the Arab ships were set ablaze and nearly the entire fleet destroyed. The Greek troops then attacked the besiegers and won so complete a victory that Maslama retreated to Syria.

Iconoclasm (717–802)

Leo III earned the name Isaurian because he was said to come from Isauria in Cilicia. According to Theophanes he was born of an Armenian family in Isauria; his father later moved to Thrace, became a shepherd, and when prosperous presented five hundred sheep and his son Leo to Emperor Justinian II. Leo became a palace guard, rose to command the Anatolian legions, and was finally raised to the throne by the army’s unanimous vote. He was ambitious, strong-willed, patient, and resolute; a general who repeatedly defeated far superior Muslim forces; a statesman who restored stability by fair administration, reformed taxation, reduced serfdom, extended peasant ownership, distributed land, repopulated deserted districts, and revised the laws wisely. His only fault was a tendency toward absolute rule.

Perhaps in his youth in Asia, Leo had absorbed from Muslims, Jews, Manichaeans, Monophysites, and Paulicians a stern, puritanical (Stoic-iconoclastic) conception of religion that condemned the Christian masses’ addiction to image-worship, superstition, and ritual. The Old Testament (Deuteronomy 4:16-18) explicitly forbade making “the likeness of male or female… or the likeness of any beast… or any winged fowl… or any creeping thing… or any fish.” Early Christianity had rejected images as remnants of paganism. But the triumph of Christianity under Constantine, and the influence of Greek environment, tradition, and sculpture, softened this opposition. As the number of venerated saints increased, it became necessary to distinguish and remember them. Images of the saints and especially of the Virgin and Christ were multiplied; the cross itself became a sacred object and, for the common people, a magical talisman. Natural freedom of imagination turned pictures, statues, and relics into objects of popular worship. People prostrated themselves before them, kissed them, burned candles and incense, placed garlands upon them, and expected miracles from their supernatural power. In the Greek Christian world images were everywhere: in churches, monasteries, homes, shops, and even on household articles and clothing. Cities threatened by plague, famine, or war relied more on their patron saints or on the miraculous power of relics than on human courage. Bishops and councils repeatedly explained that images were not themselves gods or saints but only aids to memory; the people paid little attention to the distinction.

Leo III was distressed by these excesses of popular faith. It seemed to him that paganism was about to triumph through this means, and he keenly felt the taunts of Muslims, Jews, and heretical Christian sects against the superstitions of the orthodox. To weaken the influence of monks over people and government, and to win the support of Nestorians and Monophysites, he convened a great council of bishops and senators and, with their approval, issued an edict in 726 ordering the removal of all images from churches; the display of images of Christ and the Virgin was completely forbidden; church wall paintings were to be whitewashed. Some high clergy supported the decree, lower clergy and monks protested, and the people rose in revolt. Soldiers attempting to enforce the law were attacked by believers horrified at the desecration of their dearest symbols of faith. In Greece and the Cyclades islands rebels proclaimed another emperor and sent a fleet to seize the capital. Leo destroyed the fleet and imprisoned the leaders. In Italy, where pagan forms of worship had never entirely disappeared, opposition was almost unanimous. In Venice, Ravenna, and Rome imperial officers were expelled and a council of Western bishops summoned by Pope Gregory II anathematized the Iconoclasts without naming the emperor. The Patriarch of Constantinople sided with the rebels and used the controversy as a lever to free the Eastern Church from imperial control. Leo deposed the Patriarch (730) but treated him with moderation; the edict was enforced so mildly that when Leo died (741) most churches still retained their mosaics and frescoes intact.

Leo’s son Constantine V (741–775) continued his father’s policy and earned from hostile historians the affectionate nickname Copronymus (“named from dung”). A council of Eastern bishops summoned at his direction in Constantinople (754) condemned image-worship as “a shameful practice” by which “the devil had reintroduced idolatry,” denounced the “ignorant painter” who “with impure hands gives form to that which should be believed only in the heart,” and ordered all church images to be obliterated or destroyed. Constantine carried out the decree without moderation or prudence; monks who resisted were imprisoned and tortured; eyes were gouged out, tongues cut, noses slit; the Patriarch was tortured and beheaded (767). Like Henry VIII, Constantine closed monasteries and nunneries, confiscated their property, converted the buildings to secular uses, and distributed monastic lands to his favorites. The governor of Ephesus, with the emperor’s approval, assembled the monks and nuns of the province and forced them either to marry one another or face death. The persecution lasted five years (765–771).

Constantine compelled his son Leo IV (775–780) to swear that he would continue the iconoclastic policy. Despite frail health Leo IV did what he could. On his deathbed he left his ten-year-old son Constantine VI (780–797) as emperor and his widow Irene as regent during the boy’s minority. The empress governed with ability and courage and, sympathizing with popular religious feeling, quietly ended the enforcement of the iconoclastic decrees; she allowed monks to return to their monasteries and pulpits and summoned the bishops of Christendom to the Second Council of Nicaea (787). This council, attended by three hundred and fifty bishops under papal legates, restored the veneration (but not the worship) of sacred images and declared it a legitimate means of expressing Christian faith and piety.

In 790 Constantine VI reached manhood and, resenting his mother’s reluctance to surrender power, deposed and exiled her. Soon the merciful youth relented, recalled his mother, and made her co-ruler (792). In 797 the mother imprisoned her son, blinded him, and thereafter ruled as “emperor” – she took the title Basilios, not the feminine Basilissa. For five years she governed with prudence and skill, reduced taxes, aided the poor, founded charitable institutions, and beautified the capital. The people loved and admired her, but the army resented being ruled by a woman far more capable than most men. In 802 the iconoclastic party revolted, deposed her, and proclaimed her treasurer Nicephorus emperor. She submitted quietly and asked only that she be allowed to retire in safety. The new emperor promised, but exiled her to Lesbos where she lived by sewing until she died nine months later, friendless and penniless. The clergy, in consideration of her chastity, forgave her sins and the leaders of the Church numbered her among the saints.

The Ever-Changing Imperial Regime (802–1057)

To understand Byzantine civilization fully it is necessary here to sketch the history of many emperors and a few empresses. The purpose is not to recount palace conspiracies, court revolutions, and assassinations, but to trace the policies, laws, and persistent effort of one age to preserve a declining empire from Muslim attacks in the south and Slav and Bulgar pressure in the north. In some respects the story is heroic: through a period when faces easily appeared and disappeared the Greek heritage was largely preserved, economic continuity and order maintained; civilization continued, as if the sustaining motives came from the efforts of Pericles, Augustus, Diocletian, and Constantine in earlier ages. But in other respects it is a sorry spectacle of generals stepping over the bodies of rivals to reach the throne only to have others step over theirs; a display of splendor and luxury, blinding and mutilation, flattery and piety and treachery; a tale of the ceaseless struggle between emperors and patriarchs to decide whether power or myth, sword or word, should rule the empire. We pass over the details: Nicephorus I (802–811) and his wars with Harun al-Rashid; Michael I (811–813), deposed after defeat by the Bulgars and forced to become a monk; Leo V the Armenian (813–820), who renewed iconoclasm and was murdered while chanting in church; Michael II the Stammerer (820–829), an unlettered lover of a nun whom he persuaded the senate to beg him to marry; Theophilus (829–842), a law reformer, builder, and conscientious administrator who revived iconoclasm and died of dysentery; his widow Theodora, an able regent (842–856) who ended the persecution; and Michael III the Drunkard (842–867), whose amiable incompetence first left government to his mother and then to his able uncle Caesar Bardas. Then suddenly an extraordinary man appeared and, rejecting almost everything his predecessors had done except violence, founded the powerful Macedonian dynasty.

Basil I the Macedonian was born near Adrianople of an Armenian peasant family (c. 812). As a boy he was captured by the Bulgars and spent his youth beyond the Danube in the region later called Macedonia. At twenty-five he escaped and made his way to Constantinople. His large head and physical strength attracted a man engaged in political service, who hired Basil as his groom. Basil accompanied his patron to Greece and there won the attention and some of the wealth of a wealthy widow named Danielis. Returning to the capital, he tamed a wild horse for Michael III, entered the emperor’s service, and despite his complete illiteracy rose to the post of chief of the imperial ceremonial. Basil was always suitable and worthy; when Michael sought a husband for his mistress, Basil divorced his peasant wife with a generous settlement and sent her back to Thrace, married Eudocia (Michael’s mistress), and allowed her to continue serving the emperor. Michael provided a mistress for Basil, but Basil the Macedonian thought the proper reward was the crown. He persuaded Michael that his uncle Caesar Bardas was plotting to depose him, then strangled Bardas with his own powerful hands (866). Michael III, long accustomed to reigning rather than ruling, now made Basil co-emperor and entrusted all government to him. When Michael threatened to set him aside, Basil planned the emperor’s murder and personally supervised it, becoming sole ruler (867). Thus even in hereditary monarchy talent could find a path. With such baseness and crime the illiterate son of a peasant founded the longest Byzantine dynasty and began nineteen years of extraordinary rule, wise legislation, just judgment, filling the treasury, and building new palaces and churches for the city he had seized. No one dared oppose him; when Basil died in a hunting accident the crown passed peacefully to his son.

Leo VI the Wise (886–912) complemented his father: he was a scholar, a reader, a stay-at-home, and mild-tempered; rumor said he was Michael’s son rather than Basil’s, and perhaps Eudocia herself was not certain. He was called “the Wise” not for the poems he wrote or the treatises he composed on theology, government, or war, but for the reorganization he gave to ecclesiastical and provincial administration, the new formulation he provided for Byzantine law, and the precise order he established in industry. Though a devoted pupil of the learned Patriarch Photius and devoted to piety, he horrified the clergy and amused the public by marrying four times. His first two wives died without giving him a son. Leo insisted that the only way to avoid a succession war was to have a son. Church morality forbade a third marriage. Leo persisted, and his fourth wife, Zoe, rewarded his determination by bearing a son.

Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912–959) inherited his father’s literary talent but not his ability to govern. Constantine wrote two books for his son on the art of ruling: one on the “themes” or provinces of the empire and another, the Book of Ceremonies, on the protocol the emperor was obliged to observe. He supervised works on agriculture, medicine, veterinary science, and zoology, and compiled a “History of the Historians of the World” from selections of chroniclers and historians. Under his patronage Byzantine literature reached a peak of refined yet unaffected style.

Romanus II (959–963) was probably like other boys and paid little attention to his father’s books. He married a Greek girl named Theophano. She was suspected of poisoning her father-in-law and hastening Romanus’s death; before her twenty-four-year-old husband died she seduced the ascetic general Nicephorus Phocas into becoming her lover, and with his tacit permission Nicephorus seized the throne. Nicephorus, who had just driven the Muslims from Aleppo and Crete (961), took Cyprus from them in 965 and Antioch in 968. These conquests actually undermined the Abbasid Caliphate. Nicephorus asked the Patriarch of Constantinople to promise soldiers fighting the Muslims all the rewards and honors of martyrs; the Patriarch refused, saying all soldiers were temporarily polluted by the blood they shed. Had the Patriarch agreed, the Crusades might have begun a century earlier. Nicephorus wearied of his own ambition and retired into the palace to live like a hermit. Theophano, tired of her husband’s seclusion, took the general John Tzimisces as her lover; with her tacit consent Tzimisces murdered Nicephorus (969) and seized the throne; repenting his deed, he put Theophano aside, exiled her, and went off to atone for his sins with impermanent victories over Muslims and Slavs.

His successor was one of the strongest men in Byzantine history. Basil II Bulgaroctonus (“Bulgar-slayer”), son of Romanus and Theophano, was born in 958; he shared the throne during the reigns of Nicephorus II and Tzimisces. In 976, at eighteen, he began a reign of absolute power that lasted half a century. Problems assailed him from every side: his chief minister plotted to depose him; the feudal lords, whom he intended to tax, financed plots against him; Bardas Sclerus, commander of the eastern army, rebelled and was crushed by Bardas Phocas, whose own soldiers had proclaimed him emperor; the Muslims were now recovering almost all the Syrian territories taken by Tzimisces; and the Bulgarians were at the height of their power and raiding the empire from both east and west. Basil suppressed the revolts, recovered Armenia from the Saracens, and in a ruthless thirty-year war destroyed Bulgarian power. After his victory in 1014 he blinded fifteen thousand prisoners and sent every hundredth man back with one eye to lead the maimed host to Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria. Perhaps the Greeks gave him the name Bulgar-slayer more from terror than admiration. Amid these struggles Basil found time to fight “those who grew rich at the expense of the poor.” By his laws of 996 he attempted to break up some of the great estates and encourage the growth of free peasant farming. At the time of his death he was preparing to lead a fleet against the Saracens in Sicily; he died at sixty-eight. Since Heraclius the empire had not been so extensive, nor since Justinian so powerful.

The decline of Byzantium began again under his aged brother Constantine VIII (1025–1028). Since Constantine’s children were only three daughters, he persuaded Romanus III to marry his eldest daughter Zoe, who was nearly fifty. Zoe, as regent, and with the help of her sister Theodora, governed during the reigns of Romanus III (1028–1034), Michael IV (1034–1042), Michael V (1042), and Constantine IX (1042–1055), and it was seldom that the Byzantine Empire was so well administered. The two sisters – Zoe and Theodora – set about rooting out corruption in the civil service and the Church and forced officials to disgorge the funds they had embezzled and the treasures they had swallowed; one former prime minister surrendered 5,300 pounds of gold (equivalent to about $2,226,000) hidden in a cistern; when Patriarch Alexius died they found 100,000 pounds of silver (about $27,000,000) in his apartments. For a time the sale of offices was stopped. Zoe and Theodora sat in the highest courts and administered justice with severity. Zoe’s impartiality was remarkable. At sixty-two she married Constantine IX and, knowing that her skilled cosmetician could barely preserve her appearance, allowed her new husband to bring his mistress Sclerena into the palace and live with her there. Constantine placed his apartment between those of the two women, and Zoe would not visit him until she was sure he was free. When Zoe died (1050) her younger sister Theodora retired to her convent, and Constantine IX ruled wisely for five more years. He called able and educated men to his aid, redecorated the great church of Santa Sophia, built hospitals and shelters for the poor, and patronized literature and art.

When Constantine died (1055) supporters of the Macedonian dynasty stirred the populace to a revolt that brought the virgin Theodora out of her convent and, against her own strong opposition, placed the crown on her head and proclaimed her empress. Though seventy-four years old, she and her ministers governed with great ability, but Theodora died suddenly in 1056 and chaos followed. The court aristocracy nominated Michael VI, but the army preferred a general named Isaac Comnenus. A battle decided the issue; Michael became a monk, and Comnenus entered the capital as emperor in 1057. The Macedonian dynasty, after 190 years of violence, war, adultery, piety, and extraordinary statesmanship, had come to an end.

Isaac Comnenus abdicated after two years, named Constantine Ducas, president of the senate, as his successor, and himself entered a monastery. When Constantine died (1067) his widow Eudocia acted as regent for four years, but the needs of war required a sterner leader; she therefore married Romanus IV and placed the crown on his head. Romanus was defeated by the Turks at Manzikert (1071), returned humiliated to Constantinople, was deposed and imprisoned, blinded, and left without medical care until he died of his wounds. When Alexius I Comnenus, nephew of Isaac Comnenus, mounted the throne (1081) the Byzantine Empire seemed near collapse. The Turks had taken Jerusalem (1076) and were advancing through Asia Minor; the Patzinaks and Cumans were approaching Constantinople from the north; the Normans were attacking important Byzantine garrisons in the Adriatic; government and army were paralyzed by treason, incompetence, corruption, and cowardice. Alexius met the situation with cunning and courage. He sent spies into Norman Italy to stir up revolt there. He granted commercial privileges to Venice in return for the use of its navy against the Normans. He confiscated church treasures to strengthen the imperial forces. He took the field himself and won victories more often by strategy than by bloodshed. Amid all these foreign troubles he found time to reorganize the government and defense of the country and thus gave the tottering Byzantine Empire another century of life. In 1095, in a far-reaching diplomatic move, he appealed to the West to come to the aid of Eastern Christendom. At the Council of Piacenza he proposed that in return for a union of the Greek and Latin Churches Europe should unite against the world of Islam. His appeal, joined with other factors, unloosed the bonds of the first of those tragic Crusades that were destined first to save and then to destroy the Byzantine Empire.

Byzantine Life (566–1095)

At the beginning of the eleventh century the Greek Empire, through the warfare and good management of the Isaurian and Macedonian dynasties, had regained much of the power, wealth, and culture it had enjoyed at its height under Justinian. Asia Minor, northern Syria, Cyprus, Rhodes, the Cyclades, and Crete had been recovered from the Muslims; southern Italy had once more become Magna Graecia under Constantinople’s rule; the Bulgars and Slavs had been driven from the Balkans; Byzantine commerce and industry again dominated the Mediterranean; Greek Christianity had triumphed in the Balkan peninsula and Russia; and Greek literature and art experienced a renaissance under the Macedonian emperors. State revenue in the eleventh century reached the equivalent of about $2,400,000,000 in modern money.

Constantinople was at the height of its splendor and surpassed ancient Rome and Alexandria, and contemporary Baghdad and Cordoba, in commerce, wealth, luxury, beauty, elegance, and art. Its population, approaching a million, was largely Asian or Slav – Armenians, Cappadocians, Syrians, Jews, Bulgars and half-Slav Greeks, plus a colorful crowd of Scandinavian, Russian, Italian, and Muslim merchants and soldiers; at the head of all stood a thinning Greek aristocratic class. Thousands of varied houses – with double-pitched, flat, or domed roofs, balconies, columned porticoes, gardens, or trellises; the city’s markets were crammed with products from every corner of the world; thousands of narrow, muddy lanes filled with shops and tenements; splendid avenues lined with luxurious mansions and shaded porticoes, adorned with innumerable statues and triumphal arches, leading through the city gates guarded by sentinels to suburban pleasure districts; elaborate imperial palaces such as the Triconchos of Theophilus, the New Palace of Basil I, and the Bucoleon of Nicephorus Phocas, whose marble staircase descended to a harbor on the Sea of Marmara flanked by carved colonnades; numerous churches (according to one traveler, “as many as there are days in the year”), several of them architectural gems; altars containing the most precious and costly relics of Christendom; monasteries outwardly modest but inwardly resounding with the proud chants of monks; and above all the great church of Santa Sophia, constantly embellished, radiant with lamps and candles, heavy with incense, awesome in its majesty, and echoing with lovely chants: this was the setting for half-gold, half-brick life in the Byzantine capital.

Inside the city palaces of nobles and great merchants, and in coastal and inland villas, every luxury of the age and every ornament freed from Semitic taboos could be seen: marbles of every hue and grain, wall paintings and mosaics, statues and fine pottery, silken hangings on silver rods, rugs and carpets, doors inlaid with ivory or silver, delicately carved furniture, gold or silver tableware. Here moved the Byzantine aristocracy: men and women of handsome features and graceful carriage, dressed in colorful silks, lace, and furs, rivaling Paris and Versailles in elegance, amours, and intrigue. Never had coiffure, jewelry, perfume, and cosmetics reached such perfection. In the imperial palaces fires were kept burning all year to prepare the necessary perfumes for queens and princesses. Never had life been so ornate and ceremonial, so filled with processions, receptions, spectacles, and tournaments, so regulated down to the smallest detail of etiquette. The hereditary aristocracy, besides the imperial court, displayed its richest robes and jewels in the Hippodrome. Their carriages moved so arrogantly through the streets that they earned the hatred of the poor pedestrian, and were so sumptuous that they drew the condemnation of bishops who served God at marble, silver, and golden altars. Robert of Clari, the famous French chronicler, wrote that Constantinople contained “two-thirds of the wealth of the world”; and Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler, remarked that the Greeks “all seemed like princes.”

One twelfth-century writer observed: “If Constantinople surpasses all other cities in wealth, it also surpasses them in vice.” Here all the sins of a great city were shared equally by rich and poor. The spirit of the emperors was sometimes bestial, sometimes angelic; and among the people the intensity of religious feeling was tempered by political corruption or the violence of war. The castration of boys to serve as eunuchs in harems and administrations, and the blinding or mutilation of actual or potential claimants to the throne, continued through the various dynasties and the varied episodes of this city’s history. The population of the empire – a restless people swayed by racial, class, and religious antagonisms – was unstable, bloodthirsty, and sometimes rebellious; the government bribed them with bread, oil, and wine; horse races, animal combats, rope-dancing, obscene pantomimes in the theaters, and the processions of emperors or high clergy through the streets kept them entertained. Gambling houses and taverns were everywhere; brothels could be found in almost every street, sometimes “even before the doors of churches.” Byzantine women were famous for sensuality and piety, Byzantine men for quick wit and complete disregard of moral principles in the pursuit of desire. All classes believed in magic, astrology, divination, sorcery, spells, and miraculous amulets. Roman virtues had vanished even before the Latin language. Roman and Greek character had been submerged by a flood of uprooted Easterners who had lost their own moral code and accepted that of others only outwardly. Yet even in this highly religious and sensual society the vast majority of men and women were decent, modest citizens who, after the follies of youth, devoted themselves to the joys and sorrows of family life and performed the world’s work with reluctance. The very emperors who blinded their rivals gave generous donations from their private purses to hospitals, orphanages, homes for the aged, and the building of hostels for travelers. And among that aristocratic circle where luxury and comfort were the order of the day there were hundreds who, with a zeal that money could not diminish, devoted themselves to the tasks of government and, despite all upheavals and plots, somehow kept the state from disaster and preserved the happiest economy of the medieval Christian world.

The bureaucracy founded by Diocletian and Constantine had become, over seven centuries, an effective instrument of government whose writ ran in every province of the empire. Heraclius replaced the old division into provinces with “themes” or military districts, each under a strategos or military governor; this was one of a hundred ways in which the danger from Islam forced adjustments in Byzantine institutions. The themes retained considerable local autonomy and prospered under this centralized yet decentralized rule; they enjoyed continuous peace, undisturbed by the direct pressure of the struggles and violence that made life in the capital turbulent. Constantinople was ruled by the emperor, the patriarch, and the governing class, but the themes were governed by Byzantine law. While Islam made no distinction between law and theology, and Western Europe floundered in the chaos of a dozen barbarian codes, the Byzantine world cherished and developed the heritage of Justinian. The Novels of Justin II and Heraclius, the Ecloga or selected laws published by Leo III, the Basilika or imperial ordinances issued by Leo VI, and the Novels promulgated at the same emperor’s direction brought the great Pandects of Justinian into harmony with the changing needs of five centuries. Military, ecclesiastical, maritime, commercial, and rural codes gave order and authority to the justice administered by soldiers and clergy, in markets and ports, and in fields and on the seas; and in the eleventh century the law school of Constantinople was the seedbed of secular thought in the Christian world. Thus the Byzantine people preserved the greatest gift of Rome – Roman law – through a thousand years of peril and change, so that its revival at Bologna in the twelfth century revolutionized the civil law of Latin Europe and the canon law of the Church of Rome. The Byzantine maritime code, promulgated by Leo III and based on the ancient Rhodian sea laws, was the first comprehensive body of commercial law in the medieval Christian world. In the eleventh century it became the source of similar codes for the Italian republics of Trani and Amalfi; and through them it entered the legal heritage of the modern world.

The Rural Code was a serious attempt to check feudalism and establish free peasant farming. Small farms were granted to retired soldiers. Larger tracts belonging to the state were given to soldiers for cultivation in return for military service; vast areas were settled by heretical sects transferred from Asia to Thrace and Greece. In still larger districts barbarian groups, whose presence within the empire was thought less dangerous than outside it, were forcibly or protectively colonized. In this way Goths were settled in Thrace and Illyricum, Lombards in Pannonia, Slavs in Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece. By the tenth century the population of the Peloponnesus was largely Slav, and Slavs were numerous in Attica and Thessaly. Government and Church cooperated in reducing slavery. Imperial laws forbade the sale of slaves or the enslavement of free men, and automatically freed any slave who entered military or clerical service or married a free person. In Constantinople slavery was practically confined to domestic service, but even there it was slowly reviving.

Nevertheless, it is almost a Newtonian law of economic history that larger landed estates, in proportion to their size and proximity, absorb smaller ones, and that every few generations the total of such estates becomes concentrated into vast properties, then through taxation or revolution the land is again divided, and concentration begins anew. By the tenth century most of the land in eastern Byzantium belonged in large estates to wealthy proprietors (dynatoi, the powerful), or to churches and monasteries, or to hospitals that, by the wills of the pious, each held special endowed lands. Cultivation on these estates was carried on by serfs or coloni who were legally free but economically bound. The owners, with their retinues of retainers, guards, and domestic slaves, lived in luxurious villas or city mansions. We may see examples of these great nobles, good and bad, in the story of Basil I’s patron and the lady Danielis. When she visited Basil in Constantinople she was carried in a litter by three hundred slaves who took turns bearing the burden. The gifts she brought Basil were far more costly than any present ever sent by a subject to a Byzantine emperor. Merely a part of the donation consisted of four hundred young men, a hundred eunuchs, and a hundred maidens; also four hundred pieces of the finest gold-woven silk, a hundred pieces of linen so fine that each could be passed through the eye of a needle, and a complete set of gold and silver tableware. During her lifetime she gave away most of her fortune, and at her death she willed the remainder to Basil’s son. Leo VI suddenly found himself owner of eighty rural estates and several villas, vast sums of coin and jewels, gold and silver plate, costly furniture, precious objects, innumerable flocks, and thousands of slaves.

Such Greek generosity did not altogether please the emperors. Wealth accumulated by the sweat and toil of millions gave its possessors a power dangerous in the aggregate to any sovereign. The Byzantine emperors, from self-interest as well as humanitarian feeling, tried to halt the process of wealth concentration. The terrible winter of 927–928 brought drought and plague; peasants, facing starvation, sold their farms for a pittance or merely for bread to the great landowners. In 934 the regent Romanus issued a Novel condemning the magnates who “had shown themselves more merciless than drought and plague,” ordering that any estate bought for less than half its “fair price” must be restored to its owner, and allowing any seller, within three years, to repurchase his land at the original price. The law had only slight effect; concentration continued; moreover many free peasants, groaning under heavy taxes, sold their holdings and moved to the cities, and if possible to Constantinople, to share in the government’s distribution to the poor. Basil II renewed the emperors’ struggle against the nobility. His law of 996 permitted the seller to repurchase his land at the original price whenever he could; it canceled all titles to land bought in violation of the 934 law, and ordered such land to be restored immediately and without cost to its former owners. Most proprietors evaded the law, and by the eleventh century a modified feudalism had taken root here and there in eastern Byzantium. But the emperors’ efforts were not wasted. The free peasants who remained, stimulated by ownership, developed arable fields, orchards, vineyards, apiaries, and stock farms on their holdings; the great landlords advanced scientific agriculture to a level unsurpassed in the Middle Ages; and from the eighth to the eleventh century Byzantine agriculture kept pace with the expanding industry of the empire.

The Eastern Roman Empire in this period acquired an urban and semi-industrial character that contrasted sharply with the rural life of Latin Europe north of the Alps. Miners and metalworkers actively explored and extracted lead, iron, copper, and gold. Not only Constantinople but a hundred other Byzantine cities – Smyrna, Tarsus, Ephesus, Dyrrhachium, Ragusa, Patras, Corinth, Thebes, Thessalonica, Adrianople, Heraclea, Selymbria – echoed with the clamor of tanners, shoemakers, saddlers, armorers, goldsmiths, jewelers, metalworkers, carpenters, turners, wheelwrights, bakers, dyers, weavers, potters, mosaicists, painters, and the like. In the ninth century the cities of Constantinople, Baghdad, and Cordoba, each as vast and bustling centers of industry and exchange, almost rivaled the frantic activity of a modern capital. Despite competition from Persian craftsmen, the Greek capital was still the leader of the white world in the production of silk fabrics and fine textiles, with only Argos, Corinth, and Thebes ranking after it. The textile industry was highly organized and employed large numbers of slaves; most other workers were free artisans. The working population of Constantinople and Thessalonica was conscious of its grievances and engaged in several futile revolts. Their employers formed a large middle class that was acquisitive, generous, industrious, shrewd, and intensely conservative. Important craftsmen, including workers, artists, managers, merchants, judges, and financial specialists, were organized into systemata (guilds), which continued and developed the collegia and artes of antiquity and resembled the great economic units of a modern corporative state. Each guild enjoyed a monopoly in its special field but was strictly regulated by law in matters such as purchase of materials, prices, methods of manufacture, and conditions of sale; government inspectors supervised operations and accounts, and maximum wages were sometimes fixed by statute. Small industries, however, were left to free labor and individual enterprise. These arrangements gave Byzantine industry order, prosperity, and continuity, but they discouraged initiative and invention and produced a social and economic stasis characteristic of the East.

Government administration or supervision of harbors and docks, regulation of marine insurance and bottomry loans, vigorous suppression of piracy, and the possession of the steadiest currency in Europe all encouraged commerce. The state exercised comprehensive control over all transactions – it forbade the export of certain goods, monopolized the trade in grain and silk, levied duties on imports and exports, and taxed sales. It allowed foreign merchants – Armenians, Syrians, Egyptians, Amalfitans, Pisans, Venetians, Genoese, Jews, Russians, and Catalans – to carry on most of the empire’s trade and to maintain semi-autonomous “factories” or quarters in the capital or its suburbs; and by this policy it almost invited the eventual sovereignty of the two Aegean and Black Seas. Interest was permitted, but the legal rate was fixed at twelve, ten, eight, or even lower percent. Bankers were numerous; and it was probably the moneylenders of Constantinople who invented the bill of exchange and organized the most comprehensive credit system in the Christian world before the thirteenth century, rather than their Italian counterparts.

The Byzantine Renaissance

Through the toil and skill of the people and the acquisitiveness of the nobles, art and literature revived splendidly in the ninth and tenth centuries. Though the empire continued to call itself Roman to the end, almost all Latin elements except Roman law had disappeared. In eastern Byzantium, from the time of Heraclius, Greek had become the language of government, literature, liturgy, and daily speech. Education was now completely Greek. Almost all free men, many women, and even large numbers of slaves received some schooling. The University of Constantinople, which like literature in general had declined in the crises of the Heraclian age, was revived by Caesar Bardas (863) and gained great fame for its courses in grammar, philosophy, theology, astronomy, mathematics, biology, music, and literature. Even the works of pagan authors like Libanius and the witty atheist Lucian were studied there. Instruction was generally free for deserving students; professors’ salaries were paid by the state. Numerous public and private libraries existed and still preserved the classical masterpieces that had been forgotten in the turbulent West.

This broad transmission of the Greek heritage was both stimulating and restrictive. It sharpened and broadened the mind and freed it from the old confines of theological disputation and homiletic rhetoric. But the very richness of the heritage checked originality. It is easier for an ignorant man to be inventive than for a learned one. Byzantine literature was especially intended for the pleasure of cultivated and leisured men and women; it was polished and refined, full of artistic subtleties and affectations, Greek in style but not in language, dealing with the surface of human life and not with its depths. Though the clergy of this period were remarkably tolerant, thought, shaped by habits formed in youth, still moved contentedly within the limits of religious dogma, and the iconoclastic laity were more devout than the priests.

Another Alexandrian age of scholarship had begun. Professors analyzed language and poetic meter; they wrote concise treatises, “general rules,” and universal histories; they compiled lexicons, encyclopedias, and literary anthologies. It was in this age that Constantine Cephalas gathered the Greek Anthology (917) and Suidas compiled his lexicon (976). Theophanes (c. 814) and Leo the Deacon (d. 950) wrote valuable histories of their own or nearly contemporary times. Paul of Aegina (615–690) compiled a medical encyclopedia that brought together the theories and methods of Islamic physicians with the heritage of Galen and Oribasius. The work described in almost modern terms a series of operations for cancer of the breast, hemorrhoids, catheterization of the urethra, removal of bladder stones, and castration. Paul remarks of the last that to castrate boys one should crush the testicles in a hot bath.

The outstanding Byzantine scientist of these centuries was an obscure and impoverished teacher named Leo of Thessalonica (c. 850) whom the University of Constantinople ignored until one of the Abbasid caliphs invited him to Baghdad. One of his pupils, taken prisoner in war, became the slave of a Muslim noble, and soon his master was astonished at the young slave’s mastery of geometry. Caliph al-Ma’mun, hearing of this, invited the youth to a court debate on geometric problems; he was amazed at the young man’s skill, listened eagerly to his description of his teacher, and at once, with promises of wealth, invited Leo to the school at Baghdad. Leo asked the advice of a Byzantine official, who reported the matter to Emperor Theophilus; Theophilus at once offered Leo a state professorship to keep him. Leo was a master of many fields: he taught and wrote on mathematics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, and philosophy. Al-Ma’mun sent him several problems in geometry and astronomy and was so pleased with the answers that he offered the emperor Theophilus perpetual peace and two thousand gold coins if he would lend Leo to him for a short time. The emperor refused, and to keep Leo beyond al-Ma’mun’s reach made him archbishop of Thessalonica.

Leo, Photius, and Psellus were the three bright stars of this age. Photius (?820–891), the most learned man of his time, had risen in six days from a layman to the patriarchate, and belongs to the history of religion. Michael Psellus (c. 1018–1080) was a man of the world and the court, adviser to kings and queens, a Voltairean wit and orthodox believer who could shine on any subject proposed, yet after every theological dispute or palace revolution he remained in place. Psellus would not let love of books dim his love of life. He taught philosophy at the University of Constantinople and received the title “Prince of Philosophers.” For a time he entered a monastery, found the seclusion too quiet, returned to the world’s tumult, served as prime minister (1071–1078), and meanwhile wrote books and treatises on politics, science, medicine, grammar, theology, jurisprudence, music, and history. In his Chronographia he recorded with frankness, zest, and pride the plots and scandals of a century (976–1078) – including a description of Constantine IX as a man “hanging from the tip of Psellus’s tongue.” Here, for example, is part of his account of the revolt that restored Theodora to the throne in 1055:

Each (soldier in the crowd) carried a weapon. One had a small axe, another a battle-axe, one a bow, another a spear. Some of the people carried large stones; and all with the greatest disorder… moved toward Theodora’s palace. … But Theodora, who had taken refuge in a chapel, paid no attention to their shouts. The crowd abandoned fair words and resorted to force; some, with drawn daggers, rushed upon Theodora as if to kill her. With great boldness they dragged her from her refuge, clothed her in imperial robes, set her on a horse, and, surrounding her as she rode, led her to the church of Santa Sophia. Now all the people, from the highest to the lowest, joined in acclaiming her and all called her their empress.

Psellus’s private letters were almost as charming as Cicero’s and as revealing; his speeches, poems, and treatises were quoted in the salons; his malicious wit and devastating epigrams were a stimulant amid the tedious researches of his scholarly contemporaries. Compared with Psellus and Photius and Theophanes, the great scholars and reformers of their age in the West – an Alcuin, a Rabanus, a Gerbert – seemed like timid immigrants from a barbarian world into the land of reason.

The most distinctive feature of the Byzantine renaissance was its art. From 726 to 842 the Iconoclastic movement forbade any statuary or portrayal of sacred beings, but it freed the artist from the monotonous bondage of religious subjects and led him to observe, draw, and decorate secular life. Thereafter, instead of gods, members of the imperial family, aristocratic patrons, historical events, forest animals, field plants and fruits, and the homely incidents of family life became the subjects of the painter’s art. Basil I built in his palace the Nea or New Church, which according to a contemporary “was adorned throughout with precious doors, gold, shining silver, mosaics, silks, and a thousand kinds of marble.” Much of the decoration recently discovered in Santa Sophia dates from the ninth century. The central dome of this church was rebuilt after an earthquake in 975, and in the course of this restoration the great mosaic of Christ seated on a rainbow was added. Other mosaics were added in 1028. This cathedral, like a living organism, experienced continuous life through the decay and renewal of its parts. The superb bronze doors installed in 838 became so famous that similar doors were ordered from Constantinople for Monte Cassino, the cathedral of Amalfi, and the basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura in Rome. The last two leaves, made in Constantinople in 1070, still survive as striking witnesses of Byzantine art.

The imperial palace of Basil, or “Sacred Palace,” of which the Nea or New Church was only the chapel, was a complex of rooms, reception halls, churches, baths, pavilions, gardens, porticoes, and courtyards; almost every emperor added something to it. Theophilus, using plans brought from Syria, added to the ensemble the Triconchos hall in a new Eastern style. North of this hall he built the Pearl Chamber, and to the south several heliaka or sun terraces and the Camilas – a building with a golden roof, green marble columns, and a very fine mosaic showing men and women gathering fruit against a golden background. Even finer were the mosaics of the adjacent building: its walls showed green trees against a golden sky, and the tesserae of the floor of the “Harmony Chamber” depicted a meadow full of flowers and herbs. Theophilus’s taste for exotic splendor reached its height in the Magnaura palace: a golden plane tree spread its branches over the throne; golden birds perched on the branches and on the throne; on either side of the imperial seat two fabulous beasts [eagle-headed, lion-bodied] of gold reclined, and at the foot of the throne stood several golden lions. When a foreign envoy was admitted to the emperor’s presence the fabulous beasts rose on hidden mechanisms, the golden lions stood up, wagged their tails, and roared, and the artificial birds sang. All this pomp was an open imitation of similar absurdities in the palace of Harun al-Rashid at Baghdad.

With the taxes drawn from commerce and the “themes” Constantinople was beautified, yet enough money remained in the treasury to spend on the lesser splendor of the provincial capitals. Monasteries, grown rich again, rose in majesty: in the tenth century the monasteries of Lavra and Iviron on Athos; in the eleventh the monastery of St. Luke in Phocis, the Nea Moni on Chios, and the monastery of Daphni near Eleusis – whose almost classical mosaics are the finest examples of the mid-Byzantine style. Georgia, Armenia, and Asia Minor shared in this renaissance and each became a center of Byzantine art. The public buildings of Muslim Antioch aroused admiration. In Jerusalem the “Church of the Resurrection” was rebuilt shortly after Heraclius’s victories. In Egypt, before and after the Arab conquest, the Coptic Christians built domed churches of moderate size, but adorned them with metals, ivory, wood, and textiles so skillfully that it seemed as if all the skills of the Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods of Egypt had come to them as an intact and perfect heritage. The persecution of the Iconoclasts drove thousands of monks from Syria, Asia Minor, and Constantinople into southern Italy, where they found protection under the popes. Through these refugees and Eastern merchants the Byzantine styles of architecture and decoration spread to Bari, Otranto, Benevento, Naples, and even to Rome. Ravenna continued to follow the Greek style and in the seventh century created the magnificent mosaics of Sant’Apollinare in Classe. Thessalonica preserved the Byzantine style and adorned its own church of Santa Sophia with mosaic apostles of gaunt and El Greco-like thinness.

In all these lands and cities, as in the capital, the Byzantine renaissance was a fountain of masterpieces in mosaic, miniature, pottery, enamel, glass, wood, ivory, bronze, iron, jewelry, and woven and dyed fabrics so skillfully ornamented that they excited the wonder and respect of the world. Byzantine artists made blue glass cups with human figures, birds, and golden foliage beneath the surface; they fashioned glass vessels with necks adorned with enameled flowers and arabesques; and they produced other kinds of glass with such delicacy that Byzantine emperors were always glad to send them as gifts to foreign rulers. More precious than such objects for presentation were the wide-sleeved robes, mantles, scarves, and costly cloaks that displayed the skill of Byzantine textile masters. Of this class were the “ mantle of Charlemagne” in the cathedral of Metz and the delicate silks found in that king’s tomb at Aachen. Half the splendor that surrounded the Greek emperor, much of the awe that enhanced the dignity of the patriarch, and part of the glory that clothed Christ the Savior, the Virgin, and the martyrs of the faith came from the sumptuous fabrics and garments on which the labor of a dozen artists, the techniques of centuries, and the richest colors of earth and sea had been lavished. The goldsmiths and jewelers of Byzantium until the thirteenth century were the masters of their craft in the world. The treasury of San Marco in Venice is filled with their work. The strikingly realistic mosaic of St. Luke now in the École des Hautes Études in Paris, the radiant head of Christ in the Deesis mosaic of Santa Sophia, and finally the very large mosaic (3.7 square meters) discovered in 1935 in the ruins of the palace of the Macedonian emperors in Istanbul all belong to this period. When the Iconoclastic movement subsided, or wherever it did not reach, the churches, with icons painted in enamel on wood and sometimes set in cloisonné or jeweled frames, strengthened piety. Throughout the history of enamel work no miniature surpasses in delicacy and mastery the Reliquary of the True Cross made for Constantine Porphyrogenitus (c. 948) and now preserved at Limburg. The precision and the exquisite refinement of its workmanship, and the rich coloring of its sumptuous decoration, are all characteristic of Byzantine art.

No art was so completely subordinated to religion as the Byzantine. A church council in 787 decreed that “the composition of religious imagery is not left to the inspiration of artists; it derives from the principles put in place by the Catholic Church and religious tradition. … The execution alone belongs to the artist; the selection and arrangement of the subject is the responsibility of the clergy.” Hence this art appeared somber and serious; the artist’s range of subject was limited; method and style became uniform; rarely did he turn his attention to the realities of life, to humor, or to the incidents of daily existence; it became so bound to color and splendor that it had no rival; and it never achieved the sensuous variety and robust vulgarity of fully developed Gothic art. Because of these very limitations we should marvel all the more at the achievements and influence of such an art. The whole Christian world from Kiev to Cadiz acknowledged the leadership of Byzantine art and expressed its admiration by imitating its style; even Chinese artists occasionally bowed before it. It was this art that, transmitted by Syrian craftsmen, mingled with Sasanian Persian art and produced the new style of Islamic architecture, mosaic, and decorative design. It also, in the work of embellishment, took Constantinople as its model, and San Marco copied the Church of the Apostles in the Byzantine capital. The Byzantine architectural style reached France and extended northward as far as Aachen. Illuminated and ornamented manuscripts throughout the Western world showed Byzantine influence. The Bulgarians adopted Greek faith and decoration, and the conversion of Vladimir of Russia to the Greek rite opened many paths for the penetration of Byzantine art into Russian life.

From the fifth to the twelfth century Byzantine civilization led Christian Europe in government, diplomacy, revenues, manners, culture, and art. Perhaps no society had ever before been so sumptuously adorned, and no religion had ever possessed such colorful and captivating pageantry. This civilization too, like every other, rested on the shoulders of serfs or slaves, and the gold and marble of its shrines and palaces were the fruit of the sweat of workers who toiled on the surface or in the bowels of the earth. Byzantine culture, like every culture of this age, was attended by cruelty. The same man who knelt before an icon of the Virgin could watch the children of Emperor Maurice being cut to pieces before their father’s eyes. This society, with all its splendor, had elements that made it base: a thin veneer of aristocratic refinement covered a mass of popular superstition, bigotry, and ignorance; half its culture was devoted to perpetuating that ignorance. Any science or philosophy that contradicted that ignorance found no soil in which to grow, and for a thousand years Greek civilization added nothing to man’s knowledge of the world. No work of Byzantine literature has ever startled the human imagination or won the seal of time. The medieval Greek mind, weighed down by the richness of its own heritage and imprisoned in a theological maze that had caused dying Greece to lose Christ from Christianity, no longer had the power to reach a mature and realistic view of man and the world. Over a vowel and again over a word it divided Christianity in two, and because it considered every heresy a treason it undermined the foundations of the Eastern Roman Empire.

It is astonishing that this civilization lasted so long. What hidden resources or inner vital force kept the Byzantine Empire alive against Persian victories in Syria and Muslim victories in Syria, Egypt, Sicily, and Spain? Perhaps the very religious faith that, by relying on the relics of saints and miracles, weakened the military defenses of Byzantium, gave a constantly patient people who at times became rebellious the discipline and order that prevented change, and bestowed upon the emperor and the government a supernatural and moral influence that checked every alteration. The Byzantine bureaucracy, collectively immortal, gave the empire continuity and stability through all struggles and revolutions, preserved internal peace, regulated the economy, and collected the taxes that made possible the renewed expansion of the empire almost to the limits of Justinian’s realm. Though the territories of the Islamic caliphs were vaster than the Byzantine world, the caliphs’ revenues probably did not equal those of the emperors, and the looseness of Islamic government and the inadequacy of its communications and administration caused the Abbasid structure to collapse in three centuries, while the Byzantine Empire endured for a thousand years.

Byzantine civilization performed three essential tasks: first, for a thousand years it stood as a firm bulwark against the assaults of Iran and the Eastern Islamic world upon the European continent; second, it faithfully cherished the texts containing the literature, science, and philosophy of ancient Greece and transmitted them to future generations until they were pillaged by the Crusaders in 1204. Monks fleeing the persecution of the Iconoclastic emperors carried Greek manuscripts with them to southern Italy and revived the knowledge of Greek literature there. Greek scholars, fleeing alike from Muslims and Crusaders, left Constantinople, resided for a time in Italy, and performed the work of the Piccolominis in spreading the seeds of classical Greek thought until year by year Italian knowledge of ancient Greece increased and seekers after learning became intoxicated with that free fountain of rational thought; third, Byzantium caused the Bulgars and Slavs to pass from the faith of savagery to the creed of Christianity, and by this act associated a vast force of Slavic body and soul with the life and destiny of Europe.

The Balkan Lands and the Rise of Russia

Only a few hundred kilometers north of Constantinople lay a vast, confused mass of peoples who considered the acquisition of learning beneath their dignity. They were almost enchanted by war. The wave of the Hunnic invasion had hardly subsided when a new people of the same stock, the Avars, moved from Turkestan toward southern Russia (558), enslaved hordes of Slavs, attacked Germany, reached the Elbe (562), drove the Lombards into Italy (568), and ravaged the Balkan peninsula so thoroughly that almost no Latin-speaking population remained. For a time the Avar power extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In 626 they besieged Constantinople and nearly captured it. But their failure caused their decline. In 805 Charlemagne defeated them, and gradually they were absorbed by the Bulgars and Slavs.

The Bulgars, originally a mixture of Hunnic, Uighur, and Turkish stocks, had formed part of the Hunnic Empire in Russia. After Attila’s death one branch of them established along the Volga, near the modern city of Kazan, the kingdom known as “Old Bulgaria.” Their capital, the city of Bulgar, became wealthy through river trade and continued to prosper until it was destroyed by the Tatars in the thirteenth century. In the fifth century another branch of the Bulgars moved southwestward and approached the Don valley. A tribe of this branch called the Utigurs crossed the Danube (679), founded the second Bulgarian kingdom in the ancient land of Moesia, enslaved the Slavs living there, adopted their language and institutions, and were finally absorbed into the Slav race. The new Bulgarian state reached its zenith under the rule of the khagan or khan Krum (802). Krum was a man who combined the courage of savages with the cunning of civilized peoples. He invaded Macedonia, one of the provinces of the Eastern Empire, carried off 1,000 pounds of gold, and burned the city of Serdica, the modern Sofia, capital of Bulgaria. Emperor Nicephorus of the Eastern Romans retaliated by burning the Bulgarian capital Pliska (811), but Khan Krum trapped the Greek army in a mountain pass and annihilated it, killed Nicephorus, and made a drinking cup from the emperor’s skull. In 813 he besieged Constantinople, burned its suburbs, and laid waste Thrace – as if in rehearsal for the events of 1913. Krum was preparing another assault when one of his arteries burst and he died. His son Omurtag made peace with the Greeks and they ceded him half of Thrace. Under the rule of Khan Boris (852–888) Bulgaria accepted Christianity. Boris himself, after a long reign, entered a monastery. Four years later he came out of the cloister to depose his eldest son Vladimir and place his younger son Simeon on the throne, and he lived until 907. When he died the Church declared him the first national saint of Bulgaria. Simeon was one of the greatest rulers (893–927) of his age. He extended his power to Serbia and the Adriatic, called himself “emperor and autocrat of all the Bulgars and Greeks,” and fought the Byzantine Empire many times. Nevertheless he tried, with the help of translations of Greek literature, to civilize his people and to adorn his Danubian capital with the manifestations of Greek art. One of his contemporaries described the city of Preslav as “one of the wonders of the world,” full of “churches and magnificent palaces” adorned with the finest decorations. In the thirteenth century this city was the largest in the Balkans, and today only a few ruins remain.

After Simeon’s death Bulgaria was weakened by internal strife. The Bogomil heretics converted half the peasants of the kingdom to a doctrine of pacifism and a kind of communism. Serbia recovered its independence in 931. In 972 the Eastern Roman Emperor John Tzimisces reannexed eastern Bulgaria to his empire. In 1014 Basil II conquered western Bulgaria and Bulgaria again became a province of the Byzantine Empire (1018–1186).

Meanwhile the empire, already devastated, had been raided (934–942) by a new barbarian horde. The Magyars, like the Bulgars, probably sprang from tribes loosely called Uighurs. This people, wandering near western China, had mingled for a long time with Hunnic and Turkish tribes and their language was closely related to Finnish and Samoyedic. In the ninth century the Uighurs moved from the steppes of the Urals and Khazaria and settled in the lands along the Don and Dnieper and on the shores of the Black Sea. In this region they practiced agriculture in summer, fished in winter, and in all seasons captured Slavs and sold them as slaves to the Greeks. After the Uighurs had spent about sixty years in the Ukrainian region they moved westward again. Europe at that time was at its lowest ebb. West of Constantinople there was no strong state and no strong army to bar the way. In 889 the Magyars conquered Bessarabia and Moldavia and in 895, under the leadership of their chief Arpad, they secured forever their hold on the land of Hungary, later called Hungary. In 899 they crossed the Alps and poured into Italy, burned Pavia with its forty-three churches, put its inhabitants to the sword, and for a whole year ravaged the Italian peninsula. They opened Pannonia, devastated Bavaria (900–907), destroyed Carinthia (901), conquered Moravia (906), sacked Saxony, Thuringia, Swabia (913), southern Germany and Alsace (917), and annihilated the Germans at the Lech, a tributary of the Danube (924). All Europe trembled with fear and prayed, for these invaders were still pagans and the whole Christian world seemed doomed. But in 943 the Magyars were defeated at Gotha, and their advance was stopped. In 943 they again invaded Italy, and in 955 they plundered Burgundy. Finally in that year the united German armies under Otto I won a decisive victory at the Lechfeld or Lech valley near Augsburg, and Europe, which for a terrible century (841–955) had fought the Northmen in the north, the Muslims in the south, and the Magyars in the east, was able to breathe again amid its ruins.

After their defeat the Magyars made Europe safer by accepting Christianity (975). Prince Géza feared that the Hungarian realm would be absorbed by the expanding Byzantine Empire, so he accepted the Latin rite in order to ally himself with Western Christendom and married his son Stephen to Gisela, daughter of Henry II, Duke of Bavaria. Stephen I the Saint, patron, duke, and greatest king (997–1038) of Hungary, organized the Magyars on the German feudal model, and by accepting the crown and kingdom from Pope Sylvester II (1000) he firmly established the religious foundation of the new society. Benedictine monks came in crowds from every direction, built towns and monasteries, and spread the arts of agriculture and industry. Thus, after a century of war, Hungary moved from savagery toward civilization, and when Queen Gisela of Hungary presented a crucifix to a German friend, that crucifix was a masterpiece of Hungarian goldsmiths’ art.

As far as we can tell, the oldest home of the Slavs was a marshy region in Russia bounded by Kiev, Mogilev, and Brest-Litovsk. The Slavs were of Indo-European stock and spoke a language related to German and Persian. The Slavs were occasionally trampled by nomadic hordes, often enslaved, and always afflicted and impoverished; consequently, through these endless hardships they became a patient and sturdy people; death among them from famine, disease, and chronic war was frequent, and only the fertility of their women compensated for it. The Slavs lived in caves or mud huts, and supported themselves by hunting, herding, fishing, beekeeping, and selling honey, wax, and animal skins. Gradually they abandoned nomadic life and settled in permanent homes with the intention of farming. Because they had been driven into marshes and impenetrable forests and had been savagely captured and sold, they adopted the morality of their time and engaged in the exchange of individuals for goods. Since their dwelling place was a cold and damp land they warmed themselves with strong drink, and for this reason they preferred Christianity to Islam, since the teachings of Muhammad (peace be upon him) forbade the drinking of wine. Drunkenness, filth, cruelty, and an excessive love of plunder were prominent defects among them. Thrift, foresight, and imagination fluctuated between virtue and vice, but the Slavs were also a kindly, hospitable, and warm-hearted people who loved amusement, dancing, music, and song. Their chiefs had several wives, and the common and poor people had one wife. Women, who were usually bought or captured at marriage, were extraordinarily faithful and obedient. In the family the father was clearly the head, and these families freely formed clans, and several clans formed tribes. Probably in the beginning of their pastoral stage these clans practiced communal ownership, but the development of agriculture produced individual and family ownership, since varying degrees of physical strength and ability produced unequal results on diverse lands. The Slavs, repeatedly divided by migration and fraternal wars, spoke various Slavic languages; for example, in the west Polish, Wendish, Czech, and Slovak; in the south Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian; in the east Great Russian, White Russian, and Little Russian (Ruthenian and Ukrainian) – yet almost all these languages remained mutually intelligible to their speakers. A common Slavic culture in speech and dress, together with sufficient space and resources and the vital force resulting from harsh conditions of natural selection, caused the Slavs to grow steadily more numerous.

Simultaneously with the Germanic tribes’ movement southward and westward during their migrations into Italy and Gaul, a region with a sparse population remained in northern and central Germany behind them. This empty area attracted the Slavs, and under pressure from the invading Huns they expanded their lands westward, crossed the Vistula, and even reached the Elbe; in this region they later appeared as peoples such as the Wends, Poles, Czechs, Wallachians, and Slovaks. Near the end of the sixth century a wave of Slavic immigrants poured into the rural districts of Greece. The cities closed their gates against these immigrants, but large numbers of Slavs were absorbed into the Greek race. About the year 640 two Slavic tribes, the Serbs and Croats, who were related to each other, settled in the two regions of Pannonia and Illyricum. The Serbs accepted the Greek Christian rite and the Croats followed the Roman Church. This religious difference, which cut across racial and linguistic unity, weakened the people against their neighbors, and Serbia was always oscillating between independence, subjection to the Byzantine Empire, and subjection to Bulgaria. In 989 Samuel, Tsar of Bulgaria, who had defeated and captured John Vladimir, prince of the Serbs, gave his daughter Kossara in marriage to him and allowed Vladimir to return as a vassal prince to his capital at Zeta. This event is the subject of the oldest Serbian romance, “Vladimir and Kossara,” written in the thirteenth century. The coastal cities of the ancient region of Dalmatia – Zara, Spalato, and Ragusa – preserved their Latin culture and language, and the rest of Serbia became Slavic. In 1042 Prince Voislav freed Serbia, but in the twelfth century the land again submitted to Byzantine influence.

When this astonishing Slavic migration was completed at the end of the eighth century, all of central Europe, the Balkan lands, and Russia had become a vast sea of Slavic people whose waves beat against the frontiers of Constantinople, Greece, and Germany.

The Rise of Russia

The Slavs were only one of the last peoples to be drawn from the fertile land, vast steppes, and navigable rivers of Russia, and to be saddened by the swamps and repellent forests and the lack of natural barriers against enemy attack, the heat of summer, and the cold of winter. On the western shores and northern edge of the Black Sea, the parts of Russia least hospitable to strangers, the Greeks had even in the seventh century before Christ encountered many cities, including Olbia, Tanais, Theodosia, and Panticapaeum (Kerch), and had fought and traded with the Scythians who lived away from the seashore. These natives, who probably had Iranian ancestry, had absorbed some elements of Iranian and Greek civilization. Among them even a philosopher, Anacharsis (600 B.C.), went to Athens and debated with Solon.

During the second century before Christ another Iranian tribe, the Sarmatians, conquered the Scythians and took their place; amid these disturbances the Greek colonial settlements declined. In the second century A.D. the Goths entered southern Russia from the west and founded the Ostrogothic kingdom. About 375 this kingdom was overthrown by the Huns, and for several centuries the southern Russian steppes saw almost no civilization except the succession of nomadic peoples such as Bulgars, Avars, Slavs, Khazars, Magyars, Pechenegs, Cumans, and Mongols. The Khazars were originally of Turkish stock. They spread through southern Russia in the seventh century by way of the Caucasus and established a realm of relative peace extending from the Dnieper to the Caspian Sea, with a capital called Itil at the mouth of the Volga near the modern Astrakhan. Their kings and upper classes accepted the Jewish religion, and their land became a Jewish region surrounded by the Islamic world and a Christian empire. Probably the Khazars preferred to keep both Muslims and Christians equally dissatisfied rather than dangerously offend either. At the same time they granted complete freedom to followers of different faiths within their realm. There were seven courts of justice, two for Muslims, two for Christians, two for Jews, and one for pagans. Since Islamic justice at that time was the best of all, it also had the right to hear appeals from the other five courts. Merchants of different religions, seeing this enlightened policy as encouraging to their business, gathered in the cities of the Khazar realm, and as a result the market for trade between the Baltic and the Caspian flourished, so that the city of Itil in the eighth century became one of the greatest commercial centers in the world. In the ninth century nomadic Turkish tribes attacked Khazaria; the government could no longer protect its trade routes against robbers and pirates, and finally, in the tenth century, the Khazar kingdom collapsed amid the same racial chaos from which it had emerged.

In the sixth century A.D. groups of Slavic tribes moved from the Carpathians and entered the great mass of peoples already settled in southern and central Russia. They made the valleys of the Dnieper and Don their home, and a smaller number moved northward and reached Lake Ilmen. For several centuries these people multiplied, cleared the forests year by year, drained the marshes, exterminated the beasts of prey, and created the land of Ukraine. These tribes expanded across the plains with such fertility that only among the Hindus and Chinese has anything similar been seen, and as far as we know from their history they were always on the move – toward the Caucasus and Turkestan, toward the Urals and Siberia. This process of colonization continues to the present day, and the Slavic ocean every year enters new racial bays.

In the early ninth century a seemingly minor invasion came upon the Slavic world from the northwest. The Scandinavian Vikings, who were engaged in raids on Scotland, Iceland, Ireland, England, Germany, France, and Spain, were able to spare enough men and strength to send bands of a hundred or two hundred into northern Russia to attack communities of Balts, Finns, and Slavs and then return with the booty they had taken. These bands of Varangians (“followers” of a Viking chief) built strong guard posts along their route to bring their robberies under the rule of law and gradually, among the majority of submissive peasants, formed an armed Scandinavian minority that ruled. Some cities hired them to maintain order and security. Apparently these protectors converted their pay into tribute and became the masters of those who had hired them. By the middle of the ninth century they governed Novgorod (the New Fortress) and had extended their power southward as far as the city of Kiev. The roads and settlements they controlled were loosely gathered within an empire of trade and politics called Rus or Ros – about the etymology of this name many conflicting theories have been offered. The great rivers that flowed through this land, connected by canals and short overland portages, joined the Black Sea and the Baltic, and naturally promoted the expansion of Varangian power and trade southward. Soon these bold warriors and merchants offered their goods or services in the markets of Constantinople itself. The reverse was also true; the more orderly the trade along the Dnieper, Volkhov, and Western Dvina, the more Muslim merchants from Baghdad and the Byzantine Empire moved northward and exchanged spices, wines, bales of silk, and jewels for furs, amber, honey, wax, and slaves; thus many Islamic and Byzantine coins have been found along these rivers and even in Scandinavia. When Muslim control of the eastern Mediterranean blocked the flow of European goods from the ports of France and Italy toward the eastern Mediterranean ports, the cities of Marseilles, Genoa, and Pisa declined during the ninth and tenth centuries, while in Russia cities such as Novgorod, Smolensk, Chernigov, Kiev, and Rostov prospered through trade with Scandinavia, the Slavs, Islam, and the Byzantine Empire.

The ancient Russian chronicle (twelfth century, with its story of the “three princes”) gave this Scandinavian influence a personal character. A summary of what the chronicle relates is that the Finnish and Slavic population of the city of Novgorod and its surroundings, having driven out their Varangian masters, became so involved in quarrels among themselves that they were forced to invite the Varangians to send them a ruler or leader (862). According to the same account three brothers – Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor – came and founded the Russian state. Although in later periods the truth of this story has been considered doubtful, it may be true; or it may be a patriotic whitewashing of the Scandinavian conquest of Novgorod. The chronicle also relates that Rurik sent two of his companions, Askold and Dir, to conquer Constantinople, and that these two Vikings on their way captured Kiev and declared themselves independent of both Rurik and the Khazars. In 860 Kiev was strong enough to send a fleet of two hundred ships to attack Constantinople; the expedition failed, but Kiev remained the commercial and political center of Russia and brought much of the interior of Russia under its influence. It is right to regard the rulers of Kiev – Askold, Oleg, and Igor – rather than Rurik, ruler of Novgorod, as the founders of the Russian state. Oleg, Igor, and the capable princess Olga (Igor’s widow) and her brave son Svyatoslav, during their reigns (962–972), expanded the realm of Kiev until it included almost all the eastern Slavic tribes and the cities of Polotsk, Smolensk, Chernigov, and Rostov. Between 860 and 1043 the new principality of Kiev launched six attempts to conquer Constantinople; this itself testifies to the antiquity of Russia’s drive toward the Bosporus and its intense desire to maintain a foothold on the Mediterranean.

With the acceptance of Christianity by Vladimir (972–1015), the fifth “grand prince of Kiev,” who now called himself a Rus, Russia officially entered the Christian fold (989). Vladimir married the sister of Emperor Basil II, and from then until 1917 Russia was, in religion, alphabet, coinage, and art, a tributary of Byzantium. Greek priests explained to Vladimir the divine origin and legitimate right of kings, and the value of these ideas for preserving social order and the stability of monarchical government. During the reign of Vladimir’s son Yaroslav (1036–1054) the principality of Kiev reached the height of its power. The authority of the government of Kiev was generally accepted everywhere, from Lake Ladoga and the Baltic Sea to the region of the Caspian, the Caucasus, and the Black Sea, and it was with this authority that taxes were collected. The Scandinavian invaders were absorbed, and Slavic blood and language became dominant. The social organization was clearly aristocratic. The prince entrusted the conduct of government and the duty of defense to the high nobility, the boyars, and to the druzhina or retainers who were a lower nobility. Below these aristocratic classes came merchants, townsmen, semi-servile peasants, and slaves. A law code known as the Russkaya Pravda or “Russian Right” permitted private revenge, trial by combat (duel), and the oath of an individual to prove the innocence of others, but it provided that trials should be conducted before a jury of twelve citizens. Vladimir founded a school for boys in Kiev, and Yaroslav established another in Novgorod. Kiev, the meeting point of merchant ships on the Volkhov, Dvina, and lower Dnieper, claimed a large share of all goods passing through that region. Soon the wealth of Kiev reached a level where four hundred churches and a cathedral of St. Sophia, modeled on Santa Sophia of Byzantium, were built there. Greek artists were hired to adorn these buildings with mosaics, frescoes, and other Byzantine decorations, and Greek music was adopted to prepare the way for the composition of masterpieces of Russian choral song. Gradually Russia pulled itself out of dust and filth, built splendid palaces for its princes, raised great domes above its mud huts, and in the light of its patient nation’s power created small islands of civilization amid a sea still full of savagery.