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Lecture 7A: The Byzantines- Emperors and Icons in the East

Introduction: The Fall of the Roman Empire

Last week, I told you that by the fifth century CE, the Roman Empire as it had been known for the past almost 1000 years fell apart. It had been in decline for a couple centuries before, and one of the tell-tale signs of this was the growing divide in the Empire between the East and the West. In my lectures this week- there are three of them-, we’re going to talk about the civilizations that emerged from the two sides of the former Roman Empire, and we’re also going to discuss another invading group that came to form a pillar of medieval Europe. More specifically, we’re going to discuss the Byzantine Empire, the Latin Civilization of Western Europe, and Islamic Civilization, all of which became big players in the Western World between 500 and 900 CE. These three civilizations are also important because they form the foundation of modern civilization. It was during this time period between 500 and 900 that the Western World began to look a little bit closer to how we see it today.

By 450 CE, most of the western provinces of the Roman Empire had fallen to Barbarian invaders. The Romans held on to Italy for a while longer, but in 476, the Italian Peninsula also fell to a barbarian group known as the Ostrogoths. Consequently, most historians designate the year 476 CE as the end of the Roman Empire in the West. Only the eastern part remained of the Roman Empire. This eastern part of the former Roman Empire is colored yellow on the map on your screen. This reduced form of the Roman Empire was called the Byzantine Empire, or Byzantium. Interestingly, the residents of the Byzantine Empire still thought of themselves as Roman, as the heirs of the former glorious empire. They also retained the same principate government with one emperor. As we'll see in this lecture and in the coming lectures, the Byzantine Empire would continue to change over the centuries, but it would remain in existence until the 1400s.

Quiz Question #1

Byzantine Emperor Justinian

One of the most important emperors of the Byzantine Empire was Justinian. Justinian defied convention in a couple of different ways. First, he was the last emperor to speak Latin as his native language. In addition, he married a former actress named Theodora. Here's an image of Theodora as depicted in a mosaic from the time period. Today, we tend to think of acting as a pretty respectable profession. But at this time, acting, and particularly actresses, were connected with prostitution and had less than pristine reputations. Making Justinian's choice for a wife even more controversial, Theodora had a very strong personality, and she wasn't afraid to voice her opinions on politics and religion. She wasn't the stereotypical subdued and silent empress.

One of Justinian's primary goals as emperor was to unify the Byzantine Empire and demonstrate his authority as emperor. He did this by creating the Corpus Juris Civilis in 534 CE. Prior to Justinian, most emperors had allowed conquered people to retain their own laws and customs. While this encouraged less revolts and uprisings from conquered people, in the long run, it created a lot of confusion. Consequently, Justinian ordered his lawyers to sort through all the laws of his empire and determine which of them should be enforced. What Justinian's lawyers kept became came the Corpus Juris Civilis. And he enforced this single law code throughout his territories.

Justinian's other major goal was to take back the Western Roman Empire from the Barbarian invaders. In 533, Justinian's army succeeded in retaking parts of North Africa and Southern Spain from the Vandals without much effort. Encouraged by this easy victory, Justinian set his sights on Italy in 537, which was currently under the control of the Ostrogoths. But retaking Italy did not prove as easy as Justinian had anticipated. The main obstacle he faced was that the Ostrogoths had been pretty nice to the Romans living in Italy. Consequently, many former Romans supported the Ostrogoths in resisting Justinian. Justinian eventually regained Italy. This is what the Byzantine Empire looked like under Justinian once he finished his conquest. On the map, the Byzantine Empire is colored pink. Justinian's conquest of Italy, however, took over 20 years, and it did not produce good results. The first year of fighting devastated crops and livelihoods in Italy, which upset residents. And it was a huge financial drain for the Byzantine Empire, which upset the Byzantines back home. Justinian got Italy back, but no one was happy about it. Even worse, the Byzantine emperors after Justinian didn't have the money or the armies necessary to maintain control of the territories he reclaimed. By the early 600s, North Africa, Spain, and Italy were lost again to Barbarian invaders.

Dr. Carol Symes Video: Why Justinian’s Efforts to Reunite the Roman Empire Proved Destructive

Constantinople

The loss of Italy also meant the loss of the city of Rome. In the place of Rome, the city of Constantinople became the capital of the Byzantine Empire. By the way, today, Constantinople is known as Istanbul in the country of Turkey. As was mentioned in the video we just watched, Constantinople had been founded by, and was named after, Constantine in 324 CE. On the map on your screen, the city of Constantinople is marked with a red box. The city was strategically located where the Black Sea meets the Sea of Marmara, which benefited the city economically. Consequently, between 450 and 700 CE, Constantinople was the richest and largest city in the world. Perhaps the most brilliant jewel of Constantinople was the Hagia Sophia. This was a church, and it still stands today, although it was converted into a mosque when the Ottoman Turks conquered the city in the 1400s. The Hagia Sophia was built by Justinian. He hired a whole crew of architects and over 10,000 workers to build it. The dome of the Hagia Sophia was a significant accomplishment for architects, who had to figure out how to keep such a large structure from crashing down.

Quiz Question #2

The Orthodox Church

Religion in the Byzantine Empire remained a central aspect of daily life. The city of Constantinople boasted so many churches and sacred relics, that by 600 CE, the Byzantines had begun to think of it as a holy city, protected by God and under the special care of the Virgin Mary. Due to the loss of the West to barbarian tribes, Christians in the western and eastern parts of the former Roman Empire began to develop different religious ideas and customs. Eventually, the Byzantines created their own church, the Orthodox Church. This was a different church than the Roman Catholic Church. They’re both Christian, but as we’ll see, their officials and practices were and are a bit different.

The Eastern Orthodox Church still exists today, primarily in the area where the Byzantine Empire was located. The Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Empire had a distinct hierarchy. At the top was the chief bishop of Constantinople, who was known as the patriarch. The patriarch was appointed by the emperor, and he worked closely with the emperor in directing and supervising the other bishops and priests and monasteries of the Byzantine Empire. As with the civilizations that came before, the Byzantine Empire, as well as the other civilizations we discuss this week, religion and government often overlapped during this time period. The idea of a separation between Church and State is a modern idea that would not become a thing until over a thousand years from the time we’re discussing. So, what we’re going to see in the lectures this week and in the coming weeks are religious leaders who play large roles in the government or politics, we’ll see political leaders like kings and emperors who make religious decisions, and we’ll see how both religious and political leaders often interacted with each other to justify or boost their own power and authority in society.

The Iconoclastic Controversy

Now as I mentioned a minute ago, the Byzantines had the Christian Orthodox Church. And for much of the history of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Church represented a unifying element for the Byzantines. But it wasn't always free from internal conflict. One conflict in particular threatened to tear the Orthodox Church and its members apart. This was the Iconoclastic Controversy of the 8th century. The word "iconoclastic" comes from the word "icon." An icon is a visual representation of a saint, religious figure, or a divine figure that people look at to pray and worship. It was, and still is today, intended to be a religious tool. Here are two examples of icons from the modern era. Icons are generally painted images on pieces of wood of varying sizes. These images seem pretty innocent. But in the 8th century, some Byzantines saw all the Barbarian in the West and there were new Muslim invaders in the East, both of which were major threats to the Empire. So some Byzantines began to think that perhaps God was angry with the Empire for its use of icons and was punishing them. They claimed that the use of icons had gone too far, that people were worshipping the icons themselves, instead of what they represented, and that this action was a form of idolatry, a very grave sin indeed. On the one hand, defenders of the icons claimed that the icons were important because they helped people better relate to and worship God. In other words, the paintings made the unimaginable imaginable. On the other hand, critics responded that uneducated Christians couldn't tell the difference between using an icon as a tool to worship and worshipping the icons itself.

Well, in 726, the Byzantine Emperor Leo came down on the side of the critics and he ordered the destruction of all icons throughout the empire in an effort to appease God. The destruction of icons is known by the term "iconoclasm." So, here is an example of a government official- the emperor- make orders about religious practice. Upon Emperor Leo's orders, officials stormed into churches, monasteries, and private homes seizing icons and burning them in big bonfires. But we have to remember that people had been using icons for centuries to worship. So many people resisted Emperor Leo's order to destroy all the icons, often by rioting or hiding their icons. The Iconoclastic Controversy continued until the year 843 CE. In 843, after years of turmoil, Empress Theodora put an end to iconoclasm in the empire and allowed people to freely use icons again. By the way, this is a different Theodora than the one married to Justinian. The Theodora who ended iconoclasm lived about 300 years later than Justinian’s Theodora.

This conflict was important because it created division between Christians in the Byzantine Empire and those in the former Western Roman Empire that was now under the control of barbarians. The two Christian groups started to grow apart when barbarians invaded and took over the West. Since the West was no longer connected to the East, the Christians living in these two parts continued to develop their faith and religious ideas separately and follow different religious leaders. In the West, the pope in the city of Rome was the highest religious authority. I’ll talk about this more in my last lecture for this week, but in short- the pope claimed to be the heir of Saint Peter, who according to Biblical traditions, was the first leader of the Christian Church and the first bishop of Rome. Based on this tradition, the popes presented themselves as the heirs of Peter and thus the head of the larger Christian community. In contrast, in the East, the patriarch became the highest religious authority in collaboration with the emperor, who now resided in Constantinople. But even though there were two different religious leaders, up until the Iconoclastic Controversy, they were allies and saw each other as part of the same larger Christian community. But when the Iconoclastic Controversy took place in the 8th and 9th centuries, it called into question not only the worship of icons, but also the authority of the saints and, by extension, the pope’s claim to be Saint Peter’s successor. This was simply not a position that the pope could support. Consequently, it began a division between the two that would continue to widen over the next few centuries until the Roman Catholic Church and Byzantine Orthodox Church officially split in 1054 CE.

Quiz Question #3