15c: Fall of the Eastern Empire

The Eastern Roman Empire, better known as the Byzantine Empire, outlasted the Western Empire for centuries. Constantinople finally fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 - that is, on the eve of the New World's discovery. The adjective "Byzantine," derived from Constantinople's original name of Byzantium, has come to describe twisted and complex plots directed (usually) toward an immoral goal. The association is not exactly unfair. Unlike the rough-and-tumble Western kings, mere generations removed from the barbarians, Eastern emperors retained all of the imperial pomp and ritual incorporated by Diocletian, and even added to it. Byzantine government was characterized by a large army, an even larger bureaucracy, and a tendency to feud over the slightest differences of opinion. Sometimes these differences were religious, as with the Iconoclast Controversy, which came to a merciful end in 843. But all too often, the Byzantines fought over who should succeed to the throne, or who should command the Byzantine forces in one of their wars against one of their numerous enemies. The period from 843 to 1025 AD represented a high point of military security and cultural achievement for the Byzantines, largely due to the comparative absence of internal bickering. Not only did they keep the Muslim, Slav, and Persian armies at arm's length, but even made scattered conquests of their own. The Empire's eastern frontier was extended to Mesopotamia, and the Balkan Peninsula completely taken over. To the north, Kievan Rus (the forerunner state of Russia) had become an outpost of Orthodox Christianity, and a seedbed of Byzantine culture. Economically, the emperors managed to balance the needs of the peasants and the ambitions of the wealthy. Military success and economic prosperity were reflected by new achievements in science, architecture, and literature. This was not quite a golden age, nor could it approach the aura of the Pax Romana. But it was impressive nevertheless.

The late eleventh century found the Byzantines once more beset by economic woes and rampaging Turks. I their desperation they called on Catholic Western Europe for help, which came in the unhelpful form of the First Crusade. The great Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenius (1081–1118),initially welcomed the Crusaders. What could be more noble than Orthodox and Catholic fighting together to redeem the Holy Land from the infidel Muslim? Yet Orthodox and Catholic alike had ulterior motives; Alexius wanted the Crusaders to help him retake territory in Asia Minor, while the Crusaders wanted the Byzantines to help them set up Western-style Catholic kingdoms in the Holy Land. While the Christians squabbled with each other, the Ottoman Turks continued chipping away at Byzantine territory. Along with the land itself, the Byzantines also lost population and tax revenues. In the twelfth century, economic threats arose in the West as rising Italian naval powers like Venice and Genoa began cutting Byzantium out of eastern markets. In 1204 the Fourth Crusade nearly ended the Byzantine Empire two and a half centuries early. The Crusaders captured and sacked Constantinople, instituting a Latin-speaking Catholic kingdom. But Greek-speaking Emperors hung on in a remote corner of Greece, maintaining the tradition of the Romaioi until they managed to retake Constantinople in 1261.

The time period from 1261 until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, known as the Late Byzantine Empire, could just as well be called the Long Decline. Both the internal and external causes resembled the decline experienced earlier by the Western Roman Empire. In fact, the Byzantine Empire became not so much an empire, or even a state, but rather a small kingdom controlling the metropolis of Constantinople and some surrounding territories. The rich grew richer while the poor grew poorer, but neither became more numerous as the Byzantine population shrunk along with the state. As in the West, the wealthier Byzantines bought tax exemptions; the Orthodox Church paid no taxes at all despite being one of the largest landowners itself. The Byzantine small farmers, once the backbone of a Byzantine citizen army which fought as best it could for its own land and its own culture, had basically become serfs tied to their masters' land. Since they no longer had any stake in the success of the Byzantine government, they tended to make rather poor soldiers. Often they came to prefer rule by the comparatively tolerant Ottoman Turks to that of their fellow Romaioi. Pathetically, the emperor John V was reduced in 1369 to making a grand fundraising tour of Western Europe... which ended with his being thrown into a Venetian debtors' prison.

As time went on, the Byzantine Empire fell on even harder times. Once more, emperors reached out to the West, this time offering the greatest prize Byzantium could offer: submission to the Catholic Church. At the 1439 Council of Florence, Emperor John VIII of Byzantium agreed to merge the Orthodox Church back into the Catholic Church, under the leadership of the Bishop of Rome - that is, the Pope. To this day, the Roman Catholic Church insists that the Council of Florence is still in effect, placing the Catholic Church in charge of all Orthodox churches. Yet the good Orthodox people of Constantinople refused to accept submission to the Roman Church, and to this day the Orthodox churches do not recognize the Council of Florence either. In any event, the Byzantines' attempted surrender did their empire no good. No help would forthcoming from the West: France and Britain, for example, were still fighting the Hundred Years' War and the Spanish were still trying to kick the Moors out for good. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI, maneuvered desperately to fend off the Ottoman Turks. He even offered to marry a widowed female relative of the Sultan. But all in vain; on May 29, 1453 he was killed at the head of his troops as his city fell for the last time. To celebrate his victory, Sultan Muhammad II took upon himself the title Kaysar-i-Rum... the Caesar of Rome.

Yet while the empire deteriorated physically, the Byzantine culture endured. The core of this culture was lost, of course, with the fall of Constantinople. But Byzantine culture would live on in the West, as Greek scholars grabbed their precious manuscripts and fled to Italy, where wealthy merchants and nobles sponsored them - spawning the rebirth of Greek learning there. The resulting Renaissance would in turn lead to the Enlightenment, making Byzantium the bridge through which Greek and Roman democratic institutions were transmitted to the modern world. The Byzantine culture would take on new life far to the north, where the Grand Duchy of Muscovy had just emerged from two centuries of Mongol rule, and Tsar Ivan III (1462-1505) - would take as his second wife and valued advisor the Byzantine princess Zoe Palaeologina. As we will find out in Unit Four, Muscovy - and its successor state, Russia - would explicitly consider itself the third, permanent, incarnation of Rome.