Byzantine Greeks
Encyclopedia
Byzantine Greeks or Byzantines
is a conventional term used by modern historians to refer to the medieval Greek
or Hellenised
citizens of the Byzantine Empire
, centered mainly in Constantinople
, the southern Balkans
, the Greek islands, Asia Minor
(modern Turkey), Cyprus
and the large urban centres of the Near East
and northern Egypt
. The identity of the Byzantine Greeks has taken many forms in name, with such variants as Romaioi or Romioi (meaning "Romans"), Graikoi (meaning "Greeks"), "Byzantines", and "Byzantine Greeks".
The social structure of the Byzantine Greeks was primarily supported by a rural, agrarian base that consisted of the peasantry, and a small fraction of the poor. These peasants lived within three kinds of settlements, the chorion or village, the agridion or hamlet, and the proasteion or estate. Many civil disturbances that occurred during the time of the Byzantine Empire
were attributed to political factions within the Empire rather than to this large popular base. Soldiers among the Byzantine Greeks were at first conscripted amongst the rural peasants and trained on an annual basis. As the Byzantine Empire entered the 11th century, more of the soldiers within the army
were either professional men-at-arms or mercenaries
.
Education within the Byzantine Greek population was until the twelfth century more advanced than in the West
, particularly on the primary school level, which increased literacy rates. Success came easily to Byzantine Greek merchants
, who enjoyed a very strong position in international trade. Despite the challenges they faced against rival Italian
merchants, they managed to hold their own throughout the latter half of the Empire’s existence. The clergy also held a special place, not only having more freedom than their Western counterparts, but also maintaining a patriarch in Constantinople
that was considered to be the equal of the pope. This position of strength had built up over time, for at the beginning of the Empire, under Constantine the Great (r. 306–337), only a small part, about 10%, of the population was Christian
.
The language of the Byzantine Greeks since the age of Constantine had been Greek
, although Latin
was the language of the administration. From the reign of Emperor Heraclius
(r. 610–641), Greek was not only the predominant language amongst the populace but also replaced Latin in the administration. The makeup of the Empire had at first a multi-ethnic character that, following the loss of the non-Greek speaking provinces, came to be dominated by the Byzantine Greeks. Over time, the relationship between them and the West, particularly with Germanic Roman
and Frankish
Europe, deteriorated. Relations were further damaged by a schism
between the Roman West and Orthodox East that led to the Byzantine Greeks being labeled as heretics. Throughout the later centuries of the Byzantine Empire and particularly following the coronation of Charlemagne
in 800, the Byzantine Greeks were not considered by Western Europeans as heirs of the Roman Empire, but rather part of an Eastern kingdom made up of Greek peoples. However, the Byzantine Empire was the remnant of the Roman Empire, continuing the unbroken line of succession of the Roman emperors.
During most of the Middle Ages
, the Byzantine Greeks identified themselves as Romaioi (Greek: Ρωμαίοι, "Romans", meaning citizens of the Roman Empire
), a term which in the Greek language
had become synonymous to a Christian Greek. They also identified themselves as Graikoi (Greek: Γραικοί, "Greeks") even though the ethnonym was never used in official Byzantine correspondence prior to 1204 AD. The ancient name Hellene was in popular use synonymous to a pagan and was revived as an ethnonym
in the Middle Byzantine period (11th century). While in the West
the term "Roman" acquired a new meaning in connection with the Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome, the Greek form "Romaioi" remained attached to the Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire. These people called themselves Romaioi (Romans) in their language, and the term Byzantines or Byzantine Greeks is an exonym
applied by later historians like Hieronymus Wolf
. However, the use of the term "Byzantine Greeks" for the Romaioi is not entirely uncontroversial.
Most historians agree that the defining features of their civilization were: 1) Greek language
, culture, literature, and science, 2) Roman law
and tradition, 3) Christian faith. The term "Byzantine" has been adopted by Western scholarship on the assumption that anything Roman is essentially "western" and by modern Greek scholarship for nationalistic reasons of identification with ancient Greece. In modern times, the Greek people still use the ethnonym "Romaioi" or rather "Romioi" to refer to themselves. In addition, the Eastern Roman Empire was in language and civilization a Greek society.
Byzantinist August Heisenberg (1869–1930) defined the Byzantine Empire
as "the Christianised Roman empire of the Greek nation". Byzantium was primarily known as the Empire of the Greeks by foreigners due to the predominance of Greek linguistic
, cultural, and demographic elements.
. This society included various classes of people that were neither exclusive nor immutable. The most characteristic were the poor, the peasants, the soldiers, the teachers, entrepreneurs, and clergy.
(who is the Greek equivalent of Santa Claus
), Gregory of Nyssa
and John Chrysostom
. The number of the poor fluctuated in the many centuries of Byzantium's
existence but they provided a constant supply of muscle power for the building projects and rural work. There did, however, appear to be an apparent rise in their numbers towards the end of late antiquity, the late fourth and early fifth centuries as barbarian raid
s and a desire to avoid taxation pushed rural populations into cities.
There were several categories of poverty with the ptochos ("poor" in medieval Greek) being lower than the penes ("poor" in ancient Greek). They formed the majority of the infamous Constantinopolitan mob whose function was similar to the mob of the First Rome
. However, while there are instances of riots attributed to the poor, specifically the majority of civil disturbances were attributable to the various factions of the Hippodrome
like the Greens and Blues. Apart from the fact that they constituted a non-negligible percentage of the population, there is a point to focusing on the poor because their existence influenced the Christian society of Byzantium to create a large network of hospitals (iatreia), alms houses and a religious and social model largely justified by the existence of the poor and born out of the Christian transformation of Classical society.
of Emperor Leo VI the Wise
(r. 886–912), the two professions defined as the backbone of the state are the peasantry (georgika) and the soldiers (stratiotika). The reason for this was that besides producing most of the empire's food the peasants also produced most of its taxes. They lived mostly in villages, whose name changed slowly from the classical kome to the modern chorio. While agriculture and herding were the dominant occupations of villagers they were not the only ones. There are records for the small town of Lampsakos, situated on the eastern shore of the Hellespont, which out of 173 households classifies 113 as peasant
and 60 as urban
, which indicate other kinds of ancillary activities. The Treatise on Taxation, preserved in the Biblioteca Marciana
in Venice, distinguishes between three types of rural settlements, the chorion or village, the agridion or hamlet, and the proasteion or estate. According to a fourteenth century survey of the village of Aphetos, donated to the monastery of Chilandar, the average size of a landholding is only 3.5 modioi (0.08 ha). Taxes placed on rural populations included the kapnikon or hearth tax and the aerikon (lit. "of the air") which depended on the village's population and ranged between 4 and 20 gold coins annually.
Their diet consisted of mainly grains and beans and in fishing communities fish was usually substituted for meat. Bread, wine and olives were important staples of Byzantine diet with soldiers on campaign eating double baked and dried bread called paximadion. As in antiquity and modern times, the most common cultivations in the choraphia were olive groves and vineyards. While Liutprand of Cremona
, a visitor from Italy
, found Greek wine irritating as it was often flavoured with resin (retsina
) most other Westerners admired Greek wines, Cretan in particular being famous.
While both hunting and fishing were common, the peasants mostly hunted to protect their herds and crops. Apiculture, the keeping of bees, was as highly developed in Byzantium as it had been in Ancient Greece
. Aside from agriculture, the peasants also laboured in the crafts, fiscal inventories mentioning smiths (chalkeus), tailors (rhaptes), and cobblers
(tsangarios).
During the Byzantine millennium, hardly a year passed without a military campaign. Soldiers were a normal part of everyday life, much more than in modern Western societies. While it is difficult to draw a distinction between Roman and Byzantine
soldiers from an organizational aspect, it is easier to do so in terms of their social profile. The military handbooks known as the Taktika continued a Hellenistic and Roman tradition that contains a wealth of information about the appearance, customs, habits and life of the soldiers. As with the peasantry, there are apart from the main core of soldiers many who performed ancillary activities, like medics and technicians. Selection for military duty was annual with yearly call-ups and great stock was placed on military exercises, during the winter months, which formed a large part of a soldier's life.
Until the eleventh century, the majority of the conscripts were from rural areas, while the conscription of craftsmen and merchants is still an open question. From that point on, professional recruiting replaced conscription and the rising use of mercenaries within the army placed a ruinous burden on the treasury. From the tenth century onwards, stipulations exist for the connection between land-ownership and military service. While the state never allotted land for obligatory service, soldiers could and did use their pay to buy landed estates and taxes would be decreased or waived in some cases. What the state did allocate to soldiers, however, from the twelfth century onwards, were the tax revenues from some estates called pronoiai. As in antiquity, the basic food of the soldier remained the dried biscuit bread though its name had changed from boukelaton to paximadion.
Byzantine education was the product of an ancient educational tradition that stretched back to the fifth century BC. It comprised a tripartite system of education that, taking shape during the Hellenistic
era, was maintained, with inevitable changes, up until the fall of Constantinople
. The stages of education were the elementary school, where pupils ranged from six to ten years, secondary school, where pupils ranged from ten to sixteen, and higher education.
Elementary education was widely available throughout most of the Byzantine Empire's existence, in the countryside, as well as in towns. This, in turn, ensured that literacy
was much more widespread than in Western Europe, at least until the twelfth century. Secondary education
was confined to the larger cities while higher education
was the exclusive provenance of Constantinople
.
The elementary school teacher occupied a low social position and taught mainly from simple fairy tale books (Aesop's Fables
were often used). However, the grammarian and rhetorician, teachers responsible for the following two phases of education, were more respected. These used classical Greek texts like Homer's Iliad
or Odyssey
and much of their time was taken with detailed word-for-word explication. Books were rare and very expensive and likely only possessed by teachers who dictated passages to students.
While constituting 50% of the population, women have tended to be overlooked in Byzantine studies
. Byzantine society was patriarchical and left few records about them. In addition, women were generally viewed with suspicion and considered periodically unclean and as a result were the subjects of discrimination
. Women were disadvantaged in some aspects of their legal status, in their access to education and limited in their freedom of movement. The life of a Byzantine Greek woman could be divided into three phases, girlhood, motherhood, and widowhood.
Childhood was brief and perilous, even more so for girls than boys. Parents would celebrate twice as much the birth of a boy and there is some evidence of female infanticide, though it was contrary to both civil and canon law. Educational opportunities for girls were few as they did not attend regular schools but were taught in groups at home by tutors. With few exceptions, education was limited to literacy and the Bible
. There were no forays into classical literature for most girls. A famous exception is the Princess Anna Comnena, whose Alexiad
displays an uncanny depth of erudition. The majority of a young girl's daily life would be spent in household and agrarian chores, preparing herself for marriage.
For most girls, childhood
came to an abrupt end with the onset of puberty
which was followed shortly after by betrothal and marriage. This was due to most women (and indeed men) having high mortality rates, the average age if they survived infancy being thirty-five. Although marriage arrangements by the family was the norm, romantic love was by no means unknown. Most women produced a large number of children in order to ensure the survival of at least a few, and grief for the loss of a loved one was an inalienable part of life. The main form of birth control was abstinence and while there is evidence of contraception it seems to have been mainly used by prostitutes.
Due to prevailing norms of modesty, women would wear clothing that covered the whole of their body except their hands. While women among the poor could get away with wearing sleeveless tunics, most women were obliged to cover even their heads with the long maphorion veil. Women of means, however, spared no expense in adorning their clothes with exquisite jewelry and fine silk fabrics. Divorces were hard to obtain even though there were laws permitting them. Husbands would often beat their wives, though the reverse situation was not unknown as in Theodore Prodromos' description of a battered husband in the Ptochoprodromos poems.
Though in Byzantium, female life expectancy was lower than that of men, due to wars and the fact that men married younger, female widowhood was still fairly common. Still, women were often able to circumvent societal strictures and work as traders, craftswomen, female abbots and entertainers not to mention empresses and scholars.
The traditional image of Byzantine Greek merchants as unenterprising benefactors of state aid is beginning to change for that of mobile, pro-active agents. The merchant class, particularly that of Constantinople
, became a force of its own that could, at times, even threaten the Emperor as it did in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This was achieved through efficient use of credit and other monetary innovations. Merchants invested surplus funds in financial products called chreokoinonia, the equivalent and perhaps ancestor of the later Italian commenda. Eventually, the purchasing power of Byzantine merchants became such that it could influence prices in markets as far afield as Cairo
and Alexandria
. In reflection of their success, emperors gave merchants the right to become members of the Senate
, that is to integrate themselves with the ruling elite. This had an end by the end of the eleventh century when political machinations allowed the landed aristocracy to secure the throne for a century and more. Following that phase, however, the enterprising merchants bounced back and wielded real clout during the time of the Third Crusade
.
The reason Byzantine Greek merchants have often been neglected in historiography is not that they were any less able than their ancient or modern Greek colleagues in matters of trade. It rather originated with the way history was written in Byzantium, which was often under the patronage of their competitors, the court and land aristocracy. The fact that they were eventually surpassed by their Italian rivals is attributable to the privileges sought and acquired by the Crusader States
within the Levant
and the dominant maritime violence of the Italians.
, the clergy of the Eastern Roman Empire remained in close contact with the rest of society. Readers and subdeacons were drawn from the laity and expected to be at least twenty years of age while priests and bishops had to be at least 30. Unlike the Latin church
, the Byzantine church allowed married priests and deacons, as long as they were married before ordination
. Bishops, however, were required to be unmarried.
While the religious hierarchy mirrored the Empire's administrative divisions, the clergy were more ubiquitous than the emperor's servants. The issue of caesaropapism
, while usually associated with the Byzantine Empire, is now understood to be an oversimplification of actual conditions in the Empire. By the fifth century, the Patriarch of Constantinople
was recognized as first among equals of the four eastern Patriarchs and as of equal status with the Pope
in Rome
. The ecclesiastical provinces were called eparchies and were headed by archbishops or metropolitans
who supervised their subordinate bishops or episkopoi. For most people, however, it was their parish priest or papas (from the Greek
word for "father") that was the most recognizable face of the clergy.
Linguistically, Byzantine or medieval Greek is situated between the Hellenistic (Koine) and modern phases of the language. Since as early as the Hellenistic era, Greek
had been the lingua franca
of the educated elites of the Eastern Mediterranean, spoken natively in the southern Balkans
, the Greek islands, Asia Minor and the ancient and Hellenistic Greek colonies of Western Asia and Northern Africa. At the beginning of the Byzantine millennium, the koine remained the basis for spoken Greek and Christian writings, while Attic Greek
was the language of the philosophers and orators. As Christianity became the dominant religion, Attic began to be used also in Christian writings in addition to and often interspersed with, the koine Greek. Nonetheless, from the sixth century on and at least until the twelfth, Attic remained entrenched in the educational system while further changes to the spoken language can be postulated for the early and middle Byzantine periods.
The empire, at least in its early stages, was composed of people whose mother tongue was other than Greek, as well. These included Latin, Aramaic, Coptic
and Caucasian languages, while Cyril Mango
cites evidence for bilingualism as well in the South and South East. These influences in addition to the influx of people of Arabic, Celtic, Germanic, Turkic, and Slavic backgrounds supplied medieval Greek with many loanword
s that have survived in the modern Greek language as well. From the eleventh and twelfth centuries onward, there is a steady rise in the literary use of the vernacular, as well. Following the Fourth Crusade
and the increased contact with the West, this entailed that the lingua franca of commerce became Italian, and in the areas of the Crusader kingdoms a classical education (paideia
) ceased to be the sine qua non of social status, leading to the rise of the vernacular. It is from this era that many beautiful works in the vernacular, often written by people deeply steeped in classical education, are attested. A famous example are the four Ptochoprodromic poems attributed to Theodoros Prodromos. From the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, the last of the Empire, arise several works like laments, fables, romances, and chronicles written outside Constantinople, which until then had been the seat of most literature, in an idiom termed by scholars as "Byzantine Koine".
Nonetheless, this did not in the end obviate the diglossia
of the Greek-speaking world (which had already started in ancient Greece), and which continued under Ottoman
rule and persisted in the modern Greek state until 1976, while Atticist Greek remains the official language of the Greek Orthodox Church
. As shown in the poems of Ptochoprodromos, an early stage of modern Greek had already been shaped by the twelfth century and possibly earlier. Vernacular Greek continued to be known as "Romaic" up until the twentieth century.
At the time of Constantine the Great (r. 306–337), barely 10% of the Roman Empire's population were Christians, with most of them being urban population and generally found in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. The majority of people still honoured the old gods in the public Roman way of religio. As Christianity became a complete philosophical system, whose theory and apologetics were heavily indebted to the Classic word, this changed. In addition, Constantine as Pontifex Maximus
was responsible for the correct cultus or veneratio of the deity which was in accordance with former Roman practice. The move from the old religion to the new entailed some elements of continuity as well as break with the past, though the artistic heritage of paganism was literally broken by Christian zeal.
Christianity led to the development of a few phenomena characteristic of Byzantium. Namely, the intimate connection between Church and State, a legacy of Roman cultus. Also, the creation of a Christian philosophy that guided Byzantine Greeks in their everyday lives. And finally, the dichotomy between the Christian ideals of the Bible
and classical Greek paideia which could not be left out, however, since so much of Christian scholarship and philosophy depended on it. These shaped Byzantine Greek character and the perceptions of themselves and others.
Christians at the time of Constantine's conversion made up only 10% of the population. This would rise to 50% by the end of the fourth century and 90% by the end of the fifth century. Emperor Justinian I
(r. 527–565) then brutally mopped up the rest of the pagans, highly literate academics on one end of the scale and illiterate peasants on the other. A conversion so rapid seems to have been rather the result of expediency than of conviction.
The survival of the Empire in the East assured an active role of the emperor in the affairs of the Church. The Byzantine state inherited from pagan times the administrative and financial routine of organising religious affairs, and this routine was applied to the Christian Church
. Following the pattern set by Eusebius of Caesarea
, the Byzantines viewed the emperor as a representative or messenger of Christ
, responsible particularly for the propagation of Christianity among pagans, and for the "externals" of the religion, such as administration and finances. The imperial role in the affairs of the Church never developed into a fixed, legally defined system, however.
With the decline of Rome, and internal dissension in the other Eastern patriarchates, the church of Constantinople became, between the 6th and 11th centuries, the richest and most influential centre of Christendom
. Even when the Byzantine Empire was reduced to only a shadow of its former self, the Church, as an institution, exercised so much influence both inside and outside the imperial frontiers as never before. As George Ostrogorsky
points out:
Within the Byzantine Empire, a Greek or Hellenised citizen was generally called a Rhōmaîos (Greek: ), which was first of all defined in opposition to a foreigner, ethnikós (Greek: ). The Byzantine Greeks were, and perceived themselves as, the descendants of their classical Greek forebears, the political heirs of imperial Rome, and followers of the Apostles. Thus, their sense of "Romanity" was different from that of their contemporaries in the West. "Romaic" was the name of the vulgar Greek language, as opposed to "Hellenic" which was its literary or doctrinal form. "Greek" (Greek: Γραικός) had become synonymous with "Roman" (Greek: Ρωμαίος/Ρωμιός) and "Christian" (Greek: Χριστιανός) to mean a Christian Greek citizen of the [Eastern] Roman Empire. There was always an element of indifference or neglect of everything non-Greek, which was therefore "barbarian".
In official discourse, "all inhabitants of the empire were subjects of the emperor, and therefore Romans." Thus the primary definition of Rhōmaios was "political or statist." In order to succeed in being a full-blown and unquestioned "Roman" it was best to be a Greek Orthodox Christian
and a Greek-speaker, at least in one's public persona. Yet, the cultural uniformity which the Byzantine church and the state pursued through Orthodoxy and the Greek language was not sufficient to erase distinct identities, nor did it aim to. The highest compliment that could be paid to a foreigner was to call him andreîos Rhōmaióphrōn (Greek: , roughly "a Roman-minded fellow").
Often one's local (geographic) identity could outweigh one's identity as a Rhōmaios. The terms xénos (Greek: ) and exōtikós (Greek: ) denoted "people foreign to the local population," regardless of whether they were from abroad or from elsewhere within the Byzantine Empire. "When a person was away from home he was a stranger and was often treated with suspicion. A monk from western Asia Minor who joined a monastery in Pontus
was 'disparaged and mistreated by everyone as a stranger'. The corollary to regional solidarity was regional hostility."
empire, soon comprised the Hellenised empire of the East, and ended its thousand-year history, in 1453, as a Greek Orthodox state: an empire that became a nation
, almost by the modern meaning of the word. The presence of a distinctive and historically rich literary culture was also very important in the division between "Greek" East and "Latin" West and thus the formation of both. It was a multi-ethnic empire where the Hellenic
element was predominant, especially in the later period. Spoken language and state, the markers of identity that were to become a fundamental tenet of nineteenth-century nationalism throughout Europe became, by accident, a reality during a formative period of medieval Greek history. Beginning in the twelfth century, certain Byzantine Greek intellectuals began to use the ancient Greek ethnonym Héllēn (Greek: ) in order to describe Byzantine civilisation.
During the later period of the Byzantine Empire, Emperor Theodore I Laskaris
(r. 1205–1222) tried to revive Hellenic tradition by fostering the study of philosophy, for in his opinion there was a danger that philosophy "might abandon the Greeks and seek refuge among the Latins". In a letter to Pope Gregory IX
, the Byzantine emperor John Vatatzes (r. 1221–1254) claimed to have received the gift of royalty from Constantine the Great, and put emphasis on his "Hellenic" descent, exalting the wisdom of the Greek people. He was presenting Hellenic culture as an integral part of the Byzantine polity in defiance of Latin claims. Byzantine Greeks had always felt superior for being the inheritors of a more ancient civilisation, but such ethnic identifications had not been politically popular up until then. Hence, in the context of increasing Venetian
and Genoese
power in the eastern Mediterranean, association with Hellenism took deeper root among the Byzantine elite, on account of a desire to distinguish themselves from the Latin West and to lay legitimate claims to Greek-speaking lands.
Claims of association with Hellenism continued and increased throughout the Palaiologan
dynasty. The scholar, teacher, and translator, John Argyropoulos
, addressed Emperor John VIII Palaiologos
(r. 1425–1448) as "Sun King of Hellas" and urged the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (r. 1449–1453), to proclaim himself "King of the Hellenes". During the same period, the neo-platonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon boasted "We are Hellenes by race and culture," and proposed a re-born Byzantine Empire following a utopian Hellenic system of government centered in Mystras
. According to the historian George Sphrantzes
, on the eve of the Fall of Constantinople
, the last Byzantine emperor urged his soldiers to remember that they were the descendants of Greeks and Romans.
In the eyes of the West, after the coronation of Charlemagne
, the Byzantines were not acknowledged as the inheritors of the Roman Empire. Byzantium was rather perceived to be a corrupted continuation of ancient Greece, and was officially known for most of its history as the "Empire of the Greeks" or "Kingdom of Greece". Such denials of Byzantium's Roman heritage and ecumenical rights would instigate the first resentments between Greeks and Latins or "Franks", as they were called by the Greeks. Popular Western opinion is reflected in the Translatio militiae, whose anonymous Latin author states that the Greeks had lost their courage and their learning, and therefore did not join in the war against the infidels. In another passage, the ancient Greeks are praised for their military skill and their learning, by which means the author draws a contrast with contemporary Byzantine Greeks, who were generally viewed as a non-warlike and schismatic people.
A turning point in how both sides viewed each other is probably the massacre of Latins in Constantinople in 1182. A major source for Western interpretations of the Byzantines, particularly during this event is William of Tyre
, a historian of the Crusades. He described the "Greek nation" as a "a brood of vipers, like a serpent in the bosom or a mouse in the wardrobe evilly requite their guests", highlighting the strained relations between both ethnic groups as a result of the massacre, the Crusades, and the Schism, which helped to define the modern identity of the Greek nation.
is a conventional term used by modern historians to refer to the medieval Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
or Hellenised
Hellenization
Hellenization is a term used to describe the spread of ancient Greek culture, and, to a lesser extent, language. It is mainly used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon...
citizens of the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
, centered mainly in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, the southern Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
, the Greek islands, Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
(modern Turkey), Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
and the large urban centres of the Near East
Near East
The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
and northern Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. The identity of the Byzantine Greeks has taken many forms in name, with such variants as Romaioi or Romioi (meaning "Romans"), Graikoi (meaning "Greeks"), "Byzantines", and "Byzantine Greeks".
The social structure of the Byzantine Greeks was primarily supported by a rural, agrarian base that consisted of the peasantry, and a small fraction of the poor. These peasants lived within three kinds of settlements, the chorion or village, the agridion or hamlet, and the proasteion or estate. Many civil disturbances that occurred during the time of the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
were attributed to political factions within the Empire rather than to this large popular base. Soldiers among the Byzantine Greeks were at first conscripted amongst the rural peasants and trained on an annual basis. As the Byzantine Empire entered the 11th century, more of the soldiers within the army
Byzantine army
The Byzantine army was the primary military body of the Byzantine armed forces, serving alongside the Byzantine navy. A direct descendant of the Roman army, the Byzantine army maintained a similar level of discipline, strategic prowess and organization...
were either professional men-at-arms or mercenaries
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
.
Education within the Byzantine Greek population was until the twelfth century more advanced than in the West
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
, particularly on the primary school level, which increased literacy rates. Success came easily to Byzantine Greek merchants
Byzantine economy
The Byzantine economy was among the most advanced in Europe and the Mediterranean for many centuries. Constantinople was a prime hub in a trading network that at various times extended across nearly all of Eurasia and North Africa. Some scholars argue that, up until the arrival of the Arabs in the...
, who enjoyed a very strong position in international trade. Despite the challenges they faced against rival Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
merchants, they managed to hold their own throughout the latter half of the Empire’s existence. The clergy also held a special place, not only having more freedom than their Western counterparts, but also maintaining a patriarch in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
that was considered to be the equal of the pope. This position of strength had built up over time, for at the beginning of the Empire, under Constantine the Great (r. 306–337), only a small part, about 10%, of the population was Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
.
The language of the Byzantine Greeks since the age of Constantine had been Greek
Medieval Greek
Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, is the stage of the Greek language between the beginning of the Middle Ages around 600 and the Ottoman conquest of the city of Constantinople in 1453. The latter date marked the end of the Middle Ages in Southeast Europe...
, although Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
was the language of the administration. From the reign of Emperor Heraclius
Heraclius
Heraclius was Byzantine Emperor from 610 to 641.He was responsible for introducing Greek as the empire's official language. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, successfully led a revolt against the unpopular usurper Phocas.Heraclius'...
(r. 610–641), Greek was not only the predominant language amongst the populace but also replaced Latin in the administration. The makeup of the Empire had at first a multi-ethnic character that, following the loss of the non-Greek speaking provinces, came to be dominated by the Byzantine Greeks. Over time, the relationship between them and the West, particularly with Germanic Roman
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
and Frankish
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
Europe, deteriorated. Relations were further damaged by a schism
East–West Schism
The East–West Schism of 1054, sometimes known as the Great Schism, formally divided the State church of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western branches, which later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, respectively...
between the Roman West and Orthodox East that led to the Byzantine Greeks being labeled as heretics. Throughout the later centuries of the Byzantine Empire and particularly following the coronation of Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
in 800, the Byzantine Greeks were not considered by Western Europeans as heirs of the Roman Empire, but rather part of an Eastern kingdom made up of Greek peoples. However, the Byzantine Empire was the remnant of the Roman Empire, continuing the unbroken line of succession of the Roman emperors.
Terminology
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, the Byzantine Greeks identified themselves as Romaioi (Greek: Ρωμαίοι, "Romans", meaning citizens of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
), a term which in the Greek language
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
had become synonymous to a Christian Greek. They also identified themselves as Graikoi (Greek: Γραικοί, "Greeks") even though the ethnonym was never used in official Byzantine correspondence prior to 1204 AD. The ancient name Hellene was in popular use synonymous to a pagan and was revived as an ethnonym
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...
in the Middle Byzantine period (11th century). While in the West
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
the term "Roman" acquired a new meaning in connection with the Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome, the Greek form "Romaioi" remained attached to the Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire. These people called themselves Romaioi (Romans) in their language, and the term Byzantines or Byzantine Greeks is an exonym
Exonym and endonym
In ethnolinguistics, an endonym or autonym is a local name for a geographical feature, and an exonym or xenonym is a foreign language name for it...
applied by later historians like Hieronymus Wolf
Hieronymus Wolf
Hieronymus Wolf was a sixteenth-century German historian and humanist, most famous for introducing a system of Byzantine historiography that eventually became the standard in works of medieval Greek history.- His life :...
. However, the use of the term "Byzantine Greeks" for the Romaioi is not entirely uncontroversial.
Most historians agree that the defining features of their civilization were: 1) Greek language
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, culture, literature, and science, 2) Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
and tradition, 3) Christian faith. The term "Byzantine" has been adopted by Western scholarship on the assumption that anything Roman is essentially "western" and by modern Greek scholarship for nationalistic reasons of identification with ancient Greece. In modern times, the Greek people still use the ethnonym "Romaioi" or rather "Romioi" to refer to themselves. In addition, the Eastern Roman Empire was in language and civilization a Greek society.
Byzantinist August Heisenberg (1869–1930) defined the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
as "the Christianised Roman empire of the Greek nation". Byzantium was primarily known as the Empire of the Greeks by foreigners due to the predominance of Greek linguistic
Medieval Greek
Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, is the stage of the Greek language between the beginning of the Middle Ages around 600 and the Ottoman conquest of the city of Constantinople in 1453. The latter date marked the end of the Middle Ages in Southeast Europe...
, cultural, and demographic elements.
Society
While social mobility was not unknown in Byzantium the order of society was thought of as more enduring, with the average man regarding the court of Heaven to be the archetype of the imperial court in ConstantinopleConstantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
. This society included various classes of people that were neither exclusive nor immutable. The most characteristic were the poor, the peasants, the soldiers, the teachers, entrepreneurs, and clergy.
The poor
According to a text dated to 533 AD, a man was termed "poor" if he did not have 50 gold coins (aurei), which was a modest though not negligible sum. The Byzantines were heirs to the Greek concepts of charity for the sake of the polis, nevertheless it was the Christian concepts attested in the Bible that animated their giving habits, and specifically the examples of Basil of CaesareaBasil of Caesarea
Basil of Caesarea, also called Saint Basil the Great, was the bishop of Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia, Asia Minor . He was an influential 4th century Christian theologian...
(who is the Greek equivalent of Santa Claus
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
), Gregory of Nyssa
Gregory of Nyssa
St. Gregory of Nyssa was a Christian bishop and saint. He was a younger brother of Basil the Great and a good friend of Gregory of Nazianzus. His significance has long been recognized in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholic and Roman Catholic branches of Christianity...
and John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom , Archbishop of Constantinople, was an important Early Church Father. He is known for his eloquence in preaching and public speaking, his denunciation of abuse of authority by both ecclesiastical and political leaders, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and his ascetic...
. The number of the poor fluctuated in the many centuries of Byzantium's
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
existence but they provided a constant supply of muscle power for the building projects and rural work. There did, however, appear to be an apparent rise in their numbers towards the end of late antiquity, the late fourth and early fifth centuries as barbarian raid
Migration Period
The Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions , was a period of intensified human migration in Europe that occurred from c. 400 to 800 CE. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages...
s and a desire to avoid taxation pushed rural populations into cities.
There were several categories of poverty with the ptochos ("poor" in medieval Greek) being lower than the penes ("poor" in ancient Greek). They formed the majority of the infamous Constantinopolitan mob whose function was similar to the mob of the First Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. However, while there are instances of riots attributed to the poor, specifically the majority of civil disturbances were attributable to the various factions of the Hippodrome
Hippodrome of Constantinople
The Hippodrome of Constantinople was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named Sultanahmet Meydanı in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with only a few fragments of the original structure surviving...
like the Greens and Blues. Apart from the fact that they constituted a non-negligible percentage of the population, there is a point to focusing on the poor because their existence influenced the Christian society of Byzantium to create a large network of hospitals (iatreia), alms houses and a religious and social model largely justified by the existence of the poor and born out of the Christian transformation of Classical society.
Peasantry
There are no reliable figures as to the numbers of the peasantry, yet it is widely assumed that the vast majority of Byzantines lived in rural and agrarian areas. In the TaktikaTactica of Emperor Leo VI the Wise
The Tactica is a military treatise written by or on behalf of Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise in ca. 895-908. Drawing on earlier authors such as Aelian, Onasander and the Strategikon of emperor Maurice, it is one of the major works on Byzantine military tactics, written on the eve of Byzantium's...
of Emperor Leo VI the Wise
Leo VI the Wise
Leo VI, surnamed the Wise or the Philosopher , was Byzantine emperor from 886 to 912. The second ruler of the Macedonian dynasty , he was very well-read, leading to his surname...
(r. 886–912), the two professions defined as the backbone of the state are the peasantry (georgika) and the soldiers (stratiotika). The reason for this was that besides producing most of the empire's food the peasants also produced most of its taxes. They lived mostly in villages, whose name changed slowly from the classical kome to the modern chorio. While agriculture and herding were the dominant occupations of villagers they were not the only ones. There are records for the small town of Lampsakos, situated on the eastern shore of the Hellespont, which out of 173 households classifies 113 as peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
and 60 as urban
Urban area
An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
, which indicate other kinds of ancillary activities. The Treatise on Taxation, preserved in the Biblioteca Marciana
Biblioteca Marciana
The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana is a library and Renaissance building in Venice, northern Italy; it is one of the earliest surviving public manuscript depositories in the country, holding one of the greatest classical texts collections in the world. The library is named after St. Mark, the...
in Venice, distinguishes between three types of rural settlements, the chorion or village, the agridion or hamlet, and the proasteion or estate. According to a fourteenth century survey of the village of Aphetos, donated to the monastery of Chilandar, the average size of a landholding is only 3.5 modioi (0.08 ha). Taxes placed on rural populations included the kapnikon or hearth tax and the aerikon (lit. "of the air") which depended on the village's population and ranged between 4 and 20 gold coins annually.
Their diet consisted of mainly grains and beans and in fishing communities fish was usually substituted for meat. Bread, wine and olives were important staples of Byzantine diet with soldiers on campaign eating double baked and dried bread called paximadion. As in antiquity and modern times, the most common cultivations in the choraphia were olive groves and vineyards. While Liutprand of Cremona
Liutprand of Cremona
Liutprand, also Liudprand, Liuprand, Lioutio, Liucius, Liuzo, and Lioutsios was a Lombard historian and author, and Bishop of Cremona....
, a visitor from Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, found Greek wine irritating as it was often flavoured with resin (retsina
Retsina
Retsina is a Greek white resinated wine that has been made for at least 2000 years. Its unique flavor is said to have originated from the practice of sealing wine vessels, particularly amphorae, with Aleppo Pine resin in ancient times. Before the invention of impermeable glass bottles, oxygen...
) most other Westerners admired Greek wines, Cretan in particular being famous.
While both hunting and fishing were common, the peasants mostly hunted to protect their herds and crops. Apiculture, the keeping of bees, was as highly developed in Byzantium as it had been in Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. Aside from agriculture, the peasants also laboured in the crafts, fiscal inventories mentioning smiths (chalkeus), tailors (rhaptes), and cobblers
Shoemaking
Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been largely superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not necessarily in quality, attention to detail, or...
(tsangarios).
Soldiers
Byzantine army
The Byzantine army was the primary military body of the Byzantine armed forces, serving alongside the Byzantine navy. A direct descendant of the Roman army, the Byzantine army maintained a similar level of discipline, strategic prowess and organization...
soldiers from an organizational aspect, it is easier to do so in terms of their social profile. The military handbooks known as the Taktika continued a Hellenistic and Roman tradition that contains a wealth of information about the appearance, customs, habits and life of the soldiers. As with the peasantry, there are apart from the main core of soldiers many who performed ancillary activities, like medics and technicians. Selection for military duty was annual with yearly call-ups and great stock was placed on military exercises, during the winter months, which formed a large part of a soldier's life.
Until the eleventh century, the majority of the conscripts were from rural areas, while the conscription of craftsmen and merchants is still an open question. From that point on, professional recruiting replaced conscription and the rising use of mercenaries within the army placed a ruinous burden on the treasury. From the tenth century onwards, stipulations exist for the connection between land-ownership and military service. While the state never allotted land for obligatory service, soldiers could and did use their pay to buy landed estates and taxes would be decreased or waived in some cases. What the state did allocate to soldiers, however, from the twelfth century onwards, were the tax revenues from some estates called pronoiai. As in antiquity, the basic food of the soldier remained the dried biscuit bread though its name had changed from boukelaton to paximadion.
Teachers
Education in Ancient Greece
Education played a significant role in ancient Greek life since the founding of the poleis till the Hellenistic and Roman period. From its origins in the Homeric and the aristocratic tradition, Greek education was vastly "democratized" in the 5th century BC, influenced by the Sophists, Plato and...
era, was maintained, with inevitable changes, up until the fall of Constantinople
Fall of Constantinople
The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which occurred after a siege by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, against the defending army commanded by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI...
. The stages of education were the elementary school, where pupils ranged from six to ten years, secondary school, where pupils ranged from ten to sixteen, and higher education.
Elementary education was widely available throughout most of the Byzantine Empire's existence, in the countryside, as well as in towns. This, in turn, ensured that literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
was much more widespread than in Western Europe, at least until the twelfth century. Secondary education
Secondary education
Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...
was confined to the larger cities while higher education
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
was the exclusive provenance of Constantinople
University of Constantinople
The University of Constantinople, sometimes known as the University of the palace hall of Magnaura in the Roman-Byzantine Empire was founded in 425 under the name of Pandidakterion...
.
The elementary school teacher occupied a low social position and taught mainly from simple fairy tale books (Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
were often used). However, the grammarian and rhetorician, teachers responsible for the following two phases of education, were more respected. These used classical Greek texts like Homer's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
or Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
and much of their time was taken with detailed word-for-word explication. Books were rare and very expensive and likely only possessed by teachers who dictated passages to students.
Women
Byzantine studies
Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, costumes, religion, art, such as literature and music, science, economy, and politics of the Byzantine Empire. The discipline's founder in Germany is considered to be the philologist Hieronymus...
. Byzantine society was patriarchical and left few records about them. In addition, women were generally viewed with suspicion and considered periodically unclean and as a result were the subjects of discrimination
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
. Women were disadvantaged in some aspects of their legal status, in their access to education and limited in their freedom of movement. The life of a Byzantine Greek woman could be divided into three phases, girlhood, motherhood, and widowhood.
Childhood was brief and perilous, even more so for girls than boys. Parents would celebrate twice as much the birth of a boy and there is some evidence of female infanticide, though it was contrary to both civil and canon law. Educational opportunities for girls were few as they did not attend regular schools but were taught in groups at home by tutors. With few exceptions, education was limited to literacy and the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. There were no forays into classical literature for most girls. A famous exception is the Princess Anna Comnena, whose Alexiad
Alexiad
The Alexiad is a medieval biographical text written around the year 1148 by the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, daughter of Emperor Alexius I....
displays an uncanny depth of erudition. The majority of a young girl's daily life would be spent in household and agrarian chores, preparing herself for marriage.
For most girls, childhood
Childhood
Childhood is the age span ranging from birth to adolescence. In developmental psychology, childhood is divided up into the developmental stages of toddlerhood , early childhood , middle childhood , and adolescence .- Age ranges of childhood :The term childhood is non-specific and can imply a...
came to an abrupt end with the onset of puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
which was followed shortly after by betrothal and marriage. This was due to most women (and indeed men) having high mortality rates, the average age if they survived infancy being thirty-five. Although marriage arrangements by the family was the norm, romantic love was by no means unknown. Most women produced a large number of children in order to ensure the survival of at least a few, and grief for the loss of a loved one was an inalienable part of life. The main form of birth control was abstinence and while there is evidence of contraception it seems to have been mainly used by prostitutes.
Due to prevailing norms of modesty, women would wear clothing that covered the whole of their body except their hands. While women among the poor could get away with wearing sleeveless tunics, most women were obliged to cover even their heads with the long maphorion veil. Women of means, however, spared no expense in adorning their clothes with exquisite jewelry and fine silk fabrics. Divorces were hard to obtain even though there were laws permitting them. Husbands would often beat their wives, though the reverse situation was not unknown as in Theodore Prodromos' description of a battered husband in the Ptochoprodromos poems.
Though in Byzantium, female life expectancy was lower than that of men, due to wars and the fact that men married younger, female widowhood was still fairly common. Still, women were often able to circumvent societal strictures and work as traders, craftswomen, female abbots and entertainers not to mention empresses and scholars.
Entrepreneurs
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, became a force of its own that could, at times, even threaten the Emperor as it did in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This was achieved through efficient use of credit and other monetary innovations. Merchants invested surplus funds in financial products called chreokoinonia, the equivalent and perhaps ancestor of the later Italian commenda. Eventually, the purchasing power of Byzantine merchants became such that it could influence prices in markets as far afield as Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
and Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
. In reflection of their success, emperors gave merchants the right to become members of the Senate
Byzantine Senate
The Byzantine Senate or Eastern Roman Senate was the continuation of the Roman Senate, established in the 4th century by Constantine I. It survived for centuries but was increasingly irrelevant until its eventual disappearance in the 13th century....
, that is to integrate themselves with the ruling elite. This had an end by the end of the eleventh century when political machinations allowed the landed aristocracy to secure the throne for a century and more. Following that phase, however, the enterprising merchants bounced back and wielded real clout during the time of the Third Crusade
Third Crusade
The Third Crusade , also known as the Kings' Crusade, was an attempt by European leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin...
.
The reason Byzantine Greek merchants have often been neglected in historiography is not that they were any less able than their ancient or modern Greek colleagues in matters of trade. It rather originated with the way history was written in Byzantium, which was often under the patronage of their competitors, the court and land aristocracy. The fact that they were eventually surpassed by their Italian rivals is attributable to the privileges sought and acquired by the Crusader States
Crusader states
The Crusader states were a number of mostly 12th- and 13th-century feudal states created by Western European crusaders in Asia Minor, Greece and the Holy Land , and during the Northern Crusades in the eastern Baltic area...
within the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
and the dominant maritime violence of the Italians.
Clergy
Unlike in Western Europe where priests were clearly demarcated from the laymenLaity
In religious organizations, the laity comprises all people who are not in the clergy. A person who is a member of a religious order who is not ordained legitimate clergy is considered as a member of the laity, even though they are members of a religious order .In the past in Christian cultures, the...
, the clergy of the Eastern Roman Empire remained in close contact with the rest of society. Readers and subdeacons were drawn from the laity and expected to be at least twenty years of age while priests and bishops had to be at least 30. Unlike the Latin church
Clerical celibacy (Catholic Church)
Clerical celibacy is the discipline by which, in some Churches, only unmarried men are, as a rule, to be ordained to the priesthood. The same discipline holds in some other Churches for ordination to the episcopate....
, the Byzantine church allowed married priests and deacons, as long as they were married before ordination
Ordination
In general religious use, ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart as clergy to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination itself varies by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is...
. Bishops, however, were required to be unmarried.
While the religious hierarchy mirrored the Empire's administrative divisions, the clergy were more ubiquitous than the emperor's servants. The issue of caesaropapism
Caesaropapism
Caesaropapism is the idea of combining the power of secular government with, or making it superior to, the spiritual authority of the Church; especially concerning the connection of the Church with government. The term caesaropapism was coined by Max Weber, who defined it as follows: “a secular,...
, while usually associated with the Byzantine Empire, is now understood to be an oversimplification of actual conditions in the Empire. By the fifth century, the Patriarch of Constantinople
Patriarch of Constantinople
The Ecumenical Patriarch is the Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome – ranking as primus inter pares in the Eastern Orthodox communion, which is seen by followers as the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church....
was recognized as first among equals of the four eastern Patriarchs and as of equal status with the Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. The ecclesiastical provinces were called eparchies and were headed by archbishops or metropolitans
Metropolitan bishop
In Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan, pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis; that is, the chief city of a historical Roman province, ecclesiastical province, or regional capital.Before the establishment of...
who supervised their subordinate bishops or episkopoi. For most people, however, it was their parish priest or papas (from the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
word for "father") that was the most recognizable face of the clergy.
Language
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
had been the lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
of the educated elites of the Eastern Mediterranean, spoken natively in the southern Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
, the Greek islands, Asia Minor and the ancient and Hellenistic Greek colonies of Western Asia and Northern Africa. At the beginning of the Byzantine millennium, the koine remained the basis for spoken Greek and Christian writings, while Attic Greek
Attic Greek
Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...
was the language of the philosophers and orators. As Christianity became the dominant religion, Attic began to be used also in Christian writings in addition to and often interspersed with, the koine Greek. Nonetheless, from the sixth century on and at least until the twelfth, Attic remained entrenched in the educational system while further changes to the spoken language can be postulated for the early and middle Byzantine periods.
The empire, at least in its early stages, was composed of people whose mother tongue was other than Greek, as well. These included Latin, Aramaic, Coptic
Coptic language
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
and Caucasian languages, while Cyril Mango
Cyril Mango
Cyril Alexander Mango is a British scholar in the history, art, and architecture of the Byzantine Empire. He is a former King's College London and Oxford professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature. He is the brother of Andrew Mango.One of his major works The Mosaics of St...
cites evidence for bilingualism as well in the South and South East. These influences in addition to the influx of people of Arabic, Celtic, Germanic, Turkic, and Slavic backgrounds supplied medieval Greek with many loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s that have survived in the modern Greek language as well. From the eleventh and twelfth centuries onward, there is a steady rise in the literary use of the vernacular, as well. Following the Fourth Crusade
Fourth Crusade
The Fourth Crusade was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire...
and the increased contact with the West, this entailed that the lingua franca of commerce became Italian, and in the areas of the Crusader kingdoms a classical education (paideia
Paideia
In ancient Greek, the word n. paedeia or paideia [ to educate + - -IA suffix1] means child-rearing, education. It was a system of instruction in Classical Athens in which students were given a well-rounded cultural education. Subjects included rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, music, philosophy,...
) ceased to be the sine qua non of social status, leading to the rise of the vernacular. It is from this era that many beautiful works in the vernacular, often written by people deeply steeped in classical education, are attested. A famous example are the four Ptochoprodromic poems attributed to Theodoros Prodromos. From the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, the last of the Empire, arise several works like laments, fables, romances, and chronicles written outside Constantinople, which until then had been the seat of most literature, in an idiom termed by scholars as "Byzantine Koine".
Nonetheless, this did not in the end obviate the diglossia
Diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
of the Greek-speaking world (which had already started in ancient Greece), and which continued under Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
rule and persisted in the modern Greek state until 1976, while Atticist Greek remains the official language of the Greek Orthodox Church
Greek Orthodox Church
The Greek Orthodox Church is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity sharing a common cultural tradition whose liturgy is also traditionally conducted in Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament...
. As shown in the poems of Ptochoprodromos, an early stage of modern Greek had already been shaped by the twelfth century and possibly earlier. Vernacular Greek continued to be known as "Romaic" up until the twentieth century.
Religion
Pontifex Maximus
The Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome. This was the most important position in the ancient Roman religion, open only to patricians until 254 BC, when a plebeian first occupied this post...
was responsible for the correct cultus or veneratio of the deity which was in accordance with former Roman practice. The move from the old religion to the new entailed some elements of continuity as well as break with the past, though the artistic heritage of paganism was literally broken by Christian zeal.
Christianity led to the development of a few phenomena characteristic of Byzantium. Namely, the intimate connection between Church and State, a legacy of Roman cultus. Also, the creation of a Christian philosophy that guided Byzantine Greeks in their everyday lives. And finally, the dichotomy between the Christian ideals of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and classical Greek paideia which could not be left out, however, since so much of Christian scholarship and philosophy depended on it. These shaped Byzantine Greek character and the perceptions of themselves and others.
Christians at the time of Constantine's conversion made up only 10% of the population. This would rise to 50% by the end of the fourth century and 90% by the end of the fifth century. Emperor Justinian I
Justinian I
Justinian I ; , ; 483– 13 or 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the Empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire.One of the most important figures of...
(r. 527–565) then brutally mopped up the rest of the pagans, highly literate academics on one end of the scale and illiterate peasants on the other. A conversion so rapid seems to have been rather the result of expediency than of conviction.
The survival of the Empire in the East assured an active role of the emperor in the affairs of the Church. The Byzantine state inherited from pagan times the administrative and financial routine of organising religious affairs, and this routine was applied to the Christian Church
Christian Church
The Christian Church is the assembly or association of followers of Jesus Christ. The Greek term ἐκκλησία that in its appearances in the New Testament is usually translated as "church" basically means "assembly"...
. Following the pattern set by Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea also called Eusebius Pamphili, was a Roman historian, exegete and Christian polemicist. He became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical canon...
, the Byzantines viewed the emperor as a representative or messenger of Christ
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, responsible particularly for the propagation of Christianity among pagans, and for the "externals" of the religion, such as administration and finances. The imperial role in the affairs of the Church never developed into a fixed, legally defined system, however.
With the decline of Rome, and internal dissension in the other Eastern patriarchates, the church of Constantinople became, between the 6th and 11th centuries, the richest and most influential centre of Christendom
Christendom
Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...
. Even when the Byzantine Empire was reduced to only a shadow of its former self, the Church, as an institution, exercised so much influence both inside and outside the imperial frontiers as never before. As George Ostrogorsky
George Ostrogorsky
George Alexandrovič Ostrogorsky was a Russian-born Yugoslavian historian and Byzantinist who acquired worldwide reputations in Byzantine studies.-Biography:...
points out:
"The Patriarchate of Constantinople remained the center of the Orthodox world, with subordinate metropolitan sees and archbishoprics in the territory of Asia Minor and the Balkans, now lost to Byzantium, as well as in Caucasus, Russia and Lithuania. The Church remained the most stable element in the Byzantine Empire."
Self-perception
Official discourse
In official discourse, "all inhabitants of the empire were subjects of the emperor, and therefore Romans." Thus the primary definition of Rhōmaios was "political or statist." In order to succeed in being a full-blown and unquestioned "Roman" it was best to be a Greek Orthodox Christian
Greek Orthodox Church
The Greek Orthodox Church is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity sharing a common cultural tradition whose liturgy is also traditionally conducted in Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament...
and a Greek-speaker, at least in one's public persona. Yet, the cultural uniformity which the Byzantine church and the state pursued through Orthodoxy and the Greek language was not sufficient to erase distinct identities, nor did it aim to. The highest compliment that could be paid to a foreigner was to call him andreîos Rhōmaióphrōn (Greek: , roughly "a Roman-minded fellow").
Regional identity
Often one's local (geographic) identity could outweigh one's identity as a Rhōmaios. The terms xénos (Greek: ) and exōtikós (Greek: ) denoted "people foreign to the local population," regardless of whether they were from abroad or from elsewhere within the Byzantine Empire. "When a person was away from home he was a stranger and was often treated with suspicion. A monk from western Asia Minor who joined a monastery in Pontus
Pontus
Pontus or Pontos is a historical Greek designation for a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in modern-day northeastern Turkey. The name was applied to the coastal region in antiquity by the Greeks who colonized the area, and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: Πόντος...
was 'disparaged and mistreated by everyone as a stranger'. The corollary to regional solidarity was regional hostility."
Revival of Hellenism
From an evolutionary standpoint, Byzantium was a multi-ethnic empire that emerged as a ChristianChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
empire, soon comprised the Hellenised empire of the East, and ended its thousand-year history, in 1453, as a Greek Orthodox state: an empire that became a nation
Nation
A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...
, almost by the modern meaning of the word. The presence of a distinctive and historically rich literary culture was also very important in the division between "Greek" East and "Latin" West and thus the formation of both. It was a multi-ethnic empire where the Hellenic
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
element was predominant, especially in the later period. Spoken language and state, the markers of identity that were to become a fundamental tenet of nineteenth-century nationalism throughout Europe became, by accident, a reality during a formative period of medieval Greek history. Beginning in the twelfth century, certain Byzantine Greek intellectuals began to use the ancient Greek ethnonym Héllēn (Greek: ) in order to describe Byzantine civilisation.
During the later period of the Byzantine Empire, Emperor Theodore I Laskaris
Theodore I Laskaris
Theodoros I Komnenos Laskaris was emperor of Nicaea .-Family:Theodore Laskaris was born to the Laskaris, a noble but not particularly renowned Byzantine family of Constantinople. He was the son of Manuel Laskaris and wife Ioanna Karatzaina . He had four older brothers: Manuel Laskaris Theodoros...
(r. 1205–1222) tried to revive Hellenic tradition by fostering the study of philosophy, for in his opinion there was a danger that philosophy "might abandon the Greeks and seek refuge among the Latins". In a letter to Pope Gregory IX
Pope Gregory IX
Pope Gregory IX, born Ugolino di Conti, was pope from March 19, 1227 to August 22, 1241.The successor of Pope Honorius III , he fully inherited the traditions of Pope Gregory VII and of his uncle Pope Innocent III , and zealously continued their policy of Papal supremacy.-Early life:Ugolino was...
, the Byzantine emperor John Vatatzes (r. 1221–1254) claimed to have received the gift of royalty from Constantine the Great, and put emphasis on his "Hellenic" descent, exalting the wisdom of the Greek people. He was presenting Hellenic culture as an integral part of the Byzantine polity in defiance of Latin claims. Byzantine Greeks had always felt superior for being the inheritors of a more ancient civilisation, but such ethnic identifications had not been politically popular up until then. Hence, in the context of increasing Venetian
Republic of Venice
The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...
and Genoese
Republic of Genoa
The Most Serene Republic of Genoa |Ligurian]]: Repúbrica de Zêna) was an independent state from 1005 to 1797 in Liguria on the northwestern Italian coast, as well as Corsica from 1347 to 1768, and numerous other territories throughout the Mediterranean....
power in the eastern Mediterranean, association with Hellenism took deeper root among the Byzantine elite, on account of a desire to distinguish themselves from the Latin West and to lay legitimate claims to Greek-speaking lands.
Claims of association with Hellenism continued and increased throughout the Palaiologan
Palaiologos
Palaiologos , often latinized as Palaeologus, was a Byzantine Greek noble family, which produced the last ruling dynasty of the Byzantine Empire. After the Fourth Crusade, members of the family fled to the neighboring Empire of Nicaea, where Michael VIII Palaiologos became co-emperor in 1259,...
dynasty. The scholar, teacher, and translator, John Argyropoulos
John Argyropoulos
John Argyropoulos was a Greek lecturer, philosopher and humanist, one of the émigré scholars who pioneered the revival of Classical learning in Western Europe in the 15th century...
, addressed Emperor John VIII Palaiologos
John VIII Palaiologos
John VIII Palaiologos or Palaeologus , was the penultimate reigning Byzantine Emperor, ruling from 1425 to 1448.-Life:John VIII Palaiologos was the eldest son of Manuel II Palaiologos and Helena Dragaš, the daughter of the Serbian prince Constantine Dragaš...
(r. 1425–1448) as "Sun King of Hellas" and urged the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (r. 1449–1453), to proclaim himself "King of the Hellenes". During the same period, the neo-platonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon boasted "We are Hellenes by race and culture," and proposed a re-born Byzantine Empire following a utopian Hellenic system of government centered in Mystras
Mystras
Mystras is a fortified town and a former municipality in Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Sparti, of which it is a municipal unit. Situated on Mt...
. According to the historian George Sphrantzes
George Sphrantzes
George Sphrantzes, also Phrantzes or Phrantza was a late Byzantine Greek historian. He was born in Constantinople. At an early age he became secretary to Manuel II Palaiologos; in 1432 protovestiarites; in 1446 prefect of Mistras, and subsequently great logothete...
, on the eve of the Fall of Constantinople
Fall of Constantinople
The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which occurred after a siege by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, against the defending army commanded by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI...
, the last Byzantine emperor urged his soldiers to remember that they were the descendants of Greeks and Romans.
Western perception
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
, the Byzantines were not acknowledged as the inheritors of the Roman Empire. Byzantium was rather perceived to be a corrupted continuation of ancient Greece, and was officially known for most of its history as the "Empire of the Greeks" or "Kingdom of Greece". Such denials of Byzantium's Roman heritage and ecumenical rights would instigate the first resentments between Greeks and Latins or "Franks", as they were called by the Greeks. Popular Western opinion is reflected in the Translatio militiae, whose anonymous Latin author states that the Greeks had lost their courage and their learning, and therefore did not join in the war against the infidels. In another passage, the ancient Greeks are praised for their military skill and their learning, by which means the author draws a contrast with contemporary Byzantine Greeks, who were generally viewed as a non-warlike and schismatic people.
A turning point in how both sides viewed each other is probably the massacre of Latins in Constantinople in 1182. A major source for Western interpretations of the Byzantines, particularly during this event is William of Tyre
William of Tyre
William of Tyre was a medieval prelate and chronicler. As archbishop of Tyre, he is sometimes known as William II to distinguish him from a predecessor, William of Malines...
, a historian of the Crusades. He described the "Greek nation" as a "a brood of vipers, like a serpent in the bosom or a mouse in the wardrobe evilly requite their guests", highlighting the strained relations between both ethnic groups as a result of the massacre, the Crusades, and the Schism, which helped to define the modern identity of the Greek nation.
See also
- Byzantine artByzantine artByzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Byzantine Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453....
- Byzantine cuisineByzantine cuisineByzantine cuisine was marked by a merger of Greek and Roman gastronomy. The development of the Byzantine Empire and trade brought in spices, sugar and new vegetables to Greece. Cooks experimented with new combinations of food, creating two styles in the process...
- Byzantine musicByzantine musicByzantine music is the music of the Byzantine Empire composed to Greek texts as ceremonial, festival, or church music. Greek and foreign historians agree that the ecclesiastical tones and in general the whole system of Byzantine music is closely related to the ancient Greek system...
- Byzantine scholars in Renaissance
- Medieval GreekMedieval GreekMedieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, is the stage of the Greek language between the beginning of the Middle Ages around 600 and the Ottoman conquest of the city of Constantinople in 1453. The latter date marked the end of the Middle Ages in Southeast Europe...
- History of GreeceHistory of GreeceThe history of Greece encompasses the history of the territory of the modern state of Greece, as well as that of the Greek people and the areas they ruled historically. The scope of Greek habitation and rule has varied much through the ages, and, as a result, the history of Greece is similarly...