Byzantine Empire

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Ῥωμανία
Rhōmanía
Romania
Imperium Romanum
Roman Empire
←
330–1453 →


Flag of the late Empire (ca. 1350) Imperial Emblem during the Palaiologos dynasty
Territorial development of the Empire
Capital Constantinople¹
Language(s) Latin (until the seventh century), Greek
Religion Roman paganism until 391, Orthodox Catholicism (Eastern Orthodoxy) thereafter
Government Autocracy
Emperor
 - 306–337 Constantine the Great
 - 1449–1453 Constantine XI
Legislature Byzantine Senate
Historical era Late Antiquity-Late Middle Ages
 - Diocletian splits imperial administration between east and west 285
 - Foundation of Constantinople² May 11, 330
 - The deposition of Romulus Augustulus, nominal emperor in the west, brings formal division of the Roman Empire to an end 476
 - Pope Leo III, hostile to the rule of the Empress Irene, attempts to confer imperial authority on the Frankish king Charlemagne 800
 - East-West Schism 1054
 - Fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade 1204
 - Fall of Constantinople³ May 29, 1453
 - Fall of Trebizond 1461
Population
 - 4th cent⁴ est. 34,000,000 
 - 8th cent (780 AD) est. 7,000,000 
 - 11th cent⁴ (1025 AD) est. 12,000,000 
 - 12th cent⁴ (1143 AD) est. 10,000,000 
 - 13th cent (1281 AD) est. 5,000,000 
Currency Solidus, Hyperpyron
¹ Constantinople (330–1204 and 1261–1453). The capital of the Empire of Nicaea, the empire after the Fourth Crusade, was at Nicaea, present day İznik, Turkey.
² Establishment date traditionally considered to be the re-founding of Constantinople as the capital of the Roman Empire (324/330) although other dates are often used.[1]
³Date of end universally regarded as 1453, despite the temporary survival of remnants in Morea and Trebizond.[1]
⁴ See Population of the Byzantine Empire for more detailed figures taken provided by McEvedy and Jones, "Atlas of world population history", 1978, as well as Angeliki E. Laiou, "The Economic History of Byzantium", 2002.

The Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire, was the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on the capital of Constantinople, and ruled by Byzantine emperors. It was called the Roman Empire, and also as Romania (Greek: Ῥωμανία, Rhōmanía), by its inhabitants and its neighbours. As the distinction between "Roman Empire" and "Byzantine Empire" is purely a modern convention, it is not possible to assign a date of separation, but an important point is the Emperor Constantine I's transfer in 324 of the capital from Nicomedia (in Anatolia) to Byzantium on the Bosphorus, which became Constantinople (alternatively "New Rome").[n 1]

The Empire remained one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe, despite setbacks and territorial losses, especially during the Roman–Persian and Byzantine–Arab Wars. The Empire recovered during the Macedonian dynasty, rising again to become the pre-eminent power in the Eastern Mediterranean by the late tenth century. After 1071, however, much of Asia Minor, the Empire's heartland, was lost to the Seljuk Turks. The Komnenian restoration regained some ground and briefly re-established dominance in the twelfth century, but declined again under their successors. The Empire received a mortal blow in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, when it was dissolved and divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople and re-establishment of the Empire in 1261, under the Palaiologan emperors, successive civil wars in the fourteenth century further sapped the Empire's strength. Most of its remaining territory was lost in the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople and its remaining territories to the Muslim Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century.

Nomenclature

The designation of the Empire as "Byzantine" began in Western Europe in 1557, when German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of Byzantine sources. "Byzantine" itself comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city of Constantinople before it became the capital of Constantine. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre (Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ), and in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularized the use of Byzantine among French authors, such as Montesquieu.[3] It was not until the nineteenth century, however, with the birth of modern Greece, that the term "Byzantine" came into general use in the Western world. Before this time Greek had been used for the Empire and its descendants within the Ottoman Empire.

The Empire was known to its inhabitants as the Roman Empire, the Empire of the Romans (Latin: Imperium Romanum, Imperium Romanorum, Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn), Romania[n 2] (Ῥωμανία, Rhōmanía), Roman Republic (Latin: Res Publica Romana, Greek: πολιτεία Ῥωμαίων, politeίa Rhōmaíōn),[5] and also as Rhōmaís (Ῥωμαΐς).[6]

Although Byzantium had a multi-ethnic character during most of its history,[7] it preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions[8] and was usually known to most of its western and northern contemporaries as the Empire of the Greeks[n 3] due to the increasing predominance of the Greek element.[9] The use of the term Empire of the Greeks (Latin: Imperium Graecorum) in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire also implied a rejection of the empire's claim to be the Roman Empire.[10] The claims of the Eastern Roman Empire to Roman inheritance had been actively contested in the West at the time of the Roman Empress Irene of Athens, due to the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor year 800, by Pope Leo III, who needing help against enemies in Rome, saw the throne of the Roman Empire as vacant (lacking a male occupant). Whenever the Popes or the rulers of the West made use of the name Roman to refer to the eastern Roman Emperors, they preferred the term Imperator Romaniæ instead of Imperator Romanorum, a title that Westerners maintained applied only to Charlemagne and his successors.[11]

By contrast, in the Persian, Islamic, and Slavic worlds, the Empire's Roman identity was generally accepted. In the Islamic world it was known primarily as روم (Rûm "Rome").[12][13]

In modern historical atlases, the Empire is usually called the Eastern Roman Empire in maps depicting the empire during the period AD 395 to AD 610, after the new emperor Heraclius changed the official language from Latin to Greek (already the language known by the great majority of the population); in maps depicting the Empire after AD 610, the term Byzantine Empire usually appears.

History

History of the Byzantine Empire

This article is part of a series

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Early Byzantine period
Byzantium under the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties
Byzantium under the Theodosian Dynasty
Byzantium under the Leonid Dynasty
Byzantium under the Justinian Dynasty
Middle Byzantine period
Byzantium under the Heraclians
Byzantium under the Isaurians
Byzantium from the fall of Irene to the ascension of Basil I
Byzantium under the Macedonians
Late Byzantine period
Byzantium under the Komnenoi
Byzantium under the Angeloi
Byzantium under the Palaiologoi
Topics
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Army
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