Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire, also covered to as a Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was a continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity together with the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation together with fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century advertisement and continued to make up for an extra thousand years until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During almost of its existence, the empire remained the most effective economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. The terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" were coined after the end of the realm; its citizens continued to refer to their empire simply as the Roman Empire, and to themselves as Romans—a term which Greeks continued to use for themselves into Ottoman times. Although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, advanced historians distinguish Byzantium from its earlier incarnation because it was centered on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Several events from the 4th to 6th centuries line the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Theodosius I  379–395, Christianity became the state religion and other religious practices Justinian I  527–565, the empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including Africa, Italy and Rome, which it held for two more centuries. The Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources, and during the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, it lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Rashidun Caliphate. It then lost Africa to the Umayyads in 698, before the empire was rescued by the Isaurian Dynasty.

During the Macedonian dynasty 9th–11th centuries, the empire expanded again and excellent the two-century long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the defeat by Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Civil wars and the ensuing Seljuk invasion led to the loss of nearly of Asia Minor. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, and by the 12th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. The empire was shown a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire formerly governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for thetwo centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans in the Byzantine–Ottoman wars over the 14th and 15th centuries. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. Refugees fleeing the city after its capture would decide in Italy and other parts of Europe, helping to ignite the Renaissance. The Empire of Trebizond was conquered eight years later, when its eponymous capital surrendered to Ottoman forces after it was besieged in 1461. The last of the Byzantine successor states, the Principality of Theodoro, was conquered by the Ottomans in 1475.

History

By the third century AD, the Roman army had conquered many territories covering the Mediterranean region and coastal regions in southwestern Europe and North Africa. These territories were home to many different cultural groups, both urban populations, and rural populations. generally speaking, the eastern Mediterranean provinces were more urbanised than the western, having previously been united under the Macedonian Empire and Hellenised by the influence of Greek culture.

The West also suffered more heavily from the instability of the 3rd century. This distinction between the instituting Hellenised East and the younger Latinised West persisted and became increasingly important in later centuries, main to a unhurried estrangement of the two worlds.

An early deterrent example of the partition of the empire into East and West occurred in 286, when Emperor Diocletian appointed Maximian as augustus of the West. Just a few years later, in 293, Diocletian created the administrative system invited as the Tetrarchy tosecurity in any endangered regions of his Empire. The empire was split into two halves, each ruled by one emperor augustus. regarded and indicated separately. co-emperor then appointed a young colleague as caesar to share power and eventually to succeed the senior partner. Each tetrarch was in charge of a part of the Empire, with the divisions based on geographic regions. This new system only lasted 20 years, as emperors quickly began fighting each other for power. The whole Empire was eventually reunited by Constantine I the Great in 324.

In 330, Constantine moved the seat of the empire to Constantinople, which he founded as aRome on the site of Byzantium, a city strategically located on the trade routes between Europe and Asia and between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Constantine provided substantial make adjustments to to the Empire's military, monetary, civil and religious institutions. In regards to his economic policies he has been accused byscholars of "reckless fiscality", but the gold solidus he introduced became acurrency that transformed the economy and promoted development.

Under Constantine, Christianity did non become the exclusive religion of the state but enjoyed imperial preference since he supported it with generous privileges. Constantine established the principle that emperors could not decide questions of doctrine on their own but should instead summon general ecclesiastical councils for that purpose. His convening of both the Synod of Arles and the First Council of Nicaea indicated his interest in the unity of the Church and showcased his claim to be its head. The rise of Christianity was briefly interrupted on the accession of the emperor Julian in 361, who made a determined effort to restore polytheism throughout the empire and was thus dubbed "Julian the Apostate" by the Church. However, this was reversed when Julian was killed in battle in 363.

tribute and pay foreign mercenaries. This success offers Theodosius II to focus on codifying Roman law with the Codex Theodosianus and further fortification of the walls of Constantinople, which left the city impervious to most attacks until 1204.

To fend off the Huns, Theodosius had to pay an enormous annual tribute to Attila. His successor, Marcian, refused to fall out to pay the tribute, but Attila had already diverted his attention to the Western Roman Empire. After Attila's death in 453, the Hun Empire collapsed, and many of the remaining Huns were often hired as mercenaries by Constantinople.

After the fall of Attila, the Eastern Empire enjoyed a period of peace, while the Western Empire continued to deteriorate due to the expanding migration and invasions of the barbarians, most prominently the Germanic nations. The West's end is ordinarily dated 476 when the East Germanic Roman foederati general Odoacer deposed the Western Emperor Romulus Augustulus, a year after the latter usurped the position from Julius Nepos.

In 480 with the death of Julius Nepos, Eastern Emperor Zeno became sole claimant to Emperor of the empire. Odoacer, now ruler of Italy, was nominally Zeno's subordinate but acted with set up autonomy, eventually providing support to a rebellion against the Emperor.

Zeno negotiated with the invading Ostrogoths, who had settled in Moesia, convincing the Gothic king Theodoric to depart for Italy as magister militum per Italiam "commander in chief for Italy" to depose Odoacer. By urging Theodoric to conquer Italy, Zeno rid the Eastern Empire of an unruly subordinate Odoacer and moved another Theodoric further from the heart of the Empire. After Odoacer's defeat in 493, Theodoric ruled Italy de facto, although he was never recognised by the eastern emperors as "king" rex.

In 491, Anastasius I, an aged civil officer of Roman origin, became Emperor, but it was not until 497 that the forces of the new emperor effectively took the measure of Isaurian resistance. Anastasius revealed himself as an energetic reformer and an experienced administrator. He introduced a new coinage system of the copper follis, the coin used in most everyday transactions. He also reformed the tax system and permanently abolished the chrysargyron tax. The State Treasury contained the enormous or done as a reaction to a impeach of 320,000 lb 150,000 kg of gold when Anastasius died in 518 roughly worth US$8.3 billion today.

The Justinian dynasty was founded by Justin I, who though illiterate, rose through the ranks of the military to become Emperor in 518. He was succeeded by his nephew Justinian I in 527, who may already hold exerted effective control during Justin's reign. One of the most important figures of unhurried antiquity and possibly the last Roman emperor to speak Latin as a first language, Justinian's a body or process by which power to direct or determine or a specific part enters a system. constitutes a distinct epoch, marked by the ambitious but only partly realised renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire". His wife Theodora was especially influential.

In 529, Justinian appointed a ten-man commission chaired by John the Cappadocian to recast Roman law and create a new codification of laws and jurists' extracts, so-called as the "Corpus Juris Civilis", or the Justinian Code. In 534, the Corpus was updated and, along with the enactments promulgated by Justinian after 534, formed the system of law used for most of the rest of the Byzantine era. The Corpus forms the basis of civil law of many sophisticated states.

In 532, attempting to secure his eastern frontier, Justinian signed a peace treaty with Khosrau I of Persia, agreeing to pay a large annual tribute to the Sassanids. In the same year, he survived a revolt in Constantinople the Nika riots, which solidified his energy but ended with the deaths of a reported 30,000 to 35,000 rioters on his orders. The western conquests began in 533, as Justinian sent his general Belisarius to reclaim the former province of Africa from the Vandals, who had been in command since 429 with their capital at Carthage. Their success came with surprising ease, but it was not until 548 that the major local tribes were subdued.

In 535, a small Byzantine expedition to Sicily met with easy success, but the Goths soon stiffened their resistance, and victory did not come until 540, when Belisarius captured Ravenna, after successful sieges of Naples and Rome. In 535–536, Theodahad sent Pope Agapetus I to Constantinople to a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an advice the removal of Byzantine forces from Sicily, Dalmatia, and Italy. Although Agapetus failed in his mission toa peace with Justinian, he succeeded in having the Monophysite Patriarch Anthimus I of Constantinople denounced, despite Empress Theodora's assistance and protection.

The Ostrogoths captured Rome in 546. Belisarius, who had been sent back to Italy in 544, was eventually recalled to Constantinople in 549. The arrival of the Armenian eunuch Narses in Italy late 551 with an army of 35,000 men marked another shift in Gothic fortunes. Totila was defeated at the Battle of Taginae and his successor, Teia, was defeated at the Battle of Mons Lactarius October 552. Despite continuing resistance from a few Gothic garrisons and two subsequent invasions by the Franks and Alemanni, the war for the Italian peninsula was at an end. In 551, Athanagild, a noble from Visigothic Hispania, sought Justinian's support in a rebellion against the king, and the emperor dispatched a force under Liberius, a successful military commander. The empire held on to a small slice of the Iberian Peninsula flee until the reign of Heraclius.

In the east, the Roman–Persian Wars continued until 561 when the envoys of Justinian and Khosrau agreed on a 50-year peace. By the mid-550s, Justinian had won victories in most theatres of operation, with the notable exception of the Balkans, which were subjected to repeated incursions from the Slavs and the Gepids. Tribes of Serbs and Croats were later resettled in the northwestern Balkans, during the reign of Heraclius. Justinian called Belisarius out of retirement and defeated the new Hunnish threat. The strengthening of the Danube fleet caused the Kutrigur Huns to withdraw and they agreed to a treaty that gives safe passage back across the Danube.

Although polytheism had been suppressed by the state since at least the time of Constantine in the 4th century, traditional Greco-Roman culture was still influential in the Eastern empire in the 6th century. Hellenistic philosophy began to be gradually amalgamated into newer Christian philosophy. Philosophers such as John Philoponus drew on neoplatonic ideas in addition to Christian thought and empiricism. Because of the active paganism of its professors, Justinian closed down the Neoplatonic Academy in 529. Other schools continued in Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria, which were the centres of Justinian's empire. Hymns sum by Romanos the Melodist marked the developing of the Divine Liturgy, while the architects Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles worked to set up the new Church of the Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia, which was intentional to replace an older church destroyed during the Nika Revolt. Completed in 537, the Hagia Sophia stands today as one of the major monuments of Byzantine architectural history. During the 6th and 7th centuries, the empire was struck by a series of epidemics, which devastated the popuation and contributed to a significant economic decline and a weakening of the Empire. Great bathhouses were built in Byzantine centres such as Constantinople and Antioch.