The term Byzantine commonwealth was coined by 20th-century historian Dimitri Obolensky to refer to the area where Byzantine general influence (Byzantine liturgical and cultural tradition) was spread during the Middle Ages by the Byzantine Empire and its missionaries. This area covers approximately the modern-day countries of Greece, Cyprus, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, southwestern Russia, and Georgia (known as the region of Eastern Orthodoxy in Europe or the Orthodox civilization ). [2] According to Anthony Kaldellis, the Byzantines in general did not have a ecumenical outlook, nor did they think about the notion of a panorthodox commonwealth, which he describes as "Roman chauvinism". [3]
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The most important treatment of the concept is a study by Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth. [4] In his book Six Byzantine Portraits he examined the life and works of six persons mentioned in The Byzantine Commonwealth. [5] He also described the commonwealth as the international community within the sphere of authority of the Byzantine emperor, bound by the same profession of Orthodox Christianity, and accepting the principles of Romano-Byzantine law. [6]
There are scholars, however, who criticize this conceptualization, disputing the notion of an unchallenged superiority of the Byzantine empire. It is argued that the complex and multi-faceted dynamics of documented cultural exchange was not aligned with the theory that Constantinople was the superior core while those in periphery understood their marginal position and merely imitated their superiors. [7] Instead of Byzantine commonwealth, historian Christian Raffensperger, proposed that it be recast as the "Byzantine ideal". For instance, while the Bulgarian Empire was a constant and powerful rival to the Byzantine empire during the Middle Ages, [8] the Bulgarian tsars nonetheless framed their authority in a manner not hostile to 'Byzantism' per-se, styling themselves in a manner based on Orthodox Roman ideology and artistic style and calling themselves emperors of the Romans as well as tsar of Bulgarians. The same would apply to the Serbian Empire, and even the Ottoman Empire, with Mehmed II styling himself Qayser-i Rûm. Thus even in the later period of the empire when the reach and sway of the empire were diminished, the rulers still maintained this conception of imperial hierarchy. [9]
Rūm, also romanized as Roum, is a derivative of Parthian (frwm) terms, ultimately derived from Greek Ῥωμαῖοι. Both terms are endonyms of the pre-Islamic inhabitants of Anatolia, the Middle East and the Balkans and date to when those regions were parts of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The House of Nemanjić was the most prominent dynasty of Serbia in the Middle Ages. This princely, royal and imperial house produced twelve Serbian monarchs, who ruled between 1166 and 1371.
Byzantinism, or Byzantism, is the political system and culture of the Byzantine Empire, and its spiritual successors the Orthodox Christian Balkan countries of Greece and Bulgaria especially, and to a lesser extent Serbia and some other Orthodox countries in Eastern Europe like Belarus, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. The term Byzantinism itself was coined in the 19th century. The term has primarily negative associations, implying complexity and autocracy.
Philotheos Kokkinos was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople for two periods from November 1353 to 1354 and 1364 to 1376, and a leader of the Byzantine monastic and religious revival in the 14th century. His numerous theological, liturgical, and canonical works received wide circulation not only in Byzantium but throughout the Slavic Orthodox world.
The Byzantine Greeks were the Greek-speaking Eastern Romans throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. They were the main inhabitants of the lands of the Byzantine Empire, of Constantinople and Asia Minor, the Greek islands, Cyprus, and portions of the southern Balkans, and formed large minorities, or pluralities, in the coastal urban centres of the Levant and northern Egypt. Throughout their history, the Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Romans, but are referred to as "Byzantine Greeks" in modern historiography. Latin speakers identified them simply as Greeks or with the term Romaei.
Petar Gojniković or Peter of Serbia was Prince of the Serbs from 892 to 917. He ruled and expanded the First Serbian Principality and won several wars against other family members that sought the crown. He was the first Serbian monarch with a Christian (non-Slavic) name.
Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky was a Russian-British historian who was Professor of Russian and Balkan History at the University of Oxford and the author of various historical works.
The Battle of Southern Buh occurred near the banks of the eponymous river. The result was a great Bulgarian victory which forced the Magyars of the Etelköz realm to abandon the steppes of southern Ukraine, as well as their aspirations of subduing Danube Bulgaria, retreating to the newly occupied lands beyond the Carpathian Mountains, centering on Pannonia, from where they will stage their next war, against Moravians this time, defeating them and establishing a new Hungary, after the Etelköz state in modern Ukraine, which succeeded an earlier stage of statehood for the Magyars, the legendary although short-lived Levedia, and even one before that, in the actual country of origin for the Magyars, Yugra, beyond river Ob.
Byzantine diplomacy concerns the principles, methods, mechanisms, ideals, and techniques that the Byzantine Empire espoused and used in order to negotiate with other states and to promote the goals of its foreign policy. Dimitri Obolensky asserts that the preservation of civilization in Southern Europe was due to the skill and resourcefulness of Byzantine diplomacy, which remains one of Byzantium's lasting contributions to the history of Europe and the Middle East.
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred in Constantinople during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The eastern half of the Empire survived the conditions that caused the fall of the West in the 5th century AD, and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire remained the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in the Mediterranean world. The term "Byzantine Empire" was only coined following the empire's demise; its citizens referred to the polity as the "Roman Empire" and to themselves as "Romans". Due to the imperial seat's move from Rome to Byzantium, the adoption of state Christianity, and the predominance of Greek instead of Latin, modern historians continue to make a distinction between the earlier Roman Empire and the later Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantine Empire's history is generally periodised from late antiquity until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD. From the 3rd to 6th centuries, the Greek East and Latin West of the Roman Empire gradually diverged, marked by Diocletian's formal partition of its administration in 285, the establishment of an eastern capital in Constantinople by Constantine I in 330, and the adoption of Christianity as the state religion under Theodosius I, with others such as Roman polytheism being proscribed. Under the reign of Heraclius, the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use instead of Latin. While there was an unbroken continuity in administration and other features of Roman society, historians have often distinguished the Byzantine epoch from earlier eras in Roman history for reasons including the imperial seat moving from Rome to Constantinople and the predominance of Greek instead of Latin.
In AD 1453, the city of Constantinople, the capital and last stronghold of the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Ottoman Empire. By this time Egypt had been under Muslim control for some eight centuries. Jerusalem had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate Muslims in 638, won back by Rome in 1099 under the First Crusade and then reconquered by Saladin's forces during the siege of Jerusalem in 1187. Later in the seventh Crusade, it was briefly taken back by the Catholics once again. It was conquered by the Ottomans in 1517. Orthodoxy, however, was very strong in Russia which had recently acquired an autocephalous status; and thus Moscow called itself the Third Rome, as the cultural heir of Constantinople. Under Ottoman rule, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired power as an autonomous millet. The ecumenical patriarch was the religious and administrative ruler of the entire "Greek Orthodox nation", which encompassed all the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Empire.
From c. 970 until 1018, a series of conflicts between the Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantine Empire led to the gradual reconquest of Bulgaria by the Byzantines, who thus re-established their control over the entire Balkan peninsula for the first time since the 7th-century Slavic invasions. The struggle began with the incorporation of eastern Bulgaria after the Russo-Byzantine War (970–971). Bulgarian resistance was led by the Cometopuli brothers, who – based in the unconquered western regions of the Bulgarian Empire – led it until its fall under Byzantine rule in 1018.
In the year before the Council of Constantinople in 381, the Trinitarian version of Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which recognized the catholic orthodoxy of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion. Historians refer to the Nicene church associated with emperors in a variety of ways: as the catholic church, the orthodox church, the imperial church, the Roman church, or the Byzantine church, although some of those terms are also used for wider communions extending outside the Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Catholic Church all claim to stand in continuity from the Nicene church to which Theodosius granted recognition.
The Kingdom of Serbia, or the Serbian Kingdom, was a medieval Serbian kingdom in Southern Europe comprising most of what is today Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro, as well as southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of coastal Croatia south of the Neretva river, Albania north of the Drin River, North Macedonia, and a small part of western Bulgaria. The medieval Kingdom of Serbia existed from 1217 to 1346 and was ruled by the Nemanjić dynasty. The Grand Principality of Serbia was elevated with the regal coronation of Stefan Nemanjić as king, after the reunification of Serbian lands. In 1219, Serbian Orthodox Church was reorganized as an autocephalous archbishopric, headed by Saint Sava. The kingdom was proclaimed an empire in 1346, but kingship was not abolished as an institution, since the title of a king was used as an official designation for a co-ruler of the emperor.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Byzantine Empire:
Rūm millet was the name of the Eastern Orthodox Christian community in the Ottoman Empire. Despite being subordinated within the Ottoman political system, the community maintained a certain internal autonomy.
Moscow, third Rome is a theological and political concept asserting Moscow as the successor to ancient Rome, with the Russian world carrying forward the legacy of the Roman Empire. The term "third Rome" refers to a historical topic of debate in European culture: the question of the successor city to the "first Rome" and the "second Rome".
The foreign relations of the Eastern Roman Empire were conducted by the emperor. Preferring diplomacy over war, the emperor would use alliances, treaty's and diplomatic tactics to achieve goals. Military confrontations also occurred, with Dimitri Obolensky calling it as a form of "defensive imperialism". The conduct of its foreign relations is a large factor to the Empire's longevity of 1,123 years.