Byzantine Empire (610-1453) remained far ahead of the West for Centuries in Government and Arts of Civilization

The vision of the Holy Grail as part of the Byzantine Art

The history of the Roman Empire was marked almost from the outset by a shift of focus to the east. The original cause was the lure of the wealth of the older oriental civilizations and the economic strength of the great commercial centers of Egypt and western Asia. Later, the loss of the western provinces to Germanic invaders hastened the trend. Simultaneously the great Persian revival under the Sasanians forced Rome to concentrate its efforts on defense of its eastern frontier. After Justinian the west was neglected, the Roman empire became an eastern, Greek-speaking dominion. The change is conventionally placed in the reign of Heraclius. From this time it is customary to speak of a Byzantine rather than a Roman empire.

Heraclius brought the long contest with Persia to a victorious close at Nineveh, but almost immediately was confronted by an even more redoubtable foe: Islam. The struggle with Islam and with the Slavs, pressing against the European frontiers in the Balkan, now became the dominant fact in the Byzantine history. What is remarkable is Byzantine resilience. To meet the Arab threat, Asia Minor was reorganized into military districts or ‘themes’ manned by a peasant militia. After two long Arab sieges of Constantinople had been repelled, the new Mecedonian dynasty launched a vigorous counter-offensive. By the death of Basil II the frontiers had been pushed back to almost their earlier limits. By 976 the Arabs were driven back to Jerusalem and Bulgaria was reduced to a group of Christian provinces. Even later Manuel I still planned to recover the former Byzantine territories in Italy. But constant wars imposed heavy financial strains, as well as profound and debilitating social changes, and in spite of phases of aggressive counter-offensive and expansion, the frontiers steadily shrank.

After Basil I the decisive fact the was the appearance of a new foe, the Seljuk Turks. The crushing Seljuk victory at Manzikert in 1071 induced Alexios I to call on the west for help, thus initiating a sequence of events that led to the First Crusade. In retrospect it was a disastrous move. The Franks were less concerned to aid the Byzantium than to set up their own principalities in Palestine and Asia Minor. The Normans, by now in control of Sicily and Byzantine Italy were greedy for Byzantine territory in the Morea (Peloponnese) and further east. The Italian cities, Venice to the fore, were striving to engross the oriental trade. The outcome, after a century of vicissitudes, was the Forth Crusade between 1202 and 1204, the conquest and pillage of Constantinople, the partition of the Byzantine empire and the establishment in its place of a Latin empire. But the Latin empire proved short-lived the Greek-speaking population resented it and a new dynasty, the Paleologues restored the Greek empire in 1261.

It was nevertheless only a shadow of former Byzantine empire; and when a new Turkish people , the Ottomans established itself in Anatolia, and then outflanked Constantinople, advanced into Byzantium’s European territories, its fate was sealed. The rest of the story is an epilogue, ending with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Nevertheless the story of Byzantium is not without greatness and lasting achievements. For centuries it was ahead of the west in government and the art of civilization. It also passed on its culture and religion to Balkan people and Russia. “Two Romes have fallen” a Russian monk wrote shortly after 1453, “ but the third is standing and there shall be no fourth”. He was speaking of Moscow. Russia gradually consolidated under its Varangian rulers and their Muscovite successors, now emerged as heir to Byzantine inheritance. This was to be a fact of lasting importance in world history.