Byzantine

Examples of Byzantine in the following topics:

• The Double Disasters

  • A number of wars between the Normans and the Byzantine Empire were fought from 1040 until 1185 when the last Norman invasion of Byzantine territory was defeated.
  • At the end of the conflict, neither the Normans nor the Byzantines could boast much power.
  • Emperor Romanos Diogenes moved the Byzantine army to meet them.
  • It was perhaps the most severe military disaster in Byzantine history.
  • The Byzantine Empire was now vulnerable to conquest.

• Byzantium's Legacy

  • The Byzantine Empire has had a lasting legacy in religion, architecture, art, literature, and law.
  • Byzantium has been often identified with absolutism, orthodox spirituality, orientalism and exoticism, while the terms "Byzantine" and "Byzantinism" have been used as metaphors for decadence, complex bureaucracy, and repression.
  • In the 10th century, Leo VI the Wise achieved the complete codification of the whole of Byzantine law in Greek, which became the foundation of all subsequent Byzantine law, which generates interest to the present day.
  • A page from a 16th-century edition of the vast Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda.
  • Give examples of how the Byzantine Empire continued to have an impact even after its collapse

• The Byzantine Empire

  • Despite this present-day appellation, those living within the borders of the Byzantine Empire did not call themselves "Byzantine."
  • This swath of territory remained in the Byzantine Empire for two centuries.
  • However, few incoming influences affected Byzantine style.
  • Early Byzantine architecture drew upon earlier elements of Roman architecture.
  • The Byzantine Empire (red) and its vassals (pink) in 555 CE during the reign of Justinian I.

• The Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars

  • The Byzantine Empire had a long and tumultuous relationship with the Bulgar Empire to its north.
  • There they secured Byzantine recognition of their right to settle south of the Danube by defeating — possibly with the help of local South Slavic tribes — the Byzantine army led by Constantine IV.
  • The Byzantines and Bulgarians continued to clash over the next century with variable success, until the Bulgarians, led by Krum, inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Byzantines.
  • A Byzantine painting depicting Bulgarians slaughtering Byzantines, who can be seen with halos on their head.
  • Distinguish between the different threats that the Byzantines faces around the turn of the millennium

• Naming of the Byzantine Empire

  • While the Western Roman Empire fell, the Eastern Roman Empire, now known as the Byzantine Empire, thrived.
  • Byzantine art never lost sight of this classical heritage.
  • The term "Byzantine" was also useful to the many Western European states that also claimed to be the true successors of the Roman Empire, as it was used to delegitimize the claims of the Byzantines as true Romans.
  • "Byzantine diplomacy" has come to mean excess use of trickery and behind-the-scenes manipulation.
  • These are all based on medieval stereotypes about the Byzantine Empire that developed as Western Europeans came into contact with the Byzantines and were perplexed by their more structured government.

• The Fall of Constantinople

  • The restored Byzantine Empire converted to Catholicism to get aid from the West against the Ottoman Turks, but the Turks defeated them by conquering Constantinople, thereby causing the final collapse of the Byzantines.
  • The restored Byzantine Empire was surrounded by enemies.
  • Even more dangerous to the Byzantines, the Turks were once again raiding Byzantine lands, and Asia Minor was overrun.
  • The Empire controlled nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when Timur invaded Anatolia in the Battle of Ankara in 1402.
  • This was not acceptable for most Byzantines.

• Crisis and Fragmentation

  • To the Byzantines the crusaders were dirty, uneducated brutes.
  • To the crusaders, the Byzantines were untrustworthy, over-pampered schemers.
  • The Byzantines and crusaders agreed that whatever formerly Byzantine lands the crusaders recaptured from the Turks would be returned to Byzantine control.
  • Tensions between them and the Byzantines of the city worsened.
  • The crusaders parceled out Byzantine lands among themselves.

• Painting in the Late Byzantine Empire

  • As Late Byzantine painting became more naturalistic, bodies gained mass and figures portrayed humanity with emotion and movement; these developments and traditions continued into the Post-Byzantine age.
  • During the Late Byzantine period the iconostasis fully developed.
  • The architecture is rendered in a later Byzantine style.
  • The bodies, however, differ from their earlier Byzantine predecessors.
  • The scene also takes cues from Late Byzantine styles, since it is dramatically depicted.

• The Last Byzantine Dynasty

  • Michael VIII recaptured Constantinople and restored the Byzantine Empire, giving rise to the last dynasty of the Empire and a brief time of cultural flourishing.
  • He founded the Palaiologos Dynasty, the longest and last dynasty of Byzantine rulers.
  • Still, Michael VIII returned to the city and was proclaimed emperor there, marking the restoration of the Byzantine Empire.
  • Although the Palaiologan Renaissance came too late to save the struggling Byzantine civilization, it would be a major catalyst for the Italian Renaissance, especially as Byzantine artists and scholars traveled to Italy to seek shelter from the new threats that besieged the empire.
  • A gold Byzantine coin, called the hyperpyron (which replaced the earlier solidus), depicting the first emperor of the Byzantine Palaiologan Dynasty, Michael VIII.

• Icons and Iconoclasm

  • The Byzantine Iconoclasm encompasses two periods in the history of the Byzantine Empire when religious images of icons came under scrutiny by religious and imperial authorities within the Orthodox Church and the temporal imperial hierarchy.
  • It was a debate triggered by changes in Orthodox worship, which were themselves generated by the major social and political upheavals of the seventh century for the Byzantine Empire .
  • Traditional explanations for Byzantine iconoclasm have sometimes focused on the importance of Islamic prohibitions against images influencing Byzantine thought.
  • Toynbee, for example, it was the prestige of Islamic military successes in the 7–8th centuries that motivated Byzantine Christians to adopt the Islamic position of rejecting and destroying idolatricous images.
  • Define iconoclasm, and describe what led to the the two Iconoclasm periods of the Byzantine Empire.