7 ms·

Byzantine history is so important to understand the modern world. It gives us the context for the orthodox/west divide; it gives us an example of a economic and

• nerdponx 4y ago
  One thing I learned recently is that 12th Century Fourth Crusade actually culminated in sacking Constantinople and establishment of the "Latin Empire", as the intended successor of the Byzantine Empire, which only existed for a brief time before it was recaptured by a rump state founded by exiled Byzantine aristocrats. Apparently (and understandably) this led to major deterioration in East-West Christian relations, and furthermore the resulting weakening of the Byzantine Empire is what might have enabled the Ottoman Empire to eventually conquer the Byzantine Empire in the 15th Century. The level of geopolitical chaos involved in such an event is unimaginable today. Even the messiest of 20th century wars seem downright orderly by comparison.
  • qwytw 4y ago
    The Fourth Crusade was preceded by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins which was a reaction to the empire becoming near completely dominated by westerns both economically and (to a lesser degree) politically. The last coup attempt/civil war (which was also a near permanent issue in the empire) before the massacre was between a French Princess ruling the empire as a regent for her underage son and her stepdaughter who was married to a Frankish nobleman from the Outremer (he was -the second highest ranking official in the empire and seemingly the heir apparent together with his wife). Had they succeeded the Empire would probably have had its first Latin Emperor (or at least co-Emperor) without even being directly conquered. Of course instead it ended with late emperor's cousin* murdering (he forced the 12 year old emperor to sign her mothers death warrant and before having him assassinated soon after). mothers everyone and taking the throne for himself after he masterfully utilized the widespread public hatred towards the Latins amongst the general population.. *Andronikos Komnenos, who was in his middle 60s at the time and while being quite a terrible person had a very interesting life. Amongst other things (while in exile due all kinds of scheming) he seduced the former queen of Jerusalem (who happened to be his niece..) and up having two children with her after they ran away to the Turkish Sultanate of Damascus. Eventually she was captured by the emperor who used her to lure Andronikos into Constantinople and then (unfortunately for the emperor's son) decided pardon him and exile him to a remote province instead of executing him.
    • steveBK123 4y ago
      Thanks for sharing, i read a lot of history and while I was generally aware of the western sacking of Constantinople during the crusades.. I wasn’t aware this preceded it.
    • nerdponx 4y ago
      This is why it makes my blood boil when TV shows and movies that recount historical events try to dramatize everything and add their own silly unnecessary fictional touches. The actual events that happened are dramatic enough!
      • mr_toad 4y ago
        Andronikos Komnenos would not have been out of place in Game of Thrones.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• drcode 4y ago
  I do find it curious that not that much science came out of the Byzantine empire- Yes there was some, but (with my admittedly limited knowledge) it does seem to pale in comparison to the earlier stuff from Greece, Rome or even the Arab Caliphates with their scholars in Mathematics and Physics. It seems like it was intellectual, but didn't have a proportional output of science or art that has stood the test of time. Feel free to disagree and tell me why I'm wrong
  • mach1ne 4y ago
    Well, Christianity is a big reason. It was so successful for so long in part because it aggressively repressed any ideologies which could have threatened its hegemony. Since the Church considered the ’scientific’ domain to be part of its curriculum, new science was generally a threat.
    • badpun 4y ago
      > Since the Church considered the ’scientific’ domain to be part of its curriculum, new science was generally a threat. I don't think that's true. Church only opposed science that was in contradiction with the Bible, which was a small minority of all science discoveries. Church never had any qualms with Newton laws or laws of conservation of mass (in chemistry) etc.
      • mr_toad 4y ago
        > Church never had any qualms with Newton laws or laws of conservation of mass (in chemistry) etc. That was a much later church separated by more than one schism. The Orthodox Church of the Byzantine empire was much less tolerant of any thoughts that might contradict doctrine. More that one philosopher was convicted of heresy.
        • badpun 4y ago
          Were these philosophers generating science?
    • 4y ago
• Jeff_Brown 4y ago
  Carrying that logic further, then, would it be better if public servants had no friends? If everyone anywhere but the lowest rung of the corporate ladder (from which one does not typically make hiring decisions) also had no family? For only the least (conventionally) successful to reproduce seems problematic.
  • knodi123 4y ago
    > Carrying that logic further Or rather, "carrying it to an extreme". But we don't have to carry it that far. Eliminating inherited positions is a huge and sufficient improvement. If you go all the way to "no family or friends at all", yeah, I'd agree the problematic aspects might outweigh the benefits.
• giraffe_lady 4y ago
  The religious parts of this I'm not sure I can agree with really.... I'm orthodox if it matters or seems relevant. The catholic/orthodox differences are largely just because of a thousand years of divergence, of speaking different languages and having relatively little interchange, of each individually having movements in response to internal pressures and trends not experienced by the other. Not going to get into a filioque debate on HN but the initial theological dispute, however significant you find it to be, is not the source of the most tangible differences in the two branches today. They've just each been doing their own thing for a millennium and their unique histories took them to two different places during that time. I don't see how byzantine eunuchs indicates anything about priest celibacy, especially since orthodox priests are usually married. Eunuchs and celibate priests still come from families, they experience love and duty and allegiance and enmity. To the extent a position is admirable people will want to be in it and to the extent it's powerful people will use that power to benefit the people and things they value. No restriction on who can hold an office will by itself address those factors. Byzantine eunuchs got up to plenty of corruption and betrayal in their own right. I assume by "barbarians" you mean the ottoman turks, but we have to be careful in reading byzantine history not to absorb byzantine attitudes about their rivals. The ottomans were a long-lived, sophisticated, and nuanced entity in their own right. Even their precursors and other byzantine neighbors were not as simple or simply motivated as byzantine or byz-sympathetic sources would indicate.
  • YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    Oh yes, the Ottomans very mighty sophisticated. They just didn't know how to build cities, so they took other peoples'. Orthodox? Which kind? I grew up Greek Orthodox but then I grew up more atheist.
    • giraffe_lady 4y ago
      I'm american and my parents were converts so I don't think of myself as being particularly affiliated with any of the ethnic jurisdictions. I usually just find a parish where I like the people and the services are in english. Often that's OCA (russian-tinged american) but in the past it has been serbian or greek. As you're probably aware it's all technically the same church so there's no barrier or ritual to changing. The differences are mostly just musical style and other aesthetic traditions.
• qwytw 4y ago
  > It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs That was the case for "only" around a third to a half of the empire's existence. But by the 1000 ADs appointing eunuchs to high posts fell out of fashion with emperors appointing family members or leading in the field directly (unlike in Justinians day when emperors spent almost their entire reign being cloistered in the palace). Somewhere between the first and third crusades there was a non-insignificant chance of the empire becoming much more integrated with Latin/Catholic west. Later Komnenian emperors started adopting Western customs, had fairly good relations with most Crusader and Western States and were attempting to reunite the both churches officially. Of course this process culminated when a French princess became an effective ruler of the empire as a regent for her underage son, she surrounded herself with Latins and parceled off pretty much everything she could off to Italian Merchants. This was met with an extremely violent backlash culminating in her and her son being murdered and a literal genocide (or at least a massive pogrom) of all the westerns living in Constantinople (10-20% of all the people living in the city). And the split was made permanent by the even more violent sack during the 4th crusade by the westerners.
  • YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    In some sense, the final sack by the Ottomans imposed a certain modicum of order and peace to the Polis. And that's saying something.
    • qwytw 3y ago
      Yeah, unless your entire property was stolen, house burned and you yourself murdered (reports on how violent the sack was differ though). The again the city never really recovered after the Crusader/Venetian sack.
• _a_a_a_ 4y ago
  > It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs and how the next best thing was celibate people ok. why?
  • boomboomsubban 4y ago
    They're more likely to choose their successors based on merit than familial ties for a start. That's really enough, but they may also have less need to enrich themselves as they don't need to plan for inheritance.
    • _a_a_a_ 4y ago
      I wish the original poster had put that. It makes sense. Thanks
• kmlx 4y ago
  one random tidbit that struck me was that the term "Byzantine Empire" was actually an invention from the 1500's. the "byzantine" people actually called themselves Romans, and the empire was called "Roman Empire".
  • aorth 4y ago
    Ah yes! This is an interesting tidbit I learned while listening to the excellent Fall of Civilizations podcast. The episode about Byzantium was so good. Paul and his team do such a good job on the audio and visuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvzoAfpCvbw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvzoAfpCvbw
  • YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    That's because Byzantium was the eastern wing of the Roman Empire. Justinian I (the emperor in the wikipedia article) is remembered for being behind the last almost successful attempt to take Rome back from the hands of the barbarians and reunite the Empire's two heads. The two heads in the Byzantine flags, that is. Byzantines called themselves "Roman", and everyone else in the area called them "Rum" (i.e. "Roman") because they were Romans. And this guy was the Last of the Romans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius
  • MichaelZuo 4y ago
    A good compromise is to call it the Eastern Roman empire, though some folks in the Vatican would undoubtedly be annoyed.
    • selcuka 4y ago
      Turkish people (as the successors of the Ottoman Empire) always call it the Eastern Roman Empire. Byzantine is almost exclusively used when talking about "Byzantine system" (i.e. intrigue, and plots).
  • m00dy 4y ago
    and then the Ottomans came...
• throwaway6734 4y ago
  The author of this book was a guest on the History of Byzantium podcast. It's a great listen that picks up where the History of Rome left off.
  • f5ve 3y ago
    I could never get into that podcast even though I have a strong interest and want to delve into the empire's history. In being disappointed by History of Rome's "sequel" I doubt I'm alone. Though I will check out this specific episode since I'm intrigued by this book; thanks for the heads-up.
• nsajko 4y ago
  > senior civil servants were eunuchs and how the next best thing was celibate people Ralph Nader comes to mind.
• Jun8 4y ago
  AFAIK, an important reason eunuchs were preferred as generals and high officials is because a person who was castrated or had any other deformity could not be emperor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_mutilation_in_Byzantine_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_mutilation_in_Byzant...) Exceptions did occur, e.g. Justinian II, but rare. It was also common practice to castrate sons of deposed emperors.
• bigbillheck 4y ago
  > It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs The place the Byzantines got those eggs from tried that too, didn't always work out too great in terms of stability and good governance, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Attendants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Attendants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_Ai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_Ai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Tigers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Tigers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei_Zhongxian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei_Zhongxian