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The Byzantine Empire and Russia. Chapter 10. The Byzantine Empire Section 1.
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The Byzantine Empire and Russia Chapter 10
The eastern part of the Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire. Constantine founded the city of Constantinople there in A.D. 330. He made his new city the capital of the Byzantine Empire.Constantine called his capital city the “new Rome.” He built as the emperors had in Rome. One building, the Hippodrome, was like Rome’s Circus Maximus.Constantinople had an excellent harbor and was guarded on three sides by water and a huge wall protected the fourth side. Later, a huge chain was even strung across the city’s north harbor for greater protection.
About 600,000 people lived in the city during Constantine’s rule: there were Greeks, Turks, Italians, Slavs, Persians, Armenians, and Jews. The spoke Greek among themselves, but the official language was Latin. Most people became Christians and called themselves Romans. The Byzantine Empire reached its greatest size under the emperor Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565.
He is remembered for three reasons: he tried to win back the Roman lands in the West, he put together a code of laws, and he made Constantinople more beautiful. The backbone of the Byzantine empire was formed by the peasants. Justinian created the Body of Civil Law, a.k.a. Justinian Code = code of Roman laws that was the basis of imperial law in Eastern Roman empire until its end in 1453
Justinian tried to win back all western lands that Rome had lost the century before. One of his armies won back much of Italy and North Africa; another army threw back the Persians.Justinian was interested in public works. He built a government building in which 20,000 people worked, and across from it, he built the Hagia Sophia, one of the world’s most beautiful churches.
Justinian used the law to unite the empire under is control. He ruled as an autocrat, or sole ruler with complete authority. He also had power over the Church. The Church of the Holy Wisdom, known as Hagia Sophia
Justinian’s wife, Theodora was a great help to him. She was an actress before she met him, people of the empire had a low opinion of actresses. She, gradually, began to take an interest in politics and soon was helping Justinian fill government and church offices. In 532, Theodora made her most important contribution when a group of senators had organized a revolt to protest high taxes. Justinian wanted to leave the city, but Theodora urged him to stay. They did and defeated the rebels, killing 30,000 of them and gaining even more power in the empire.
Christianity was the official religion of the Byzantine Empire. Divisions grew between Christians in the Byzantine East and those in Western Europe. The Byzantines believed the emperor represented Christ on Earth and rejected the pope’s authority over all Christians. The leader of the Church in Constantinople was called the patriarch. Under him were the church officials in charge of the empire’s important areas called metropolitans. Byzantines allowed their priests to marry, used Greek as their language, and made Easter the chief holy day, instead of Christmas.
Christians also fought over the use of icons (small pictures of the saints and Jesus). This fight damaged the empire’s relations with western Europe. Because so few people in the West could read, church leaders there used images instead of written word to explain Christian teachings. When the Emperor Leo III, in 726, decided to stop the use of icons, the Pope and a council of bishops declared that the emperor and his supporters were no longer Church members.
In 1054, the church in the West became known as the Roman Catholic Church. The church in the East became the Eastern Orthodox Church. This was called schism, or permanent split. In 1054, Pope Leo IX & Michael Cerularius (Head of Byzantine Church) excommunicated each other.Struggles over succession, court intrigues, and constant wars undermined the strength of the Byzantine Empire. The Normans and the Seljuk Turks invaded the region. During the Fourth Crusade, knights attacked Constantinople, then the Ottoman Turks conquered the city. Under the Ottomans, Constatinople became a center of Muslim culture.
The Byzantine empire influenced all of Europe with its combination of Christian beliefs with Greek science, philosophy, and literature. Byzantine artists made unique contributions, especially in religious art and architecture, that evoked the sacred and influenced Western styles from the Middle Ages to the present. Byzantine scholars preserved the classic works of ancient Greece and created their own great books, such as Alexiad by Anna Comnena.
Russia lies in the vast Eurasian plain that reaches from Europe to the borders of China. Three broad zones with different climates and resources helped shape early Russian life: the northern forest supplied lumber for building and fuel; farther south, a band of fertile land attracted early farmers (Ukraine); the southern steppe was an open, treeless grasslands. It offered pasture for the herds and horses of the nomadic peoples. This was a great highway, along which streams of nomads migrated from Asia into Europe.
Russia’s network of rivers provided transportation for both people and goods. The Dnieper and Volga rivers became productive trade routes.
Russia • Eastern Slavic people settled in present day Ukraine & Russia • 8th century, Swedish Vikings began to move in search of plunder & trade routes • Vikings eventually dominated the native people • Vikings named it Rus = where word Russia is derived
In the 700s and 800s, the Vikings, called Varangians by later Russians, moved from Scandinavia to help the Eastern Slavs protect their trade route. Located at the heart of this vital trade network was the city of Kiev, which was the southernmost town on the Varangian trading route. Whoever ruled Kiev controlled trade with Byzantium.
Around 900 A.D., two Greek monks, Cyril and Methodius, began to preach to the Slavs. They helped many Slavs become Christians. The Slavs had no written language, so the monks invented an alphabet for their spoken language. This was called the Cyrillic alphabet and it is still used today in some Slavic countries. In 957, Princess Olga of Kiev converted to Byzantine Christianity, beginning a movement in which Byzantine Christianity became the major religion in Kiev.
When Olga’s grandson, Vladimir, became the ruler of Kiev, Christianity spread widely. He married the sister of a Byzantine emperor and had Greek priests in Kiev presiding over the mass baptisms organized by the prince. Because Byzantine Christianity set the pattern for close ties between Church and state, Russian leaders eventually controlled the Church, making it dependent on them for support.
Kievan Russia reached its peak between 1000 and 1050. Yaroslav the Wise, the ruler at the time, arranged marriages between his children and some of the royal families of Western Europe. When he died, his sons divided the kingdom among themselves. They fought each other and cut off trade with Constantinople. In 1240, Mongol armies, led by Batu, from Central Asia captured Kiev and completely destroyed it. They were known as the Golden Horde and ruled Russia for the next 240 years. They set up a government that was tolerant but demanded heavy tributes.
Mongol rule had six effects on Russia:Peasants felt the weight of heavy taxes and fled to remote regions or became serfs; the Russian Orthodox Church grew more powerful; peace brought new trading between Eastern Europe and China; women became totally subject to male authority in the household; Russia was ruled by a strong central government; Russian was isolated from contacts with Western Europe, specially in the arts and sciences.
During Mongol ruling, the princes of Moscow increased their power due to the city’s location near important trade routes. As Mongol power declined, the princes of Moscow took a new role as patriotic defenders of Russia against foreign rule. In 1380, they rallied other Russians and defeated the Golden Horde at the battle of Kulikovo.Ivan III, known as Ivan the Great, brought much of northern Russia under his rule. He built the framework for absolute rule and limited the power of the boyars (great landowning nobles). He took the title of czar, the Russian word for Caesar. He also adopted Byzantine court rituals to emphasize Russia’s role as the heir to Byzantine power.
Ivan IV (1530-1584), grandson of Ivan the Great, was known as Ivan the Terrible. His was three when his father died and became czar at the age of 17. He centralized royal power even more – extreme absolute power; he introduced laws that tied Russian serfs to the land. He became very unstable after his wife died (he even killed his son in a moment of rage). He organized the oprichniki, who were agents who enforced the czar’s will. They killed boyars and sacked many towns where people were suspected of disloyalty. When he died in 1584, he left a land with many rebellions going on.
The “Time of Troubles”, which lasted from 1604 to 1613, were a period of disputes over succession, peasant uprisings, and foreign invasions. Finally, an assembly of clergy, nobles, and townsmen, known as the zemsky sobor, elected a new czar, Michael Romanov. His reign established the Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia until 1917. Czars expanded national borders and centralized royal control.
The region known as Eastern Europe is the territory between German speaking Central Europe and Russia; from the Baltic Sea, the plains in Poland, to the Balkan mountains. Much of the region lies on the great European plain with access to the Danube and the Vistula rivers. The Balkans in the south felt the influence of the Byzantine empire and the Muslim Ottoman empire; while the northern regions were influenced by Western Europe.
Eastern Europe’s geography encourage migration of many different peoples, that is why now it includes a wealth of languages and cultures. An ethnic group is a large group of people who share the same language and cultural heritage. The Balkans were people by other ethnic groups.
THE BALKANS – were made up from South Slavs and became the ancestors of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. There were also Asians, such as Huns and Avars. Byzantine missionaries carried Eastern Orthodox Christianity; German knights and missionaries spread Roman Catholic Christianity; the Ottomans brought Islam to certain areas.In the Middle Ages, Eastern Europe was a refuge for many Jewish settlers, who were escaping persecution from Christian Europeans. In the late 1300s, Polish kings created a policy of toleration toward Jews, which helped increase Jewish villages in Poland.
POLAND – made up of West Slavs, were first Roman Catholic and Jewish. To survive, Poland had to battle Germans, Russians, and Mongols. In 1386, Queen Jadwiga married Duke Wladyslav Jagiello of Lithuania, bringing the greatest age to Poland. They controlled the largest state in Europe, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Poland, unlike Russia, gradually increased the power of its nobles at the expense of the monarch. The vote of a single noble was enough to block the passage of a law. This was known as liberum veto (free vote), and made it hard for the government to take decisive action.
Without a strong central government, Poland declined. In 1683, Poland enjoyed a final moment of glory under the king Jan Sobieski, who broke the Ottoman siege of Vienna. But in the next century, Poland was attacked by ambitious neighbors and disappeared from the map entirely.
HUNGARY – The Magyars of Asia raided Europe. They adopted Roman Catholic Christianity. The Hungarian king was forced to sign a charter recognizing the rights of the nobles, this was known as the Golden Bull of 1222, limiting the power of the monarch.The Mongols overran Hungary in 1241 and then the Ottoman Turks ended Hungarian independence in 1526
CZECH REPUBLIC – West Slavs, who adopted Roman Catholic Christianity.SERBIA – South Slavs who accepted Orthodox Christianity. By the late 1100s, they had set up their own state, which reached its height under Stefan Dusan. He modeled his law code based on the Justinian.His successors lacked his political gifts and Serbia could not withstand the advance of Ottoman Turks. At the battle of Kosovo in 1389, Serbs fought to the death, but were defeated.
