His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children, and for centuries after his reign. The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference, and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity.
Constantine the Great: Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great presents a representation of the city of Constantinople as tribute to an enthroned Mary and Christ Child in this church mosaic. St Sophia, c. Constantine moved the seat of the empire, and introduced important changes into its civil and religious constitution. In , he founded Constantinople as a second Rome on the site of Byzantium, which was well-positioned astride the trade routes between east and west; it was a superb base from which to guard the Danube river, and was reasonably close to the eastern frontiers.
Constantine also began the building of the great fortified walls, which were expanded and rebuilt in subsequent ages. Constantine built upon the administrative reforms introduced by Diocletian. He stabilized the coinage the gold solidus that he introduced became a highly prized and stable currency , and made changes to the structure of the army.
Under Constantine, the empire had recovered much of its military strength and enjoyed a period of stability and prosperity. He also reconquered southern parts of Dacia, after defeating the Visigoths in , and he was planning a campaign against Sassanid Persia as well. To divide administrative responsibilities, Constantine replaced the single praetorian prefect, who had traditionally exercised both military and civil functions, with regional prefects enjoying civil authority alone.
In the course of the 4th century, four great sections emerged from these Constantinian beginnings, and the practice of separating civil from military authority persisted until the 7th century. Constantine was the first emperor to stop Christian persecutions and to legalize Christianity, as well as all other religions and cults in the Roman Empire. The edict stated that Christians should be allowed to follow the faith without oppression.
This removed penalties for professing Christianity, under which many had been martyred previously, and returned confiscated Church property. The edict protected from religious persecution not only Christians but all religions, allowing anyone to worship whichever deity they chose. Scholars debate whether Constantine adopted Christianity in his youth from his mother, St. Helena,, or whether he adopted it gradually over the course of his life.
According to Christian writers, Constantine was over 40 when he finally declared himself a Christian, writing to Christians to make clear that he believed he owed his successes to the protection of the Christian High God alone.
Throughout his rule, Constantine supported the Church financially, built basilicas, granted privileges to clergy e. The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the emperor as having great influence and ultimate regulatory authority within the religious discussions involving the early Christian councils of that time most notably, the dispute over Arianism, and the nature of God.
Constantine himself disliked the risks to societal stability that religious disputes and controversies brought with them, preferring where possible to establish an orthodoxy. One way in which Constantine used his influence over the early Church councils was to seek to establish a consensus over the oft debated and argued issue over the nature of God.
In , he summoned the Council of Nicaea, effectively the first Ecumenical Council. The Council of Nicaea is most known for its dealing with Arianism and for instituting the Nicene Creed, which is still used today by Christians.
After Constantine, few emperors ruled the entire Roman Empire. It was too big and was under attack from too many directions. While the Western Empire was overrun by Germanic barbarians its lands in Italy were conquered by the Ostrogoths, Spain was conquered by the Visigoths, North Africa was conquered by the Vandals, and Gaul was conquered by the Franks , the Eastern Empire thrived.
Constantinople became the largest city in the empire and a major commercial center. Emperor Justinian was responsible for substantial expansion, a legal code, and the Hagia Sophia, but suffered defeats against the Persians.
In and , he issued a series of edicts essentially banning pagan religion. Pagan festivals and sacrifices were banned, as was access to all pagan temples and places of worship. The dynastic principle was established so firmly that the emperor who died in that year, Theodosius I, could bequeath the imperial office jointly to his sons, Arcadius in the East and Honorius in the West.
The Eastern Empire was largely spared the difficulties faced by the west in the third and fourth centuries, due in part to a more firmly established urban culture and greater financial resources, which allowed it to placate invaders with tribute and pay foreign mercenaries. Throughout the fifth century, various invading armies overran the Western Empire but spared the east. Theodosius II further fortified the walls of Constantinople, leaving the city impervious to most attacks; the walls were not breached until To fend off the Huns, Theodosius had to pay an enormous annual tribute to Attila.
His successor, Marcian, refused to continue to pay the tribute, but Attila had already diverted his attention to the west. After his death in , the Hunnic Empire collapsed, and many of the remaining Huns were often hired as mercenaries by Constantinople. Leo I succeeded Marcian as emperor, and after the fall of Attila, the true chief in Constantinople was the Alan general, Aspar. Byzantium served as the capital city of the Byzantine Empire and Roman Empire before becoming part of the Ottoman Empire from to Byzantium was situated on the European side of Turkey and the core of Istanbul.
The oracle instructed him to settle on the land that is directly opposite the "Land-of-the-Blind". Byzas with a group of colonists from Megara found a place where the Golden Horn met Bosporus before flowing into the Marmara Sea where he established Byzantium.
The Greek forces besieged the city during the Peloponnesian war. Sparta took over Byzantium in BC as part of their strategy to cut off grain supply to Athens, but the Athenian forces took over the city later in BC.
Justinian I, who took power in and would rule until his death in , was the first great ruler of the Byzantine Empire. Many great monuments of the empire would be built under Justinian, including the spectacular domed Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia. Justinian also reformed and codified Roman law, establishing a Byzantine legal code that would endure for centuries and help shape the modern concept of the state.
Debts incurred through war had left the empire in dire financial straits, however, and his successors were forced to heavily tax Byzantine citizens in order to keep the empire afloat. During the seventh and eighth centuries, attacks from the Persian Empire and from Slavs, combined with internal political instability and economic regression, threatened the vast empire.
A new, even more serious threat arose in the form of Islam , founded by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca in In , Muslim armies began their assault on the Byzantine Empire by storming into Syria. During the eighth and early ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors beginning with Leo III in spearheaded a movement that denied the holiness of icons, or religious images, and prohibited their worship or veneration.
Though it stretched over less territory, Byzantium had more control over trade, more wealth and more international prestige than under Justinian. The strong imperial government patronized Byzantine art, including now-cherished Byzantine mosaics. Rulers also began restoring churches, palaces and other cultural institutions and promoting the study of ancient Greek history and literature.
Greek became the official language of the state, and a flourishing culture of monasticism was centered on Mount Athos in northeastern Greece. Monks administered many institutions orphanages, schools, hospitals in everyday life, and Byzantine missionaries won many converts to Christianity among the Slavic peoples of the central and eastern Balkans including Bulgaria and Serbia and Russia.
The end of the 11th century saw the beginning of the Crusades , the series of holy wars waged by European Christians against Muslims in the Near East from to As armies from France, Germany and Italy poured into Byzantium, Alexius tried to force their leaders to swear an oath of loyalty to him in order to guarantee that land regained from the Turks would be restored to his empire.
After Western and Byzantine forces recaptured Nicaea in Asia Minor from the Turks, Alexius and his army retreated, drawing accusations of betrayal from the Crusaders.
During the subsequent Crusades, animosity continued to build between Byzantium and the West, culminating in the conquest and looting of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in Many refugees from Constantinople fled to Nicaea, site of a Byzantine government-in-exile that would retake the capital and overthrow Latin rule in During the rule of the Palaiologan emperors, beginning with Michael VIII in , the economy of the once-mighty Byzantine state was crippled, and never regained its former stature.
Nevertheless, the empire would regain some semblance of stability and continue on until it was hit with another blow in A pivotal moment in the history of the Byzantine Empire occurred in , when an army of crusaders from the west sacked Constantinople and installed a short-lived line of rulers to rule it. The idea of Christians crusading against other Christians was strange even by the standards of the Middle Ages. There are a number of reasons why it came to this. An important reason is that in the decades preceding the sacking, the Byzantines had become estranged from their former allies in the west.
The Orthodox Church broke away from the church in Rome in and, perhaps most importantly, people from the west were massacred in Constantinople in , partly in response to the growing influence of western merchants and kingdoms. This meant that in , when a group of cash strapped crusaders were looking for money to finance an expedition to Egypt, they were willing to hear out Prince Alexius Angelos, a claimant to the Byzantine throne, who encouraged them to journey to Constantinople before going to Egypt.
Phillips notes that by this time, the Byzantine military was in bad shape. Between and no fewer than fifty-eight rebellions or uprisings took place across the empire. While Constantinople was once again under control of a Greek ruler, its end was drawing near.
The empire struggled on into the 15th century, the emperors gradually losing their importance in favor of religious officials. In , Patriarch Anthony actually had to give a speech explaining why the Byzantine emperor was still important.
0コメント