CHAPTER XVII THE EAST ROMAN EMPIRE DURING the Middle Ages, Western statesmen and CHAP. XVII churchmen, Western thinkers and writers, took little note of the Eastern Empire which stubbornly held its ground at Constantinople down to A.D. 1453. Its claim to represent the ancient dominion of Rome was practically ignored. Its splendid efforts in the defence of civilization against the fierce tribes of the North, and the still more formidable Musulmans of the East, received slight recognition, and scarcely any support. Even in later times the part played by the people and rulers of New Rome was inadequately appreciated, and it is only in our own days that history has begun to atone for this long neglect. The two imperial lines, which the revolt of Italy and the coronation of Charles the Great in A.D. 800 substituted for the one Roman Emperor whom Christian doctrine had required and continued to require, were, after that fateful year, always rivals and usually unfriendly rivals. a Gibbon does much less than justice to them and the first modern historian who set them in a fuller and fairer light was the late Mr. Finlay. Le Beau, in his Histoire du Bas-Empire, gave a résumé of East Roman history useful in its day, and among more recent works of value are those of Karl Hopf (in Ersch and Gruber, vols. 85 and 86), and of Hertzberg (Geschichte der Byzantiner), with the excellent History of the Later Roman Empire of J. B. Bury. A full bibliography will be found in the learned and luminous Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur of K. Krumbacher, which is itself of great service for a comprehension of Byzantine history generally. CHAP. XVII. But their direct relations either of negotiation or of armed hostility were infrequent. Each went its own way. Each had foes of its own to confront. Each affected the other much less than might have been expected, when it is remembered that each maintained its claim to be the heir of Rome, and to perpetuate the political and religious traditions of the early Christian Emperors. Yet few as the points of contact were, the history of the East Roman is a necessary complement to that of the West Roman Empire, for the course of events in each throws an instructive light upon the course of events in the other. As the divergences are worth noting, so too are the resemblances. Both Empires rested upon the memories of Rome. Both stood in a peculiar relation to the Christian Church. Both had to deal with the instreaming races of the North. But these conditions of life told differently upon the one and upon the other, and gave a different direction to their respective fortunes. Slight effect on the East Charles the To sketch, even in outline, the long and chequered and romantic history of the Eastern Empire would be altogether outside the scope of this book. But from among the salient features that mark its annals I may single out for comment a few which specially serve to illustrate the parallel or divergent history of the West. It has already been remarked (see p. 26 and p. 62, supra) that neither the extinction of the line of Emperors who reigned in the West down to A.D. 476, nor the establishment of a second imperial line at Old Rome by the coronation of Charles the Great in A.D. 800, was an event of critical significance in the history of the East Roman realm. By the event of A.D. 476 the Eastern monarch became the sole legal representative of Roman claims, claims still admitted in theory, to the lordship of the whole Western world. But the only practical result of this nominally enlarged authority was to induce, fifty years CHAP. XVII. afterwards, Justinian's reconquest of North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy, territories which added nothing to the effective strength of the Empire, and which were successively lost, Africa in the seventh, Sicily and Sardinia in the ninth, Italy partly in the eighth and partly in the eleventh century. By the event of A.D. 800 the right to represent Rome, carrying with it the headship of the whole Christian commonwealth, was withdrawn from the Eastern line, so far as the Roman Church and the Franks could withdraw it, so that such titular sovereignty, by this time shadowy, as still remained to the Roman Emperor over the world at large, became henceforth vested in those Western potentates, first Frankish, then Italian, ultimately German, who could obtain it from the hands of the Pope, or (in later days) by the election of the German princes. But this effort to transfer the claim to universal monarchy did not affect the legal rights of the Eastern sovereign in the countries which actually obeyed him, and affected but slightly the position he held towards the states that bordered on his own. Though he had lost Rome he continued to hold Southern Italy; nor did any of his nearer provinces in Thrace, or Greece, or Asia shew any signs of turning to his new Teutonic rivals. To the Westerns (other than the Southern Italians) he was already merely a name; so none of their peoples or cities, except Venice, thought of cleaving to him. To the Easterns he had been, and still remained, not only the national monarch of whom they were proud, but the legitimate heir of Old Rome; for the coronation of Charles in which the Pope, the citizens of Old Rome, and the Franks had joined, was in their eyes an outrageous usurpation. Thus the Eastern Empire was, for practical purposes, no more weakened by the incoming of Charles, and afterwards of CHAP. XVII. Otto the Great, than it had been strengthened by the disappearance of Romulus Augustulus in A.D. 476. We may therefore cast our glance over its history as a whole, covering a thousand years from the accession of Arcadius in A.D. 395 the point at which the real political separation of East and West begins-to the taking of Constantinople by Mohammed the Second in A.D. 1453. Constant the Eastern Empire: A long history! longer than that of any European struggles of monarchy, or indeed of any monarchy save those of China and Japan; and a history which amazes us by the power of recovery and rejuvenescence which this singular state displays. From the time of Justinian onwards, it had to support, against formidable enemies on either side, a veritable and unending struggle for life, longer and more perilous than the struggle which in earlier days Rome had for centuries maintained against the Samnites, against Carthage, and against the Italian allies. against the Northern barbarians, 626. On the north swarms of fierce savages poured down in succession upon it from the wilds of Scythia. First, about the beginning of the sixth century, came various Slavonic tribes. Then the Avars, established along the Theiss and A.D. 619 and the Middle Danube, began a long series of desolating raids, and twice appeared before Constantinople. Then, early in the seventh century, the Bulgarians, a Finnish people, moved out of their old seats on the Volga and the Kama, occupied the region which now bears their name, laid waste and ultimately settled in the adjoining parts of Thrace (where they became blent with, and adopted the speech of the Slavic tribes), and threatened Constantinople itself. Further to the north-east, the Petchenegs, also a Finnic or Tatar race, having established themselves in the steppes of the Dnieper and the Don, frequently attacked the frontiers; and somewhat later, the Russians (perhaps led by chieftains of Scandinavian stock), descending the Dnieper in their light boats and crossing the Euxine, were CHAP. XVII. twice repelled with difficulty from the walls of the capital. Of all these enemies the Bulgarians were the most dangerous because the nearest. The Emperor Basil II reduced them in the tenth century to nominal subjection, but they regained their freedom within less than'a century, and continued to threaten the Empire until they fell before the rising power of the Ottoman Turks. While the greater part of Thrace had thus been overspread by the Bulgarians, the North-west provinces had passed to the Slavs, the power of whose leading kingdom culminated in the reign of the Servian Tsar Simeon Dushan in the thirteenth century. Thus, speaking broadly, it may be said that, from the middle of the sixth century onwards, the Empire was constantly at war with these Northern barbarians, and often seemed on the point of succumbing to their attacks. Musulman Arabs and Meantime it had to resist still more terrible foes advanc- against the ing from the south. The first wave of Arab invasion tore away Syria and Egypt, rolled over Asia Minor, and carried Turks. a Musulman host to the shores of the Bosphorus (A.D. 673). After many long and fierce struggles the whole of Asia Minor was recovered, and in the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century even Northern Syria (except Tyre and Damascus) and Armenia were reconquered by John Tzimiskes and Basil II. But in the middle of the eleventh the rise of the Seljukian Turks drove back the Romans from Syria, and by degrees forced them out of the eastern and central parts of Asia Minor. Armenia Battle of was lost for ever, and in the thirteenth century only a Manzikert, strip of country along the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora remained to Christianity. The ruin of Central and Southern Asia Minor, in earlier ages one of the most flourishing and populous regions of the world, dates from A.D. 1071. |