In Praise of Byzantium – Why should we remember Byzantium?
by Richard Blake
(The Baltic Review, 9th August 2014)
Based in Constantinople (modern Istanbul), it lasted until 1453. At times, it was the richest and most powerful state in the known world. Today, it is almost forgotten. Its main presence in the English language is as a word meaning complex bureaucracy. What is it so forgotten? Why should it be remembered?
Let’s take the first question. Looking at our own family history, we tend to pay more attention to our grandparents than our cousins. Whatever they did, we have a duty to think well of our grandparents. We often forget our cousins. So far as they are rivals, we may come to despise or hate them. So it has been with Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire. The Barbarians who crossed the Rhine and North Sea in the fifth century are our parents. They founded a new civilisation from which ours is, in terms of blood and culture, the development. Their history is our history. The Greeks and Romans are our grandparents. In the strict sense, our parents were interlopers who dispossessed them. But the classical and Christian influence has been so pervasive that we even look at our early history through their eyes. The Jews also we shoehorn into the family tree. For all they still may find it embarrassing, they gave us the Christian Faith. We have no choice but to know about them down to the burning of the Temple in 70AD. The Egyptians have little to do with us. But we study them because their arts impose on our senses, and because they have been safely irrelevant for a very long time.
Byzantium is different. Though part of the family tree, it is outside the direct line of succession. In our civilisation, the average educated person studies the Greeks till they were conquered by the Romans, and the Romans till the last Western Emperor was deposed in 476AD. After that, we switch to the Germanic kingdoms, with increasing emphasis on the particular kingdom that evolved into our own nation. The continuing Empire, ruled from Constantinople, has no place in this scheme. Educated people know it existed. It must be taken into account in histories of the Crusades. But the record of so many dynasties is passed over in a blur. Its cultural and theological concerns have no place in our thought. We may thank it for preserving and handing on virtually the whole body of Classical Greek literature that survives. But its history is not our history. It seems, in itself, to tell us nothing about ourselves.
Indeed, where not overlooked, the Byzantines have been actively disliked. Our ancestors feared the Eastern Empire. They resented its contempt for their barbarism and poverty, and its ruthless meddling in their affairs. They hated it for its heretical and semi-heretical views about the Liturgy or the Nature of Christ. They were pleased enough to rip the Empire apart in 1204, and lifted barely a finger to save it from the Turks in 1453. After a spasm of interest in the seventeenth century, the balance of scholarly opinion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was to despise it for its conservatism and superstition, and for its alleged falling away from the Classical ideals – and for its ultimate failure to survive. If scholarly opinion since then has become less negative, this has not had any wider cultural effect.
Now to the second question: Why should we remember Byzantium? Well, everyone admires the Greeks and the Roman Empires. But, once your eyes adjust, and you look below the glittering surface, you see that it wasn’t a time any reasonable person would choose to be alive. The Greeks were a collection of ethnocentric tribes who fought and killed each other till they nearly died out. The Roman Empire was held together by a vampire bureaucracy directed more often than in any European state since then by idiots or lunatics. Life was jolly enough for the privileged two or three per cent. But everything they had was got from the enslavement or fiscal exploitation of everyone else.
Yet, while the Roman State grew steadily worse until the collapse of its Western half, the Eastern half that remained went into reverse. The more Byzantine the Eastern Roman Empire became, the less awful it was for ordinary people. This is why it lasted another thousand years. The consensus of educated opinion used to be that it survived by accident. Even without looking at the evidence, this doesn’t seem likely. In fact, during the seventh century, the Empire faced three challenges. First, there was the combined assault of the Persians from the east and the Avars and Slavs from the north. Though the Balkans and much of the East were temporarily lost, the Persians were annihilated. Then a few years after the victory celebrations in Jerusalem, Islam burst into the world. Syria and Egypt were overrun at once. North Africa followed. But the Home Provinces – these being roughly the territory of modern Turkey – held firm. The Arabs could sometimes invade, and occasionally devastate. They couldn’t conquer.
One of the few certain lessons that History teaches is that, when it goes on the warpath, you don’t face down Islam by accident. More often than not, you don’t face it down at all. In the 630s, the Arabs took what remained of the Persian Empire in a single campaign. Despite immensely long chains of supply and command, they took Spain within a dozen years. Yet, repeatedly and with their entire force, they beat against the Home Provinces of the Byzantine Empire. Each time, they were thrown back with catastrophic losses. The Byzantines never lost overall control of the sea. Eventually, they hit back, retaking large parts of Syria. More than once, the Caliphs were forced to pay tribute. You don’t manage this by accident.
The Byzantine historians themselves are disappointingly vague about the seventh and eight centuries. Our only evidence for what happened comes from the description of established facts in the tenth century. As early as the seventh century, though, the Byzantine State pulled off the miracle of reforming itself internally while fighting a war of survival on every frontier. Large parts of the bureaucracy were scrapped. Taxes were cut. The silver coinage was stabilised. Above all, the great senatorial estates of the Later Roman Empire were broken up. Land was given to the peasants in return for military service. In the West, the Goths and Franks and Lombards had moved among populations of disarmed tax-slaves. Not surprisingly, no one raised a hand against them. Time and again, the Arabs smashed against a wall of armed freeholders. A few generations after losing Syria and Egypt, the Byzantine Empire was the richest and most powerful state in the known world.
This is an inspiring story – as inspiring as the resistance put up by the Greek city states a thousand years before to Darius and Xerxes. If the Turks, who destroyed it in 1453, can admire the Byzantine Empire, and even feel proud of it, why shouldn’t the rest of humanity admire it?
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Brilliant post. Thank you. High on my tick list is to visit Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
Thanks
Fine reading for a quiet Sunday afternoon.
The Byzantines were more cultured and educated than most of the Western lords of the same period – no doubt about it.
This did not mean they were less violent and cruel – as with the treacherous slaughter of thousands of Westerners on the streets of Constantinople and other cities a few years before the Forth Crusade (which the chief executive of Venice turned into a war of savage revenge against the Byzantines – personally leading the attack, although old and blind, banner in hand – shaming the Western warriors to follow him or see him cut down alone), but they were different………
The idea of bathing was not unknown in the West – but special Roman baths (what we now call “Turkish Baths” – for the Turks took over the Byzantine practice) was alien (and had been since the collapse of Roman civilization (see Bryan Ward-Perkins little book – “The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation”).
Western lords exercised – but only with weapons and other such (normally several hours a day – something historically novelists of the Middle Ages tend to leave out). The Greek idea of the “gym” was almost known.
A Byzantine would recognise a modern “gym” for what it is – a Western person of the same peroid would be baffled by such a place (perhaps assuming that the place was some sadistic torture chamber….).
However……
The Byzantines also inherited the Roman Imperial idea that the Emperor was above the law (although clothed in complex legal philosophical language – that is the bald truth of it).
A Western ruler might (and some did) commit savage crimes – but they were crimes. A Byzantine ruler doing the same terrible things was NOT committing crimes (at least in the eyes of Roman-Byzantine philosophical jurisprudence).
“What does this matter if Western and Eastern rulers were both committing terrible acts” – it does matter (it matters a lot). And the Islamic Empires followed the Byzantine way in this respect (accept that they were more blatant about it). There was no “Charles the Bald moment” in the Byzantine Empire – no formal acceptance (even one inspired by weakness – after all Charles the Bald was in a desperate position) that the ruler was BELOW the natural law (that his power was formally limited, concerning land holding and sorts of other things).
Also the society was different.
The West might have peasant revolts – but the idea of a common soldier (not a feudal land holder) becoming the ruler would have been impossible. In the Byzantine Empire “social revolution” (military coups and urban mob revolutions) were only too possible.
Westerners tended to follow their lords – to the death. “Stronger does heart grow as hope fades” is not a sentiment one would expect from the clever Byzantines, but it not lack of intelligence it is a cultural difference (one remarked upon by the, often critical of Franks and so on, Emperor Maurice in the “Strategikon” – where the mad Westerners, knowing it does not make sense, we fight on to recover bodies or to avenge dead lords).
It is not clever to fight on when one’s lord’s dead body is lying broken on the ground. How can he punish those who run away? How can he reward those who do not? But there are other things that cleverness – as the Emperor Maurice learned when his own soldiers betrayed him (murdering him and his family – at the command of a low born pretender).
For a thousand years or so Western societies tended to be vertical – with people looking up for leadership to the “natural leaders of society” as long as these leaders operated (or at least pretended to operate – YES it as often an pretence, but the need to pretend to be honourable and just is itself imporant) within the law (the natural law – the natural justice of reason, rather than any earthly ruler).
It is fundamentally different for a Caliph or Sultan (their “law of God” is the WILL of God, not a matter of REASON) and it was different to or a Roman Emperor – Roman legal scholars accepted the existence of natural justice (natural law), but held it was trumped by the will of the Emperor. For a Westerner (for a thousand years or so) it was, at least in theory, exactly the OPPOSITE.
For all the savage crimes of Westerners – in theory a single Westerner was supposed to stand against the entire world (including their own rulers) to defend a single helpless innocent person. “In THEORY Paul” – sometimes “theory” became a matter of life and death. Like some Hapsburg or Wittelsbach (once the ruling family of Bavaria) during the Third Reich (with its “my honour is loyalty” – proving that the National Socialists understood neither concept, with loyalty depending on honourable conduct). “But you do not even life Jews – and what you are doing is hopeless anyway” – “Both of those points are irrelevant”.
As for “follow me” rather than “forward” (the clever person orders “forward” – the person who says “follow me”, may be just as intelligent but they are not “clever”).
YES it can be absurd – such as General P. (the brother in law of the Duke of Wellington) leading in his men into the American artillery fire at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. He was killed, and his men (unwilling to leave his broken body) were shot to pieces.
Or the British practice in the First World War of officers leading attacks (with the Germans it was already more “forward” than “follow me”) which led to the absurdly high casualty rate among British officers (although some very senior officers, such as General Haig, never seemed to be in such situations – for good scientific reasons no doubt).
On the second day of the Battle of Loos (1915) it reached of absurdity – with ten thousand men (two full divisions) led in a hopeless attack (the order came from Haig – of course) against vast German defences.
The officers died first (they were in front – on horseback) so there was no one to order a retreat – so the men (being that baffling sort of Westerner) continued to attack (walking up and down along side the walls of barbed wire and earth as the German machine gunned them) till more than eight thousand of the ten thousand were dead or wounded (there seem to have been no German casualties at all).
Rather like Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s son – who let the Vikings cross the causeway (even though they outnumbered him) because it would have been dishonourable to refuse their polite request to do so. And then many of his men refused to leave his dead body – thus being killed with him.
Tolkien’s account of the events makes clear the strange (at least strange to the clever) situation that many of his men loved him, even though they understood he was a total idiot who had doomed them to death and their land to ruin (a Byzantine would shake his head in bafflement). Or the old British General in the Boar War who had managed (by his own stupidity) to get his men in a position where they were pinned down from fire on three sides. who went about, the bullets flying around him, asking his men (who were desperately clinging to what cover they could find) saying (with formal politeness) “if your General gives you a lead – will you follow him?” (and many left cover and did so……).
Not really a Byzantine mindset – at least I do not think so.
Or the Ulster Division on the Somme in 1916 who (having captured the German positions they were asked to, but being ordered to retreat due to the failure of the rest of the British attack – only to be shot to pieces on their way back to the British lines) – finding the broken body of John Redmond’s son on the battlefield.
He was dead (beyond aid) and his father was an enemy of theirs back in Ireland anyway – yet his body must be honourably returned to the lines (regardless of their own casualties doing it).
But it can also lead to victory unlooked for………
For example when the King of Poland on seeing the “impossible” odds in front of him (when he viewed the vast Ottoman army besieging Vienna in 1683) he did ride away.
On the contrary he charged – personally, shaming his whole army into following him (or see him cut down alone). The fact that he was charging into the REAR of the vast Ottoman army does not make this clever (although it may make it intelligent) – as a single bullet, arrow or blade could still have killed him.
The King has armed his infantry with battle axes (rather than pikes – they could move faster with axes) – so we can say “Axes of the Poles! The Poles are upon you!” (I wonder if Tolkien was inspired by this – although the language he actually created for the Dwarves was based upon Hebrew).
For more than a thousand years the West faced Islamic attack (and the Byzantine Empire was no shield to for large areas of the West – although it was for other areas) and it survived (against all odds) and eventually turned the tables against seemingly unlimited hordes. That what is left of the West may be destroyed soon does not alter this achievement – just as honourable deeds are not devalued by no one being left alive to sing of them.
Culture is good, and cleverness has its uses……
But sometimes more than that is needed.
And nor is there any necessary contradiction between this thing and intelligence (although there may be with cleverness).
Constantine XI (and some other Byzantines) showed it – but, in the end, it is not really compatible with a society where the ruler is above the law (the real law – which every person may find the basic principles of, indeed, deep down, already knows them).
If anyone thinks I have been unfair to the Romans (and, in part, perhaps I have been) there is much of this in (for example) the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius – although there it is honour without real hope (in this world or any other), a quiet but defiant unveiling of the banner of good in a universe that Marcus Aurelius viewed (or at least I believe he viewed it) as without hope, utterly cold and unfeeling (with decay and death being the final reality).
Very interesting, Paul.
Paul, your comments are nearly always apposite and informative. But they are also almost always rather long. The one above was 1,725 words (MS word says so). That’s not to say it wasn’t good and interesting, which it is.
Some of us haven’t got all the time in the world (as per the song, the one I’m sure we all know, James Bond and all that.) Could you poss break them up a little sometimes into “soundbites”? Or just write differently? I don’t mean this as a criticism – more like an observation.
My apologies David.
As the saying goes – “it is less difficult to write long than to write short”, I was tired.
Where the state is all-in-all (where the great men have no troops of their own), everything depends on the Emperor – if he is no good, all is lost. And if the Imperial Army is defeated, there is naught else.
When the Imperial Army was defeated in 1071 the Empire was crippled and almost destroyed (and would have been destroyed had it not been for First Crusade). When the Imperial army was defeated in 1176 the Empire was broken (utterly – by the way the Crusader States were cut off by the defeat of the Byzantines, thus making their own defeat likely).
Perhaps the last chance for the Byzantine Empire (as well as the Crusader States) ended in 1190 – when Frederick the First (German “Emperor” in a very different sense from a Byzantine Emperor) was drowned. The French (Philip) and English (Richard “The Lionheart”) parts of the Third Crusade fell into mutual distrust.
As for free peasants – a good idea. Their being tied to the soil by Diocletian (no friend of the rich) to make sure they paid taxes, was evil. But free peasants (such as the Croats who fought the Ottomans for the Hapsburg cause for centuries) need the back up of landed Marcher Lords (without them the peasants will eventually fail).
Bazil “the Bulgar Basher” may have been the greatest military Emperor the Eastern Empire ever had. but his undermining of the Byzantine version of Marcher Lords was a fatal long term error. The rich continued to exist – but they were a court rich. alienated from landed estates (knowledge of the land – and of military matters).
A bit like the transformation of the French aristocracy by Richelieu under Louis XIII and even more by Louis XIV. In theory the French aristocracy was exactly the same after Louis XIV as they had always been – in reality they had become worthless (creatures of wig and powder living in the King’s palace – far from their own estates) – even their swords became toys.
None of the above should be read to mean that “Themes” (Greek – Thema, what came to mean land administered by a military governor and inhabited by people who held land in return for military service rather than paying taxes) were a bad idea.
On the contrary they were vital – and big estates were not broken up the (the old economy had already been destroyed by the Civil Wars, Persian Invasions, and then the Islamic calamity – worse than any of the other events, and cutting the Empire fro Egypt and so on, permanently).
However, the military governors should have been the leading landowners (some were – but later Emperors feared that because of revolts, giving power to civilian officials instead) and the Themes should not have been broken up into smaller and smaller units (making them ineffective against Islamic attack). And commuting military service for taxation (to pay for a bigger regular army) was also a long term mistake.
A realm needs its “Ned Starks” (to put things in “Games of Thrones” terms). Great land holders who live on their estates (far from the capital), know the land (so no marching into ambushes as the Byzantine regular army tended to – led by people from the Persian style Byzantine court, another innovation of Diocletian), know the people (speak their language – know, and lead, their customs) and whose principle tool is a the sword (a real one – not a court toy) not the pen.
Even if the “Ned Stark” can be powerful enough to threaten the ruler himself…….
To mitigate this the danger there is the stress on hereditary right, and on honourable conduct – which is fine, unless the ruler violates these things (then he is in trouble).
Oh well I am asking for the Byzantines to be totally like “Feudal” Westerners – and then they would not have been Byzantines (they would just have been Westerners who knew Greek – like Roger Bacon). So I am baying for the Moon.
As for a recent example of land being held for military service…..
Canada in the run up to the war of 1812.
The Crown offered a of cheap land in return for oaths of loyalty – land much cheaper than in the United States and with lower taxes (although horror-of-horrors no “right to vote” for a national government).
Many Americans took up the offer – not “old Americans” (Empire Loyalists) but recent Americans born in the Republic.
It was feared that these would be a security risk in time of war – but it proved otherwise.
The Americans who left America and swore blood loyalty to the British Crown proved true to their oath – fighting their own relatives (and former countrymen) with savage ferocity in the war of 1812 . The Americans feared the Indians in the employ of the British Crown (a fear well exploited by the Guernseyman General Block) – it is their own former countrymen they should have feared.
People who talk about the Scots-Irish (Ulster) cultural “meme” of the love of fighting and killing would not find me eager to argue against them – and it is not entirely a bad thing anyway.
After all the English are a bit too peaceful – swallowing insult after insult, having their freedoms taken away a bit at a time.
There is something to be said for (as well as against) a cultural meme that “feels an insult like a wound” and responds by giving wounds.
Paul, your postings throughout this discussion are breathtaking reading. And educational on top of that.
I have nothing to add except to say, Thank you.
Julie.
If anyone wants to know what happened to France (and to Rome – and the new Rome that was the Byzantine Empire) one indication would be the fate of a certain association of knights.
They were founded with the vow that no King of France would be harmed or taken captive till the blue sashes they wore were saturated in their own blood. And this vow was meant – by generation after generation.
But by the late 18th century they had become dining club (translate “Sacred Blue” into modern French).
This is the sort of thing that made civilised people (such as David Hume) smile…….
And makes me weep – or smash my fist against the wall (stupidly damaging my wrist again).
That should be “translate “Cordon Blue” into modern French” – I just tend to tend to think of the Cordon Blue as the Sacred Blue. It is like my old habit of confusing the Strauss composers (the two J.s and one R.).
Could Byzantium have had a bodyguard of leading landholding knights for centuries – after the manner of the blue cordon?
I do not think so – which is what is wrong with Byzantium. They (or too many of them – although not all of them) were too clever for honour. Too “into” playing complex games, rather than saying what they meant and be prepared to die for it.