Constantine I
Emperor Maurice Tiberius
The Attarouthi Treasure
David and Goliath |
|
The Early Byzantine Period:
The 'First Golden Age' of Byzantium (324730)
The Christianized eastern part of the Roman Empire, or Byzantium, as it came to be called, continued for another 1100 years. A vital figure in its earliest years was the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine the Great (274[?]337), who established toleration for Christianity throughout the Roman Empire through the Edict of Milan in 313. Constantine legally transferred his capital from Rome to Constantinople, on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium.
So it was that the empire continued to be ruled by Roman law and political institutions, with the elite communicating officially in Latin. Yet the population, now Christian, also spoke Greek. In school students studied the ancient Greek classics of literature, philosophy, science, medicine, art, and rhetoric. The church, which developed its own literature and philosophy, nonetheless looked favorably upon the intellectual tradition of classical scholarship. An incalculable benefit of this system was that often only that part of classical Greek literature preserved in Byzantine schoolbooks has survived into modern times.
One of the advantages of Constantine's new capital was that it was on an easily fortified peninsula; as it was closer to the dangerous frontiers of the empire than Rome, imperial armies could respond more rapidly to crises. The strategic location of the city enabled merchants there to grow rich through their control over the trade routes between Europe and the East and the shipping lanes connecting the Black and Mediterranean Seas. Constantine lavished on his new capital a university, two theaters, eight public and fifty-three private baths, fifty-two covered walkways, four law courts, fourteen churches, and fourteen palaces. He imported staggering quantities of the best Greco-Roman art from throughout the empire. This infusion helped the art of the Early Byzantine period to remain close to its Greco-Roman heritage in its naturalism and classical subject matter.
At the Eastern Empire's greatest expanse during the sixth century, the emperor Justinian (483565) controlled most of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. He was an ambitious builder, his greatest monument being the magnificent domed church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which was constructed in just five years (53237).
In the seventh century the empire lost Syria, the Holy Land, Egypt, and North Africa to invading Islamic armies. For a time the Muslims merely tapped the economy of these regions, leaving intact many of the Byzantine institutions they had overrun. The Early Byzantine period ended with the onset of the Iconoclastic controversy, the violent debate over devotional religious images called icons that devasted much of the empire for over a hundred years.
Next Page
|
