Hellenism entered
its
second phase when Alexander of Macedon expanded the Greek world into
the east, and on its third with the foundation of Constantine by the
waters where Asia and Europe meet.
its
second phase when Alexander of Macedon expanded the Greek world into
the east, and on its third with the foundation of Constantine by the
waters where Asia and Europe meet.
Cambridge Medieval History - v4 - Eastern Roman Empire
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## p. i (#7) ################################################
THE
CAMBRIDGE
MEDIEVAL HISTORY
VOLUME IV
HT
## p. ii (#8) ###############################################
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN VRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD
TORONTO
## p. iii (#9) ##############################################
THE
CAMBRIDGE
MEDIEVAL HISTORY
PLANNED BY
J. B. BURY, M. A. , F. B. A.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY
EDITED BY
J. R. TANNER, LITT. D.
C. W. PREVITÉ-ORTON, M. A.
Z. N. BROOKE, M. A.
VOLUME IV
THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE
(717—1453)
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1923
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
## p. iv (#10) ##############################################
tis
D117
CIT
1911aa
1. 4
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
## p. v (#11) ###############################################
PREFACE.
IT
Twill be seen from the title-page that the Cambridge Medieval History
has again suffered the loss of one of its Editors by the resignation
of Professor Whitney, to whom the first three volumes owed so much.
Volume IV, however, a good part of which was in type before the War,
stands indebted to him nearly as much as its predecessors have done, and
much of the revision in proof has benefited by his co-operation. Mr Z. N.
Brooke has been appointed by the Syndics of the University Press to
succeed him.
Our chief thanks are also due to Professor Bury, without whose aid
our task in a volume treating of Byzantine history could hardly have been
accomplished. He has read most of the chapters in proof, and has made
a number of invaluable suggestions upon them. Besides contributing
a summary to Chapter V, he has written for us the Introduction to the
volume, in which he explains its general plan and defines the place of
Byzantium in universal history.
A volume dealing with subjects which lie apart from the more frequented
paths of medieval studies has laid the Editors under many obligations to
specialists. Professor A. A. Bevan has given the kindest help in the
transliteration of Arabic, and Professor E. G. Browne in that of Turkish
names, while Dr E. H. Minns has revised the forms of names in Slavonic
languages; we owe much to their criticism and advice.
The long delays which the War imposed on Volume III have reacted
also on Volume IV, and we regret that Sir Edwin Pears did not live to
see his chapter in proof, nor M. Ferdinand Chalandon more than the first
proofs of his chapters; but we have been fortunate in the second revision
of M. Chalandon's proofs by Madame Chalandon.
The scope and proportion of the volume have occasionally necessitated
the abbreviation of a chapter; and here we owe a special debt to Professor
Macler, who has allowed us to reshape his exhaustive contribution on
Armenia in accordance with the limitations on our space, "nd to
Mrs E. A. Benians, who undertook the task of compression, enab? g us to
give to a chapter abbreviated from the French the characteris ues of an
original composition in English.
Our thanks are also due to Mr E. W. Brooks for the Bibliography of
## p. vi (#12) ##############################################
vi
Preface
Chapter V(B), since it has not been possible to communicate with the
author, Professor A. A. Vasil'ev; to Dr Paul Wittek for the revision of
the oriental portion of the Bibliography of Chapter XXI; to Mrs
Goulding Brown for her care and accuracy in compiling the Index; to
Miss A. Greenwood for time and labour devoted to the difficult task
of preparing the maps; and to Mr C. C. Scott, Sub-Librarian of
St John's College, for invaluable help in the peculiarly exacting task of
preparing for the press Bibliographies which include works in some twenty
languages. To the officials of the University Press we also owe many
thanks, and especially to the late Mr J. B. Peace, who with his expert
knowledge helped us in the technical problems of map-making.
A word must once more be said in conclusion on the vexed and thorny
question of the forms of proper names. Byzantine names as a rule have
been represented by their Latinised forms, saving in the first place such
as are distinctly sobriquets, and in the second place the little-known
names of medieval Greece, which are given in their original Greek spelling.
These last in Chapters XV to XVIII, by request of the author Dr Miller,
have been provided with their Greek accents as an aid to pronunciation.
Arabic, Persian, and Slavonic names, unless a form has become familiar
in English literature, have been transcribed in accordance with the systems
approved by the British Academy.
J. R. T.
C. W. P. -O.
Z. N. B.
July, 1923.
## p. vii (#13) #############################################
INTRODUCTION.
The present volume carries on the fortunes of a portion of Europe
to the end of the Middle Ages. This exception to the general chrono-
logical plan of the work seemed both convenient and desirable. The orbit
of Byzantium, the history of the peoples and states which moved within
that orbit and always looked to it as the central body, giver of light and
heat, did indeed at some points touch or traverse the orbits of western
European states, but the development of these on the whole was not
deeply affected or sensibly perturbed by what happened east of Italy or
south of the Danube, and it was only in the time of the Crusades that
some of their rulers came into close contact with the Eastern Empire or
that it counted to any considerable extent in their policies. England, the
remotest state of the West, was a legendary country to the people of Con-
stantinople, and that imperial capital was no more than a dream-name
of wealth and splendour to Englishmen, except to the few adventurers
who travelled thither to make their fortunes in the Varangian guards. It
is thus possible to follow the history of the Eastern Roman Empire from
the eighth century to its fall, along with those of its neighbours and
clients, independently of the rest of Europe, and this is obviously more
satisfactory than to interpolate in the main history of Western Europe
chapters having no connexion with those which precede and follow.
Besides being convenient, this plan is desirable. For it enables us to
emphasise the capital fact that throughout the Middle Ages the same
Empire which was founded by Augustus continued to exist and function
and occupy even in its final weakness a unique position in Europe-a fact
which would otherwise be dissipated, as it were, and obscured amid the
records of another system of states with which it was not in close or
constant contact. It was one of Gibbon's services to history that the title
of his book asserted clearly and unambiguously this continuity.
We have, however, tampered with the correct name, which is simply
Roman Empire, by adding Eastern, a qualification which although it has
no official basis is justifiable as a convenient mark of distinction from the
Empire which Charlemagne founded and which lasted till the beginning
of the nineteenth century. This Western Empire had no good claim to
the name of Roman. Charlemagne and those who followed him were not
M
## p. viii (#14) ############################################
viii
Introduction
legitimate successors of Augustus, Constantine, Justinian, and the
Isaurians, and this was tacitly acknowledged in their endeavours to obtain
recognition of the imperial title they assumed from the sovrans of Con-
stantinople whose legitimacy was unquestionable.
Much as the Empire changed after the age of Justinian, as its popu-
lation became more and more predominantly Greek in speech, its descent
from Rome was always unmistakably preserved in the designation of its
subjects as Romans (Pwuaîoi). Its eastern neighbours knew it as Rūm.
Till the very end the names of most of the titles of its ministers, officials,
and institutions were either Latin or the Greek translations of Latin terms
that had become current in the earliest days of the Empire? . Words of
Latin derivation form a large class in medieval Greek. The modern Greek
language was commonly called Romaic till the middle of the nineteenth
century. It is only quite recently that Roumelia has been falling out of
use to designate territories in the Balkan peninsula. Contrast with the
persistence of the Roman name in the East the fact that the subjects of
the Western Empire were never called Romans and indeed had no common
name as a whole; the only “Romans” among them were the inhabitants
of the city of Rome. There is indeed one district in Italy whose name still
commemorates the Roman Empire-Romagna; but this exception only
reinforces the contrast. For the district corresponds to the Exarchate of
Ravenna, and was called Romania by its Lombard neighbours because
it belonged to the Roman Emperor of Constantinople. It was at the
New Rome, not at the Old, that the political tradition of the Empire
was preserved. It is worth remembering too that the greatest public
buildings of Constantinople were originally built, however they may have
been afterwards changed or extended—the Hippodrome, the Great Palace,
the Senatehouses, the churches of St Sophia and the Holy Apostles,
by Emperors of Latin speech, Severus, Constantine, Justinian.
On the other hand, the civilisation of the later Roman Empire was
the continuation of that of ancient Greece. Hellenism entered
its
second phase when Alexander of Macedon expanded the Greek world into
the east, and on its third with the foundation of Constantine by the
waters where Asia and Europe meet. Christianity, with its dogmatic
theology and its monasticism, gave to this third phase its distinctive
character and flavour, and Byzantine civilisation, as we have learned to
upon
1 Examples: (1) ασηκρήτις (α secretis), δούξ, κόμης, μάγιστρος, πατρίκιος, δομέστικος,
πραιπόσιτος, πραίτωρ, κουαίστωρ, κουράτωρ, ιδίκτον, πάκτον, κάστρον, φοσσάτον, παλά-
τιον, βήλον (velum); άπληκεύειν = (castra) applicare, πραιδεύειν, δηριγεύειν, μούλτος
=(tu)multus; (2) (ancient equivalents of Latin terms) Baoleús, avrokpárop (imperator),
cúykántos (senatus), Ümatos (consul), avdútatos (proconsul), üstapxos (praefectus),
8pópos (cursus publicus).
## p. ix (#15) ##############################################
Introduction
ix
call it, is an appropriate and happy name. Its features are very fully
delineated in this volume by Professor Diehl (chapter xxiv). The con-
tinuity which links the fifteenth century A. D. with the fifth B. c. is notably
expressed in the long series of Greek historians, who maintained, it may
be said, a continuous tradition of historiography. From Critobulus, the
imitator of Thucydides, and Chalcocondyles, who told the story of the
last days of the Empire, we can go back, in a line broken only by a dark
interval in the seventh and eighth centuries, to the first great masters,
Thucydides and Herodotus.
The development of “Byzantinism” really began in the fourth century.
The historian Finlay put the question in a rather awkward way by asking,
When did the Roman Empire change into the Byzantine? The answer is
that it did not change into any other Empire than itself, but that some
of the characteristic features of Byzantinism began to appear immediately
after Constantinople was founded. There is, however, a real truth in
Finlay's own answer to his question. He drew the dividing line at the
accession of Leo the Isaurian, at the beginning of the eighth century.
And, in fact, Leo's reign marked the consummation of a rapid change
which had been going on during the past hundred years. Rapid: for
I believe anyone who has studied the history of those centuries will agree
that in the age of the Isaurians we feel much further away from the age
of Justinian than we feel in the age of Justinian from the age of Theodosius
the Great. Finlay's date has been taken as the starting point of this
volume; it marks, so far as a date can, the transition to a new era.
The chief function which as a political power the Eastern Empire
performed throughout the Middle Ages was to act as a bulwark for
Europe, and for that civilisation which Greece had created and Rome had
inherited and diffused, against Asiatic aggression. Since the rise of the
Sasanid power in the third century, Asia had been attempting, with
varying success, to resume the rôle which it had played under the
Achaemenids. The arms of Alexander had delivered for hundreds of years
the Eastern coasts and waters of the Mediterranean from all danger from
an Asiatic power. The Sasanids finally succeeded in reaching the Medi-
terranean shores and the Bosphorus. The rôles of Europe and Asia were
again reversed, and it was now for Byzantium to play on a larger stage
part formerly played by Athens and Sparta in a struggle for life and
death. Heraclius proved himself not only a Themistocles but in some
measure an Alexander. He not only checked the victorious advance of
he completely destroyed the power of the Great King and made
him his vassal. But within ten years the rôles were reversed once more in
that amazing transformation scene in which an obscure Asiatic people
the
the enemy;
## p. x (#16) ###############################################
X
Introduction
which had always seemed destined to play a minor part became suddenly
one of the strongest powers in the world. Constantinople had again to
fight for her life, and the danger was imminent and the strain unrelaxed
for eighty years. Though the Empire did not succeed in barring the road
to Spain and Sicily, its rulers held the gates of Europe at the Propontis
and made it impossible for them to sweep over Europe as they had swept
over Syria and Egypt. Centuries passed, and the Comnenians guarded
Europe from the Seljūqs. The Ottomans were the latest bearers of the
Asiatic menace. If the Eastern Empire had not been mortally wounded and
reduced to the dimensions of a petty state by the greed and brutality of
the Western brigands who called themselves Crusaders, it is possible that
the Turks might never have gained a footing in Europe. Even as it was,
the impetus of their first victorious advance was broken by the tenacity
of the Palaeologi-assisted it is true by the arms of Tīmūr. They had
reached the Danube sixty years before Constantinople fell. When this at
length happened, the first force and fury of their attack had been spent,
and it is perhaps due to this delay that the Danube and the Carpathians
were to mark the limit of Asiatic rule in Europe and that St Peter's was
not to suffer the fate of St Sophia. Even in the last hours of its life, the
Empire was still true to its traditional rôle of bulwark of Europe.
As a civilised state, we may say that the Eastern Empire performed
three principal functions. As in its early years the Roman Empire laid the
foundations of civilisation in the West and educated Celtic and German
peoples, so in its later period it educated the Slavs of eastern Europe.
Russia, Bulgaria, and Serbia owed it everything and bore its stamp.
Secondly, it exercised a silent but constant and considerable influence on
western Europe by sending its own manufactures and the products
of the East to Italy, France, and Germany. Many examples of its
embroidered textile fabrics and its jewellery have been preserved in the
West. In the third place, it guarded safely the heritage of classical Greek
literature which has had on the modern world a penetrating influence
difficult to estimate. That we owe our possession of the masterpieces of
Hellenic thought and imagination to the Byzantines everyone knows, but
everyone does not remember that those books would not have travelled
to Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, because they would not
have existed, if the Greek classics had not been read habitually by the
educated subjects of the Eastern Empire and therefore continued to be
copied.
Here we touch on a most fundamental contrast between the Eastern
Empire and the western European states of the Middle Ages. The well-to-
do classes in the West were as a rule illiterate, with the exception of ecclesi-
astics; among the well-to-do classes in the Byzantine world education
## p. xi (#17) ##############################################
Introduction
xi
was the rule, and education meant not merely reading, writing, and arith-
metic, but the study of ancient Greek grammar and the reading of classical
authors. The old traditions of Greek education had never died out. In
court circles at Constantinople everyone who was not an utter parvenu
would recognise and understand a quotation from Homer. In consequence
of this difference, the intellectual standards in the West where book-
learning was reserved for a particular class, and in the East where every
boy and girl whose parents could afford to pay was educated, were entirely
different. The advantages of science and training and system were under-
stood in Byzantine society.
The appreciation of method and system which the Byzantines inherited
both from the Greeks and from the Romans is conspicuously shewn
in their military establishment and their conduct of war. Here their
intellectuality stands out in vivid contrast with the rude dullness displayed
in the modes of warfare practised in the West. Tactics were carefully
studied, and the treatises on war which the officers used were kept up to
date. The tacticians apprehended that it was stupid to employ uniform
methods in campaigns against different foes. They observed carefully the
military habits of the various peoples with whom they had to fight-
Saracens, Lombards, Franks, Slavs, Hungarians—and thought out different
rules for dealing with each. The soldiers were most carefully and efficiently
drilled.
Hellenism entered
its
second phase when Alexander of Macedon expanded the Greek world into
the east, and on its third with the foundation of Constantine by the
waters where Asia and Europe meet. Christianity, with its dogmatic
theology and its monasticism, gave to this third phase its distinctive
character and flavour, and Byzantine civilisation, as we have learned to
upon
1 Examples: (1) ασηκρήτις (α secretis), δούξ, κόμης, μάγιστρος, πατρίκιος, δομέστικος,
πραιπόσιτος, πραίτωρ, κουαίστωρ, κουράτωρ, ιδίκτον, πάκτον, κάστρον, φοσσάτον, παλά-
τιον, βήλον (velum); άπληκεύειν = (castra) applicare, πραιδεύειν, δηριγεύειν, μούλτος
=(tu)multus; (2) (ancient equivalents of Latin terms) Baoleús, avrokpárop (imperator),
cúykántos (senatus), Ümatos (consul), avdútatos (proconsul), üstapxos (praefectus),
8pópos (cursus publicus).
## p. ix (#15) ##############################################
Introduction
ix
call it, is an appropriate and happy name. Its features are very fully
delineated in this volume by Professor Diehl (chapter xxiv). The con-
tinuity which links the fifteenth century A. D. with the fifth B. c. is notably
expressed in the long series of Greek historians, who maintained, it may
be said, a continuous tradition of historiography. From Critobulus, the
imitator of Thucydides, and Chalcocondyles, who told the story of the
last days of the Empire, we can go back, in a line broken only by a dark
interval in the seventh and eighth centuries, to the first great masters,
Thucydides and Herodotus.
The development of “Byzantinism” really began in the fourth century.
The historian Finlay put the question in a rather awkward way by asking,
When did the Roman Empire change into the Byzantine? The answer is
that it did not change into any other Empire than itself, but that some
of the characteristic features of Byzantinism began to appear immediately
after Constantinople was founded. There is, however, a real truth in
Finlay's own answer to his question. He drew the dividing line at the
accession of Leo the Isaurian, at the beginning of the eighth century.
And, in fact, Leo's reign marked the consummation of a rapid change
which had been going on during the past hundred years. Rapid: for
I believe anyone who has studied the history of those centuries will agree
that in the age of the Isaurians we feel much further away from the age
of Justinian than we feel in the age of Justinian from the age of Theodosius
the Great. Finlay's date has been taken as the starting point of this
volume; it marks, so far as a date can, the transition to a new era.
The chief function which as a political power the Eastern Empire
performed throughout the Middle Ages was to act as a bulwark for
Europe, and for that civilisation which Greece had created and Rome had
inherited and diffused, against Asiatic aggression. Since the rise of the
Sasanid power in the third century, Asia had been attempting, with
varying success, to resume the rôle which it had played under the
Achaemenids. The arms of Alexander had delivered for hundreds of years
the Eastern coasts and waters of the Mediterranean from all danger from
an Asiatic power. The Sasanids finally succeeded in reaching the Medi-
terranean shores and the Bosphorus. The rôles of Europe and Asia were
again reversed, and it was now for Byzantium to play on a larger stage
part formerly played by Athens and Sparta in a struggle for life and
death. Heraclius proved himself not only a Themistocles but in some
measure an Alexander. He not only checked the victorious advance of
he completely destroyed the power of the Great King and made
him his vassal. But within ten years the rôles were reversed once more in
that amazing transformation scene in which an obscure Asiatic people
the
the enemy;
## p. x (#16) ###############################################
X
Introduction
which had always seemed destined to play a minor part became suddenly
one of the strongest powers in the world. Constantinople had again to
fight for her life, and the danger was imminent and the strain unrelaxed
for eighty years. Though the Empire did not succeed in barring the road
to Spain and Sicily, its rulers held the gates of Europe at the Propontis
and made it impossible for them to sweep over Europe as they had swept
over Syria and Egypt. Centuries passed, and the Comnenians guarded
Europe from the Seljūqs. The Ottomans were the latest bearers of the
Asiatic menace. If the Eastern Empire had not been mortally wounded and
reduced to the dimensions of a petty state by the greed and brutality of
the Western brigands who called themselves Crusaders, it is possible that
the Turks might never have gained a footing in Europe. Even as it was,
the impetus of their first victorious advance was broken by the tenacity
of the Palaeologi-assisted it is true by the arms of Tīmūr. They had
reached the Danube sixty years before Constantinople fell. When this at
length happened, the first force and fury of their attack had been spent,
and it is perhaps due to this delay that the Danube and the Carpathians
were to mark the limit of Asiatic rule in Europe and that St Peter's was
not to suffer the fate of St Sophia. Even in the last hours of its life, the
Empire was still true to its traditional rôle of bulwark of Europe.
As a civilised state, we may say that the Eastern Empire performed
three principal functions. As in its early years the Roman Empire laid the
foundations of civilisation in the West and educated Celtic and German
peoples, so in its later period it educated the Slavs of eastern Europe.
Russia, Bulgaria, and Serbia owed it everything and bore its stamp.
Secondly, it exercised a silent but constant and considerable influence on
western Europe by sending its own manufactures and the products
of the East to Italy, France, and Germany. Many examples of its
embroidered textile fabrics and its jewellery have been preserved in the
West. In the third place, it guarded safely the heritage of classical Greek
literature which has had on the modern world a penetrating influence
difficult to estimate. That we owe our possession of the masterpieces of
Hellenic thought and imagination to the Byzantines everyone knows, but
everyone does not remember that those books would not have travelled
to Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, because they would not
have existed, if the Greek classics had not been read habitually by the
educated subjects of the Eastern Empire and therefore continued to be
copied.
Here we touch on a most fundamental contrast between the Eastern
Empire and the western European states of the Middle Ages. The well-to-
do classes in the West were as a rule illiterate, with the exception of ecclesi-
astics; among the well-to-do classes in the Byzantine world education
## p. xi (#17) ##############################################
Introduction
xi
was the rule, and education meant not merely reading, writing, and arith-
metic, but the study of ancient Greek grammar and the reading of classical
authors. The old traditions of Greek education had never died out. In
court circles at Constantinople everyone who was not an utter parvenu
would recognise and understand a quotation from Homer. In consequence
of this difference, the intellectual standards in the West where book-
learning was reserved for a particular class, and in the East where every
boy and girl whose parents could afford to pay was educated, were entirely
different. The advantages of science and training and system were under-
stood in Byzantine society.
The appreciation of method and system which the Byzantines inherited
both from the Greeks and from the Romans is conspicuously shewn
in their military establishment and their conduct of war. Here their
intellectuality stands out in vivid contrast with the rude dullness displayed
in the modes of warfare practised in the West. Tactics were carefully
studied, and the treatises on war which the officers used were kept up to
date. The tacticians apprehended that it was stupid to employ uniform
methods in campaigns against different foes. They observed carefully the
military habits of the various peoples with whom they had to fight-
Saracens, Lombards, Franks, Slavs, Hungarians—and thought out different
rules for dealing with each. The soldiers were most carefully and efficiently
drilled. They understood organisation and the importance of not leaving
details to chance, of not neglecting small points in equipment. Their
armies were accompanied by ambulances and surgeons. Contrast the feudal
armies of the West, ill-disciplined, with no organisation, under leaders
who had not the most rudimentary idea of tactics, who put their faith
in sheer strength and courage, and attacked all antagonists in exactly the
same way. More formidable the Western knights might be than Slavs or
Magyars, but in the eyes of a Byzantine officer they were equally rude
barbarians who had not yet learned that war is an art which requires
intelligence as well as valour. In the period in which the Empire was
strong, before it lost the provinces which provided its best recruits, its
army was beyond comparison the best fighting machine in Europe. When
a Byzantine army was defeated, it was always the incompetence of the
general or some indiscretion on his part, never inefficiency or cowardice
of the troops, that was to blame. The great disaster of Manzikert (1071),
from which perhaps the decline of the Eastern Empire may be dated,
was caused by the imbecility of the brave Emperor who was in command.
A distinguished student of the art of war has observed that Gibbon's
“the vices of Byzantine armies were inherent, their victories
accidental,” is precisely the reverse of the truth. He is perfectly right.
Military science enabled the Roman Empire to hold its own for many
dictum,
בל
## p. xii (#18) #############################################
xii
Introduction
centuries against the foes around it, east and west and north. Internally,
its permanence and stability depended above all on the rule of Roman
law. Its subjects had always “ the advantage of possessing a systematic
administration of justice enforced by fixed legal procedure”; they were
not at the mercy of caprice. They could contrast their courts in which
justice was administered with a systematic observance of rules, with those
in which Mohammedan lawyers dispensed justice. The feeling that they
were much better off under the government of Constantinople than their
Eastern neighbours engendered a loyal attachment to the Empire, not-
withstanding what they might suffer under an oppressive fiscal system! .
The influence of lawyers on the administration was always great, and
may have been one of the facts which account for the proverbial conser-
vatism of Byzantine civilisation. But that conservatism has generally
been exaggerated, and even in the domain of law there was a develop-
ment, though the foundations and principles remained those which were
embodied in the legislation of Justinian.
The old Roman law, as expounded by the classical jurists, was in the
East considerably modified in practice here and there by Greek and
oriental custom, and there are traces of this influence in the laws of
Justinian. But Justinianean law shews very few marks of ecclesiastical
influence which in the seventh and following centuries led to various
changes, particularly in laws relating to marriage. The law-book of the
Isaurian Emperor, Leo III, was in some respects revolutionary, and
although at the end of the ninth century the Macedonian Emperors,
eager to renounce all the works of the heretical Isaurians, professed to
return to the pure principles of Justinian, they retained many of the
innovations and compromised with others. The principal reforms of Leo
were too much in accordance with public opinion to be undone. The
legal status of concubinate for instance was definitely abolished. Only
marriages between Christians were recognised as valid. Marriages between
first and second cousins were forbidden. Fourth marriages were declared
illegal and even third were discountenanced. It is remarkable however
that in the matter of divorce, where the differences between the views of
State and Church had been sharpest and where the Isaurians had given
effect to the un-Roman ecclesiastical doctrine that marriage is indissoluble,
the Macedonians returned to the common-sense view of Justinian and
Roman lawyers that marriage like other contracts between human beings
may be dissolved. We can see new tendencies too in the history of the
patria potestas. The Iconoclasts substituted for it a parental potestas,
1 Compare Finlay, History of Greece, 11. 22-4; 1. 411-2.
## p. xiii (#19) ############################################
Introduction
xiii
assigning to the mother rights similar to those of the father. Other
changes are mentioned below in Chapter XXII, pp. 709–101.
In criminal law there was a marked change in tendency. From
Augustus to Justinian penalties were ever becoming severer and new
crimes being invented. After Justinian the movement was in the direction
of mildness. In the eighth century only two or three crimes were punish-
able by death. One of these was murder and in this case the extreme
penalty might be avoided if the murderer sought refuge in a church. On
the other hand penalties of mutilation were extended and systematised.
This kind of punishment had been inflicted in much earlier times and
authorised in one or two cases by Justinian. In the eighth century we
find amputations of the tongue, hand, and nose part of the criminal
system, and particularly applied in dealing with sexual offences. If such
punishments strike us to-day as barbaric (though in England, for instance,
mutilation was inflicted little more than two centuries ago), they were then
considered as a humane substitute for death, and the Church approved
them because a tongue-less or nose-less sinner had time to repent. In the
same way, it was a common practice to blind, instead of killing, rebels
or unsuccessful candidates for the throne. The tendency to avoid capital
punishment is illustrated by the credible record that during the reign of
John Comnenus there were no executions.
The fact that in domestic policy the Eastern Empire was far from being
obstinately conservative is also illustrated by the reform of legal educa-
tion in the eleventh century, when it was realised that a system which had
been in practice for a long time did not work well and another was substi-
tuted (as is explained in Chapter XXII, p. 719). That conception of the later
Empire which has made the word Byzantine almost equivalent to Chinese
was based on ignorance, and is now discredited. It is obvious that no
State could have lasted so long in a changing world, if it had not had
the capacity of adapting itself to new conditions. Its administrative
machinery was being constantly modified by capable and hardworking
rulers of whom there were many; the details of the system at the end of
the tenth century differed at ever so many points from those of the eighth.
As for art and literature, there were ups and downs, declines and renas-
cences, throughout the whole duration of the Empire. It is only in quite
recent years that Byzantine literature and Byzantine art have been
methodically studied; in these wide fields of research Krumbacher's
It has been commonly held that the codes known as the Rhodian (Maritime) Law,
the Farmer's (Rural) Law, and the Military Law were the work of the Isaurian
Emperors, and this view is taken below in Chapter 1 (pp. 4-5) and Chapter XXII
(pp. 708,710). In the opinion of the present writer the investigations of Mr Ashburner
have rendered it quite untenable, at least in regard to the two first.
1
## p. xiv (#20) #############################################
xiv
Introduction
Byzantine Literature and Strzygowski's Orient oder Rom were pioneer
works marking a new age. Now that we are getting to know the facts
better and the darkness is gradually lifting, we have come to see that the
history of the Empire is far from being a monotonous chronicle of
palace revolutions, circus riots, theological disputes, tedious ceremonies
in a servile court, and to realise that, as in any other political society,
conditions were continually changing and in each succeeding age new
political and social problems presented themselves for which some solution
had to be found. If the chief interest in history lies in observing such
changes, watching new problems shape themselves and the attempts of
rulers or peoples to solve them, and seeing how the characters of indi-
viduals and the accidents which befall them determine the course of
events, the story of the Eastern Empire is at least as interesting as that
any medieval State, or perhaps more interesting because its people
were more civilised and intellectual than other Europeans and had a
longer political experience behind them. On the ecclesiastical side it
offers the longest and most considerable experiment of a State-Church
that Christendom has ever seen.
of
The Crusades were, for the Eastern Empire, simply a series of bar-
barian invasions of a particularly embarrassing kind, and in the present
volume they are treated merely from this point of view and their general
significance in universal history is not considered. The full treatment of
their causes and psychology and the consecutive story of the movement
are reserved for Vol. V.
But the earlier history of Venice has been included in this volume. The
character of Venice and her career were decided by the circumstance that she
was subject to the Eastern Emperors before she became independent. She
was extra-Italian throughout the Middle Ages; she never belonged to
the Carolingian Kingdom of Italy. And after she had slipped into inde-
pendence almost without knowing it—there was never a violent breaking
away from her allegiance to the sovrans of Constantinople—she moved
still in the orbit of the Empire; and it was on the ruins of the Empire,
dismembered by the criminal enterprise of her Duke Dandolo, that she
reached the summit of her power as mistress in the Aegean and in Greece.
She was the meeting-place of two civilisations, but it was eastern not
western Europe that controlled her history and lured her ambitions. Her
citizens spoke a Latin tongue and in spiritual matters acknowledged the
supremacy of the elder Rome, but the influence from new Rome had
penetrated deep, and their great Byzantine basilica is a visible reminder
of their long political connexion with the Eastern Empire.
## p. xv (#21) ##############################################
XV
CORRIGENDA.
VOL. I.
p. xvi. For THE VISIGOTHS TO THE DEATH OF EURic read THE VISIGOTHS TO THE DEATH
OF ALARIC II.
INDEX.
p. 731. Under Marcellinus, Roman general, delete cited, 399, 431.
p. 731. Insert entry Marcellinus, count, his chronicle cited, 399, 431.
Vol. II.
INDEX.
p. 839. Under Columbanus (Columba), St, delete 510; in Scotland 512 sq. , 526, and
5:27.
p. 839. Insert entry Columba, St, apostle of Scotland, 510, 512 sq. , 526 sq.
ر•
VOL. III.
p. xxi, 1. 13. For Taube read Tauber.
p. 150, 1. 6 from end. For Moslem read Muslim.
p. 157, 1. 19. For Apscari's read Anscar's.
p. 177, 1. 18. For on the Tiber read near the Tiber.
p. 178, 1. 5. For 1006 read 1005.
p. 301, 1. 14 from end. For Archbishop read Bishop.
P. 404, l. 20. For Fores read Forest.
p. 460, 1. 4. For Ardre read Ardres.
p. 460, 1. 11. For Terouanne read Térouanne.
p. 467, 1. 8 from end. For flay read flog.
p. 560, 1. 20. For St Germigny read Germigny.
p. 561, 1. 16.
Find more books at https://www. hathitrust. org.
Title: The Cambridge medieval history / planned by J. B. Bury . . . ;
edited by H. M. Gwatkin . . . J. P. Whitney
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## p. i (#7) ################################################
THE
CAMBRIDGE
MEDIEVAL HISTORY
VOLUME IV
HT
## p. ii (#8) ###############################################
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN VRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD
TORONTO
## p. iii (#9) ##############################################
THE
CAMBRIDGE
MEDIEVAL HISTORY
PLANNED BY
J. B. BURY, M. A. , F. B. A.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY
EDITED BY
J. R. TANNER, LITT. D.
C. W. PREVITÉ-ORTON, M. A.
Z. N. BROOKE, M. A.
VOLUME IV
THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE
(717—1453)
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1923
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
## p. iv (#10) ##############################################
tis
D117
CIT
1911aa
1. 4
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
## p. v (#11) ###############################################
PREFACE.
IT
Twill be seen from the title-page that the Cambridge Medieval History
has again suffered the loss of one of its Editors by the resignation
of Professor Whitney, to whom the first three volumes owed so much.
Volume IV, however, a good part of which was in type before the War,
stands indebted to him nearly as much as its predecessors have done, and
much of the revision in proof has benefited by his co-operation. Mr Z. N.
Brooke has been appointed by the Syndics of the University Press to
succeed him.
Our chief thanks are also due to Professor Bury, without whose aid
our task in a volume treating of Byzantine history could hardly have been
accomplished. He has read most of the chapters in proof, and has made
a number of invaluable suggestions upon them. Besides contributing
a summary to Chapter V, he has written for us the Introduction to the
volume, in which he explains its general plan and defines the place of
Byzantium in universal history.
A volume dealing with subjects which lie apart from the more frequented
paths of medieval studies has laid the Editors under many obligations to
specialists. Professor A. A. Bevan has given the kindest help in the
transliteration of Arabic, and Professor E. G. Browne in that of Turkish
names, while Dr E. H. Minns has revised the forms of names in Slavonic
languages; we owe much to their criticism and advice.
The long delays which the War imposed on Volume III have reacted
also on Volume IV, and we regret that Sir Edwin Pears did not live to
see his chapter in proof, nor M. Ferdinand Chalandon more than the first
proofs of his chapters; but we have been fortunate in the second revision
of M. Chalandon's proofs by Madame Chalandon.
The scope and proportion of the volume have occasionally necessitated
the abbreviation of a chapter; and here we owe a special debt to Professor
Macler, who has allowed us to reshape his exhaustive contribution on
Armenia in accordance with the limitations on our space, "nd to
Mrs E. A. Benians, who undertook the task of compression, enab? g us to
give to a chapter abbreviated from the French the characteris ues of an
original composition in English.
Our thanks are also due to Mr E. W. Brooks for the Bibliography of
## p. vi (#12) ##############################################
vi
Preface
Chapter V(B), since it has not been possible to communicate with the
author, Professor A. A. Vasil'ev; to Dr Paul Wittek for the revision of
the oriental portion of the Bibliography of Chapter XXI; to Mrs
Goulding Brown for her care and accuracy in compiling the Index; to
Miss A. Greenwood for time and labour devoted to the difficult task
of preparing the maps; and to Mr C. C. Scott, Sub-Librarian of
St John's College, for invaluable help in the peculiarly exacting task of
preparing for the press Bibliographies which include works in some twenty
languages. To the officials of the University Press we also owe many
thanks, and especially to the late Mr J. B. Peace, who with his expert
knowledge helped us in the technical problems of map-making.
A word must once more be said in conclusion on the vexed and thorny
question of the forms of proper names. Byzantine names as a rule have
been represented by their Latinised forms, saving in the first place such
as are distinctly sobriquets, and in the second place the little-known
names of medieval Greece, which are given in their original Greek spelling.
These last in Chapters XV to XVIII, by request of the author Dr Miller,
have been provided with their Greek accents as an aid to pronunciation.
Arabic, Persian, and Slavonic names, unless a form has become familiar
in English literature, have been transcribed in accordance with the systems
approved by the British Academy.
J. R. T.
C. W. P. -O.
Z. N. B.
July, 1923.
## p. vii (#13) #############################################
INTRODUCTION.
The present volume carries on the fortunes of a portion of Europe
to the end of the Middle Ages. This exception to the general chrono-
logical plan of the work seemed both convenient and desirable. The orbit
of Byzantium, the history of the peoples and states which moved within
that orbit and always looked to it as the central body, giver of light and
heat, did indeed at some points touch or traverse the orbits of western
European states, but the development of these on the whole was not
deeply affected or sensibly perturbed by what happened east of Italy or
south of the Danube, and it was only in the time of the Crusades that
some of their rulers came into close contact with the Eastern Empire or
that it counted to any considerable extent in their policies. England, the
remotest state of the West, was a legendary country to the people of Con-
stantinople, and that imperial capital was no more than a dream-name
of wealth and splendour to Englishmen, except to the few adventurers
who travelled thither to make their fortunes in the Varangian guards. It
is thus possible to follow the history of the Eastern Roman Empire from
the eighth century to its fall, along with those of its neighbours and
clients, independently of the rest of Europe, and this is obviously more
satisfactory than to interpolate in the main history of Western Europe
chapters having no connexion with those which precede and follow.
Besides being convenient, this plan is desirable. For it enables us to
emphasise the capital fact that throughout the Middle Ages the same
Empire which was founded by Augustus continued to exist and function
and occupy even in its final weakness a unique position in Europe-a fact
which would otherwise be dissipated, as it were, and obscured amid the
records of another system of states with which it was not in close or
constant contact. It was one of Gibbon's services to history that the title
of his book asserted clearly and unambiguously this continuity.
We have, however, tampered with the correct name, which is simply
Roman Empire, by adding Eastern, a qualification which although it has
no official basis is justifiable as a convenient mark of distinction from the
Empire which Charlemagne founded and which lasted till the beginning
of the nineteenth century. This Western Empire had no good claim to
the name of Roman. Charlemagne and those who followed him were not
M
## p. viii (#14) ############################################
viii
Introduction
legitimate successors of Augustus, Constantine, Justinian, and the
Isaurians, and this was tacitly acknowledged in their endeavours to obtain
recognition of the imperial title they assumed from the sovrans of Con-
stantinople whose legitimacy was unquestionable.
Much as the Empire changed after the age of Justinian, as its popu-
lation became more and more predominantly Greek in speech, its descent
from Rome was always unmistakably preserved in the designation of its
subjects as Romans (Pwuaîoi). Its eastern neighbours knew it as Rūm.
Till the very end the names of most of the titles of its ministers, officials,
and institutions were either Latin or the Greek translations of Latin terms
that had become current in the earliest days of the Empire? . Words of
Latin derivation form a large class in medieval Greek. The modern Greek
language was commonly called Romaic till the middle of the nineteenth
century. It is only quite recently that Roumelia has been falling out of
use to designate territories in the Balkan peninsula. Contrast with the
persistence of the Roman name in the East the fact that the subjects of
the Western Empire were never called Romans and indeed had no common
name as a whole; the only “Romans” among them were the inhabitants
of the city of Rome. There is indeed one district in Italy whose name still
commemorates the Roman Empire-Romagna; but this exception only
reinforces the contrast. For the district corresponds to the Exarchate of
Ravenna, and was called Romania by its Lombard neighbours because
it belonged to the Roman Emperor of Constantinople. It was at the
New Rome, not at the Old, that the political tradition of the Empire
was preserved. It is worth remembering too that the greatest public
buildings of Constantinople were originally built, however they may have
been afterwards changed or extended—the Hippodrome, the Great Palace,
the Senatehouses, the churches of St Sophia and the Holy Apostles,
by Emperors of Latin speech, Severus, Constantine, Justinian.
On the other hand, the civilisation of the later Roman Empire was
the continuation of that of ancient Greece. Hellenism entered
its
second phase when Alexander of Macedon expanded the Greek world into
the east, and on its third with the foundation of Constantine by the
waters where Asia and Europe meet. Christianity, with its dogmatic
theology and its monasticism, gave to this third phase its distinctive
character and flavour, and Byzantine civilisation, as we have learned to
upon
1 Examples: (1) ασηκρήτις (α secretis), δούξ, κόμης, μάγιστρος, πατρίκιος, δομέστικος,
πραιπόσιτος, πραίτωρ, κουαίστωρ, κουράτωρ, ιδίκτον, πάκτον, κάστρον, φοσσάτον, παλά-
τιον, βήλον (velum); άπληκεύειν = (castra) applicare, πραιδεύειν, δηριγεύειν, μούλτος
=(tu)multus; (2) (ancient equivalents of Latin terms) Baoleús, avrokpárop (imperator),
cúykántos (senatus), Ümatos (consul), avdútatos (proconsul), üstapxos (praefectus),
8pópos (cursus publicus).
## p. ix (#15) ##############################################
Introduction
ix
call it, is an appropriate and happy name. Its features are very fully
delineated in this volume by Professor Diehl (chapter xxiv). The con-
tinuity which links the fifteenth century A. D. with the fifth B. c. is notably
expressed in the long series of Greek historians, who maintained, it may
be said, a continuous tradition of historiography. From Critobulus, the
imitator of Thucydides, and Chalcocondyles, who told the story of the
last days of the Empire, we can go back, in a line broken only by a dark
interval in the seventh and eighth centuries, to the first great masters,
Thucydides and Herodotus.
The development of “Byzantinism” really began in the fourth century.
The historian Finlay put the question in a rather awkward way by asking,
When did the Roman Empire change into the Byzantine? The answer is
that it did not change into any other Empire than itself, but that some
of the characteristic features of Byzantinism began to appear immediately
after Constantinople was founded. There is, however, a real truth in
Finlay's own answer to his question. He drew the dividing line at the
accession of Leo the Isaurian, at the beginning of the eighth century.
And, in fact, Leo's reign marked the consummation of a rapid change
which had been going on during the past hundred years. Rapid: for
I believe anyone who has studied the history of those centuries will agree
that in the age of the Isaurians we feel much further away from the age
of Justinian than we feel in the age of Justinian from the age of Theodosius
the Great. Finlay's date has been taken as the starting point of this
volume; it marks, so far as a date can, the transition to a new era.
The chief function which as a political power the Eastern Empire
performed throughout the Middle Ages was to act as a bulwark for
Europe, and for that civilisation which Greece had created and Rome had
inherited and diffused, against Asiatic aggression. Since the rise of the
Sasanid power in the third century, Asia had been attempting, with
varying success, to resume the rôle which it had played under the
Achaemenids. The arms of Alexander had delivered for hundreds of years
the Eastern coasts and waters of the Mediterranean from all danger from
an Asiatic power. The Sasanids finally succeeded in reaching the Medi-
terranean shores and the Bosphorus. The rôles of Europe and Asia were
again reversed, and it was now for Byzantium to play on a larger stage
part formerly played by Athens and Sparta in a struggle for life and
death. Heraclius proved himself not only a Themistocles but in some
measure an Alexander. He not only checked the victorious advance of
he completely destroyed the power of the Great King and made
him his vassal. But within ten years the rôles were reversed once more in
that amazing transformation scene in which an obscure Asiatic people
the
the enemy;
## p. x (#16) ###############################################
X
Introduction
which had always seemed destined to play a minor part became suddenly
one of the strongest powers in the world. Constantinople had again to
fight for her life, and the danger was imminent and the strain unrelaxed
for eighty years. Though the Empire did not succeed in barring the road
to Spain and Sicily, its rulers held the gates of Europe at the Propontis
and made it impossible for them to sweep over Europe as they had swept
over Syria and Egypt. Centuries passed, and the Comnenians guarded
Europe from the Seljūqs. The Ottomans were the latest bearers of the
Asiatic menace. If the Eastern Empire had not been mortally wounded and
reduced to the dimensions of a petty state by the greed and brutality of
the Western brigands who called themselves Crusaders, it is possible that
the Turks might never have gained a footing in Europe. Even as it was,
the impetus of their first victorious advance was broken by the tenacity
of the Palaeologi-assisted it is true by the arms of Tīmūr. They had
reached the Danube sixty years before Constantinople fell. When this at
length happened, the first force and fury of their attack had been spent,
and it is perhaps due to this delay that the Danube and the Carpathians
were to mark the limit of Asiatic rule in Europe and that St Peter's was
not to suffer the fate of St Sophia. Even in the last hours of its life, the
Empire was still true to its traditional rôle of bulwark of Europe.
As a civilised state, we may say that the Eastern Empire performed
three principal functions. As in its early years the Roman Empire laid the
foundations of civilisation in the West and educated Celtic and German
peoples, so in its later period it educated the Slavs of eastern Europe.
Russia, Bulgaria, and Serbia owed it everything and bore its stamp.
Secondly, it exercised a silent but constant and considerable influence on
western Europe by sending its own manufactures and the products
of the East to Italy, France, and Germany. Many examples of its
embroidered textile fabrics and its jewellery have been preserved in the
West. In the third place, it guarded safely the heritage of classical Greek
literature which has had on the modern world a penetrating influence
difficult to estimate. That we owe our possession of the masterpieces of
Hellenic thought and imagination to the Byzantines everyone knows, but
everyone does not remember that those books would not have travelled
to Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, because they would not
have existed, if the Greek classics had not been read habitually by the
educated subjects of the Eastern Empire and therefore continued to be
copied.
Here we touch on a most fundamental contrast between the Eastern
Empire and the western European states of the Middle Ages. The well-to-
do classes in the West were as a rule illiterate, with the exception of ecclesi-
astics; among the well-to-do classes in the Byzantine world education
## p. xi (#17) ##############################################
Introduction
xi
was the rule, and education meant not merely reading, writing, and arith-
metic, but the study of ancient Greek grammar and the reading of classical
authors. The old traditions of Greek education had never died out. In
court circles at Constantinople everyone who was not an utter parvenu
would recognise and understand a quotation from Homer. In consequence
of this difference, the intellectual standards in the West where book-
learning was reserved for a particular class, and in the East where every
boy and girl whose parents could afford to pay was educated, were entirely
different. The advantages of science and training and system were under-
stood in Byzantine society.
The appreciation of method and system which the Byzantines inherited
both from the Greeks and from the Romans is conspicuously shewn
in their military establishment and their conduct of war. Here their
intellectuality stands out in vivid contrast with the rude dullness displayed
in the modes of warfare practised in the West. Tactics were carefully
studied, and the treatises on war which the officers used were kept up to
date. The tacticians apprehended that it was stupid to employ uniform
methods in campaigns against different foes. They observed carefully the
military habits of the various peoples with whom they had to fight-
Saracens, Lombards, Franks, Slavs, Hungarians—and thought out different
rules for dealing with each. The soldiers were most carefully and efficiently
drilled.
Hellenism entered
its
second phase when Alexander of Macedon expanded the Greek world into
the east, and on its third with the foundation of Constantine by the
waters where Asia and Europe meet. Christianity, with its dogmatic
theology and its monasticism, gave to this third phase its distinctive
character and flavour, and Byzantine civilisation, as we have learned to
upon
1 Examples: (1) ασηκρήτις (α secretis), δούξ, κόμης, μάγιστρος, πατρίκιος, δομέστικος,
πραιπόσιτος, πραίτωρ, κουαίστωρ, κουράτωρ, ιδίκτον, πάκτον, κάστρον, φοσσάτον, παλά-
τιον, βήλον (velum); άπληκεύειν = (castra) applicare, πραιδεύειν, δηριγεύειν, μούλτος
=(tu)multus; (2) (ancient equivalents of Latin terms) Baoleús, avrokpárop (imperator),
cúykántos (senatus), Ümatos (consul), avdútatos (proconsul), üstapxos (praefectus),
8pópos (cursus publicus).
## p. ix (#15) ##############################################
Introduction
ix
call it, is an appropriate and happy name. Its features are very fully
delineated in this volume by Professor Diehl (chapter xxiv). The con-
tinuity which links the fifteenth century A. D. with the fifth B. c. is notably
expressed in the long series of Greek historians, who maintained, it may
be said, a continuous tradition of historiography. From Critobulus, the
imitator of Thucydides, and Chalcocondyles, who told the story of the
last days of the Empire, we can go back, in a line broken only by a dark
interval in the seventh and eighth centuries, to the first great masters,
Thucydides and Herodotus.
The development of “Byzantinism” really began in the fourth century.
The historian Finlay put the question in a rather awkward way by asking,
When did the Roman Empire change into the Byzantine? The answer is
that it did not change into any other Empire than itself, but that some
of the characteristic features of Byzantinism began to appear immediately
after Constantinople was founded. There is, however, a real truth in
Finlay's own answer to his question. He drew the dividing line at the
accession of Leo the Isaurian, at the beginning of the eighth century.
And, in fact, Leo's reign marked the consummation of a rapid change
which had been going on during the past hundred years. Rapid: for
I believe anyone who has studied the history of those centuries will agree
that in the age of the Isaurians we feel much further away from the age
of Justinian than we feel in the age of Justinian from the age of Theodosius
the Great. Finlay's date has been taken as the starting point of this
volume; it marks, so far as a date can, the transition to a new era.
The chief function which as a political power the Eastern Empire
performed throughout the Middle Ages was to act as a bulwark for
Europe, and for that civilisation which Greece had created and Rome had
inherited and diffused, against Asiatic aggression. Since the rise of the
Sasanid power in the third century, Asia had been attempting, with
varying success, to resume the rôle which it had played under the
Achaemenids. The arms of Alexander had delivered for hundreds of years
the Eastern coasts and waters of the Mediterranean from all danger from
an Asiatic power. The Sasanids finally succeeded in reaching the Medi-
terranean shores and the Bosphorus. The rôles of Europe and Asia were
again reversed, and it was now for Byzantium to play on a larger stage
part formerly played by Athens and Sparta in a struggle for life and
death. Heraclius proved himself not only a Themistocles but in some
measure an Alexander. He not only checked the victorious advance of
he completely destroyed the power of the Great King and made
him his vassal. But within ten years the rôles were reversed once more in
that amazing transformation scene in which an obscure Asiatic people
the
the enemy;
## p. x (#16) ###############################################
X
Introduction
which had always seemed destined to play a minor part became suddenly
one of the strongest powers in the world. Constantinople had again to
fight for her life, and the danger was imminent and the strain unrelaxed
for eighty years. Though the Empire did not succeed in barring the road
to Spain and Sicily, its rulers held the gates of Europe at the Propontis
and made it impossible for them to sweep over Europe as they had swept
over Syria and Egypt. Centuries passed, and the Comnenians guarded
Europe from the Seljūqs. The Ottomans were the latest bearers of the
Asiatic menace. If the Eastern Empire had not been mortally wounded and
reduced to the dimensions of a petty state by the greed and brutality of
the Western brigands who called themselves Crusaders, it is possible that
the Turks might never have gained a footing in Europe. Even as it was,
the impetus of their first victorious advance was broken by the tenacity
of the Palaeologi-assisted it is true by the arms of Tīmūr. They had
reached the Danube sixty years before Constantinople fell. When this at
length happened, the first force and fury of their attack had been spent,
and it is perhaps due to this delay that the Danube and the Carpathians
were to mark the limit of Asiatic rule in Europe and that St Peter's was
not to suffer the fate of St Sophia. Even in the last hours of its life, the
Empire was still true to its traditional rôle of bulwark of Europe.
As a civilised state, we may say that the Eastern Empire performed
three principal functions. As in its early years the Roman Empire laid the
foundations of civilisation in the West and educated Celtic and German
peoples, so in its later period it educated the Slavs of eastern Europe.
Russia, Bulgaria, and Serbia owed it everything and bore its stamp.
Secondly, it exercised a silent but constant and considerable influence on
western Europe by sending its own manufactures and the products
of the East to Italy, France, and Germany. Many examples of its
embroidered textile fabrics and its jewellery have been preserved in the
West. In the third place, it guarded safely the heritage of classical Greek
literature which has had on the modern world a penetrating influence
difficult to estimate. That we owe our possession of the masterpieces of
Hellenic thought and imagination to the Byzantines everyone knows, but
everyone does not remember that those books would not have travelled
to Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, because they would not
have existed, if the Greek classics had not been read habitually by the
educated subjects of the Eastern Empire and therefore continued to be
copied.
Here we touch on a most fundamental contrast between the Eastern
Empire and the western European states of the Middle Ages. The well-to-
do classes in the West were as a rule illiterate, with the exception of ecclesi-
astics; among the well-to-do classes in the Byzantine world education
## p. xi (#17) ##############################################
Introduction
xi
was the rule, and education meant not merely reading, writing, and arith-
metic, but the study of ancient Greek grammar and the reading of classical
authors. The old traditions of Greek education had never died out. In
court circles at Constantinople everyone who was not an utter parvenu
would recognise and understand a quotation from Homer. In consequence
of this difference, the intellectual standards in the West where book-
learning was reserved for a particular class, and in the East where every
boy and girl whose parents could afford to pay was educated, were entirely
different. The advantages of science and training and system were under-
stood in Byzantine society.
The appreciation of method and system which the Byzantines inherited
both from the Greeks and from the Romans is conspicuously shewn
in their military establishment and their conduct of war. Here their
intellectuality stands out in vivid contrast with the rude dullness displayed
in the modes of warfare practised in the West. Tactics were carefully
studied, and the treatises on war which the officers used were kept up to
date. The tacticians apprehended that it was stupid to employ uniform
methods in campaigns against different foes. They observed carefully the
military habits of the various peoples with whom they had to fight-
Saracens, Lombards, Franks, Slavs, Hungarians—and thought out different
rules for dealing with each. The soldiers were most carefully and efficiently
drilled. They understood organisation and the importance of not leaving
details to chance, of not neglecting small points in equipment. Their
armies were accompanied by ambulances and surgeons. Contrast the feudal
armies of the West, ill-disciplined, with no organisation, under leaders
who had not the most rudimentary idea of tactics, who put their faith
in sheer strength and courage, and attacked all antagonists in exactly the
same way. More formidable the Western knights might be than Slavs or
Magyars, but in the eyes of a Byzantine officer they were equally rude
barbarians who had not yet learned that war is an art which requires
intelligence as well as valour. In the period in which the Empire was
strong, before it lost the provinces which provided its best recruits, its
army was beyond comparison the best fighting machine in Europe. When
a Byzantine army was defeated, it was always the incompetence of the
general or some indiscretion on his part, never inefficiency or cowardice
of the troops, that was to blame. The great disaster of Manzikert (1071),
from which perhaps the decline of the Eastern Empire may be dated,
was caused by the imbecility of the brave Emperor who was in command.
A distinguished student of the art of war has observed that Gibbon's
“the vices of Byzantine armies were inherent, their victories
accidental,” is precisely the reverse of the truth. He is perfectly right.
Military science enabled the Roman Empire to hold its own for many
dictum,
בל
## p. xii (#18) #############################################
xii
Introduction
centuries against the foes around it, east and west and north. Internally,
its permanence and stability depended above all on the rule of Roman
law. Its subjects had always “ the advantage of possessing a systematic
administration of justice enforced by fixed legal procedure”; they were
not at the mercy of caprice. They could contrast their courts in which
justice was administered with a systematic observance of rules, with those
in which Mohammedan lawyers dispensed justice. The feeling that they
were much better off under the government of Constantinople than their
Eastern neighbours engendered a loyal attachment to the Empire, not-
withstanding what they might suffer under an oppressive fiscal system! .
The influence of lawyers on the administration was always great, and
may have been one of the facts which account for the proverbial conser-
vatism of Byzantine civilisation. But that conservatism has generally
been exaggerated, and even in the domain of law there was a develop-
ment, though the foundations and principles remained those which were
embodied in the legislation of Justinian.
The old Roman law, as expounded by the classical jurists, was in the
East considerably modified in practice here and there by Greek and
oriental custom, and there are traces of this influence in the laws of
Justinian. But Justinianean law shews very few marks of ecclesiastical
influence which in the seventh and following centuries led to various
changes, particularly in laws relating to marriage. The law-book of the
Isaurian Emperor, Leo III, was in some respects revolutionary, and
although at the end of the ninth century the Macedonian Emperors,
eager to renounce all the works of the heretical Isaurians, professed to
return to the pure principles of Justinian, they retained many of the
innovations and compromised with others. The principal reforms of Leo
were too much in accordance with public opinion to be undone. The
legal status of concubinate for instance was definitely abolished. Only
marriages between Christians were recognised as valid. Marriages between
first and second cousins were forbidden. Fourth marriages were declared
illegal and even third were discountenanced. It is remarkable however
that in the matter of divorce, where the differences between the views of
State and Church had been sharpest and where the Isaurians had given
effect to the un-Roman ecclesiastical doctrine that marriage is indissoluble,
the Macedonians returned to the common-sense view of Justinian and
Roman lawyers that marriage like other contracts between human beings
may be dissolved. We can see new tendencies too in the history of the
patria potestas. The Iconoclasts substituted for it a parental potestas,
1 Compare Finlay, History of Greece, 11. 22-4; 1. 411-2.
## p. xiii (#19) ############################################
Introduction
xiii
assigning to the mother rights similar to those of the father. Other
changes are mentioned below in Chapter XXII, pp. 709–101.
In criminal law there was a marked change in tendency. From
Augustus to Justinian penalties were ever becoming severer and new
crimes being invented. After Justinian the movement was in the direction
of mildness. In the eighth century only two or three crimes were punish-
able by death. One of these was murder and in this case the extreme
penalty might be avoided if the murderer sought refuge in a church. On
the other hand penalties of mutilation were extended and systematised.
This kind of punishment had been inflicted in much earlier times and
authorised in one or two cases by Justinian. In the eighth century we
find amputations of the tongue, hand, and nose part of the criminal
system, and particularly applied in dealing with sexual offences. If such
punishments strike us to-day as barbaric (though in England, for instance,
mutilation was inflicted little more than two centuries ago), they were then
considered as a humane substitute for death, and the Church approved
them because a tongue-less or nose-less sinner had time to repent. In the
same way, it was a common practice to blind, instead of killing, rebels
or unsuccessful candidates for the throne. The tendency to avoid capital
punishment is illustrated by the credible record that during the reign of
John Comnenus there were no executions.
The fact that in domestic policy the Eastern Empire was far from being
obstinately conservative is also illustrated by the reform of legal educa-
tion in the eleventh century, when it was realised that a system which had
been in practice for a long time did not work well and another was substi-
tuted (as is explained in Chapter XXII, p. 719). That conception of the later
Empire which has made the word Byzantine almost equivalent to Chinese
was based on ignorance, and is now discredited. It is obvious that no
State could have lasted so long in a changing world, if it had not had
the capacity of adapting itself to new conditions. Its administrative
machinery was being constantly modified by capable and hardworking
rulers of whom there were many; the details of the system at the end of
the tenth century differed at ever so many points from those of the eighth.
As for art and literature, there were ups and downs, declines and renas-
cences, throughout the whole duration of the Empire. It is only in quite
recent years that Byzantine literature and Byzantine art have been
methodically studied; in these wide fields of research Krumbacher's
It has been commonly held that the codes known as the Rhodian (Maritime) Law,
the Farmer's (Rural) Law, and the Military Law were the work of the Isaurian
Emperors, and this view is taken below in Chapter 1 (pp. 4-5) and Chapter XXII
(pp. 708,710). In the opinion of the present writer the investigations of Mr Ashburner
have rendered it quite untenable, at least in regard to the two first.
1
## p. xiv (#20) #############################################
xiv
Introduction
Byzantine Literature and Strzygowski's Orient oder Rom were pioneer
works marking a new age. Now that we are getting to know the facts
better and the darkness is gradually lifting, we have come to see that the
history of the Empire is far from being a monotonous chronicle of
palace revolutions, circus riots, theological disputes, tedious ceremonies
in a servile court, and to realise that, as in any other political society,
conditions were continually changing and in each succeeding age new
political and social problems presented themselves for which some solution
had to be found. If the chief interest in history lies in observing such
changes, watching new problems shape themselves and the attempts of
rulers or peoples to solve them, and seeing how the characters of indi-
viduals and the accidents which befall them determine the course of
events, the story of the Eastern Empire is at least as interesting as that
any medieval State, or perhaps more interesting because its people
were more civilised and intellectual than other Europeans and had a
longer political experience behind them. On the ecclesiastical side it
offers the longest and most considerable experiment of a State-Church
that Christendom has ever seen.
of
The Crusades were, for the Eastern Empire, simply a series of bar-
barian invasions of a particularly embarrassing kind, and in the present
volume they are treated merely from this point of view and their general
significance in universal history is not considered. The full treatment of
their causes and psychology and the consecutive story of the movement
are reserved for Vol. V.
But the earlier history of Venice has been included in this volume. The
character of Venice and her career were decided by the circumstance that she
was subject to the Eastern Emperors before she became independent. She
was extra-Italian throughout the Middle Ages; she never belonged to
the Carolingian Kingdom of Italy. And after she had slipped into inde-
pendence almost without knowing it—there was never a violent breaking
away from her allegiance to the sovrans of Constantinople—she moved
still in the orbit of the Empire; and it was on the ruins of the Empire,
dismembered by the criminal enterprise of her Duke Dandolo, that she
reached the summit of her power as mistress in the Aegean and in Greece.
She was the meeting-place of two civilisations, but it was eastern not
western Europe that controlled her history and lured her ambitions. Her
citizens spoke a Latin tongue and in spiritual matters acknowledged the
supremacy of the elder Rome, but the influence from new Rome had
penetrated deep, and their great Byzantine basilica is a visible reminder
of their long political connexion with the Eastern Empire.
## p. xv (#21) ##############################################
XV
CORRIGENDA.
VOL. I.
p. xvi. For THE VISIGOTHS TO THE DEATH OF EURic read THE VISIGOTHS TO THE DEATH
OF ALARIC II.
INDEX.
p. 731. Under Marcellinus, Roman general, delete cited, 399, 431.
p. 731. Insert entry Marcellinus, count, his chronicle cited, 399, 431.
Vol. II.
INDEX.
p. 839. Under Columbanus (Columba), St, delete 510; in Scotland 512 sq. , 526, and
5:27.
p. 839. Insert entry Columba, St, apostle of Scotland, 510, 512 sq. , 526 sq.
ر•
VOL. III.
p. xxi, 1. 13. For Taube read Tauber.
p. 150, 1. 6 from end. For Moslem read Muslim.
p. 157, 1. 19. For Apscari's read Anscar's.
p. 177, 1. 18. For on the Tiber read near the Tiber.
p. 178, 1. 5. For 1006 read 1005.
p. 301, 1. 14 from end. For Archbishop read Bishop.
P. 404, l. 20. For Fores read Forest.
p. 460, 1. 4. For Ardre read Ardres.
p. 460, 1. 11. For Terouanne read Térouanne.
p. 467, 1. 8 from end. For flay read flog.
p. 560, 1. 20. For St Germigny read Germigny.
p. 561, 1. 16.
