By Richard Hooker, with introduction by Lewis Loflin
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MA/BYZ.HTM
As a Deist, I see Richard Hooker’s overview of Byzantium through reason’s lens—not divine mandate. This empire, a Roman heir, blended Greek, Roman, and Christian elements, yet its religious strife and Justinian’s wars hastened its decline, paving Islam’s path. From classical preservation to Iconoclastic rifts, Byzantium’s story is human ambition and folly, not providence, shaping history to 1453.
The Byzantine Empire, centered in Constantinople, was the Roman Empire—not merely its eastern remnant. Founded by Constantine in 330 AD, it retained a Greek character from Diocletian’s era (r. 284-305). Rome’s fall to Goths in 476 AD weakened but didn’t end it; Byzantines saw themselves as Romans. Over centuries, they fused Greek, Roman, European, and Islamic influences until the Ottoman conquest in 1453.
Byzantine Christianity diverged from Latin practice, vesting theological authority in the emperor—near-divine in Roman tradition—unlike the pope’s primacy in the fragmented West. The Iconoclastic Controversy (8th-9th centuries) cemented this rift. Leo III (r. 717-741), inspired partly by Islam’s icon aversion, banned images, a move his son Constantine V (r. 741-775) intensified. Opposed by the papacy, this split East and West permanently, fostering a static, traditionalist Byzantine Church.
Byzantium preserved classical culture—Plato, Aristotle, and Homer thrived there while fading in the Latin West. Education centered on Greek literature, later transmitted via Islam to Europe. Women, though barred from schools, often received tutelage in aristocratic homes. Anna Comnena’s (1083-1153) *Alexiad*, a masterful history of her father Alexius I, stands among medieval historiography’s finest works.
Justinian (r. 527-565) aimed to restore Rome, speaking Latin and codifying its laws in the *Corpus Iuris Civilis*—a Christian-Roman synthesis shaping European law (except England). His Gothic War retook Italy and North Africa but ravaged both, draining Byzantium. Italy’s economic collapse under Lombards (568) followed. His persecution of Monophysites, aligning with the Pope, alienated Eastern Christians, easing Muslim conquests after 630 AD.
Most content copyright Richard Hooker. I thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for aiding in refining this updated format.
As a Deist, I see reason, not divine will, in history’s turns. Early Christian schisms—Monophysitism, Nestorianism, Arianism—fractured unity, as explored in What Split Early Christianity? and Arian Goths and Jews in the West. The Byzantine Empire Overview and Byzantine-Persian Wars Overview reveal how relentless conflicts with Sassanid Persia (Religion in the Persian Sassanid Dynasty) drained both empires by the 7th century. Persecution of heretics and Jews under Catholic rule, replacing Arian tolerance, alienated populations. Exhausted and divided, these powers crumbled before Islam’s swift advance post-630 AD—a human tale of strife opening doors to a new faith.
