Byzantine culture developed from Christianity and Roman characteristics in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, Constantinople founded by Constantine in 324 was the center of the Byzantine Empire where the merge of Christianity and Roman characteristics flourished. Emperor Justinian was one of the greatest influences in combining Christianity and Roman traditions during his reign. Justinian had an unwavering Christian faith and a desire to reform the empire he also felt it was his duty as emperor to enforce uniform religious belief throughout the entire empire. Justinian goal was to create a Christian society he did this by combining Roman laws with military force. Justinian revamped the roman laws into Justinian’s codification of law’s that
The new faith that brought a message and established the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the faith that Constantine adopted as a child from his mother. Christianity during Constantine’s reign established much dominance over other religions and was the main reason for influence of the Christian. Christianity in the Roman world had many perils from gladiatorial battles, to forms of charity which affected the Roman world for good (McGiffert, 34). Charity became with
The Roman Empire influenced the Byzantine Empire’s culture, mainly through the religion of Christianity. Christianity first appeared in the Roman Empire, with the birth, teachings, and supposed resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the beginning years of it’s arrival, Christianity was not tolerated and Christians were mainly, and most often brutally prosecuted. However, with Constantine’s Edict of Milan, Christianity was officially tolerated, and under Theodosius, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire inherited this relatively new religion, continuing to follow the beliefs and traditions of the church, as well as spreading the word of Jesus Christ and the message of god. Churches sprung up in the empire, such as the mighty Hagia Sophia. Located in Constantinople and built by Justinian, this church especially exemplified
Though Justinian, a Byzantine emperor, led a unique empire, he did essentially revive Roman culture and values. Geographically, ancient Rome and the Byzantine Empire were very alike. The map in document 6 indicates the Byzantine Empire controlled North Africa, and land around the Mediterranean, which is similar to ancient Rome. Cultures usually depend on geographic locations, therefore, since the empires had very similar locations, their culture too were alike. In society, both empires adopted Christianity and trade played an important role. These geographic and cultural similarities show that the Justinian Byzantine Empire revived Rome, and prolonged it’s legacy. Ancient Rome built multiple architectural feats, such as the Colosseum. Using
Byzantine also helped with the spreading of the Catholic religion and churches. Most of what we know about Roman culture today comes from documents from Byzantine. A political and cultural continuity in Rome was that the Empire had always been patriarchal. This is mainly shown by what is called the paterfamilias. The paterfamilias says that the oldest living male in the family has complete control and authority over the whole family.
Ancient civilizations, specifically Greek and Roman civilizations, played various significant roles throughout the main civilizations in the Common Era. Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman from the Ancient civilization since the Roman emperor Constantine moved the capital from Rome to Byzantium and changed its name to Constantinople, known as the center city of Christian world. The political identity of Byzantine Empire can be traced back to one of the Imperial Rome. The empire had one emperor who made all decisions in the empire. The member of senate was appointed by the Emperor to be the figure-head. However, during Justinian’s reign, he tried to revise the Roman Law code and summarized all laws so that the court can refer to. Some of the architecture style during that time was resemble to the Roman architecture. For example, The Hague Sophia was the combination of longitudinal shape of the Roman basilica with a domed central plan. Regarding the infusion of the Greek culture, it could be easily seen by looking
Founder of Constantinople, Constantine claimed the great Byzantine Empire and in turn inherited the new Holy Roman Empire. With the Edict of Milan in 313, Constantine proclaimed religious tolerance of Christians throughout the empire and soon the religion spread. Constantine then transformed the city of Byzantium into the new capital of the Roman Empire, which then was known and proclaimed as Constantinople. The new capital would profit from its location being closer to the east frontier, having then the advantage of better trading, and a militarily sound location being protected on three sides by water.
The first reason why Justinian caused the Byzantine empire to succeed during his reign was because of his new coded system of laws. Justinian inherited a vast amount of Roman laws, called the twelve tables. (Allen Evans 24, Commire). In 528, Justinian set up a commission to codify the Roman law (Ostrogorski 74). 1528 books of Roman law were scanned and combined into fifty books divided into 432 chapters (Allen Evans 24). The work was called the Digest, and had immediate impacts on the Byzantine Empire and then it’s long-success (Allen Evans 24, Commire). Lawyers were able reference the laws in court, allowing fairer decisions to be made. The government, now was not only supported by its army, was also supported by the law (Allen Evans 24, Commire). Both of these things were very important to the success of the empire. Civilians had the ability to go to court and make sure that decisions were based on hundreds of years of law written out in one place, and not an impulsive decision of a judge. The government also had an extreme benefit in terms of having written out code of law, so there could be no arguments in terms of taxation or punishments. This attributed to the success of the empire because this helped stabilize the empire because important decisions could have been made based on hundreds of years of law and farer decisions prevented revolts. Coded laws also
This was an entertaining video that summarized the periods of the fall of the Roman Empire to the start of the renaissance. Medieval Europe had fewer resources compared to the Roman Empire. The Visigoths invaded the Roman Empire, thus the once powerful empire was tumbled. Henceforth, the Franks gradually took control of most Europe with the help of their Great King, Clovis. Clovis, a pagan, converted to Christianity and strengthened the control of the Franks.
The Byzantine Empire was a part of the Roman Empire and when Constantine decreed that Christianity would be the official religion of the Roman Empire, both sides benefited. Christianity would reach districts across the Silk Road and convert many peoples. The Byzantine Empire benefited by having a means to prevent conflicts with other Christian regions. Though they both promoted each other, when the Ottoman’s took Constantinople the Byzantine Empire lost access to Asia. Due to this dramatic blow, the Byzantine Empire wouldn’t be able to expand and in turn wouldn’t be able to promote Christianity.
The Byzantine government was controlling of all the citizens, and provided needs of the poor on special occasions. This government was in control of anything to do with money and religious activities. The influence for Byzantines was the Romans with their laws, but more than the Romans they were influenced by the Greeks culture.(Hall, 168) In the beginning Constantinople was under the rule of one person who took over the government and religious aspects of the everyday life. Then it was split into someone ruling the government and the head of the church.
Eastern Europe had begun its transition from the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine empire with the penetration of Christianity into all aspects of life. Both the Byzantine and Islamic Empires were defined by their use of monotheistic religion in governing their empires. They both used religion in their own ways as justification to spread their governorship. But their laws however were not the same, Byzantine laws were based off of romans and Christianity, However the Islamic caliphates laws were based off The Holy Book Quran. The Byzantine built churches so the people could worship and learn about the religion of Christianity where the Islamic Caliphates used the Sharia law where equal punishment is given to criminals. The difference between the two empires was that the Islamic Caliphates believed that the ruler should be related to prophet Muhammad. Whereas the Byzantine Empire believed that whoever was the most dedicated to the religion of
Although not as well-known as the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire was among one of the most influential empires in the ancient world because of its contributions in government and religion. The Byzantine Empire outlived the fall of the Western Empire by over a thousand years (Watts) through its strength, organization, and efficiency. The Byzantine Empire was successful after the fall of the Roman Empire because of its shrewd leaders, mainly Justinian the Great and his wife Theodora. One of the major political contributions of Justinian was the creation of a system of laws to govern his whole empire, known as the Justinian Code.
The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 had an effect on the culture of the Constantine people after Constantinople fell to the Muslim Ottoman Turks. The Muslim Ottoman Turks was one of the biggest empires that lasted the longest. When they took over the Byzantine empire they controlled the most powerful empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Ottoman Turks leader was Mehmed the Conqueror. At only the age of twenty-one he took over the largest city in Europe. When Mehmet became in charge he wanted the an “imam” (a person who leads prayer in a mosque) to claim the church as Muslim faith. Surprisingly Mehmet didn't touch the churches. He didn’t even let his soldiers vandalize them. He let one of the church's practice Greek Orthodox by giving it
Though their ideas are similar, their roots of these are still different. Rome was basically influenced by the Etruscans with their monarchy and infrastructure of paved streets, public buildings, defensive walls, large temples, & geographic advantages of being near (i.e. easy access to the Mediterranean which helped in trade.) Though the Byzantine was much influenced by the Romans, they were also influenced by the Middle East. Like Islamic views which were spreading throughout north of Africa and the bulk of the Middle East. In addition, during the 7th century the Arab Muslims had built a fleet that challenged the Byzantine naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean while repeatingly attacking Constantinople. The Arabs quickly swallowed the empire’s remaining provinces along the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean. This attack influenced the Byzantine empire’s pattern of life with Arab cultural and commercial influence. From attacks to religion, we see the religion between the Byzantine Empire and Ancient Romans are similar due to the fact they are associated with Christianity, but each civilization found ways to make it their own. The Romans, being that Christianity was becoming one of the major world religions, did of course arise during the time of Rome. However, Christianity was not really a product of roman culture & roman gods and goddesses were. The Byzantine Empire created a new branch of Christianity,
The difference of religion had a huge impact on both of the empires. Christianity in the Byzantine Empire was the most popular religion in the world with Islam right after. Judaism is a monotheistic religion and while most Christians believe they are monotheistic as well, many Muslims think upon Christians as polytheistic because they believed both God and Jesus are gods. In comparison, both empires were ruled by a pope. The Byzantine Empire was impacted through Christianity because the pope was the head of the empire, such as Constantine who became pope in 708. The Islamic Caliphate was also impacted through Islam because they too were ruled by a pope. This meant if you had a religious ruler, many people of the empire would follow suit and either convert or become more involved in the religious practices that the emperor/pope would do. Both religions were quite simple. Islam has no official clergy, and follows only one single sacred text, the Koran. However, Muslims do believe in the validity of the Old Testament. Muslim's