Ronchey, S. “Bisanzio fino alla quarta crociata.” Storia d'Europa e del Mediterraneo. VIII. Eds. A. Barbero and S. Carocci. Rome: Salerno, 2006. 215-55.

This essay outlines the history of Byzantine civilisation from the founding of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade.  In every way a continuation of the Roman empire, Byzantium succeeded in assimilating to positive effect the Völkerwanderungen that determined the fall of the first Rome, creating a point of strength and allegiance out of the multi-ethnic, ascendant vertical dynamism of the élites.  If gravitation toward the West and an antiquated Roman perspective still prevailed in Justinian’s ephemeral project to reunify the universal empire, the shift beyond the Italo-centric perspective from Heraclius on marked the true beginning of the Byzantine era.  Two fundamental achievements are ascribed to Heraclius: the creation of the system of themes and the definitive subjugation of the Persian empire, to whose ex-territories, however, the new Arab interlocutor would soon succeed.  Between the 7th and 8th centuries, with the accentuation of non-European traits in economic, social, artistic, and cultural fields, we begin to see the emergence of the authentic Byzantine concept of power.  Long considered “dark,” the age of iconomachy coincided, in reality, with a phase of economic prosperity.  The culmination of the process of de-urbanisation and transformation of the territory favoured the accentuation of a state-centred vocation and set the stage for the great “cultural revival” of the 9th and 10th centuries.  The defeat of iconoclasm also saw the defeat of Platonism and the affirmation of Aristotelianism as the official philosophy of Medieval Christianity.  The reign of Basil I and the Macedonian dynasty marked the so-called “golden age” of the Byzantine empire.  The 10th and 11th centuries saw more tormented relations between church and state, culminating in the Schism of 1054 between the Eastern and Western churches (ultimately the patriarch Cerularius’ challenge to the basileus) and a political and economic increase in the provincial military nobility that would assert itself definitively with the Comnenian dynasty.  The beginning of the decline of the Byzantine economy - uninterrupted until the 15th century, symmetrical in nature and the inverse of the ascent of Western trade proto-capitalism to which the ancient hegemony of Byzantium would be gradually subjugated and the very survival of the basileia ultimately sacrificed - began precisely with the Comnenian dynasty, in particular, with the concession of commercial privileges to Venice by Alexius I.  To the reawakening of the prospect of a restoration of the universal empire would correspond – in the form of social withdrawal and weakening of the state – greater vulnerability in political practice. Under these conditions Byzantium would, in 1204, be subjected to the destructive force of the “detour” of the Fourth Crusade: an unforeseen catastrophe and perhaps for this reason even more traumatic than the definitive fall in 1453 at the hands of the Osmanli Turks.

 

 

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