How old is Byzantium. Fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire

Byzantium (Byzantine Empire) - a medieval state from the name of the city of Byzantium, on the site of which the emperor of the Roman Empire Constantine I the Great (306–337) founded Constantinople and in 330 moved the capital here from Rome (see Ancient Rome). In 395 the empire was divided into Western and Eastern; in 476 the Western Empire fell; East survived. Byzantium was its continuation. The subjects themselves called her Romania (Roman power), and themselves - Romans (Romans), regardless of their ethnic origin.

Byzantine Empire in the VI-XI centuries.

Byzantium existed until the middle of the 15th century; until the 2nd half of the 12th century. it was a powerful, richest state that played a huge role in the political life of Europe and the countries of the Middle East. Byzantium achieved its most significant foreign policy successes at the end of the 10th century. - the beginning of the 11th century; she temporarily conquered the western Roman lands, then stopped the offensive of the Arabs, conquered Bulgaria in the Balkans, subjugated the Serbs and Croats and became in essence a Greek-Slavic state for almost two centuries. Its emperors tried to act as the supreme overlords of the entire Christian world. Ambassadors from all over the world came to Constantinople. The sovereigns of many countries of Europe and Asia dreamed of kinship with the emperor of Byzantium. Visited Constantinople around the middle of the 10th century. and Russian princess Olga. Her reception in the palace was described by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus himself. He was the first to call Russia "Rosia" and spoke about the path "from the Varangians to the Greeks."

Even more significant was the influence of the peculiar and vibrant culture of Byzantium. Until the end of the 12th century. it remained the most cultured country in Europe. Kievan Rus and Byzantium supported from the 9th century. regular trade, political and cultural ties. Invented around 860 by Byzantine cultural figures - the "Thessalonica brothers" Constantine (in monasticism Cyril) and Methodius, Slavic writing in the 2nd half of the 10th century. - early 11th c. penetrated into Russia mainly through Bulgaria and quickly became widespread here (see Writing). From Byzantium in 988, Russia also adopted Christianity (see Religion). Simultaneously with the baptism, Prince Vladimir of Kyiv married the emperor's sister (granddaughter of Constantine VI) Anna. In the next two centuries, dynastic marriages between the ruling houses of Byzantium and Russia were concluded many times. Gradually in the 9th-11th centuries. on the basis of an ideological (then primarily religious) community, an extensive cultural zone (“the world of orthodoxy” - Orthodoxy) developed, the center of which was Byzantium and in which the achievements of Byzantine civilization were actively perceived, developed and processed. The Orthodox zone (it was opposed by the Catholic one) included, in addition to Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria and most of Serbia.

One of the factors holding back the social and state development of Byzantium was the continuous wars that it waged throughout its existence. In Europe, she held back the onslaught of the Bulgarians and nomadic tribes - the Pechenegs, the Uzes, the Polovtsians; waged wars with the Serbs, Hungarians, Normans (in 1071 they deprived the empire of its last possessions in Italy), and finally, with the crusaders. In the East, Byzantium served for centuries as a barrier (like Kievan Rus) for Asian peoples: Arabs, Seljuk Turks, and from the 13th century. - and the Ottoman Turks.

There are several periods in the history of Byzantium. Time from the 4th c. until the middle of the 7th c. - this is the era of the collapse of the slave system, the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Slavery has outlived itself, the ancient policy (city) - the stronghold of the old system - was wrecked. The crisis was experienced by the economy, the state system, and ideology. Waves of "barbarian" invasions hit the empire. Relying on the huge bureaucratic apparatus of power inherited from the Roman Empire, the state recruited part of the peasants into the army, forced others to perform official duties (to carry goods, build fortresses), imposed heavy taxes on the population, attached it to the land. Justinian I (527–565) attempted to restore the Roman Empire to its former borders. His commanders Belisarius and Narses temporarily conquered North Africa from the Vandals, Italy from the Ostrogoths, and part of Southeastern Spain from the Visigoths. The grandiose wars of Justinian were vividly described by one of the greatest contemporary historians - Procopius of Caesarea. But the rise was short. By the middle of the 7th c. the territory of Byzantium was reduced by almost three times: possessions in Spain, more than half of the lands in Italy, most of the Balkan Peninsula, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were lost.

The culture of Byzantium in this era was distinguished by its bright originality. Although Latin was almost until the middle of the 7th century. official language, there was also literature in Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian. Christianity, which became the state religion in the 4th century, had a huge impact on the development of culture. The church controlled all genres of literature and the arts. Libraries and theaters were destroyed or destroyed, schools where "pagan" (ancient) sciences were taught were closed. But Byzantium needed educated people, the preservation of elements of secular scholarship and natural science knowledge, as well as applied arts, the skill of painters and architects. A significant fund of ancient heritage in Byzantine culture is one of its characteristic features. The Christian Church could not exist without a competent clergy. It turned out to be powerless in the face of criticism from pagans, heretics, adherents of Zoroastrianism and Islam, not relying on ancient philosophy and dialectics. On the foundation of ancient science and art, multicolored mosaics of the 5th-6th centuries, enduring in their artistic value, arose, among which the mosaics of churches in Ravenna stand out especially (for example, with the image of the emperor in the church of San Vitale). The Code of Civil Law of Justinian was drawn up, which later formed the basis of bourgeois law, since it was based on the principle of private property (see Roman law). An outstanding work of Byzantine architecture was the magnificent church of St. Sophia, built in Constantinople in 532-537. Anthimius of Thrall and Isidore of Miletus. This miracle of building technology is a kind of symbol of the political and ideological unity of the empire.

In the 1st third of the 7th c. Byzantium was in a state of severe crisis. Huge areas of previously cultivated lands were desolate and depopulated, many cities lay in ruins, the treasury was empty. The entire north of the Balkans was occupied by the Slavs, some of them penetrated far to the south. The state saw a way out of this situation in the revival of small free peasant landownership. Strengthening its power over the peasants, it made them its main support: the treasury was made up of taxes from them, an army was created from those obliged to serve in the militia. It helped to strengthen power in the provinces and return the lost lands in the 7th-10th centuries. a new administrative structure, the so-called thematic system: the governor of the province (themes) - the strategist received from the emperor all the fullness of military and civil power. The first themes arose in areas close to the capital, each new theme served as the basis for the creation of the next, neighboring one. The barbarians who settled in it also became subjects of the empire: as taxpayers and warriors, they were used to revive it.

With the loss of lands in the east and west, the majority of its population were Greeks, the emperor began to be called in Greek - "basileus".

In the 8th–10th centuries Byzantium became a feudal monarchy. A strong central government held back the development of feudal relations. Some of the peasants retained their freedom, remaining taxpayers to the treasury. The vassal system in Byzantium did not take shape (see Feudalism). Most of the feudal lords lived in large cities. The power of the basileus was especially strengthened in the era of iconoclasm (726-843): under the flag of the fight against superstition and idolatry (veneration of icons, relics), the emperors subjugated the clergy, who argued with them in the struggle for power, and supported separatist tendencies in the provinces, confiscated the wealth of the church and monasteries . From now on, the choice of the patriarch, and often the bishops, began to depend on the will of the emperor, as well as the welfare of the church. Having solved these problems, the government restored icon veneration in 843.

In the 9th-10th centuries. the state completely subjugated not only the village, but also the city. The gold Byzantine coin - nomisma acquired the role of an international currency. Constantinople became again a "workshop of splendor" that amazed foreigners; as a "golden bridge", he brought into a knot the trade routes from Asia and Europe. Merchants of the entire civilized world and all "barbarian" countries aspired here. But the artisans and merchants of the major centers of Byzantium were subjected to strict control and regulation by the state, paid high taxes and duties, and could not participate in political life. From the end of the 11th century their products could no longer withstand the competition of Italian goods. Uprisings of townspeople in the 11th-12th centuries. brutally repressed. Cities, including the capital, fell into decay. Their markets were dominated by foreigners who bought wholesale products from large feudal lords, churches, and monasteries.

The development of state power in Byzantium in the 8th–11th centuries. - this is the path of gradual revival in a new guise of a centralized bureaucratic apparatus. Numerous departments, courts, and overt and secret police operated a huge machine of power, designed to control all spheres of life of citizens, to ensure their payment of taxes, the fulfillment of duties, and unquestioning obedience. In the center of it stood the emperor - the supreme judge, legislator, military leader, who distributed titles, awards and positions. His every step was decorated with solemn ceremonies, especially the receptions of ambassadors. He presided over the council of the highest nobility (synclite). But his power was not legally hereditary. There was a bloody struggle for the throne, sometimes the synclite decided the matter. Intervened in the fate of the throne and the patriarch, and the palace guards, and all-powerful temporary workers, and the capital's plebs. In the 11th century two main groups of nobility competed - the civil bureaucracy (it stood for centralization and increased tax oppression) and the military (it sought greater independence and expansion of estates at the expense of free taxpayers). Basileus of the Macedonian dynasty (867-1056), founded by Basil I (867-886), under which Byzantium reached the pinnacle of power, represented the civil nobility. The rebellious usurper commanders waged a continuous struggle with her and in 1081 managed to place their protege Alexei I Comnenus (1081–1118), the founder of a new dynasty (1081–1185), on the throne. But the Comneni achieved temporary successes, they only delayed the fall of the empire. In the provinces, the rich magnates refused to consolidate the central government; Bulgarians and Serbs in Europe, Armenians in Asia did not recognize the power of the Basils. Byzantium, which was in crisis, fell in 1204, during the invasion of the Crusaders during the 4th Crusade (see Crusades).

In the cultural life of Byzantium in the 7th-12th centuries. changed three stages. Until the 2nd third of the 9th c. its culture is marked by decadence. Elementary literacy became a rarity, secular sciences were almost expelled (except for those related to military affairs; for example, in the 7th century "Greek fire" was invented, a liquid combustible mixture that brought victories to the imperial fleet more than once). Literature was dominated by the genre of biographies of saints - primitive narratives that praised patience and implanted faith in miracles. Byzantine painting of this period is poorly known - icons and frescoes perished during the era of iconoclasm.

The period from the middle of the 9th c. and almost to the end of the 11th century. called by the name of the ruling dynasty, the time of the "Macedonian revival" of culture. Back in the 8th c. it became predominantly Greek-speaking. The "Renaissance" was peculiar: it was based on official, strictly systematized theology. The metropolitan school acted as a legislator both in the sphere of ideas and in the forms of their embodiment. The canon, model, stencil, fidelity to tradition, the unchanging norm triumphed in everything. All types of fine arts were permeated with spiritualism, the idea of ​​humility and the triumph of the spirit over the body. Painting (icon painting, frescoes) was regulated by obligatory plots, images, the arrangement of figures, a certain combination of colors and chiaroscuro. These were not images of real people with their individual traits, but symbols of moral ideals, faces as carriers of certain virtues. But even in such conditions, artists created genuine masterpieces. An example of this is the beautiful miniatures of the Psalter of the early 10th century. (stored in Paris). Byzantine icons, frescoes, book miniatures occupy a place of honor in the world of fine arts (see Art).

Philosophy, aesthetics, and literature are marked by conservatism, a penchant for compilation, and a fear of novelty. The culture of this period is distinguished by external pomposity, adherence to strict rituals, splendor (during worship, palace receptions, organizing holidays and sports, triumphs in honor of military victories), as well as a sense of superiority over the culture of the peoples of the rest of the world.

However, this time was also marked by a struggle of ideas, and by democratic and rationalist tendencies. Major advances have been made in the natural sciences. He was famous for his scholarship in the first half of the 9th century. Lev Mathematician. The ancient heritage was actively comprehended. He was often approached by Patriarch Photius (mid-ninth century), who cared about the quality of teaching at the higher Mangavra school in Constantinople, where the Slavic enlighteners Cyril and Methodius were then studying. They relied on ancient knowledge when creating encyclopedias on medicine, agricultural technology, military affairs, and diplomacy. In the 11th century the teaching of jurisprudence and philosophy was restored. The number of schools that taught literacy and numeracy increased (see Education). Passion for antiquity led to the emergence of rationalistic attempts to justify the superiority of reason over faith. In the "low" literary genres, calls for sympathy for the poor and humiliated became more frequent. The heroic epic (the poem "Digenis Akrit") is permeated with the idea of ​​patriotism, consciousness of human dignity, independence. Instead of brief world chronicles, there are extensive historical descriptions of the recent past and events contemporary to the author, where often the devastating criticism of the basileus was heard. Such, for example, is the highly artistic Chronography by Michael Psellos (2nd half of the 11th century).

In painting, the number of subjects increased sharply, technique became more complicated, attention to the individuality of images increased, although the canon did not disappear. In architecture, the basilica was replaced by a cross-domed church with rich decoration. The pinnacle of the historiographical genre was the "History" by Nikita Choniates, an extensive historical narrative, brought to 1206 (including a story about the tragedy of the empire in 1204), full of sharp moral assessments and attempts to clarify the cause-and-effect relationships between events.

On the ruins of Byzantium in 1204, the Latin Empire arose, consisting of several states of Western knights bound by vassal ties. At the same time, three state associations of the local population were formed - the Kingdom of Epirus, the Empire of Trebizond and the Empire of Nicaea, hostile to the Latins (as the Byzantines called all Catholics whose church language was Latin) and to each other. In the long-term struggle for the “Byzantine inheritance”, the Nicaean Empire gradually won. In 1261, she expelled the Latins from Constantinople, but the restored Byzantium did not regain its former greatness. Not all lands were returned, and the development of feudalism led to the 14th century. to feudal disunity. In Constantinople and other large cities, Italian merchants were in charge, having received unheard-of benefits from the emperors. Civil wars were added to the wars with Bulgaria and Serbia. In 1342–1349 the democratic elements of the cities (primarily Thessalonica) revolted against the big feudal lords, but were defeated.

The development of Byzantine culture in 1204–1261 lost unity: it proceeded within the framework of the three states mentioned above and in the Latin principalities, reflecting both Byzantine traditions and the characteristics of these new political entities. Since 1261, the culture of late Byzantium has been characterized as a "Paleologian revival". This was a new bright flowering of Byzantine culture, marked, however, by especially sharp contradictions. As before, writings on ecclesiastical topics prevailed in literature - lamentations, panegyrics, lives, theological treatises, etc. However, secular motives begin to sound more and more insistently. The poetic genre developed, novels in verse on ancient subjects appeared. Works were created in which there were disputes about the meaning of ancient philosophy and rhetoric. Folk motifs, in particular folk songs, began to be used more boldly. The fables ridiculed the vices of the social system. Literature in the vernacular arose. 15th century humanist philosopher Georgy Gemist Plifon exposed the self-interest of the feudal lords, proposed to liquidate private property, to replace obsolete Christianity with a new religious system. In painting, bright colors, dynamic postures, individuality of portrait and psychological characteristics prevailed. Many original monuments of religious and secular (palace) architecture were created.

Starting from 1352, the Ottoman Turks, having captured almost all the possessions of Byzantium in Asia Minor, began to conquer its lands in the Balkans. Attempts to bring the Slavic countries in the Balkans to the union failed. The West, however, promised Byzantium help only on the condition that the church of the empire be subordinated to the papacy. The Ferraro-Florentine union of 1439 was rejected by the people, who protested violently, hating the Latins for their dominance in the economy of the cities, for the robberies and oppression of the crusaders. At the beginning of April 1453, Constantinople, almost alone in the struggle, was surrounded by a huge Turkish army and on May 29 was taken by storm. The last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died in arms on the walls of Constantinople. The city was sacked; it then became Istanbul - the capital of the Ottoman Empire. In 1460, the Turks conquered the Byzantine Morea in the Peloponnese, and in 1461 Trebizond, the last fragment of the former empire. The fall of Byzantium, which had existed for a thousand years, was an event of world-historical significance. It resonated with keen sympathy in Russia, in Ukraine, among the peoples of the Caucasus and the Balkan Peninsula, who by 1453 had already experienced the severity of the Ottoman yoke.

Byzantium perished, but its bright, multifaceted culture left a deep mark on the history of world civilization. The traditions of Byzantine culture were carefully preserved and developed in the Russian state, which experienced a rise and soon after the fall of Constantinople, at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, turned into a powerful centralized state. Her sovereign Ivan III (1462–1505), under whom the unification of Russian lands was completed, was married to Sophia (Zoya) Paleolog, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor.

Eastern Roman Empire - Byzantium

During its thousand-year history, the Byzantine Empire, which absorbed the magnificent heritage of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the Hellenistic East, went through the same main stages of social development as many countries of the medieval world. The unique geographical location of the empire, which had possessions both in Europe and in Asia, and in other periods of history in Africa, made the country, as it were, a link between East and West. The mixture of different cultures - Eastern, Greek and Roman - could not help but leave imprints on all aspects of the life of Byzantine society - the state structure, religion, culture and art. The so-called openness of the Byzantine civilization arose due to the established economic and political relations that connected Byzantium with many countries of Europe and Asia. At the same time, Byzantium went its own historical path. She claimed to be the ruler of the entire civilized world. The rulers of Western and Southeastern Europe sought to imitate the customs and methods of state administration and diplomacy of Byzantium.

In the history of the Byzantine Empire, if we consider its internal development and the role it played in the international life of the Middle Ages, we can distinguish several periods: the formation of the empire, the time of its highest prosperity, the fall under the blows of the crusaders and the final death under the onslaught of the Seljuk Turks and Turks. Ottomans.

In 330, the Roman emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople. The city was built on the site of the former Greek colony of Byzantium on the shores of the Sea of ​​Marmara. The new capital was named in honor of the emperor Constantinople - "the city of Constantine." And in 395 the Great Roman Empire broke up into eastern and western parts. It is this date that is considered to be the beginning of the Byzantine Empire proper. Since that time, the history of Byzantine civilization opens. In its early period, Byzantium had possessions in Europe, as well as in Asia and Africa. After the collapse of the Roman state, the richest regions were under the rule of Byzantium.

The vast Byzantine Empire included the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, parts of Mesopotamia, Armenia and Arabia. Byzantine possessions were also in the Northern Black Sea region. The territory of the empire was vast. The nature and climate of this state were very diverse: hot and dry summers with warm and rainy winters in one part of the empire, cold and snowy winters in another.

High mountains in Greece and Asia Minor, wide fertile plains in Thessaly and Thrace, fat lands of the Nile Valley - the Byzantine Empire was rich. In Egypt and Thrace, wheat and barley were grown. The coastal regions of the Aegean were famous for their orchards and extensive vineyards, while Greece was famous for its olive oil. In Egypt, flax was grown, and in Syria and Phoenicia they were engaged in sericulture, which brought fame to Byzantium as a manufacturer of valuable silk fabrics. Cattle breeding was developed in the mountainous regions and in the steppes.

“The great state road, leading from west to east, passed through Thessalonica and involuntarily persuaded travelers to stop and buy everything they needed here. Therefore, we turned out to be the owners of all sorts of blessings, whatever you can name. The streets of the city were always filled with a motley crowd of Thessalonians and passing guests, so it was easier to count the grains of sand on the seashore than the people passing through the market square and busy with trading affairs ... ”, - this is how the Thessalonian priest John Kameniata (beginning of the 10th century) described trade in the cities of the Byzantine Empire. c.) in his essay "The Capture of Thessalonica".

Byzantine lands were also famous for their natural resources: timber, stone and marble, gold and silver, iron and copper. Iron ore was delivered to Byzantium from the distant Caucasian ranges, and silver and copper from Armenia. The most important writing material, papyrus, was brought from Egypt, and a special shell was mined off the coast of Asia Minor and Phenicia, which served as raw material for the manufacture of the famous purple paint. Only one drop of this paint could be obtained from one shell, so it was terribly expensive and was mainly used to dye imperial clothes. Byzantine merchants in search of new goods went to different countries, sometimes making their way to the most remote corners of the world. Merchants were often scouts: they tried to learn as much as possible about the customs, strengths and weaknesses of the countries they visited. “It is more reliable to defeat the enemy with ingenuity, intelligence or even cunning than by force of arms,” the Byzantines believed. And although the empire was constantly at war, since its rich lands always attracted invaders, nevertheless the Romans - subjects of the Byzantine kings - preferred to pay rather than fight. At the same time, they maintained a well-trained professional army. Byzantium managed to happily avoid the fate of the Western Roman Empire - it did not know the complete conquest of the entire country by barbarian tribes and did not experience the death of a centralized state. Until the 7th century Latin was considered the official language of Byzantium, but books were written in Greek, Armenian, Syriac, and Georgian. The majority of the population were Greeks. The inhabitants of the empire called themselves Romans, their state - the Roman kingdom, and Constantinople - New Rome. The ruler of the Byzantine Empire was called Basileus. According to the Byzantines, he was the only legitimate heir to the Roman emperors.

The first period of the history of the empire covers three and a half centuries - from the 4th to the middle of the 7th century. In Byzantium, there were about a thousand cities in which many different peoples lived, speaking different languages. But the biggest was, of course, Constantinople, it was inhabited by more than half a million people. It had a favorable geographical position: the main trade routes crossed here, which led from west to east - to the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, from the Black Sea - to the Mediterranean. On one side, the walls of Constantinople were washed by the waters of the Sea of ​​​​Marmara, on the other, there was the Golden Horn Bay. This bay was an excellent harbor for Byzantine ships, and in case of danger, the entrance to the bay was blocked by a special iron chain.

The fortified city walls and towers of Constantinople that have survived to this day amaze with their power and grandeur. It was also the largest port in the entire Mediterranean. Byzantium throughout almost the entire early Middle Ages was a great maritime power. It was the presence of the fleet that contributed to the economic and political influence of Byzantium in the medieval world.

In the IV century. around the world, the products of skilled Byzantine craftsmen were already known, who made items of the most sophisticated luxury. The works of jewelers, mosaicists, enamellers, wood and stone carvers and other Byzantine craftsmen served as an unattainable standard for artisans in many countries. The Byzantines called their capital "the vast workshop of the universe." Luxurious patterned silk fabrics, the finest linen and woolen fabrics were famous all over the world. But merchants were not allowed to sell purple, scarlet, purple fabrics to foreigners, since wearing clothes of such colors was the exclusive privilege of the emperor. The sale of such fabrics was considered an encroachment on the imperial colors, and therefore on the very dignity of the emperor.

The works of Byzantine jewelers were distinguished by their extraordinary beauty and delicate taste. Valuable handwritten books, magnificently illustrated with artistic miniatures, were highly valued throughout the civilized world.

“The crusaders could not even imagine that there was such a mighty city in the world before they saw the high walls and powerful towers surrounding it, its magnificent palaces, high cathedrals. And there are so many of them that you can’t believe it without seeing with your own eyes the expanse and distance of it, the city that stands as a king over other cities, ”wrote J. Villardouin from Champagne, who participated in the capture of Constantinople.

The beauty and grandeur of the city amazed contemporaries. Admired by the beautiful appearance of palaces and temples, writers and poets glorified the splendor and exquisite charm of the Byzantine capital in their works: “A city of cities, the light of the universe, the glory of the world, the mother of churches, the foundation of faith, the patron of science and art, the fatherland and the hearth of beauty.”

Merchants from different countries came to Constantinople, and the Byzantines themselves went to the most remote corners of the ecumene. In the east, they traded with such fantastic countries as Europeans imagined, such as India and Ceylon, distant China. In the south they reached Arabia and rich in gold and ivory Ethiopia, in the north - the harsh coast of Scandinavia and the misty islands of Albion.

According to its state structure, Byzantium was an autocratic monarchy. The emperor-autocrat - basileus was considered the sovereign ruler of the country. According to Roman tradition, the emperor was elected by the senate, the army and the people. His power was considered sacred. He had the power to make and amend laws, appoint and dismiss officials, sentence his subjects to death, and confiscate their property. The emperor was the supreme judge, commander-in-chief of the army, he was in charge of all foreign policy. Vasivlevs was the ruler of the country, but still not its owner, which could be observed in the eastern states. The power of the emperor in Byzantium was not inherited. The emperor had to prove himself "a faithful servant of Christ God." In the case of unrighteous deeds, he lost the support of God. And then anyone could encroach on his power. If the attempt to seize power was successful, then the usurper became emperor, otherwise he was blinded. Many Byzantine rulers reigned for a short time and ended their lives at best in a monastery, at worst - death at the hands of assassins. The researchers noted that "in Byzantium during its existence, one hundred and nine emperors ruled, and only thirty-four of them died a natural death." So, the fate of many of them was tragic: “Michael III was stabbed to death at a feast in his country residence, Nicephorus II was killed in his own bedroom, John I was poisoned, Roman III was drowned in a bath. In just a hundred years from the beginning of the reign of Basil II (976) to the beginning of the reign of Alexei I Komnenos (1081), there were about 50 conspiracies and rebellions. (S. B. Dashkov, Emperors of Byzantium, M.: 1996). Even a person of no noble birth could become an emperor. For example, Emperor Justinian was the son of a peasant, and his wife, the beautiful Theodora, was an actress in the past; Vasily I and Roman I also came from peasants, and Mikhail IV was a money changer. However, it was in Byzantium that the Christian church substantiated the theory of the divine origin of imperial power, laying the foundation for an unlimited Christian monarchy.

The emperor had a powerful but cumbersome administrative system under his control. The whole empire was divided into themes (districts), at the head of each was a strategist, who had military and civil power in it. He managed the district and was obliged to report annually to the basileus. He could be moved to manage another district. Subordinate to the strategist was a judge in charge of the civil administration. Money was needed to maintain such a large state apparatus. Therefore, all subjects of the emperor were obliged to pay taxes. Special employees determined the amounts of these taxes, and collectors collected them. Each village was jointly responsible for paying the tax. If someone did not pay, then others were obliged to pay for it.

The second person in the state was the patriarch, who led all the clergy and was subordinate to the emperor.

Byzantium preserved the traditions of Roman military art, published and studied works on the theory, strategy and tactics of military affairs. However, by the end of the existence of the empire, the army became mostly mercenary and was distinguished by a rather low combat capability.

Many written monuments and images have survived to our time, thanks to which we can reconstruct the weapons of Byzantine soldiers. Sculptures confirm that late Italic armaments were preserved until the emperor Theodosius (346-395). At the same time, the Roman military historian Publius Flavius ​​Vegetius (end of the 4th - beginning of the 5th century) complains that defensive weapons gradually disappeared from the army, especially for light infantry.

The Byzantine army was divided into several classes according to the types of weapons: heavy cavalry, or cataphracts, light cavalry, heavy infantry and light infantry, artillery, which was not numerous and was used mainly during the siege and storming of cities.

Simultaneously with the professional army, there were personal squads of generals and private individuals, called bucellaria. Vigilantes were recruited from the barbarians more often only for the duration of a military campaign, since the maintenance of such a detachment was quite expensive. To protect the emperor and empress, there were guards - tagmas. They were divided into horse tagmas (scholas, escuvites, arithms, ikanats) and foot tagmas - numbers and walls. In addition, there were also hired foreign guards - etheria - and palace guards: kuvikularii, candidates and wiggles.

Eteria - commanded by an etheriarch, a detachment of several thousand heavily armed infantrymen. Byzantine historians Michael Psellus, Nicephorus Bryennius, Anna Komnena refer to etheria either as “those who wear swords on their shoulders”, or as “armed with axes”, meaning, respectively, the Anglo-Saxon and Varangian-Russian parts of it. In terms of armament and methods of combat, it was a very good heavy infantry.

The shock part of the army was made up of warriors-riders - cataphracts, whose spear attacks often decided the outcome of the battle. Their weapons are spears, swords, daggers, clubs, shields. The body of a warrior was protected by chain mail, over which they put on a klibanion shell - metal or armor made of thick leather, equipped with pterygiums - leather stripes on the shoulders. The lower part of the shell, which was called cremasmata, protected the stomach and thighs. The rider's arms and legs were protected from injury by halcotube leggings and panikelia bracers that covered the arm from elbow to hand, as well as leather gloves. During excavations of a large palace in Constantinople, face masks were found worn by cataphract warriors. In addition, the armor protected the horse. Sometimes some cataphract warriors were armed with bows and darts instead of spears. “The Byzantine cataphracts bore little resemblance to the Western European knightly militia, they were quite disciplined, organized into permanent units and even had (this was a common feature of the Byzantine army) uniform elements: cloaks and tufts of horsehair on helmets of a certain color, indicating that the warrior belonged to one or another division." (S. B. Dashkov, Emperors of Byzantium, M.: 1996).

The light cavalry were armed with shields, spears and bows with arrows. The offensive weapons of the heavy infantry were swords, and the defensive weapons were shields and chain mail. The light infantry were armed with bows and arrows, javelins and slings. Often, weapons were provided to soldiers at the expense of the treasury.

Judging by the information presented by Emperor Leo VI in his treatise "Tactics" (beginning of the 10th century), the main offensive weapons of heavily armed warriors, both on foot and on horseback, were long spears and swords. The protective armament of heavily armed foot soldiers (hoplites) consisted of a round or oval shield with a metal umbon covered with thick rawhide, a round helmet with a high crest and earpieces, a chain mail shirt, sometimes equipped with a hood, and lamellar armor made of interconnected metal plates. .

The main part of the Byzantine army was made up of light infantry. The body of the foot soldier was protected by soft armor, which was made of multi-layered felt. Infantrymen initially used round shields for protection, which gradually gave way to elongated almond-shaped ones, which made it possible to cover almost the entire figure of a warrior. Slings, darts and daggers served as offensive weapons for lightly armed infantrymen, they also used powerful composite bows and arrows.

The Byzantine Empire reached its peak in the early period under Justinian I. During this period, the empire not only successfully repelled the onslaught of barbarian tribes, but also began to pursue a broad policy of conquest in the West. The Byzantines conquered North Africa from the Vandals, Italy from the Ostrogoths, and part of Spain from the Visigoths. For some time, the Roman Empire was restored to its former borders. However, under the successors of Justinian, most of these conquests were again lost. The future emperor Justinian was born into the family of a poor Illyrian peasant, and his wife and faithful assistant Theodora was previously a circus actress and courtesan. Her extraordinary beauty and mind conquered Justinian, and he made Theodora his wife and empress. Theodora, according to the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (between 490 and 507 - after 562), was "small in stature, beautifully built and graceful, with an amazingly beautiful oblong matte face, witty, cheerful, slanderous and intelligent." (Procopius of Caesarea. Secret History. / Translated by S. P. Kondratiev. // VDI. 1938. No. 4).

In the 7th century The Byzantines invented a special combustible mixture, which they called "Greek fire." It was a truly terrible weapon. The fire even spread through the water and spread from ship to ship.

Justinian was an intelligent and energetic ruler, a tireless reformer who dreamed of the revival of the Great Roman Empire. And at the same time, although he gave the impression of a generous, accessible and easy-to-handle person, he was merciless to opponents, two-faced and insidious. During his reign, the cruel persecution of pagans and heretics began, whose property was taken away to the treasury, they were also forbidden to enter the public service. “It is fair,” wrote Justinian, “to deprive earthly goods of one who wrongly worships God.” (S. B. Dashkov, Emperors of Byzantium, M.: 1996), strengthened his power with iron and blood. He literally drowned the largest Nika uprising in Constantinople in blood. By the way, Theodora's determination played a big role in this. He dealt ruthlessly with the recalcitrant nobility, taking the property of the condemned to the treasury. Justinian became famous for his legislative and administrative activities. He owns the famous code of civil laws "Code of Justinian", which formed the basis of the legal systems of many states.

The Byzantines have always believed that culture is exactly what distinguishes them from the barbarians. The historical writings of the Byzantine historians Procopius, Psellos, Anna Komnina, and George Pachymer and others have survived to our time. From the age of eight, children began to study at a school that provided primary education. Then those wishing to receive a more complete education continued it under the guidance of a teacher paid by their parents. They studied "Homer and geometry, dialectics and other philosophical disciplines, rhetoric and arithmetic, astronomy, music and other Hellenic sciences." It was also possible to enter the University of Constantinople, which was founded by the decree of Theodosius II in 425. “The departments of Greek and Latin grammar and rhetoric, law and philosophy were established at the university. Teaching was conducted in Greek and Latin. The total number of teachers was determined at 31 people, of which ten Greek and ten Latin grammarians, three Latin and five Greek rhetors, two law professors and one philosopher ”(S. Valyansky, D. Kalyuzhny. From the history of education. Byzantine education).

During the reign of Emperor Justinian, Byzantine art flourished. Only in Constantinople, by his decree, 30 churches were erected and the most famous temple of Hagia Sophia (Temple of Wisdom), which became a symbol of the "golden age" of Byzantium. The cathedral was designed by the Byzantine architects Isidore of Miletus and Anthimius of Thrall. The best craftsmen from all over the country were invited to Constantinople. To decorate the temple, the best rocks of granite and marble were delivered, eight columns were broken out of the temple of Artemis in Ephesus and brought. According to the figurative expression of the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea: “In height, it (the temple of Hagia Sophia) rises as if to the sky and, like a ship on the high waves of the sea, stands out among other buildings.” The dome of St. Sophia Cathedral, 54 meters high, was "so light, so airy that it seemed that it was not held on masonry, but was suspended from the sky on a golden chain."

The interior of the cathedral was filled with light, which was reflected from the sparkling mosaics that adorned the walls of the temple.

And this was not accidental: according to the definition of Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia, "light is the visible form of the Divine." The columns were decorated with exquisite carvings, the floors and walls were carved from multi-colored marble, silver lamps that looked like trees descended from the ceiling. “It is famous for its indescribable beauty… One could say that this place is not illuminated by the sun from the outside, but that the brilliance is born in itself: such an amount of light spreads in this temple. The ceiling is lined with pure gold, connecting with beauty and magnificence; competing in brilliance, its brilliance defeats the brilliance of stones. On either side are two galleries; and their ceiling is a dome, and the decoration is gold. One of these galleries is designated for praying men, the other for women. Who could count the splendor of the columns and marbles with which the temple is adorned? One would think that you are in a luxurious meadow covered with flowers, ”wrote the admiring Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea. (War with the Persians. War with the Vandals. Secret History. Aletheia, St. Petersburg - 1998).

The dome of the cathedral was decorated with a large golden cross. Hagia Sophia and now serves as an adornment of the capital of Turkey - Istanbul, the former Constantinople. The cathedral houses the Hagia Sophia mosque, surrounded by four majestic minarets, and the magnificent mosaics that once adorned its walls have disappeared under a layer of plaster.

In many parts of the empire, temples were erected that resembled the Hagia Sophia. The temple covered with a dome, as it were, personified the image of the universe, the elevated vault of the church - the "heaven of heaven", and the wide and beautiful arches that supported the dome - the four cardinal points. The Byzantines loved to decorate their temples with mosaics. From particles of smalt (pieces of colored glass mass, marble and multi-colored stone), they made amazing pictures. So, the mosaic of Hagia Sophia depicts Emperor Constantine and his wife, Empress Zoya, their images embodied the idea of ​​royalty. On the mosaics of the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, a solemn procession is shown: on the one hand, surrounded by courtiers, the emperor Justinian moves, he carries a precious cup as a gift to the temple; on the other - his wife Theodora, along with the ladies of the court, in her hands is a chalice (chalice for communion), which she also carries as a gift to the church. The clothes of the emperor and empress are made of expensive fabrics, decorated with gold embroidery and precious stones, their heads are crowned with imperial crowns studded with jewels. The figures, as it were, protrude from the sparkling golden background surrounding them, giving them solemnity and significance.

The Byzantines also decorated their houses with great love: they could see expensive fabrics, famous Byzantine silks with woven patterns that were used as curtains, precious utensils, beautiful furniture, magnificent floors. Tables were covered with especially expensive carpets. The rooms in the houses were lit with oil lamps in the form of lily flowers or a two-humped camel, a fish, the head of a terrible dragon.

Education received in Byzantium was highly valued: “No European could be considered sufficiently educated if he had not studied at least for some time in Constantinople,” wrote Pope Pius II (1405–1464).

Particularly magnificent was the palace of Vasileus - the Grand Imperial Palace, erected on the very shore of the Sea of ​​​​Marmara. The palace was a whole complex of luxurious buildings. Beautiful palaces with beautifully decorated ceremonial halls and living rooms, with open terraces and luxurious baths - all this was surrounded by gardens and fountains. Special closed passages led to the imperial box at the hippodrome and to other buildings of the palace complex. The size and scale of the buildings were amazing. Visited Constantinople in 1348-1349. Stefan of Novgorod recorded: “There is a palace right there, called the Chamber of the Faithful Tsar Constantine.” Its walls are very high, higher than the city walls, the palace is great, it is like a city, it stands near the Hippodrome by the sea. (“The Journey of Stefan of Novgorod” in the book by I. Maleto “Anthology of the Journeys of Russian Travelers. XII-XV centuries”. M .: Nauka, 2005).

The walls and floors in the palaces were decorated with multi-colored marble and mosaics, the motives of many of them were dedicated to the military victories of Emperor Justinian over the barbarians. Not only the walls of the palace, but also the floors were decorated with magnificent mosaic compositions - here in front of us is a peasant milking a goat, a fisherman is fishing on the river bank, a beautiful girl carries a heavy jug filled with water in her hands, and a young man plays the flute.

Expensive fabrics adorned the walls, they were draped window and doorways. Thrones, stools and boxes were inlaid with precious metals and ivory. But the most magnificent room of the palace was, of course, the “Golden Throne Room”, called Chrysotriclinium, where solemn receptions of foreign ambassadors were held.

There were legends about the luxury and wealth of the Byzantine imperial palace. “In front of the throne of the emperor stood a bronze gilded tree, on the branches of which birds of different breeds, also made of gilded bronze, sat, singing according to their bird breed in different voices. The throne of the emperor was so skillfully built that one moment it seemed low, the next - higher, and after that elevated. This throne, as it were, was guarded by lions of unusual size, I don’t know, made of bronze or wood, but gilded. They beat the floor with their tails, opened their mouths and, moving their tongues, uttered a growl. At my appearance, lions roared, birds chirped, each in its own way, when, bowing before the emperor, I bowed for the third time, then, raising my head, I saw him, whom I had just seen sitting on a small dais, now sitting almost under the ceiling of the hall and dressed in other clothes. I could not understand how this happened: he must have been lifted up by a machine ..., - wrote, without hiding his admiration for the reception held in the Constantinople palace, the ambassador of the German emperor Liutprand of Cremona (Liutprand of Cremona. Anatapodosis, or Retribution). To supply the huge city with water, a whole system of aqueducts and cisterns was built. During the reign of Justinian, the largest and most magnificent reservoir in the city was erected - this structure resembles a beautiful palace, decorated with many elegant marble columns, but located underground and filled with clear water. Water came here through special water pipes and aqueducts from springs located in the forest 19 km from the city. When the Turks captured Constantinople, they, amazed by the beauty and splendor of the reservoir, called it "A Thousand and One Columns."

The hippodrome was the center of social and cultural life of the capital. Here, with a huge gathering of people, and the hippodrome could accommodate about a hundred thousand spectators, various celebrations, public executions, chariot races, all kinds of sports competitions, animal hunting and other similar spectacles took place. The hippodrome was decorated with ancient monuments brought to the city from different places as trophies: a snake column from Delphi, an Egyptian obelisk of Thutmose III delivered by order of Constantine from Luxor. The gates to the hippodrome were decorated with magnificent bronze horses, sculpted by the greatest Greek sculptor Lysippus and subsequently taken by the crusaders to Venice. “... Along this square (hippodrome) there was a wall that had a good 15 feet in height and 10 in width; and on top of this wall were the figures of both men and women, and horses, and bulls, and camels, and bears, and lions, and many other animals, cast in copper. And all of them were so well made and so naturally sculpted that neither in pagan countries nor in the Christian world can one find such a skilled craftsman who could imagine and cast the figures so well as these were cast. (Description of the hippodrome by Robert de Clary, a member of the Fourth Crusade).

The Byzantine Empire flourished. Nevertheless, this greatness was bought at too high a price - devastating wars gradually undermined the country's economy, the population was impoverished. And the lands and wealth of the empire attracted powerful neighbors. The successors of Justinian no longer thought about conquest campaigns, they were forced only to defend the borders of the state. Soon, many of the lands conquered by Justinian in the west were lost.

The next, the 7th century, brought Byzantium some hardships - it was one of the most difficult periods in the history of the empire. Sassanid Iran fought with Byzantium for trade routes, and from the north, the blows were delivered by the Slavs. Prolonged wars with Persia and confrontation with the Slavic tribes, who poured in an unstoppable stream from behind the Danube and settled on the lands of the empire - all this led to the fact that Byzantium began to lose its possessions. By the middle of the 7th century Slavic tribes captured the Balkan provinces: Dalmatia, Istria, Macedonia, Moesia, Peloponnese and Thrace.

Soon another powerful enemy appeared - the Arab Caliphate. Byzantium lost most of its possessions in Syria and Palestine, then in Upper Mesopotamia and Egypt, and later - lands in North Africa, the Arabs even besieged Constantinople. It should be noted that the country itself was restless - many cities were ruined and deserted, internal unrest significantly undermined the country's economy.

The Basilica Cistern is one of the largest and well-preserved ancient underground reservoirs in Constantinople. It is located in the historical center of Istanbul opposite the Hagia Sophia. The construction of the cistern was started by the Greeks during the reign of Emperor Constantine I (306–337) and completed in 532 under Emperor Justinian. The dimensions of the underground structure are 145 × 65 m, the capacity is 80,000 m3 of water. The vaulted ceiling of the cistern is supported by 336 columns (12 rows of 28 columns) eight meters high, they stand at a distance of 4.8 m from each other. The 4 m thick walls are made of refractory bricks and covered with a special waterproofing mortar.

Period from the 7th to the 11th century. turned out to be difficult for the Byzantine Empire. However, the emperors of the new Macedonian dynasty, who came to power at this difficult time, managed not only to bring the country out of the crisis, but also to make the empire more united and monolithic. They carried out a number of transformations in the state structure and in the army. Greek became the official language. At the end of the 9th century, starting from the reign of Basil I, the Byzantine Empire again experienced a brief flowering, the Macedonian dynasty 867-1081. provided Byzantium with one hundred and fifty years of prosperity and power. During this period, which is often called the “golden age” of Byzantine statehood, successful military campaigns against the Arabs were carried out, the borders of the empire were again extended up to the Euphrates and Tigris, Armenia and Iberia were conquered. This period is also characterized by the flourishing of culture.

After a brief heyday during the reign of the powerful Macedonian dynasty, the Byzantine Empire enters a period of decline. The reasons for the weakness of the empire in these last centuries are complex and varied. They lurked in the slowness of the socio-economic development of Byzantium, the strengthening of feudal fragmentation - the rulers of the provinces in this period had little regard for the central government. Cities gradually fell into decay, the army and navy weakened. At the same time, the still remaining power and wealth of the Byzantine Empire aroused the envy of its neighbors, and at the beginning of the 13th century. she experienced a severe shock. In 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade, supported by the Venetians, captured and sacked Constantinople. The Byzantine historian Nikita Choniates (mid-12th century - 1213), who was in the city at that time, described what was happening with horror: abandoned by their own people were destroyed. About the looting of the main temple (Hagia Sophia) one cannot even listen indifferently. The holy lecterns, woven with jewels and of extraordinary beauty that led to amazement, were cut into pieces and divided among the soldiers along with other magnificent things. When they needed to take out of the temple sacred vessels, objects of extraordinary art and extreme rarity, silver and gold, which were lined with chairs, ambos and gates, they brought mules and horses with saddles into the vestibules of the temples. (Nikita Choniates. Nikita Choniates is a story beginning with the reign of John Komnenos. VIPDA. St. Petersburg: 186–862). One of the participants in the assault and the author of the chronicle “The Conquest of Constantinople,” Robert de Clary, amazed at the wealth of the city and the greed of the crusaders, recalls: “There were so many rich utensils made of gold and silver, and so many gold-woven fabrics, and so many rich treasures that it was a real miracle. , all this huge goodness that was demolished there. I myself think that even in the 40 richest cities in the world there was hardly as much goodness as was found in Constantinople. And the very people who were supposed to guard the good, took away the jewels of gold and everything they wanted, and so plundered the good; and each of the powerful people took for himself either golden utensils, or golden-woven silks, or what he liked best, and then carried away. After the fall of the empire, the crusaders conquered and divided the entire empire and established their own rules in it. The powerful Byzantine Empire broke up into several independent states: the Empire of Trebizond was formed on the Black Sea coast, the Kingdom of Epirus was formed on the Balkan Peninsula, the Nicaean Empire was located in Asia Minor. The crusaders created the Latin Empire, under whose rule were the lands of Central Greece, Thrace and the Peloponnese peninsula. In 1261, Michael VIII Palaiologos (1258-1282) succeeded in liberating Constantinople from the Latins and was re-proclaimed emperor in the Hagia Sophia. The deserted city was a very sad sight. Most of the palaces, temples, public buildings were ruins, which were overgrown with grass and shrubs, among these ruins the locals grazed goats and sheep. “Nothing but a plain of destruction filled with rubble and ruins,” the Byzantine historian Nicephorus Grigora later wrote (The Roman History of Nicephorus Grigora, beginning with the capture of Constantinople by the Latins / Per. M. L. Shalfeev / / VIPDA. Spb., 1862). The possessions of the empire were significantly reduced - partly as a result of invasions from the west, partly due to the unstable situation in Asia Minor, in which in the middle of the 13th century. The country was torn apart by civil unrest and strife on religious grounds.

In the XV century. The Byzantine Empire met with a new, much more formidable enemy - the Ottoman Turks. In April 1453, a huge (according to various historians, from eighty to three hundred thousand people) Turkish army, led by Sultan Mehmed II, besieged the Byzantine capital. The defenders of the city fought valiantly and managed to repulse several attacks, but the forces were too unequal, the ranks of the defenders were melting, and there was no replacement for them. And already at the end of May, despite the stubborn resistance of the inhabitants of the city, Turkish troops broke into Constantinople and subjected it to a three-day pogrom. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (1405–1453), fought alongside the city's defenders like a common soldier and died in battle. The picture of the plundered city was truly terrible. “Military happiness was already leaning on the side of the Turks, and one could see a spectacle full of shudder, for the Romans and Latins, preventing those who were moving the stairs to the walls, some were cut by them, while others, closing their eyes, fell from the wall, crushing their bodies and losing their lives in a terrible way. . The Turks now began to put up the stairs without hindrance and climbed the wall like flying eagles, ”wrote the Byzantine historian Michael Duka about the last hours of the siege of Constantinople by the Turks. According to eyewitnesses, "in many places the ground could not be seen because of the many corpses." About 60,000 inhabitants were enslaved. Magnificent temples and palaces were looted and burned, and many beautiful art monuments were destroyed. On May 30, 1453, Sultan Mehmed II solemnly entered the capital and, amazed by the beauty and grandeur of Hagia Sophia, ordered the central temple of the city to be converted into a mosque. With the fall of Constantinople, the once majestic Byzantine Empire ceased to exist, striking contemporaries with its luxury, high level of culture and enlightenment. Its thousand-year history, which had such a beneficial effect on the culture of Western Europe and Ancient Russia, has ended.

The Byzantine Empire got its name from the ancient Megarian colony, the small town of Byzantium, on the site of which in 324-330. Emperor Constantine founded the new capital of the Roman Empire, which later became the capital of Byzantium - Constantinople. The name "Byzantium" appeared later. The Byzantines themselves called themselves Romans - "Romeans" ("Ρωματοι"), and their empire - "Romean". The Byzantine emperors officially called themselves "Emperors of the Romans" (ο αυτοχρατωρ των "Ρωμαιων"), and the capital of the empire was called "New Rome" for a long time ( Νεα "Ρωμη). Having arisen as a result of the collapse of the Roman Empire at the end of the 4th century and the transformation of its eastern half into an independent state, Byzantium was in many ways a continuation of the Roman Empire, preserving the traditions of its political life and state system. Therefore, Byzantium of the 4th - 7th centuries often called the Eastern Roman Empire.

The division of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western, which led to the formation of Byzantium, was prepared by the peculiarities of the socio-economic development of both halves of the empire and the crisis of the slave society as a whole. The regions of the eastern part of the empire, closely connected with each other by a long-established common historical and cultural development, were distinguished by their originality, inherited from the Hellenistic era. In these areas, slavery was not as widespread as in the West; in the economic life of the village, the main role was played by the dependent and free population - the communal peasantry; in the cities, a mass of small free artisans remained, whose labor competed with slave labor. Here there was no such sharp, impassable line between the slave and the free, as in the western half of the Roman state - various transitional, intermediate forms of dependence prevailed. In the system of government in the countryside (community) and city (municipal organization), more formal democratic elements were retained. For these reasons, the eastern provinces suffered much less than the western provinces from the crisis of the 3rd century, which undermined the foundations of the economy of the slave-owning Roman Empire. It did not lead to a radical breakdown of the former forms of the economic system in the East. The village and the estate retained their ties with the city, whose numerous free trade and craft population provided for the needs of the local market. Cities did not experience such a deep economic decline as in the West.

All this led to the gradual shift of the center of the economic and political life of the empire to the richer and less affected by the crisis of the slave-owning society, the eastern provinces.

Differences in the socio-economic life of the eastern and western provinces of the empire led to the gradual isolation of both halves of the empire, which eventually prepared their political division. Already during the crisis of the III century. the eastern and western provinces were under the rule of various emperors for a long time. At this time, local, Hellenistic traditions, suppressed by Roman domination, revived and strengthened again in the East. Temporary exit of the empire from the crisis at the end of III - beginning of IV century. and the strengthening of the central government did not lead to the restoration of state unity. Under Diocletian, power was divided between two Augusts and two Caesars (tetrarchy - quadruple power). With the founding of Constantinople, the eastern provinces had a single political and cultural center. The creation of the Senate of Constantinople marked the consolidation of their ruling elite - the senatorial class. Constantinople and Rome became the two centers of political life - the "Latin" West and the "Greek" East. In the storm of ecclesiastical disputes, there was also a demarcation of the eastern and western churches. By the end of the IV century. all these processes were so clearly defined that the division in 395 of the empire between the successors of the last emperor of the unified Roman state Theodosius - Honorius, who received power over the West, and Arcadius, who became the first emperor of the East, was perceived as a natural phenomenon. Since that time, the history of each of the formed states went its own way 1 .

The division of the empire made it possible to fully reveal the specifics of the socio-economic, political and cultural development of Byzantium. Constantinople was built as a new, "Christian" capital, free from the burden of the old, obsolete, as the center of the state with a stronger imperial power and a flexible administrative apparatus. A relatively close union of the imperial power and the church developed here. Constantinople arose on the verge of two eras - antiquity, which was fading into the past, and the emerging Middle Ages. Engels wrote that "with the rise of Constantinople and the fall of Rome, antiquity ends" 2 . And if Rome was a symbol of dying antiquity, then Constantinople, although it adopted many of its traditions, became a symbol of the emerging medieval empire.

Byzantium included the entire eastern half of the collapsed Roman Empire. It included the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean Sea, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Cyrenaica, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, part of Mesopotamia and Armenia, certain regions of Arabia, as well as strong holdings on the southern coast of Crimea (Kherson ) and in the Caucasus. The border of Byzantium was not immediately determined only in the northwestern part of the Balkans, where for some time after the partition, the struggle between Byzantium and the Western Roman Empire for Illyricum and Dalmatia continued, which had withdrawn in the first half of the 5th century. to Byzantium 3 .

The territory of the empire exceeded 750,000 sq. km. In the north, its border ran along the Danube to its confluence with the Black Sea 4 , then along the coast of the Crimea and the Caucasus. In the east, it stretched from the mountains of Iberia and Armenia, adjoined the borders of the eastern neighbor of Byzantium - Iran, led through the steppes of Mesopotamia, crossing the Tigris and Euphrates, and further along the desert steppes inhabited by North Arab tribes, to the south - to the ruins of ancient Palmyra. From here, through the deserts of Arabia, the border went to Ayla (Aqaba) - on the coast of the Red Sea. Here, in the southeast, the neighbors of Byzantium were those formed at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 4th century. Arab states, South Arab tribes, Himyarite kingdom - "Happy Arabia" 5 . The southern border of Byzantium ran from the African coast of the Red Sea, along the borders of the Aksumite kingdom (Ethiopia), the regions bordering Egypt, inhabited by semi-nomadic tribes of the Vlemmians (they lived along the upper reaches of the Nile, between Egypt and Nubia), and further - to the west, along the outskirts of the Libyan deserts in Cyrenaica, where the militant Moorish tribes of the Ausurians and the Maquis bordered on Byzantium.

The empire covered areas with a variety of natural and climatic conditions. The mild Mediterranean, in some places subtropical, climate of the coastal regions gradually turned into the continental climate of the interior regions with its inherent sharp fluctuations in temperature, hot and dry (especially in the south and east of the country) in summer and cold, snowy (the Balkans, partly Asia Minor) or warm, rainy (Syria, Palestine, Egypt) in winter.

Most of the territory of Byzantium was occupied by mountainous or mountainous regions (Greece, including the Peloponnese, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine). Comparatively vast flat spaces represented some Danube regions: the Danube Delta, the fertile South Thracian plain, the hilly plateau of inner Asia Minor covered with rare shrubs, the semi-steppe-semi-desert of the east of the empire. The flat terrain prevailed in the south - in Egypt and Cyrenaica.

The territory of the empire consisted mainly of areas with a high agricultural culture. In many of them, fertile soils made it possible to grow 2-3 crops per year. However, agriculture was almost everywhere possible only under the condition of additional watering or irrigation. Wherever conditions allowed, crops were grown - wheat and barley. The remaining irrigated or irrigated lands were occupied by horticultural crops, the more arid ones were occupied by vineyards and olive plantations. In the south, the date palm culture was widespread. On floodplain meadows, and mainly on mountain slopes covered with shrubs and forests, in alpine high-mountain meadows and in the semi-steppe-semi-deserts of the east, cattle breeding was developed.

Natural-climatic and water conditions determined certain differences in the economic appearance of different regions of the empire. Egypt was the main grain-producing region. From the 4th century Thrace became the second granary of the empire. A significant amount of grain was also produced by the fertile river valleys of Macedonia and Thessaly, hilly Bithynia, the Black Sea regions, the lands of Northern Syria and Palestine irrigated by the Orontes and the Jordan, as well as Mesopotamia.

Greece, the Aegean Islands, the coasts of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine - these were areas of horticultural crops and grapes. Luxurious vineyards and fields sown with bread were rich even in mountainous Isauria. One of the largest centers of viticulture was Cilicia. Viticulture also reached a significant size in Thrace. Greece, Western Asia Minor, the hinterland of Syria and Palestine served as the main centers of olive growing. In Cilicia and especially Egypt, flax was grown in large quantities, as well as legumes (beans), which were the food of the common people, Greece, Thessaly, Macedonia and Epirus were famous for their honey, Palestine - for date palms and pistachio trees.

Cattle breeding was widely developed in the western regions of the Balkans, in Thrace, in the interior of Asia Minor, in the steppe spaces of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Cyrenaica. On the low, shrub-covered slopes of the mountains of Greece and the coast of Asia Minor, fine-haired goats were bred. The interior regions of Asia Minor (Cappadocia, the steppes of Halkidiki, Macedonia) were sheep-breeding; Epirus, Thessaly, Thrace, Cappadocia - horse breeding; the hilly regions of western Asia Minor and Bithynia, with their oak forests, were the main areas for pig production. In Cappadocia, in the steppes of Mesopotamia, Syria and Cyrenaica, the best breeds of horses and pack animals - camels, mules - were bred. At the eastern borders of the empire, various forms of semi-nomadic and nomadic pastoralism were widespread. The glory of Thessaly, Macedonia and Epirus was the cheese produced here - it was called "Dardanian". Asia Minor was one of the main areas for the production of leather and leather products; Syria, Palestine, Egypt - linen and woolen fabrics.

Byzantium was also rich in natural resources. The waters of the Adriatic, the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, especially Pontus, Phenicia, and Egypt abounded in fish. Forest areas were also significant; in Dalmatia there was an excellent drill and ship timber 6 . In many areas of the empire there were huge deposits of clay used for the production of pottery; sand suitable for making glass (primarily Egypt and Phoenicia); building stone, marble (especially Greece, islands, Asia Minor), ornamental stones (Asia Minor). The empire also had significant deposits of minerals. Iron was mined in the Balkans, in Pontus, Asia Minor, in the Taurus Mountains, in Greece, in Cyprus, copper - in the famous Fenn mines of Arabia; lead - in Pergamon and Halkidiki; zinc - in Troas; soda and alum - in Egypt. The real storehouse of minerals was the Balkan provinces, where the bulk of the gold, silver, iron and copper consumed in the empire was mined. There were many minerals in the region of Pontus, in Byzantine Armenia (iron, silver, gold) 7 . In iron and gold, the empire was much richer than all neighboring countries. However, she lacked tin and partly silver: they had to be imported from Britain and Spain.

On the Adriatic coast, salt was obtained from the salt lakes of Asia Minor and Egypt. Byzantium also had a sufficient quantity of various types of mineral and vegetable raw materials, from which dyes were made, aromatic resins were pressed; there was also the now extinct silphium plant, and saffron, and licorice root, and various medicinal plants. Off the coast of Asia Minor and Phoenicia, the murex shell was mined, which served to prepare the famous purple dye.

Egypt - the delta and the banks of the Nile - was the main region of the Mediterranean, where a special reed grew (now rarely found in the upper reaches of the river), from which the most important writing material of that time, papyrus, was made (it was also made in Sicily).

Byzantium could meet its needs in almost all basic products, and some of them even exported to other countries in significant quantities (grain, oil, fish, fabrics, metal and metal products). All this created a certain economic stability in the empire, made it possible to conduct a fairly wide foreign trade in both agricultural products and handicrafts, importing mainly luxury goods and precious oriental raw materials, oriental spices, aromas, silk. The territorial position of the empire made it in the IV-VI centuries. monopoly intermediary in trade between West and East.

The population of the vast Byzantine Empire in the 4th-6th centuries, according to the estimates of some researchers, reached 50-65 million. 8 Ethnically, Byzantium was a motley union of dozens of tribes and nationalities that were at different stages of development.

The largest part of its population were Greeks and Hellenized local residents of non-Greek areas. The Greek language became the most widespread, and the Greeks, in fact, became the dominant nationality. In addition to the south of the Balkan Peninsula, the islands, most of the coast of Byzantine Africa and Western Asia Minor, were purely Greek in population. The Greek element was very significant in Macedonia and Epirus.

Quite a lot of Greeks lived in the eastern half of the Balkans, on the Black Sea coast in Asia Minor, in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, where they constituted the predominant percentage of the urban population.

The Latin population in the eastern half of the former Roman Empire was relatively small. It was significant only in the northwestern regions of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Adriatic coast of the Balkans and along the Danube border - up to and including Dacia. Quite a few Romans also lived in the cities of Western Asia Minor. In other areas of the eastern half of the empire, Romanization was very weak, and even representatives of the most educated part of the local nobility usually did not know Latin. Small groups of Romans - several dozen, rarely - hundreds of families - concentrated in the largest administrative, trade and craft centers. Several more of them were in Palestine.

The Jewish population was significant and widely dispersed throughout the most important regions of the empire. Jews and Samaritans living in a large compact mass in the territory of Palestine, close in life and faith to the Jews, were also numerous in the neighboring provinces - Syria and Mesopotamia. There were large Jewish communities in Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and other cities. Jews retained their ethnic identity, religion, language. During the period of the Roman Empire, a huge Talmudic literature in the Hebrew language developed.

A large group of the population of Byzantium were the Illyrians who lived in the north-west of the Balkans. They were largely subjected to Romanization, which led to the spread and establishment of the dominance of the Latin language and writing. However, in the IV century. well-known features of ethnic identity survived among the Illyrians, especially in rural, mountainous areas. They retained for the most part freedom, a strong communal organization, and a spirit of independence. The militant tribe of the Illyrians provided the best contingents of the late Roman and early Byzantine armies. The Illyrian language, used in colloquial speech, subsequently played a significant role in the formation of the Albanian language.

The Macedonians lived on the territory of Macedonia - a rather numerous nationality, which had long been subjected to intensive Hellenization and Romanization.

The eastern half of the Balkan Peninsula was inhabited by the Thracians - one of the largest ethnic groups in the Balkan Peninsula. The numerous free peasantry of Thrace lived in communities in which remnants of tribal relations were still often retained. Despite the strong Hellenization and Romanization of Thrace, its population in the 4th century. so different from the population of the Hellenized regions of the East that Eastern Roman writers often called Thrace a "barbarian country". Free Thracian farmers and pastoralists, tall, strong and hardy, enjoyed well-deserved fame as perhaps the best warriors of the empire.

After the loss of the entire Transdanubian Dacia by the empire, very few Dacians remained on the territory of Byzantium: they were resettled in the border regions of Mysia.

From the middle of the 3rd c. significant changes occurred in the ethnic composition of the Danubian provinces. Since that time, barbarian tribes adjacent to the empire began to settle here: Goths, Carps, Sarmatians, Taifals, Vandals, Alans, Pevks, Borans, Burgundians, Tervingi, Grevtungs, Heruli, Gepids, Bastarnas 9 . Each of these tribes numbered tens of thousands of people. In the IV-V centuries. the influx of barbarians increased markedly. Already before that, in the 3rd-4th centuries, the Germanic and Sarmatian tribes surrounding the empire, who were at different stages of the decomposition of primitive communal relations, noticeably developed productive forces, powerful tribal alliances began to take shape, which allowed the barbarians to seize the border areas of the weakening Roman Empire.

One of the largest was the Gothic union, which united at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 4th century. many of the most developed, agricultural, sedentary and semi-sedentary tribes of the Black Sea region, passing from the primitive communal system to the class system. The Goths had their own kings, numerous nobility, there was slavery. Eastern Roman writers considered them the most developed and cultured of the northern barbarians. From the end of III - beginning of IV century. Christianity began to spread among the Goths.

By the middle of the IV century. the unions of the tribes of the Vandals, the Goths, the Sarmatians grew stronger and stronger. With the development of agriculture and handicrafts, their campaigns against the empire were no longer undertaken so much for the sake of booty and captives, but to capture fertile land suitable for cultivation. The government, unable to restrain the onslaught of the barbarians, was forced to provide them with devastated border territories, then entrusting the defense of state borders to these settlers. The onslaught of the Goths on the Danubian borders of the empire intensified especially in the second half of the 4th century, mainly from the 70s, when they began to be pressed by semi-wild nomads, the Huns, advancing from Asia. Defeated Goths, Sarmatians, nomadic Alans moved to the Danube. The government allowed them to cross the border and occupy the empty border areas. Tens of thousands of barbarians were settled in Mysia, Thrace, Dacia. Somewhat later, they penetrated into Macedonia and Greece, partially settled in Asia Minor regions - in Phrygia and Lydia. The Ostrogoths settled in the western Danubian regions (Pannonia), the Visigoths - in the eastern (Northern Thrace).

In the 5th century the Huns reached the limits of the empire. They subjugated many barbarian peoples and created a powerful union of tribes. For several decades, the Huns attacked the Balkan provinces of the empire, reaching as far as Thermopylae. Thrace, Macedonia and Illyricum were devastated by their raids.

Mass invasions and barbarian settlement of the Balkan lands led to a significant reduction in the Greek, Hellenized and Romanized population of these provinces of Byzantium, to the gradual disappearance of the Macedonian and Thracian peoples.

The Hun union of tribes, torn apart by internal contradictions, collapsed in the 50s of the 5th century. (after the death of Attila). The remnants of the Huns and the tribes subject to them stayed on the territory of the empire. The Gepids inhabited Dacia, the Goths - Pannonia. They occupied a number of cities, of which Sirmium was the closest to the empire, and Vindomina, or Vindobona (Vienna), the most distant. Many Huns, Sarmatians, Skirs, Goths were settled in Illyricum and Thrace.

From the end of the 5th century other tribes began to penetrate into the Byzantine possessions, approaching the borders of the empire - the Proto-Bulgarians-Turks - nomads who were going through the process of decomposition of primitive communal relations, and the agricultural tribes of the Slavs, whose settlements at the end of the 5th century. appear at the Danube borders of the empire.

By the time of the formation of Byzantium, the process of Hellenization of the indigenous population in the inner eastern regions of Asia Minor was still far from complete. Authors IV-V centuries. describe with disdain the primitive village life of the inhabitants of these regions. Many local languages ​​retained a known meaning. The Lydians, who had a developed civilization and statehood in the past, had their own written language. Local languages ​​were spoken in Caria and Phrygia. The Phrygian language as early as the 5th-6th centuries. existed as a conversational Ethnic identity was also preserved by the inhabitants of Galatia and Isauria, whose population only in the 4th-5th centuries. was subject to the authority of the Byzantine government. In Cappadocia, Hellenization seriously affected only the upper strata of the local population. The bulk of rural residents in the IV century. continued to speak the local language, Aramaic, although Greek served as the official language.

In the eastern part of Pontus, in Lesser Armenia and Colchis, various local tribes lived: Tsans (Lazis), Albanians, Abazgs. Many tribes inhabiting the border regions of the Balkans and regions of Asia Minor retained remnants of tribal relations.

Even in the IV-V centuries. The warlike tribe of the Isaurians lived in clans, obeying their tribal and tribal leaders and taking little account of the power of the government.

After the partition of the Armenian state of the Arshakids in 387, approximately one fourth of it became part of Byzantium: Western (Small) Armenia, Inner Armenia and autonomous principalities. The Armenians, who by this time had gone through a centuries-old path of historical development, experienced in the 4th-5th centuries. the period of expansion of slaveholding and the emergence of feudal relations. At the end of the IV century. Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet, and in the 5th century. there was an active development of Armenian literature, art, theater. Taking advantage of the spread of Christianity in Armenia, Byzantium sought to take possession of all the Armenian lands for which it fought with Iran. In the IV-V centuries. the Armenian population also appeared in other regions and cities of the empire. At the same time, Byzantium, relying on some points of the Caucasian coast, sought to strengthen its influence in Georgia, where from the 4th century. Christianity also spread. Georgia was divided by the Likhi Range into two kingdoms: Lazika (ancient Colchis) in the west and Kartli (ancient Iberia) in the east. Although Iran in the IV-V centuries. strengthened his power in Iberia, in Western Georgia, the state of the Laz, associated with Byzantium, strengthened. In Ciscaucasia, on the coast of the Black and Azov Seas, Byzantium had influence among the Adyghe-Circassian tribes.

The regions of Mesopotamia adjacent to Cappadocia and Armenia were inhabited by Aramaeans, and the regions of Osroene were inhabited by Aramaean-Syrian and partly Arab nomads. Mixed - Syrian-Greek - was the population of Cilicia. On the borders of Asia Minor and Syria, in the mountains of Lebanon, lived a large tribe of Mardaites.

The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Byzantine Syria were Syrian Semites, who had their own language and developed cultural and historical traditions. Only a very small part of the Syrians underwent more or less deep Hellenization. The Greeks lived here only in large cities. The village and smaller trade and craft centers were almost entirely inhabited by Syrians; a significant stratum of the population of large cities also consisted of them. In the IV century. the process of formation of the Syrian nationality continued, the Syrian literary language took shape, a bright and original literature appeared. Edessa became the main cultural and religious center of the Syrian population of the empire.

In the southeastern frontier regions of Byzantium, to the east of Syria, Palestine and southern Mesopotamia, starting from Osroene and further south, the Arabs lived, leading a semi-nomadic and nomadic lifestyle. Some of them more or less firmly settled within the empire, were influenced by Christianity, the other continued to roam near its borders, from time to time invading Byzantine territory. In the IV-V centuries. there was a process of consolidation of the Arab tribes, the Arab people took shape, the development of the Arabic language and writing took place. At this time, more or less large associations of tribes were formed - the states of the Ghassanids and Lakhmids; Iran and Byzantium fought for influence on them.

In Cyrenaica, the ruling stratum, concentrated in the cities, was the Greeks, the Hellenized local elite and a small number of Romans. A well-known part of the merchants and artisans were Jews. The absolute majority of the rural population belonged to the indigenous inhabitants of the country.

The population of Byzantine Egypt 10 was also extremely diverse ethnically. Here you could meet Romans, Syrians, Libyans, Cilicians, Ethiopians, Arabs, Bactrians, Scythians, Germans, Indians, Persians, etc., but the bulk of the inhabitants were Egyptians - they are usually called Copts - and the Greeks, who were very inferior in number to them and Jews. The Coptic language was the main means of communication of the indigenous population, many Egyptians did not know and did not want to know the Greek language. With the spread of Christianity, a religious Coptic literature arose, adapted to popular tastes. At the same time, an original Coptic art developed, which had a great influence on the formation of Byzantine art. The Copts hated the exploitative Byzantine state. Under the historical conditions of that time, this antagonism took a religious form: at first, the Christian Copts opposed the Hellenized population - the pagans, then the Monophysite Copts - the Orthodox Greeks.

The diverse composition of the population of Byzantium had a certain influence on the nature of the socio-political relations that developed here. There were no prerequisites for the formation of a single "Byzantine" people. On the contrary, the large compact ethnic groups that lived in the empire were themselves nationalities (Syrians, Copts, Arabs, etc.) in the process of their formation and development. Therefore, as the crisis of the slave-owning mode of production deepened, along with social contradictions, ethnic contradictions also intensified. Relations between the tribes and nationalities inhabiting the empire were one of the most important internal problems in Byzantium. The dominant Greco-Roman nobility relied on the well-known elements of the political and cultural community that developed during the period of Hellenism and the existence of the Roman Empire. The revival of Hellenistic traditions in social, political and spiritual life and the gradual weakening of the influence of Roman traditions were one of the manifestations of the consolidation of the Eastern Roman Empire. Using the common class interests of the ruling strata of different tribes and nationalities, as well as Hellenistic traditions and Christianity, the Greco-Roman aristocracy sought to strengthen the unity of Byzantium. At the same time, a policy of fomenting contradictions between different nationalities was pursued in order to thus keep them in subjection. For two to two and a half centuries, Byzantium managed to maintain its dominion over the Copts, the Syrian Semites, the Jews, and the Arameans. At the same time, the main ethnic core of Byzantium gradually took shape in the Greek and Hellenized territories, which were permanently part of the Eastern Roman Empire.

A legendary city that has changed many names, peoples and empires... The eternal rival of Rome, the cradle of Orthodox Christianity and the capital of an empire that has existed for centuries... You will not find this city on modern maps, nevertheless it lives and develops. The place where Constantinople was located is not so far from us. We will talk about the history of this city and its glorious legends in this article.

emergence

To master the lands located between the two seas - the Black and the Mediterranean, people began in the 7th century BC. As the Greek texts say, the colony of Miletus settled on the northern shore of the Bosphorus. The Asian coast of the strait was inhabited by the Megarians. Two cities stood opposite each other - in the European part stood the Milesian Byzantium, on the southern coast - the Megarian Calchedon. This position of the settlement made it possible to control the Bosphorus Strait. Lively trade between the countries of the Black and Aegean Seas, regular cargo flows, merchant ships and military expeditions provided both of these cities, which soon became one.

So, the narrowest place of the Bosphorus, later called the bay, became the point where the city of Constantinople is located.

Attempts to capture Byzantium

Rich and influential Byzantium attracted the attention of many commanders and conquerors. For about 30 years during the conquests of Darius, Byzantium was under the rule of the Persian Empire. A field of relatively quiet life for hundreds of years, the troops of the king of Macedonia - Philip approached its gates. Several months of siege ended in vain. Entrepreneurial and wealthy citizens preferred to pay tribute to numerous conquerors, rather than engage in bloody and numerous battles. Another king of Macedonia, Alexander the Great, managed to conquer Byzantium.

After the empire of Alexander the Great was fragmented, the city fell under the influence of Rome.

Christianity in Byzantium

Roman and Greek historical and cultural traditions were not the only sources of culture for the future of Constantinople. Having arisen in the eastern territories of the Roman Empire, the new religion, like a fire, engulfed all the provinces of Ancient Rome. Christian communities accepted into their ranks people of different faiths, with different levels of education and income. But already in apostolic times, in the second century AD, numerous Christian schools and the first monuments of Christian literature appeared. Multilingual Christianity gradually emerges from the catacombs and more and more loudly declares itself to the world.

Christian emperors

After the division of a huge state formation, the eastern part of the Roman Empire began to position itself precisely as a Christian state. assumed power in the ancient city, naming it Constantinople, in his honor. The persecution of Christians was stopped, temples and places of worship of Christ began to be revered on a par with pagan sanctuaries. Constantine himself was baptized on his deathbed in 337. Subsequent emperors invariably strengthened and defended the Christian faith. And Justinian in the VI century. AD left Christianity as the only state religion, banning ancient rites on the territory of the Byzantine Empire.

Temples of Constantinople

State support for the new faith had a positive impact on the life and state structure of the ancient city. The land where Constantinople was located was filled with numerous temples and symbols of the Christian faith. Temples arose in the cities of the empire, divine services were held, attracting more and more adherents to their ranks. One of the first famous cathedrals that arose at this time was the temple of Sophia in Constantinople.

Church of St. Sophia

Its founder was Constantine the Great. This name was widespread in Eastern Europe. Sophia was the name of a Christian saint who lived in the 2nd century AD. Sometimes so called Jesus Christ for wisdom and learning. Following the example of Constantinople, the first Christian cathedrals with that name spread throughout the eastern lands of the empire. The son of Constantine and the heir to the Byzantine throne, Emperor Constantius, rebuilt the temple, making it even more beautiful and spacious. One hundred years later, during the unjust persecution of the first Christian theologian and philosopher John the Theologian, the churches of Constantinople were destroyed by the rebels, and the Cathedral of St. Sophia burned to the ground.

The revival of the temple became possible only during the reign of Emperor Justinian.

The new Christian bishop wished to rebuild the cathedral. In his opinion, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople should be revered, and the temple dedicated to her should surpass with its beauty and grandeur any other building of this kind in the whole world. For the construction of such a masterpiece, the emperor invited famous architects and builders of that time - Amphimius from the city of Thrall and Isidore from Miletus. One hundred assistants worked in the subordination of the architects, and 10 thousand people were employed in the direct construction. Isidore and Amphimius had at their disposal the most perfect building materials - granite, marble, precious metals. The construction lasted five years, and the result exceeded the wildest expectations.

According to the stories of contemporaries who came to the place where Constantinople was located, the temple reigned over the ancient city, like a ship over the waves. Christians from all over the empire came to see the amazing miracle.

Weakening of Constantinople

In the 7th century, a new aggressive arose on the Arabian Peninsula - Under its pressure, Byzantium lost its eastern provinces, and the European regions were gradually conquered by the Phrygians, Slavs, and Bulgarians. The territory where Constantinople was located was repeatedly attacked and subjected to tribute. The Byzantine Empire was losing its positions in Eastern Europe and gradually fell into decline.

in 1204, the crusader troops, as part of the Venetian flotilla and the French infantry, took Constantinople in a months-long siege. After a long resistance, the city fell and was plundered by the invaders. The fires destroyed many works of art and architectural monuments. In the place where the populous and rich Constantinople stood, there is the impoverished and plundered capital of the Roman Empire. In 1261, the Byzantines were able to recapture Constantinople from the Latins, but they failed to restore the city to its former glory.

Ottoman Empire

By the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire was actively expanding its borders in European territories, spreading Islam, annexing more and more lands to its possessions by sword and bribery. In 1402, the Turkish Sultan Bayazid already tried to take Constantinople, but was defeated by Emir Timur. The defeat at Anker weakened the strength of the empire and extended the quiet period of the existence of Constantinople for another half a century.

In 1452, Sultan Mehmed 2, after careful preparation, began to capture. Previously, he took care of the capture of smaller cities, surrounded Constantinople with his allies and began the siege. On the night of May 28, 1453 the city was taken. Numerous Christian churches turned into Muslim mosques, the faces of saints and symbols of Christianity disappeared from the walls of cathedrals, and a crescent moon flew over St. Sophia.

It ceased to exist, and Constantinople became part of the Ottoman Empire.

The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent gave Constantinople a new "Golden Age". Under him, the Suleymaniye Mosque is being built, which becomes a symbol for Muslims, the same as St. Sophia remained for every Christian. After the death of Suleiman, the Turkish Empire throughout its existence continued to decorate the ancient city with masterpieces of architecture and architecture.

Metamorphoses of the name of the city

After the capture of the city, the Turks did not officially rename it. For the Greeks, it retained its name. On the contrary, “Istanbul”, “Istanbul”, “Istanbul” began to sound more and more often from the lips of Turkish and Arab residents - this is how Constantinople began to be called more and more often. Now two versions of the origin of these names are called. The first hypothesis claims that this name is a bad copy of the Greek phrase, which means "I'm going to the city, I'm going to the city." Another theory is based on the name Islambul, which means "city of Islam". Both versions have the right to exist. Be that as it may, the name Constantinople is still used, but the name Istanbul also comes into use and is firmly rooted. In this form, the city got on the maps of many states, including Russia, but for the Greeks it was still named after Emperor Constantine.

Modern Istanbul

The territory where Constantinople is located now belongs to Turkey. True, the city has already lost the title of the capital: by decision of the Turkish authorities, the capital was moved to Ankara in 1923. And although Constantinople is now called Istanbul, for many tourists and visitors, ancient Byzantium still remains a great city with numerous monuments of architecture and art, rich, hospitable in a southern way, and always unforgettable.

The content of the article

BYZANTINE EMPIRE, the name of the state that arose in the 4th century, accepted in historical science. on the territory of the eastern part of the Roman Empire and existed until the middle of the 15th century. In the Middle Ages, it was officially called the "Empire of the Romans" ("Romans"). The economic, administrative and cultural center of the Byzantine Empire was Constantinople, well located at the junction of the European and Asian provinces of the Roman Empire, at the intersection of the most important trade and strategic routes, land and sea.

The appearance of Byzantium as an independent state was prepared in the bowels of the Roman Empire. It was a complex and lengthy process that stretched over a century. Its beginning goes back to the era of the crisis of the 3rd century, which undermined the foundations of Roman society. The formation of Byzantium during the 4th century completed the era of the development of ancient society, and in most of this society, tendencies to preserve the unity of the Roman Empire prevailed. The process of separation proceeded slowly and implicitly and ended in 395 with the formal formation of two states on the site of a single Roman Empire, each headed by its own emperor. By this time, the difference between internal and external problems facing the eastern and western provinces of the Roman Empire was clearly revealed, which largely determined their territorial demarcation. Byzantium included the eastern half of the Roman Empire along a line that ran from the western part of the Balkans to Cyrenaica. Differences were also reflected in the spiritual life, in ideology, as a result, from the 4th century. in both parts of the empire, different directions of Christianity were established for a long time (in the West, orthodox - Nicene, in the East - Arianism).

Located on three continents - at the junction of Europe, Asia and Africa - Byzantium occupied an area of ​​up to 1 ml square. It included the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Cyrenaica, part of Mesopotamia and Armenia, the Mediterranean islands, primarily Crete and Cyprus, strongholds in the Crimea (Chersonese), in the Caucasus (in Georgia), some regions of Arabia, islands of the Eastern Mediterranean. Its borders stretched from the Danube to the Euphrates.

The latest archaeological material shows that the late Roman era was not, as previously thought, an era of continuous decline and decay. Byzantium has gone through a rather complicated cycle of its development, and modern researchers consider it possible to even talk about the elements of "economic revival" during its historical path. The latter includes the following steps:

4–beginning of the 7th c. - the time of the country's transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages;

second half of the 7th–12th centuries - the entry of Byzantium into the Middle Ages, the formation of feudalism and related institutions in the empire;

13th - first half of the 14th c. - the era of the economic and political decline of Byzantium, culminating in the death of this state.

The development of agrarian relations in the 4th–7th centuries.

Byzantium included densely populated regions of the eastern half of the Roman Empire with a long and high agricultural culture. The specifics of the development of agrarian relations were influenced by the fact that most of the empire was made up of mountainous areas with stony soil, and fertile valleys were small, fragmented, which did not contribute to the formation of large territorial economic units. In addition, historically, already from the time of Greek colonization and further, in the era of Hellenism, almost all lands suitable for cultivation turned out to be occupied by the territories of ancient city-polises. All this led to the dominant role of medium-sized slave-owning estates, and as a result, the power of municipal land ownership and the preservation of a significant layer of small landowners, communities of peasants - owners of various incomes, the top of which were wealthy owners. Under these conditions, the growth of large landed property was hindered. It usually consisted of dozens, rarely hundreds of small and medium-sized estates, territorially scattered, which did not favor the formation of a single estate economy, similar to the western one.

The distinctive features of the agrarian life of early Byzantium in comparison with the Western Roman Empire were the preservation of small, including peasant, land ownership, the viability of the community, a significant proportion of medium-sized urban land ownership with the relative weakness of large land ownership. The state land ownership was also very significant in Byzantium. The role of slave labor was significant and can be clearly seen in the legislative sources of the 4th-6th centuries. Slaves were owned by wealthy peasants, soldiers - veterans, urban landowners - plebeians, municipal aristocracy - curials. Researchers associate slavery mainly with municipal land ownership. Indeed, the average municipal landowners constituted the largest stratum of wealthy slave owners, and the average villa was undeniably slave-owning in character. As a rule, the average urban landowner owned one estate in the urban district, often in addition a country house and one or more smaller suburban farms, proastians, which in their totality constituted suburbia, a wide suburban zone of the ancient city, which gradually passed into its rural district, the territory - choir. The estate (villa) was usually a farm of a fairly large size, since it, having a multicultural character, provided the basic needs of the urban manor house. The estate also included lands cultivated by colonial holders, which brought the landowner cash income or a product that was sold.

There is no reason to exaggerate the extent of the decline of municipal landownership, at least until the 5th century. Until that time, the alienation of curial property was not actually limited, which indicates the stability of their position. Only in the 5th c. the curials were prohibited from selling their rural slaves (mancipia rustica). In a number of regions (in the Balkans) up to the 5th c. the growth of medium-sized slave-owning villas continued. As archaeological material shows, their economy was mainly undermined during the barbarian invasions of the late 4th-5th century.

The growth of large estates (fundi) was due to the absorption of medium-sized villas. Did this lead to a change in the nature of the economy? Archaeological material shows that in a number of regions of the empire large slave-owning villas survived until the end of the 6th–7th century. Documents from the end of the 4th c. rural slaves are mentioned on the lands of large owners. Laws of the late 5th c. about the marriages of slaves and columns, they talk about slaves planted on the land, about slaves on peculia, therefore, it is, apparently, not about changing their status, but about curtailing their own master's economy. The slave status laws for the children of slave women show that the bulk of the slaves "reproduced themselves" and that there was no active tendency to eliminate slavery. We see a similar picture in the "new" rapidly developing church and monastic land ownership.

The process of development of large landownership was accompanied by the curtailment of the master's own economy. This was stimulated by natural conditions, by the very nature of the formation of large landed property, which included a mass of small territorially scattered possessions, the number of which sometimes reached several hundred, with sufficient development of the exchange between the district and the city, commodity-money relations, which made it possible for the owner of the land to receive from them and cash payments. For the Byzantine large estate in the process of its development, to a greater extent than for the western, the curtailment of its own master's economy was characteristic. The manor's estate from the center of the estate's economy more and more turned into a center for the exploitation of the surrounding farms, the collection and better processing of products coming from them. Therefore, a characteristic feature of the evolution of the agrarian life of early Byzantium, with the decline of medium and small slave-owning farms, the main type of settlement becomes a village inhabited by slaves and columns (coma).

An essential feature of small-scale free landownership in early Byzantium was not just the presence in it of a mass of small rural landowners, which also existed in the West, but also the fact that the peasants were united in a community. In the presence of different types of communities, the dominant was the metrocomia, which consisted of neighbors who had a share in communal lands, owned common land property, used by fellow villagers or rented out. The metrocomia carried out the necessary joint work, had its own elders who managed the economic life of the village and maintained order. They collected taxes, monitored the fulfillment of duties.

The presence of a community is one of the most important features that determined the originality of the transition of early Byzantium to feudalism, while such a community has a certain specificity. Unlike the Middle East, the early Byzantine free community consisted of peasants - full owners of their land. It has come a long way of development on the polis lands. The number of inhabitants of such a community reached 1–1.5 thousand people (“large and populous villages”). She possessed elements of her own craft and traditional internal cohesion.

The peculiarity of the development of the colony in early Byzantium was that the number of columns here grew mainly not at the expense of slaves planted on the land, but was replenished by small landowners - tenants and communal peasantry. This process proceeded slowly. During the entire early Byzantine era, not only did a significant layer of communal property owners persist, but colonial relations in their most rigid forms were formed slowly. If in the West "individual" patronage contributed to the rather rapid inclusion of a small landowner in the structure of the estate, then in Byzantium the peasantry defended their rights to land and personal freedom for a long time. The state attachment of the peasants to the land, the development of a kind of "state colony" ensured for a long time the predominance of milder forms of dependence - the so-called "free colony" (coloni liberi). Such columns retained part of their property and, as personally free, had considerable legal capacity.

The state could take advantage of the internal cohesion of the community, its organization. In the 5th c. it introduces the right of protimesis - the preferred purchase of peasant land by fellow villagers, strengthens the collective responsibility of the community for the receipt of taxes. Both ultimately testified to the intensified process of the ruin of the free peasantry, the deterioration of its position, but at the same time helped to preserve the community.

Spread from the end of the 4th c. the transition of entire villages under the patronage of large private owners also influenced the specifics of a large early Byzantine estate. With the disappearance of small and medium-sized holdings, the village became the main economic unit, this led to its internal economic consolidation. Obviously, there is reason to talk not only about the preservation of the community on the lands of large owners, but also about its “regeneration” as a result of the resettlement of former small and medium-sized farms that have become dependent. The invasions of the barbarians also contributed to the rallying of communities to a large extent. So, in the Balkans in the 5th century. the ruined old villas were replaced by large and fortified villages of columns (vici). Thus, in early Byzantine conditions, the growth of large landownership was accompanied by the spread of villages and the strengthening of the village economy, and not the estate. Archaeological material confirms not only the multiplication of the number of villages, but also the revival of village construction - the construction of irrigation systems, wells, cisterns, oil and grape presses. There was even an increase in the rural population.

Stagnation and the beginning of the decline of the Byzantine village, according to archeology, falls on the last decades of the 5th - early 6th century. Chronologically, this process coincides with the emergence of more rigid forms of the colonat - the category of "assigned columns" - adscripts, enapographs. They were the former workers of the estate, the slaves freed and planted on the land, free columns, who lost their property as the tax burden intensified. The ascribed columns no longer had their own land, often they did not have their own house and economy - livestock, inventory. All this became the property of the master, and they turned into "slaves of the earth", recorded in the qualification of the estate, attached to him and to the personality of the master. This was the result of the evolution of a significant part of the free colons during the 5th century, which led to an increase in the number of colons-adscriptions. One can argue about the extent to which the state, the growth of state taxes and duties, was to blame for the ruin of the small free peasantry, but a sufficient amount of data shows that large landowners, in order to increase incomes, turned the columns into quasi-slaves, depriving them of the remnants of their property. The legislation of Justinian, for the sake of the full collection of state taxes, tried to limit the growth of requisitions and duties in favor of the masters. But the most important thing was that neither the proprietors nor the state sought to strengthen the colonial property rights to the land, to their own economy.

So we can state that at the turn of the 5th-6th centuries. the way for the further strengthening of small peasant farming was closed. The result of this was the beginning of the economic decline of the village - construction was reduced, the number of the village population ceased to grow, the flight of peasants from the land increased and, naturally, there was an increase in abandoned and empty lands (agri deserti). Emperor Justinian saw in the distribution of land to churches and monasteries a matter not only pleasing to God, but also useful. Indeed, if in the 4th-5th centuries. the growth of church land ownership and monasteries occurred at the expense of donations and from wealthy landowners, then in the 6th century. the state itself increasingly began to transfer low-income allotments to monasteries, hoping that they would be able to better use them. Rapid growth in the 6th century. church and monastic landholdings, which then covered up to 1/10 of all cultivated territories (this at one time gave rise to the theory of “monastic feudalism”) was a direct reflection of the changes that took place in the position of the Byzantine peasantry. During the first half of the 6th c. a significant part of it was already made up of adscriptions, into which an increasing part of the small landowners who had survived until then were turning. 6th c. - the time of their greatest ruin, the time of the final decline of the average municipal land ownership, which Justinian tried to preserve by prohibitions on the alienation of curial property. From the middle of the 6th c. the government found itself increasingly forced to withdraw arrears from the agricultural population, to record the increasing desolation of land and the reduction of the rural population. Accordingly, the second half of the 6th c. - a time of rapid growth of large landed property. As archaeological material from a number of regions shows, large secular and church-monastic possessions in the 6th century. have doubled, if not tripled. Widespread on public lands was emphyteusis - perpetually hereditary lease on preferential terms, associated with the need to invest significant effort and funds in maintaining the cultivation of the land. Emphytevsis became a form of expansion of large private land ownership. According to a number of researchers, the peasant economy and the entire agrarian economy of early Byzantium during the 6th century. lost the ability to develop. Thus, the result of the evolution of agrarian relations in the early Byzantine village was its economic decline, which found expression in the weakening of the ties between the village and the city, the gradual development of more primitive, but less costly village production, and the growing economic isolation of the village from the city.

The economic decline also affected the estate. There was a sharp reduction in small-scale, including peasant-communal land ownership, the old ancient urban land ownership actually disappeared. Kolonat in early Byzantium became the dominant form of dependence of the peasants. The norms of colonial relations extended to the relationship between the state and small landowners, who became a secondary category of farmers. The more rigid dependence of slaves and adscripts, in turn, influenced the position of the rest of the colony mass. The presence in early Byzantium of small landowners, free peasantry united in communities, a long and massive existence of the category of free columns, i.e. softer forms of colonial dependence, did not create conditions for the direct transformation of colonial relations into feudal dependence. The Byzantine experience once again confirms that the colonat was a typical late antique form of dependence associated with the disintegration of slaveholding relations, a form of transition and doomed to disappear. Modern historiography notes the almost complete elimination of the colony in the 7th century, i.e. he could not have a significant impact on the formation of feudal relations in Byzantium.

City.

The feudal society, like the ancient one, was basically agrarian, and the agrarian economy had a decisive influence on the development of the Byzantine city. In the early Byzantine era, Byzantium, with its 900-1200 city-states, often spaced 15-20 km apart, looked like a “country of cities” compared to Western Europe. But one can hardly speak of the prosperity of cities and even the flourishing of urban life in Byzantium in the 4th-6th centuries. compared to previous centuries. But the fact that a sharp turning point in the development of the early Byzantine city came only at the end of the 6th - beginning of the 7th centuries. - no doubt. It coincided with the attacks of external enemies, the loss of part of the Byzantine territories, the invasion of the masses of the new population - all this made it possible for a number of researchers to attribute the decline of cities to the influence of purely external factors that undermined their former well-being for two centuries. Of course, there is no reason to deny the huge real impact of the defeat of many cities on the overall development of Byzantium, but their own internal trends in the development of the early Byzantine city of the 4th-6th centuries also deserve close attention.

Its greater stability than the cities of Western Roman is explained by a number of circumstances. Among them is the less development of large magnate farms, which were formed in the conditions of their increasing natural isolation, the preservation of medium landowners and small urban landowners in the eastern provinces of the empire, as well as a mass of free peasantry around the cities. This made it possible to maintain a fairly wide market for urban crafts, and the decline of urban land ownership even increased the role of the intermediary merchant in supplying the city. On the basis of this, a rather significant stratum of the trade and craft population remained, united by profession into several dozen corporations and usually constituting at least 10% of the total number of citizens. Small towns had, as a rule, 1.5–2 thousand inhabitants, medium-sized towns had up to 10 thousand, and larger towns had several tens of thousands, sometimes more than 100 thousand. In general, the urban population accounted for up to 1/4 of the country's population.

During the 4th-5th centuries. cities retained certain land ownership, which provided income for the urban community and, along with other income, made it possible to maintain urban life and improve it. An important factor was the fact that under the authority of the city, the city curia was a significant part of its rural district. Also, if in the West the economic decline of cities led to the pauperization of the urban population, which made it dependent on the urban nobility, then in the Byzantine city the trade and craft population was more numerous and economically more independent.

The growth of large landed property, the impoverishment of urban communities and curials still did their job. Already at the end of the 4th c. the rhetorician Livanius wrote that some small towns were becoming "like villages," and the historian Theodoret of Cyrrhus (fifth century) regretted that they were unable to maintain their former public buildings and "lost" in the number of their inhabitants. But in early Byzantium this process proceeded slowly, albeit steadily.

If in small towns, with the impoverishment of the municipal aristocracy, ties with the intra-imperial market weakened, then in large cities the growth of large landed property led to their rise, the resettlement of wealthy landowners, merchants and artisans. In the 4th–5th centuries major urban centers are on the rise, helped by the restructuring of the administration of the empire, which was the result of the shifts that took place in late antique society. The number of provinces multiplied (64), and state administration was concentrated in their capitals. Many of these capitals became centers of local military administration, sometimes important centers of defense, garrisoning, and major religious centers - the capitals of metropolises. As a rule, in the 4th-5th centuries. intensive construction was going on in them (Livanius wrote in the 4th century about Antioch: “the whole city is under construction”), their population multiplied, to some extent creating the illusion of the general prosperity of cities and city life.

It should be noted the rise of another type of city - seaside port centers. Wherever possible, an increasing number of provincial capitals moved to coastal cities. Outwardly, the process seemed to reflect the intensification of trade exchange. However, in reality, the development of cheaper and safer sea transportation took place in the context of the weakening and decline of the extensive system of inland land routes.

A peculiar manifestation of the "naturalization" of the economy and the economy of early Byzantium was the development of state industries designed to meet the needs of the state. This kind of production was also concentrated mainly in the capital and major cities.

The turning point in the development of a small Byzantine city, apparently, was the second half - the end of the 5th century. It was at this time that small towns entered an era of crisis, began to lose their importance as centers of crafts and trade in their area, and began to “push out” the excess trade and craft population. The fact that the government was forced in 498 to cancel the main trade and handicraft tax - hrisargir, an important source of cash receipts to the treasury, was neither an accident nor an indicator of the increased prosperity of the empire, but spoke of the massive impoverishment of the trade and handicraft population. As a contemporary wrote, the inhabitants of the cities, oppressed by their own poverty and the oppression of the authorities, led a “miserable and miserable” life. One of the reflections of this process, apparently, was the one that began in the 5th century. a massive outflow of townspeople to monasteries, an increase in the number of city monasteries, characteristic of the 5th-6th centuries. Perhaps the information that in some small towns monasticism made up from 1/4 to 1/3 of their population is exaggerated, but since there were already several dozen city and suburban monasteries, many churches and church institutions, such an exaggeration was in any case small.

The position of the peasantry, small and medium-sized urban proprietors in the 6th century. did not improve, having become for the most part adscriptions, free columns and peasants, robbed by the state and land owners, did not join the ranks of buyers in the city market. The number of wandering, migrating artisan population grew. We do not know what was the outflow of the artisan population from the declining cities to the countryside, but already in the second half of the 6th century, the growth of large settlements surrounding the cities, “settlements”, burgs, intensified. This process was also characteristic of previous eras, but its character has changed. If in the past it was associated with increased exchange between the city and the district, the strengthening of the role of urban production and the market, and such villages were a kind of trading outposts of the city, now their rise was due to the beginning of its decline. At the same time, individual districts were separated from the cities with the curtailment of their exchange with the cities.

The rise of the early Byzantine major cities in the 4th–5th centuries also had a structural-stage character in many respects. Archaeological material clearly paints a picture of a real turning point in the development of a large early Byzantine city. First of all, it shows the process of a gradual increase in the property polarization of the urban population, which is confirmed by the data on the growth of large landed property and the erosion of the layer of medium-sized urban owners. Archaeologically, this finds expression in the gradual disappearance of quarters of the prosperous population. On the one hand, the rich quarters of the palaces-estates of the nobility stand out more clearly, on the other hand, the poor, who occupied an increasing part of the city. The influx of trade and handicraft population from small towns only exacerbated the situation. Apparently, from the end of the 5th to the beginning of the 6th c. one can also talk about the impoverishment of the mass of the trade and craft population of large cities. In part, this probably caused the cessation in the 6th century. intensive construction in most of them.

For large cities, there were more factors that supported their existence. However, the pauperization of their population exacerbated both the economic and social situation. Only manufacturers of luxury goods, food merchants, large merchants and usurers flourished. In a large early Byzantine city, its population also increasingly went under the patronage of the church, and the latter was increasingly embedded in the economy.

Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, occupies a special place in the history of the Byzantine city. The latest research has changed the understanding of the role of Constantinople, amended the legends about the early history of the Byzantine capital. First of all, Emperor Constantine, preoccupied with strengthening the unity of the empire, did not intend to create Constantinople as a "second Rome" or as a "new Christian capital of the empire." The further transformation of the Byzantine capital into a giant supercity was the result of the socio-economic and political development of the eastern provinces.

Early Byzantine statehood was the last form of ancient statehood, the result of its long development. Polis - the municipality until the end of antiquity continued to be the basis of the social and administrative, political and cultural life of society. The bureaucratic organization of late antique society was formed in the process of decomposition of its main socio-political cell - the policy, and in the process of its formation was influenced by the socio-political traditions of ancient society, which gave its bureaucracy and political institutions a specific antique character. It was precisely the fact that the late Roman regime of domination was the result of the centuries-old development of the forms of Greco-Roman statehood that gave it originality, which did not bring it closer either to the traditional forms of Eastern despotism, or to the future medieval, feudal statehood.

The power of the Byzantine emperor was not the power of a deity, as with the Eastern monarchs. She was the power of "the grace of God", but not exclusively. Although consecrated by God, in early Byzantium it was viewed not as divinely sanctioned personal omnipotence, but as unlimited, but entrusted to the emperor, the power of the senate and the Roman people. Hence the practice of "civilian" election of each emperor. It was no coincidence that the Byzantines considered themselves "Romans", Romans, keepers of the Roman state-political traditions, and their state - Roman, Roman. The fact that the heredity of imperial power was not established in Byzantium, and the election of emperors was preserved until the end of the existence of Byzantium, should also be attributed not to Roman customs, but to the influence of new social conditions, the class non-polarization of society in the 8th-9th centuries. Late antique statehood was characterized by a combination of the government of the state bureaucracy and polis self-government.

A characteristic feature of this era was the involvement in self-government of independent owners, retired officials (honorati), and the clergy. Together with the top curials, they constituted a kind of official collegium, a committee that stood above the curiae and was responsible for the functioning of individual city institutions. The bishop was the "protector" of the city not simply because of his ecclesiastical functions. His role in the late antique and early Byzantine city was special: he was a recognized defender of the urban community, its official representative before the state and bureaucratic administration. This position and duties reflected the general policy of the state and society in relation to the city. Concern for the prosperity and well-being of cities was declaimed as one of the most important tasks of the state. The duty of the early Byzantine emperors was to be "philopolises" - "lovers of the city", it also extended to the imperial administration. Thus, one can speak not only about the maintenance by the state of the remnants of polis self-government, but also about a certain orientation in this direction of the entire policy of the early Byzantine state, its “urban centrism”.

With the transition to the early Middle Ages, the policy of the state also changes. From the "urban-centric" - late antique, it turns into a new, purely "territorial" one. The empire as an ancient federation of cities with territories subject to them died completely. In the system of the state, the city turned out to be equated with the village within the framework of the general territorial division of the empire into rural and urban administrative tax districts.

From this point of view, the evolution of church organization should also be considered. The question of which municipal functions of the church, which were mandatory for the early Byzantine era, has died out has not yet been sufficiently studied. But there is no doubt that some of the surviving functions have lost their connection with the activities of the urban community and have become an independent function of the church itself. Thus, the church organization, having broken the remnants of its former dependence on the ancient polis structure, for the first time became independent, territorially organized and united within the dioceses. The decline of cities, obviously, contributed to this to no small extent.

Accordingly, all this was reflected in the specific forms of state-church organization and their functioning. The emperor was an unlimited ruler - the supreme legislator and head of the executive branch, the supreme commander in chief and judge, the highest court of appeal, the protector of the church and, as such, "the earthly leader of the Christian people." He appointed and dismissed all officials and could take sole decisions on all issues. The State Council - a consistory consisting of senior officials, and the Senate - a body representing and protecting the interests of the senatorial class, had advisory, advisory functions. All threads of control converged in the palace. The magnificent ceremonial raised the imperial power high and separated him from the mass of subjects - mere mortals. However, certain features of the limited imperial power were also observed. Being a "living law", the emperor was obliged to follow the existing law. He could make individual decisions, but on major issues he consulted not only with his advisers, but also with the Senate and senators. He was obliged to listen to the decision of the three "constitutional forces" - the Senate, the army and the "people" involved in the nomination and election of emperors. On this basis, the city parties were a real political force in early Byzantium, and often when emperors were elected, conditions were imposed that they were obliged to observe. During the early Byzantine era, the civil side of the election absolutely dominated. The consecration of power, in comparison with the election, was not essential. The role of the church was considered to some extent within the framework of ideas about the state cult.

All types of service were divided into court (palatina), civil (militia) and military (militia armata). Military administration and command were separated from civil ones, and the early Byzantine emperors, formally supreme commanders, actually ceased to be generals. Civil administration was the main thing in the empire, military activity was subordinate to it. Therefore, the main figures, after the emperor, in the administration and hierarchy were the two prefects of the praetorium - the “viceroy”, who were at the head of the entire civil administration and were in charge of managing provinces, cities, collecting taxes, performing duties, police functions on the ground, ensuring the supply of the army, court, etc. The disappearance in the early medieval Byzantium of not only the provincial division, but also the most important departments of prefects, undoubtedly, testifies to a radical restructuring of the entire system of state administration. The early Byzantine army was completed in part by a forced recruitment (conscription), but the further, the more it became hired - from the inhabitants of the empire and the barbarians. Its supply and armament was provided by civilian departments. The end of the early Byzantine era and the beginning of the early medieval era were marked by a complete restructuring of the military organization. The former division of the army into the frontier, located in the border districts and under the command of the duks, and into the mobile, located in the cities of the empire, was canceled.

The 38-year reign of Justinian (527–565) was a turning point in early Byzantine history. Having come to power in the conditions of a social crisis, the emperor began with attempts to forcibly establish the religious unity of the empire. His very moderate reformist policy was interrupted by the Nika Uprising (532), a unique and at the same time urban movement characteristic of the early Byzantine era. It focused all the heat of social contradictions in the country. The uprising was brutally suppressed. Justinian implemented a series of administrative reforms. From Roman law, he adopted a number of norms, establishing the principle of the inviolability of private property. The code of Justinian will form the basis of the subsequent Byzantine legislation, contributing to the fact that Byzantium remains a "legal state", in which the authority and power of the law played a huge role, and in the future will have a strong influence on the jurisprudence of all medieval Europe. On the whole, the era of Justinian, as it were, summed up, synthesized the tendencies of the previous development. The well-known historian G.L. Kurbatov noted that in this era all serious opportunities for reforms in all spheres of life of early Byzantine society - social, political, ideological - were exhausted. During 32 of the 38 years of Justinian's reign, Byzantium waged exhausting wars - in North Africa, Italy, Iran, etc.; in the Balkans, she had to repel the onslaught of the Huns and Slavs, and Justinian's hopes for stabilizing the position of the empire ended in failure.

Heraclius (610-641) achieved notable successes in strengthening the central government. True, the eastern provinces with a predominantly non-Greek population were lost, and now his power extended mainly to Greek or Hellenized territories. Heraclius adopted the ancient Greek title "basileus" instead of the Latin "emperor". The status of the ruler of the empire was no longer associated with the idea of ​​electing the sovereign as a representative of the interests of all subjects, as the main position in the empire (magistrate). The emperor became a medieval monarch. At the same time, the translation of all state business and legal proceedings from Latin into Greek was completed. The difficult foreign policy situation of the empire required the concentration of power on the ground, and the "principle of separation" of powers began to leave the political arena. Radical changes began in the structure of provincial administration, the boundaries of the provinces changed, all the fullness of military and civil power was now entrusted to the emperors to the governor - the stratig (military leader). Stratig received power over the judges and officials of the fiscus of the province, and the province itself began to be called "thema" (previously the detachment of local troops was called that).

In the difficult military situation of the 7th century. the role of the army steadily increased. With the formation of the theme system, mercenary troops lost their importance. The theme system relied on the village, free peasant stratiotes became the main military force of the country. They were included in the stratiotsky catalog lists, received certain privileges in relation to taxes and duties. They were assigned land plots that were inalienable, but could be inherited, subject to the continuation of military service. With the spread of the theme system, the restoration of imperial power in the provinces accelerated. The free peasantry turned into taxpayers of the treasury, into warriors of the thematic militia. The state, which was in dire need of money, was largely relieved of the obligation to maintain an army, although the stratiotes received a certain salary.

The first themes arose in Asia Minor (Opsiky, Anatolic, Armenian). From the end of the 7th to the beginning of the 9th c. they also formed in the Balkans: Thrace, Hellas, Macedonia, Peloponnese, and also, probably, Thessalonica-Dyrrachium. So, Asia Minor became the "cradle of medieval Byzantium." It was here, under the conditions of acute military necessity, that the theme system first took shape and took shape, the stratiotic peasant estate was born, which strengthened and raised the socio-political significance of the village. At the end of the 7th-8th century. tens of thousands of Slavic families subjugated by force and submitting voluntarily were resettled to the north-west of Asia Minor (to Bithynia), endowed with land on the terms of military service, they were made taxpayers of the treasury. Military districts, turms, and not provincial towns, as before, are becoming more and more distinct as the main territorial divisions of the theme. In Asia Minor, the future feudal ruling class of Byzantium began to form from among the thematic commanders. By the middle of the 9th c. the theme system was established throughout the empire. The new organization of military forces and management allowed the empire to repel the onslaught of enemies and move on to the return of lost lands.

But the theme system, as it turned out later, was fraught with danger for the central government: the strategists, having gained enormous power, tried to slip out of the control of the center. They even fought wars with each other. Therefore, the emperors began to split up large themes, thereby causing dissatisfaction with the stratigi, on the crest of which the strategist of the themes Anatolik Leo III the Isaurian (717-741) came to power.

Leo III and other iconoclast emperors, who succeeded, overcoming centrifugal tendencies, for a long time to turn the church and the military-administrative system of thematic administration into the support of their throne, have an exceptional place in strengthening imperial power. First of all, they subordinated the church to their influence, arrogating to themselves the right of a decisive vote in the election of the patriarch and in the adoption of the most important church dogmas at ecumenical councils. The recalcitrant patriarchs were deposed, exiled, and the Roman governors were also deprived of the throne, until they found themselves under the protectorate of the Frankish state from the middle of the 8th century. Iconoclasm contributed to the discord with the West, serving as the beginning of the future drama of the division of the churches. Iconoclast emperors revived and strengthened the cult of imperial power. The same goals were pursued by the policy of resuming Roman legal proceedings and reviving the 7th century BC, which had experienced a deep decline. Roman law. Eclogue (726) sharply increased the responsibility of officials before the law and the state and established the death penalty for any speech against the emperor and the state.

In the last quarter of the 8th c. the main goals of iconoclasm were achieved: the material position of the opposition clergy was undermined, their property and lands were confiscated, many monasteries were closed, large centers of separatism were destroyed, the thematic nobility was subordinated to the throne. Earlier, however, the strategists sought complete independence from Constantinople, and thus a conflict arose between the two main factions of the ruling class, the military aristocracy and civil power, for political predominance in the state. As the researcher of Byzantium G.G. Litavrin notes, “it was a struggle for two different ways of developing feudal relations: the metropolitan bureaucracy, which disposed of the funds of the treasury, sought to limit the growth of large landownership, strengthen tax oppression, while the thematic nobility saw the prospects for its strengthening in all-round development privately owned forms of exploitation. The rivalry between the "commanders" and the "bureaucracy" has stood for centuries as the core of the internal political life of the empire ... ".

The iconoclastic policy lost its sharpness in the second quarter of the 9th century, since further conflict with the church threatened to weaken the positions of the ruling class. In 812-823 Constantinople was besieged by the usurper Thomas the Slav, he was supported by noble icon worshipers, some strategists of Asia Minor and part of the Slavs in the Balkans. The uprising was crushed, it had a sobering effect on the ruling circles. The VII Ecumenical Council (787) condemned iconoclasm, and in 843 icon veneration was restored, the desire for centralization of power won. The fight against the adherents of the dualistic Paulician heresy also required a lot of effort. In the east of Asia Minor they created a peculiar state with the center in the city of Tefrika. In 879 this city was taken by government troops.

Byzantium in the second half of the 9th–11th centuries

The strengthening of the power of imperial power predetermined the development of feudal relations in Byzantium and, accordingly, the nature of its political system. For three centuries, centralized exploitation became the main source of material resources. The service of the stratiote peasants in the theme militia for at least two centuries remained the foundation of the military power of Byzantium.

Researchers date the onset of mature feudalism to the end of the 11th or even the turn of the 11th–12th centuries. The formation of large private landownership falls on the second half of the 9th-10th century, the process of ruining the peasantry intensified in the lean years of 927/928. The peasants went bankrupt and sold their land for next to nothing to the dinats, becoming their wig holders. All this drastically reduced the revenues of the Fisk and weakened the Theme militia. From 920 to 1020, the emperors, worried about the massive decrease in income, issued a series of decrees-novels in defense of the peasant landowners. They are known as "the legislation of the emperors of the Macedonian dynasty (867–1056)". Peasants were given the preferential right to purchase land. Legislation, first of all, had in mind the interests of the treasury. Community members-fellow villagers were obliged to pay taxes (mutual responsibility) for abandoned peasant plots. The abandoned lands of the communities were sold or leased out.

11th–12th centuries

Differences between different categories of peasants are smoothed out. From the middle of the 11th century growing conditional land ownership. Back in the 10th c. emperors granted the secular and spiritual nobility the so-called "non-property rights", which consisted in transferring the right to collect state taxes from a certain territory in their favor for a fixed period or for life. These awards were called solemnias or pronias. Pronias were envisaged in the 11th century. performance by their recipient of military service in favor of the state. In the 12th century pronia reveals a tendency to turn into hereditary, and then unconditional property.

In a number of regions of Asia Minor, on the eve of the IV Crusade, complexes of vast possessions were formed, which were actually independent of Constantinople. Registration of the patrimony, and then its property privileges, was carried out in Byzantium at a slow pace. Tax immunity was presented as an exclusive privilege, the empire did not have a hierarchical structure of land ownership, and the system of vassal-personal relations did not develop either.

City.

The new rise of Byzantine cities reached its climax in the 10th-12th centuries, and embraced not only the capital Constantinople, but some provincial cities - Nicaea, Smyrna, Ephesus, Trebizond. Byzantine merchants launched a wide international trade. Artisans of the capital received large orders from the imperial palace, the higher clergy, officials. In the 10th century city ​​charter was drafted Eparch's book. It regulated the activities of the main craft and trade corporations.

The constant intervention of the state in the activities of corporations has become a brake on their further development. A particularly severe blow to Byzantine crafts and trade was inflicted by exorbitantly high taxes and the provision of benefits in trade to the Italian republics. Signs of decline were found in Constantinople: the dominance of the Italian economy in its economy grew. By the end of the 12th century. the very supply of the capital of the empire with food turned out to be mainly in the hands of Italian merchants. In the provincial towns this competition was felt weakly, but such towns more and more fell under the rule of large feudal lords.

Medieval Byzantine state

developed in its most important features as a feudal monarchy by the beginning of the 10th century. under Leo VI the Wise (886–912) and Constantine II Porphyrogenitus (913–959). During the reign of the emperors of the Macedonian dynasty (867-1025), the empire reached an extraordinary power, which it never knew afterwards.

From the 9th century the first active contacts of Kievan Rus with Byzantium begin. Starting from 860 they contributed to the establishment of stable trade relations. Probably, the beginning of the Christianization of Russia dates back to this time. Treaties 907-911 opened her permanent way to the Constantinople market. In 946, the embassy of Princess Olga to Constantinople took place, it played a significant role in the development of trade and money relations and the spread of Christianity in Russia. However, under Prince Svyatoslav, active trade and military political relations gave way to a long period of military conflicts. Svyatoslav failed to gain a foothold on the Danube, but in the future Byzantium continued to trade with Russia and repeatedly resorted to its military assistance. The result of these contacts was the marriage of Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, with Prince Vladimir, which completed the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of Russia (988/989). This event brought Russia into the ranks of the largest Christian states in Europe. Slavic writing spread in Russia, theological books, religious objects, etc. were imported. Economic and ecclesiastical ties between Byzantium and Russia continued to develop and strengthen in the 11th-12th centuries.

During the reign of the Komnenos dynasty (1081-1185), a new temporary rise of the Byzantine state took place. The Komneni won major victories over the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor and were active in the West. The decline of the Byzantine state became acute only at the end of the 12th century.

Organization of state administration and management of the empire in 10 - ser. 12th c. has also undergone major changes. There was an active adaptation of the norms of Justinian law to new conditions (collections Isagogue, Prochiron, Vasiliki and the issuance of new laws.) The synclite, or council of the highest nobility under the basileus, genetically closely related to the late Roman senate, was on the whole an obedient instrument of his power.

The formation of the personnel of the most important governing bodies was entirely determined by the will of the emperor. Under Leo VI, a hierarchy of ranks and titles was brought into the system. It served as one of the most important levers for strengthening imperial power.

The power of the emperor was by no means unlimited, often very fragile. First, it was not hereditary; the imperial throne, the place of the basil in society, his rank, and not his personality and not the dynasty were deified. In Byzantium, the custom of co-government was early established: the ruling basileus was in a hurry to crown his heir during his lifetime. Secondly, the dominance of temporary workers upset management in the center and in the field. The authority of the strategist fell. Again there was a separation of military and civilian power. The supremacy in the province passed to the praetor judge, the stratigi became the heads of small fortresses, the head of the tagma, a detachment of professional mercenaries, represented the highest military authority. But at the end of the 12th c. there was still a significant stratum of the free peasantry, and changes gradually took place in the army.

Nikephoros II Phocas (963-969) singled out their wealthy elite from the mass of stratigi, from which he formed a heavily armed cavalry. The less wealthy were obliged to serve in the infantry, in the navy, in the convoy. From the 11th century the duty of personal service was replaced by monetary compensation. The mercenary army was kept on the received funds. The fleet of the army fell into decay. The empire became dependent on the help of the Italian fleet.

The state of affairs in the army reflected the vicissitudes of the political struggle within the ruling class. From the end of the 10th c. generals sought to wrest power from the strengthened bureaucracy. Occasionally, representatives of a military group seized power in the middle of the 11th century. In 1081, the rebellious commander Alexei I Komnenos (1081–1118) took the throne.

With this, the era of the bureaucratic nobility ended, and the process of forming a closed estate of the largest feudal lords intensified. The main social support of the Comneni was already a large provincial landowning nobility. The staff of officials in the center and in the provinces was reduced. However, the Komnenos only temporarily strengthened the Byzantine state, but they were not able to prevent the feudal decline.

Economy of Byzantium in the 11th century was on the rise, but its socio-political structure was in crisis of the old form of Byzantine statehood. The evolution of the second half of the 11th century contributed to the way out of the crisis. - the growth of feudal landownership, the transformation of the bulk of the peasantry into feudally exploited, the consolidation of the ruling class. But the peasant part of the army, the ruined stratiots, was no longer a serious military force, even in combination with shock feudal detachments and mercenaries, it became a burden in military operations. The peasant part was becoming more and more unreliable, which gave a decisive role to the commanders and the top of the army, opened the way for their rebellions and uprisings.

With Alexei Komnenos, not just the Komnenos dynasty came to power. A whole clan of military-aristocratic families came to power, already from the 11th century. bound by family and friendship ties. The Komnin clan pushed aside the civil nobility from governing the country. Its importance and influence on the political fate of the country was reduced, management was increasingly concentrated in the palace, at the court. The role of the synclite as the main body of civil administration has fallen. Generosity becomes the standard of nobility.

The distribution of pronias made it possible not only to strengthen, to strengthen the dominance of the Komnenos clan. Part of the civil nobility was also satisfied with the pronias. With the development of the institute of prony, the state created, in fact, a purely feudal army. The question of how much small and medium-sized feudal landownership grew under the Komnenos is debatable. It is difficult to say why, but the Comnenos government placed considerable emphasis on attracting foreigners to the Byzantine army, including by distributing pronia to them. Thus, a significant number of Western feudal families appeared in Byzantium. act as a kind of "third force", was suppressed.

By asserting the dominance of their clan, the Comneni helped the feudal lords to ensure the peaceful exploitation of the peasantry. Already the beginning of the reign of Alexei was marked by the merciless suppression of popular heretical movements. The most stubborn heretics and rebels were burned. The church also stepped up its fight against heresies.

The feudal economy in Byzantium is on the rise. And already in the 12th century. the predominance of privately owned forms of exploitation over centralized ones was noticeable. The feudal economy gave more and more marketable products (productivity - self-fifteen, self-twenty). The volume of commodity-money relations increased in the 12th century. 5 times compared to the 11th century.

In large provincial centers, industries similar to those in Constantinople (Athens, Corinth, Nicaea, Smyrna, Ephesus) developed, which hit the capital's production painfully. The provincial towns came into direct contact with the Italian merchants. But in the 12th century Byzantium is already losing its monopoly of trade not only in the western, but also in the eastern part of the Mediterranean.

The policy of the Comneni in relation to the Italian city-states was entirely determined by the interests of the clan. Most of all, the merchants and merchants of Constantinople suffered from it. State in the 12th century received considerable income from the revitalization of urban life. The Byzantine treasury did not experience, despite the most active foreign policy and huge military expenditures, as well as the costs of maintaining a magnificent court, an acute need for money throughout a significant part of the 12th century. In addition to organizing expensive expeditions, emperors in the 12th century. conducted a large military construction, had a good fleet.

The rise of Byzantine cities in the 12th century turned out to be short and incomplete. Only the oppression that fell on the peasant economy increased. The state, which gave the feudal lords certain benefits and privileges that increased their power over the peasants, did not actually seek to significantly reduce state taxes. The telos tax, which became the main state tax, did not take into account the individual capabilities of the peasant economy, and tended to turn into a unified tax such as household or hoist. The state of the internal, urban market in the second half of the 12th century. began to slow down due to the decrease in the purchasing power of peasants. This doomed many mass crafts to stagnation.

Strengthened in the last quarter of the 12th century. The pauperization and lumpen-proletarianization of part of the urban population was particularly acute in Constantinople. Already at this time, the growing import of cheaper Italian consumer goods to Byzantium began to affect his position. All this heated up the social situation in Constantinople, led to mass anti-Latin, anti-Italian demonstrations. In the provincial cities, the features of their well-known economic decline are also beginning to appear. Byzantine monasticism actively multiplied not only at the expense of the rural population, but also the trade and crafts. In the Byzantine cities of the 11th-12th centuries. there were no trade and craft associations such as Western European workshops, artisans did not play an independent role in the public life of the city.

The terms “self-government” and “autonomy” can hardly be applied to Byzantine cities, because they imply administrative autonomy. In the letters of the Byzantine emperors to the cities, we are talking about tax and partly judicial privileges, in principle, taking into account the interests of not even the entire urban community, but individual groups of its population. It is not known whether the urban trade and craft population fought for “their” own autonomy, separately from the feudal lords, but the fact remains that those elements of it that were strengthened in Byzantium put their feudal lords at the head. While in Italy the feudal class was fragmented and formed a layer of urban feudal lords, who turned out to be an ally of the urban class, in Byzantium the elements of urban self-government were only a reflection of the consolidation of the power of the feudal lords over the cities. Often in cities, power was in the hands of 2-3 feudal families. If in Byzantium 11-12 centuries. there were some tendencies towards the emergence of elements of urban (burgher) self-government, then in the second half - the end of the 12th century. they were interrupted - and forever.

Thus, as a result of the development of the Byzantine city in the 11th–12th centuries. in Byzantium, unlike Western Europe, neither a strong urban community, nor a powerful independent movement of citizens, nor a developed urban self-government, or even its elements, developed. Byzantine artisans and merchants were excluded from participation in official political life and in city government.

The fall of the power of Byzantium in the last quarter of the 12th century. was associated with the deepening of the processes of strengthening Byzantine feudalism. With the formation of the local market, the struggle between the tendencies of decentralization and centralization inevitably intensified, the growth of which characterizes the evolution of political relations in Byzantium in the 12th century. The Comneni very resolutely embarked on the path of developing conditional feudal landownership, not forgetting their own family feudal power. They distributed tax and judicial privileges to the feudal lords, thereby increasing the volume of privately owned exploitation of the peasants and their real dependence on the feudal lords. However, the clan in power was by no means willing to give up centralized revenues. Therefore, with the reduction in the collection of taxes, the state tax oppression intensified, which caused sharp discontent among the peasantry. The Comneni did not support the tendency to turn the pronia into conditional, but hereditary possessions, which was actively sought by an ever-increasing part of the proniarii.

A tangle of contradictions that intensified in Byzantium in the 70s-90s of the 12th century. was largely the result of the evolution that Byzantine society and its ruling class underwent in this century. The forces of the civil nobility were sufficiently undermined in the 11th-12th centuries, but they found support in people who were dissatisfied with the policy of the Komnenos, the dominance and bossing of the Komnenos clan in the field.

Hence the demands to strengthen the central government, streamline the state administration - the wave on which Andronicus I Komnenos (1183-1185) came to power. The masses of the Constantinopolitan population expected that a civilian rather than a military government would be able to more effectively limit the privileges of the nobility and foreigners. Sympathy for civil bureaucracy also increased with the emphasized aristocracy of the Komnenos, who to some extent dissociated themselves from the rest of the ruling class, their rapprochement with the Western aristocracy. Opposition to the Comneni found increasing support both in the capital and in the provinces, where the situation was more difficult. In the social structure and composition of the ruling class during the 12th century. there have been some changes. If in the 11th c. the feudal aristocracy of the provinces was mainly represented by large military families, large early feudal nobility of the provinces, then during the 12th century. a powerful provincial stratum of "middle class" feudal lords grew up. She was not associated with the Comneno clan, actively participated in city self-government, gradually took over the power in the localities, and the struggle to weaken the power of the government in the provinces became one of her tasks. In this struggle, it rallied local forces around itself and relied on the cities. She had no military forces, but local military commanders became her tools. Moreover, we are not talking about the old aristocratic families, who had enormous forces and power of their own, but about those who could only act with their support. Byzantium in the late 12th century separatist actions became frequent, leaving entire regions from the central government.

Thus, one can speak of an undoubted expansion of the Byzantine feudal class in the 12th century. If in the 11th c. a narrow circle of the largest feudal magnates of the country fought for central power and was inextricably linked with it, then during the 12th century. a powerful layer of provincial feudal archons grew up, becoming an important factor in truly feudal decentralization.

The emperors who ruled after Andronicus I to some extent, albeit forcedly, continued his policy. On the one hand, they weakened the power of the Komnenos clan, but did not dare to strengthen the elements of centralization. They did not express the interests of the provincials, but the latter, with their help, overthrew the dominance of the Komnenos clan. They did not pursue any targeted policy against the Italians, they simply relied on popular uprisings as a means of pressure on them, and then made concessions. As a result, neither decentralization nor centralization of administration took place in the state. Everyone was unhappy, but no one knew what to do.

There was a delicate balance of power in the empire, in which any attempt at decisive action was instantly blocked by the opposition. Neither side dared to reform, but all fought for power. Under these conditions, the authority of Constantinople fell, the provinces lived an increasingly independent life. Even serious military defeats and losses did not change the situation. If the Comneni were able, relying on objective tendencies, to take a decisive step towards the establishment of feudal relations, then the situation that had developed in Byzantium towards the end of the 12th century turned out to be internally insoluble. There were no forces in the empire that could decisively break with the traditions of stable centralized statehood. The latter still had a fairly strong support in the real life of the country, in state forms of exploitation. Therefore, there were no those in Constantinople who could resolutely fight for the preservation of the empire.

The Komnenian epoch formed a stable military-bureaucratic elite, considering the country as a kind of "estate" of Constantinople and accustomed to disregard the interests of the population. Its revenues were squandered on lavish construction and costly overseas campaigns, leaving the country's frontiers lightly defended. The Komneni finally liquidated the remnants of the Theme army, the Theme organization. They created a combat-ready feudal army capable of scoring major victories, liquidated the remnants of the thematic fleets and created a combat-ready central fleet. But the defense of the regions now depended more and more on the central forces. The Comneni deliberately ensured a high percentage of foreign chivalry in the Byzantine army, they just as deliberately hampered the transformation of pronia into hereditary property. Imperial donations and awards turned the proniaris into a privileged elite of the army, but the position of the bulk of the army was insufficiently secured and stable.

Ultimately, the government had to partially revive the elements of a regional military organization, partly subordinating the civil administration to local strategists. Around them, the local nobility began to rally with their local interests, proniars and archons, who tried to consolidate the ownership of their possessions, the urban population, who wanted to protect their interests. All this differed sharply from the situation in the 11th century. the fact that behind all the movements that arose on the ground from the middle of the 12th century. there were powerful tendencies towards the feudal decentralization of the country, which took shape as a result of the establishment of Byzantine feudalism, the processes of folding regional markets. They were expressed in the emergence of independent or semi-independent formations on the territory of the empire, especially on its outskirts, ensuring the protection of local interests and only nominally subordinate to the government of Constantinople. Such was Cyprus under the rule of Isaac Komnenos, the region of central Greece under the rule of Camatira and Leo Sgur, Western Asia Minor. There was a process of gradual "separation" of the regions of Ponta-Trebizond, where the power of the Le Havres-Taronites was slowly strengthening, uniting local feudal lords and merchant circles around themselves. They became the basis of the future Trebizond Empire of the Great Komnenos (1204-1461), which turned into an independent state with the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders.

The growing isolation of the capital was largely taken into account by the crusaders and the Venetians, who saw a real opportunity to turn Constantinople into the center of their dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean. The reign of Andronicus I showed that the opportunities for consolidating the empire on a new basis were missed. He established his power with the support of the provinces, but did not justify their hopes and lost it. The rupture of the provinces with Constantinople became a fait accompli; the provinces did not come to the aid of the capital when it was besieged by the crusaders in 1204. The Constantinopolitan nobility, on the one hand, did not want to part with their monopoly position, and on the other hand, they tried in every possible way to strengthen their own. Komnin's "centralization" made it possible for the government to maneuver with large resources, to quickly increase either the army or the navy. But this shift in needs created enormous opportunities for corruption. By the time of the siege, the military forces of Constantinople consisted mainly of mercenaries and were insignificant. They could not be instantly enlarged. The "Big Fleet" was liquidated as unnecessary. By the beginning of the siege by the crusaders, the Byzantines were able to "fix 20 rotten ships, carved by worms." The unreasonable policy of the government of Constantinople on the eve of the fall paralyzed even trade and merchant circles. The impoverished masses of the population hated the swaggering and arrogant nobility. On April 13, 1204, the crusaders captured the city without difficulty, and the poor, exhausted by the hopeless need, smashed and plundered the palaces and houses of the nobility together with them. The famous "Constantinople devastation" began, after which the capital of the empire could no longer recover. The “sacred booty of Constantinople” poured into the West, but a huge part of the cultural heritage of Byzantium was irretrievably lost during the fire during the capture of the city. The fall of Constantinople and the disintegration of Byzantium were not a natural consequence of objective development trends alone. In many ways, this was also a direct result of the unreasonable policy of the Constantinople authorities.

Church

in Byzantium was poorer than the western one, the priests paid taxes. Celibacy has been in the empire since the 10th century. obligatory for clergy, starting with the rank of bishop. In terms of property, even the highest clergy depended on the emperor's good will and usually obediently carried out his will. The higher hierarchs were drawn into the civil strife of the nobility. From the middle of the 10th c. they began to more often go over to the side of the military aristocracy.

In the 11th-12th centuries. the empire was truly a country of monasteries. Almost all noble persons sought to found or endow monasteries. Even despite the impoverishment of the treasury and the sharp decrease in the fund of state lands by the end of the 12th century, the emperors very timidly and rarely resorted to the secularization of church lands. In the 11th-12th centuries. in the internal political life of the empire, the gradual feudalization of nationalities began to be felt, which sought to secede from Byzantium and form independent states.

Thus, the Byzantine feudal monarchy of the 11th-12th centuries. does not fully correspond to its socio-economic structure. The crisis of imperial power was not completely overcome by the beginning of the 13th century. At the same time, the decline of the state was not the result of the decline of the Byzantine economy. The reason was that socio-economic and social development came into irresolvable contradiction with the inert, traditional forms of government, which were only partially adapted to the new conditions.

Crisis at the end of the 12th century strengthened the process of decentralization of Byzantium, contributed to its conquest. In the last quarter of the 12th c. Byzantium lost the Ionian Islands, Cyprus, during the 4th crusade, a systematic seizure of its territories began. On April 13, 1204, the crusaders captured and sacked Constantinople. On the ruins of Byzantium, in 1204, a new, artificially created state arose, which included lands stretching from the Ionian to the Black Sea, belonging to Western European knights. They were called Latin Romania, it included the Latin Empire with its capital in Constantinople and the states of the “Franks” in the Balkans, the possessions of the Venetian Republic, colonies and trading posts of the Genoese, territories belonging to the spiritual and knightly order of the Hospitallers (St. John; Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands (1306–1422 But the Crusaders failed to carry out the plan to seize all the lands belonging to Byzantium. In the northwestern part of Asia Minor, an independent Greek state arose - the Empire of Nicaea, in the southern Black Sea region - the Trebizond Empire, in the west of the Balkans - the Epirus state. They considered themselves the heirs of Byzantium and wanted to reunite.

Cultural, linguistic and religious unity, historical traditions led to the presence of tendencies towards the unification of Byzantium. The Nicaean Empire played a leading role in the struggle against the Latin Empire. It was one of the most powerful Greek states. Its rulers, relying on small and medium-sized landowners and cities, managed in 1261 to expel the Latins from Constantinople. The Latin Empire ceased to exist, but the restored Byzantium was only a semblance of the former powerful state. Now it included the western part of Asia Minor, part of Thrace and Macedonia, islands in the Aegean Sea and a number of fortresses in the Peloponnese. The foreign political situation and centrifugal forces, weakness and lack of unity in the urban estate made it difficult to attempt further unification. The Palaiologan dynasty did not take the path of a decisive struggle against large feudal lords, fearing the activity of the masses, it preferred dynastic marriages, feudal wars using foreign mercenaries. The foreign policy position of Byzantium turned out to be extremely difficult; the West continued to try to recreate the Latin Empire and extend the power of the pope to Byzantium; increased economic and military pressure from Venice and Genoa. The attacks of the Serbs from the northwest and the Turks from the East became more and more successful. The Byzantine emperors sought to obtain military assistance by subordinating the Greek Church to the pope (Unia of Lyon, Union of Florence), but the dominance of Italian merchant capital and Western feudal lords was so hated by the population that the government could not force the people to recognize the union.

During this period, the dominance of large secular and ecclesiastical feudal landownership was further strengthened. Pronia again takes the form of hereditary conditional possession, the immune privileges of the feudal lords are expanding. In addition to the granted tax immunity, they are increasingly acquiring administrative and judicial immunity. The state still determined the size of the public law rent from the peasants, which it transferred to the feudal lords. Its basis was a tax from the house, from the land, from the cattle team. Taxes were applied to the entire community: tithes of livestock and pasture fees. Dependent peasants (wigs) also carried private legal obligations in favor of the feudal lord, and they were regulated not by the state, but by customs. Corvée averaged 24 days a year. In the 14th-15th century it increasingly turned into cash payments. Monetary and in-kind fees in favor of the feudal lord were very significant. The Byzantine community has become an element of the patrimonial organization. The marketability of agriculture grew in the country, but secular feudal lords and monasteries acted as sellers in foreign markets, which derived great benefits from this trade, and the property differentiation of the peasantry intensified. The peasants became more and more landless and landless, they became hired workers, tenants of someone else's land. The strengthening of the patrimonial economy contributed to the development of handicraft production in the village. The late Byzantine city did not have a monopoly on the manufacture and sale of handicraft products.

For Byzantium 13-15 centuries. was characterized by the increasing decline of urban life. The Latin conquest dealt a heavy blow to the economy of the Byzantine city. The competition of the Italians, the development of usury in the cities led to the impoverishment and ruin of large sections of the Byzantine artisans who joined the ranks of the urban plebs. A significant part of the state's foreign trade was concentrated in the hands of Genoese, Venetian, Pisan and other Western European merchants. Trading posts of foreigners were located in the most important points of the empire (Thessalonica, Adrianople, almost in all cities of the Peloponnese, etc.). In the 14th-15th centuries. the ships of the Genoese and Venetians dominated the Black and Aegean Seas, and the once powerful fleet of Byzantium fell into decay.

The decline of urban life was especially noticeable in Constantinople, where entire quarters were in desolation, but even in Constantinople economic life did not completely die out, but at times revived. More favorable was the position of large port cities (Trebizond, in which there was an alliance of local feudal lords and the commercial and industrial elite). They took part in both international and local trade. Most of the medium and small towns turned into centers for the local exchange of handicraft goods. They, being the residences of large feudal lords, were also church-administrative centers.

By the beginning of the 14th century. most of Asia Minor was captured by the Ottoman Turks. In 1320–1328, an internecine war broke out in Byzantium between the emperor Andronicus II and his grandson Andronicus III, who sought to seize the throne. The victory of Andronicus III further strengthened the feudal nobility and centrifugal forces. In the 20-30s of the 14th century. Byzantium waged exhausting wars with Bulgaria and Serbia.

The decisive period was the 1440's, when the peasant movement flared up in the course of the struggle between two cliques for power. Taking the side of the "legitimate" dynasty, it began to smash the estates of the rebellious feudal lords, headed by John Kantakouzin. The government of John Apokavkas and Patriarch John initially pursued a decisive policy, sharply speaking out both against the separatist-minded aristocracy (and resorting to the confiscation of the properties of the recalcitrant), and against the mystical ideology of the hesychasts. The townspeople of Thessalonica supported Apokavkas. The movement was led by the Zealot Party, whose program soon took on an anti-feudal character. But the activity of the masses frightened the government of Constantinople, which did not dare to use the chance that the popular movement gave it. Apokavk was killed in 1343, the struggle of the government against the rebellious feudal lords actually stopped. In Thessalonica, the situation escalated as a result of the transition of the city's nobility (archons) to the side of Kantakouzenos. The plebs who came out exterminated most of the city's nobility. However, the movement, having lost contact with the central government, remained local in nature and was suppressed.

This largest urban movement of late Byzantium was the last attempt of trade and craft circles to resist the dominance of the feudal lords. The weakness of the cities, the absence of a cohesive urban patriciate, the social organization of handicraft workshops, and the traditions of self-government predetermined their defeat. In 1348-1352 Byzantium lost the war with the Genoese. The Black Sea trade and even the supply of grain to Constantinople were concentrated in the hands of the Italians.

Byzantium was exhausted and could not resist the onslaught of the Turks, who took possession of Thrace. Now Byzantium included Constantinople with the district, Thessaloniki and part of Greece. The defeat of the Serbs by the Turks near Maritsa in 1371 effectively made the Byzantine emperor a vassal of the Turkish sultan. Byzantine feudal lords compromised with foreign invaders in order to maintain their rights to exploit the local population. The Byzantine trading cities, including Constantinople, saw their main enemy in the Italians, underestimating the Turkish danger, and even expected to destroy the dominance of foreign commercial capital with the help of the Turks. The desperate attempt of the population of Thessaloniki in 1383-1387 to fight against Turkish rule in the Balkans ended in failure. The Italian merchants also underestimated the real danger of the Turkish conquest. The defeat of the Turks by Timur at Ankara in 1402 helped Byzantium temporarily restore independence, but the Byzantines and South Slavic feudal lords failed to take advantage of the weakening of the Turks, and in 1453 Constantinople was captured by Mehmed II. Then the rest of the Greek territories also fell (Morea - 1460, Trebizond - 1461). The Byzantine Empire ceased to exist.

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