Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire was a Greek speaking eastern roman empire that belonged to the Middle Ages and it was founded on the capital of Constantinople. It is also reoffered to as Romania or the Roman Empire by the locals. During its existence the empire remained powerful in terms of economic, cultural, and military forces although it had so many setbacks and loss of territories more so during the time of Byzantine-Arab wars and Roman-Persian wars. It regained its status in Macedonian reign as a paramount kingdom (Craig, 2005).
Economy of this empire was in the most highly developed in Europe and the Mediterranean centuries. Europe was not able to rhyme with the economy of Byzantine until in the middle mid-ages.its capital was strategically placed such that it acted as the core in the trading network which spanned North Africa and Eurasia. Up to the seventh century, its economy was the highest universally. After the Arabs conquered it changed the state which led to the period of down turn and stagnation. The economy was later revived by Constantine V until 1204. In this period, this empire was marked by lavishness and it attracted many tourists. An economic upheaval happened on the arrival of the fourth crusade. This economy did not survive the blow and it could not regain its foreign or domestic economic forces. Trade was the main foundation of the economy of this empire. Textile was the vital part of export especially silk.
Due to survival of the empire in the east the empire had to be involved in the affairs of the church. This form of administering and financing religious affairs was borrowed from the pagan way of doing things. Byzantines saw the emperor as the messenger who was in charge of propagating Christianity among the pagans. This role of the emperor regarding the affairs of the church did not develop into a permanent and legally definite scheme. Christianity was not fully united and the Christians were dispersed all over the kingdom.
Art and literature is a form of cultural diversity. Art was closely related to religious expressions and the cautious paraphrase of the church theology. Byzantine forms were distributed by trade and their win over Italy and Sicily. Due to Orthodox Church expansion, these forms spread to Russia. Byzantine architecture has been found to have dominated religious structures in Egypt, Russia, and Romania. Cultural elements are classified under the Greek, the Christian, the Roman, and the Oriental. Byzantine literature is widely classified historians and analysts, encyclopedists, essayists, and writers of secular poetry. It has been known that 2000to 3000 volumes of this literature exist till today but 130 is for secular poetry, history, science and pseudo-science.
The Byzantine army was the basic military body of Byzantine armed forces which acted alongside the navy. This army was amongst the effective armies of Eurasia during the greatest period in the middle ages. This army during early years, it had been defeated but also won some wars. During the 12th century, this army had flourished and joined the group of the effective and powerful forces. Theme system introduced collapsed in the 11th century and hence they advanced in the use of mercenaries because the empire’s recruiting ground had been reduced as a result of loss of Asia Minor. The abuse of the pronoia grants resulted to a continuous feudalization of the Empire. The successes of Komnenian were not defeated by the Angeloi reign, resulting to the termination of the Empire at 4th crusade. The empire of the Byzantine seems to have succeeded though it was defeated since it remained in power for a long time.
