Hagia Sophia (rendition without the minarets). Edit made by Robert Raderschatt.

Available from Thriftbooks, Abebooks, and Alibris

Book Length: 736 Pages

The Byzantine Empire, or more appropriately the Eastern Roman Empire, is a lost civilization which has seen a revival of interest in recent decades, both in secular and liturgical spheres. This exposure be may credited in large part to the appearances Byzantium has made in video games set during the Middle Ages, which have served as a gateway for the generations of the Digital Age to come into contact with a civilization far superior to the ones they have been raised under. In Catholic circles, the Byzantine Rite, or Divine Liturgy, has generated more attention and discussion among the faithful as this magnificent rite has been—for the most part—left practically untouched in the Eastern Catholic Churches while the degenerate impostor of the Roman Rite, termed the “New Mass” or “Ordinary Form”, has left many within the Post-Conciliar Church yearning for spiritual authenticity. In both spheres, this revival of interest poses an important question, one that—if answered correctly—will unlock the deeper secret behind the trend: What was Byzantium?

To this question, Dr. George Ostrogorsky—one of the greatest Byzantine scholars—has left for us a brilliant definition:

Roman political concepts, Greek culture and the Christian faith were the main elements which determined Byzantine development. Without all three the Byzantine way of life would have been inconceivable. It was the integration of Hellenistic culture and the Christian religion within the Roman imperial framework that gave rise to the historical phenomenon which we know as the Byzantine Empire.

(27)

Thus, it is no surprise that this wonderful blend between the two great cultures of Antiquity and what was then the new world of Christendom attracts such fascination from both the worldly and the spiritual minded. In an age that despises the glorious achievements of the Classical and Medieval worlds, whether this be in the realms of theology, art, philosophy, or architecture, the desire to reconnect with a culture that, in its ultimate ideal, embodied the best of both worlds is only a healthy reaction to the sinful banality of modern “progress”. Therefore, to rediscover Eastern Rome is to rediscover a key component of the Old World Order. Despite the Empire’s fall in 1453, the spirit of this Rome survived not only in the Greek nation, but also in the nations which had been under its domain or influence, in whole or in part—Italy, Russia, Serbia, and Bulgaria are the most prominent examples. But those nations were not—and are not—alone in drawing upon Byzantine heritage, as the so-called Renaissance, for good and for ill, was made possible by the transfer of Byzantium’s extensive preservation of the Classics to the nations of Western Europe in the wake of the heroic last stand at Constantinople. Indeed, both Western and Eastern Christendom today are in great need of a true Renaissance; thus, we have much to learn from Byzantium. One needs, however, a reliable guide to carry out this mission of rediscovery. The prattling misdirections of post-modern academics will not do. This, then, is where Ostrogorsky’s work comes to us as a historical study of the first order.

Ostrogorsky succeeds in uniting the complex realms of Byzantine life, from the Church and the State to the nobility and the peasantry, in a coherent narrative that manages to be both encyclopedic and lively for the interested student. This was no small task, given the extensive bibliography of this historic tome; hence his achievement is all the more admirable. It is a commonly expressed fault of historians and history teachers that in focusing on the abstract and more surface level details, such as the dates of battles and the principles of philosophers, that they bore their students into desiring ignorance over knowledge. Fret not—the author of this work does not commit this fault, and nor does he engage in the kind of long-winded theorizing about history which also (quite naturally) bores most readers. Despite the heavily academic tone and language, there are numerous anecdotes related within the text which aid the reader in understanding the culture and society of the Eastern Romans. These not only serve to bring the reader closer to the lived experience of the Byzantines, but also reinforce the more abstract lessons which the author imparts concerning their values and beliefs.

For instance, this astonishing story of how Emperor Basil II the “Bulgar-Slayer” celebrated his conquest of Bulgaria exemplifies the cooperation between Church and State in Eastern Rome:

After Basil traversed the subjugated country, everywhere establishing his rule, he paid a visit to the venerable city of Athens. The feelings of exaltation released by the revival of the Empire found striking expression in the victorious Emperor’s solemn thanksgiving in the Parthenon, at that time a church dedicated to the Mother of God.

(310)

What a sight this must have been! Sadly, it is not common knowledge that the Parthenon was a church for a thousand years—ceasing to become one only when the Ottomans subjugated Athens in 1458 and desecrated the structure, turning it into a mosque.¹

Thus, the double revelation these sentences presented me with upon my first reading of them deeply impressed me, as I knew nothing of this beforehand. To think, that the very Parthenon itself, symbol of Classical Athens, was once brought out of the darkness of paganism to the light of Christian worship! How many Masses were said there, how many communions were made there, how many souls brought back into God’s friendship by confession, all in that same spot where now mere tourists crowd around the marble! We shall find out for sure on the Day of Judgment, but for now we can only imagine with awe. And furthermore, how striking is it to imagine that this emperor, easily one of the greatest among the plurality of those who sat on Constantinople’s throne, humbled himself to offer thanksgiving to Our Lord in that very church!

The era of the Macedonian dynasty in which Basil II played an instrumental part—termed by the author the “Golden Age of the Byzantine Empire”—is replete with fascinating details and events such as the previously mentioned. However, I rank it my second favorite. In my opinion, I find the Roman era—or the “Early Byzantine State” as it is called in the text—to be the most attractive. A magnificent coexistence and blending of the Roman and Greek elements of the Empire dominated it at this time. This dynamic quite understandably—yet I would maintain sadly—changed, as the ultimate shift of the Empire to predominantly Greek lands meant that eventually the Roman cultural elements were doomed to assimilate into Greek culture, as happened under the reign of Heraclius. Describing this process Ostrogorsky writes:

The early Byzantine state had clung with astonishing tenacity to Latin as the official language and only yielded slowly and reluctantly to the steady predominance of Greek, without making any open and decisive change. The existence of one language of administration and another as the vernacular was characteristic of the early Byzantine period, and in practically all government circles, as well as in the army, the official tongue was Latin which was not understood by the overwhelming majority of the people in the eastern provinces. Heraclius put an end to this state of affairs and Greek, the medium of the people and the Church, became the official language of the Byzantine Empire. Freed from any artificially imposed restraint, Hellenization developed even more rapidly, and by the next generation a knowledge of Latin was rare, even in educated circles.

(106)

This was seemingly bound to happen. A similar case, perhaps, can be seen in what occurred after the conquest of England by William I: the foreign culture of the French ruling class was eventually assimilated into the dominant culture of the English people. Of course, there is a substantial difference between these two cases. The Normans came to England as conquerors in 1066, while in the case of Byzantium, Roman culture had been a present and persistent force for many centuries, as the Romans had conquered Greece nearly two hundred years before the birth of Christ. But this being stated, I still dream idyllically of that truly Greco-Roman empire. Thus it is no surprise that the reign of Justinian moves me profoundly, with his becomingly sound union not only between Greek and Roman culture, but also between piety and imperial idealism.² The author explains this quite well:

Justinian was the last Roman Emperor to occupy the Byzantine throne. He was at the same time a Christian ruler filled with the consciousness of the Divine source of his imperial authority. His strivings towards the achievement of a universal Empire were based on Christian, as well as on Roman, conceptions. For him the imperium romanum was to be identified with the Christian oikoumene, and the triumph of Christianity was as sacred a mission as the restoration of Roman supremacy.

(77)

Of course, I know that not everyone will share my views. But it suffices to inscribe here, that a true lover of history, when reading this book, will encounter at least one era in the lifespan of this thousand year empire that will capture and inspire their imagination.

Alongside the chronicling of the development of the theme system and the Senate, the flourishing of the arts, and the many wars fought by the Empire, Ostrogorsky also dedicates time to detail the failings of the Byzantine state. One of the most prominent failures was the attempt of the aforementioned Emperor Heraclius, after having successfully led campaigns to recover Imperial holdings in the Middle East and North Africa, to create peace by compromising with error. For the heresy of Monophysitism³ was running rampant in these same provinces, and as the author notes, “…there was no doubt that the longstanding doctrinal differences between Constantinople and the monophysite East had contributed considerably to Persian successes” (108). To therefore avoid further conflict in these regions, and to at the same time appease those portions of Byzantium where the Catholic Faith was upheld, the Patriarch Sergius created a new heresy—monotheletism⁴—which the Emperor himself endorsed. But, such perfidy was not only a mortal sin to the souls of these men, but a mortal sin to their state. Ostrogorsky, relating the political failure of this compromise, writes:

As a means of reconciliation montheletism had failed, just as badly as the combined efforts of Church and State to produce a compromise in earlier centuries. As in the case of previous attempts at reconciliation, it had only produced fresh hostility and increased confusion. The situation was further complicated by the Arab conquest of Syria and Palestine, both of which had been occupied by the enemy by 638, and Egypt was soon to suffer the same inevitable fate. Thus montheletism had failed in its political aim, and the religious ferment in the eastern provinces which had assisted the Persians was now to do the same in the cause of the Arabs.

(109)

One might lament that he and the Patriarch should have insisted on the Catholic doctrine, against the pressure to compromise—this is well and good—but we were born in this time, and not in that age. In light of the questions of compromising with the heresy of Modernism that rear themselves in our circles, the example of Heraclius proves to us that such compromising will not only jeopardize our souls, but also our temporal affairs. Therefore, we are called to avoid the mistakes that were made then, and uphold God’s truth, come what may.

The monophysite controversy, of course, was not the only religious problem to strike the Empire—others like Iconoclasm, Bogomilism, and most notoriously, the Great Schism emerged. All these and more are given sufficient treatment by the author, who makes many sound statements that modern “politically correct” historians would shy away from. One such example lies in the following description:

The downfall of the campaign against icons signified the victory of the Greek religious and cultural outlook over the Asian characteristics embodied in iconoclasm.

(217)

Such a statement is not riddled with the “prejudice” of “Orientalism” but rather finds solid grounding on historical fact. As Ostrogorsky explains earlier in the text:

The persecution of the Jews under Leo III, one of the relatively rare persecutions in Byzantine history, should be regarded rather as an increase in Jewish influence at the time. From the seventh century a good deal of Byzantine theological polemic was concerned with Jewish attacks upon Christianity. More significant still is the indication of Leo’s friendly attitude towards the Muslims revealed by the nickname of ‘Saracen-minded’ which his contemporaries gave him. The Arabs, who for some years had ranged through Asia Minor, brought not only the sword, but also their own civilization and their peculiarly Muslim abhorrence of any pictorial representation of the human countenance. Thus the iconoclast controversy in the eastern districts of the Empire arose from the interaction of a Christian faith striving for pure spirituality, with the doctrines of iconoclast sectarians, the tenets of old Christological heresies and the influence of non-Christian religions, such as Judaism and especially Islam.

(161)

Relieving as this intellectual honesty is, it must be admitted that Ostrogorsky carries with him a bias that leans in favor of the Eastern schismatic position. On some level, this is not that unsurprising, for he was Russian and therefore likely raised Russian Orthodox. Nonetheless, this bias is most apparent when he covers the subject of the Crusades, and though he does not come across as a vehement anti-Catholic, there are some notable omissions. The case of the alleged “Fourth Crusade” of 1204 stands out, as he does not mention that most of the crusaders left the crusade upon finding out that it was to be derailed into a Venetian-led assault against the rebellious city of Zara. Moreover, he excludes the fact that Pope Innocent III excommunicated the so-called “crusaders” who participated in the atrocities that took place at Constantinople.⁵ This being stated, the author does mention the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople which occurred years prior and the murder of Alexius IV—who had allied himself with those on this campaign in a bid to win back his throne—by revolutionaries within the city, thus prompting revenge. Additionally, the way in which he describes the incursions of Robert Guiscard and his Norman Sicilians into Byzantine territory that took place a little over a decade prior to the First Crusade makes the apprehension of the Greeks towards the crusaders understandable. He is, however, significantly more balanced in his evaluation of the Great Schism.

Describing that tragic breaking point, Ostrogorsky makes, among other important points, the assertion that Caesaropapism is not to be blamed for the Schism. He relates:

It was not Byzantine caesaropapism which caused the breach, as has so often been maintained; on the contrary, in Byzantium there was indeed no stronger supporter of ecclesiastical union than the imperial rulers. The Byzantine Emperors—for instance, Basil I and his successors—backed the conception of the universality of the Roman Church against their own Church, because they for their part wished to preserve the universality of the Byzantine state and to maintain their claim to Italy.

(335)

Though Eastern Roman caesaropapism certainly had its faults—such as the tendency for Emperors to intervene to an unnecessary extent in Church affairs—the Schism, as the author states here, was not one of them. Rather, it was the fault of Patriarch Cerularius, who as the author admits, “…had the Church and the people behind him…” and thus in 1054 “….managed to persuade the vacillating Emperor [Constantine IX] to change his policy and fall into line” (337). In attempting to prove to the people the “errors” of the Latins, Cerlarius revived the very same errors concocted by the Patriarch Photius, which the East had in union with the West condemned a little less than two hundred years before. Relating the process, Ostrogorksy writes:

It was again the old problems which had troubled men’s minds since the days of Photius, the western teaching of the double procession of the Holy Ghost, the Roman fasting on the Sabbath and prohibition of married clergy, and the use of leavened bread for the Communion Service in the Byzantine Church and unleavened bread in the Roman Church. It was significant that this last point was most bitterly debated. For tactical reasons Cerularius brought liturgical differences into the foreground, as these were easier for the general public to understand than the far more complicated, and incomparably more important, differences of dogmatic interpretation.

(336-337)

These claims were, as they were in the time of Photius, frankly absurd. Instead of accepting the Roman tradition as valid and licit as the Greek tradition, pride caused both Photius and Cerularius to err gravely. Notable among the list given here is that of the “Roman fasting on the Sabbath”—this does not refer to fasting on Sunday, for Catholics have never done this. Rather, this refers to fasting on Saturday, a traditional custom in the West but not the East, in which Saturday is commemorated as a sabbath day much like Sunday.⁶ It is also worth considering is that, at the time “[t]he significance of this event was not realized until later, and at the time little notice was taken of it…” as many misunderstandings had come between Rome and Constantinople beforehand, thus in order to see the event as those who would have seen it back then, we must have this in mind (Ibid). Though the author claims that the “quarrel of 1054” was to be “…a schism which was never again to be healed”, he does document the various attempts—the Council of Florence being the most well-known among them—to reunite East and West (Ibid). These, in line with Ostrogorsky’s observations, it was interested emperors who reached out to Rome, not patriarchs of Constantinople.⁷

Though this information is all quite illuminating, and indeed should help us in our apologetics, Ostrogorsky did not see what a Catholic can clearly see in the fall of Constantinople. For how can one not perceive a chastisement of God in His allowing the Turks to conquer that great city when reading the very words of this historian, who in documenting the reaction of the Greeks towards Cardinal Isidore’s visit wrote:

Cardinal Isidore, who had once been Metropolitan of Russia, came to Constantinople as papal legate, and on 12 December 1452, five months before the city fell, he proclaimed the union in Hagia Sophia and celebrated Roman mass. The Byzantine populace was furiously indignant, for the more desperate their need the more tenaciously they clung to their faith and resented more passionately this violation of their religious feelings. Their mood of despair and their irreconcilable hatred of the Latins was expressed at the time in the trenchant words of one of the Emperor’s highest officials—’I would rather see the Muslim turban in the midst of the city than the Latin mitre.’

(568)

Constantinople could have been another Nineveh! As in that case, the ruler was willing to do penance and accept the Will of God—Constantine XI, who even in the eyes of a bigoted anti-Catholic historian was:

…a Romanist like his elder brother, and was therefore treated with great coolness and suspicion by his handful of subjects. He was the best man that the house of Paleologus had ever reared, brave, pious, generous, and forgiving. Like King Hosea of Israel, “he did not do evil as the kings that were before him”, yet was destined to bear the penalty for all the sins and follies of his long line of predecessors.

(Oman. The Story of the Nations: The Byzantine Empire, 343)

But as much as the dispositions of this noble emperor were sincere, the dispositions of the clergy and populace were unfortunately lacking. Indeed, the Greeks got their wish—the turbaned Turks tyrannized them for four hundred years, and Constantinople still remains in chains! May the Virgin Mother open the eyes of these poor people.

I recommend this work to scholarly types, albeit advising discernment to them. Ostrogorsky’s tome—magisterial as it is in Byzantine studies—not only presents a fascinating and very well researched look into the history of the Eastern Roman Empire, but also allows us to see the Empire as the Eastern Orthodox see it. Thus, study of this text by Catholic minds will broaden our historical perspective (as, to my knowledge, Catholics have not written histories of the Empire) and will prove a useful tool in evangelizing the schismatics.

1. To learn more about this awe-inspiring historical fact, I suggest the following article, entitled “The Christian Parthenon of Athens”:
   
   https://shadowsofconstantinople.com/christian-parthenon/.

2. There is a need for a similar sort of idealism in our time to unite Christendom, as it stands more in pieces now than it ever was. But, further treatment of this subject is better suited to a separate article.

3. This doctrine taught that Jesus Christ had only one nature, which is contrary to the truth that He has both a divine and human nature. For a more extensive description and history, I recommend the entry on the topic from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which can be readily accessed by visiting New Advent:

   “Monophysites and Monophysitism.” Catholic Encyclopedia.
   https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10489b.htm.

4. This doctrine held that “…the divine and human natures of Christ had one active force” (107).

5. The video put out by Stephen Roberts entitled “Did the Fourth Crusade Destroy the Byzantine Empire? – DOCUMENTARY” is recommended as reference:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCTzkmbXsio.

6. This does raise an interesting question: is Our Lady of Fatima’s promotion of the First Saturdays connected, in the plan of Heaven, as a penance in part for this element of the continued schism of the Orthodox?

7. One particularly intriguing case was that of a letter sent by Emperor John II, which is described by the author as follows:

   “In 1141 John II had written to Pope Innocent II saying that there were two swords, the secular which he himself would wield, and the spiritual which he would leave to the Pope, and together they would restore the unity of the Christian Church and establish the world supremacy of the one Roman Empire.” (385)