It is obvious that I generally hold the Eastern Romans in high regard. They managed to save a crumbling empire through sheer willpower and tenacity. While the Western Roman Empire was falling apart due to the fact that they had too many Germans in their armies and incompetent emperors, the Eastern Roman Empire was succeeding as well as an agrarian imperial state could in the 4th and 5th Centuries. The longevity of the Eastern Roman state is one of those great stories that history all too often tends to ignore. However, in recent years, it appears that historians are doing justice to the topic of the Byzantine Empire. In spite of this, it is very hard to see Byzantine history being more mainstream in the next couple of years unless there is more effort made to connect the Byzantines with the Roman Empire.
I wrote an article in 2021 about the reasons for why the Byzantine Empire is not as popular in the consciousness of the American and Western peoples. Outside of Greece and some Eastern Orthodox countries, the Byzantine Empire remains a very obscure and elusive topic that people are not paying attention to. This is one of the greatest issues that I have to deal with when doing historical research. The lack of interest in Byzantine History means that much of the history is hidden away in academic journals that require subscriptions. There are various blogs that are scattered across cyberspace, but they are still niche sites that are unable to truly get the attention of the audience that is bigger than academics and armchair academics. Due to the lack of interest in Byzantine history, I was actually motivated to start this site.
History by its very nature is very niche topic in today’s age. While in the 19th Century and before, someone who was educated in one of the best schools of Europe or Asia would have known something about their country’s history, these days people are shockingly ignorant about their ancestors in a way that really surprises me. While China has maintained their devotion to historical education after the reforms that occurred in the 20th century, Western education is very much behind the Chinese system.
While the Romans were very much aware of their own history, as evidenced by their annual holdings of celebrations marking the founding of Rome by Romulus, the Chinese took it to another level. They had almost an entire millennium devoted to teaching about Chinese history long before any modern education system. It is ingrained into the Chinese to know something about their history, all from the mythical Xia Dynasty to the Republic of China era.
While the Western education system may have had some advantages over the Chinese one in terms of getting people to focus more on the implementation of scientific principles than the Chinese education model. However, the Chinese have caught up with the West and are probably more knowledgeable of classical history than that of the West today. The Western education model seems to be more interested in deconstructing the West instead of elevating our culture. The Chinese are aware that they live on the shoulders of giants, and they seek to glorify their culture, not to deconstruct it. Because of this desire to deconstruct, Byzantine culture and history is ignored by people in the West. We need to change this.
In spite of the longevity of the Eastern Roman state and its many contributions to the canon of human history, it seems that it in the shadows of the Pagan Roman Empire. It is a tragedy that this is the case. Considering that the Byzantines or the Eastern Romans are closer to us in morality than that of the Pagan Romans, yet the narrative is that the Christian Roman Empire was somehow a corrupt government that stymied the growth of science and commerce. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I have discussed many times on this blog, the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire was one of the most productive and successful empires on the planet. However, due to the Gibbons of the world trying to create an alternative narrative to the historical nature of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire has been seen as an empire of decadence and stagnation.
Gibbons and other historians have been incorrect about the nature of the Byzantine Empire for centuries. Most of this discrimination aganist the Byzantines has to do with long standing biases against Eastern cultures. The Greek nature of the Byzantine Empire has always been used as a way to discount the achievements of the empire. Ironically, the Romans, once they got in contact with the Greeks, began incorporating Greek culture into their Republic and later Empire. The Romans did not consider the Easterners to be inferior to them. Yet, over a millennium later, the Byzantine East was considered to be a decadent realm that was no competitor to the greatness of the Pagan Roman state.
It is clear that this atitude is not correct in the way that they analyze Roman history.
It is clear to me that the Byzantine Empire was one of the most important empires in the history of the world. In comparison to some other empires out there, the Byzantines were among the top tier who brought much needed moral and governmental reforms to the Roman Empire that was needed in a time of crisis. People ignore this because they want to believe that the Pagan Romans somehow understood something that the later Christians didn’t understand. However, this is a case of people essentially seeing Roman Paganism as something exotic and paradoxically having more substance than Christianity. This is generally the case because people are used to the structure of Christianity. They have known about the story of the religion for some two millennia at this point while Roman Paganism still has this aura of being this unknown thing that still requires respect amongst people. Because of its unknown nature, the Christians of this world are enamored of something that is so alien to them.
While Christian tv shows and movies are still popular among Christians, they often lack the weight of movies that focus on Pagan European cultures. Often, Christianity is generally seen as a nice religion that is mostly for social occasions and not for serious discussion about man’s place on this Earth.
The obsession with Rome’s pagan past instead of taking the whole piece of Roman history means that alot of history is being ignored by people instead of being elevated to the position of reverence.
One of the greatest examples of this is how the Ottoman history is obscured by this very ignorance. The Ottomans, especially the Muslim upper class, were aware of the civilization that came before them. The Byzantine history was uniquely intertwined with the Muslim and Christian conflict and even Edward Gibbons knew about the importance of Eastern Rome. However, by the time we get to the mid 20th Century, the understanding of Eastern Rome seemed to fallen to obscurity, just like Ottoman history became shrouded in the stereotypes of the Orient and Eastern cultures.
Because of this attraction to the Roman past as being more interesting to them, the Byzantine historical legacy ends up getting forgotten by people who are more interested in repressing its memory. It seems to me that the Christian nature of the Byzantines has alot to do with how people are turned off by the nature of the government and its culture.
Many people in this day and age are not interested in Byzantine history but that is slowly changing. Authors like Anthony Kaldellis are doing wonders for changing the perception about the culture of this great and religious empire that often gets ignored for a multitude of reasons, which goes to show how uneducated some people tend to be about history and the glory of their ancestors.
Anthony Kaldellis had clearly shown the importance of the Byzantine Empire to the history of the planet. Why is it so difficult for people to be willing to take this empire seriously?
In the article that I wrote in 2021, one of the first elements to this conundrum about the Byzantine Empire and why its not popular in the imaginations of the Western audiences was because of religion. Being an Orthodox state, the Byzantine Empire was dismissed as a part of a tradition of Christianity that wasn’t true and that its accomplishments were not emphasized due to it being a true Christian state. This is one of the greatest misunderstandings about the Byzantine Empire that I have generally seen. It’s Christianity is as valid as any other of the denominations and I believe that this simply religious bigotry that is getting in the way of the true historical research that would bring to light all the greatness that the Byzantine Empire represented to the glory of the Orthodox sphere.
However, in spite of all reasons that I give, there is one particular issue that is preventing people from trying to engage with Byzantine history. That issue is that the Byzantine Empire is high-brow history. It is so niche that people are not going to pay attention to it. Many people are more interested in watching reality tv shows than in actually learning anything about their ancestors.
This is one of the reasons that I have patronized the works of Greek authors and illustrators who are interested in creative outlets that showcase their glorious past. The book series, Theophano and Basil Basilieus are important aspects of this movement to get people more interested in Byzantine history.
However, this isn’t just enough. The authors and artists of Theophano and Basil Basilieus made the tour in their home country of Greece, talking about the comic books to schoolchildren of various ages. It is important that children in Greece and Orthodox countries remember their history, but it also has to make its way in the West. The Great Schism of 1054 was an unfortunate example of Christians fighting against each other and being divided amongst each themselves. However, the knowledge of the Orthodox world should not be ignored by the West.
The Byzantine Age in the Roman Empire was one of the most important contributors to the Renaissance in the West. The Byzantines, while not necessarily the most innovative people of the times, were particularly skilled at encyclopedias and cataloging knowledge. The keeping of this knowledge was important to jumpstarting the Renaissance in Europe.
The bias against the Byzantines is completely unwarranted, when one considers what they managed to achieve while being under siege for generations and then finally going after the Arabs and the Bulgarians.
The Byzantines have much to teach us and I believe that historians are doing the best they can to get the public’s attention but there is still much work that needs to be done. We, as Byzantinists are dealing with a public that is not only apathetic towards history but is viewing institutions as corrupt and not worth supporting. Byzantine History is really important to the history of the globe and it needs to be respected. The Christian faith was important in changing the ethics of the Roman Empire and it is unfortunate that people are seemingly in this age wanting to ignore Rome’s incredible Christian history in favor of its Paganism. Christianity is under threat in many ways and many Christians are unable to understand their history or why they are Christian.
It is time for Byzantine culture and history to be brought out into the open for many to see and experience.
Byzantine-Empire.com 