Why Are the Byzantines Significant?

At the time I started writing this article, the most upvoted answer to the question “Why was the Byzantine Empire important in world history?” on Quora was an answer by Bryden Walsh that basically says that the Byzantines aren’t important in world history and that the only reason why anyone imagines that the Byzantines have any historical relevance is because people have overromanticized them due to their association with the old Roman Empire.

Walsh bitterly insists at one point in his answer, “But unlike the neighbouring Islamic civilisations, or the Catholic societies of the west, Byzantium did nothing to move human civilisation forward.” Near the end of the article, he says that the modern world doesn’t owe “anything to Byzantium” at all and that the modern world is “the opposite of everything the Byzantines believed in.”

This is, unfortunately, a reflection of the view towards the Byzantine Empire that has dominated the west for centuries. Despite its perennial appeal, this view is also totally inaccurate; the Byzantine Empire has affected the modern world in ways that few people even realize and there is much to be gained from studying it.

Why people keep insisting the Byzantines are of no significance

There are lots of historical empires that modern people are generally ignorant of, but the Byzantine Empire is the only one I am aware of that people today still aggressively insist is totally irrelevant to the modern world. To quote Anthony Kaldellis in the opening paragraph of his book Byzantium Unbound:

“For a civilization that did relatively little harm, prized humility and compassion, preserved its existence and integrity against overwhelming odds, and contributed in captivating ways to the diversity of human culture, Byzantium is oddly one of the most maligned and misunderstood civilizations of the past.”

The reasons why people today hate the Byzantine Empire so much are complicated, but one major reason why people have historically insisted that the Byzantine Empire was backwards and stagnant is because the very existence of the Byzantine Empire poses a threat both to the supremacy of western Europe and to the presumed supremacy of the Islamic world.

For the first few centuries of Byzantine history, western Europeans generally acknowledged the Byzantine Empire as the true Roman Empire. Then, in the late eighth century AD, Karl the Great (lived 748 – 814 AD)—the man we know in English as “Charlemagne”—established his empire in western Europe. He and his supporters wanted to claim that their empire was the real Roman Empire.

At the time, the empress Eirene Sarantapechaina (lived c. 752 – 803 AD) was the ruler of the Byzantine Empire. Pope Leo III, a supporter of Charlemagne, insisted that Eirene was not a legitimate ruler because she was a woman and, according to him, no woman could ever rightfully serve as the ruler of the true Roman Empire.

Leo III therefore decided that the Roman throne was vacant and that it was his responsibility as Pope to appoint a new emperor. Thus, on 25 December 800 AD, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as “emperor of the Romans” in the Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons of the Carolingian Empire at its greatest territorial extent in 814 AD

Ever since then, western Europeans have been desperately trying to claim themselves as sole heirs to the Greco-Roman legacy. The existence of the Byzantine Empire—a culturally Greek, religiously Christian continuation of the Roman Empire—undermines that claim.

It is partly as a result of this conflict that people continue to insist that, although the Byzantine Empire might have existed, the people there were all just a bunch of degenerates and nothing even remotely important or worth paying attention to ever happened in their empire. The French philosopher Voltaire (lived 1694 – 1778) famously wrote:

“There exists another history, more absurd than the history of Rome since the time of Tacitus: it is the history of Byzantium. This worthless collection contains nothing but declamations and miracles. It is a disgrace to the human mind.”

This isn’t even an isolated comment; bashing the Byzantine Empire was a real hobby for philosophers in western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who imagined the Byzantine Empire as a perfectly backwards culture representing everything they themselves despised. Very few of these philosophers actually knew much about Byzantium, but they all knew that they hated it.

ABOVE: Portrait from c. 1724 of Voltaire, a French Enlightenment philosopher and Byzantine-hater extraordinaire

The Byzantine Empire and Orientalism

In addition to being marginalized from history, the Byzantine Empire has also been ruthlessly stereotyped according to western European ideas about “the East.” For the past two hundred years at least, western Europeans have generally perceived “eastern” cultures as static, unchanging, and unworthy of serious attention. The classicist Edith Hamilton (lived 1867 – 1963) writes in the first chapter of her book The Greek Way, which was originally published in 1930:

“The ancient world, in so far as we can reconstruct it, bears everywhere the same stamp. In Egypt, in Crete, in Mesopotamia, wherever we can read bits of the story, we find the same conditions: a despot enthroned, whose whims and passions are the determining factor in the state; a wretched, subjugated populace; a great priestly organization to which is handed over the domain of the intellect. This is what we know as the Oriental state to-day. It has persisted down from the ancient world through thousands of years, never changing in any essential. Only in the last hundred years—less than that—it has shown a semblance of change, made a gesture of outward conformity with the demands of the modern world. But the spirit that informs it is the spirit of the East that never changes. It has remained the same through all the ages down from the antique world, forever aloof from all that is modern.”

Notice that, in this passage, Hamilton is saying the exact same things about the ancient Egyptians, Minoans, and Mesopotamians that people like Bryden Walsh are still saying about the Byzantines. Scholars have a name for these derogatory stereotypes and attitudes towards cultures that are perceived as “eastern”: Orientalism. One of the core components of Orientalism is the idea that all “eastern” cultures are fundamentally the same and that they are all stagnant and unchanging

As I discuss in this article from February 2020, all civilizations—whether they are one that we consider “western” or ones that we consider “eastern”—are, in fact, diverse, vibrant, and ever-changing.

ABOVE: Theodora, painted by the Italian Academic painter Giuseppe de Sanctis (lived 1858 – 1924), reflecting the typical Orientalist image of the Byzantines as decadent easterners

Re-inserting Byzantium into history

One of the most compelling reasons why it is important to learn about the Byzantine Empire is because the histories of western Europe and the Islamic world are both inextricably intertwined with the history of the Byzantine Empire. Unfortunately, because the Byzantine Empire has been intentionally marginalized from our history books, there are a lot of historical events that the Byzantine Empire was significantly involved in that we learn about without learning about how the Byzantines were involved.

I know that Bryden Walsh is very interested in Islamic history. As it happens, knowing about Byzantine history really helps us to understand the rise of Islam.

In school, most of us are taught that the unifying message of Islam and the strategic brilliance of the early Islamic military leaders allowed the caliphate to conquer the entire Middle East and North Africa. I’m sure those are probably both part of what made the Muslim conquests in the seventh century possible, but it probably also had something to do with the fact that the two most powerful empires in the Middle East—the Byzantine Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire—had just fought a devastating decades-long war that left both empires severely weakened.

In 590 AD, the Sassanian shah Khosrow II was deposed, but he appealed to the Roman emperor Maurikios for help. Maurikios helped Khosrow II to regain his throne in 591 AD and, for a brief time, the Romans and the Sassanians were at peace. Then, in 602 AD, a disgruntled general named Phokas staged a coup d’état and had Maurikios and all his sons executed.

Khosrow II launched an invasion of the Roman Empire, declaring that he would avenge Maurikios. Due in part to Phokas’s incompetence, the Sassanians conquered almost the entire Levant, all of Egypt, parts of Asia Minor, and even some of the Aegean Islands. The, in 608 AD, Herakleios, the son of the exarch of Africa, led a rebellion against Phokas and, in 610 AD, Herakleios toppled Phokas from power and seized the throne for himself.

ABOVE: Gold coin of the Sassanian king Khosrow II, bearing his portrait

Herakleios fought a hard campaign against the Sassanians. In the beginning, he suffered several major defeats. In 614 AD, the Sassanians captured the city of Jerusalem and looted major holy relics that were held in the city. Then Herakleios launched a full-scale invasion of the Sassanian Empire. The Sassanian navy besieged the city of Constantinople itself with significant aid from the Slavs and Avars in 626 AD, but the siege was unsuccessful. In 627 AD, Herakleios’s forces decisively defeated the Sassanians in the Battle of Nineveh and, in 628 AD, Khosrow II was overthrown by his own son Kavad II.

Kavad II negotiated a peace deal with Herakleios. The Sassanians agreed to return all lands they had taken from the Romans, to release all Roman prisoners of war, to pay massive war reparations to the Romans, and to return all the holy relics they had captured in their conquest of Jerusalem in 614 AD. That same year, a devastating plague swept across the Sassanian Empire, killing many, including Kavad II himself.

The Romans and the Sassanians had fought each other before, but this war was more devastating than any previous conflict between the two empires. The Sassanian Empire was left utterly crippled. It spent the next fourteen years in state of perpetual civil war, going through no less than thirteen kings in that relatively span of time. Meanwhile, even the Romans, who had unquestionably won the war, were greatly weakened. Decades of fighting had left their armies and their resources sorely depleted.

Then, just when it seemed like there would finally be peace, the Rashidun Caliphate began expanding out of Arabia. The Arab conquest of the Levant began in 634 AD and was completed by 638 AD. Between 639 AD and 646 AD, the Arabs conquered Egypt. The full conquest of the Sassanian Empire began in 642 AD and was largely completed by 651 AD.

Thus, the Sassanian Empire was totally conquered and the Roman Empire lost all of its lands south of the Taurus Mountain range. If not for the cataclysmic events of the early seventh century AD, the Arab conquests probably wouldn’t have been possible.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons of the Rashidun Caliphate at its greatest territorial extent in 654 AD

The Byzantines and the Renaissance

Knowing about Byzantine history also helps us to understand western European history. In school, we are taught about the Renaissance and how it marked a return to the study of the Greek classics in western Europe, but we are not usually taught about the important role that the Byzantines played in this.

After the collapse of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, knowledge of the Greek language became extremely rare in western Europe and copies of ancient Greek texts became even more rare. As I discuss in this article from January 2020, Greek remained the main language of the Byzantine Empire throughout its history and the Byzantines continued to study the Greek classics.

Over the course of the fifteenth century AD, many Greek-speaking scholars fled from the declining Byzantine Empire, bringing classical Greek texts and knowledge of the Greek language with them, and travelled to western Europe. Some of the most famous scholars who fled to western Europe include Basilios Bessarion (lived 1403 – 1472), Ioannes Argyropoulos (lived c. 1415 – 1487), and Demetrios Chalkokondyles (lived 1423 – 1511).

These scholars are partly responsible for the reintroduction of the Greek classics in the west. Demetrios Chalkokondyles published the first printed edition of the Iliad and the Odyssey in 1488 and the first printed edition of the speeches of the Greek orator Isokrates (lived 436 – 338 BC) in Greek in 1493. Other Greek scholars published editions and translations of various works of classical Greek literature as well.

These efforts paved the way for non-Greek scholars to start publishing printed editions of Greek texts, such as the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus (lived 1466 – 1536), who published the Textus Receptus, the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament, in 1516.

Greek scholars from the Byzantine Empire and the formerly Byzantine lands of the east weren’t just publishers of Greek texts; they also wrote important works of original scholarship. Basilios Bessarion, who became a Catholic cardinal, was one of the most influential scholars in Renaissance Italy and he wrote philosophical treatises in which he sought to reconcile the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.

ABOVE: Portrait of the Greek scholar Dimitrios Chalkokondylis, who published the first printed editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the speeches of Isokrates in Greek and helped re-introduce the study of the Greek language to western Europe in the late fifteenth century

The Byzantine political legacy and civil law

For some people, the Byzantines merely having role in history isn’t enough to warrant studying them; these people only care about how the Byzantines have influenced. In his answer that I referenced earlier, Bryden Walsh has a whole list of subjects that he claims the Byzantines never meaningfully contributed to. In actuality, the Byzantines have contributed to all the subjects he lists, but I think very few people are aware of their contributions, so it is worth covering this subject in depth.

Let’s start with government, the first item on Walsh’s list. Walsh says, “There are no modern countries that are influenced by the Byzantine political/government model.” This isn’t entirely true, though. For one thing, modern Russia has explicitly associated itself with the Byzantine Empire. The czars of Russia enthusiastically embraced the political model of the Byzantine Empire and promoted the idea that imperial Russia was “the third Rome.”

Now it is true that Czar Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, was forced to abdicate on 15 March 1917. He and his whole family were later murdered by the Bolsheviks at the Ipatiev House on the night of 16–17 July 1918. Under the rule of the Soviet Union, associations between Russia and the Byzantine Empire were largely suppressed.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the association between Russia and the Byzantine Empire was revived. In 1993, Russia restored the double-headed eagle—the symbol of the Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologos Dynasty—as the country’s official coat of arms. In the twenty-first-century, under the authoritarian rule of President Vladimir Putin, Russia has increasingly embraced the Byzantine Empire, seeking to emulate it.

The Russian Orthodox priest Tikhon (whose secular name is Georgiy Alexandrovich Shevkunov), who is an extremely influential figure in Russia and who is widely rumored to be Vladimir Putin’s personal confessor and spiritual advisor, even produced a propaganda film in 2008 titled Death of an Empire: the Byzantine Lesson, which unambiguously associates modern Russia with the Byzantine Empire.

ABOVE: Photograph of Russian ice hockey player Alexander Ovechkin wearing the Russian jersey at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Notice the double-headed eagle—the symbol of the Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologos Dynasty.

Meanwhile, on a less authoritarian note, the Byzantine legal system has had enormous influence on the western world at large. Between 529 and 534 AD, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (ruled 527 – 565 AD) issued his Corpus Iuris Civilis, a collection of imperial decrees, extracts from the writings of Roman jurists, and other fundamental legal texts. Copies of this work were distributed throughout the Roman Empire, which, at the time, included much of Italy.

In around the eleventh century, the Corpus Iuris Civilis began to be used as a standard legal text in northern Italy. Over time, it became widely used throughout western Europe. Eventually, the Corpus Iuris Civilis became the basis for civil law, which is the dominant legal system throughout all of continental Europe, most of South America, and all of Central America.

Most the United States is under the English common law system, but, to this day, the state of Louisiana is governed by a combination of English common law and Roman civil law.

ABOVE: Frontispiece from a 1626 printed edition of the Corpus Iuris Civilis in Latin

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the legal systems of the world. Countries that practice civil law are shown in light blue.

Byzantine language

In his answer, Walsh describes the linguistic legacy of the Byzantine Empire as “negligible,” saying that “Greek is a tiny language spoken by a mere 11 million people today.” This statistic is actually incorrect, however; the country of Greece has a population of around eleven million people, but Walsh seems to have forgotten that there are plenty of native Greek speakers outside of Greece.

Greek is actually the official language of two countries: Greece and Kypros. There are also people in Turkey, Albania, Italy, and other countries around the world who speak Greek as a native language. In fact, the Greek language has somewhere around 13.4 million native speakers worldwide. There are even more people who have learned Greek as a second language who aren’t included in this figure.

It’s true that there are not nearly as many native speakers of Greek as there are of English or Spanish, but the number of native Greek speakers worldwide is certainly not “negligible.” After all, there are languages most of us have heard of that have even fewer native speakers; for instance, there are only around five million native speakers of Hebrew worldwide. (That’s because, as I discuss in this article from November 2019, a century ago, Hebrew was a dead language.)

Byzantine architecture

Walsh says regarding the Byzantines:

“Apart from church architecture and a few monuments in Istanbul, and some castles, their architectural legacy is limited compared to that of the Greeks, Romans and the Islamic civilisations.”

First of all, I’m not sure what Walsh has against church architecture. The most famous monuments of ancient Greece and Rome are mostly temples (e.g. the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, the Pantheon in Rome, etc.), the most famous monuments of the Islamic civilizations are mostly mosques (e.g. the Jameh Mosque of Isfahan, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, etc.), and the most famous monuments of western Europe are mostly churches (e.g. the Notre Dame de Paris, Chartres Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Saint Peter’s Basilica, etc.).

Given this information, it makes very little sense to dismiss Byzantine architecture just because the most impressive surviving Byzantine monuments are churches.

The most famous Byzantine cathedral is, of course, the Hagia Sophia in İstanbul. The current structure was mostly built between 532 AD and 537 AD under the orders of the emperor Justinian I. The building was designed by two renowned Greek architects and mathematicians, Isidoros of Miletos and Anthemios of Tralleis.

Like most other cathedrals, however, the Hagia Sophia has been significantly renovated many times since it was originally built. During the time when it was used as a cathedral, the Hagia Sophia was damaged by fires and earthquakes. Consequently, it had to be reconstructed several times.

The Hagia Sophia was stripped of all religious images during the iconoclast periods of Byzantine history, but many mosaics and other decorations have been added since then. After the Ottoman conquest in 1453, the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque. Today, it is used as a museum.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Hagia Sophia in İstanbul

ABOVE: Another photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Hagia Sophia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Hagia Sophia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Hagia Sophia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior dome of the Hagia Sophia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the dome of the Hagia Sophia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of decorations in the Hagia Sophia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a column in the Hagia Sophia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the west side of the upper gallery of the Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia in may be the most famous Byzantine church, but it is far from the only impressive church the Byzantines built. There are dozens of beautiful Byzantine churches all across Greece and Turkey. For instance, in addition to the Hagia Sophia in İstanbul, there is also a smaller Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, Greece.

The Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki was built in the eighth century AD and was based on the larger, more famous church in Constantinople. After Thessaloniki was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1430, the Hagia Sophia there was converted into a mosque. It was converted back into a church after Thessaloniki was annexed by Greece in 1912 and it remains in use as a church today.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the great dome of the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the iconostasis of the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki

There are Byzantine churches all over the city of Athens. They aren’t as famous as the ancient Greek temples in the city that typically attract droves of tourists each year, but they are still worth seeing.

The Church of Panagia Kapnikarea in Athens was built in around the middle of the eleventh century AD. Like many other Byzantine churches, it was built over the ruins of an ancient Greek temple. It stands in the middle of Athens, surrounded by modern buildings.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea in Athens

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea in Athens

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea in Athens

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the dome of the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea in Athens

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea in Athens

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea in Athens

When the Byzantines ruled Italy in the sixth century AD, they also renovated many churches there that had been originally constructed by the Ostrogoths. The Byzantine mosaics in these churches remain some of the most famous mosaics in the world. (We’ll talk more about the mosaics, though, in a later section.)

The construction of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, began in 504 AD under the Ostrogoths, but the basilica was renovated and reconsecrated in 561 AD under the Byzantines.

The construction of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna began in 527 AD when Ravenna was ruled by the Ostrogoths, but the basilica was completed in 547 AD, after Ravenna was captured by the Byzantines under Justinian I.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of elaborate mosaic work from the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of mosaic work from the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna

The Byzantines also constructed churches of their own in Italy. The Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe was constructed under the rule of Justinian I and dedicated in 549 AD.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the apse of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe

Byzantine secular monuments—surviving examples and lost ones

Furthermore, in addition to building many beautiful churches like the ones above, the Byzantines also built many stunning secular monuments. Unfortunately, as I already discussed in this article from January 2020, most of the monuments that were built in Constantinople before the thirteenth century were destroyed during the sack of the city in 1204 AD by the Crusaders.

For instance, the Forum of Constantine was a large round forum in the center of Constantinople. It was decorated with statues that had been taken from the sanctuaries of temples all over the Greek world. In the center of the forum stood a massive porphyry triumphal column with a statue of the emperor Constantine I as the god Apollon on top of it.

ABOVE: Modern reconstruction by Antoine Helbert of what the Forum of Constantine would have originally looked like after it was first built

Unfortunately, during the sack of Constantinople in 1204, all the bronze statues that had been on display there were melted down by the Crusaders for their raw metal, including a famous bronze statue of Herakles by the great Greek sculptor Lysippos of Sikyon (lived c. 390 – c. 300 BC). The other statues were destroyed and the Forum of Constantine itself was burned to the ground.

After the siege, the ruins of the Forum of Constantine were built over with new buildings. Today, all that remains of the forum is the porphyry column that once stood in the center of it. The column is burnt from the fires that raged during the sack of the city in 1204 and from another fire that struck in 1779. Today, it is known as “the Burnt Column.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Burnt Column of Constantine, which is all that remains of the magnificent Forum of Constantine

Some monuments in Constantinople did survive the sack in 1204 and there were other monuments built after the sack. Unfortunately, after the Ottoman Turks conquered the city of Constantinople in 1453, they demolished many of the most impressive Byzantine monuments.

The Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople was one of the largest and most impressive churches built by the Byzantines. It was second only to the Hagia Sophia itself in its importance. It housed the tombs of nearly all the Byzantine emperors, including Constantine I himself.

The church was plundered by the western European Crusaders during the Sack of Constantinople in 1203. It was restored during the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos (lived 1282 – 1328), but, over the following centuries, it fell into disrepair. In 1461, the Ottomans demolished it so they could built the Fatih Mosque on the site. The Fatih Mosque, which still stands today, is almost certainly modeled on the Church of the Holy Apostles, since it bears a close resemblance to surviving illustrations of the earlier building.

ABOVE: Byzantine manuscript illustration of the Church of the Holy Apostles

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Fatih Mosque in İstanbul, which was built on the site of the Church of the Holy Apostles and probably modeled after it

The Great Palace of Constantinople was the main palace and administrative center that was used by Byzantine emperors from 331 AD to 1081 AD. It was an absolutely enormous building. It covered somewhere around thirteen times the land area of the Hagia Sophia.

After 1081 AD, however, the Byzantine emperors began ruling mainly from the Palace of Blachernai and the Great Palace fell into gradual disrepair. During the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the Great Palace was extensively looted by the Crusaders from western Europe.

The emperors of the Palaiologos Dynasty mostly ruled from the Palace of Blachernai and never really bothered to restore the Great Palace. After the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, they gradually demolished the Great Palace, converting some sections of it into mosques.

Sultan Ahmed I (ruled 1603 – 1617) demolished large portions of the Great Palace so he could build the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, which now stands on the site. Only a few fragments of the Great Palace have survived, but, from the surviving fragments and from descriptions of the palace, we can guess that the building was at least as impressive as the Hagia Sophia.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of fragments of the Great Palace of Constantinople sitting outside the İstanbul Archaeology Museums

ABOVE: Surviving floor mosaic from the Great Palace of Constantinople of a child and a donkey, dated to around the fifth century AD, on display in the Great Palace Mosaic Museum

The Turks aren’t the only ones who are guilty of destroying Byzantine monuments, however; the modern nation-state of Greece has embraced a national ideology that emphasizes the country’s classical Greek heritage and deemphasizes the country’s Byzantine heritage. As a result, a number of Byzantine monuments in Greece have been deliberately demolished.

After the Bavarian prince Otto became the first king of Greece in 1832, he declared Athens the capital of his kingdom and initiated a campaign to purge the city of post-classical monuments and “restore” the city to its ancient glory. Even many Byzantine churches were slated for destruction. In fact, the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea was one of these churches; it was only spared from demolition due to the intervention of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, Otto’s father, who opposed the church’s demolition.

The influence of Byzantine architecture

The Byzantines built a lot of really impressive monuments, but their architectural style has also been extremely influential, both on western European architecture and on Islamic architecture.

Many Italian cathedrals have been influenced by the Byzantine architectural style. Perhaps the most overtly Byzantine-influenced cathedral in Italy is St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, which was originally constructed in the late eleventh century in deliberate imitation of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.

The basilica is full of Byzantine-style columns, arches, pendentive domes, friezes, and mosaics. The cathedral is also decorated with authentic Byzantine artworks that were plundered from Constantinople during the sack of the city in 1204.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the north façade of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the great dome of St. Mark’s Basilica

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of pendentive domes and mosaic work on the interior of St. Mark’s Basilica

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the pendentive domes and mosaic work on the entrance to St. Mark’s Basilica

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a pendentive dome inside St. Mark’s Basilica

Byzantine architecture has actually been more influential on the Islamic world than it has in western Europe, however. Byzantine church architecture has fundamentally influenced the design of nearly every mosque on the planet. The standard features of mosque architecture—colossal central domes, pendentive domes, Corinthian columns, large hypostyle halls, and enormous arches—are all derived from Byzantine churches.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Notice the Corinthian-style columns and the colossal central dome—both of which were iconic features of Byzantine church architecture long before this mosque was constructed.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the hypostyle hall of the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Notice the double Corinthian-style columns, the huge arches, and the stone friezes.

Basically all the major mosques in Turkey are deliberately modeled on the Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles in particular. Indeed, the Fatih Mosque and the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in İstanbul both resemble the Hagia Sophia so closely that visitors often get them confused.

Some Turkish historians such as Mehmet Aga-Oglu have nationalistically tried to insist that the Fatih Mosque and Sultan Ahmed Mosque drew absolutely no inspiration from Byzantine churches and are actually solely inspired by Iranian Islamic architecture—but all you have to do is look at them to tell where their real inspiration comes from.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Fatih Mosque in İstanbul

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Fatih Mosque, showing distinctly Byzantine architectural features, such as the multiple pendentive domes

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in İstanbul

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in İstanbul

The scientific legacy of the Byzantine Empire

In his answer, Bryden Walsh claims:

“The Byzantines didn’t achieve anything in the sciences, nor did they achieve anything of note in philosophy. There’s nothing remotely approaching the tradition of Islamic philosophy, scholarship and different ideas, such as Sufism, which also inspired arts and poetry.”

It is patently untrue that the Byzantines never “achieved anything in the sciences.” The Byzantines didn’t invent laptop computers, but they did make significant scientific advancements. For instance, the Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BC) famously noticed that certain objects (e.g. feathers) take longer to fall than other objects (e.g. rocks) when dropped from an equal height. Aristotle incorrectly attributed this phenomenon to the relative weights of the objects, concluding that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects.

The Byzantine scholar and theologian Ioannes Philoponos (lived c. 490 – c. 570 AD), however, demonstrated using empirical evidence that Aristotle’s hypothesis was flawed; he conducted an experiment in which he dropped two weights, one heavier than the other, from an equal height and found that they hit the ground at almost exactly the same time. Ioannes Philoponos writes in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics: 682–4, as translated in A Source Book in Greek Science by Morris R. Cohen and I. E. Drabkin:

“But this is completely erroneous, and our view may be completely corroborated by actual observation more effectively than by any sort of verbal argument. For if you let fall from the same height two weights, one many times heavier than the other you will see that the ratio of the times required for the motion does not depend [solely] on the weights, but that the difference in time is very small. And so, if the difference in the weights is not inconsiderable, that is, if one is, let us say, double the other, there will be no difference, or else an imperceptible difference, in time…”

The reality is that how long it takes for an object to fall through air depends on the object’s buoyancy, not the object’s weight. Feathers take longer to fall because they are buoyant in air, not because they are lighter. Thus, by dropping two objects of similar buoyancy but different weights, Ioannes Philoponos disproved Aristotle’s hypothesis that the amount of time it takes for an object to fall depends solely on weight.

And Ioannes Philoponos’s experiment didn’t go in vain; the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (lived 1564 – 1642) read Ioannes Philoponos’s description of his experiment and actually cites it in his book The Two New Sciences, which he published in 1638.

Unfortunately, because people can’t give the Byzantines any credit, Galileo always gets credited with having supposedly been the first person to contest Aristotle’s hypothesis about heavier objects falling faster than lighter ones—even though he himself admitted that it was actually Philoponos who contested it first.

ABOVE: Portrait of the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei, who relied on the work of the Byzantine scholar Ioannes Philoponos, but sadly always gets credited with Philoponos’s discoveries

Ioannes Philoponos also developed the “theory of impetus,” the precursor to the theory of inertia. Philoponos argued that, once a force acts on an object, the object acquires a tendency to continue moving, even once the initial force stops acting on it. Philoponos was only wrong in the fact that he believed this tendency would eventually expire on its own without intervention.

Today, we know from Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion that an object in motion will stay in motion in the same direction and at the same velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. The reason why objects stop moving on their own is because of friction, an outside force that constantly opposes the motion of all surfaces in contact with other surfaces. Even objects moving through air face friction from the air.

Philoponos’s theory of impetus, then, perfectly accurately describes the phenomenon of motion as we usually observe it on Earth, but not the phenomenon of motion generally.

ABOVE: Woodcut by Walther Hermann Ryff from 1582 illustrating the theory of impetus through the motion of artillery

Byzantine inventions

In addition to making scientific discoveries, the Byzantines also made a number of inventions that are still in use today:

• The fork as a utensil has existed ever since prehistoric times, but they were normally used for cooking and serving food, not for eating it. The Byzantines are the earliest people who known to have regularly used forks as eating utensils. They seem to have begun eating with forks in around the fourth century AD. When western Europeans came into contact with Byzantines who ate with forks, they were at first scandalized and saw it as proof of the Byzantines’ moral decadence. Later, they came to adopt forks themselves. Anytime you eat with a fork, remember you are following a Byzantine custom.

• The Byzantines invented the pointed arch bridge. The Karamagara Bridge, built by the Byzantines in the region of Kappadokia in Asia Minor in around the fifth or sixth century AD, may be the oldest surviving pointed arch bridge in the world.

• The Romans experimented with pendentives as early as the second and third centuries AD, but the Byzantine architects who designed the Hagia Sophia in the sixth century AD were the first ones to bring the pendentive dome to full development. The pendentive dome thereafter became one of the most characteristic features of Byzantine church architecture.

• The ship mill was invented by the Byzantines during the siege of Rome in 537 AD. The Goths were preventing the Byzantines from using the water mills, so the general Belisarios proposed the construction of the first ship mills, which were subsequently anchored in the Tiber River.

• During the siege of Constantinople from 674 to 678 AD by the Umayyad Caliphate, the Byzantines invented Greek fire, a highly flammable liquid that was nearly impossible to extinguish. With this weapon, they were able to defend the city against the Arab besiegers. To this day, Greek fire remains the most famous Byzantine invention.

• The Byzantines also invented the flamethrower by using devices with pressurized nozzles to shoot Greek fire at their enemies. They mounted these devices on their ships and used them to spray fire upon their enemies at sea. They also had handheld versions that could be used on land.

• They also invented the incendiary hand grenade by filling jars with Greek fire and hurling them at their enemies.

• The Byzantines also invented the counterweight trebuchet. The Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates (lived c. 1155 – c. 1217 AD) describes the prince and future emperor Andronikos I Komnenos as using one at the siege of Zevgminon in 1165 AD.

Clearly, the idea that the Byzantines never invented anything is just straight-up false.

ABOVE: Illustration from the Madrid Skylitzes, a twelfth-century Sicilian manuscript, of the Byzantines spraying Greek fire at the ship of one of their enemies in 821 AD

How the Byzantines thought about orthodoxy

An old accusation against the Byzantines is that they rejected science and reason and that they only cared about religious orthodoxy. Bryden Walsh repeats this accusation in his answer, saying that the modern emphasis on “on humanism, on education, on science, and on independent thought” would be “anathema” to the Byzantines, whose entire civilization he claims was based on “Orthodoxy and autocracy.”

It’s certainly true that the Byzantines cared a lot about orthodoxy, but it is also important to realize what the Byzantines thought orthodoxy was, because they actually thought about it quite differently from how Walsh thinks they thought about it.

Modern evangelical Protestants believe that all the information that someone needs understand Christianity is laid out explicitly in the Bible. The Byzantines generally didn’t think this, however. Instead, the Byzantines believed that orthodoxy had to be discovered through careful analysis of the scriptures, using reason. As a result of this, the Byzantines were constantly debating the meaning of the scriptures, the nature of God, and the nature of the universe. “Orthodoxy” was constantly being debated, revised, and reinvented.

In fact, ironically, the Byzantines spent so much time debating theology that, for centuries, westerners have accused them of spending all their time debating pointless minutiae. This portrayal isn’t entirely accurate either, though; it’s true that some Byzantine scholars did spend an awful lot of time debating minutiae, but that’s not how all Byzantine scholars spent their time.

Furthermore, it’s worth noting that some ancient Greek philosophers spent a lot of time debating pointless minutiae as well, and so have plenty of western European philosophers throughout history. Debating pointless minutiae is just something that philosophers in general often have a tendency to do. Indeed, I can think of some present-day philosophers who are maybe a bit too preoccupied with pointless minutiae.

ABOVE: Mid-tenth century Byzantine manuscript illustration of Matthew the Apostle with Byzantine-era scribal equipment

Byzantine religious intolerance

In a later section of his answer, Walsh implies that the reason why the Byzantines supposedly never made any meaningful scientific achievements is because they were religiously intolerant. He starts out by saying:

“For instance, the Byzantines often persecuted Armenian Christians, Jews, Monophysites, Nestorian Christians, Bogomils, Paulicans and other ‘heretics’ in the areas they controlled. The empire was religiously intolerant.”

It’s true that the Byzantines were, by contemporary standards, very religiously intolerant—but it is worth pointing out that the western Europeans whom Walsh praises in his answer for having brought forth the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution were every bit as religiously intolerant as the Byzantines up until very recently.

Furthermore, it is also worth pointing out that, while the Byzantines may have tried to enforce religious orthodoxy, they were also unbelievably terrible at it. The state never put much effort into enforcing orthodoxy among the common folk at all. There is compelling evidence that many of the everyday peasants living out in the Byzantine countryside were practicing a sort of folk Christianity with a lot of pagan elements.

For instance, as I discuss in this article from April 2020 about the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, some of the saints that were venerated in the Byzantine Empire were merely poorly disguised ancient Greek deities. Even in the late eighteenth century, the people of the town of Eleusis, located just outside of Athens, were reportedly still venerating an ancient statue that they claimed represented “Saint Demetra,” who they believed controlled the harvest and had a daughter who had been abducted by a malicious Turk.

Some of the people in the more isolated parts of Greece may not have even been particularly Christian at all. A passage from Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos’s De Administrando Imperio records that many people in the region of Mani in the Peloponnesos apparently still practiced traditional Greek polytheistic religion as late as the ninth century AD and that they were only converted to Christianity during the reign of Emperor Basileios I the Makedonian (ruled 867 – 886 AD). Here is the passage, as translated by P. A. L. Greenhalgh and Edward Eliopoulos:

“Be it known that the inhabitants of Castle Maina are not from the race of aforesaid Slavs [Melingoi and Ezeritai dwelling on the Taygetus] but from the older Romaioi who up to the present time are termed Hellenes by the local inhabitants on account of their being in olden times idolators and worshippers of idols like the ancient Greeks, and who were baptized and became Christians in the reign of the glorious Basil. The place in which they live is waterless and inaccessible, but has olives from which they gain some consolation.”

Furthermore, even among the intellectual elites, orthodoxy was only haphazardly enforced by authorities who couldn’t even agree on what counted as “orthodoxy” anyway. For instance, the iconoclast emperors of the Isaurian and Amorian Dynasties had a bit of problem with their own wives secretly being iconophiles; Eirene Sarantapechaina (the wife of Leon IV) and Theodora (the wife of Theophilos) both turned out to be iconophiles, even though their husbands were both iconoclasts.

The reality is that enforcing strict religious orthodoxy upon a large population is impossible. The Byzantine Empire is almost a perfect example of this.

ABOVE: Illustration from the Madrid Skylitzes, showing the daughters of Theodora and Theophilos being taught to venerate icons

The shutdown of the Neoplatonic Academy

Immediately after talking about how the Byzantine Empire was so religiously intolerant, Walsh says:

“In the 9th century, some Byzantine scholars fled to Baghdad to escape persecution, where they were able to take up teaching jobs at the ‘house of wisdom’. Several centuries earlier, in the time of Justinian (6th century), the Byzantines also closed down the famous Academy of Athens, for being ‘pagan’. The Academy was the heritage of Plato and Aristotle.”

Here Walsh has absolutely mangled what is actually a single story, turning it into two separate stories, neither of which is an accurate reflection of what actually happened.

Here’s what the actual evidence shows: A decree of Justinian I that is recorded in Codex Justinianeus 1.5.18 forbids any practitioner of traditional Greek polytheism from being paid to teach out of public funds. Another decree recorded in Codex Justinianeus 1.11.10 forbids practitioners of traditional Greek polytheism from teaching altogether. These decrees were most likely issued in around 529 AD.

Modern scholars have argued that these decrees would have effectively shut down Neoplatonic Academy in Athens, since the main teachers there—including Damaskios of Syria (lived c. 458 – after c. 538 AD) and Simplikios of Kilikia (lived c. 490 – c. 560 AD)—were literal pagans who openly worshipped the traditional Greek deities.

Justinian most likely issued these decrees as part of his campaign to reduce government spending on aristocratic pursuits. You may notice, however, that they only forbid pagans from teaching; they don’t prohibit people from studying classical Greek literature or philosophy. Christians were still allowed to teach about ancient Greek philosophy, and we know from plenty of other sources that they did.

Furthermore, we know that these decrees were not universally enforced, since Olympiodoros the Younger (lived c. 495 – c. 570 AD), who teaching in Egypt at the time, was openly a worshipper of the traditional Greek deities and he doesn’t seem to have suffered any persecution as a result of the edicts.

Finally, contrary to what Walsh’s wordings suggests, the Academy that existed in Athens in the time of Justinian was not the same Academy that Plato himself founded, but rather a later Neoplatonic revival. The Academy was run by people who saw themselves as successors to the Platonic tradition, but it was not the specific organization that Plato himself founded.

Here’s where Walsh’s other story comes in: The historian Agathias (lived c. 530 – c. 582/c. 594 AD) records that, during the reign of Justinian I, seven philosophers who had been teachers at the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens, including Damaskios and Simplikios, fled to the court of King Khosrow I of the Sassanian Empire because they disagreed with Justinian’s religious policies and because they had heard of Khosrow I’s reputation as a “philosopher king.”

When they arrived, however, Agathias says they quickly discovered that Khosrow I’s reputation as a philosopher was much exaggerated and decided that they wanted to return to the Roman Empire. In 532 AD, Khosrow I signed a treaty with Justinian I which included a clause stipulating that Justinian would allow the philosophers who had taken refuge in Khosrow’s court to return home safely and practice their religion unmolested.

This account seems to be the source of inspiration for Walsh’s whole story about scholars fleeing to the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad. In reality, the scholars fled to the court of Khosrow I, not the “House of Wisdom,” and they quickly decided that they liked it better back home.

ABOVE: Fourteenth-century Greek manuscript of Simplikios of Kilikia’s commentary on Aristotle’s cosmological treatise On the Heavens

Byzantine centers of learning

In a caption, Walsh complains that the Byzantines had no center of learning equivalent of the classical Academy or the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad. This is incorrect, however; the Byzantines had multiple major centers of learning, some of which certainly compare in significance to the classical Academy.

Most famous is the Pandidakterion, the university that was originally founded in Constantinople in 425 AD by Emperor Theodosios II (lived 401 – 450 AD). It was housed in an extension of the Great Palace. Subjects taught there included rhetoric, Latin grammar, Greek grammar, philosophy, law, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

The teachers who taught at the university were paid by the state. The purpose of the university was to prepare students for positions in the government or the church. The Pandidakterion remained in operation in various forms throughout the entire history of the Byzantine Empire, although, after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Crusaders, it fell into steep decline.

Meanwhile, the so-called “House of Wisdom” that Walsh mentions in his answer probably wasn’t a single institution, but rather an epithet applied to the larger academic community in Baghdad.

ABOVE: Manuscript illustration from 1237 depicting scholars at an Abbasid library. The Byzantines had centers of learning just like the Arabs did.

Byzantine literature

Unsurprisingly, Walsh isn’t a fan of Byzantine literature. He writes:

“Even their literature was full of archaisms, a scholarly exercise in showing off their education by using allusions to texts written thousands of years earlier, rather than actually contributing anything of genuine meaning or significance.”

It’s true that many works of Byzantine literature are based on or make frequent allusions to earlier works of Greek literature, but not all Byzantine literature is necessarily like is. Furthermore, although works of Byzantine literature may make reference to older works, they are more than just those references.

Instead of thinking of Byzantine writers as pompous hacks merely trying to show off how educated they are by referencing obscure texts that no one reads, we should think of them as contributors to a vibrant literary tradition who use earlier works within that tradition, building on their ideas and reimagining them in ways that are often new and creative.

A great example of this is the Timarion, a satirical work written in Greek in around the twelfth century AD or thereabouts. The work is about a Christian man who eats a large meal, is racked with vomiting and diarrhea, dies suddenly, and discovers, to his astonishment, that paganism was true all along. He is taken to the Greek Underworld by demons and he finds the dead being judged by a tribunal of ancient Greek kings and philosophers and the iconoclast emperor Theophilos.

The man is informed that the pagan judges are absolutely impartial and that they will not hold his Christianity against him. It turns out, though, that there was a mistake and he isn’t supposed to be dead yet, so he gets sent back to the land of the living.

The work is full of classical references, but these are part of the humor of the work. It draws on older traditions, but it adapts them to suit its needs and its message. It asks questions like, “What if everything we believe turned out to be wrong?” and “What if Hell isn’t so bad?”

The Byzantines actually produced some really great literature. Unfortunately, much of it remains obscure in the west, partly because a great deal of it remains untranslated. Some works, though, were translated remarkably early and have been influential on western literature.

The Byzantine poet Mousaios Grammatikos lived in around the early sixth century AD. He is best known for his epic poem Hero and Leandros, which is a retelling of a tragic love story from Greek mythology about a woman named Hero who lives in a tower at Sestos on the European side of the Bosphoros and a man named Leandros who lives in Abydos on the Asian side.

Hero leaves a lamp on top of her tower every night and Leandros swims across the Bosphoros to be with her, using the light from the lamp to guide his way. Then, one night, he gets lost in a storm and the wind blows out Hero’s lamp. He gets lost at sea and drowns. His body washes ashore. Hero finds it and commits suicide so she can be with him.

A printed edition of this poem was published by the Italian humanist scholar Aldus Manutius in around 1493. It was translated into Italian, Spanish, and French shortly thereafter. The poem attained great popularly, in part because it was widely but mistakenly believed to have been composed by the legendary poet Mousaios of Athens, who supposedly lived before Homer.

The English poet Christopher Marlowe (lived 1564 – 1593) wrote an adaptation of the poem in English, which he never finished. The incomplete poem was published after his death. Several different endings have been written for it by later poets. The story of Hero and Leandros has also been depicted in a number of paintings.

ABOVE: Hero Mourns the Dead Leander, painted by the Dutch painter Gillis Backereel

Most of the surviving literary works from the Byzantine Empire were written by educated elites for educated elites and they very much reflect this fact, both in terms of their style and in terms of their content. We do, however, have some surviving works of popular literature from the Byzantine Empire that may appeal to some of the people who don’t particularly care for elite literature.

Most notably, the Digenis Akritis is a folk epic composed in Greek around the ninth century AD that has survived in several different versions. The epic about a border lord named Basileios, whose mother was a Roman Christian and whose father was a Arab emir.

In the epic, Basileios wins a bride, rescues (and subsequently rapes) a maiden, slays a dragon, fights bandits, builds a great palace on the Euphrates, and dies a tragic death alongside his wife. It’s not quite the Odyssey, but it’s definitely full of swashbuckling and adventure.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Byzantine dish dated to the twelfth century showing the hero of the Digenis Akritis slaying a dragon

Byzantine art

Speaking of paintings, the next subject on Walsh’s list of subjects the Byzantines supposedly never meaningfully contributed to is art. He writes:

“Byzantine art mainly consists of mosaics, and while these can be impressive, they are not technically any more sophisticated than works already produced in Italy in the second century BC – centuries before their empire even existed.”

It is true that the Byzantines have left a large number of mosaics, but it is not true that “Byzantine art mainly consists of mosaics”; the Byzantines have left plenty of other magnificent works of art aside from just mosaics.

For instance, I am personally quite fond of Byzantine manuscript illustrations. Probably the most famous Byzantine illustrated manuscript is the Paris Psalter, a illustrated copy of the Book of Psalms in Greek that was produced in the tenth century AD during the Makedonian Renaissance.

These beautiful illustrations show scenes from the Hebrew Bible, but they are influenced by images from classical Greek art. The first page, for instance, shows the young King David seated on a rock playing a lyre, surrounded by wild beasts, who are listening to his song.

This is how the legendary singer Orpheus is usually portrayed in ancient Greek art, but the illustrator of the Paris Psalter has adapted Orpheus’s traditional iconography and applied it to King David in a way that is both creative and traditional.

ABOVE: Ancient Roman floor mosaic from Palermo, showing Orpheus seated on a rock playing the lyre, surrounded by wild animals

ABOVE: Folio 1v from the Paris Psalter, showing the young King David seated on a rock playing a lyre, surrounded by wild animals. Notice the similarities and differences between this illustration and the floor mosaic of Orpheus above.

ABOVE: Folio 4v from the Paris Psalter, showing the battle between David and Goliath

ABOVE: Folio 5v from the Paris Psalter showing David being glorified by the women of Israel in song

ABOVE: Folio 7v from the Paris Psalter, showing King David dressed in the purple robe of a Byzantine emperor with Wisdom on his left and Prophecy on his right

ABOVE: Folio 466v from the Paris Psalter, showing the healing of Hezekiah

There are also some beautiful Byzantine icon paintings that have survived. Some of the oldest surviving icons are encaustic panel paintings dating to the sixth century AD that have survived because they were kept in Saint Catherine’s Monastery, which is located at the base of Mount Sinai in Egypt. Saint Catherine’s Monastery was under Muslim rule during the two iconoclast phases of Byzantine history, so the icons held there were spared from destruction.

One of the most famous of these extremely ancient icons from Saint Catherine’s Monastery is a painting of Christ Pantokrater. The artist who made the painting intentionally portrayed the two sides of Jesus’s face differently to represent his dual nature as simultaneously fully divine and fully human. Other famous sixth-century AD encaustic panel paintings from Saint Catherine’s Monastery include an icon of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus sitting on her lap and an icon of Saint Peter.

ABOVE: Encaustic panel painting from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, depicting Jesus as Christ Pantokrater, dated to the sixth century AD

ABOVE: Encaustic panel painting from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula depicting the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus sitting on her lap, dated to the sixth century AD

ABOVE: Encaustic panel painting from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, depicting Saint Peter, dated to the sixth century AD

Many beautiful icons have survived from later periods of Byzantine history.

ABOVE: Byzantine icon of the Annunciation of the Virgin, painted in the fourteenth century by an anonymous artist

The Byzantine icon-painting tradition remained alive long after the fall of the Constantinople in 1453 and it has influenced subsequent artists considerably. Notably, the Greek painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos (lived 1541 – 1614), who is best known today by the nickname “El Greco,” was born on the island of Krete and trained there as an icon painter. His early works that he painted while he was still living on Krete very much reflect the Byzantine style. The Byzantine influence is evident in his later works as well.

ABOVE: The Dormition of the Virgin, painted at some point between c. 1565 and c. 1566 by the Greek painter Domenikos Theotokopoulosnear the beginning of his career while he was living on the island of Krete

ABOVE: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, painted by Domenikos Theotokopoulos in 1586 while he was living in Spain. The Byzantine influence is less overt here, but still evident.

The Byzantines generally did not carve monumental statues, probably because monumental statues tended to be associated with paganism. The Byzantines are, however, known for their exquisite ivory relief carvings.

We know that the ancient Greeks and Romans made ivory carvings as well, but most of these have not survived, because ivory does not tend to preserve well on the ground. Byzantine ivory carvings have mostly survived because they were kept in storage spaces above ground, mainly in church treasuries.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Berberini ivory, an ivory relief carving of a victorious emperor, probably either Anastasios I Dikoros or Justinian I, dated to the early sixth century AD

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ivory relief carving of an angel from Constantinople, dated to between c. 525 and c. 550 BC

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a tenth-century AD Byzantine ivory relief of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste

There are, of course, plenty of outstanding Byzantine mosaics. Mosaics were used to decorate churches, public buildings, and private homes. Some of the most beautiful mosaics come from the churches that were remodeled by Justinian in Ravenna and from churches like the Hagia Sophia and the Chora Church in İstanbul.

ABOVE: Detail of the Byzantine mosaic of Jesus from the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, dating to c. 526 AD

ABOVE: Mosaic of the emperor Justinian I surrounded by clergy and soldiers from the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, dating to the sixth century AD

ABOVE: Mosaic of the empress Theodora with her attendants from the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, dating to the sixth century AD

ABOVE: Byzantine mosaic from the Hagia Sophia in İstanbul, depicting the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus on her lap. The emperor Justinian offers up the Hagia Sophia and the emperor Constantine offers up the city of Constantinople.

ABOVE: Byzantine mosaic from the Hagia Sophia in İstanbul, dated to c. 1118 AD, depicting the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus on her lap with the emperor Ioannes II Komnenos on her right and his wife Eirene of Hungary on her left

ABOVE: Mosaic of the Virgin Mary seated on a throne with the infant Jesus on her lap from the apse of the Hagia Sophia in İstanbul

ABOVE: Byzantine mosaic of Christ Pantokrator from the Hagia Sophia in İstanbul, dated to c. 1261 AD

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a mosaic of Saint Peter from the Chora Church in İstanbul

As for Walsh’s assertion that Byzantine art is “not technically any more sophisticated” than earlier Roman works of art, I think this is an extremely misguided and reductionist approach to art in general. The value of a work of art is not determined by its “technical sophistication,” but rather by its aesthetic value.

Most works of Roman art from the second century AD are not any more “technically sophisticated” than works of Greek art from the fifth century BC, but that certainly doesn’t mean that these works of art are in any way lacking in value; they are still valuable on their own, independent of whatever “technical sophistication” they may or may not have. The same is true for works of Byzantine art.

Besides, many of the most famous modern artists have eschewed the notion of “technical sophistication” anyways. Some of the most famous artists of modern times include people like Vincent van Gogh (lived 1853 – 1890), Paul Gauguin (lived 1848 – 1903), Pablo Picasso (lived 1881 – 1973), Frida Kahlo (lived 1907 – 1954), and Jackson Pollock (lived 1912 – 1956), who were, if anything, intentionally rebelling against popular notions of “technical sophistication.”

ABOVE: One version of Vincent van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, painted in 1888. If “technical sophistication” is the measure of how significant a work of art is, why are the most celebrated artists of modern times people who rebelled against this notion?

Personal ignorance of Byzantine history doesn’t prove it isn’t important

Annoyingly, Walsh argues on the basis of his own personal ignorance of the Byzantines that they weren’t significant. He poses the following challenge:

“Find me one single equivalent in Byzantium of the legendary Persian poets Rumi, or Shams Tabrizi, or Omar Khayyam, or the Turkish Sufi poet Yunus Emre, or really any Byzantine personality of note, who wasn’t an emperor, before the 15th century. Can you name even one?”

For some reason, people seem to think that this is a real argument. Tamim Ansary poses exactly the same argument in his book Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, page 14:

“…once eastern Rome became the Byzantine Empire it more or less passed out of Western history.”

“Many will dispute this statement—the Byzantine Empire was Christian, after all. Its subjects spoke Greek, and its philosophers… well, let us not speak too much of its philosophers. Almost any well-educated Western knows of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, not to mention Sophocles, Virgil, Tacitus, Pericles, Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar, Augustus, and many others; but apart from academics who specialize in Byzantine history, few can name three Byzantine philosophers, or two Byzantine poets, or one Byzantine emperor after Justinian. The Byzantine Empire lasted almost a thousand years, by [sic] few can name five events that took place in the empire during all that time.”

Essentially, the argument that Walsh and Ansary are both making here is, “I don’t know much about the Byzantines and most people I know don’t really know about them either, so I guess they must not be important.” It is purely an argument from ignorance.

Walsh goes on to say that the only significant Byzantine he can think of is “the philosopher Plethon,” referring to the Neoplatonic philosopher Georgios Gemistos Plethon (lived c. 1360 – c. 1454 AD), but he immediately goes on to reject Plethon, saying, “he lived in the 15th century, and he called for a return to the pagan gods, so he was hardly an example of Orthodox Byzantine civilisation!”

Here Walsh is essentially saying that Plethon doesn’t count as a proper Byzantine because he doesn’t fit the stereotype that Walsh himself has constructed. This is like saying that Aristophanes wasn’t a real Greek because Greeks are supposed to be all reverent and serious or that Percy Bysshe Shelley wasn’t a real Englishman because English people are supposed to be super emotionally repressed.

ABOVE: Portrait of Georgios Gemistos Plethon from a painting by Benozzo Gozzoli, painted between 1459 and 1461

In any case, the reason why most people can’t name any “Byzantine personalities of note” is not because they don’t exist, but rather because the Byzantines have been largely erased from our history books and most people haven’t bothered to research the Byzantines for themselves. If they actually started reading about the Byzantines, they’d find that there were some quite interesting personalities. Here are just a handful of examples of famous scholars and intellectuals who lived in the Byzantine Empire:

• Prokopios of Kaisareia (lived c. 500 – after c. 565 AD) was a historian and a member of the court of the emperor Justinian I. He wrote The Wars (a history of the wars fought by Justinian) and The Buildings (an account of Justinian’s building projects). In both of these works, he praises Justinian and portrays him as a great leader. He also, however, secretly wrote another work, unbeknownst to Justinian: The Secret History. In this work, he condemns Justinian, portraying him as evil and a literal demon.
• Leon the Mathematician (lived c. 790 – after c. 869 AD) was a mathematician, philosopher, logician, and polymath who is known for having been the head of the Magnaura School in Constantinople, where he taught a wide range of subjects. He also constructed automata for the imperial throne room, including mechanical birds that moved and made bird cries, mechanical lions that moved and roared, and a throne that levitated.
• Kassia (lived c. 805 – before c. 865 AD) was an abbess, a poet, and a writer of hymns. Some of her hymns are still used in Eastern Orthodox church services. According to legend, as a young woman, she took part in a bridal show for the emperor Theophilos, who almost picked her to be his bride, but didn’t because she made a sassy remark to him.
• Photios I of Constantinople (lived c. 810 – 893 AD) was a scholar and patriarch of Constantinople. His most famous work is the Bibliotheke, a collection of reviews of 279 different books he had read. The collection includes reviews of Christian and non-Christian works belonging to a range of genres.
• Arethas of Kaisareia (lived c. 860 – c. 939 AD) was an archbishop of Kaisareia, theologian, and commentator on classical texts.
• Michael Psellos (lived c. 1017 – c. 1078 AD) was a philosopher, historian, mathematician, and polymath. He is best known for his Chronographia, a history of Byzantine emperors from the reign of Basileios II Bulgaroktonos until his own time, with especial focus on the personalities of the people involved in the history.
• Anna Komnene (lived 1083 – 1153 AD) was the daughter of Alexios I Komnenos. She and her mother attempted to lead a coup against her brother Ioannes II Komnenos in 1118, but Anna’s husband, Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger, did not cooperate with their plans, so the coup failed. She was confined to the Kecharitomene monastery in Constantinople for the rest of her life. While she was living in the monastery, she wrote The Alexiad, a detailed history of her father’s reign.
• Ioannes Tzetzes (lived c. 1110 – 1180 AD) was a poet, grammarian, and commentator on classical texts. His most famous work is the Book of Histories, a long poem dealing with various historical, mythological, and literary topics.
• Eustathios of Thessaloniki (lived c. 1115 – c. 1195 AD) was a scholar, commentator, and archbishop of the city of Thessaloniki. He is best known for his extensive commentaries on the Homeric poems, his orations, and his account of the sack of Thessaloniki by the Normans in 1185.
• Georgios Gemistos Plethon (who is mentioned above) was a Neoplatonic philosopher. His Nomoi, a work written near the end of his life that was originally only circulated among his close friends, advocates a rejection of Christianity and a return to the traditional Greek deities.

Again, these are just a few examples. If you just look, you can find plenty of other examples of notable scholars and intellectuals who lived in the Byzantine Empire.

Conclusion

My purpose in writing this article has not been to romanticize the Byzantine Empire or portray it as something greater than it really was, but rather to show why it is important, how it has influenced the world as we know it, and explain why it is worth studying, despite all the negative stereotypes that surround it and the visceral hatred that so many people have for it.

The Byzantines produced a lot of truly stunning art and architecture, made significant scientific and technological advancements, produced fascinating works of literature, and, in general, made a noteworthy impact on the world we know today.