The Road To New England -- RBN Energy - February 8, 2017

Link here.

Archived.

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The Irony Of It All

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Byzantium

From an earlier post:

For a quick read on Byzantium:

Byzantium: The Bridge from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Michael Angold
c. 2001 

For the definitive read on Byzantium:

A Short History of Byzantium
John Julius Norwich
based on the "great" three-volume work
c. 1997

I've taken a fair amount of notes on Norwich's book but it is really, really detailed.

For a faster read, I'm going to take another look at Angold's book today. Now that I have a fairly good (superficial) understanding of the history of Constantine 1 and Byzantium, it will be interesting to see what Angold has to say.

Chapter One: The City of Constantine

• Greek polis, city-state of little importance in anitquity
• Constantine 1 renamed it Constantinople, 324 AD
• would serve as the "new Rome"
• would better serve his most vulnerable frontiers: from the Danube to the Euphrates
• did not foster unity, which he had hoped; gave rise to a competing empire, the Byzantium Empire
• Constantine's work complemented by Justinian 1 (Roman Emperor, 527 - 65) when he built the Church of St Sophia; indelible stamp on Byzantium; not only the new Rome, but second only to Jerusalem for Christians; but first his son Constantius takes over
• when Constantine died; his city was only half-built
• that the city did not die with Constantine is attributed to his son, Constantius (emperor, 337 - 61)
• gave Constantinople a Senate on par with that of Rome
• completed the Church of the Holy Apostles (his father's mausoleum)
• emphasized the city's Christian character by building the first Church of St Sophia to serve as its cathedral
• Arian doctrine, page 3, surfaces again
• Constantius succeeded by his cousin Julian, a pagan; hated the new Christian order; he found Antioch more to his taste; died on a campaign in 363 against Persia
• Julian's death: a division of the Byzantium Empire -- eastern provinces fell to Valens (364 - 78) who had no love for Constantinople either; he made Antioch his headquarters also, the better to survey the Persian frontier; lost the bubble on the Danube; vacuum allowed the Huns to panic the Visigoths who sought refuge on Roman soil; their settlement mismanaged; Visigoths caught Valens and his army at Adrianople in 378; emperor killed; Visigoths within striking distance of Constantinople
• Theodosius (379 - 95) sent to rescue Constantinople; a good general; Spanish descent; devout Catholic; defeated the Visigoths; outlawed Arian form; Theodosius mandated his orthodoxy to be the religion of the Roman Empire; it raised Constantinople to patriarchal status; same rank as the church of Jerusalem, underlining the fact that Constantinople was not just "new Rome," but also the new Jerusalem; despite its lack of apostolic origins -- that would have to be manufactured in the shape of St Andrew -- Constantinople ranked as one of the major centers of Christianity

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