ἀνθρώποισι πᾶσι μέτεστι γινώσκειν ἑωυτοὺς καὶ σωφρονεῖν.
The capture of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 accelerated the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire, and was followed by a period of intense political fragmentation and military conflicts between the small political entities that were established on the territories that had belonged to the Byzantine Empire. Continue reading “West-European soldiers in the armies of the Empire of Nicaea”
The Catalan Grand Company were a soldier company of Spanish mercenaries hired by Andronikos II. They were supposed to halt the Ottoman expansion in what little was left of Byzantine Asia Minor; instead, they wreaked havoc on Byzantine territories from 1304–1309. Continue reading “The Catalan Grand Company in the Eastern Roman (‘Byzantine’) lands”
by Charles Diehl
The church of St. Sophia in Constantinople is the masterpiece of Byzantine art, and it is at the same time one of those monuments where some of the most characteristic features of that art appear most clearly. Thus if one would understand the nature of the Christian art of the East and in what its originality consisted, one must go first of all to this essential building-to this “Great Church” as it was called throughout the East during the Middle Ages. Continue reading “The three ‘Golden Ages’ of Eastern Roman (‘Byzantine’) Art and its widespread influence over time”
The Arab–Byzantine Wars were a series of wars between the mostly Arab Muslims and the Byzantine Empire between the 7th and 11th centuries AD. These started during the initial Muslim conquests under the expansionist Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs in the 7th century and continued by their successors until the mid-11th century. Continue reading “Eastern Roman (‘Byzantine’) Empire, Transcaucasia and the Umayyad Caliphate”
Byzantine Era means first of all a period of about one 1000 years and with about 13 royal dynasties (houses), like: Continue reading “Entrepreneurial Aspects in the Eastern Roman (‘Byzantine’) Empire”
The concept of ‘holy war’ is defined and distinguished by two core ideas: First, by the idea that warfare is arbitrarily justified as divine order, i.e. command; second, that warfare is perceived and propagated as a means of religion employed against infidels or heretics, thus granting the believer-warriors absolution and sanctification. Continue reading “The negative Eastern Roman (‘Byzantine’) attitude towards a conception of warfare as a divinely ordained means of religion”
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