Byzantine Empire PDF

Byzantine Empire Constantine First emperor to legalize Christianity From here, it spreads Becomes official state religion after his lifetime Once it comes out from the underground, Christianity then has to think about its doctrine now that people can practice together Doctrine of C...

Byzantine Empire Constantine First emperor to legalize Christianity From here, it spreads Becomes official state religion after his lifetime Once it comes out from the underground, Christianity then has to think about its doctrine now that people can practice together Doctrine of Christianity Holy trinity doctrine ○ How christianity explains itself as monotheistic despite believing in 3 parts ○ Chrisitan doctrine holds that they all 3 always existed This develops doubts among other people, which threatens to tear apart belief in Christianity In 325CE Constantine calls a meeting to create a unified Christian doctrine ○ Aries is present, he was one who brought up issues in relation to the holy trinity doctrine, he gets the chance to say his beliefs He loses, the Holy Trinity Doctrine becomes official Aries refuses to go along with the decision ○ This bothers Constantine He throws Aries out of the meeting and exiles him from the empire He also exiles his followers So Constantine threw out Aries for disrespecting the Christian doctrine when he himself was not part of the church Future emperors look at Constantine as setting a precedent for future emperors to act as the head of the church Caesaropapism ○ The doctrine of the emperor being the pope After the fall of the Roman empire, there is a pope in Rome and a emperor in Constantinople that believes that he is also the head of the church  ○ Constantine's actions eventually lead to a separation of Christianity into 2 parts, 700 years later Justinian and Theodora Justinian is on the throne of the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople. He is a Christian emperor ○ He views himself as god's representative on earth; he thinks he is doing God's will Theodora was Justinian's wife, and he made her his co-ruler ○ He willing to split his power 50-50 with her They have an interesting origin story: ○ Theodora and her family were traveling performers and were invited to perform for Justinian She was good at many forms of entertainment Her go-to performance art was burlesque ○ A suggestive form of dance Justinian then married her and made her co-ruler There is a week where Justinian questions giving up the city of constantinople ○ Theodora tells them to hold the city As they believe they are enacting gods will, they try to follow through on it ○ They believe his will was to put back together the Roman Empire ○ He then wants to de-Germanize the west Does this through Military conquest Tries for 3 decades Whenever progress was made in the west, he lost ground in the east to persia Wherever he was not focused, he lost land Justinian dies 565 ○ Successors give up on the idea of putting the empire back together ○ Byzantine empire focuses into the East Byzantine empire slows down Constantinople was a good place for trade However there were 2 big things that caused issues for the empire: ○ Volcanic eruption altered the earth's climate No summer for many years due to the ash in the air  This caused food shortages and led to the other problem, disease outbreaks This means that they need to buy more food, luckily, port city, so they can buy food, however, the ships brought rats and diseases ○ Plaque The cooler, damp environment helped foster diseases along with the ships that were coming in and out of Constantinople This resulted in lower birth rates, which meant it took generations to rebound from this At this time-ish (20 years after outbreak) in the Arabian peninsula, Muhammad is born ○ This is the beginning of what will take down the Byzantine Empire: The Muslims/ Ottoman Empire ○ Within his lifetime, he reorients the trajectory of world history through Islam How latin dies: West begins to adopt other languages: Greek East also moves away from Latin Words on Board Doctrine: The things that an institution believes to be true Nicaeu Caesaropapism: The doctrine of the emperor being the head of the church ○ Caesar ○ Papism: to do with the pope Papal Primacy