Byzantine Emperor Quotes

When the Byzantine emperor Isaac Angelus demanded it for the Orthodox, Saladin decided that they must share it under his supervision and appointed Sheikh Ghanim al-Khazraji as Custodian of the Church, a role still performed today by his descendants, the Nusseibeh family.

Oh, but once my memories had pulsed with the blood-heat of life. In desperation, I forced myself to recall that once, I had walked with kings and conversed in languages never heard in this land. Once I had stood at the prow of a Sea Wolf ship and sailed oceans unknown to seamen here. I had ridden horses through desert lands, and dined on exotic foods in Arab tents. I had roamed Constantinople’s fabled streets, and bowed before the Holy Roman Emperor’s throne. I had been a slave, a spy, a sailor. Advisor and confidant of lords, I had served Arabs, Byzantines, and barbarians. I had worn captive’s rags, and the silken robes of a Sarazen prince. Once I had held a jeweled knife and taken a life with my own hand. Yes, and once I had held a loving woman in my arms and kissed her warm and willing lips...Death would have been far, far better than the gnawing, aching emptiness that was now my life.

the whole idea of a “holy” war was an alien concept to the Byzantine mind. Killing, as Saint Basil of Caesarea had taught in the fourth century, was sometimes necessary but never praiseworthy, and certainly not grounds for remission of sins. The Eastern Church had held this line tenaciously throughout the centuries, even rejecting the great warrior-emperor Nicephorus Phocas’s attempt to have soldiers who died fighting Muslims declared martyrs. Wars could, of course, be just, but on the whole diplomacy was infinitely preferable. Above all, eastern clergy were not permitted to take up arms, and the strange sight of Norman clerics armed and even leading soldiers disconcerted the watching hosts.

Most astonishing of all to the citizens of Constantinople, however, was the emperor’s habit of wandering in disguise through the streets of the capital, questioning those he met about their concerns and ensuring that merchants were charging fair prices for their wares. Once a week, accompanied by the blare of trumpets, he would ride from one end of the city to the other, encouraging any who had complaints to seek him out. Those who stopped him could be certain of a sympathetic ear no matter how powerful their opponent. One story tells of a widow who approached the emperor and made the startling claim that the very horse he was riding had been stolen from her by a senior magistrate of the city. Theophilus dutifully looked into the matter, and when he discovered that the widow was correct, he had the magistrate flogged and told his watching subjects that justice was the greatest virtue of a ruler.*

on that last Monday of the empire’s history, the mood changed. There was no rest for the weary, of course, and work continued, but for the first time in weeks, the inhabitants of the city began to make their way to the Hagia Sophia. There, for the first and last time in Byzantine history, the divisions that had split the church for centuries were forgotten, Greek priests stood shoulder to shoulder with Latin ones, and a truly ecumenical service began. While the population gathered in the great church, Constantine gave a final speech—a funeral oration, as Edward Gibbon put it—for the Roman Empire. Reminding his assembled troops of their glorious history, he proudly charged them to acquit themselves with dignity and honor: “Animals may run from animals, but you are men, and worthy heirs of the great heroes of Ancient Greece and Rome.”* Turning to the Italians who were fighting in defense of Constantinople, the emperor thanked them for their service, assuring them that they were now brothers, united by a common bond. After shaking hands with each of the commanders, he dismissed them to their posts and joined the rest of the population in the Hagia Sophia.

After 1,123 years and 18 days, the Byzantine Empire had drawn to a close. The Divine Liturgy that had echoed from the great dome of the Hagia Sophia for nearly a millennium fell silent, and the clouds of incense slowly cleared from the desecrated churches of the city. The shocked and shattered Byzantines were now in permanent exile, but they could at least reflect that their empire had come to a glorious and heroic end. Their last emperor had chosen death over surrender or a diminishment of his ideals, and in doing so he had found a common grave among the men he led. Proud and brave, the iconic eighty-eighth emperor of Byzantium had brought the empire full circle. Like the first to rule in the city by the Bosporus, he had been a son of Helena named Constantine, and it was fitting that in his hour of need he had a Justinian by his side.

There is nothing in the Quran or early Muslim religious literature to suggest an iconoclastic attitude. Grabar has argued that Muslim calligraphy and vegetal arts were most likely a pragmatic adaptation to the need for a new imperial-Islamic emblem distinct from the Byzantine and Sasanian portraits of emperors. The use of vegetal designs and writing was prior to any religious theory about them. Once adopted, they became the norm for Islamic public art. Theories about Islamic iconoclasm were developed later.

As each German and Italian and Frankish nobleman arrived in Constantinople with his own private army, ready to cross over the Bosphorus Strait and face the enemy, Alexius had demanded a sacred oath. Whatever “cities, countries or forces he might in future subdue . . . he would hand over to the officer appointed by the emperor.” They were, after all, there to fight for Christendom; and Alexius Comnenus was the ruler of Christendom in the east.1 Just as Alexius had feared, the chance to build private kingdoms in the Holy Land proved too tempting. The first knight to bite the apple was the Norman soldier Bohemund, who had arrived in Constantinople at the start of the First Crusade and immediately became one of the foremost commanders of the Crusader armies. Spearheading the capture of the great city Antioch in 1098, Bohemund at once named himself its prince and flatly refused to honor his oath. (“Bohemund,” remarked Alexius’s daughter and biographer, Anna, “was by nature a liar.”) By 1100, Antioch had been joined by two other Crusader kingdoms—the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Edessa—and Bohemund himself was busy agitating the Christians of Asia Minor against Byzantium. By 1103, Bohemund was planning a direct attack against the walls of Constantinople itself.2 To mount this assault, Bohemund needed to recruit more soldiers. The most likely source for reinforcements was Italy; Bohemund’s late father, Robert Guiscard, had conquered himself a kingdom in the south of Italy (the grandly named “Dukedom of Apulia and Calabria”), and Bohemund, who had been absent from Italy since heading out on crusade, had theoretically inherited its crown. Alexius knew this as well as Bohemund did, so Byzantine ships hovered in the Mediterranean, waiting to intercept any Italy-bound ships from the principality of Antioch. So Bohemund was forced to be sneaky. Anna Comnena tells us that he spread rumors everywhere: “Bohemond,” it was said, “is dead.” . . . When he perceived that the story had gone far enough, a wooden coffin was made and a bireme prepared. The coffin was placed on board and he, a still breathing “corpse,” sailed away from Soudi, the port of Antioch, for Rome. . . . At each stop the barbarians tore out their hair and paraded their mourning. But inside Bohemond, stretched out at full length, was . . . alive, breathing air in and out through hidden holes. . . . [I]n order that the corpse might appear to be in a state of rare putrefaction, they strangled or cut the throat of a cock and put that in the coffin with him. By the fourth or fifth day at the most, the horrible stench was obvious to anyone who could smell. . . . Bohemond himself derived more pleasure than anyone from his imaginary misfortune.3 Bohemund was a rascal and an opportunist, but he almost always got what he wanted; when he arrived in Italy and staged a victorious resurrection, he was able to rouse great public enthusiasm for his fight against Byzantium. In fact, his conquest of Antioch in the east had given him hero stature back in Italy. People swarmed to see him, says one contemporary historian, “as if they were going to see Christ himself.”4

The Romans were too practical-minded to appreciate Euclid; the first of them to mention him is Cicero, in whose time there was probably no Latin translation; indeed there is no record of any Latin translation before Boethius (ca. A.D. 480). The Arabs were more appreciative: a copy was given to the caliph by the Byzantine emperor about A.D. 760, and a translation into Arabic was made under Harun al Rashid, about A.D. 800. The first still extant Latin translation was made from the Arabic by Adelard of Bath in A.D. 1120. From that time on, the study of geometry gradually revived in the West; but it was not until the late Renaissance that important advances were made.

Despite the empire’s problems, however, its former emperor had succeeded in making Byzantium a shining beacon of civilization. The architectural triumph of the Hagia Sophia had only been possible by sophisticated advances in mathematics, and it soon spawned a flourishing school dedicated to improving the field. In Byzantium, primary education was available for both genders, and thanks to the stability of Justinian’s rule, virtually every level of society was literate. Universities throughout the empire continued the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions that were by now over a millennium old, and the works of the great scientists of antiquity were compiled in both public and private libraries. The old western provinces under barbarian rule, by contrast, were quickly sinking into the brutish chaos of the Dark Ages, with recollections of advanced urban life a fading memory. Literacy declined precipitously as the struggle to scratch out an existence made education an unaffordable luxury, and it would have disappeared completely without the church. There, writing was still valued, and remote monasteries managed to keep learning dimly alive. But throughout the West, trade slowed to a crawl, cities shrank, and the grand public buildings fell into disrepair.

And should there exist someone endowed with the beauty of a statue and the lyrical eloquence of a nightingale in song, gifted, moreover, with ready wit, then the wearer of the crown can neither sleep nor rest, but his sleep is interrupted, his voluptuousness suppressed, his appetite for pleasure lost, and he is filled with grave apprehensions; with wicked tongue he curses the creator nature for fashioning others suitable to rule and for not making him the first and last and the fairest of men.

Dagobert, King of the Franks, drove them from Gaul; Spain's Visigoths seized their children as converts; the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius forbade Jewish worship.

Once a week, accompanied by the blare of trumpets, he would ride from one end of the city to the other, encouraging any who had complaints to seek him out. Those who stopped him could be certain of a sympathetic ear no matter how powerful their opponent. One story tells of a widow who approached the emperor and made the startling claim that the very horse he was riding had been stolen from her by a senior magistrate of the city. Theophilus dutifully looked into the matter, and when he discovered that the widow was correct, he had the magistrate flogged and told his watching subjects that justice was the greatest virtue of a ruler.*

Now emperors went about in silken robes encrusted with jewels, hidden from their people by eunuchs and a cloud of incense. Where once they had conferred with generals to conquer the world, now they spent their time meeting with cooks, planning ever more elaborate culinary delights. Worst of all, they had thrown off the old Roman martial virtues of honor and duty and adopted Christianity with its feminine qualities of forgiveness and gentleness. No wonder emperors and armies alike had grown soft and weak.

The 4th century church was later replaced by the building that exists in present-day Bethlehem. Between 530 and 533, Emperor Justinian I dedicated a second Church of the Nativity upon the site, and according to the Egyptian Patriarch Eutychius of Alexandria, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was destroyed and rebuilt by Justinian because the Byzantine emperor felt that the old church was too small.[43] This is the oldest Christian church that has remained in constant use throughout history.

Outbreaks forced empires to change course – like the Byzantine Empire when struck by the Plague of Justinian in 541-542 – and some even to disappear altogether – when Aztec and Inca emperors died with most of their subjects from European germs. Also, authoritative measures to attempt to contain them have always been part of the policy arsenal. Thus, there is nothing new about the confinement and lockdowns imposed upon much of the world to manage COVID-19. They have been common practice for centuries. The earliest forms of confinement came with the quarantines instituted in an effort to contain the Black Death that between 1347 and 1351 killed about a third of all Europeans. Coming from the word quaranta (which means “forty” in Italian), the idea of confining people for 40 days originated without the authorities really understanding what they wanted to contain, but the measures were one of the first forms of “institutionalized public health” that helped legitimatize the “accretion of power” by the modern state.[1] The period of 40 days has no medical foundation; it was chosen for symbolic and religious reasons: both the Old and New Testaments often refer to the number 40 in the context of purification – in particular the 40 days of Lent and the 40 days of flood in Genesis.

Political correctness in its most literal sense set in early among the Ottomans: their chroniclers mention neither Orhan’s alliance with the Christian Byzantine emperor John VI, nor his marriage to Princess Theodora.

From the 1070s, instability in the Holy Land deepened. In 1071 an army led by the Seljuq commander Alp Arslan, or Heroic Lion, routed Byzantine forces at the Battle of Manzikert, in what is eastern Turkey today. The battle, which marked the beginning of Turkish ascendancy in Anatolia and the slow decline of Byzantium, was a cataclysmic defeat. Humiliatingly Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was captured and taken prisoner.

He forgave Julian on his deathbed, leaving the younger emperor as his heir.

who would choose new junior emperors to continue the tetrarchy.

Maximian’s son Maxentius promoted himself to emperor, conquering the territory

Maximian’s son Maxentius promoted himself to emperor, conquering the territory of the current western Augustus.

When the emperor died in 518, he left a monumental sum in the treasury

Three Rising to Glory “Every man who is born in the light of day must sooner or later die; and how can an Emperor allow himself to become a fugitive? . . . As for me, I stand by the ancient saying: royalty makes the best shroud.” —Theodora, recorded by Procopius Into the increasing peace and prosperity of the Byzantine Empire stepped an unlikely leader.

Emperor Justin was almost 70 years old, came from a peasant family, and had little education.

Constantine, allying himself with one of the eastern emperors, marched against Maxentius in 312 CE.

bargaining tool for Vladimir when he was asked for help by Byzantine Emperor Basil II.

The younger Heraclius took the city and executed Phocas, declaring himself emperor.

Alexius was followed by four successors, the other emperors who made up the Comnenus dynasty.

His death in 1180 left his ten-year-old son Alexius II as emperor, with Manuel’s Norman wife Maria of Antioch as the real power behind the throne.

the emperors who took the throne peacefully or through bloodshed;

powerful women, wives and mothers, who influenced emperors or held power in their own right;

The Ottoman conquests continued with even more enthusiasm during Orhan’s reign, who defeated Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III

defeated Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III at the Battle of Pelecanum in 1329.

The Ottoman conquests continued with even more enthusiasm during Orhan’s reign, who defeated Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III at the Battle of Pelecanum in 1329. The emperor was forced to flee after his forces were routed, freeing the way for Orhan to capture the city of Nicaea

after the fall of Rome. In Byzantium, the emperor retained ultimate power,

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Byzantine Emperor Cantacuzenus chose to ally with the Ottomans

Thus, the European nations were reluctant to send help to the Byzantine emperor.

was firmly returned to the emperor’s hands.

members of the tetrarchy claimed the title of Augustus, and the once cooperative relationships between the emperors disintegrated.

instructing the emperor that he would be victorious through this symbol.

and how can an Emperor allow himself to become a fugitive?

But Aspar seriously underestimated Leo. The new emperor began a subtle campaign to consolidate power for himself.

emperor and his taxes. The mob turned violent, with looting and fires breaking out throughout the center of the city.

Soon after, Justin pronounced Justinian co-emperor, securing his nephew’s right to the throne. Justin died in 527.

position when rumors reached her that the military wanted to make him emperor if Justinian died.

their relationship with Emperor Alexius, always strained, completely gave way

Justinian became ill himself. With the emperor unable to rule, Theodora took control.

Without the appearance of a firm and proficient emperor on the throne, the empire began to totter.

and soon was able to declare himself co-emperor with Alexius II.

The three emperors who ruled at the end of the sixth century had

the first emperor of the east who did not peacefully inherit the throne since Constantine.

Many who had once believed in the divine appointment of the emperor as the world’s Christian ruler

Leo VI died in 911, but during the following century other emperors continued to strengthen and expand

paid them to leave. In 565, the 83-year-old emperor died.

Since the Byzantines had a strong naval force, Orhan asked for the emperor’s support to free his son from captivity,

the last great dynasty of Byzantine emperors, the Palaiologoi, to rule from Constantinople.8

relations between the crusaders and the Byzantine emperor were seldom cordial.

How is it that after war and conquest the spoils are split evenly between the Emperor, the treasury and his Varangian Guard? True they are an unmatched commodity in war, but servants nonetheless, not so?Not so. They are tigers. Wild things we have allowed into our lands, our cities and our homes. They stand over our sleeping forms with their terrible axes poised. They have come to know all our secrets and entrenched themselves so deeply within the bosom of the Empire that it begs the question: are we paying them to guard us, or are we bribing them not to kill us?" - Justrudd Valusarian Excerpt from Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga

The situation at the tomb after the Resurrection is significant. The Roman seal was broken, which meant automatic crucifixion upside down for whoever broke it. The massive stone was moved not just from the entrance but from the entire sepulcher, looking as if it had been picked up and carried away. The guard unit had fled. Byzantine Roman emperor Justinian in his Digest 49:16 lists eighteen offenses for which a Roman guard unit could be put to death. These included falling asleep or leaving one’s position unguarded.

implying an equivalent majesty to the Persians’ king of kings. Every Byzantine emperor would follow the tradition.

The eighth-century CE Byzantine emperor Leo III,

The  first crusade  started after a speech given on November 27, 1095 by  Pope Urban II  with the primary goal of responding to an appeal from  Byzantine Emperor  Alexios I Komnenos, who requested that Western volunteers come to his aid and help to repel the invading  Seljuq Turks  from  Anatolia. An additional goal soon became the principal objective — the Christian re-conquest of the  sacred city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and the freeing of the  Eastern Christians from Muslim rule.

Pope Gelasius I (492-496) expressed his vision of the West in a famous letter to the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I, and, even more clearly in his fourth treatise, where, with reference to the Byzantine model of Melchizedek [who was king and priest at the same time (Genesis 14:18)], he affirmed that the unity of powers lies exclusively in Christ: “Because of human weakness (pride!), they have separated for the times that followed the two offices, so that neither shall become proud.” On worldly matters, priests should follow the laws of the emperor installed by divine decree, while on divine matters the emperor should submit to the priest. This introduced a separation and distinction of powers that would be of vital importance to the later development of Europe, and laid the foundations for the distinguishing characteristics of the West.

In spite of shared cultural traits, ancient Greeks owed their fundamental political loyalty to their city-state, or polis, rather than to some unitary Greek state, while Byzantine emperors did not see themselves as the heirs to ancient Athens or Sparta.

The Islamic world had transmitted much of Greek science to medieval Europe, and Aristotle in particular was greatly admired by Muslim scholars as “The Philosopher”. But under the influence of the clerics Islam eventually turned against reason and science as dangerous to religion, and this renaissance died out. In rather similar fashion, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian closed the philosophy schools of Athens in 529 AD because he considered them dangerous to Christianity. But while in the thirteenth century several Popes, for the same reason, tried to forbid the study of Aristotle in the universities, they were ignored and in fact by the end of the century Aquinas had been able to publish his synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology in the Summa Theologica.

for the Byzantine Empire, absolute monarchy though it might be, ran its economy on socialist lines. Private enterprise was rigidly controlled: production, labour, consumption, foreign trade, public welfare, even the movement of population were all in the hands of the State. The consequence was a vast horde of civil servants, imbued by the Emperor with one overriding principle: to curb if not actually to destroy the power of the army.

Next he placed on his head the fur-rimmed Crown (or Cap) of Monomakh, embellished with rubies and emeralds, and handed him the orb and sceptre. Michael sat on the throne of Monomakh. The Cap had never been owned by the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomakh who gave it his name, but was a royal Mongol helmet, adapted in the fourteenth century, while the wooden throne, carved with lions and Byzantine scenes, had actually been built for Ivan the Terrible.

Disaster came when the Byzantine emperor Basil II surprised and destroyed a Bulgarian army at Balasita in 1018, and had the eyes gouged out of most of the surviving 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners, granting himself the title (Bulgar-oak-THONE-oss), “Slayer of the Bulgarians.

and into the western parts of Asia Minor, where his successful activities attracted the attention of the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Pogonatus. This Emperor issued a decree (684) against the congregations of believers and against Constantine in particular, sending one of his officers, named Simeon, to put it into effect. In order to give special significance to the execution of Constantine, Simeon supplied a number of his personal friends with stones and ordered them to stone the teacher whom they had so long revered and loved. Risking their own lives by their refusal, they dropped the stones, but there was a young man present named Justus, who had been brought up by Constantine as his adopted son and treated with especial kindness; he flung a stone at his benefactor and killed him, thus earning high praise and reward from the authorities, who compared him to David slaying Goliath. Simeon was profoundly moved by all that he saw and heard at Kibossa, and, conversing with the Christians there, was convinced of the truth of their doctrines and the Tightness of their practice.

in the Taurus Mountains, Leo was born, who became Emperor of the Eastern, or Byzantine Empire, and is known as Leo the Isaurian. He was one of the best and most successful of the Byzantine Emperors, defending Constantinople from the Saracens and strengthening the Empire internally by his vigorous and wise reforms. Perceiving that the prevalent idolatry and superstition were among the chief causes of the miseries that were so evident in both East and West, he set himself to root out the evil. In 726 he issued his first edict against the worship of images, and followed it by a campaign of forcible destruction of images, and persecution of those who held to them.

In the year 970, the Greek historian Leo Diaconus witnessed a band of far-traveling beserkers as they fought against an army of the Byzantine emperor, his employer. He says that they fought in a burning frenzy beside which ordinary battle rage paled in comparison. They roared, growled, bayed, and shrieked like animals, and in an especially eerie and uncanny way. They seemed utterly indifferent to their own well-being, as if lost to themselves. Their leader, who embodied all of these traits to an extreme degree, was thought by Leo to have literally gone insane. Leo and Byzantine forces were veterans of countless battles, so the reactions elicited by the Scandinavian's behavior in Leo and his companions strongly suggests that what they witnessed in that battle was something unique to the Scandinavians, and something which chilled Leo and the Byzantines to their core.