The Christian Byzantine Empire

The first Christian Empire in the world was that of the Byzantine Empire founded by Constantine in 330 A.D. The Byzantine Empire started with the division of the Roman empire into East and West factions, with the eastern provinces becoming the Byzantine Empire. When the Roman Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity, he moved the governing center from Rome to the city of Byzantium, made Christianity the state religion, and created a state that had a profound effect on the social life and outlook of the people. The first moves toward splitting up the Roman Empire had been made by Constantine's uncle, the Emperor Diocletian, who thought that the problems with the empire were related to having too much territory to the east and north out of direct control (Wenzel, 1965: pp. 11-13). The separation did not take place immediately but over a generation or so and would last for more than 1100 years.

The choice of Byzantium for the new capital was fortunate. The city was on the European side of the Bosporus and overlooked both Europe and Asia and thus was positioned to be a power in both. In many ways, the development of the Byzantine Empire sealed the doom of the Roman Empire. For a time, the organization put in place in the east by Diocletian strengthened this half of the old Roman Empire, but in time it too began to decline steadily, in part because of a shortage of able men to lead: "We have seen that citizenship in the Roman Empire no longer meant a share in the

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by Christianity and combined with the idea that all human life is sacred. This helped form the character of the Byzantine Empire (Wenzel: pp. 19-20). Christianity was an important political tool for the Byzantines, and they sent missionaries in the form of priests to teach the poeple to be loyal to the emperor just as they taught them to be loyal to Christ: "One of the biggest means of propaganda for the emperor and for Christ was the decoration in Byzantine churches, which they tried to build wherever the Christian religion had taken effect" (Wenzel: p. 73). In terms of architectural design as well as theology, the inside of the church was seen as a model of heaven and earth. The worshipper entering the church would thus see a picture of Paradise in which a complete order of the sacred beings of heaven would be shown in rich colors, using purple and gold as the colors the people had learned to associated with heavenly and earthly power. The figures are often placed in a background of gold mosaic as gems would be put into settings of gold in the emperor's crown. The highest figures would be the richest and the most sacred, and they always looked down upon the worshipper: "The worshipper felt that the figures were magically p

Category: History - T