Was the Byzantine Empire mainly a Hellenic Empire?

 

Originally posted by Scipion Also you're also missing the fact that ever since the days of Jusinian I and until 1453, all Europeans referred to the Byzantine Empire as Greece and its people as Greeks in an ethnic sense.

 

 

Originally posted by Scipion Also you seem to be completely ignorant of the modern Greek proto-nationalism which was born within the Byzantine Empire, starting with Psellos and reaching its peak in 1204. Then the term "Hellene" is returned to official use.

 

 

 

Originally posted by Scipion Most scholars agree that the Greek Rhomaios was merely a political term and was only used within Byzantium.

 

 

 

Thanks for your welcoming. I'm afraid that the westeners used "Greeks" in an ethnic sense. That was in fact the standard word for "Byzantine" in their languages. This can be also proved by the fact that even Byzantine noblemen would use "Greeks" instead of "Rhomaioi" when referring to the Latins (see for examples the appeal of Alexius IV to the crusaders). There have been specific studies on this, see for example Ciggaar's "Western Travellers to Constantinople: Cultural and Political relations" among many others. The westeners didn't make a distinction between the Greeks of Byzantium and the ancient Greeks. In fact, they only viewed Byzantium as a decayed version of ancient Greece. In medieval Latin texts "Graeci" and "Graecia" is the standard terminology for Byzantium. This is only normal if you think how the Latins -the direct heritors of the Romans- perceived themselves and the rest of the world. If they had ever seen Byzantium as a Roman Empire rather than a Greek one, they would have willingly submitted themselves to its rule. But that never happened. In official Latin texts, e.g. epistles that were sent to the Byzantine Emperors, terms such as "Imperator Romanorum" were used only until Charlemagne's coronation in 800 AD. This is where your example about emperor Nikephoros and the Pope comes into place. The resurrection of the Roman Empire under the Frankish monarch means to that the Greeks can have no official claims on the Imperium. In the eyes of the Latins the Roman scepters were simply transferred from the Greeks to the Germans (Romano nomine ad Graecos). This proves that the term "Roman" has long acquired a strictly political sense. However, the propaganda arguments used by Nikephoros to refute this and by the Pope to promote it cannot be of any historical significance today. If we take seriously the arguments of the former then we'll have to believe that he was a direct ancestor of Julius Caesar. If we take seriously the arguments of the latter the we'll have to believe that Byzantium has never had any connections to the Roman Empire whatsoever. This is why that event is irrelevant to the question at hand. What happened between the Pope and the "Roman" Emperors is independent to how the Latins viewed the Byzantines and vice versa up to that point. The event is important only from a political perspective, e.g. because it signals a break in the relations between the West and Byzantium.

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor Can you cite some modern scholarship that posits Psellos' use of the term as being indicative of modern Greek proto-nationalism?  I would hope that you do not think that any scholar who does not agree with this label at this time period is an "amateur Western revisionist."

Nobody would say that by Psellos' time there was a nationalism in the modern sense of the term (as it happened later). However, the era of Psellos is usually termed the "First Byzantine renaissance" due to the fact that Classical (neo-Platonic) thought is injected in Christian ideology. This renaissance is the first step to the inevitable, i.e. the creation of a nation-state out of an ecumenical empire. The real modern Greek proto-nationalism begins with the fall of Constantinople to the crusaders (1204). During that period Byzantine scholars such as Nicetas Choniates would start to proudly refer to the Byzantines as "Hellenes". The Byzantine emperor Vatatzes tells the Latins that "Hellenes have been granted the rule of the Roman state by Constantine the Great". The emperors of Nicaea would go as far as to argue that the Greek rulers of Trebizond and Epirus cannot lay claims to the Roman throne because they're not "Hellenic enough" in terms of land of population. The Lascarides argue that the Byzantine army has lost its fierce due to the large amount of non-Hellenic mercenary soldiers. In other words, from 1204 to 1453 the Empire becomes consciously an ethnic Greek state, and Byzantine noblemen use their Greekness as the main argument towards the succession of the Roman throne. Books such as Donald Nicol's, The last centuries of Byzantium or Michael Angold's Church and society in Byzantium under the Comneni: 1081-1261 are good sources on this topic.

Originally posted by Scipion I think it would be more accurate to describe the use of "Hellene" in reference to Greek national pride in George Gemistos Plethon's use of it in the 15th century.

Personally I don't think that Plethon's cultural and political views can be representative of the Byzantine society of his time. His views tended more towards an utopian resurrection of an ancient Greek patriotism rather than the creation of a modern Greek nationalism (don't forget that Pletho was a pagan and modern Greek nationalism was founded on Orthodoxy). He did of course continue Psellos' work by contributing to the "Second Byzantine renaissance", yet the vision of a Hellenic Empire dates to the fourth crusade. I do find that the term "Byzantine commonwealth" is a good descriptor of the fragmented Greek states at the time.
 

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor Scholars such as?  I don't think Rhomaioi was "merely a political term."  Within Byzantium, yes.  But the fact that the Byzantine emperors and people thought themselves to be descended from the Romans, is an idea that they held all the way to 1453/61.  To go beyond what Plethon was saying when he used the word "Hellene" in the 15th century is to journey into anacronism.

I'll have to disagree wholeheartedly. Michael Angold explicitely states that the Byzantines did not look to the Caesars and the Romans as their ancestors, but to the Emperors of Constantinople and the Greek-speaking christians of their domain. The Eastern Roman Empire was indeed a distinct political and cultural identity to the Roman Empire, hence why it has always been coined with a distinct name. I think your views are too affected by Nicephorus' epistles to the pope in which he claims himself to be an ancestor of the Caesars. I think you would agree that such a claim under such circumstances cannot be the basis of conclusions upon the entire history of the Byzantine state. Don't forget that Julian the Apostate would also call himself a Hellene and claim that the Roman Empire was a in fact the ecumenical form of Hellenism. But that would never lead us to conclude that the ancient Rome was a Greek Empire.

Steven Runciman would be one of the credible scholars who explain that "Rhomaios" had really the connotation of "Christian Greek". He also explains that during medieval times "Romans" had a political connotation in relation to the Imperium and the claims on ecumenical, christian rule. On the other hand D. Anguelov explains that the Greek "Graikos" was acceptable as an ethnonym synonymous to "Rhomaios" in Byzantine society (unlike the pagan "Hellene"). In my line of reasoning, the above facts in combination to the Greek nationalism of the 12th century and the Latin texts of late antiquity prove that the Greekness of Byzantium is not an anachronism. Similarly the cultural heritage of the Roman Empire had always been native to the lands of the Latins (in terms of language, religion and culture, which is what really defines a people). And as I said earlier the views of Pletho have little or no relevance to the question at hand. I'd better stop here because this is getting too long. My regards.


Edited by Scipion - 31-Aug-2007 at 17:03

H�l�ne Ahrweiler in L'id�ologie politique de l'empire byzantin says the actual image on what the empire is (universal or national), and who its inhabitants were it varied in time, from emperor to emperor, from era to era. The reign of Justinian I is obviously the apogee of the idea of Roman Empire. That's why (if you quoted him correctly) I don't think Angold is right. Moreover, in its first centuries, the Byzantine Empire had both Latin as official language and Latinophone territories (like the northern Balkans, not to mention Justinian's reconquests!).

This is nice map and I am not sure about it. In the central anatolia, there are to much Turkic people in and Galatian? 

Azeri and Turkish people quite similar. But we see them two different nations so what about Greeks?