English Workshop A

Write a paragraph to say why the Byzantine Empire was so stable and secure. The paragraph should have five sentences:

• one sentence to introduce the subject,

• a second, third and fourth sentence to explain three reasons why,

• a fifth sentence to conclude your ideas - why the Empire was so stable and secure.

English Workshop B

Write one sentence to say why the Byzantine Empire was able to survive all of its political traumas.

More Background Reading

The Byzantine Empire (395 - 1453) : Introduction

By the beginning of the 4th.century A.D. the Roman Empire seemed as powerful as ever but this was not the case. One of the problems it had to face was its size, it was simply too big for one man, the emperor, to govern effectively. Another problem was that the eastern part of the empire was not only far more populated than. the western part but it was also far richer; Rome was the only major city in the west , whereas in the east were found great cities of trade and culture such as Alexandria in Egypt, Haifa and Jaffa in Palestine and Antioch in Syria.

Constantine the Great

In the year 307 A.D. Constantine became Emperor of Rome and although he was not a Christian (he did convert to Christianity just before his death in 337 A.D.) he was sympathetic to Christians and in the year 312 he decreed that Christians had complete freedom of worship. In 313 Constantine went further and decreed that Christianity was one of the official religions of the Roman Empire.

In addition Constantine decided that Rome was no longer the best place from which to govern this vast empire. He eventually chose the small Greek port-city of Byzantium as the site of his new capital city. This small Greek town was totally reconstructed as an imperial capital city and in the year 330 A.D. Byzantium, now renamed Constantinople became the new capital city of the Roman Empire.

After Constantine's death in 337 every Roman Emperor was Christian (except for the two year reign of Julian the Apostate who continued to worship the old Roman gods).

Emperor Theodosius

Theodosius was important for two major decisions:

A. In the year 393 he decreed that Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire and that all pagan religions were forbidden. Judaism was tolerated.

B. In the year 395 Theodosius finally solved the problem about the size of the Roman Empire very simply; he divided it in two!

This decision by Theodosius created two Roman Empires:

Until 476 the two empires existed side by side but in that year the Western Roman Empire collapsed and western Europe was totally dominated by "barbarian" Germans.

As long as Byzantium kept control of these four trade routes it would remain rich and be able to afford a powerful army and a huge navy to protect the land and the sea.

This was the situation in the 6th.century especially during the reign of the greatest of the Byzantine emperors; his name was Justinian I (the Great) who ruled from 527 until 565.

The First Period of Crisis 565 - 661

The period immediately after Justinian's death were difficult ones. Continuous warfare had been very expensive and the army was weakened and to make matters worse Byzantium soon found itself at war again this time against its traditional enemy, the Persian Empire to the east.

By 632 the Byzantine Empire had won this exhausting war but desperately needed a long period of peace to get its strength back. It was not to be! Without warning armies of Arab Muslim cavalry swept into the eastern provinces of the empire from Arabia. Within thirty years they had captured half of the territory of the empire and over half the population, including the great cities of Alexandria, Haifa and Antioch-all the land from Egypt to the frontier of Asia Minor was lost to Byzantium for ever. The situation was made more dramatic by the fact that in losing all this territory Byzantium had lost its two most important trade routes , the eastern and the southern.

Although the empire managed to survive it could never recover from these losses. For a brief period during the 9th. And 10th. centuries a family of emperors (the Macedonian dynasty) did restore a period of prosperity but it did not last.

Between the 11th. and the 15th. centuries Byzantium lost more and more territory and began to lose control of the two remaining trade routes to the Normans and Italians in the west and to the Muslim Turks in the east. The end was inevitable. It came in the year 1453 when the massed armies and warships of the Turkish Sultan Mohammed II Captured the city and deposed the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI. The Byzantine Empire had ended the Turkish Ottoman Empire had begun (this Turkish empire would last until 1918).

One of the last great achievements of the Byzantine Empire and one which we can still see today was the conversion of Vladimir Prince of Kiev to Christianity and the introduction of the Greek alphabet into Russia.

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