O Byzantine Empire it was a continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted until the 15th century, when the capital Constantinople (or Byzantium for the Greeks, and now Istanbul) was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The legacy left by the Byzantine Empire is broad, influencing trade routes between West and East to contemporary civil codes.
The city of Constantinople, an ancient Greek fishing village, was urbanized around 330 AD. Ç. under the guidance of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Initially known as Nova Roma, Constantinople became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and a great center. commercial due to its privileged geographic location, on the Bosphorus, at a junction point between the western world and Eastern.
The main Byzantine emperor was Justinian (527-565), which during his reign expanded the Empire to its maximum limits in the Mediterranean region, reaching even to reconquer the city of Rome and the Italian Peninsula from the Germanic peoples. It was during Justinian's rule that the Roman laws were compiled, creating the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law). This Roman legal code organized by the Byzantines influenced the constitution of several civil codes in contemporary countries.
However, after Justinian's death, the Byzantine Empire entered a slow process of decay, which would drag on until Constantinople was taken by the Turks in 1453.
Justiniano also financed the construction of large public works, including the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, which still exists in the city of Istanbul to this day. The emperor still ruled with absolute powers, considering himself the representative of God on earth, which also made him head of the Church. This ended up differentiating the Church itself, since in the West, the bishop of Rome became the head of the Church from 455, becoming Pope Leo I.
Interior of St. Sophia Cathedral, built in Constantinople, present-day Istanbul Turkey.*
Another point of differentiation with Western Catholic Christianity can be found with the movement of iconoclasts, who, guided by the non-worship of images (icons), began to destroy them. However, the production of mosaics and paintings was encouraged, within parameters pre-established by theologians, such as the portrayal of the figures always facing forward.
This differentiation between the religious practices of the Roman Church and the Byzantine Empire, combined with the political and economic disputes between the pope and the Byzantine emperors led to the separation of the two churches. The episode became known as schism of the east, or Great Schism, giving rise to two Catholic churches: the Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Church of the East, better known in Brazil as the Orthodox Church.
Constantinople was considered the greatest cultural center in the Christian world during the Middle Ages, mainly because of the preservation of a large number of works by artists and thinkers of antiquity, especially the Greeks and the Romans. The activities of the copyist monks enabled Renaissance thinkers to come into contact with the classics of antiquity. Even the Greek influence on the Byzantine Empire was enormous, to the point of replacing the use of Latin with Greek in religious ceremonies and official documents.
It was the Byzantines who spread Christianity in Eastern Europe, to the point of two monks Byzantines, Cyril and Methodius, have created an alphabet, based on the Greek alphabet, to convert the Slavic peoples. O Cyrillic alphabet, as it was baptized, is now used in several countries, such as Russia and Ukraine.
* Image Credit: muharremz and Shutterstock.com
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