Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome

384 Pages·1980·83.636 MB·English

by  Cyril Mango

MANGO
CYRIL
117.30
!>YZAMriVA/i
THE EMPIRE OF NEW ROME
In AD. 324 the city of Constantinople was
founded as the new Rome. In the powerful,
vast, heterogeneous Byzantine world, it
became the center of a rich and diverse
culture, at one time extending from
Gibraltar to the Euphrates.
During its first three centuries, the
Byzantine world integrated Christianity
fully within the Greco-Roman tradition;
and yet the Christian Empire contemplated
by Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian
—
remained an elusive ideal to be striven for
but never attained. Through eleven
centuries this fabulous civilization under-
went profound transformations; a cata-
strophic break in Byzantine history
occurred, for example, in the seventh
century when the Persian invasion and
Arab expansion initiated a process of
disintegration, leading ultimately to the fall
of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in
1453.
In this authoritative survey. Professor
Mango exposes the shortcomings of the
surviving historical records of Byzantine
civilization on which previous studies have
too frequently depended. Adopting an
original approach, he rectifies the bias of
such accounts by concentrating especially
on the point of view of the "average"
He
Byzantine rather than the intellectual.
considers Byzantine life from a thematic
perspective, covering such fundamental
aspects as people and languages, society
and economy, the disappearance and
revival of cities, dissidents, monasticism,
education, accepted ideas about good and
evil, the physical universe, history and the
ideal life and the Byzantine cultural
—
legacy literature, art, and architecture.
(continued on back flap)

HISTORY OF CIVILISATION
Byzantium

Byzantium
New
The Empire Rome
of
MANGO
CYRIL
Bywater and Sotheby Professor ofByzantine and
Modern Greek Language and Literature in the University of Oxford
NEW
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS YORK
BURLINGAME PUBLIC LIBRARY
480 PRiiViROSE ROAD
BURimG^ME, CA 94010
H^ j( 1st
' I
Copyright © 1980 Cyril A. Mango
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mango, Cyril A
Byzantium, the empire of New Rome.
Bibhography:
p.
Includes index.
—
1. Byzantine Empire Civilization. I. Title.
DF521.M36 1981 949.5 80-5870
ISBN 0-684-16768-9
This book published simultaneously in the
—
United States of America and in Canada
Copyright under the Berne Convention
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without the
permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 I/C 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
1
3613^;
CONTENTS
page
List of Illustrations vii
Maps
List of xi
Preface xiii
Introduction
I
PART ONE:
Aspects of Byzantine Life
1
I Peoples and Languages 13
2 Society and Economy 32
3 The Disappearance and Revival of Cities 60
4 Dissenters 88
5 Monasticism 105
6 Education 125
PART TWO: The Conceptual World of Byzantium 149
7 The Invisible World of Good and Evil 151
8 The Physical Universe 166
9 The Inhabitants of the Earth 177
10 The Past of Mankind 189
The Future of Mankind 201
1 1
12 The Ideal Life 218
PART THREE: The Legacy 231
13 Literature 233
14 Art and Architecture 256
Appendix. Chronological List of Byzantine Emperors 282
Abbreviations in the Notes 284
Notes 285
Bibliography 303
Index 325