1. Introduction
“When we speak of the fall of the Roman Empire, we should not forget that in fact only the western portion of that empire succumbed to the Germanic invaders. In the Greek-speaking eastern half, the Byzantine Empire stood for a thousand years as a citadel against the threats of expansion by the Muslims.”
Through the later Middle Ages, however, Byzantine both gradually declined politically and became more isolated from the rest of Europe. While the last centuries of the European Middle Ages saw the consolidation of the idea of Europe and the incorporation of European cultures into a larger, overarching European monoculture, Byzantine was left out of this new European concept. By the beginning of the modern period, when "Europe" had become a solid, cultural idea, Byzantine had come to an end with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.
Byzantine history, then, stretches in a continuous line from the latter centuries of Rome to the very beginning of the......
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Approximate Word Count: 2915
Approximate Pages: 12 (260 words per double-spaced page) |