The Byzantine Empire and Western Europe Essay

The Roman Empire influenced the Byzantine Empire’s culture, mainly through the religion of Christianity. Christianity first appeared in the Roman Empire, with the birth, teachings, and supposed resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the beginning years of it’s arrival, Christianity was not tolerated and Christians were mainly, and most often brutally prosecuted. However, with Constantine’s Edict of Milan, Christianity was officially tolerated, and under Theodosius, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire inherited this relatively new religion, continuing to follow the beliefs and traditions of the church, as well as spreading the word of Jesus Christ and the message of god. Churches sprung up in the empire, such as the mighty Hagia Sophia. Located in Constantinople and built by Justinian, this church especially exemplified

In 1054 the Byzantines split from the Roman Catholic Church in the west and developed the Eastern Orthodox Church. They prospered for almost a thousand years, but fell to the Turks in 1453. Byzantine history is often over looked, but there are many reasons they should be taught about in classrooms including their advanced military technology, the development and influence of Justinian’s code,

When Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople the Christian churches of Rome and Constantinople found themselves at odds. They ended up differing on many subjects. Over the years they gradually grew apart until the final split happened in 1054. This continues to today. The differences are slight but significant. The Roman church continued with using Latin as the official language, giving the Pope the ultimate authority, but not allowing priests to get married (Doc C). Whilst the Eastern Orthodox church decided to have Greek as the official language, instead of a Pope they had a ceremonial leader, also known as the Patriarch (who could marry); this is because Constantinople failed to see the Pope as the supreme authority. Their interpretation of the bible was also a bit different (Doc C). In the world there are about 120,845,374 people who worship Orthodox Christianity. Though there are many branches of it. Most of the religion stays in the Eastern side of the world, except the 5,000,000 or so Americans (Doc C). If it hadn’t been for the Byzantines stepping out

About a thousand years ago, there was a mighty and innovative empire called the byzantines. They were a cultural beacon, an influential centerpiece, and a power to fear when it came to the military. Even though their cities crumbled and their cultures faded away, they are still talked about to this very day. That makes total sense because of how influentially powerful they were that is not the only reason why we give them a thought of recognition in our history classes or still become amazed when our historians find yet another piece of their vast history. According to 5 documents explaining their history and achievements, 3 of the many reasons why we should study the byzantines are that they somewhat created a branch of religion that is still

The Byzantines also allowed the survival of this religion by preventing the Islamic people to invade Constantinople and therefor prevented the whole world of Europe being taken over by the Islamic

Eastern Europe had begun its transition from the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine empire with the penetration of Christianity into all aspects of life. Both the

During the 17th to 18th century, The Roman Empire had gone through a cultural and religious metamorphous. Throughout this time, the roles of religion in the Islamic, Byzantine and Western European worlds altered the period of 600-750 with their similarities adhering to monotheism for one, and differences in regards to perspectives. These three cultures were all pretty diverse but they also shared some of the same roots and became heritors of the Roman Empire, built on different ideologies. The different ideologies of the Islamic, Byzantine and Western European worlds, consisted of different founders, places, and elements of worship, thus portraying how religion was indeed prominently central to governmental and social structures because of the large impact towards political laws.

Before the fourth crusade, the Byzantium empire was very centralized government. There was a lot of unity between the government in the capital and the provinces. The main political effect of the fourth crusade was the fragmentation of the byzantine world. After 1204, the unity of the byzantine government was shattered forever and a new Latin empire was set up, which was very decentralized and fragmented state. The empire was shattered into many parts including the empire of trapezoid, the empire of Nicaea, the Despotate of Epirus and the Latin States (Latin empire plus crusaders’ controlled areas in central Greece) all of which were running autonomously. In terms of religious repercussions of the fourth crusade, many churches and monasteries

One of the primary differences between Eastern and Western Europe in period 3 is their respective governments or more specifically the centralization of them. The major nation in the East was the Byzantines. They are known for being extremely centralized and having a very large bureaucracy. While on the other hand, Western Europe was split into many smaller areas and states, each having very loose organization. The paramount example of a noncentralized Europe is the governing system. This system was feudalism, a political system that spreads power and control amongst lords and their vassals. While the king has a lot of power, feudalism does not allow for a heavily centralized government. With the Byzantines it is almost the opposite. Most of the power was given to the emperor. The

In the year 330 Constantine founded a new imperial city in the east, which became known as Constantinople. Accompanying Diocletian's system of tetrarchy, the creation of this new city affirmed the separation of the Roman Empire into the east and the west. The Eastern Roman Empire held a series of advantages over the west both socially and economically. The Western Roman Empire was the weaker empire and a bad leadership and government along with attacks from barbarians led to the demise of the Western Roman Empire.

Vandal, Visigoth, and Ostrogoth people all had cultures heavily influenced by Rome and its Religion. During this era, feudalism developed, and Christianity divided in two - the Catholic Church in the west and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the east. In both cases, the Church grew to have a great deal of political and economic power.

Eastern Europe had begun its transition from the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine empire with the penetration of Christianity into all aspects of life. Both the Byzantine and Islamic Empires were defined by their use of monotheistic religion in governing their empires. They both used religion in their own ways as justification to spread their governorship. But their laws however were not the same, Byzantine laws were based off of romans and Christianity, However the Islamic caliphates laws were based off The Holy Book Quran. The Byzantine built churches so the people could worship and learn about the religion of Christianity where the Islamic Caliphates used the Sharia law where equal punishment is given to criminals. The difference between the two empires was that the Islamic Caliphates believed that the ruler should be related to prophet Muhammad. Whereas the Byzantine Empire believed that whoever was the most dedicated to the religion of

Though both had similar roots, they both took these similar bases & formed it into their own way. Both the Byzantine Empire and Ancient Roman have similar aspects, but each one made it unique. To better understand the similarities and differences of the Byzantine Empire and Ancient Romans one must look at each civilization’s cultural ideas, religion, & dependence on lower class.

A schism formed between the East and the West due to power struggles between the pope and the patriarchs. Christianity was divided into the Roman Catholic church for the west and the Eastern Orthodox church for the east. There are key differences between the two churches. First, the Byzantines outlawed the use of icons, while icons are permitted in the west. In addition, Greek was the main language for the Byzantines, while Latin was the main language for the west. Lastly, the pope controlled all church affairs in the west while the Byzantine emperor controlled the church affairs for the east.

The difference of religion had a huge impact on both of the empires. Christianity in the Byzantine Empire was the most popular religion in the world with Islam right after. Judaism is a monotheistic religion and while most Christians believe they are monotheistic as well, many Muslims think upon Christians as polytheistic because they believed both God and Jesus are gods. In comparison, both empires were ruled by a pope. The Byzantine Empire was impacted through Christianity because the pope was the head of the empire, such as Constantine who became pope in 708. The Islamic Caliphate was also impacted through Islam because they too were ruled by a pope. This meant if you had a religious ruler, many people of the empire would follow suit and either convert or become more involved in the religious practices that the emperor/pope would do. Both religions were quite simple. Islam has no official clergy, and follows only one single sacred text, the Koran. However, Muslims do believe in the validity of the Old Testament. Muslim's