world of byzantium

7/30/2019 World of Byzantium

1/4

World of Byzantium(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)Course No. 367

Taught by Kenneth W. HarlTulane UniversityPh.D., Yale University

Try this thought experiment: Mentally chart the main phases of European history to 1500.

If you're like most of us, you probably hopscotched from classical Greece through Alexander theGreat, from the Rome of the Caesars to the Renaissance, with a detour into the long post-Romanhiatus known as the Dark and Middle Ages.

But this storyline is woefully incomplete, even misleading.

Why? It leaves out Byzantium.

And you're not alone. The mental charts drawn by most educated people would show the samegap.

As Professor Kenneth Harl notes:

"Far from being merely the eastern rump of the old Roman Empire, Byzantium was without adoubt the greatest state in Christendom through much of the Middle Ages.

"This story is far more important than any number of tales of palace intrigue, and is not as wellknown as it deserves to be.

"These lectures are a small attempt to help redress the balance."

Curious and Even Unsettling Civilization

The civilization of East Rome, or Byzantium, is seldom studied on its own merits because thisseemingly remote world is a curious, even unsettling, mix of the classical and medieval.

Byzantine arts and letters, deeply steeped in traditional orthodoxy, seldom appeal to the modernWesterner, a product of the Enlightenment and the changes wrought by modernization. And thesame can be said for Muslims, as well, whose own civilization owes much to Byzantium.

These lectures by Professor Kenneth W. Harl are designed to fill that gap. You come away with awidened perspective on everything from the decline of imperial Rome to the rise of the

Renaissance.

Professor Harl's tellingly detailed lectures show how the Greek-speaking empire of Byzantium, orEast Rome, occupied a crucial place in both time and space that began with Constantine theGreat and endured for more than a millennium.

A Crux of Civilizations

You can take the word "crucial" literally.
http://www.teach12.com/store/professor.asp?ID=170&d=Kenneth+W.+Harlhttp://www.teach12.com/store/professor.asp?ID=170&d=Kenneth+W.+Harl


2/4

Centered on its magnificent fortified capital at the lucrative crossroads of Europe and Asia,Byzantium was a crux of civilizations.

It was a colossus that bestrode two continents: a crucible where peoples, cultures, and ideas metand melded to create a world at once Eastern and Western, Greek and Latin, classical andChristian.

It was truly a fulcrum of world history.

A Grandeur That Still Awes

Byzantium's spiritual grandeur and mystical vision of humanity, God, and the cosmos can still beglimpsed. You can see them in:

the awesome, soaring dome of the Hagia Sophia, 100 feet across and tall enough to hold

a 17-story building, still the greatest domed building in Istanbul and the model for thegreat domed churches of the empire

the luminous mosaics of San Vitale at Ravenna, Italy

countless Orthodox churches on several continents.

For century after century, the Byzantines kept alive Hellenic arts and letters and Roman legal-political achievements over a vast arena of space and time.

The influence of this grand Orthodox Christian state was felt in Russia and southeastern Europeand throughout the Islamic world. And it influenced the Italian Renaissance, as well.

Renaissance scholars would name this powerful and brilliant civilization "Byzantium" after theancient town that occupied the strategic spot where Constantine built his new capital.

The Byzantines called themselves simply hoi RomaioiGreek for "the Romans."

An Empire of Accomplishment

A list of the achievements of Byzantium's emperors, patriarchs, priests, monks, artists, architects,scholars, soldiers, and officials would have to include:

actively preserving and extending the literary, intellectual, and aesthetic legacy of

Classical and Hellenistic Greece (the Byzantine patriarch Photius was doing seriousPlatonic scholarship at a time when only three of Plato's dialogues were even known inthe Latin West)

carrying forward pathbreaking Roman accomplishments not only in law and politics but in

engineering, architecture, urban design, and military affairsat a time when these hadmostly been forgotten in the West

deepening and articulating Christian thought and belief through church councils and thework of brilliant theologians such as St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, and St.Gregory of Nazienzus while spreading the faith to Russia and the rest of what wouldbecome the Orthodox world

developing the Christian monastic institutions whose eventual diffusion from the deserts

of Egypt to the shores of the Irish Sea would help to sustain faith and learning throughcenturies of hardship and peril

shielding the comparatively weak and politically fragmented lands of western Europe

from the full force of eastern nomadic and Islamic invasions


3/4

fusing classical, Christian, and eastern influences to create an art and culture of stunning

beauty and splendor

helping to shape the course of the humanist revival and the Renaissance in Western

Europe through the writings of the Greek Fathers of the church, the preservation ofclassical texts, and the example of church mosaics and the work of El Greco.

Three Chapters of the Byzantine Story

To tell this pivotal story, Professor Harl has divided his lectures into three conceptual phases.

Lectures 1 to 12 provide you with essential background as they explain how the Roman worldslowly gave way to distinct new blended cultures in the Latin, Celtic, and Germanic north andwest, the Greek-speaking east (Byzantium), and later the Islamic south and east from Morocco toIndia.

You learn how the later Roman Empire under the forceful soldier-emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305)responded to political and military crises, setting the stage for Constantine (r. 306-337), whoseconversion to Christianity would point the Roman world in new directions.

You also meet the amazing emperor Justinian (r. 527-565).

This brilliant visionary built the Hagia Sophia, sponsored the magnificent codification of Romanlaw that bears his name, and sought to restore the entire Mediterranean world to his vision of aChristian and Constantinian empire.

But even the brilliant generalship of Belisarius and Narses could not make Justinian's policies asuccess. In the end came fresh crises that ended the classical world forever.

Lectures 13 to 21 deal with the achievements of medieval Byzantium, familiar to poets andnovelists.

Its emperors warded off new invaders, checked the power of Islam, and directed a transformationof government, society, and culture.

The Byzantine State went through downs and ups of crisis and recovery, the latter sometimesdirected by remarkable emperors like Alexius I Comnenus and the dynasty he sired (r. 1081-1185).

But the pressures from the Seljuk Turks and others were relentless and eventually triggered theByzantine cry for help that led to the First Crusade (1095-99).

Lectures 22 to 24 run from the Fourth Crusade's horrifying sack of Constantinople (1204) to theOttoman triumph of 1453. They tell a tale of political decline but enduring cultural and spiritualachievement.

Each in its own way, the Italian quattrocento and the Orthodox realm of Russia and EasternEurope emerged as a legatee of Byzantium's mind and spirit.

Indeed, even the Ottoman sultans, creators of the last great Islamic empire, owed a huge debt totheir vanquished foes.

"Should I buy Audio or Video?"


4/4

These lectures provide an admirable learning experience in all of our formats. The DVD andvideotape versions contain hundreds of images, including portraits, photographs, maps,diagrams, and on-screen graphics, to aid your mastery and retention of Professor Harls lectures.

World of Byzantium

Course Lecture Titles

1. Imperial Crisis and Reform2. Constantine3. State and Society Under the Dominate4. Imperial Rome and the Barbarians

5. The Rise of Christianity6. Imperial Church and Christian Dogma7. The Friends of GodAscetics and Monks8. The Fall of the Western Empire9. The Age of Justinian10. The Reconquest of the West11. The Search for Religious Unity12. The Birth of Christian Aesthetics and Letters13. The Emperor Heraclius14. The Christian Citadel15. Life in the Byzantine Dark Age16. The Iconoclastic Controversy17. Recovery Under the Macedonian Emperors18. Imperial Zenith-Basil II19. Imperial Collapse20. Alexius I and the First Crusade21. Comnenian Emperors and Crusaders22. Imperial Exile and Restoration23. Byzantine Letters and Aesthetics

24. The Fall of Constantinople

world of byzantium

Documents