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Some Aspects of Byzantine Civilisation

Author(s): Norman H. BaynesReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 20 (1930), pp. 1-13Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/297380 .

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SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.IBv NORMIAN H. BAYNES.

At the outset the question may well be raised whether there isany real justification for the inclusion of a paper on such a theme inthe programme of a Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.Is Byzantine civilisation--in any true sense of the word-Roman atall ? To judge from not a few modern studies of the life of the EastRoman Empire, the answer to that question could only be in thenegative. Take what is perhaps the best known brief presentment ofByzantine history-that of Professor Diehl of Paris-and the readerwill not long be left in doubt. The preface proclaims the characterof the Empire: Byzantium very quickly became, and was essentially,an oriental monarchy. In the sixth century, before Justinian'saccession, one could well believe that the dream of a purelv orientalempire was near its realisation. Justinian delayed that consummation,but at the beginning of the eighth century a really Byzantine empirehad come into being which grew ever more and more oriental incharacter. Under the Iconoclast monarchs the Empire had becomecompletely orientalised; at the end of the Iconoclast struggle EastRome was a strictly oriental empire. The words ' oriental,'orientalise,' beat upon the mind with throbbing insistence : themonotonous repetition is almost hypnotic in its cumulative effect.The reader may without difficulty fail to note that by this subtlerhetorical device an Histoire, which is in fact a veiled Tendenzschrift,has charmed him into acquiescence. He will hardly be consciousthat the ' blessed word ' oriental is given little, if any, specificcontent, that general assertions are not illustrated and controlled byconcrete detail, that it is left uncertain what Orient is intended-whether Syria, Persia, India or far Cathay. The Orient, thusundifferentiated, is a word not of historical science, but of mysticism;an unkindly critic might add-of mystification. If Professor Diehlwere challenged on the point, what, we may ask ourselves, would behis reply ? He would doubtless point to the 7poaxivc%q of aByzantine court; he would agree with Rostovtzeff that the Byzantinetheory of sovranty as a celestial trust dates from Aurelian's easternwars and reflects an Iranian conception of the true legitimation of amonarch's authority; he might contend that the later monasticideal of divine contemplation-of a mystic Oewp'o-is cousin-german toBuddhism, while he would remind us that through the wanderings

I A paper read at a meeting of the Society on March 5th, 1930.

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2 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.of a far-travelled ale Buddhahimselfhasbeen canonisedas aChristiansaint. The barbarouspunishments of Byzantine criminal justice,blinding, nose-slitting and other corporeal mutilations, he wouldperhaps suggest, were derived from ancient Persian practices whichwere largely responsible or the Greek view that the Persian was abarbarian. ProfessorDiehl doesin factpoint out that the Iconoclastreformers found their inspiration in those Asiatic provinces whichborderedupon Armenia,and we mayremindourselveshat Armenia shistoricallyalandhostileto anartof 'Darstellung --a representationalart-and enamouredof an art of ' significant form,' to borrow aphrase rom Mr. Clive Bell, an artwhich soughtto express ts deepestconvictions in the symbolismof an ornamentation which went tonature only to borrow from it decorative motives-which neversought in the interest of mere realism to reproduce that nature.ProfessorDiehl might follow further in the footstepsof Strzygowskiand seek to portraythe whole Iconoclast controversy as a strugglebetween two worlds aesthetically, a struggle between theMediterraneanman and his art of representationon the one handand the nomad, be he of steppe or desert,with his art of symbolismon the other ; architecturally, strugglein which the congregationalbasilicaandthe flat roofof the West were matchedagainst he confinedspacesof the cupola constructionsof the East ; and similarly, n thereligioussphere,a strugglewhere two worldsmet in conflict-a worldwhich had raisedthe iconographyof the humanto a point where itbecamea bridgeof mediationleadingmanto the ideal and the super-human, and a world to which such an iconography appearedasmenschlich, llzu menschlich-a degradationof the Eternal throughidentification with the transience of the material. And in thisAimageddonof the continents Byzantiumwill stand as the bridge-head, the prize for which Asia and Europe will dispute, the postwherethe issueis joined.It might indeed seem as though a Society for the Promotion ofRomanStudies had but little reasonto concern itself with Byzantinecivilisation. Andyet I would contend that I do not stand here to-dayunder anyfalsepretence. I would claim,as a disciple of Freemanandof Bury,that there remainsa reason or the use of the term the LaterRoman Empire, that there is a Roman element in this Byzantinecivilisation. That civilisation representsto my mind the fusion oftwo traditions, he Greek and the Roman,and I would maintain thatwhat oriental elements there are in its composition are not theessentialand characteristic eaturesof the Byzantineworld. I wouldsuggest hat it isby meansof a panoramic urveyof East Mediterraneanhistoiy that we can best picture to ourselves hat fusion which is EastRome.As I see the process,the turning-pointsin the development aremarkedby four outstandingfigures: Alexander he Great, Augustus,



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SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. 3Constantine and the emperor Heraclius. The first period of somethree hundred years-from Alexander the Great to Augustus-created the civilisation with which that of East Rome was continuous:its marked feature is that it was a culture shared widely by the menof a world where intercourse was general. Alexander had brokendown the separate independence of the Greek city-state, and by sodoing had destroyed much of its cherished individuality. Thecity-state lives on, but with a difference : its significance was neces-sarily dwarfed when brought into contact with empires and withscientifically organised armies before which its strength was as a verylittle thing. It may be doubted whether we always realise withsufficient vividness the discomfort of an age when empire-building wasthe fashion, when any day a Pyrrhus might arrive before the city gates,seeking a field for the satisfaction of a boundless egoism. Thesheltering embrace of men's city walls availed little before the relent-less individualists who march through Hellenistic history. Man felthimself alone in face of a dangerous world: the poles of Hel>nisticthinking are thus the individual and the cosmos. Mr. Tarn hascontended that Alexander the Great never dreamed of a world-empire; but, even if this be true, Alexander did break down thetraditional moulds of men's thinking and forced them to deal withproblems in the light of the olzouV&v-a-asProfessor Bury was fondof saying, the ' oecumenical idea ' was born. In an age when themight of the gods of the city-state had dwindled before new powers,the agencies which really counted, the forces which could do things,were the human rulers of the Hellenistic kingdoms: they were theefficient saviours and benefactors of man. While Euhemerism wasreducing to human proportions the ancient deities, men were seeingtheir rulers as gods. The god-king was born; the sovran did notultimately derive his legitimation from the suffrages of his fellow-countrymen, but rather from the possession of a daimonic energywhich was more than the potency of any ordinary mortal. You have,you see, these two conceptions - the universe, and the divinitywhich raises a ruler above his kind: later these conceptions willunite, and the zoa0Lx64 aUc&oxc&-cp of the East Roman world willbe the result.And together with the oecumenical idea there gradually emergedthe common language, the xo\v), the necessary medium of com-munication in a world where the sundering barriershad fallen. Andthat common Greek language was the natural speech of the missionary,if he would carry his cause throughout Hellenistic society. Even theexclusiveness of the Jew yielded to the compulsion exercised by thiscommon vehicle of thought. We are sometimes tempted to judgeof all Judaism from our knowledge of Palestine of the first century ofour era; but that unbending aversion from Hellenism and its wayswas forged in the fires of the Maccabaean reaction, and elsewhere in



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4 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.the Diasporaa very differentspirit reigned. The Septuagintis thepermanent memorial of the conquering power of the universallanguage. It is in a Greek-speakingworld that Constantinoplewasfounded, and the effortsof Roman emperors o foster the spreadofLatin within the Romanprovincesof the East were foredoomedtofailure.Alexander'sAsiatic campaignsnot only carriedHellenismto theOrient, but from those campaignswas brought back the scientificinaterial which formed the capital of the scholarsof Alexandria.Aristotlc had lacked that rangc of knowledgefrom which, in theHellenistic age, new sciences were born. But the period duringwhich this scientificrenascence astedwas brief, and Greckscicntificcuriosityfaded away. It was not killed by Christianobscurantism:the scientific age had passed before Christianitywas born. Thisdecayof the scicntificintercst is one of thosc mysteriouschangesinhumanthought which it is so difficultfor the historianto cxplain:the mind of man revcrts from the frce enquiry of the unfetteredreasonto the acceptance of the primacyof authority--of oracle orsacredbook. Amongstthe thinkersof the fourth centuryof our era,Christian and pagan alike arc convinced that the final authority isto be found in the scriptures Julian, as much as any father of thechurch, is assuredthat the plausible hypotheses of the scientistscount as nothing when set against the word of God. In their lackof scicntific curiosity, in the supremacyaccorded to the inspiredwriting,thc Byzantincsarc the spiritualheirsof thc later Alexandrines.And not in this alone: for it was the scholarsof Alexandriawhoformcd the pagan canon of the classical iterature. In their workon the texts of the great authorsof the past, in the collection andprcscrvationof those texts, the sclholarsof Alexandriawon theirpositionas the librariansof the Greekworld. The literatureof theHellenistic period is, I take it, the work of men who consciouslywrote as epig,oni, and the range of their creative originality, as inpastoral or romance, is restricted. They are already custodian-trustees. Here obviouslythe Byzantinesare their successors: theycver sought to read their title clcar to the grcat inheritancewhichhad descendedupon them from the past. But the very splendourof that inheritance, while it might inspire imitation, paralysedinitiative. For everythinghad alreadybeen achieved,and achievedwith final mastery. We know the benediction passed upon thepeoplewhichhas no history. Byzantiumhadits roots in so gloriousapast that its brilliancethrew the prcsent into shadow. Heisenbergis, I think, right in his assertion hat there was nothing in Byzantinehistorywhich can be called a Rcnascence n the sense in which theWcst has used that word, and Bury in his RomanesLecture showedthat, even where Byzantineliteratureseemsto appropriateWesternmodels, it is in reality but bringing forth from its own treasure-



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SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. 5house familiar motives. Its literary wealth was so great that therewas no incentive to put the talent out to interest. But this is nonew phenomenon, the fruit of a supposed sterility amongst theByzantines: they are but continuing the task of the scholars ofAlexandria; in Europe's Middle Age they are the world's librarians.This Hellenistic culture of the centuries after Alexander's deathundoubtedly contains oriental elements, but it is not always easy toisolate those debts of Greece to the East. One of the most strikingfeatures of Byzantine life is the omnipresence of demon powers;this general belief in the operation of demonic agency is anotheilegacy from the Hellenistic period. Is this a purely Iranian conceptioninvading a Greek world for whiclh it was a new thing, or did theIranian conception link itself naturally to ideas-which were alreadywidely prevalent on Greek soil though hidden by the majestic fa9adeof the Olympian faith ? It is desperately hard to determine whatwas the working creed of humble folk in the classical age ; the literaturewhich we still possess is so urban and so aristocratic. As the greatgods lost not a little of their former authority, did the lesser powersof popular belief venture forth from their hiding-places into thelight of day ? The supremacy of the demons in Greek lands through-out the history of our era might suggest that in some form or anotherthey had long been familiar to the folk of the Eastern Mediterranean.And against this common civilisation of the Hellenistic East,spread throughout the kingdoms which had taken the place of thesingle realm of Alexandcr, there stands in clear relief the power ofRome. That is the result of the wars of the third centurv: Carthagefallen, there remained no rival to Rome in the Western Sea; Syracusefallen, there remained no independent centre of Hellenism west ofGreece. The Greek had lost his chance of makingthe Mediterranean aHellenic lake from shore to shore. Henceforth Hellenism wouldcome to Western Europe through Roman channels. The threecenturies before Christ are thus a period of intercourse betweentwo worlds-the Greek and the Roman. One current carries thearmed power of Rome to the East, the other carries the culture ofGreece to the West. Roman conservatism fights a losing battle,and for a time it might have seemed that, in spite of the victory ofRoman arms, Greece would enslave her conqueror, that Rome itselfwould be transplanted to Alexandria. But Antony was defeated byOctavian, and the second period of our survey, inaugurated byAugustus, meant a reinforcement of the Roman tradition, it meantthat Byzantine civilisation could draw upon the riches of a doubleinheritance: the heir of Hellas was also the guardian of the legacyof Rome.Attempts havc been made to disguise this fact: men have definedHellenism as the culturc of all educated men throughout the Romanworld: Otto, for instance,hassaid that JuliusCaesarby his victories



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6 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.won GaulforHellenism.This jugglingwith words s adangerous ame,for it may easily obscurefacts. The principate,formed of Romanmaterials, s a Romanbuilding,and the culturewhich Rome broughtto Western Europe,whether you like that cultureor not, is a Romanproduct. That I firmly believe, and I confessthat modern effortsto belittle that Romanachievementseemto me singularly ll-judged.For our present purposethe significanceof the workof Augustus iesin this-that the Greek East could begin to regard Rome in a newlight, not merely as an exploiting power, but as one deservingofthose epithets of saviourand of benefactorwhich it had lavishedonits own sovrans. The ' Evangel' of a Roman emperor was layingthe basis for that fusion of traditions which went to the makingofEast Rome: it was rendering possiblethe day when the proudestboast of the Greek should be the assertion that he was a Roman.And further, I would repeat, Augustussaved into the new age thoseRomantraditionswhich during the last yearsof the Republic werethreatenedwith dissolution; when the tide which drew Rome to theEastern Mediterranean easserted ts force, those traditions could betransported,not to an Alexandriawhere there was every likelihoodthat they would simply have been submerged,but to a New Romeupon the Bosphoroswhich was the creationof an emperorwho hadalready uled the RomanWest for many years.Thus Constantinenitiates the third period,the greattransition nwhich East Romewasbuilt, and in his own personConstantinemarksaturning point in the historyof the Mediterraneanands. He is notmerelythe result of the past, he is a new beginning. The picturesdrawnby modernscholars f Constantine avebeen manyand various,but few, if any,do justiceto the boldnessandoriginalityof his achieve-ment. Burckhardt ndCostaareonly representativef manywhohavesought to explain away Constantine'sChristianity. I confess that,aftera lengthyand detailedstudyof all those edicts and lettersof hiswhich have been preserved,I have come to the conclusion thatConstantine'sChristianity s indeed the key to his reign. He is theservantof God, the fellow-servant f the bishops, he man of God-amanundera senseof mission: his fortunehe owesto the ChristianGod,andthat relation o aChristianGodhas aidaponhimacharge o defendthe church,to toil unceasinglyor ecclesiastical nity. I feel that toConstantinemore than to any other man the Romanworldowed theformulationof its Christiantheory of sovranty,for with him thattheoryhad sprungspontaneously ndvividlyfrom his own experience.The Roman magistratehad traditionallybeen entrusted with themaintenance f the Pax Deorum;the maintenance f that peacewasamatterof suchvital importanceo the commonwealthhat the Romanstatevery early ookreligionunder ts efficientcharge. It is to the closeconnexionbetween Romanreligionand the Romanstate that WardeFowler'smasterpiece s devoted. *Thatconnexion s not lost with the



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SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. 7passage of the years, and a restoration of the Roman state habituallycarrieswith it a restorationof the Roman religion. Augustus, Justinian,Leo III, the Iconoclast, are all in the Roman tradition; and it is in thisline that Constantine has his place. The calling of the emperor toservice,the missionof the emperor,the obligation of a Christian emperor,these are the themes which fill the writings of Constantine. Theformal acceptance of an Iranian theory which regardssovranty as a giftof heaven is one thing, the living conviction of experienced fact isanother. When George of Pisidia in the seventh century exclaims ofEast Romansovrantyto,,eu xparotTo &Uv ? pe woaptxo-how faira thing is monarchy with God for guide !--he is but echloing thethought of Constantine.And one must ever remember that the man who led the crusade ofA.D. 323 against the persecutor Licinius was the emperor who had atfirst left the settlement of the Donatist controversyto the bishops, andonly after their failure had been forced himself to pass judgment: thatis to say that Constantine came to the Council of Nicaea with the con-viction that the emperor was God's chosen mediator in ecclesiasticalaffairs. When an emperorhas issued an orderin defence of the truth, arecalcitrant bishop must be taught that it is not seemly for him to dis-obey the imperial mandate. And because it was Constantine, thechampion and protector of the church, who formulated that principle,the church allowed the claim. Constantine admitted the church intofull participation in the life of the Roman state: the church-or, atleast, each individual church-is recognised as a corporation before theRoman law, bishops become Roman judges, a Christian clergy enjoysthe same privileges as the pagan priesthood-many other instancescould be cited. And the consequence was that the Christian churclaccepted the Roman state: it did not fashion a new state for a new-aChristian-empire. And with the Roman state the church acceptedthe law of Rome. The law of Islam was fashioned by the religiousconsciousness of Islam: religion and law were inextricably inter-twined. As we have seen during the last few years, for a divorceto be effectuated a completely new mould must be created for thelaw of a new society. But the Christian church, professing a creedof altruism, aWcepteda code of law which, as Mitteis has shown, islogically so completely satisfying because consistently based on thepresuppositions of an egoism untroubled by humanitarian scruples.It is once more the personality and the achievement of Constantinewhich rendered this reception of pagan law as the basis of a Christianstate not merely a possibility, but a fact of history.And Constantine further entertained the vision of a Roman statewhich should be founded upon the unity of Christian orthodoxy andfind in that unity a magnet which should draw the worlk of barbarianpeoples to know and reverence the Christian God. In the earlydays of the fourth century this was a prophetic vision and its realisation



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8 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.was delayed, but that vision was realised at length in the ByzantineEmpire where orthodox Christianitywas the inspiration that sustained,the cement which held togethec, the East Roman world.Thus, as I sec the story-and I am only attempting here to outline apersonal view of the historical development-Constantine was thearchitect of East Rome. If I am right, the strength and consistency ofthe emperor's convictions sprang from the immediacy of an individualexperience; they were no mere logical deductions from an inheritedtheory. Those convictions lcd Constantine, as it were, by a necessityinherent in themselves to divine the fabric of the Christian state whichwas to be. That Christian state was being constructed within theancient shell of the doomed pagan building. The pagan walls werealready sapped and undermined: in time they would fall of their owndecay.That fall was certain, because it was preordained by the will of theChristian God. For the present man could work-and wait. Butwith a prescience that was almost uncanny in its accuracy the emperorforecast the lincaments of the Christian edifice which should one daybe disclosed. The three centuries which stretch from Constantine toHeraclius are a period of transition, an age in which through religiousconflict and domestic disaffection, through foreign menace and bar-barianVFlkerwanderung,ast Rome-the Christian state of Constantine'svision-was built. ' And the builders every one had his sword girdedby his side, and so builded.'We have but to state the problems which received their solution inthis period, and that can be done in few words. First, there was thefundamental economic question: should the money economy of theold world be carried on into the new, or should the Empire lapse into anatural economy and paymeint in kind for service rendered ? In theearly years of the fourth century the Roman state strove resolutely tomaintain the latter system in order that it might not be forced to expendits store of precious metal, but the unrelenting opposition of the soldierand the civil servant carried the day, and onec more salarieswere paidin cash. But this meant that a fluid taxation system must of necessitybe retained, and it is on this system that the later empire was based.Only so could a standing army have been kept in being and a fleet incommission: it was througlh ts gold that Byzantine diplomacy won itstriumphs. The fact is familiar, but it is not infrequently forgotten.The contrast between the wcstern and the eastern halves of the empirelies precisely here : the West was bankrupt ; from unravaged AsiaMinor the East consistentlv drew its taxes and thus remained solvent.The East, like the West, was threatened with the supremacyof thebarbarian: under the menacc of GaYnas nd of Asparthe end of Romanand civilian authority seemed very near. The West had no counter-poise to throw into the scale against Ricimer: the East found withinits own territory the barbarianwho should meet and overthrow the



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SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. 9barbarian rom without. The Isaurianmountaineerssaved the empire.The result may be summarised in a sentencc: in the West all realpower is concentrated in the hands of the barbarian master of thesoldiery-in the East the Roman civilian Anastasiusreignsunquestioned.Sovranty, the undivided imperium of the emperor, and with it theRoman heritage of state supremacylink the East Roman state to theRome of the Principate.Alexandriahad oncc challenged Romc : the answer to that challengewas the battle of Actium. And now Alexandriachallenged New Romein the rivalry of the patriarchates. Constantine's conception of therelation of the emperor to the church could never be realised until thepride of the ecclesiastical Pharaoh, the patriarch of Alexandria, washumbled. The story of that struggle I endcavoured to outline in apaper published recently in the 7ournal of Egyptian Archaeology :it need not be repeated here. At the Council of Chalcedon thepatriarchateof Alexandria suffered shipwreck, and henceforth the willof the emperorand of the emperor'sbishop, the patriarchof New Rome,was supreme. The vision of Constantine had become an accomplishedfact.Constantinople had been built as a Chlristian city set in Greek-speaking lands, and the West, forgetting its Greek, drifted apart. Inhis African and Italian campaigns Justinian madce he last great bid torestorc the Roman heritage of a Mediterrancan empire; hc made thelast great gesture of a Latin tradition in his codification of the law.Both efforts failed: the West went its own way: the Greek languagetriumphed, but the law preserved in Greek texts was Roman law:it is a typical example of that fusion of traditions which this paper iswritten to illustrate.Constantine had sought, we have seen, to found the empire uponthe basis of a common Christian orthodoxy. The work of this peiiodis the elaborationof the content of that orthodoxy. Its final formulationmeant that Egypt and Syria weirealienated from Constantinople, butthrough their loss the empire and orthodoxy became conterminous,and a new cohesion was gained.With the seventh century we find ourselvesin a new world: Persia,the hereditaryenemy of the Roman state, isoverthrown, and the empire'sneighbours are the Arab and the Slav. The period of transition hasbeen brought to a close, and the reign of Heraclius marksthe beginningof Byzantine history.There follows the momentous Iconoclast struggle in which theprinciples formulated during the preceding centuries are directlychallenged: in the field of art a challenge to an iconographywhich wasthe outcome of Greek traditions ; a challenge in the ecclesiasticalsphere when eastern monkswere supported by the western Papacy in a

1 'Alexandria and Constantinople: A Study in Ecclesiastical Diplomacy. The Journal of EgyptianArcbaeology, 12 (I926), 145-156.



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10 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZAN'I'INE CIVILISATION.

demand for freedom from the intervention of the civil power achallengein the realmof law when Iconoclast emperorsmade a consistenteffort to remodel the legislation of the state and refashion it upon aChristianbasis. This triple challenge and its issue are indeed of funda-mental significance for any student who would seek to determine thecssential character of an empire which was at this time, if we are tobelieve Professor Diehl, 'ctroitement orientalisc.' For in thisIconoclast struggle a movement which, as wvesaw, took its rise fromthe extreme eastern provinces of the empire-the lands borderingon Armcnia - was given its opportunitv to enforce its ownconvictions, and to that effort, which cxtended over a century, this'eastern empire gave no uncertain answer. It resolutely refused toabandon its icons despite persecution, it maintained its loyalty to aGreek conography; it rejected the claimsof the monks to ecclesiasticalfreedom: it willingly acquiescedin that interposition of the civil powerin religious affairswhich has behind it the unbrokentradition of Romanhistory; this Christian state, whose loyalty to the faith of the sevencouncils was its proudest boast, rejected with anathemas the con-sciously Christian legislation of the Iconoclasts and unhcsitatinglyreaffirmedin the codc of a Macedonian sovran the Romanlaw of thatintensely Roman monarch Justinian. It reconquered southern Italy,and on that Westcrn soil it created, in Professor Diehl's words, averitable Magna Graecia. What an odd thing for an oricntal empircto do. Why not a Magna Syria or a Magna Chaldaca ? Further, inits greatest and most self-conscious period East Rome cultivated withardour a literature which was modelled on that of classical Greece,while an imperial scholar mobilised in the interest of the common-wcalth the r-ecordsof the empire's Greco-Ronian past.And asagainst he insistenceuponthe dual traditionof Greeceand Rometo what essential charactcristicsof Byzantine civilisation can one pointif one would seekto justify the dogmatic assertionsof, let us say, ProfessolOtto of Munich ? ' Here Asia won a decisive victory over Europe v 1;it is easy to make such a statement: how, we may ask, is it proposed toprovc it ? For mysclf, I can only say, in the familiar phrase of thelawyers, that I desire further and better particulars. Believe me, I amnot trying to makea debating point: I am not merely pleadingprodomo.2I do really want to know what these oriental elements are which arcsaid to determine the character of East Roman life. Is it contendedthat the Byzantine empirc is oriental becauseit is Christian, Christianitybeing in its origin an orientalreligion ? My difficultyis that Christianityhas always meant diffcrent things in different surroundings,while theOrthodox Church, identified with a Greek theology, does not seem tome to be adequately characterised by the cpithet ' oriental.' Again,

' Kulturgeschichtedes Altertums, p. 93.2 TI'he conception of East Roman civilisationdefended in this paper is that of iny little book onThe Byzantine Emnpire published in the HonmeUniversity Library.



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SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISAriON. I I

monasticismmay be described as an oriental movement but once more,when the general pagan asceticism of the time of monastic origins isremembered, when one considers that the strongest influence in theformulation of the monasticism of the eastern church was so essentiallyGreek a statesman as was S. Basil, it would appearto me misleading torepresent Greek monasticism as distinctively oriental. Or take theetiquette of the East Roman court ; here one mav freely admit thatthere is Persian influence at work, but one is forced to askthe questionwhich is truly more individual,more characteristicof the Empire, thatthe sovran is honoured by the prostration of the subject or that with aprofoundly Roman passionfor efficiency the Bvzantine always expectedthe monaich to lead the armies of the Roman state-that Byzantineabsolutismwas never permitted permanently to reduce the emperor tothe position of a roifaineant ? For me the latter fact is infinitely moresignificant. One by one I think of the outstanding features of thisEast Roman civilisation,and I fail to see that they arepeculiarlyoriental.It is not enough, for instance, simply to adduce the fact that Byzantinesovranty was absolute: as such absolutismis not oriental. I have even asuspicionthat we areinclined to talksomewhattoo glibly of the transitionfrom the Principateto the Dominate. We naturallylookat the develop-ment from an Italian standpoint. But Constantinoplewas set from thefirst not in Italy, but in a Greek land. For the folk of the EasternMediterraneanwas there ever anysuchthing asa Principate ? Is not theinterest of the letter of Claudius, recently published by Mr. Bell, i fromone side at least, just this, that it demonstrates the incomprehensionofthe Greekworld before the unaccountablerefusalsof a Roman emperor ?If you desire to represent the triumph of absolutism as an orientalencroachment, you must, for the provinces of the Roman East, go backto a very early date, to the toundation of the Principatc; yes, and evenbeyond that, for this absolutistconception of government was Hellenisticbefore ever it was Roman. If you would contend that the conceptionis fundamentally oriental, might it not be answeredthat it had at leastbecome in the centuries after Alexander the Great so closely woveninto the life of the Hellenistic world as itself to form a part of that Greekcivilisation to which Rome and Byzantium were the heirs ? TheDominate, even in the West, is there 8uvteL from the first: it wasthe interpretation which Augustus put upon his powerswhich made hisimperium something other; for, as soon as the imperium is deprived ofits temporal limits and its col]egiate character, what is the imperiuritself but practical absolutism-if the holder of the imperium choose tomake it so ? If you desire because of its absolutism to represent theEastern empire as an oriental state, it will not be necessaryto await thecoming of the Iconoclast emperors.I would repeat that until Professor Diehl and Professor Otto come

1 yews and Christians in Egypt, British Museum, 1924, pp. 1-37.



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12 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.

into the open and put down their cards upon the table for all to see-until then-it is open to us to insist that those characteristic featureswhich seem to us essential in Byzantine civilisation are developmentsfrom, and continuous with, the civilisations of Greece and Rome.Let us briefly in closing recapitulate some of those features. Firstamong them is a state which was maintained upon the basis of amoney economy: upon that basis alone depended the empire'sstanding army, its fleet in commission, its constantly adaptable art ofwar, continuously studied, and still reprcsented in the survivingmilitarymanuals-the C-TpXrJyiXi: to all of which the West stands instriking contrast, for feudalism and a landed economy made all thisimpossible. Further, a state which resolutely maintained a singlesystem of Roman law ; and this maintenance goes right back to thefounder of New Rome itself, who because he so unexpectedlv offeredto the Christians a full and free entry into the Roman state could doso on his own Roman terms, introducing, it is true, a few minormodifications into the law of the state, but essentially leaving themassive building unaltered. M. Maurice, in a recent book which hiswarmest admirers can onlv regret, has represented the Constantiniansettlement as a Concordat between Roman state and Christianchurch ; but the all-important fact for the student of the later cmpireto realise is surely this: that the admission of the Christians into theprivileges of the state by Constantine was in essentials a unilateralact: thereby was determined the character of the later history ofRoman law. When the Iconoclasts attempted to breakthe traditionalmoulds, it was already too late, for the Roman Empire had familiariseditself too intimately with the conditions of the Constantinian settle-ment to tolerate any change. And again in contrast with this statcof the single law stands the West with its welter of local courts andsystems of local law.And the one law is maintaincd by a single sovranty, the directcontinuation of the imperium of Rome--the only sovranty worthyof the namc in the Europe of the early Middle Age. By the seventhcentury the menace of feudalism is broken in the East Roman Empire,and the centralised state is supreme. Here, in this Paradise of theAustinian jurist, all authority is concentrated in and flows from God'svicegerent, the Emperor.And, asfrom Rome's earliest days, so now in the Christian empire,the holder of the imperium is also charged with the care of religion:the pax Deoium, which it was the duty of the Repablican magistrateto safeguard, has become a Roman emperor's maintenance of Greektheological orthodoxy, which is indeed but another instance of thefusion which I have sought to illustrate. Only to the traditionalduty derived from a Western Rome there has been added a Christianmissionary activity amongst the barbarians settled without theempire's frontiers. This, too, is, as we have seen, a heritage from the



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SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. t3founder of New Rome, for Constantine as Christian Emperorgave a new content to the title of pontifexmaximus: he was ' thebishop of those without the church,' whether heretics or pagans,and to that missionhis successors emained oyal.In a word New Rome did not belie her name: the empireset inGreeklandswith its heart in the city of Constantinemay still withreasonclaim the interest of the membersof a Society formed for thestudyof the workof Rome.

baynes 1930 aspects byzsoc

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