A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire
thecritic.co.uk
thecritic.co.uk
But as the Empire fell, a large set of manuscripts were brought by the great Plethon to Cosimo d’Medici. Marsilio Ficino’s translation of Greek classics into Latin—like the complete works of Plato and the Hermetica—helped kindle the European Renaissance as we know it.
1. The works were still in their original Greek (rather than translations into Latin done long ago, or the translations from Greek to Arabic (and then to Latin) that came in through moorish Spain).
2. Religious attitudes allowed the works to be studied close to their original form. Early Christians were basically of the opinion that if a book disagreed with the bible it was heresy and should be destroyed, and if it agreed with the bible it was unnecessary and could be destroyed. That was less the case in the eastern side of the church and of course a big exaggeration too: there were old Latin translations of eg Plato however they had been quite bastardised to conform with Christian theology (I understand Aristotle was a little less bastardised as early Christian theology was itself quite Aristotelian). By the renaissance less bastardisation was required (if translating to Latin rather than the vernacular).
Without being transferred so late to the west, the works may never have made it to modern times in such a complete form.
The problem with Greek works is that they were no longer readable (since literacy in Greek disappeared with the fall of the Western Empire), and so there was no interest in copying them.
1. You're way overestimating the wealth of the Near East in the time period we're talking about. If you look at Maddison's estimates of historical GDP (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...), you can see that circa 1000, "Western Europe" had a GDP of about 10.9 billion (1990) USD, slightly below "West Asia's" 12.4 billion. But by 1500, Western Europe has ballooned 44.2 billion, while West Asia has fallen to 10.5 billion.
2. Italian merchants had regular access to the Near East throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, so "suddenly the West had easy access to trade with the East after Lepanto" is not even remotely true.
3. Lepanto's significance even in the context of the 16th Century Mediterranean is highly debatable; arguably, the most it did was to halt further westward expansion by the Ottomans, while they solidified their hold over the Eastern Mediterranean (they did, after all, rebuild their fleet within a year). See, e.g. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/head-head/how-important...
4. The most significant transfers of "knowledge" happened earlier, during the 12th Century Renaissance (translation of Arabic works and Arabic translations of Greek works) and the Italian Renaissance (translation of additional Greek works); continued transfer is evident in the apparent presence of 14th and 15th Century Arabic mathematical and astronomy texts in early 15th Century Italy, where they influenced Copernicus. And, of course, the transmission of other forms of knowledge and technology (compasses, paper, new agricultural products like citrus fruits, rice, and sugar, etc.) occurred throughout the period.
Not sure where you're getting this from, but it's suspiciously similar to this commentary by Islamic Caliph Omar, where he was talking about the books in the Library of Alexandria.
"Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of 'Amr ibn al-'As. Several later Arabic sources describe the library's destruction by the order of Caliph Omar.[94][95] Bar-Hebraeus, writing in the thirteenth century, quotes Omar as saying to Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."
Not to mention the fact that the Library had ceased to exist by the 4th Century, long before Omar showed up.
(Though I agree with you that the original comment looks like a recycled version of the Omar story.)
Was the political situation really so chaotic and crazy that you couldn't take that trip? Or was no one interested?
It’s crazy that every single one of Plato’s books survived.
The italian renaissance started in the 14th century for sure and maybe even in 13th century depending on who you ask. Though the exact date can be disputed, nobody disputes the fact that it started long before the fall of the byzantine empire in the mid 15th century.
And the italian renaissance had more to do with direct trade opening up between europe and china/india/etc via the mongol empire ( who had an indirect role in the creation of the ottoman empire ) than anything else. Prior to the mongol empire, they had to no direct trade with either asian centers. Instead they depended on the arabs/persians who acted as middle-men between china/india and europe. It's why we call numbers, Arabic numerals, while the arabs themselves call it Hindu numerals. The arabs got the numbers from india and we got it from the arabs. It's also why europeans used to call china cathay, which is what the arabs called china.
Trade increases wealth. Wealth increase arts/humanities. This is true for italy, india, china, europe, united states, mesopotamia, ancient egypt, etc. It's like how spring rain brings about floral bloom. The italians started getting ridiculously wealthy in the 13th/14th. And like magic, the renaissance was born.
Interesting tidbit, the mongol empire had a significant but indirect part in the "discovery" of the americas by columbus.
So did the Ottomans. Their monopoly of the eastern routes caused the Western kingdoms to go the other direction.
Many educated elites from Rome moved to Constantinople a century before Rome fell. ...and similarly, the most educated elites left Constantinople for northern Italy (and Russia!) before the Ottomans smashed down the walls over the preceding century.
> The italian renaissance started in the 14th century for sure and maybe even in 13th century depending on who you ask. Though the exact date can be disputed, nobody disputes the fact that it started long before the fall of the byzantine empire in the mid 15th century.
The early "Renaissance" was Latin, the Renaissance proper was Greek. That's all you need to know to figure out when (1397+), where (Florence+), and how it started. The seed is more important than the soil.
Some fun facts, Muslim Empires also strecthed to the Italian Sicily Island (ultra Pharum) who ruled for few hundred years before it's later conquered by the Normans, who then later conquered the Britain [1]. Obviously this southern Italian empire is very much cosmopolitan not unlike the old day of Constantinople/Instanbul and modern day New York with probably the best hospitals in town [2].
If I want to guess this is the time Italian Renaissance started because of the superior way of life is happening right at their doorstep with a thriving community basically different in their mentality, religion, culture and lifestyle.
[1]Muslim conquest of Sicily:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_Sicily
[2]Schola Medica Salernitana:
The Byzantine empire was in decline for several centuries, starting with the Islamic expansion. By the time Constantinople fell to the Turks, it had been reduced to a city-state.
If you were a Greek living in the Byzantine Empire – or as they described themselves, a Roman living in the Roman Empire – the Ottomans were just the new Roman Emperors. The Roman bureaucracy, civil institutions, and daily life changed very little.
People don't normally acknowledge it because both the Holy Roman Empire and the Russian Empire wanted to be recognised as successors to the Roman Empire, but the truth is that the Ottomans were the real successors.
Some info on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_claim_to_Roman_success...
Except that the Greek-speaking part was as Roman as the Latin-speaking part in culture, heritage, bureaucracy, governance, and self-identity. The later Western European historians' designation of the East as "Byzantine" (read: not "real" Romans) is much motivated by the West Europe's desire to see themselves as intellectual descendants of the Roman Empire (n.b. Italian Renaissance and Classicism).
Not that much. It was roman in leadership and had the roman legal structures, but it was always the area of prior Greece and the Hellenistic kindgoms, which had millenia of history and culture all of its own (to the point of the Roman's saying that when they conquered it millitarily, it conquered them culturally).
Completing the conquest of the Mediterranean basin and being left bordering only states against whom the Romans never had any particular success, the Sahara, (Parthians/Sassanids) or holding the line against rotating groups of peoples pushed further west in the Balkans and Germania left the Roman state without obvious paths to expansion. That does not mean that Hellenistic states "conquered them culturally".
If you think the West was some unified area with "Latin-speaking" culture, heritage, bureaucracy, and self-identity, you'd need to write a thesis-length paper justifying it no matter what century. Even the Italian peninsula was none of those things until long after the establishment of the Principate, at which point wealth had already precluded the existence of men like Cincinnatus.
If the classical Roman citizen weren't horrified at the organizational changes under Diocletian, or the difference in response between Adrianopole and Cannae, or moving the Imperial seat, or Romanized barbarians leading legionary armies (all of which were 100+ years before the fall of the west), they'd keep going.
The fact that the population in the East spoke Greek (and Syraic, and Aramaic, and a bunch of other languages) is a meaningless distinction. The West never truly had a formalized language anyway, at least among the citizens. The East had the same history, the same institutions, the same government
From what I’ve read the bureaucracy was entirely replaced by the Sultan’s court. Daily life might not have changed much for the Roman in the street, but the Res Publica was gone for good.
Well, it was a conquest, from different peoples, with different civilization, and different religion, and different laws and government structures.
That's pretty much the definition of the end of an empire.
>If you were a Greek living in the Byzantine Empire – or as they described themselves, a Roman living in the Roman Empire – the Ottomans were just the new Roman Emperors.
Not really. There are countless laments for the fall of the empire from the "Greeks living in the Byzantine Empire" at the era, all the way from folk sayings and stories, to scholars, and tons of insurrection against the invaders after the fall of Constantinople.
This idea of the "random masses" that have no sense of belonging and identity, and just change a rule after a different people conquer their lands and impose their rule is dehumanizing and ludicrous, doubly so for an empire and a civilization that last for a millenium...
I think the fact that they conquered Byzantium is perceived more as legitimizing their rule, since the Romans at that point were weak enough to fall. In any case, it's more symbolic than anything, because the Ottomans had already taken most of the important stuff before and really just needed the city for the straight.
But the city was called Constantinople. Istanbul in Greek phonetics means "We are in the city” and was renamed after the capture. It is Ottoman, not part of the Byzantine tradition but Ottomans promoted a continuity narrative without any of the preexisting thousand year old Greek Christian traditions. Those populations had to be forcibly removed or changed faith up until the 1950’s.
Please stop the nonsense that the western world single handedly saved the Greek knowledge. Actually the Muslim scholars that performed most of the scavenging and translations to Arabic in addition to other significant knowledge contributions that later found their way to dark ages Europe, igniting their Renaissance as we know it. They did it because of the importance of knowledge and the fact that translation works are handsomely rewarded by the Caliphs with gold equivalent in book's weight. These massive Greek to Arabic translations and on top of that the more important new knowledge contributions (e.g. Khawarizmi, Avicenna, Averroes) works later found their way to Europe after the fall of Muslim Spain empire starting with the fall of Toledo (the knowledge and translation center) in the 11th CE. Most the Greek books and knowledge were lost by the literally burning of the books and libraries (e.g Alexandria library) by the later Roman Emperors.
Plethon lived during 14th and 15th century before the fall of Byzantine empire and if you want to credit one guy it should be Averroes (Ibnu Rush) who lived in the 12th century, at least two centuries before Plethon. He was highly regarded by the western scholar as the next Philosopher after Aristotle but not so much in the muslim world. He definitely has access to the Greek works including by Plato and Aristotle. I would say his many translations, commentaries and original works of more than 100 books were instrumentals in re-awakening the western European interest in Greek thinkers, an area of study that widely has been abandoned after the fall of original Roman Empire (not Byzantine) [1]. These do not include the numerous Greek, Chinese and Indian translations, and further contributions of Abbasid empire's scholars (Averroes belongs to the Muslim Spain empire) that includes the well-known House of Wisdoms but later was burnt down in the 13th CE by the Mongols. It's said that the river in Baghdad turn into blue due to the inks of the disposed books. Some of the books managed to escape the utter destructions from copying and circulations in the Muslim Spain and other part of the Abbasid empire that really helped the Renaissance movement later on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_the_Brethren_o...
But, yeah, I’ll stand up for old Marsilio’s influence any day. The story is amazing.
Regarding the origin of the Renaissance era please check my other comments on the potential root of the Italian Renaissance movement.
It's a short one, 17 episodes of about 20 minutes each. But these episodes are information-dense and have surprising depth. Also, this was one of the first podcasts ever published, starting in 2005.
"The author who, on the first page of the first chapter of this book, identifies the Book of Malachi, the last book of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) as the final book of the New Testament hardly inspires confidence in the reader. This glaring error and a perusal of his sources, all essentially in English, induced me to return the book."
On a tangent. The latest version of Candide on Gutenberg has such footnotes spread throughout to explain some obscure mentions in the text. An absolute recommender.
Didn't the Byzantians speak Greek (rather than Latin)?
“The cursus publicus (Latin: "the public way"; Ancient Greek: δημόσιος δρόμος, dēmósios drómos) was the state mandated and supervised courier and transportation service of the Roman Empire, later inherited by the Eastern Roman Empire. It was a system based on obligations placed on private persons by the Roman State”
I just wondered if in a thousand years the lines of the different eras will become irrelevant enough that this could be a representation of the olden times. There would be plenty of photographic evidence proving that people on motorbikes never wore knight's armor, but it's possible that detail isn't important in that context.
Really? -- See: https://data8.lustich.de/bilder/l/14804-ritter-auf-motorrad....
Obligatory XKCD: