Battle of Manzikert in 1071

In the Battle of Manzikert, fought in a region of Armenia held by the Turks, the army of the Byzantine Empire under Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was defeated by a Seljuk Turkish army under Sultan Arp-Arslan.

The battle was the first major defeat of a Byzantine army by the Seljuk Turks. The battle took place near Lake Van in eastern Anatolia. Before the battle, the Byzantine Empire appeared mighty, and it controlled more territory that it had for centuries.

Concerned about Turkic nomads who were increasingly encroaching on Byzantine territories, in the spring of 1071, the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes assembled an army of 60, 000 men an move eastward, intending to drive the Seljuk Turks, led by Sultan Alp-Arslan, from Anatolia.

Romanus’ forces encountered the Seljuk horde of 100, 000 mounted bowmen on the plain of Manzikert in eastern Turley on 26 August. The Turks avoided close engagement, harassing the Byzantine troops from a distance with arrows.

In the afternoon Romanus’ troops drove the Turks for some distance, capturing the Turks’ camp, but at dusk, he ordered a withdrawal. The withdrawal was not well executed and the Seljuks pressed the Byzantine forces severely. Romanus suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hand of the Seljuks and was captured in the battle, allowing the powerful Ducas family to seize control of Constantinople before Romanus was released.

The Battle of Manzikert began the long slow Byzantine retreat which ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Battle of Manzikert in 1071

Bulgarian-Byzantine War (981-1018)

The Byzantines under Basil II invaded Bulgaria but were defeated by the Bulgars under Czar Samuel in battle near Sredets (Sofia).

Basil then returned to Constantinople to deal with internal matters and because his brother had no interest in affairs of state, from 985 Basil was sole emperor. Samuel’s forces invaded Thessaly in eastern Greece in 896 to take Larissa and Dyrrhachium, Samuel, who took advantages of internal discord in The Byzantine Empire at that time, began to extend control over eastern Bulgaria and beyond.

Bulgaria gained independence under the Czar Samuel, from 987, onward and Ochrid, in Macedonia, became capital of a new Bulgarian state.

The emperor continued campaigning against the Bulgarian in 993. Basil’s Byzantine troops stopped the Bulgarian march, winning a tough campaign at Ochrida, the Bulgarian capital and at Spercheios in 996.

By 1001 Basil had seized forts around Sredets, cutting off Samuel form Bulgarian territory along the Danube. Basil then drove the Bulgars from Thrace and Macedonia and in 17 invaded Bulgaria itself. Basil’s army overwhelmed Samuel’s army at Balathista in 1014 and about 15, 000 Bulgarian soldiers were captured.

In 1018 the first Bulgarian kingdom ceased to exist, for it was transformed into a Byzantine prince ruled by an imperial governor. It preserved its internal autonomy to a certain extent.
Bulgarian-Byzantine War (981-1018)

Battle of Baphaeon

Between 1260 and 1320, the Turcomans, mobilized by their ghazi tribal chiefs, and in tandem with the Seljuk waged jihad against Byzantine forces.

Their leader was Osman Ghazi (Osman I), who held the frontier land in western Asia Minor that was farthest north and closest to the Byzantines. Osman had become master of an area stretching from Eskishehir to the plains of Iznik and Brusa and had organized a fairly powerful principality.

When Osman I besieged around 1301, the Byzantines sent an army to raise the siege. The emep0ror depstahced against Osman a force of 2,000 men under the command of the Hetaereiarch Muzalon charged with the task relieving Iznik.

This army was defeated by Osman I in the summer of 1301 at Baphaeon, on the southeastern shores of the Sea of Marmara.

The local population was panic-stricken and started to leave, seeking shelter in the castle of Nicomedia.

This victory over the Byzantine imperial army made Osman prominent among other frontier lords the prospect of new conquest, booty and land attracted a wave of Turcoman warriors to be Ottoman principality.

Many other nomadic Turkish soldiers came to Konya, Osman’s capitol. They became known as beys, commanders of complements of fighters who were loyal to them, just as they in turn, were loyal to Osman.

In Ottoman tradition this victory is known as the victory won near Yalakova over the forces of the emperor during the siege do Iznik.
Battle of Baphaeon

Battle of Adrianople

Battle of Adrianople

On August 9, 378 c.e., the Eastern Roman army under the command of Emperor Valens attacked a Gothic army (made up of Visigoths and Ostrogoths) that had camped near the town of Adrianople (also called Hadrianoplis) and was routed. The battle is often considered the beginning of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century.

During the 370s c.e. there was a movement of peoples from Mongolia into eastern Europe. Called the Huns, they were driven from Mongolia by the Chinese. From 372 to 376 the Huns drove the Goths westward, first from the region of the Volga and Don Rivers and then the Dnieper River.

This pushed the Goths into the Danube River area and into the Eastern Roman Empire. Seeking refuge from the Huns, Emperor Valens gave the Goths permission to settle in the empire as long as they agreed to serve in the Roman army.


The Romans agreed to provide the Goths with supplies. Greedy and corrupt Roman officials tried to use the situation to their advantage by either selling supplies to the Goths that should have been free or not giving them the supplies at all.

During a conference between the Visigoth leadership and Roman authorities in 377, the Romans attacked the Visigoth leaders. Some of the leaders escaped and joined with the Ostrogoths and began raiding Roman settlements in Thrace.

Throughout July and August of 378 the Romans gained the upper hand and rounded up the Gothic forces. The majority of the Goths were finally brought to bay near the town of Adrianople. The Western and Eastern emperors had agreed to work together to deal with the Goths.

Gothic Cavalry return from foraging to attack the rear of the Roman army of Emperor Valens

Western emperor Gratian with his army was on his way to join Valens when Valens decided to attack the Goths without Gratian and his army. Moving from Adrianople against the Gothic wagon camp on August 9, Valens’s attack began before his infantry had finished deploying.

As the Roman cavalry charged the camp, the Gothic cavalry, having been recalled from their raids on the surrounding countryside, returned and charged the Roman cavalry and routed it from the battlefield. The combined force of Gothic infantry and cavalry then turned on the Roman infantry and slaughtered it. The Goths killed two-thirds of the Roman army, including the emperor.

It took the new emperor, Theodosius I, until 383 to gain the upper hand. Theodosius was able to drive many of the Goths back north of the Danube River, while others were allowed to settle in Roman territory as Roman citizens.


In the short term this ended the problems with the Goths but set the stage for problems for the Western Roman Empire. With the peace the Eastern Roman Empire gained a source of soldiers for its army. These soldiers would eventually rebel and march against Rome.

In 401 the Gothic leader Alaric led a Goth-Roman army on an invasion of Italy. The invasion was turned back in 402, and Alaric finally agreed to stop hostilities in 403. The peace only lasted until 409, when Alaric invaded Italy again and eventually captured and sacked Rome on August 24, 410 c.e.

Byzantine-Persian Wars

In the third century c.e. the Sassanid dynasty replaced Parthian rule in the Persian Empire. Rome and Persia soon ran into conflict over disputed territorial claims, particularly in the Caucasus region.

Diocletian stabilized the frontier by forcing the Persians from the region and establishing suzerainty in 299 c.e. Hostilities resumed when the Persians invaded Armenia, trying to regain dominance, and continued throughout much of the fourth century.

In 363 Emperor Julian the Apostate was killed fighting the Persians. Afterward Rome yielded territory, including Armenia. Relations remained tense (and sometimes hostile) for decades until conflict resumed in the early fifth century. Another factor that led to conflict was religion.


The Eastern Roman Empire was set on Christianity, while the Sassanid Empire was set on Zoroastrianism. When the Persians began to persecute Christians, Theodosius II declared war, which resulted in another treaty.

In 442 relations were ameliorated when both faced the scourge of the Huns and mobilized for defense. Peace was broken in 502 when the Persians demanded tribute and invaded Syria and Armenia.

Hostilities continued on and off throughout the sixth century, concluding in 591 with the Caucasus region returning to Roman suzerainty under Emperor Maurice.

Byzantine cataphract

When a military revolt led to the murder of Maurice and the installation of Phocas in 602, the Persians invaded—allegedly acting on behalf of Maurice’s family. Thus began the last Byzantine-Persian war (602–629).

During the war the Roman governor of Byzantine North Africa sent his son Heraclius (Herakleios) to overthrow the tyrant Phocas in 610. Despite his ability, the war turned badly for Heraclius, who became emperor in 610. Over the next decade the Persians seized Syria, Palestine, and Egypt and plundered Anatolia. Heraclius now strove to shift the war to Persia.

With the support of the patriarch of Constantinople, he used church money to buy off the Avars (a hostile people to his north) and rebuild his army with which, in eastern Anatolia in 622, he won his first victory.


Operations then focused on the Caucasus region. In 626 the Persians attempted to besiege Constantinople with the aid of the Avars and Slavs. The city withstood the Avars, while the Byzantine navy defeated the Slav boats that were to ferry the Persians to the European side.

The Byzantines credited the Virgin Mary with the defense of their city. While they turned to their faith, the Persians sought to undermine this fervor. When they had captured Jerusalem, for example, they deported Christians to Persia (including the patriarch) and also took captive the holy relic of the True Cross. Finally, they called for Jews to resettle Jerusalem as a Jewish city.

The momentum began to shift to the Byzantines who were strengthened by an alliance with the Khazars, a Turkic people from the steppes. In 627 Heraclius defeated the Persians and led his army into Persia. Peace was established after Kavad II overthrew his father King Khosraw II. Heraclius obtained the return of the True Cross. The cost of the war was great.

It was at this juncture that Islam appeared outside Arabia as the “rightly guided caliphs,” the successors of the prophet Muhammad, led the new Muslim armies out of Arabia at the very moment that Persia, having been defeated, and Byzantium, victorious but gravely damaged, could offer little resistance. Persia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa were soon in Muslim hands.

Code of Justinian

Among the most lasting accomplishments of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527–565 c.e.) was his comprehensive compilation and organization of Roman law.

The emperor believed that law was as essential to the security of the empire as military power. His legal achievement (like his martial effort) was an attempt to ensure the power and legacy of his reign.

Justinian selected and changed a commission, which included Tribonian, the day’s greatest legal mind, with the task of organizing the past and present laws of the empire.


In 529 the commission completed its work, the Code, which arranged centuries of imperial legislation, removing that which was no longer needed. This code was revised and updated in 534. Copies were distributed throughout the empire, and only laws that were recorded in it were valid in the empire’s courts.

After this Justinian entrusted Tribonian and his commission with the task of compiling, editing, and organizing past legal decisions or commentaries on the laws. This work, known as the Digest, was completed in 533. It was divided into 50 books, by subject headings for easy reference.

Justinian further entrusted Tribonian with the publication (534) of an official legal textbook, the Institutes, for the training of lawyers. These three parts—along with a fourth part consisting of Justinian’s new laws called Novels (meaning new laws)—all written in Latin, became known as the Corpus Juris Civilis, or Body of Civil Law.

This work had a profound effect on future legal procedure. The Corpus influenced Byzantine law down to 1453, when the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Corpus largely influenced Byzantium through a later Greek legal compilation known as the Basilika (ninth century).

In the West, Roman law was diminished by the transition to Germanic rule during the early Middle Ages. In the 11th century, however, legal scholars at the University of Bologna in Italy revived the study of Justinian’s Corpus.

In the 12th century this study led Gratian, a Bolognese monk, to create a systematic organization of canon law (church laws) called the Decretum. This study also gave birth to secular legal developments in western Europe. The Code of Justinian still heavily influences many European legal systems.

Constantine the Great

Constantine the Great

The reign of Constantine the Great marked the transition from the ancient Roman Empire to medieval Europe and a decisive step in the establishment of the Christian Church as the official religion for the Greek and Latin civilizations.

His view of church-state relations affected the way that European governments were constituted for centuries, and his influence had direct repercussions on the administration of such countries as Russia, ruled by czars, even until the 20th century.

Constantine was the son of Constantius and Helena. His father was appointed in 293 c.e. as one of four co-emperors in the Tetrarchy set up by Diocletian. Diocletian chose to keep Constantius’s son under surveillance as his tribune. When Diocletian retired in 305, Constantine was allowed to join his father on campaign in Scotland. His father died in Britain, and his troops proclaimed Constantine as their new Caesar .


Between 305 and 312 Constantine marshaled propaganda, troops, and resources toward taking sole power in the Western Roman Empire. He won a string of battles against the Franks and others and then marched into the Italian Peninsula with an eye on defeating his Roman rival. The key to his success was a risky battle fought outside Rome in 312.

Constantine claims to have seen a celestial vision there that revealed his fortune and steeled his courage. At first he said that it was the appearance of his protector god Apollo who promised him 30 years of success, with the Roman numeral XXX appearing in the sky. As Constantine grew older, he decided that this visitation was of a Christian nature and that he saw a single cross with the words in hoc signo vince (“in this sign conquer”).

The later Christian version of the story finishes with Constantine’s army marching to victory, the cross emblazoned on their shields. The place of the vision was the Milvian Bridge, now associated with the turning point of his life, his career, and the destiny of the Christian religion. Constantine thought the hand of the divine was on him, and eventually he identified the god as Christian.

As a result, he began to be proactive in his support of the heretofore-persecuted faith. He restored properties to churches in the West and especially showed favor to the clergy. He met his Eastern Roman Empire counterpart and forged an agreement called the Edict of Milan in 313 c.e., in which the Christian faith was officially permitted.

Constantine statue

Though Constantine is portrayed as the matchless defender of the Christian faith by popularized histories, this interpretation must be taken with a grain of salt. For example, in his decrees he avoided citing specific religions or religious terms, thus he said “Supreme Sovereign” or “Highest God.” He did not require that his subjects do “superstitious” (i.e., Christian) practices to show their allegiance to the empire. He kept a specialist in Neoplatonism as a personal adviser.

He did not officially persecute the Greco-Roman cults, apart from a few police actions. He warned Christians against taking law into their own hands in their zeal to shut down pagan shrines. He dedicated his capital city with both pagan and Christian rites and imported into the city many works of art from pagan temples.

He continued the pagan Roman tradition that the emperor was the divinely appointed mediator between the divine and the empire, thus he intervened infrequently in church disputes. In fact, he did not formally enter the church through baptism until on his deathbed, reflecting his own anxieties about the impossibilities of living a life of holiness while serving as emperor.


East-West Discord

The concord with the eastern emperor did not last. In the East there was widespread mistrust of Constantine and continued harassment of Christians. War broke out, and Constantine again showed his military prowess. By 324 he became sole emperor of the whole Roman Empire.

At once Constantine began to make arrangements to set up his capital in a safer part of the empire, in Byzantium (in modern-day Turkey) on the European side of the Bosporus. It was called New Rome, lower in rank than Italian Rome, but destined by Constantine to be upgraded over time.

When he made the city his home and named it after himself, Constantinople, it was the sign that the safety and prestige once the possession of the Latin world had permanently migrated eastward. The light of the Roman civilization moved east, and the West began its descent into darker times.

Constantine restored many of Diocletian’s reforms and renounced others. For example, he not only recognized the need for regionalized government; he set up armies to fight in the various European and Asian theaters of war. Germans and Franks entered into the higher ranks of imperial military service.

These concepts paved the way for medieval society, with local lords who controlled smaller territories and personal armies. Yet, he did not accept Diocletian’s idea of the college of emperors, or Tetrarchy, and replaced it with a dynastic emperorship.

He separated the military from the civil in terms of services and duties. He set up a new currency and standardized its units, a system that lasted for 700 years. He held serfs and peasants to their social positions so that food production and imperial projects such as army campaigns, road maintenance, and city building could continue with ample supplies of food and labor.

At the same time he made a conscious effort to bring Christian values into public policies so that the downtrodden would be helped and especially the clergy could be promoted to a higher public status.

The results for the Christian Church were that bishops were welcomed into his courts, Christianity spread even more rapidly, and churches were reconstructed and given proprietary rights. He took an active interest in such church-building projects as St. Peter’s in Rome and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

At the same time, since Constantine saw himself as the mediator between God and his empire, he often took on the role of referee in church controversies, a role for which he was not educated. He summoned the Council of Nicaea (325) and proposed the formula to be accepted to bring unity to all the Christians in his realm. Effectively speaking, Christianity achieved a prestige in the empire that future emperors such as Julian the Apostate could not reverse.

Benefactor of The Church

The last few years of Constantine’s life were spent in the East, either in his capital or on campaign, although he occasionally traveled to Rome or the Rhine to secure his domain there. His military activities were confined to controlling the “barbarian” tribes along the frontier and not fighting Rome’s nemesis, the Sassanid Empire. Later emperors were not so fortunate. Though a civil war broke out after his death, his influence was enough to give imperial prerogatives to his descendants for the next century.

Later Christians lionized such a benefactor of the church. It did not hurt that Constantine was buried next to the Church of the Apostles and de facto numbered among them as the “13th apostle.” His friend, Eusebius, revered by later generations of Christians as the historian of the early church, also added luster to the image of Constantine through his biography of the man. Other intervening and contemporary sources and evaluations of Constantine were less enthusiastic.

Around the ninth or 10th century, however, the reputation of Constantine soared to new heights as stories and legends abounded concerning his sanctity and supernatural acts. About 25 “lives” of Constantine have been recovered, both from the East and the West, which sing his praises beyond what was celebrated by earlier generations. As a saint in the Eastern Christian Church, his feast day is May 21.

Constantinople

Constantine the Great’s city lasted as the center of civilization and religion for more than 1,000 years. Of the cities of the world, only King David’s city, Jerusalem, compares with its prestige and longevity. The ancient name was Byzantium. The foundation of the city dates back to the seven century b.c.e., and was known as a place of contention during the Peloponnesian War.

Even 150 years before Constantine, the Romans had reduced the city to rubble for its insubordination and then restored it because of its strategic location. But it was Constantine who chose the city, lavishly made it his own, and destined it to be New Rome, capital of the empire.

Constantine's City

Constantine at first planned to build his city near the famous city of Troy, but he thought better of it, perhaps because of his Christian sympathies, not wanting to adulterate his new priorities with Homeric religion. Byzantium had many natural advantages: It was surrounded on three sides by water, had excellent harbors, was close to the industrial centers of Asia Minor, and was accessible to the agricultural breadbaskets of Egypt and southern Russia.


Important east-west imperial roads intersected here, including the famous Via Egnatia. The ancient city also was known for its wall, so the wall rebuilt by Constantine could fortify its landed side. Thus, the place was eminently more strategic and defendable than the old Rome of Italy, which was not built on the sea and did not have the same natural barriers to protect it.

Constantine began his project in 324 c.e., and by 330 the new city was ready. The fortification was large enough that the boundaries encompassed empty and undeveloped areas. None of these walls survives today, but their outlines can be imagined from written records. Growth at first was modest, and the population was small. Constantine was determined to turn the city into Rome’s eastern twin.

He doled out the same subsistence subsidies, endowed it with the similar civic titles and offices, and constructed the same infrastructures and monuments. A portion of the grain supposed to go to Italian Rome now went to New Rome, and eventually tens of thousands of its people depended on the free rations of food. Constantine put into place the aristocratic ranks and nomenclature, just like ancient Rome.

Constantinople map

On the higher ground he erected the acropolis, the center of community life, the site of his Great Palace and the Capitolium; nearby was the largest gathering place, the Hippodrome, where public games were held. Later all three of these locations would become the locations of wild and bloody imperial intrigues.

Colonnaded roads and markets marked out urban districts. Gates opened up to the important trade roads. New Rome even had seven hills around which the city was planned, as in Italian Rome. The city was not overtly a Christian center by Constantine’s own design.

The old pagan temples already in Byzantium were left undisturbed during his reign. In fact, the dedication rites for the inauguration of the city included pagan prayers and artistic donations from pagan temples. He built no more than a few churches; the famous Church of the Holy Apostles, next to his burial spot, was not his project, but his son’s (Constantius II).

Nor was the city officially the capital of the empire until the time of his son, when Constantius inaugurated the senate and set up a hierarchy of imperial offices. Now old Rome began to be superseded by New Rome, and there was no turning back. In fact within 50 years or so, the Germanic tribes would overrun the old Italian capital, and to its bitter disappointment, Constantinople would not save its predecessor.


Growth and Christian Influence

The city continued to grow prodigiously over the next 200 years. By the end of the fourth century there were some 14 churches, 52 colonnaded roads, 153 bath complexes, and many ground and underground cisterns. The need for water storage pointed to the only thing lacking. Here the Theodosian emperors (or perhaps Valens) rectified the situation in typical Roman fashion.

They engineered a remarkable system that connected water sources in the hinterland as far as 60–70 miles away with vast water reservoirs inside the city. Imperial sculptors even elaborately decorated the underground cisterns. Constantine’s walls were too restrictive for the burgeoning population, so the walls were expanded and the area of the city doubled.

Some 400 defensive towers were constructed along the whole wall and the shoreline. The three-arched Golden Gate, still standing, goes back to these days, as do many of the walls presently standing. Here the Council of Constantinople was held in 381 to affirm the creedal statements of the Council of Nicaea.

By the end of the fifth century the religious dimension of the empire registered itself more strongly. Urban monasticism developed in the city, along with an abundance of Christian artwork. In addition, Oriental and Egyptian influences started infiltrating its urban culture.

Constantinople was no longer only an aspirant to the old Rome, but a new and transformed capital city in its own right. The height of the ancient city was reached under Justinian I and Theodora in the sixth century. It was the most important political, commercial, and cultural center in all of Europe. Lavish religious and imperial building occurred in this period.

The monument that best defined Constantinople’s glory was the Hagia Sophia, a basilica that still dominates modern Istanbul’s skyline. Not only was the domed structure a daring and innovative symbol of Christianity’s official stature, but also it was a statement about Constantinople’s own grandeur. The city probably had between 500,000 and 1 million residents.

An eclectic mixture of architecture and cultures was found in the sixth-century city, imported from the far-flung corners of the globe. Even the Christianity of the emperors was more diverse than Hagia Sophia would lead the observer to believe, as the city offered sanctuary to various non-Orthodox Christians.

Muslim Invasion

The fall of Constinople by Ottoman muslims invasion

A plague devastated the city in 542, and half the population died. The optimism that had marked the city as it grew economically and militarily for the previous 200 years was also soon to be challenged severely by the Byzantine-Sassanid wars, the unsuccessful sieges of the city by the Persians (616) and the Avars (626), and especially the rise of the Muslims in the latter part of the seventh century.

The invasion of the Arabs in 717 and the loss of imperial territory to them brought the city to the brink of disaster. Nonetheless, the Theodosian walls faithfully kept out foreigners for some 1,000 years.

Ironically, there was only one exception: In 1204 the city opened up its gates to the Western crusader “allies” who turned on the city and pillaged it. The treachery caused such outrage among the Byzantines that surrender to the Muslims was countenanced as a better fate. In 1453 the demoralized city gave up to the Ottoman Muslims.