Byzantium Research Paper

Why Byzantium?
Byzantium is ‘an undertheorised field as well as an understudied one’ (Cameron, 2014, p. 6). As a result there are several interpretations around it, which give rise to ambiguity. This ambiguity mainly derives from diverse and mutually different explanations of (a) the origin(s) of Byzantine culture and art and (b) Byzantium’s contribution to the formation of Europe (including its contribution to the formation of modern European nations and boarders and also, its influences to the construction of modern European identity).
Recent interpretations of Byzantium’s origin(s) have resulted in new understandings of its contribution to the construction of European identity, which underpin its culture and history. Yet, nowadays, it is

As will be explained in Chapter two, in the 19th century, Byzantium was commonly understood as the continuity of the ancient Greek past (in terms of language and cultural traditions): it was presented as a Greek Empire and was placed in the Greek history timeline. From the late 1950s to the late 1980s, when Western historians (re) discovered Byzantium, different interpretations of its origin(s) were given. A dominant interpretation at the time was that Byzantium is heir to Classical Greek and Roman cultures, Christian in religion but eastern in outlook (e.g. Vasiliev, 1958; Norwich, 1989). This interpretation is indicative of the paradox or complexity of Byzantium: the pagan Classical Greek and Roman past combined with Christian morals and eastern appearance. Due to this complexity, Byzantium had once again been marginalised, ignored and finally forgotten by Western scholars, until

Byzantium has recently been thought as the as the ancestor of Europe and acknowledged as ‘the missing link in the wider public’s understanding of the European cultural narrative, of the transition from the classical world to Renaissance and modernity’ (Manginis, 2009, p. 12). This however, is not the first time that this particular idea has been put forward. This idea had first come up when Byzantium started to be (re) discovered in late 1950s. The debate at the time however, was around the influence(s) of Byzantium to the Italian Renaissance. Following the then dominant beliefs on Byzantium’s origins, the influences of Byzantium were frequently reduced to influences of the Medieval Byzantine-Greek traditions. This is why Vasiliev (1958) in his response to the debate hastens to clarify,