Byzantinism - Criticism

Criticism

The Byzantine Empire acquired a negative reputation in the Western world as early as the Middle Ages. The creation of the Holy Roman Empire by Charlemagne in the 9th century and the East–West Schism in the 11th century made the Empire an outcast to the Western European countries following the Roman Church, and the siege and sack of Constantinopole during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 only cemented those differences. Hence the European medieval stereotypes of the people of the Byzantine Empire portrayed them as perfidious, treacherous, servile, effeminate and unwarlike.

Medievalist Steven Runciman described the medieval European view of the Byzantine Empire by saying:

Ever since our rough crusading forefathers first saw Constantinople and met, to their contemptuous disgust, a society where everyone read and wrote, ate food with forks and preferred diplomacy to war, it has been fashionable to pass the Byzantines by with scorn and to use their name as synonymous with decadence". —Steven Runciman, The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and His Reign: A Study of Tenth-Century Byzantium, 1988

Criticism of the Empire continued among historians of the 18th century and 19th century, particularly in the works of historians and philosophers influenced by The Enlightenment. Edward Gibbon, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottfried Herder, William Lecky, Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire were among the many Western writers of that period who were critical of the Byzantine system.

Of that Byzantine empire, the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed. There has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely destitute of all forms and elements of greatness, and none to which the epithet "mean" may be so emphatically applied...The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude. —William Lecky, A history of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne 2 vols. (London 1869) II, 13f. Its general aspect presents a disgusting picture of imbecility: wretched, nay, insane passions, stifles the growth of all that is noble in thoughts, deeds, and persons. Rebellion on the part of generals, depositions of the Emperors by means or through the intrigues of the courtiers, assassinations or poisoning of the Emperors by their own wives and sons, women surrendering themselves to lusts and abominations of all kinds. —Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Edward Gibbon, the first English historian to write a full history of the Byzantine Empire in his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789), was a sharp critic of the Empire. Jacob Burckhardt, an influential 19th century historian shared Gibbon's view:

At its summit was despotism, infinitely strengthened by the union of churchly and secular dominion; in the place of morality it imposed orthodoxy; in the place of unbridled and demoralized expression of the natural instincts, hypocrisy and pretense; in the face of despotism there was developed greed masquerading as poverty, and deep cunning; in religious art and literature there was an incredible stubbornness in the constant repetition of obsolete motifs. —Jacob Burckhardt, The age of Constantine the Great

Critics pointed out that the Byzantine Empire and its successors were uninfluenced by such major shifts in Western philosophy as the Investiture Controversy, the Reformation and the Renaissance; and reduced the Byzantine political culture to caesaropapism and authoritarian political culture, described as authoritarian, despotic, and imperialistic.

After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, critics of the Byzantine system pointed out that it has survived and "corrupted" other states, in particular, it has been used in the discourse of the political system, culture and society of the Russia (from the times of the Grand Duchy of Moscow through the tsardom of Russia to the Russian Empire - see also tsarist autocracy), the Soviet Union, the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan states (the former European provinces of the Ottoman Empire).

Modern historians point out that this negative reputation is not necessarily true, and at the very least, a very simplistic generalization. As a constructed term, Byzantinism also shares those fallacies with a closely related term, Balkanism. Angelov sums it up as follows:

Byzantinism begins from simple stereotypes, passes through reductionism and essentialization, and then proceeds to impute Byzantium's supposed essence onto modern Balkans or Russia as the burden of history. ... As a discourse of "otherness", Byzantinism evolves from, and reflects upon, the West's worst dreams and nightmares about its own self. —Dimiter G. Angelov, Byzantinism: The Imaginary and Real Heritage of Byzantium in Southeastern Europe