- [Narrator] The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium.
In 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell.
Let us now take a look at how this happened.
This city was once called Constantinople;
six centuries ago it was the capital city
of what was without exaggeration one
of the greatest civilizations in world history,
the Byzantine Empire.
A rule by law, something we now take for granted,
was created here, based upon the Roman codes,
in Byzantium, 1500 years ago.
A legal system which was
to become the basic foundation of all types of laws
in most modern governments was the monumental creation
of Byzantine jurisprudence
during the reign of Emperor Justinian.
The system of elementary and higher education
first developed in Byzantium;
it was here, in the fifth century,
that the first university appeared.
The most stable financial system
in the history of mankind was created in Byzantium,
and existed in a nearly unaltered form
for over one thousand years.
Modern diplomacy with its basic principles, rules of conduct,
and etiquette was created and refined here, in Byzantium.
Byzantine engineering and architectural arts were unrivaled.
Even today, famous works by Byzantine masters
as the domes of the Hagia Sophia amaze the world
with their technological perfection.
No other empire in human history lasted
as long as Byzantium.
It existed for 1,123 years.
In comparison: the great Roman Empire collapsed 800 years
after its establishment;
the Ottoman Empire fell apart after 500 years;
the Chinese Qing or Manchu Empire after 300 years.
The Russian Empire lasted 200 years; the British 150 years;
the Austro-Hungarian empire lasted around 100 years.
During its zenith, Byzantium was home to one-sixth
of the entire world population.
The Empire stretched from Gibraltar
to the Euphrates and Arabia.
It encompassed the territories of modern Greece and Turkey,
Israel and Egypt, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania,
Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco,
part of Italy, Spain and Portugal.
There were around one thousand cities in Byzantium—
nearly as many as in modern Russia.
The capital city’s incalculable wealth,
its beauty and elegance,
amazed all the European peoples,
who were still barbarians at the time
when the Byzantine Empire was in its apogee.
One can only imagine—
indeed, history records it as such—
how crude, ignorant Scandinavians, Germans,
Franks, and Anglo-Saxons,
whose chief occupation
at the time was primitive sacking and pillaging,
after arriving from some town like Paris or London
which had populations of some tens of thousands
to this megalopolis of millions,
a city of enlightened citizens, scholars,
and elegantly dressed youths crowding imperial universities,
dreamt of only one thing: invading and robbing,
robbing and invading.
In fact, when this was actually accomplished in 1204
by an army of Europeans calling themselves Crusaders,
who, instead of freeing the Holy Land,
treacherously sacked the most beautiful city in the world,
Byzantine treasures were carried away
in an uninterrupted flow
over the course of fifty years.
Hundreds of tons of precious coins alone were carried away
at a time when the annual budget
of the wealthiest European countries was no more
than two tons of gold.
Venice. The Cathedral of St. Mark.
All the columns, marble,
and precious adornments were stolen
at that very time.
By the way, those horses are from the imperial quadriga,
carried away from Constantinople by the Crusaders.
Priceless holy relics and works of art were looted,
but even more taken by barbarians from Brussels, London,
Nuremberg, and Paris were simply destroyed—
melted down into coins or thrown away like refuse.
To this day, the museums of Europe are bursting
with stolen Byzantine treasures.
But let us take into consideration that
only a small portion was actually preserved.
It was during this period of looting
that the monstrous modern lending system was created
using treasures stolen from Constantinople.
This average sized city in Italy—Venice—
was the New York of the thirteenth century.
The financial fate of nations was decided here.
At first, most of the booty was easily taken by sea
to Venice and Lombardy.
The Russian word for “pawn shop” to this day is “Lombard”.
The first European banks began to spring up like mushrooms
after a good rain.
The English and Dutch,
more reserved than their contemporary Italians and Germans,
joined the activity a little later,
and, with the help of Byzantine riches pouring in,
developed that famous capitalism
with its inevitable lust for profits,
which is essentially a sort of genetic continuation
of the sport of military plunder.
The first significant Jewish capital was amassed
as a result of speculation in Byzantine relics.
An unprecedented flow of free money caused the Western European cities
to grow turbulently,
and became the decisive catalyst in the development of craft,
science, and the arts.
The barbaric West became the civilized West
only after it had taken over, seized, destroyed,
and swallowed up the Byzantine Empire.
We must admit that our own Slavic forebears
were no more well-mannered,
and also succumbed to the barbaric temptation
to get rich quick at the expense
of Constantinople’s seemingly inexhaustible wealth.
However, to their credit, and fortunately for us,
their lust for the spoils of war
did not eclipse the most important thing:
Russians comprehended Byzantium’s greatest treasure.
This was neither gold, nor expensive textiles,
nor even art and sciences.
The greatest treasure of Byzantium was God.
Having traveled the world over in the search of the truth and God,
the ambassadors of Grand Prince Vladimir of Russia
experienced only in Byzantium
that a true relationship between God and man exists;
that it's possible for us to have living contact
with another world.
“We did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth,”
said the ancestors of present-day Russians,
astounded by their experience of Divine Liturgy
in the Empire’s most important cathedral, the Hagia Sophia.
They understood just what kind of treasure
can be obtained in Byzantium.
It was upon this treasure that our great forebears founded
not banks, nor capital, nor even museums and pawn shops.
They founded Rus’, Russia,
the spiritual successor of Byzantium.
So what made it possible for a nation so great
in the arena of world history,
with such extraordinary capabilities,
to so suddenly begin to lose its life-giving force?
What is most interesting is that the problems Byzantium met
during its period of decline— aggression from foreign nations,
natural disasters, economic and political crises—
were nothing new for this
over a thousand-year-old government
with its proven mechanism
for getting out of the most difficult situations.
After all, the empire had experienced all these things before,
and had overcome them.
Yes, there were many envious enemies both east and west,
there were earthquakes, there were plagues;
but it was not these which crushed Byzantium.
All of these problems could have been overcome
if only the Byzantines had been able
to overcome themselves.
Today we will talk about that inner enemy
which appeared within the spiritual depths
of Byzantine society,
and broke the spirit of that great nation,
turning it into a helpless victim of those historical challenges,
which Byzantium was no longer able to answer.
Nowadays we generally assess a society’s well-being
according to its economy.
Although the word “economics,” and even the science
of economics itself hails from Byzantium,
the Byzantines themselves never gave it much attention.
The Byzantine financial-economic system
underwent several serious crises during the course of history,
but the effectiveness of the Empire’s industry
and agriculture generally enabled it to weather the storms.
Suffice it to say that for a thousand years,
all international trade was based upon the Byzantine gold coin.
But Byzantium could not solve the problem
of its government’s loss of control
over its own finances
and the huge, ungovernable process of capital flow
towards the West, to developing Europe,
and this is what finally destroyed its economy.
The government dropped all levers of trade and industry,
and in the end gave all its trade and industrial resources
over to foreign entrepreneurs.
It happened like this:
An important financial resource
in the country was not gas and oil, as it is now,
but customs obtained from the enormous international trade
in the Bosphorus and Dardenelles.
The Byzantines, who earlier relied
solely upon their own capability
to govern the country’s economics,
suddenly began heated discussions about,
and finally decided upon,
consigning the problems of international trade
to their foreign friends, who were more resourceful,
and ready to take responsibility
for the expense of complex transport,
armed guards along trade routes,
the construction of new ports,
and the intensification and development
of commercial activities.
Western specialists were called in from Venice and Genoa,
towns which had grown large
on several centuries of Byzantine trade.
They were granted duty-free trade,
and entrusted with the patrol of sea routes
along the Empire’s territory.
The West began by hook or by crook
to lure Byzantium into the formative prototype
of unified European trade organizations;
and, taking advantage of one of the most complicated periods
in the life of the Empire,
succeeded in reaching its aim:
Emperor Alexios Komnenos signed
an international trade agreement
to the Empire’s great disadvantage, called the “Golden Bulla.”
This agreement was in actuality deceitful,
and profitable only to the West.
At first everyone was pleased:
the government saved a lot of money
that formerly went to its trade and military fleets,
trade increased,
and the city’s shops and markets overflowed with European
and Asian products they had never seen before.
But this did not come without a price.
After just a few decades,
domestic industry and agriculture degraded sharply.
All the Byzantine traders either went bankrupt
or became dependent upon foreigners.
When the country finally realized what was happening,
it was too late.
The “Golden Bulla” was annulled,
and Emperor Andronikos tried to reverse the flow of money
back towards the empire.
He confiscated all foreign commercial enterprises,
which were draining the government of its last resources.
Both he and the country paid dearly for this.
He himself was brutally murdered;
as for his country…
The republic of Venice,
which had by that time become a huge financial oligarchy,
hired a whole crusade,
and sent it to back to Constantinople instead of the Holy Land.
The Byzantines,
who had up until then considered the crusaders
to be in general brothers in Faith and military allies,
were so unprepared for such a treacherous blow
that it was unable to organize sufficient defense.
In 1204, French, German, and Italian contingents
of the Western allies advanced upon Constantinople
and took it over.
The city was mercilessly pillaged and put to the torch.
At the same time, Venice,
considered then to be the stronghold of free enterprise,
announced to the whole Western world
that it was only restoring disdained law and order
and the rights of a free international market;
and mainly, it was warring with a regime
which denies all European values.
This was the moment when the West began
to create an image of Byzantium as a heretical “evil empire.”
As time went by, this image would continually be pulled out
for use from Western ideological arsenals.
Although Constantinople was recovered fifty years later,
Byzantium would never recover from the blow.
Meanwhile, foreign traders would retain complete control
over both the economy and the Byzantine market.
Another unresolved problem
in Byzantium was corruption and oligarchy.
The government warred with them continually,
and was for a long time quite effective.
Bureaucrats and financial schemers
who had gone too far were punished and exiled,
their possessions completely confiscated
and given to the treasury.
However, the authorities never really had the strength
and resolve to check this evil systematically.
Oligarchs gathered whole armies under the pretext
of servants and guards,
and plunged the government into the thick of civil wars.
How did these oligarchs emerge
in Byzantium,
and why did they become uncontrollable?
Byzantium had always been
a strictly centralized bureaucratic government;
however, this was by no means its weakness,
but rather its historical strength.
All efforts to combine authority
with personal interests were cut off firmly and decisively.
However, during one moment in the period
of political and administrative reforms,
the temptation arose to exchange the old
and seemingly awkward bureaucratic machinery
for something more effective and flexible,
in which the government’s role would be limited,
and relegated to that of an overseer of formal legalities.
To put it simply, the government, out of good intentions
and with its eye upon European experience,
in fact willingly relinquished a portion
of its strategic monopolistic functions,
handing them over to a small circle of families.
However, contrary to the government’s expectations,
this new aristocracy it was feeding
did not remain long under the control
of the bureaucratic apparatus.
Resistance continued with alternating success,
and ended in a serious political crisis,
out of which the government could escape
only at the price of irreversible concessions to foreigners.
We know what happened after this.
The oligarchic corruption
of the government continued up until the very takeover
of Constantinople by the Turks.
Incidentally, the oligarchs not only failed
to provide the government with money or arms
during this final invasion by the Turks,
but even grabbed what little was left in the treasury.
When the young Sultan Mehmed took the city,
he was shocked at the exorbitant wealth of some citizens
while the city’s army was completely lacking.
He summoned the richest citizens
and asked them a simple question:
why they did not provide any money
for the city’s protection from the enemy?
“We were saving these funds for your Sultanic Majesty”
was their flattering answer.
Mehmed had them punished immediately
in the cruelest manner:
their heads were chopped off,
and their bodies thrown to the dogs.
Those oligarchs who fled to the West hoping
to hide their capital were mercilessly fleeced
by their Western “friends,”
and ended their lives in poverty.
A huge problem of the Byzantine government
during the period of decline was its frequent change
in political direction,
which could be called a lack of stability and succession
in governmental powers.
With each change of emperors,
the empire’s direction would often change drastically.
This weakened the country severely,
and cruelly exhausted the population.
Political stability is one of the most important conditions
for a strong state.
This was the testament of the great Byzantine emperors.
However, they began to disregard this testament.
There was a period when a new emperor was
in power every four years on the average.
Could it have been possible under such conditions
for the country to undergo a revival,
or complete any large-scale state projects—
projects which would have required many years
of systematic effort?
Of course, there were
also very strong emperors in Byzantium.
One example was Basil II, who was,
by the way, Grand Prince Vladimir’s godfather.
He took on the Empire’s rule after a serious crisis:
the country had been practically privatized by oligarchs.
First of all, he took tough measures
to enforce a vertical power structure,
quelled all separatist movements in outlying territories,
and suppressed rebellious governors and oligarchs,
who were preparing to dismember the empire.
Then he “purged” the government,
and confiscated huge sums of stolen money.
Basil II’s strict measures allowed him
to build the state treasury to unprecedented sums—
the Empire’s annual income was ninety tons of gold
during his reign.
As a comparison, Russia reached such levels
only towards the beginning of the 19th century.
Basil significantly weakened
the mighty regional oligarch-magnates.
These local sovereigns’ influence and power were
at times incomparably greater
than that of the official governors.
Once, during a military campaign,
the Asia Minor magnate Eustaphios Maleinos
demonstratively invited Emperor Basil and his troops
to rest at his estate,
and was easily able to accommodate this huge army
until they had sufficiently recuperated.
This oligarch seriously hoped to influence the country’s fate.
He began his intrigues,
then moved his own puppet candidate forward
to the upper levels of authority.
Later he would pay dearly for this.
All of his vast property was confiscated,
and he himself was sent to one
of the most distant prisons in the Empire.
After the rebellion of another magnate,
Bardos Skleros, was put down,
Skleros even advised Basil II in a candid discussion
to exhaust the magnates with taxes, special tasks,
and governmental service,
so that they would not have time
to get so rich and powerful.
Having restored the verticality of authority in the country,
Basil left a sort of “stabilization fund” to his successor
which was so large, that, in the words of Michael Psellos,
he had to dig new labyrinths
in the underground treasury stores.
The national reserve was designated first of all
for military reforms
and the organization of a professional, capable army.
Byzantium in general had quite a problem
with her “successors,”
although the Byzantines were the greatest specialists
in the world in the area of royal succession.
They did not have the principle of inheritance to the throne.
Wishing to ensure that power succeed to a worthy heir,
the emperors usually chose one or two candidates,
and actively drew them into governmental affairs,
delegated high and responsible positions
in the government to them, and observed them.
There was even a system whereby the country would have
at one time an emperor
and so-called junior emperors, the heirs.
This was all very reasonable,
but no matter how well they honed the system of succession,
in the final analysis it became clear
that it was simply the luck of the draw.
Basil II was unlucky.
Too occupied with governmental affairs,
he was unable to prepare a worthy successor,
and the throne passed to his natural brother Constantine VIII.
When the new emperor began to feel free,
powerful, and fabulously wealthy,
he dedicated himself not to governmental affairs,
but rather to ecstatic daydreams
about accomplishments and glory
which were supposed to eclipse those of his brother.
The results were sorrowful:
under the aegis of the dreamer in porphyry,
the cynical ruling elite quickly lost the obedience
and discipline cultivated by Basil II,
and immersed themselves in power struggles
with renewed vigor.
Although the oligarchs quickly achieved their aim,
it came with a price.
If Basil II punished insubordination by confiscation of property,
or, in extreme cases, by blinding—
a punishment not uncommon during the Middle Ages—,
his successor, the hysterical Constantine,
during fits of anger, castrated half
of his contemporary Byzantine administrative elite.
Furthermore, his extravagance eclipsed
even that of one of the most dissolute emperors
of the country’s period of decline,
whose nickname was “The Drunkard,”
and like him, in a state of inebriation,
entertained the rabble at the city hippodrome,
three times larger than this Roman Coliseum.
The next successor also failed to fulfill expectations.
Their vertical, central power structure began to collapse.
The result of a new uprising amongst the clans and elite
and the continual re-shifting
of property was predictably deplorable—
within fifty years the Empire found itself
on the brink of destruction.
The large stabilizing fund,
in the hands of inept sovereigns,
caused more harm than good—
this money gained without effort began
to work against the country by corrupting society.
The same historian, Michael Psellos, remarked bitterly
that the empire “grew sick” from the misuse
and plunder of this money set aside by Basil.
“The government’s body,” he wrote, “became bloated.”
Some were glutted with money;
others were stuffed to the gills with ranks,
and their lifestyle became unhealthy and destructive.
Thus, succession of power was a matter
of life and death for the Empire.
When there is stability in succession and development,
the country has a future;
without stability collapse.
But the people did not fully understand this,
and kept demanding various changes.
Opportunists and run-away oligarchs also played
on these popular moods.
They would usually hide somewhere abroad
and support various intrigues
with the aim of overthrowing this or that emperor
who did not suit them,
providing for their own man
and new re-assignments of property.
Such an individual was a certain Bessarion,
a mediocre scholar, unprincipled politician,
and ingenious intriguer of the 15th century,
who fled Byzantium for Rome
and received there political asylum.
Bessarion coordinated the entire opposition in Constantinople
and caused no small headache to the government.
He went on further to become a Catholic cardinal.
He bought himself a house in Rome.
After his death, his Western protectors
even named a small street on the edge of town after him.
Another serious and incurable disease
never before a problem in Byzantium also developed:
the question of nationality.
The fact of the matter is that nationality problems in Byzantium
really had not existed for many centuries.
As the historical lawful descendants of ancient Rome,
which was destroyed by barbarians in the fifth century,
the inhabitants of Byzantium called themselves Romans.
In a vast empire divided into many nationalities,
there was one faith—Orthodox Christianity.
The Byzantines literally fulfilled the Christian teaching
of a new humanity living in the Divine Spirit,
where “there is neither Greek, nor Jew, nor Scythe,”
as the Apostle Paul wrote.
This hope preserved the country
from the destructive storm of ethnic conflict.
It was enough for any pagan or foreigner
to accept the Orthodox Faith, and confirm it in deed,
in order to become a full member of society.
On the Byzantine throne, for example,
were almost as many Armenians as there were Greeks;
there were also citizens of Syrian, Arabian,
Slavic, and Germanic origin.
Amongst the higher ranks
of government were representatives
of all peoples in the Empire—
the main requirements were their competence
and dedication to the Orthodox Faith.
This provided Byzantine civilization
with incomparable cultural wealth.
The only foreign elements for the Byzantines were people
who were strange to Orthodox morals
and to the ancient Byzantine culture
and perception of the world.
For example, coarse, ignorant,
money-grubbing Western Europeans of the time
were considered barbarian by the Romans.
Emperor Constantine VII, “The Purple-born,”
instructed his son when choosing a bride,
“Inasmuch as every nation has its own traditions,
laws, and customs,
one should unite in matrimony
only with one from amongst his own people.”
In order to understand the emperor’s thoughts correctly,
we must recall that his great grandfather was a Scandinavian
by the name of Inger,
his grandfather was the son of an Armenian man
and Slavic woman from Macedonia,
his wife was the daughter of an Armenian man
and a Greek woman,
and his daughter-in-law was the daughter of an Italian king.
His granddaughter, Anna,
became the wife of the Russian Prince Vladimir,
just after the latter was baptized.
The very idea of a “nation” was
actually a European concept
which later in Byzantium evolved into an idea
of their own national superiority,
or more precisely, of that of the Greeks,
around whom Byzantium had grown.
Europeans lived in smaller states built upon ethnic principles;
for example, France, Germanic countries,
and Italian republics.
National custom was good and correct for them;
but the fact of the matter was
that Byzantium was not an ethnic state,
but rather a multi-national empire,
and this was an essential difference.
For one hundred years the Byzantines warred
with this temptation and did not allow themselves
to be broken.
“We are all Romans—Orthodox citizens of the New Rome,”
they proclaimed.
It must be noted that all this unfolded
at the very beginning of the epoch called
by historians the “Renaissance”—
the world-wide creation of a nationalistic,
Hellenic-Greek, pagan ideal.
It was understandably difficult
for the Greeks not to be tempted
by this Western European Renaissance,
and the European fascination
with the culture of their great ancient Greek ancestors.
The first to give in were the intelligentsia.
The enlightened Byzantines began to sense their Greekness.
Nationalistic movements began,
then the denial of Christian traditions,
and finally, during the reign of Palaeologi,
the imperial ideal gave way to a narrow,
ethnical Greek nationalism.
However this betrayal of the imperial ideal was costly—
the nationalistic fever tore the empire apart,
and it was then quickly swallowed up
by the neighboring Moslem empire.
One apologist for Hellenic nationalism,
the liberal scholar Plethon,
arrogantly wrote to Emperor Manuel II,
“We, the people whom you command and govern,
are Greeks by descent,
as our language and educational heritage testify.”
Such words would have been unthinkable
even a century earlier.
However, Plethon wrote them
on the eve of the fall of Constantinople,
in which were living people no longer Roman,
but rather Greeks, Armenians, Slavs, Arabs, and Italians,
in enmity with one another.
Greek arrogance led to the discrediting
of Slavs in the Empire.
Byzantium thereby estranged the Serbs and Bulgarians,
who could have provided real help
in the struggle with the Turks.
The result was that the peoples of the once united Byzantium
began to be at enmity with one another.
The West did not miss the chance
to take advantage of this new problem:
it began to forcefully convince the Serbs and Bulgarians
that the Greeks had been suppressing
their national identity for centuries.
Several real revolutions were provoked,
and finally, with the help of economic and military forces,
the West insisted upon the Serbs’
and Bulgarians’ separation from Byzantium
and unification with Latin Europe.
These nationalities took the bait, exclaiming suddenly,
“We are also Europeans.”
The West promised them material and military aid,
but of course, deceived them,
instead throwing them cynically before themselves
as a buffer along the warpath of the Turkish hordes.
The Balkan states, so loyal to the West,
found themselves under the cruel Turkish yoke
for many long centuries.
And Byzantium was no longer able to help.
National arrogance thus played a wicked role for the empire.
Another great problem was the gradual loss of control
over the far-flung provinces.
The contrast between the provinces
and the satiated, wealthy capital, Constantinople,
which lived for the most part
at the expense of these impoverished areas,
became very sharp.
At the beginning of the thirteenth century,
the Byzantine writer Micheal Choniates wrote
to the capital’s inhabitants in bitter reproach,
“Do not all riches flow into the city as rivers into the sea?
But you do not wish to take a look at the towns around you,
who await some fairness from you.
You send them one tax collector after another
with brutish teeth,
in order to devour their last morsels.
You yourselves remain in your city to enjoy your peace,
and extract the riches.”
Even the capital city’s chief administrator,
the eparch of Constantinople,
enjoyed a particular status in the country,
and his contemporaries often compared his power
with that of the Emperor,
“only without the purple,” as they would say.
One such eparch once became so feverishly involved
in the building of high-rise buildings in the capital
that he could only be stopped
by a special imperial order forbidding the construction
of buildings over ten stories.
All political, cultural and social life
essentially took place in Constantinople.
The government did not wish to notice
that a serious imbalance was developing,
and the forsaken provinces were becoming
more and more decayed.
Gradually, the tendency to flee to the center
became increasingly marked.
Governors of these distant territories
also played their deceitful games.
Money budgeted and sent
to the provinces was shamelessly expropriated.
It would not have been half as bad
if this stolen money had gone only towards the enrichment
of governors and their proteges.
But the money was often used to create real armies
under the guise of peace officers.
These battalions were often more capable in battle
than the regular army.
When the government weakened, the provinces separated.
The government watched this process unfold almost helplessly.
But the rebellious governors,
having freed themselves of central authority,
were no longer to remain captivated by their own high hopes.
Together with their hapless population,
they almost immediately fell prey to the cruel authority
of the non-Orthodox.
When this happened,
the local population was usually destroyed completely,
and the region re-settled by Turks and Persians.
The demographic problem was one
of the most serious problems in Byzantium.
The Empire was gradually inhabited
by peoples of a foreign spirit,
who firmly supplanted the native Orthodox population.
The country’s ethnic composition changed visibly.
This was in some ways an irreversible process,
for the birth rate in Byzantium was decreasing.
But this was not the worst thing.
Something similar had earlier occurred periodically.
The catastrophe was that the peoples
who were pouring into the Empire
were no longer becoming Romans, as they once had done,
but remained permanently foreign, aggressive, and enemy.
Now the newcomers treated Byzantium
not as their new homeland, but only as potential property
which should sooner or later come into their own hands.
This happened also because the Empire refused
to educate the people—
a concession it had made to the new,
Renaissance-era demagogy declaring state ideology
to be a violation of the individual.
However, nature abhors a vacuum.
Having voluntarily renounced
their thousand-year ideological function
of educating and cultivating the people,
the Byzantines made way for influences
upon the minds and souls of their citizens;
influences which were not so much a promotion
of independent and free thinking
as they were a form of intentional ideological aggression,
aimed at destroying the foundations of state and society.
But the Byzantines had amazing, incomparable experience.
The best leaders of the Empire were capable
of using their vast inheritance—
a wealth of experience in governance and subordination.
As a result of this acumen, cruel barbarians,
after partaking of the great Christian culture,
became the most reliable allies,
received grandiose titles and vast estates,
were numbered amongst the highest ranks
of government service,
and fought for the interests of the Empire
in the furthest stretches of its territory.
As for demographic issues,
the eternal headache of any empire—
separatism in the outlying areas—
the best Byzantine Emperors left
as an inheritance proven methods of solving these issues;
for example, creating conditions
for the massive resettlement of the inhabitants
of centralized areas to the outlying provinces.
This would quickly spark an explosion in the birth rate,
and effectuate an extraordinary adaptability
to the new locality in the second generation.
However, this wealth of experience was cruelly mocked
and criminally disregarded in favor of foreign opinion;
and, finally, it was irretrievably lost.
But just what was this invasive opinion?
Whose views did the Byzantines begin to value?
Who was able to so influence their minds
that they began to commit such suicidal mistakes,
one after another?
It's hard to believe that such enormous reverence
and dependence could have developed
with regard to that same once barbaric West,
which had for centuries so enviously
and greedily looked upon Byzantium’s wealth,
and then coldly and systematically grew fat
upon its gradual dissolution.
Byzantium was a unique state
which differed from both the East and the West.
Everyone recognized this fact;
some were exhilarated by it,
others hated this independence,
while others felt oppressed by it.
Be this as it may,
Byzantium’s difference from the rest
of world was an objective reality.
First of all, Byzantium was the only country in the world
which stretched over a huge territory
between Europe and Asia,
and its geography was already a large contributing factor
to its uniqueness.
It's also a very important fact
that Byzantium was a multi-national empire by nature,
in which the people felt the state
to be one of their highest personal treasures.
This was entirely incomprehensible to the Western world,
where individualism and personal self-will
had already been raised to the status of sacred principle.
Byzantium’s soul,
and its meaning of existence, was Orthodoxy—
the unspoiled confession of Christianity,
in which no dogmas had changed essentially
for a thousand years.
The West simply could not endure
such demonstrative conservatism,
called it undynamic, obtuse, and limited;
it finally began with grim fanaticism
to demand that Byzantium modernize her whole life
in the Western image—
first of all in the religious, spiritual spheres,
and then in intellectual and material spheres.
With respect to the uniqueness and particularity of Byzantium,
the West, despite its occasional raptures
over Byzantine civilization,
pronounced the sentence: it must all be destroyed;
if necessary, together with Byzantium
and her spiritual inheritors.
Not a bad organ.
Also invented and created in Byzantium.
In the ninth century, it was brought here to Western Europe,
and from that time on, as you see, it has taken root.
Of course, it's senseless to say that the West was to blame
for Byzantium’s misfortunes and fall.
The West was only pursuing its own interests,
which is quite natural.
Byzantium’s historical blows occurred
when the Byzantines themselves betrayed their own principles
upon which their empire was established.
These great principles were simple,
and known to every Byzantine from childhood:
faithfulness to God,
to His eternal laws preserved in the Orthodox Church,
and fearless reliance
upon their own internal traditions and strengths.
For hundreds of years,
Byzantine emperors both wise and not so wise,
successful governors and inept commanders,
saints on the throne and bloody tyrants,
when faced with a fateful choice,
knew that by following these two rules
they ensure their Empire’s ability to survive.
In the Holy Scriptures,
which every Byzantine knew, this is stated very specifically:
I call heaven and earth to witness before you this day:
I have offered you life and death, blessing and curse.
Choose life, that ye might live, and your descendants also.
In Byzantium, after the end of the 13th century,
two parties emerged—
one called for reliance upon the country’s internal strengths
to believe in them unconditionally,
and to develop the country’s colossal potential.
It was prepared
to accept Western European experience discriminately,
after a serious test of time,
but only in those cases
where such changes would not touch the fundamental basics
of the people’s faith and state politics.
The other party, pro-Western,
whose representatives pointed to the indubitable fact
that Europe is developing more rapidly and successfully,
began to proclaim more and more loudly
that Byzantium has historically exhausted itself
as a political, cultural, and religious phenomenon,
and to demand a root-level reworking
of all state institutions in the image
of the Western European countries.
Representatives of the pro-Western party, secretly,
or more often, openly supported by European governments,
held an undoubted victory over the imperial traditionalists.
Under their guidance, a series
of important reforms took place,
including those economic, military, political,
and finally, ideological and religious.
All of these reforms ended in total collapse,
and lead to such spiritual
and material destruction in the Empire
that it remained absolutely defenseless
before its Eastern neighbor— the Turkish Sultanate.
First of all, the pro-Western party began
to re-evaluate its fatherland’s history, culture, and Faith.
However, instead of healthy criticism,
they offered only destructive self-abnegation.
Everything Western was exulted,
and everything of their own was held in contempt.
Byzantine history was distorted,
faith and tradition were mocked, and the army was degraded.
The whole of Byzantium began to be painted
as a sort of universal monster.
The wealthy Byzantine younger generation no longer studied
in its own country, but rather left to study abroad.
The best minds of Byzantine science emigrated to the West.
The state ceased to give them the proper attention.
Emperor Theodore II foretold,
“Rejected science will become our enemy
and will take up arms against us.
It will either consign us to destruction,
or turn us into barbarians.
I write this in a state of gloomy melancholy.”
The Emperor’s presentiment did not deceive him.
During the final, fatal attack on Constantinople,
a brilliant metal-casting scholar, a Hungarian named Urban,
offered to create for the Emperor large artillery armaments
which could sweep away the Turkish troops.
But the treasury was empty,
and the rich of Constantinople did not give any money.
Not having received payments,
the insulted Urban offered his services to Sultan Mehmed.
The Sultan seized the opportunity
which would give him the capability
to destroy the city’s invincible walls.
He provided unlimited funds and began the project.
Finally, the canons of Urban,
the best student of the Byzantine ballistics school,
decided the Empire’s fate.
Western reforms in the military
along Western lines had begun long before this.
In Byzantium, there had for many centuries existed a proven,
although not always effective system called stratiotes—
a national regular army with mandatory service
from the age of eighteen.
With time, the Byzantine army underwent serious changes.
An army of a new type required significant capital.
The very stabilization fund of Basil II was earmarked
precisely for the creation of an effective army.
The fund, as we recall, was squandered,
while decisions were made to totally re-vamp the army
according the image of a Western professional one.
At that time, the Byzantine mind was captivated
by the image of Western knights,
all nailed into suits of armor—
the latest achievement of contemporary military industry.
“My Byzantines are like clay pots,”
one emperor commented contemptuously about his warriors,
“but the Western knights are like iron kettles.”
To be brief, as a result of the reforms,
they took apart their regular army,
but never built a professional one.
In the final analysis, they took the course
of forming a block with the West within the framework
of a new military-political union.
In practice this meant that
during the most critical periods of war
they were forced to resort to a professional army,
but not of their own—to a mercenary one.
What it means to have a mercenary army,
how loyal and capable it is,
the Byzantines learned from bitter experience.
Attempting to rely on the West’s experience,
the state became more and more ineffective.
Even so, they stubbornly sought salvation
in a new imitation of Western examples.
The final and most devastating blow
to Byzantium was the ecclesiastical union with Rome.
Formally, this was the submission of the Orthodox Church
to the Roman Pope for purely practically reasons.
One after another aggressive attack from foreign nations
forced the country to make the choice:
either to rely on God and their own strengths,
or to concede their age-long principles
upon which their state was founded,
and receive in return military and economic aid from Latin West.
And the choice was made.
In 1274,
Emperor Michael Palaeologus decided upon a root concession
to the West.
For the first time in history,
ambassadors from the Byzantine Emperor were sent to Lyon
to accept the supremacy of the Pope of Rome.
As it turned out,
the advantages the Byzantines received
in exchange for their ideological concession were negligible.
The pro-Western party’s calculations
not only were unjustified, they collapsed.
The union with Rome did not continue for long.
The Grecophile Pope Leo IV,
who had drawn Byzantium into the Union
out of better intentions,
died soon after the Union was concluded,
and his successor turned out to be
of a completely different spirit:
the interests of the Latin West were first on his list.
He demanded that Byzantium change completely,
that it re-make itself in the image and likeness of the West.
When these changes did not happen,
the Pope excommunicated his newly-baked spiritual son,
Emperor Michael Palaeologus,
and called Europe to a new crusade against Byzantium.
The Orthodox converts to Catholicism were pronounced bad Catholics.
The Byzantines were supposed to get the point
that the West needed only complete
and unconditional religious and political submission.
Not only the Pope was to be recognized as infallible,
but the West itself as well.
Another terrible loss from betrayal of the Faith was the loss
of trust amongst the people in the government.
The Byzantines were shocked by the betrayal
of their highest value—Orthodoxy.
They saw that it was possible for the government
to play with the most important thing in life—
the truths of the Faith.
The meaning of the Byzantines’ existence was lost.
This was the final and main blow which destroyed the country.
And although by far not all accepted the Union,
the people’s spirit was broken.
In place of their former thirst for life
and energetic resolve to action,
there appeared a terrible general apathy and fatigue.
The people no longer wanted to live.
This horror has happened during various periods in history,
with various peoples, and with entire civilizations.
This is how the ancient Hellenic people died out,
amongst whom an inexplicable demographic crisis occurred
during the first centuries of A.D.
People did not want to live;
they did not want to continue their generation.
The rare families that did form often had no children.
The children who were born died from a lack of parental care.
Abortions became common practice.
The darkest occult and Gnostic cults came aggressively
to the forefront—cults characterized by hatred for life.
Suicide became one of the main causes of death
amongst the population.
This conscious dying out of a population has been called
by science “endogenous psychosis of the I-III centuries”—
a mass pathology and loss of meaning
for continued existence.
Something similar happened in Byzantium
after the conclusion of the Union.
The crisis in state ideology led to total pessimism.
Spiritual and moral decline began to take over,
along with unbelief, interest in astrology,
and the most primitive superstitions.
Alcoholism became a true scourge of the male population.
A morbid interest in long-forgotten mysteries
of the ancient Greeks arose.
An intelligentsia fascinated with neo-paganism
consciously and cynically destroyed the foundations
of Christian Faith in the people.
Processes of depopulation and family crises ensued.
Out of the 150 Byzantine intellectuals known to us
to have lived during the late 14th, early 15th centuries,
only twenty-five had families of their own.
This is only a small part of what came to Byzantium
due to the decision amongst the elite
to sacrifice higher ideals for the sake of practical advantages.
The soul collapsed;
in a great nation,
who had given the world grandiose examples
of flights of spirit,
now reigned unbridled cynicism and squabbles.
One Russian pilgrim wrote bitterly
during the mid-14th century,
“Greeks are those who have no love.”
The best minds of Byzantium watched with sorrow
as the Empire gradually died,
but no one heeded their warnings.
The high profile statesman, Theodore Metochites,
who saw no salvation for Byzantium,
wept over the former greatness of the “Romans”
and their “perished happiness.”
He lamented the Empire “wasted by illnesses,
easily succumbing to every attack by its neighbors,
and become the helpless victim of fate and eventuality.”
A new Union signed in Florence,
in what was now a completely mad hope
for help from the West, did not change a thing.
For the Byzantines themselves
this was a new moral blow of great magnitude.
Now, not only the Emperor,
but even the Holy Patriarch shared the faith of the Latins.
However, despite various hierarchs’ betrayals,
the Orthodox Church stood firm.
“All were against the Union,” a Byzantine historian relates.
“O, piteous Romans.”
monk Gennadios Scholarios wrote prophetically
from his reclusion after the signing
of the Florentine Union,
and fourteen years before the fall of Constantinople.
“Why have you gone astray from the right path?
You have departed from hope in God
and begun to hope in the might of the Franks.
Together with the city,
in which everything will soon be destroyed,
have you apostatized from your piety?
Be merciful to me, O Lord.
I witness before the face of God that I am not guilty of this.
Return, wretched citizens,
and think about what you are doing.
Together with the captivity which will soon befall us,
you have apostatized from your fathers’ inheritance
and begun to confess dishonor.
Woe to you, when God’s judgment shall come upon you.”
The words of Gennadios Scholarios came true to the letter.
And he himself was to carry the unbearably heavy cross
of a bitter patriarchate—
he became the first Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople
after its fall to the Turks.
The fatal year of 1453 was approaching.
In April, Sultan Mehmed,
still a very young man of twenty-one,
about the age of a college sophomore in today’s Istanbul,
attacked Constantinople.
The Sultan was absolutely delirious with the idea
of taking the Romans’ capital.
His elder councilors-viziers,
one of whom was a secret agent from Byzantium,
persuaded him to cancel the attack,
saying that it was too dangerous to battle on two fronts,
for all were certain that battalions
from Genoa and Venice would arrive any minute.
But the Sultan turned out to be a disobedient pupil.
The promised help from Europe, of course, did not arrive.
To the party of Westernizers in Constantinople
there was also added a pro-Turkish party.
Sad as it may be, there was no true Byzantine-imperial party
amongst the politicians.
The Turkish party was headed by the first minister
and admiral, Grand Duke Notaras.
He announced for all to hear that
“It would be better to see the Turkish chalma cap ruling
in the city than the Latin tiara.”
A little later he, the first minister,
was to fully experience
just what this ruling Turkish chalma cap was actually like.
When Sultan Mehmed II took the city,
amidst the general pillage and wild mayhem,
he decided to appoint this very Notaras as head of the city.
However, when he learned that
the Grand Duke had a fourteen-year-old son of rare beauty,
he demanded that the son be first surrendered
to his harem of boys.
When the shaken Notaras refused,
the Sultan commanded that both he
and the boy be beheaded.
The terrible outcome was unfolding inescapably.
O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth,
Who art everywhere present and fillest all things,
treasury of good gifts and Giver of life,
come and abide in us, and cleanse us of all impurity,
and save our souls, O Good One.
May 29, 1453,
after a siege lasting many months and resisted heroically
by the city’s defense forces,
the Turks were able to break through the upper wall.
The defense forces, frightened, turned to flight.
The last Byzantine Emperor,
Constantine Palaeologus, remained alone, abandoned by all.
Holding his sword and shield, the Emperor exclaimed,
“Is there not a Christian who might take off my head?”
But there was no one to answer.
The enemies surrounded him, and after a brief siege,
the Turks standing behind the sovereign killed him
with a knife in the back.
What more is there to say?
Now a completely different people are living here,
with different laws and morals.
The Byzantine inheritance, foreign to the invaders,
was either destroyed or altered at the root.
The descendants of those Greeks
who were not destroyed by the conquerors were made
into second class citizens in their own land,
with no rights, for many long centuries.
The West’s vengeful hatred of Byzantium and her successors is
entirely inexplicable to the West itself;
it goes to some deep genetic level,
and—as paradoxically as this may seem—
continues even to the present day.
Without an understanding of this amazing but undeniable fact,
we risk misunderstanding not only distant history,
but even historical events of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries.
In Russia, before the revolution,
serious research on Byzantium was conducted.
However, the necessary conclusions were not drawn
from purely theoretical knowledge.
During the first decades of Soviet government,
research in Byzantology was cut off,
and then officially banned.
More than that: just in case, the Bolsheviks repressed
all Byzantologists remaining in Russia;
only a few were able to flee abroad.
Research in Byzantology was re-opened in Russia
by a decision from the highest government levels.
In 1943, at Stalin’s orders,
the Institute of Byzantology was created,
and a corresponding department
in the Moscow State University was opened.
Was there no other time than 1943 to open such an institute?
It is simply that the former seminarian,
Joseph Dzhugashvili, finally understood
from whom they should be studying history.
And the great city of Constantinople,
which had oft times forgotten the ancient laws of its fathers,
for which forgetfulness it did not even preserve its own name,
performs if only its final service as an instructor,
to retell the story of its greatness—
and of the monumental fall of a great empire.