Constantine XI Palaiologos- the last Byzantine emperor who met his death in the battle for Constantinople. After his death, he became a legendary figure in Greek folklore as the emperor who must awaken, restore the empire and rid Constantinople from the Turks. His death ended Roman Empire, which dominated the East for 977 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Constantine was born in Constantinople. He was the eighth of ten children Manuel II Palaiologos and Helena Dragas, daughter of Serbian tycoon Konstantin Dragas. He spent most of his childhood in Constantinople under the care of his parents. Constantine, became despot of the Morea ( medieval name Peloponnese) in October 1443. While Mystras, a fortified city, was a center of culture and art rivaling Constantinople.
After ascending as despot, Constantine began work to strengthen the defenses of the Morea, including reconstructing the wall across Isthmus of Corinth.
Despite foreign and domestic difficulties during his reign, which ended with the fall of Constantinople and Byzantine Empire, modern historians usually respect the reign of Emperor Constantine.
Died in 1451 Turkish Sultan Murad. He was succeeded by his 19 year old son Mehmed II. Soon after this, Mehmed II began to incite the Turkish nobility to conquer Constantinople. In 1451-52, Mehmed built Rumelihisar - a hill-fortress on European side Bosphorus. Then everything became clear to Konstantin, and he immediately began organizing the defense of the city.
He managed to raise funds to stockpile food for the upcoming siege and to repair the old walls of Theodosius, but the poor state of the Byzantine economy prevented him from raising the necessary army to defend the city from the large Ottoman horde. Desperate, Constantine XI turned to the West. He confirmed the union of the Eastern and Roman churches, which was signed at the Council of Ferraro-Florence.
The siege of Constantinople began in the winter of 1452. On the last day of the siege, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine emperor said: “The city has fallen, but I am still alive.” Then he tore off royal regalia so that no one could distinguish him from an ordinary soldier and led the rest of his subjects into last Stand, where he was killed.
Legend has it that when the Turks entered the city, an angel of God rescued the emperor, turned him into marble and placed him in a cave near the Golden Gate, where he waits to rise up and take back his city.
Today the emperor is considered national hero Greece. The legacy of Constantine Palaiologos continues to be a popular topic in Greek culture. Some Orthodox and Greek Catholics consider Constantine XI a saint. However, he was not officially canonized by the Church, partly due to controversy surrounding his personal religious beliefs, and because death in battle is not considered martyrdom in Orthodox Church.
Disaster in Crete
Monasteries of Holy Mount Athos. Lavra of St. Athanasius.
The Great Lavra or Lavra of St. Athanasius is the largest and most important Orthodox monastery on Holy Mount Athos. It is located in the southeastern part of the peninsula, half an hour away from the coast at the very foot of Mount Athos. The patronal feast of the monastery is the day of memory of St. Athanasius, who founded it, celebrated on July 5 according to the old style.
Religion and sects in Greece
Islands of Greece, which one to choose?
There are more than 2 thousand islands in Greece. Picturesque rocks and exotic grottoes provide ample opportunities for recreation and tourism. When traveling around Crete, you can’t help but look at Elafonisi beach, with its pink sand. It is here that the waters of three seas merge: the Aegean, Libyan and Ionian. Warm water in the first, cold - in the second, and in the third... Come and find out. They say that Greece has everything! Almost 300 sunny days a year, 4 seas, many islands. Yes, Greece has everything a tourist needs.
A trip to Greece - how to make it as safe as possible.
Greece is considered one of the safest European countries. It has a well-deserved reputation as the “most honest” country European Union, and the crime rate in Greece is very low. Serious crimes, especially robbery and theft, are very rare. A common thing that no one is surprised by is situations of almost 100% return of forgotten items. public place things. For example, you forgot your wallet or purse in a cafe, and a day later you returned, and it was lying in the same place or with the owner in the cafe in a separate signed bag.
At the beginning of 395, the last emperor of the united Roman Empire, Caesar Flavius Theodosius Augustus, left Rome for Constantinople. “Arriving in Mediolan, he fell ill and sent for his son, Honorius, whom he saw better. Then he watched the horse's display, but after that he became worse and, not having the strength to attend the spectacle in the evening, ordered his son to replace him and the next night he rested in the Lord, seventy years old, leaving behind him two sons as kings - the eldest, Arkady, in the East, and Honoria - in the West” - this is how the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes tells about the death of Theodosius I the Great. From now on, the Roman Empire was virtually forever divided into two parts - Western and Eastern. The Western Empire, weakened and fading, lasted another eighty-one years, languishing under the blows of neighboring barbarian tribes. In 476, the barbarian Odoacer, the leader of the German mercenaries, who at the end of the 5th century constituted the main fighting force of the West, demanded from the Emperor Romulus (or rather, from his father, the military leader Orestes, who actually ruled the state) a third of Italy for the settlement of his warriors. The emperor refused to satisfy this demand; in response, the mercenaries rebelled, proclaiming Odoacer “king” (i.e., prince) of Italy. Orestes died, and on August 23 Romulus was deposed.
Imperial power, which had long been a mere fiction in the West, did not appeal to Odoacer, and he did not accept it. The last Western Roman emperor, the teenager Romulus, died in the late seventies in Naples, in the former Villa Lucullus, where he was a prisoner. Odoacer sent the crown and purple robe - signs of imperial dignity - to Constantinople to Emperor Zeno, formally submitting to him in order to avoid conflicts with the East. “Just as there is one sun in the sky, so there should be one emperor on Earth,” was written in the message to the monarch of Constantinople. Zinon had no choice but to legitimize the completed coup, and he granted Odoacer the title of patrician.
History laughed at “Rome the First” - the city founded by Romulus the Great was finally crushed by barbarity during the reign of the second and last Romulus, who received the contemptuous nickname Augustulus from his contemporaries - for his insignificance. “Rome the Second” - the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantium, lasted for almost another thousand years, in many ways actually taking over the baton of ancient Rome and creating, at the junction of the West and the East, its own original statehood and culture, amazingly combining the features of arrogant Greco-Roman rationalism and barbaric eastern despotism... So, Byzantium is the name of the state that developed on eastern lands the great Roman Empire in the 4th - 5th centuries. and existed until the middle of the 15th century. You should know that the term “Byzantium” (as well as the “Eastern Roman” and “Western Roman” empires) is conventional and was introduced into use by Western historians of later times. Officially, the Roman Empire always remained united, the citizens of Byzantium always considered themselves the successors of the Romans, they called their country the Empire of the Romans (“Romans” in Greek), and the capital - New Rome. According to classical definition, Byzantium is " organic synthesis three components - ancient Hellenistic traditions, Roman state theory and Christianity."
The economic and cultural separation of the east of the Roman Empire from the west began in the 3rd-4th centuries. and finally ended only in the 5th century, and therefore it is impossible to name the exact “date of birth” of Byzantium. Traditionally, its history dates back to the time of Emperor Constantine I and his founding of the second capital of the empire on the left bank of the Bosphorus Strait. Sometimes the “reference point” is assumed to be different, for example:
- the beginning of separate administration of the empire under Diocletian (end
III century);
- the empire of the times of Constantius II and the transformation of Constantinople into a full-fledged capital (mid-IV century);
- division of the empire in 395;
- decline and death of the Western Empire (mid-5th century - 476);
- reign of Emperor Justinian I (mid-6th century);
- the era after the wars of Heraclius I with the Persians and Arabs (mid-7th century).
In 284 AD, the Illyrian Diocles took the throne of the Roman Empire and took the throne name of Diocletian (284 - 305). He managed to curb the crisis that had tormented the vast state since the middle of the 3rd century, and actually saved the empire from complete collapse, carrying out reforms in the main spheres of life of the country.
However, Diocletian's measures did not lead to final improvement. By the time Constantine, later nicknamed the Great, ascended the throne in 306, the Roman power had entered another period of decline. The system of Diocletian tetrarchy (when the state was ruled by two senior emperors with the titles of Augustus and two younger ones - Caesars) did not justify itself. The rulers did not get along with each other huge empire once again became the arena of ruinous civil wars. By the early twenties of the 4th century, Constantine managed to defeat his rivals and remain the sole ruler. The financial, economic and administrative measures of Constantine made it possible to stabilize the position of the state, at least until the end of the 4th century.
That Rome of the Dominant era was not like the Rome of the first Augustans or the great Antonines, and not last role change played a role in this economic factors ancient society.
By the end of the 2nd century. ad victorious wars Rome and the surrounding powers were largely over. The scale of conquests decreased sharply, and at the same time the influx of slaves, who constituted the main productive force of society, began to dry up. Coupled with low efficiency slave labor this led to the gradual involvement of a larger and larger mass of the poorest free citizens in the production process, especially in the east of the empire, where small land ownership and handicraft production were traditional. In addition, the custom of endowing slaves with property (peculium) and leasing cultivable land and objects of labor to them became increasingly widespread. Gradually, the social status of such slaves began to approach the status of free peasant tenants (colons) and artisans. At the beginning of the 3rd century. Roman society was divided into two classes - the “worthy”, honestiores, and the “humble”, humiliores. By the 4th century. the first included the descendants of senators, horsemen, curials, and the second, along with the plebeians, included colons, freedmen, and then, increasingly, slaves. Gradually, the colons and their descendants were forbidden to leave their lands (in the 5th century they even stopped recruiting them into the army); in the same way, membership in craft colleges and city curiae was recognized as hereditary.
In the ideological sphere, the main event of those years was the adoption of Christianity by the empire. On April 30, 311, Augustus Galerius issued an edict in Nicomedia, allowing the population to profess “the errors of Christianity.” Two years later, the Augustans Constantine I and Licinius published a similar edict in Milan, and in 325 Constantine I, not yet baptized, presided over the Nicene Council of Christian bishops. Soon, Constantine’s new edict on religious tolerance allowed the professing of “the errors of paganism.” After a brief and unsuccessful attempt by Julian II the Apostate to revive paganism, it became clear that it had exhausted itself. In 381, Christianity was proclaimed the state religion of the empire. This was the end of ancient culture.
The barbarian Germans are beginning to play an increasingly larger role in the life of the country (mainly in the west). Already from the middle of the 4th century. Most of the army of the West and a significant part of the East were recruited not from Roman free citizens, but from barbarian federates who were subordinate to the Roman authorities for the time being. In 377, a revolt broke out among the Visigothic federates of Mysia. In August 378, at the Battle of Adrianople, the East Roman army suffered from the Visigoths crushing defeat, Emperor Valens II died in battle.
The military leader Theodosius became Augustus of the East. The title of Augustus was bestowed upon him by the Western Emperor Gratian. After some time, Gratian fell under the swords of rebellious soldiers, and Theodosius the Great, taking Gratian’s young brother, Valentinian II, as co-ruler, remained virtually an autocrat. Theodosius managed to pacify the Visigoths, repel the attacks of other barbarians and win difficult civil wars with the usurpers. However, after the death of Theodosius, a split occurred in the state. The point is not at all in the division of power between Arkady and Honorius - this was common - but in the fact that from then on the West and East, who had long been aware of their economic and cultural difference, began to rapidly move away from each other. Their relations began to resemble (while formally maintaining unity) the relations of warring states. This is how Byzantium began.
According to the will of Theodosius the Great, after 395 the most developed territories went to Byzantium: the Balkans, Roman possessions in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Southern Crimea, Egypt, Syria, Palestine and part of North Africa. From the beginning of the 5th century. Illyricum and Dalmatia finally fell under the rule of its emperors. The empire was multi-ethnic, but the core of its population was Greek, and Greek was its main (and from the end of the 6th century, state) language. Having defended its possessions from the invasion of barbarians in the 5th century, Byzantium survived and existed, continuously changing, for more than a thousand years, remaining a unique phenomenon of Eurasian civilization.
In this book, the main part of the story begins with Emperor Arcadius (the reader can learn about the emperors of the East to Arcadius and the West from Honorius to Romulus Augustulus from).
By the end of the 5th century. all the lands of the Western Roman Empire became part of the barbarian kingdoms, most of which, however, recognized the nominal rule of the emperors in Constantinople. Byzantium managed to cope with both external barbarians and those in its service. Having escaped barbarian conquest, the East preserved itself and its culture. The decline that befell the West did not become the fate of Byzantium. Crafts and trade continued to flourish, and agriculture remained at a high level. By the middle of the 6th century. Byzantium was able to attempt to take revenge from the barbarian world. During the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great, the Romans reconquered their former possessions in Italy, Africa and partly in Spain. But heavy wars strained the empire's strength. At the end of the century, many of these lands were lost again. IN western regions Slavic tribes began to settle in Byzantium (in Illyricum and Thrace), and the Lombards began to settle in Italy. The country's economy fell into disrepair, and riots became more frequent. In 602, the usurper Phocas came to power. After eight years of his reign, the empire was on the brink of destruction. The Romans were unable to maintain power in the most economically valuable areas - Syria, Palestine and Egypt, which were seized by the Persians. Heraclius (610), who overthrew the hated Phocas, managed to improve the situation, but not for long. The power, exhausted by external and internal wars, was attacked by Arabs in the south and east, and Slavs and Avars in the west. At the cost of incredible efforts, the empire retained its independence, although its borders were greatly reduced. Thus ended the first period of the history of Byzantium - the period of formation. Its further history is a continuous chronicle of survival. An outpost of Christianity, Byzantium met all the conquerors rushing into Europe from the east. “... If we take into account the fact that the empire lay precisely on the path of all popular movements and was the first to take the blows of the mighty eastern barbarians, then one will have to be surprised at how many invasions it repelled, how well it knew how to use the forces of its enemies [according to the principle "divide and rule". - S.D.] and how it lasted for a whole millennium. That culture was great and it contained a lot of power if it gave birth to such a gigantic force of resistance!” .
From the middle of the 7th century, in terms of administrative structure, Byzantium began to move away from the principles of the Roman Diocletian system, based on the separation of military, civil and judiciary. This was associated with the beginning of the formation of the feminine system. Over time, the entire territory of the empire was divided into new administrative units- fems. At the head of each theme was a strategist, who exercised civil administration and commanded the theme army. The basis of the army was the stratiot peasants, who received land from the state on the condition of performing military service. At the same time, it was preserved main feature Byzantium, which has always distinguished it from the countries of Christian Europe, is centralized government and strong imperial power. The question of the genesis of the feminine system is complex; most likely, the first innovations date back to the reign of Emperor Heraclius I, and the final formation occurred in the middle and end of the 8th century, under the emperors of the Syrian (Isaurian) dynasty.
By this time there was a certain decline in culture, associated, firstly, with the ongoing heavy wars, and secondly, with the movement of iconoclasm (see “Leo III” and “Constantine V”). However, already under the last emperors of the Amorian dynasty (820 - 867), Theophilus and Michael III, a period of general socio-economic and cultural improvement began.
Under the emperors of the Macedonian dynasty (867 - 1028), Byzantium reached its second heyday.
From the beginning of the 10th century. The first signs of the collapse of the feminine system are emerging. More and more stratiots are going bankrupt, their lands falling into hands large landowners- dinates. The repressive measures taken by the emperors against the Dinates in the 10th and early 11th centuries did not bear the expected fruit. In the middle of the 11th century. The empire again found itself in a period of severe crisis. The state was shaken by rebellions, the throne of the empire passed from usurper to usurper, its territory shrank. In 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert (in Armenia), the Romans suffered a severe defeat from the Seljuk Turks; At the same time, the Normans captured the remnants of the Italian possessions of Constantinople. Only with the coming to power of the new Komnenos dynasty (1081 - 1185) did relative stabilization begin.
By the end of the 12th century, the Komnenos' reform potential had dried up. The Empire tried to maintain its position as a world power, but now - for the first time! -Western countries are beginning to clearly surpass it in terms of development. The centuries-old empire is becoming unable to compete with Western-style feudalism. In 1204, Constantinople was taken by storm by Catholic knights - participants in the IV Crusade. However, Byzantium did not perish. Having recovered from the blow, it managed to be reborn in the lands of Asia Minor that had survived the Latin conquest. In 1261, Constantinople and Thrace were returned to the rule of the empire by Michael VIII Palaiologos, the founder of its last dynasty. But the history of Byzantium of the Palaiologos is the history of the agony of the country. Surrounded by enemies on all sides, weakened by civil wars, Byzantium is dying. May 29, 14S3 troops Turkish Sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople. Five to ten years later, the remnants of its lands came under the rule of the Ottoman Turks. Byzantium was gone.
Byzantium was significantly different from the contemporary states of Christian Western Europe. For example, the term “feudalism”, common to the Western European Middle Ages, can be applied to Byzantium only with great reservations, and even then only to the later Byzantium. A semblance of the institution of vassal-fief relations, based on private ownership of land and the dependence of the peasants who cultivated it on the lord, clearly appears in the empire only from the time of the Comnenos. Roman society of an earlier period, the era of prosperity (VIII - X centuries), is more similar to, say, Ptolemaic Egypt, where the state occupied a dominant position in the economy. In this regard, the then Byzantium was characterized by a vertical mobility of society unprecedented in the West. The “nobility” of the Romans was determined not by origin, but by to a greater extent personal qualities. There was, of course, a hereditary aristocracy, but belonging to it did not entirely determine one’s future career. The son of a baker could become a logothete or governor of a province, and a descendant of high dignitaries could end his days as a eunuch or a simple scribe - and this would not surprise anyone.
Starting with the Komnenos, the influence of the aristocracy increased, but the hierarchical structure of Western countries based on the class “right of blood” did not take root in Byzantium - at least not in its full extent (see, for example,).
Culturally, the empire was even more unique. Being a Christian country, Byzantium never forgot the ancient Hellenistic traditions. The extensive bureaucratic apparatus required a mass of literate people, which led to an unprecedented scale secular education. In those years when the West was in ignorance, the Romans read the ancient classics of literature and argued about the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. In Constantinople, since 425, there was a university, and first-class hospitals for that time operated. Architecture and mathematics, natural sciences and philosophy - all this was preserved thanks to a high level of material production, tradition and respect for learning. The empire's merchants sailed to India and Ceylon, reaching the Malacca Peninsula and China. Greek doctors not only commented on Hippocrates and Galen, but also successfully introduced new things into the ancient heritage.
The church played a significant role in the culture of the empire. But unlike Catholicism, the Orthodox Church was never militant, and the spread of Orthodoxy among the Slavs of Eastern Europe and in Rus' led to the emergence of daughter cultures of these countries and the formation of special relations between states - a kind of “commonwealth” (see).
The situation changed at the end of the 12th century. From that time on, the level of the West, as mentioned above, began to surpass the Byzantine level, primarily in material terms. And in spiritual terms, the alternative “the civilization of Byzantium - the barbarism of the West” gradually disappeared: the “Latin” world acquired its own developed culture. To be fair, I note that this does not apply to all representatives of the Western world - those who came to the East are unscrupulous, rude and ignorant European knights served as an illustration of this; That is why, having contact mainly with the crusaders, the enlightened Romans for a long time (XII - XV centuries) denied the West the right to be considered a civilized world. True, comparing “levels of cultural development” has always been a generally difficult task, and most importantly, futile, although people (as a rule, from the standpoint of their own ethno-, confessional-, etc.-centrism) *have done it, are doing it, and are not doing it will stop. Personally, I do not see a reliable and impartial criterion for the concept of “cultural level”. Example: if we evaluate the quality of Byzantine coins of the 6th - 8th centuries from the point of view of an artist, then there is an abyss between these works of art, fused with craftsmanship, and shapeless pieces of metal with images like “a dot, a dot, two hooks” - the coins of the Laskaris and Palaiologos. the decline is obvious. However, on this basis it is impossible to talk about the absence of artists in late Byzantium - they simply became different and created differently (it is enough to mention the frescoes of the Chora monastery). Among the Central American Indians of the 15th - 16th centuries. there were no domesticated horses and wheeled carts, and human sacrifice was practiced - but who would dare to call the societies that perished under the fire of Cortez’s arquebusiers barbaric? Now - hardly, but in the 15th - 16th centuries. Few people disputed the right of the Spaniards to destroy the “wild” Aztecs. On the other hand, each of us has our own measure, and we are unlikely to doubt which of our ancestors is considered more cultured - the Cro-Magnon with a club or Aristotle. The main thing is probably something else - originality. And from this point of view, Byzantium never lost its culture. Neither under Justinian, nor under the Angels, nor under the Palaiologos, although these are different eras. True, if the culture of the Romans in the 6th century. could follow the dusty legionaries of Belisarius, then after a thousand years this path no longer existed.
But also in the 15th century. Byzantium continued to exert its spiritual influence on the world, and not only the Orthodox - the European Renaissance was not last resort owes its appearance to ideas coming from the Greek East. And such “non-violent” penetration is a hundred times more valuable. And who knows (it’s still impossible to confirm or refute this assumption), perhaps we admire the ideas of Kant or Descartes only “thanks” to the soldiers of Baldwin of Flanders and Mehmed II, for who can count the geniuses who were not born in the twice defeated Constantinople, and who knows , how many books perished under the indifferent boots of the paladins of Christ and Allah! Byzantine emperors
In Republican Rome, "imperator" was a title that soldiers awarded to a commander for outstanding service. The first rulers of Rome - Gaius Julius Caesar and Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian Augustus had it, but their official title was “princeps of the senate” - the first in the senate (hence the name of the era of the first emperors - principate). Later the title of Emperor was given to each princeps and replaced it.
The princeps was not a king. The idea of slavish obedience to a ruler was alien to the Romans of the first centuries of our era (in practice, of course, it happened differently - under such rulers as Caligula, Nero or Commodus). They considered having a king (rex in Latin and vabileus in Greek) to be the destiny of barbarians. Over time, the ideals of the Republic faded into oblivion. Aurelian (270 - 275) finally included the word dominus - lord - in his official title. The era of dominance has come, replacing the principate. But it was only in Byzantium that the idea of imperial power took on its most mature form. Just as God is the highest of the whole world, so the emperor heads the earthly kingdom. The power of the emperor, who stood at the top of the earthly empire, organized in the likeness of the “heavenly” hierarchy, is sacred and protected by God.
But the king (the title of Basileus of the Romans was officially adopted in 629 by Heraclius I, although the people began to call their rulers that way much earlier), who did not observe “divine and human laws,” was considered a tyrant, and this could serve as a justification for attempts to overthrow him. In moments of crisis, such changes in power became common, and any citizen of the state could become emperor (the principle of hereditary power took shape only in Byzantium last centuries), therefore both a worthy and an unworthy person could be on the throne. On the latter occasion, Niketas Choniates, a historian who survived the destruction of his homeland by the crusaders, sadly complained: “There were people who yesterday or, in a word, recently gnawed acorns and still chewed Pontic pork [dolphin meat, the food of the poor] in their mouths. - S.D.], and now they completely openly expressed their views and claims to royal dignity, fixing their shameless eyes on him, and used them as matchmakers, or better [to say] pimps, corrupt and servile public screamers... the famous Roman power, the object of envious surprise and reverent veneration of all peoples - who has not taken possession of you by force? Who hasn't dishonored you brazenly? What wildly violent lovers have you not had? Whom did you not embrace in your arms, with whom did you not share a bed, to whom did you not give yourself, and then whom did you not cover with a crown, adorn with a diadem and then put on red sandals?” .
Regardless of who occupied the throne, the etiquette of the Byzantine court was unparalleled in solemnity and complexity. The residence of the emperor and his family was, as a rule, the Great Imperial Palace - a complex of buildings in the center of Constantinople. During the time of the last Komnenos, the Great Palace fell into disrepair, and the basileos moved to Blachernae.
Any exit of the sovereign was strictly regulated by the rules. Each ceremony involving the emperor was planned down to the smallest detail. And of course, the accession to the throne of the new king was celebrated with great solemnity.
The rite of proclamation itself has not remained unchanged over the centuries. In early Byzantium, the coronation was of a secular nature; the Roman Emperor was officially elected by the Synclite, but decisive role the army played. The coronation ceremony took place surrounded by selected units; the candidate for emperor was raised on a large shield and shown to the soldiers. At the same time, the neck chain of an officer-campiductor (torques) was placed on the head of the proclaimed one. There were shouts: “So-and-so, you win (tu vincas)!” The new emperor distributed donativ - a monetary gift - to the soldiers.
From 457, the Patriarch of Constantinople began to take part in the coronation (see “Leo I”). Later, the church's participation in the coronation became more active. The ceremony of raising it on a shield faded into the background (according to G. Ostrogorsky, it completely disappeared from the 8th century). The ritual of proclamation became more complex and began to begin in the chambers of the Grand Palace. After several changes of clothes and greetings from the courtiers and members of the synclite, the candidate entered the mitatorium - an annex to the church of St. Sofia, where he dressed in ceremonial clothes: divitisy (a type of tunic) and tsitsaky (a type of cloak - chlamys). Then he entered the temple, walked to the solea, prayed and entered the pulpit. The Patriarch read a prayer over a purple robe and put it on the emperor. Then the crown was taken out of the altar, and the patriarch placed it on the head of the newly-crowned basileus. After this, the praises of the “dimovs” - representatives of the people - began. The emperor left the pulpit, returned to the mitatorium and received the worship of the members of the synclite there.
Since the 12th century, the custom of raising a candidate to the shield was revived again, and anointing was added to the rite of placing on the throne. But the meaning of the first rite has changed. The candidate was no longer raised on a shield by soldiers, but by the patriarch and the highest secular dignitaries. Then the emperor went to St. Sophia and participated in the service. After the prayer, the patriarch anointed the head of the basileus with myrrh in a cross shape and proclaimed: “Holy!”; This exclamation was repeated three times by the priests and representatives of the people. Then the deacon brought in the crown, the patriarch put it on the emperor, and cries of “Worthy!” were heard. A master approached the reigning emperor with samples of marble and asked him to choose the material for the coffin - as a reminder that the ruler of the God-protected Roman Empire was also mortal.
The proclamation of the “junior” emperor-co-ruler (boomvabileus) was framed somewhat differently. Then the senior emperor laid the crown and mantle - accepting them, however, from the hands of the patriarch.
The important role of the church in the coronation ritual was not accidental, but was dictated by the special relations between the secular and spiritual authorities of the Roman Empire.
Even in the days of pagan Rome, the emperor had the title of high priest - pontifex maximus. This tradition was preserved in Orthodox Byzantium. Basileus were revered as defensors or ekdiki (defenders, trustees) of the church, bore the title afios - “saint”, could participate in the service, and, along with the clergy, had the right to enter the altar. They decided questions of faith at councils; by the will of the emperor, the Patriarch of Constantinople was elected from the candidates proposed by the bishops (usually three).
In terms of the political ideal of relations between the Roman king and the Orthodox Church, which mainly developed by the middle of the 6th century. and lasted until the fall of the empire, there was a symphony - “concord”. The symphony was a recognition of the equality and cooperation of secular and spiritual authorities. “If a bishop obeys the orders of the emperor, then not as a bishop, whose power, as a bishop, would derive from the imperial power, but as a subject, as a member of the state, obliged to show obedience to the sovereign power placed over him by God; in the same way, when the emperor submits to the determinations of the priests, it is not because he bears the title of priest and his imperial power stems from their power, but because they are priests of God, ministers of the faith revealed by God, therefore - as a member of the church, seeking, like other people, their salvation in the spiritual kingdom of God." In the preface to one of his short stories, Emperor Justinian I wrote: “The Most High goodness imparted to humanity the two greatest gifts - the priesthood and the kingdom; then [the first] cares about pleasing God, and this [second] cares about other human objects. Both, emanating from the same source, constitute the adornment of human life. Therefore, there is no more important concern for sovereigns than the well-being of the priesthood, which, for its part, serves them as a prayer to God for them. When the church is landscaped on all sides, and public administration moves firmly and through laws directs the life of peoples towards the true good, then a good and beneficial union of church and state arises, so desired for humanity.”
Byzantium did not know such a fierce struggle between sovereigns and the church for power that reigned in the Catholic West throughout almost the entire Middle Ages. However, if the emperor violated the requirements of the symphony and thereby gave "reason to accuse himself of non-Orthodoxy, this could serve as an ideological banner for his opponents, "for the kingdom and the church are in the closest union, and ... it is impossible to separate them from each other. Only those kings are rejected Christians who were heretics raged against the church and introduced corrupting dogmas alien to the apostolic and paternal teachings" (Patriarch Anthony IV,).
The proclamation of the symphony as an official doctrine did not at all mean the inevitable implementation of this ideal in practice. There were emperors who completely subjugated the church (Justinian the Great, Basil II), and there were patriarchs who considered themselves entitled to lead emperors (Nicholas the Mystic, Michael Kirularius).
Over time, the glory of the empire faded, but the authority of its church among the Orthodox remained unquestioned, and the emperors of Byzantium, albeit nominally, were considered their overlords. IN end of the 14th century V. Patriarch Anthony IV wrote to the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily Dmitrievich: “Although, by God’s permission, the infidels constrained the power of the tsar and the borders of the empire, yet to this day the tsar is appointed by the church according to the same rank and with the same prayers [as before], and to this day he is anointed with the great chrism and appointed king and autocrat of all the Romans, that is, Christians.” Constantinople
The capital of the empire for almost the entire period of its existence, with the exception of the period from 1204 to 1261, was Constantinople - one of the largest cities of antiquity and the early Middle Ages. For most Byzantines (and foreigners as well), the empire was, first of all, Constantinople; the city was its symbol, as sacred as the imperial power or the Orthodox Church. The city has an ancient history, but under a different name - Byzantium.
In 658 BC. the inhabitants of the Greek Megara, following the command of the Delphic oracle, founded their colony - Byzantium - on the western shore of the Bosphorus Strait. The city, built at the intersection of trade routes from West to East, quickly grew rich and gained fame and glory.
In 515 BC. Persian king Darius captured Byzantium and made it his fortress. After the Battle of Plataea (September 26, 479 BC), when the Greeks defeated the Persian commander Mardonius, the Persians abandoned the city forever.
Byzantium took an active part in Greek politics. The Byzantines were allies of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War, which is why the city was subjected to repeated sieges by the Spartans.
Existing next to the powerful powers of antiquity, Byzantium still managed to maintain relative autonomy, skillfully playing on the foreign policy interests of the surrounding states. When the eastern Mediterranean began to attract the attention of the growing Rome, the city unconditionally took its side and supported - first the Republic and then the Empire - in the wars with Philip V of Macedon, the Seleucids, the kings of Pergamon, Parthia and Pontus. The city nominally lost its freedom under Vespasian, who included Byzantium into the possessions of Rome, but even here it retained many privileges.
Under the rule of the princeps of Byzantium ( main city Roman province of Europa) experienced a period of prosperity. But at the end of the 2nd century. this came to an end: the support of Pescennius Niger, a candidate for the throne of the empire (the level of this support can be used to judge the welfare of the policy - he offered Pescennius 500 triremes!), cost the city too much. Septimius Severus, who was victorious in the civil strife, took Byzantium after a three-year siege and, taking revenge on the inhabitants, destroyed its walls. The city could not recover from such a blow, fell into decay and eked out a miserable existence for more than a hundred years. However, another civil war brought Byzantium much more than it lost in the first: Emperor Constantine, son of Constantius Chlorus, during long battles with the army of Augustus Licinius, drew attention to surprisingly beneficial economic and strategic points view the location of Byzantium and decided to build a second Rome here - new capital powers.
Constantine began to implement this plan almost immediately after the victory over Licinius. Construction began in 324, and, according to legend, Constantine the Great personally drew the boundary of the city walls, the pomerium, on the ground with a spear. May 11, 330 New Rome consecrated by Christian bishops and pagan priests. The new city, where Constantine resettled many residents of other regions of the empire, quickly acquired a previously unprecedented splendor. Constantinople, "the city of Constantine" (the name "New Rome" was used less frequently), became the center of the eastern provinces. The son of Constantine I, Constantius II, ordered the senate of these provinces to be assembled here and the second consul to be elected.
During the era of the Byzantine Empire, the city became world famous. It is no coincidence that many historians count the end of the Middle Ages from the date of the fall of Constantinople.
The city did not lose its importance under the Ottomans. Istanbol or Istanbul (from the distorted Greek “is tin bolin” - to the city, to the city) for several centuries significantly influenced the entire system of European diplomacy.
Today Istanbul is a major industrial and cultural center of Turkey.
Error. Theodosius I was born in 347. Augustulus - “Augustan”. "Augustishka". The class of “worthy” was further divided, in turn, into three classes - illustrians (who had the right to sit in the upper curia of the Senate), clarissimi and spectacles. The last fragment of the Western Empire remained a part of Gaul (between the Loire and the Meuse) under the rule of the Roman governor Syagrius. In 486, the leader of the maritime Franks, Clovis, defeated Si-atrius at Soissons. The governor fled to Toulouse, to the Visigoths, but they soon handed him over to Clovis. In 487 Syagrius was executed. At the beginning of the 6th century. On the territory of former Roman Britain, an uprising of the local population broke out, successfully led by a descendant of the Romans, Anastasius Aurelian. The story of his struggle and reign many centuries later was transformed into a cycle of legends about King Arthur. The Romans themselves had an ambiguous attitude towards this. “I suppose,” he wrote back in the 5th century. Blue, - that nothing has ever caused such harm to the Roman Empire as that theatrical pomp surrounding the figure of the emperor, which is secretly prepared by the clergy and exposes us in a barbaric guise.” According to G. Ostrogorsky. It is sometimes believed that the ritual of anointing appeared in Byzantium much earlier. During the proclamation of the last emperor, Constantine XII Palaiologos, the last silver door of the Great Palace was used to make the shield. And it was not without reason that in May 1453, in response to Sultan Mehmed II’s proposal to surrender the already doomed capital, the last basileus Konstantin Dragash replied: “The Emperor is ready to live with the Sultan in peace and leave him the captured cities and lands; the city will pay any tribute required by the Sultan, as far as it is in its power; only the city itself cannot convey to the emperor - it is better to die.” Roman writers also called their capital Byzantium, Royal, simply Polis (city) and even New Jerusalem.
S.B. Dashkov. Emperors of Byzantium.
Constantine XI - the last Byzantine emperor, from 1449. Born on February 8, 1405, died on May 29, 1453 in Constantinople. Son Manuel II Palaiologos and Serbian princess Jelena Dragash, brother of the emperor John VIII. From 1428 he was a despot Moray together with his brothers. In 1429 or 1430 he occupied Patras, the main city of the Latin Achai Principality. Having become emperor, he tried to organize resistance to the Turks, looked for help in the West. In December 1452 he recognized the union with the Catholic Church. He died in a battle with Turkish troops while defending Constantinople. In 1992, he was canonized as a martyr king by the Greek Orthodox Church; A monument to this emperor was erected in the Greek city of Mystras in the Peloponnese. In a number historical research he is not listed as Constantine XI, but as Constantine XII. They consider Constantine XI Konstantin Laskar, proclaimed emperor in 1204, however, apparently not crowned and certainly not reigning.
Byzantine dictionary: in 2 volumes / [comp. General Ed. K.A. Filatov]. SPb.: Amphora. TID Amphora: RKhGA: Oleg Abyshko Publishing House, 2011, vol. 1, p. 506.
Constantine XI (according to the German historian B. Zinogovitz, Constantine XII) Palaiologos (Palaiologos); according to his mother, the Serbian princess Elena - Dragas (1403 - 29.V.1453), - the last Byzantine emperor (since 1449). Despot of the Morea (along with his brothers) since 1428, Constantine XI had subjugated almost all Latin possessions in the Peloponnese by 1432. During John VIII's stay at the Council of Florence, he was regent of the empire. In 1444 he successfully acted against the Sultan's allies in Boeotia and Thessaly, but in 1446 he was defeated by the Turks. Having become emperor, he sought an alliance with the West at the cost of church union. Led the defense of Constantinople in 1453; died in battle.
Soviet historical encyclopedia. In 16 volumes. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1973-1982. Volume 7. KARAKEEV - KOSHAKER. 1965.
The body was found under a pile of corpses
Constantine XI Palaiologos Dragash - Byzantine emperor who reigned from 1449-1453. Son of Manuel II. Born February 8, 1405 + May 29, 1453
Before his accession to the throne, Constantine had earned the respect of the Romans as a brave despot of the Seas. He did not shine with education, preferring military exercises to books, was quick-tempered, but had a common sense and the gift of convincing listeners. He also had such qualities as honesty and nobility of soul. When John VIII died, Constantine was in Mystras. His younger brother Dmitry was the first to arrive in Constantinople in the hope that the throne would go to him, but no one supported him. Constantine himself was proclaimed emperor in early January in Mystras. In March he arrived in the capital and took power. The following years, the emperor did the same as his three predecessors: prepared the city for defense in case of a siege, sought help from the Turks in the west, and tried to reconcile the church unrest caused by the union with the Catholics. In all this he succeeded only partly, but it was difficult to expect more in his position (Dashkov: “Konstantin Dragash”).
Sultan Mehmed, who had vowed to take Constantinople, also carefully prepared for the siege, knowing full well that he would have to deal with a first-class fortress, from which the conquering armies had already retreated more than once with losses. He paid special attention to artillery. In the fall of 1452, the Turks invaded the Peloponnese and began military operations against the despots, the brothers of the emperor, so that they would not come to the aid of Constantinople (Sfran-disi: 3; 3). In March 1453, the Turks took Mesemvria, Achelon and other fortifications on Pontus. Silimvria was besieged. The Romans could not leave the city. But from the sea they devastated the Turkish coast on their ships and took many prisoners. At the beginning of March, the Turks pitched tents near the walls of the capital, and in April the city was besieged (Dukas: 37-38).
Due to the scarcity of funds, many of the capital's fortifications fell into disrepair. So, on the land side the city was protected by two walls: one large, reliable, and the other smaller. There was a moat on the outside of the fortifications. But the wall on the bay side was not very strong. The emperor decided to defend himself by building defenders on the outer wall. The severe population decline was making itself felt in the most disastrous way. Since the city occupied large space and people were placed along all the walls, there were not enough soldiers to repel the assaults.
The first half of April passed in minor contractions. Then the Turks brought up two huge bombards, throwing heavy stone cannonballs weighing more than 2 talents. One was installed opposite the palace, the other - opposite the Roman gate. In addition to them, the Sultan had many other smaller cannons (Halcondil: 8). On April 22, the Turks dragged their ships by land through the Gadat Hill, bypassing the chain blocking the bay and let them into the harbor. Then a floating bridge was built; artillery was placed on it, and thus the siege ring was closed. For forty days the besiegers, day and night, vigorously attacked the walls and caused great anxiety to the defenders with all kinds of fighting vehicles, shooting and attacks. Destroying the walls in some places with throwing weapons and cannons, the Turks proceeded to the fortifications themselves and began to fill up the ditches. At night, the Romans cleared the ditches, and strengthened the collapsed towers with logs and baskets of earth. On May 18, having destroyed the tower near the gate of St. Roman to the ground, the enemies dragged a siege engine there and placed it over the ditch. After this, according to Sfrandisi, a disastrous and terrible battle began. Having repelled all attacks, the besieged cleared the ditches at night, restored the tower, and burned the siege engine. The Turks began to make a tunnel, but on May 23 the defenders placed a mine under it and blew it up (Sfrandizi: 3; 3). On May 28, as evening fell, the Sultan began a general assault and did not give the Romans rest all night. Constantine himself repelled the onslaught behind the fallen walls near the gate of St. Romanus (Dukas: 39). But the Turks entered the city in another place - through Kerkoporta - a small gate in the wall, which was left open after one of the attacks (Dashkov: “Konstantin Dragash”). Finally climbing the wall, they scattered the defenders and, leaving the outer fortifications, burst into the city through the gates of the inner wall (Sphrandisi: 3; 5). After this, the army surrounding the emperor fled. Konstantin was abandoned by everyone. One of the Turks hit him in the face with a sword and wounded him, and the other struck him from behind death blow. The Turks did not recognize the emperor and, having killed him, left him lying like a simple warrior (Dukas: 39). Already after the evening last defenders They laid down their arms, and the emperor’s body was found under a pile of corpses, over the royal boots. The Sultan ordered Constantine's head to be displayed at the hippodrome and his body to be buried with royal honors (Sphrandisi: 3; 9). This was the last emperor of the Romans. With his death the empire ceased to exist.
All the monarchs of the world. Ancient Greece. Ancient Rome. Byzantium. Konstantin Ryzhov. Moscow, 2001
Still the Twelfth
The last autocrat of Byzantium, Constantine XII (born February 8, 1405), son of Manuel II and the Serbian princess Elena Dragash, ascended the throne ancient empire in January 1449, Constantine was already ruling the country - during the departure of John VIII for the Council of Ferraro-Florence, and before that he had gained a certain respect among the Greeks as a brave despot of the Morea. He did not shine with education, preferring military exercises to books, was quick-tempered, but had a common sense and the gift of convincing listeners. In addition, Konstantin Dragash was characterized by such rare qualities for rulers as honesty and nobility of soul.
When John VIII died, the despot Constantine was in Mystras. The restless Dmitry Paleologus tried to get ahead of his brother and reached Constantinople by sea, hoping that the throne would go to him. The government managed to reject the claims of Dmitry, who had a reputation as an adventurer. On January 6, 1449, in Mystras, Constantine XII Palaiologos Dragash was proclaimed emperor, and at the beginning of March he arrived in the capital.
God did not protect the Roman Empire well - in fact, the last Byzantine basileus inherited the capital with its surroundings, several islands in the Aegean Sea and the Morea, bloodless by the war with the Turks, from where the Sultan took many prisoners in 1446. Travelers who visited Constantinople were surprised at the desolation of the great city. The population of the capital since antiquity has decreased by 10 - 12 times and amounted to 35 - 50 thousand people. Many quarters were uninhabited, most of the palaces lay in ruins since the civil war of 1341 - 1347. The majestic Great Imperial Palace was no exception, for the restoration of which the Palaiologos did not have enough money - the basileus lived in Blachernae.
But Byzantium, and especially its capital, favorably located and well protected, still attracted the Ottoman conquerors. And not only them - in the West, the descendants of the rulers of the Latin power continued to declare their rights to her throne.
The internal situation of the empire was very difficult. The Italians controlled trade, the Greeks - from day laborers to monarchs - were tormented by poverty 1) . The confrontation between the Latinophile and Turkophile parties intensified. The first stood for union and the salvation of the country at the cost of subjugation to the pope, the second (mainly the merchants who suffered from Catholics) declared that only the Turks could restore order in the state and throw out the greedy Catholics from it. And there were still people who still considered Constantinople with its surrounding gardens to be a world empire. Closely aligned with such views was the largest group, the Orthodox, which, unlike the first two, had no clear program of action other than slogans.
Standing on the threshold of a centuries-old national tragedy, the Greek people were divided political struggle. Attempts by Constantine XII to force the Orthodox Church to recognize the union, without which Western help would have been impossible, ran into stubborn resistance from the hierarchs and ordinary citizens. The supporter of the union of Patriarch Gregory III Mammu was recognized only by an insignificant part of the clergy, and a council held in the fall of 1450 with the participation of the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem deposed Mammu from the patriarchate and the latter fled to Italy. Due to Uniatism (that is, non-Orthodoxy, according to the majority of the Romans) Constantine XII himself never received his official church consecration. The last emperor of Byzantium ruled and died without being crowned king. To top it all off, quarrels between the basileus' younger brothers and the despots Thomas and Dmitry led to internecine wars.
While Murad II ruled in Adrianople, Byzantium enjoyed a reprieve. But in February 1451, the Sultan died, and the Ottoman throne was taken by his twenty-year-old side son Mehmed II Fatih - the “conqueror”, a highly amazing personality. In addition to Turkish, he spoke four languages, including Latin and Greek, and knew philosophy and astronomy. At the same time, Mehmed was pathologically cruel, cunning, deceitful and treacherous. It was he who ordered the man to be beheaded so that the Italian painter Bellini, who worked at his court, could see how different the grimace was facial muscles severed heads from those depicted in paintings. It was he who ordered the bellies of fourteen servants to be ripped open, wanting to find the thief of the melon from the Sultan's garden. Bisexual, he had two harems - women and beautiful boys. And if the goal of Konstantin Dragash was the salvation of Byzantium, then Fatih, dreaming of military exploits in the name of the Prophet and the laurels of Timur, vowed to destroy it. Secretive, like all rulers of the East, the Sultan kept his plans secret and recruited troops, trying to lull the vigilance of the Greeks with false assurances of friendship and patronage.
At that time, Prince Urhan lived in Constantinople, one of the Sultan’s relatives and a possible contender for the Ottoman throne, whom Mehmed for some reason was in no hurry to execute, but sent him away from the court, to the Christians. The emperor announced the need to increase the payment for the maintenance of Urhan; Fatih considered the demand offensive and a reason to break the peace agreements with Byzantium. No one doubted that the Sultan simply used, as in famous fable Aesop about the wolf and the lamb, the first pretext that came up.
From April to August 1452, Ottoman engineers with amazing speed built the powerful fortress of Rumeli Hissar on the European coast of the Bosphorus, in one of the narrowest places. On the other side, the strait was already guarded by the citadel of Anatoli-Hissar, built under Bayazid I. Now the Turkish batteries held the entire Bosphorus at gunpoint, and not a single ship could pass to Constantinople from the Black Sea without the knowledge of the Sultan, while the Hellespont was guarded by the Muslim fleet. The Emperor, protesting against the construction of a fortress on Greek territory, sent an embassy to Mehmed, but in vain. “I can do whatever I want,” Fatih answered the Greeks with obvious contempt. - Both banks of the Bosphorus belong to me, the eastern one - because the Ottomans live on it, and this western one - because you do not know how to defend it. Tell your sovereign that if he decides to send me a similar question again, I will order the ambassador to be flayed alive.”
The first to feel the power of the Rumeli-Hissar guns was the Italian squadron, which did not want to obey the order to lower the sails. Some of the ships broke through, but the largest Venetian galley, having received several stone cannonballs, sank, all the surviving sailors, led by the captain, were executed.
The Sultan could interrupt the supply of food to the Greek capital at any moment. At the end of August he personally examined its magnificent fortifications and began to equip his army for the campaign planned for the following spring.
Constantinople was preparing to repel the invaders. The city stocked up on bread, firewood and weapons, and walls and towers were hastily repaired.
In the fall of 1452, the basileus began negotiations with Pope Nicholas V. The papal envoy, the clever Cardinal Isidore the Russian, came to the emperor, but without soldiers, only with his small guard. The West was in no hurry to really help Byzantium, once again not wanting to spend money. The thought of the possible fall of Constantinople seemed absurd in Rome, Paris, London or Venice, so accustomed were everyone to its inviolability. Of course, they were preparing to send help, but a little later. In fact, she was not ready even when the city was taken. The Morean despots also did not allocate troops to their brother. Only the desperate Genoese Giovanni Giustiniani Long brought seven hundred volunteers in two galleys, and Constantine XII promised him the island of Lemnos if the capital could be defended.
On December 12, 1452, Cardinal Isidore celebrated a Mass in St. Sophia according to the Uniate rite. The residents noisily expressed their dissatisfaction: “We do not need the help of the Latins, nor unity with them.” The head of the Megaduk Turkophiles, Luca Notara, uttered a prophetic phrase in those days: “It is better to see a Turkish turban reigning in the city than a Latin tiara!”
Preparations for the assault were in full swing in Thrace Greek capital. In a workshop near Adrianople, a Hungarian named Urban, who had not agreed to remain in the service of the beggar Dragash, was making cannons for the Sultan. At the beginning of 1453, the largest was ready, capable of firing stone cannonballs weighing 1,200 pounds (approx. 400 kg). 2) ! To move this monster, two hundred people and sixty pairs of oxen were required.
By mid-March, the huge (according to various historians, from eighty to three hundred thousand people) Turkish army was ready. A squadron of several hundred military and auxiliary ships was just waiting for the order to go to sea. Mesemvria, Anchial and Viza were conquered by the Sultan without much difficulty; of the Thracian cities, Silim-vria and Epivates remained under the rule of Palaiologos. The emperor's secretary and friend George Sfrandzi, who later left vivid memories of the siege of Constantinople, carried out, on the instructions of the sovereign, a census of all men in the city capable of bearing arms. The results of the calculations are 4973 Greeks and about two thousand foreigners 3) - turned out to be so depressing that Constantine ordered them to be kept secret.
On the roadstead of the capital, minus several who fled on the eve of the Turkish siege, there were twenty-six ships left: five each Venetian and Genoese, three from Crete, one each from Ancona, Catalonia and Provence, and ten imperial. Their teams vowed not to abandon the city of Constantine in trouble and to stand until the end. All able-bodied residents enthusiastically tidied up ditches littered with various rubbish and patched up ancient walls. And only the population of Galata maintained neutrality that bordered on treason. However, by the end of the siege, the Galatians were already openly helping Mehmed.
At the end of March 1453, the first patrols of the Sultan's cavalry appeared on the surrounding hills, and soon units of the light Turkish infantry. The Ottomans believed that the Greeks would hide in their homes in fear of them, but they miscalculated. On the morning of April 2, the Christians, led by their brave emperor, launched a sortie, killed several dozen enemies and returned to the city, rejoicing. The spirits of the besieged rose, and when on Thursday, April 5, the main Turkish forces, who had filled the outskirts, approached the walls of the city, the thoughts of the defenders were not gloomy.
The hopes of the besieged were well founded. Firstly, all of Dragash's soldiers, both Greek and Latin, were excellently armed and more or less trained in combat. Secondly, the city had powerful double walls with cannons (albeit old ones) and throwing machines. Christians also had reserves of “Greek fire” at their disposal. The capital was pre-supplied with everything necessary - from bread to crossbow arrows, sails and saltpeter. Thirdly, the majority of the population was determined to die rather than surrender. And finally, fourthly, the emperor was counting on the troops promised by the pope and the Venetians. The Sultan offered Constantine XII to leave Constantinople in exchange for an inheritance in the Morea, for the inviolability of which the Muslim ruler swore an oath, but the basileus rejected Mehmed’s plan.
On April 7, the Turkish guns began to speak - the long bombardment of Constantinople began. Mehmed II positioned his army along the entire line of walls - from Pigi to the Golden Horn. In the center, in the most vulnerable area opposite the gate of St. Roman, on the hills, the Sultan’s headquarters was defeated, surrounded by ten thousand Janissaries. Fourteen batteries operated against the fortifications of the Theodosian and Irakli walls, and near Mehmed’s headquarters Urban installed super artillery - a kind of monster and two other guns, slightly smaller.
At first, the shelling did not have the desired effect. Urban's bombard - Fatih's hope - could only fire three or four times a day, and the gunners for this and other guns were poor. Most of the cannonballs did not reach the walls; moving the batteries closer to the city was dangerous due to possible undermining and attacks by Christians, and the Turks were afraid to increase the charge - the barrels could not withstand it. The Ottomans only managed to take by storm two small castles on the outskirts - Ferapii and Studios. The Sultan ordered several dozen prisoners left from their garrisons to be impaled. The Greeks launched frequent attacks on the unwary Turkish troops, and these attacks, often carried out with the participation of the basileus himself, brought considerable concern to the Ottomans.
However, the forays soon stopped - there were sorely not enough soldiers even to repel frequent attacks along the entire line of fortifications. “The Turks were fighting all the places without resting, not giving the least amount of peace to the Greeks, but they would make it difficult for them, before I was preparing for the attack...” - wrote the Russian chronicler Nestor Iskander, in those days a soldier of the Turkish auxiliary army.
On April 18, Mehmed made the first attempt at an organized assault. The Turks going on the attack, expecting an easy victory, swaggered and bawled songs, “and when the guns rolled and many squealed, they began to beat the hail, and also shoot from the handguns 4) and from numbered bows; The citizens, from the countless shootings, could not stand on the walls, but in the west I waited for the attack, and then they fired from cannons and arquebuses... and killed many Turks.” The Ottomans fled, leaving hundreds of corpses to rot in the ditch and perihairs. Other attacks ended in the same way; the defenders with enviable consistency threw the attackers into the ditch. “It was amazing,” recalled Sfrandzi, “that, having no military experience, they [the Greeks] won victories, because when they met the enemy, they did what was beyond human strength.” And indeed, one has to be surprised. The siege of Constantinople was the largest event of the 15th century; in terms of the scale of application of the latest methods of warfare associated with gunpowder artillery, it had no equal, the superiority of Turkish forces was tenfold or more, and on the city walls, built back in the 5th century, under the command Constantine XII and his courtiers fought mainly not even professional warriors, but armored townspeople - merchants and their servants, artisans, monks and even scientists. After the battle, the few soldiers of Palaeologus collapsed from fatigue, and the Sea Walls stood without guards, since there were not enough people on them at all.
On April 20, four ships with crosses on their masts appeared among the waves of the Propontis, three Genoese and a Greek, loaded with food and with several hundred volunteers on board 5) . The Ottomans lined up one and a half hundred ships in front of them, and the unequal battle dragged on for almost a whole day. A shower of arrows and stones fell on the Christians, who were making their way meter by meter to the entrance to the Golden Horn, partitioned off with steel and wooden floats with a chain. However, the ability to lead naval battle among the Romans and Italians it turned out to be disproportionately higher, and in technical terms their galleys were far superior to the Turkish ones. One after another, the Ottoman ships, receiving damage, rolled away from the battle line, and fires raged on some of them. Mech-med II, watching his captains' clumsy actions from the shore, became enraged. Without remembering himself, he directed his horse into the sea and woke up only when the water came to the saddle. In the evening, all four Christian ships, choosing the moment, slipped into the bay, and the chain was wound up again. The rejoicing of the city residents, who witnessed the brilliant victory, knew no bounds. The Byzantines and Genoese lost only a few people, the Muslims disproportionately more, and the Sultan's admiral was saved from inevitable execution only by the severe wounds he received in battle.
A day later, having built a land portage, the Turks dragged eighty of their ships into the Golden Horn at night, which the defenders saw with horror at dawn on April 22. The Genoese of Galata, past the walls and towers of which the Muslims moved ships, made no attempt to prevent them. When, a week later, the brave captain Trevisano tried to burn the Turkish fleet at night with several volunteers, the Galatians, who became aware of this plan, handed him over to the Sultan. The Ottomans aimed their cannons in advance and shot the brave men at point-blank range at night. Trevisano's galley sank off the coast, and the Turks executed the captured sailors in the morning in front of the emperor. In response, the enraged Dragash ordered to behead two and a half hundred Muslim prisoners and put their heads on the walls.
In the Golden Horn, Mehmed II ordered the construction floating batteries. However, shooting from water, like land shooting, went poorly. The cannonballs flew past their targets, the guns were torn off and thrown into the bay during recoil. But at the beginning of May, Hungarian ambassadors arrived at Fatih’s camp. One of them, knowledgeable in artillery, was bribed by the Turks and taught their gunners the art of proper aiming. These were difficult times for the Greeks. Stone cannonballs destroyed the masonry of walls and towers, and boulders fired from three large-caliber guns collapsed entire sections of the walls. At night, warriors and townspeople filled up the breaches with stones, earth and logs. In the morning the wall turned out to be in good condition, and the enemy, who attacked almost every day, was again met by arrows, bullets, stones and streams of “Greek fire”. The most terrible consequences of the Turkish shooting were human losses. They seemed insignificant in comparison with the damage suffered by the besiegers, but there were too few defenders...
Despite the difficult situation, Dragash was not going to surrender the city. The barbarians still covered the perihairs and the ditch with their bodies. The emperor's soldiers, clad in strong armor, fearlessly withstood arrows and bullets. On May 7, a bloody assault was repulsed at Mesotikhion, and on May 12 at Blachernae. “Padahu corpses of both countries, like sheaves, from a fence 6) and their blood flowed like rivers along the walls; from the screaming and grunting of both Lyutsky and from the crying and from the sobbing of the Gratsky, and from the sound of the klakol and from the knocking of weapons and the brilliance, the whole city seemed to be transformed from the foundation; and the ditches were filled to the top with human corpses, as if a Turk were walking through them, like in degrees, and fighting: they were dead, for they had lost the bridge and the staircase to the city... and had it not been for the Lord who had stopped that day [the city would have perished. - S.D.], all the citizens are already exhausted” (Iskander, ).
On May 18, the Greeks blew up and burned a huge mobile siege tower - the heleopola, built by Turkish specialists according to all the rules of military science. Five days later, on May 23, Christians discovered and blew up a tunnel going under the city walls. Dozens of diggers and the Sultan's engineers found death underground. Mehmed II's rage gave way to despondency. For a month and a half his gigantic army had been at Byzantine capital, and there was no end in sight. As it turned out later, the Sultan had no idea about the true number of his opponents. Wanting to intimidate the emperor, Fatih sent him and the townspeople a message, offering a choice of surrender or a saber, and the basileus - death or conversion to Islam. Some people suggested accepting these conditions. Oddly enough, among the supporters of capitulation were even such irreconcilable opponents as the megaduca Notara and Cardinal Isidore.
The clergy, dissatisfied with Isidore and the confiscation of clergy funds for the needs of the siege, grumbled, clashes between the Venetians and the Genoese became more frequent, and the emperor had to work hard to keep his allies from bloodshed. The Military Council rejected the Sultan's ultimatum. On the fortifications of the dying capital, a minority thought about surrender. Not only men fought bravely, but also their wives and children, who were able to hold a spear or crossbow.
On May 23, the ship, previously sent by Palaiologos in search of the long-awaited Venetian-Papal fleet, returned to the city. The captain informed the basileus that he was not in the Aegean Sea, and it was unlikely that he would be. The West betrayed its brothers in faith. While watchmen from the towers of bloodless Constantinople vainly looked for the sails of Christian galleys in the haze of the Sea of Marmara, the Venetians bickered with the pope, quarreling over every ducat spent on preparing the expedition.
On May 26, the Turks, accompanied by the roar of trumpets, the roar of drums and the fiery howls of the dervishes, marched on the walls with their entire army. A fierce battle raged for three hours. Forgetting about infighting, the Greeks, Genoese, Venetians, Catalans, French, and even the Turks, servants of Prince Urhan, who offered their services to the emperor, fought side by side. “... the filth... the preacher called out his filthy prayer, screamed the whole army as he galloped towards the city, and rolled up the guns and squeaks, and the tours, and the forest, and the wooden cities, and other machinations of wall-beating, they had no numbers, ships also moved across the sea... they began to beat the city from everywhere, and build bridges on ditches, and as if all the citizens had already been knocked off the walls, soon the wooden cities and tall towers and forests of dense numbers were advanced, I needed to climb the walls by force, without giving They are the Greeks, but I fought with them hard... and the slaughter was very dark, beyond their arrows [Turks. - S.D.] darken the light” (Iskander, ). Hundreds of dead bodies were piled up along the perimeter of the land walls, and the screams of Muslims dying from wounds and fatal burns were heard in the air. Mehmed II spent the rest of the night in thought. The next morning, the Sultan toured the troops and promised to give them the city to plunder for three days. The soldiers greeted the message with enthusiastic shouts. At night, the Ottoman camp fell silent - preparations were underway.
At dawn on May 28, 1453, the Roman autocrat Constantine XII Palaiologos convened the last military council. Speaking before the commanders, the emperor begged them not to disgrace the banner of Constantine the Great, not to hand over holy objects and defenseless women and children into the cruel hands of the Ishmaelites. Having finished his speech, Palaeologus slowly walked around the line of wounded, exhausted knights and quietly asked each one for forgiveness - if he had offended him in any way. Many were crying. In the evening, a solemn prayer service took place in the Church of St. Sophia. For the first time in the long weeks of the siege, all the priests - both Catholic and Orthodox - performed services, yesterday's disputants and opponents prayed together. According to Stephen Runciman, the author of an excellent monograph on the capture of Constantinople, only then, on the threshold of the terrible, there was a real reconciliation of the two churches. The emperor and, following his example, many other soldiers took communion and put on their best clothes, preparing for death.
From the church, Constantine XII went to the Blachernae Palace and said goodbye to his loved ones. In every house, men parted with their wives and children, and almost all of them were no longer destined to see each other. Friends and strangers hugged on the streets, not expecting to see the dawn...
After sunset, the defenders stood at the fortifications of the outer wall. Bonfires lit up in the Turkish camp, music and shouts began to flow from there - the Ottomans were having dinner, raising their spirits with songs. The city fell into silence. In the dim light of the night, Constantine surveyed the plain from the outermost tower of the wall at Blachernae...
At one o'clock in the morning, filling the area with wild screams, with fascines and ladders on their shoulders, detachments of bashi-bazouks - irregular infantry - armed with anything, rushed forward. The task of this least valuable part of the Sultan's army (the bashi-bazouks were recruited from all sorts of rabble, criminals, vagabonds, among them there were many Christian renegades) was to wear down the besiegers, and Mehmed II without hesitation sent half-dressed robbers against the heavily armed men-at-arms of Dragash. The Bashi-Bazouk attack, which lasted two hours, was drowned in blood. Arrows and stones rushed from the towers, finding their target in the light of the moon and stars, the Turks were chopped with swords and stabbed with spears, they fell in dozens from multi-meter stairs. Streams of “Greek fire” pouring down with a loud roar filled the hair with flames, finishing off the wounded and maimed. The shots of heavy arquebuses crackled on both sides. An alarming roar of bells floated over the doomed city - the alarm of St. Sophia struck...
The surviving bashi-bazouks retreated from the walls. After several volleys of batteries, a second wave of attackers appeared on the hillsides. Now, with their armor gleaming, detachments of Anatolian Turks were attacking. The Greeks and Catholics, without having time to rest, took up arms again.
The battle raged along the entire wall, but Mehmed organized the most persistent onslaught between the gates of St. Roman and Polyandrov. The emperor and his squad covered the weakest area - Mesotikhion (where the Lykos stream flowed into the city), Giustiniani's mercenaries fought on his right, on his left - the Genoese and a detachment of the emperor's relative, the mathematician Theophilus Palaiologos, who converted to Catholicism. A fierce battle also took place in Blachernae, where the Venetians were holding out.
An hour before dawn, a cannonball collapsed a large section of the wall near the gate of St. Roman. About three hundred Turks broke through to Paratychion, but the basileus and his Greeks drove them out of there. In the light of the rising sun, the arrows and bullets flying from above began to hit more accurately, the Sultan’s soldiers ran back, but the steel sticks of the officers again and again drove them to the walls. After four hours of battle, when the Greeks and their allies were exhausted from fatigue and wounds, the best Turkish units - the Janissaries - moved to the gates of St. Roman. Mehmed II personally led their column to the ditch.
This third attack became the most violent. Within an hour, the Janissaries suffered heavy losses, and it seemed that this time the assault would end in failure. Fatih, realizing that after this the only way out There will only be lifting of the siege, again he drove and drove his people forward, under bullets, stones and arrows. And then Long Giustiniani fell, wounded. The condottiere ordered himself to be carried to the galley.
Finding themselves without a leader, the Italians began to abandon their posts and go into the city. The huge Janissary Hasan climbed the wall, fighting off the Greeks; his comrades arrived in time and secured themselves at the top.
Even before the assault, for some of the attacks, the defenders used Kerkoporta - a small gate in the wall. It remained unlocked, and a detachment of fifty Janissaries entered through it. Having climbed the wall from the rear, the Turks ran along it, throwing down the exhausted Christians. A green banner fluttered on the tower of St. Roman. With shouts of “The city is ours!” the Ottomans rushed forward. The Italians were the first to falter and run. The emperor ordered the others to retreat behind the inner wall. But many of its gates were locked, and in the ensuing panic, traffic jams arose, people fell into holes, from which they took earth to seal the gaps. No one defended the inner wall; after the last Greeks, the Turks burst into the city...
Constantine XII, Theophilus Palaiologos and two other knights fought at the gate of St. Roman (according to another version - at the Golden Gate). When the crowd of Janissaries fell right on them, the basileus shouted to his relative: “Let's go, let's fight these barbarians!” Theophilus replied that he wanted to die rather than retreat and, waving his sword, rushed towards the enemies. A landfill formed around the mathematician, and Dragash had the opportunity to escape. But the last ruler of Byzantium chose to share the fate of his empire. Following Theophilus, he stepped into the thick of the battle, and no one saw him alive again...
Skirmishes broke out in the streets, in which the Ottomans dealt with the surviving defenders of the city. At the same time, robbery began, accompanied by all the horrors suffered by the brutal soldiers.
Hundreds of children, women and old people fled to St. Sophia, believing that God would not abandon them in this terrible hour. “Oh, unfortunate Romans! - recalled Georgy Sfrandzi. - Oh, pathetic ones: the temple, which yesterday and the day before yesterday you called a den and an altar of heretics and into which not a single person among you entered, so as not to be desecrated, because inside it those who kissed the church union performed sacred acts - now, due to the manifested wrath of God, you are looking for saving deliverance in him...” People, praying, waited for the appearance of a guardian angel with a fiery sword. The Janissaries broke down the doors with axes and, with ropes in their hands, rushed inside, each seizing his captives, “for there was no one who objected and did not betray himself like a sheep. Who will tell about what happened there? Who will tell about the crying and screams of children, about the screams and tears of mothers, about the sobs of fathers - who will tell? The Turk is looking for a more pleasant one; So one found himself a beautiful nun, but another, stronger one, pulled her out and already knitted her... Then they knitted the slave with the mistress, the master with the slave, the archimandrite with the gatekeeper, the gentle young men with the maidens. The maidens whom the sun had not seen, the maidens whom the parent had scarcely seen, were dragged along by robbers; and if they forcefully pushed them away, they were beaten. For the robber wanted to take them quickly to the place and, having given them away in safety for safekeeping, return and capture both the second victim and the third... “. In the Golden Horn, people distraught with horror, crushing and pushing each other into the water, tried to escape on the surviving ships. The Turks, busy with robbery, did not interfere with the escape, and the ships were able to sail away, leaving those who did not have enough space on the piers.
By evening, Mehmed II entered the blood-drenched city. The Sultan ordered officers to monitor the safety of the buildings that became his property. From St. Sophia, the Sultan, amazed by her greatness, himself drove out the fanatics who were destroying her. Fatih visited the empty Blachernae Palace. Looking at the blood stains in his chambers, he chanted a Persian verse:
The spider serves as a guard in the king's chambers,
An owl sings a war song in the palace of Afrasiab...
Byzantium fell on Tuesday, May 29, 1453. In the evening, Constantine Palaiologos was identified in a huge pile of corpses by small golden double-headed eagles on purple boots. The Sultan ordered the king's head to be cut off and displayed at the hippodrome, and his body to be buried with imperial honors. This grave (or what was taken for it) at least until the beginning of the 20th century. was kept in Vefa Square in Istanbul by the treasury. The Last Paleologus- Prince Giovanni Lascaris Palaiologos - died in 1874 in Turin. The city, founded by Constantine I, the son of Helen, was forever enslaved by the barbarians under Constantine XII, the son of Helen. In this, Rome Second repeated the fate of Rome First.
Notes
1) Despite the poverty of the state as a whole, individual Greeks possessed extensive wealth.
2) Urban's cannon (more precisely, bombard) was superior in caliber to the famous Tsar Cannon. Its length was 40 spans, the diameter of the barrel at the breech was 4, the muzzle was 9, the thickness of the walls was 1 span (span - 17 - 20 cm, Roman pound - 327.45 g).
3) . According to another report by Sfrandzi, 4,773 Greeks and 200 “foreign men.”
4) Ruchnitsa is a short-barreled weapon, a prototype of a pistol; sometimes this was the name given to a hand-held arquebus.
5) As in the case of the number of defenders, the number of ships is also determined differently: in a number of works they talk about five to four Genoese and one Greek ships.
6) Fence - wooden panels installed on the crest of the walls.
Book materials used: Dashkov S.B. Emperors of Byzantium. M., 1997, p. 26-30.
Read further:
Patriarchs of Constantinople(biographical reference book).
Literature:
Drialt J. E., Le basileus Constantin XII, héros et martyr, P., 1936;
Guilland R., Études Byzantines, P., 1959, p. 135-75.
Justinian I the Great
(lat. Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Justinianus) ruled Byzantium from 527 to 565. Under Justinian the Great, the territory of Byzantium almost doubled. Historians believe that Justinian was one of the greatest monarchs of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
Justinian was born around 483.
in a peasant family of a remote mountain village Macedonia, near Skupi
. For a long time the prevailing opinion was that he was Slavic origin and originally wore the name of the Manager,
this legend was very common among the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula.
Justinian was distinguished by strict Orthodoxy , was a reformer and military strategist who made the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Coming from the dark mass of the provincial peasantry, Justinian managed to firmly and firmly assimilate two grandiose ideas: the Roman idea of a universal monarchy and the Christian idea of the kingdom of God. Combining both ideas and putting them into action with the help of power in a secular state that accepted these two ideas as political doctrine Byzantine Empire.
Under Emperor Justinian, the Byzantine Empire reached its peak, after a long period of decline, the monarch tried to restore the empire and return it to its former greatness. It is believed that Justinian was influenced by the strong character of his wife Theodora, whom he solemnly crowned in 527.
Historians believe that the main goal of Justinian's foreign policy was the revival of the Roman Empire within its former borders; the empire was to turn into a single Christian state. As a result, all the wars waged by the emperor were aimed at expanding his territories, especially to the west, into the territory of the fallen Western Roman Empire.
The main commander of Justinian, who dreamed of the revival of the Roman Empire, was Belisarius,
became a commander at the age of 30. 
In 533 Justinian sent Belisarius's army to northern Africa to conquering the kingdom of the Vandals. The war with the Vandals was successful for Byzantium, and already in 534 the commander of Justinian won a decisive victory. As in the African campaign, the commander Belisarius kept many mercenaries - wild barbarians - in the Byzantine army.
Even sworn enemies could help the Byzantine Empire - it was enough to pay them. So, Huns formed a significant part of the army Belisarius , which sailed from Constantinople to North Africa on 500 ships.Huns Cavalry , who served as mercenaries in the Byzantine army of Belisarius, played a decisive role in the war against Vandal kingdom in northern Africa. During the general battle, the opponents fled from the wild horde of the Huns and disappeared into the Numidian desert. Then the commander Belisarius occupied Carthage.
After the annexation of North Africa Byzantine Constantinople turned their attention to Italy, on whose territory there existed kingdom of the Ostrogoths. Emperor Justinian the Great decided to declare war German kingdoms , who waged constant wars among themselves and were weakened on the eve of the invasion of the Byzantine army.
The war with the Ostrogoths was successful, and the king of the Ostrogoths had to turn to Persia for help. Justinian protected himself in the East from attack from the rear by making peace with Persia and launched a campaign to invade Western Europe.
First thing General Belisarius occupied Sicily, where he met little resistance. Italian cities also surrendered one after another until the Byzantines approached Naples.
Belisarius (505-565), Byzantine general under Justinian I, 540 (1830). Belasarius refusing the crown of their kingdom in Italy offered to him by the Goths in 540. Belasarius was a brilliant general who defeated a range of enemies of the Byzantine Empire, virtually doubling its territory in the process. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)
After the fall of Naples, Pope Silverius invited Belisarius to enter the holy city. The Goths left Rome , and soon Belisarius occupied Rome, the capital of the empire. The Byzantine military leader Belisarius, however, understood that the enemy was just gathering strength, so he immediately began to strengthen the walls of Rome. What followed The siege of Rome by the Goths lasted one year and nine days (537 - 538). Byzantine army, which defended Rome, not only withstood the attacks of the Goths, but also continued its offensive deep into the Apennine Peninsula.
Belisarius' victories allowed the Byzantine Empire to establish control over the northeastern part of Italy. After the death of Belisarius, it was created exarchate (province) with its capital in Ravenna . Although Rome was subsequently lost to Byzantium, since Rome actually fell under the control of the pope, Byzantium retained possessions in Italy until the middle of the 8th century.
Under Justinian, the territory of the Byzantine Empire reached its largest size for the entire existence of the empire. Justinian managed to almost completely restore the former borders of the Roman Empire.
The Byzantine Emperor Justinian captured all of Italy and almost the entire coast of North Africa, and southeastern part Spain. Thus, the territory of Byzantium doubles, but does not reach the former borders of the Roman Empire.
Already in 540 New Persian
the Sassanid kingdom dissolved the peaceful
agreement with Byzantium and actively prepared for war. Justinian found himself in a difficult position, because Byzantium could not withstand a war on two fronts. 
Domestic policy of Justinian the Great
In addition to an active foreign policy, Justinian also pursued a reasonable domestic policy. Under him, the Roman system of government was abolished, which was replaced by a new one - the Byzantine one. Justinian was actively engaged in strengthening the state apparatus, and also tried improve taxation . Under the emperor they were united civil and military positions, attempts have been made reduce corruption by increasing pay to officials.
Justinian was popularly nicknamed the “sleepless emperor,” as he worked day and night to reform the state.
Historians believe that Justinian's military successes were his main merit, but internal politics, especially in the second half of his reign, drained the state treasury.
Emperor Justinian the Great left behind a famous architectural monument that still exists today - Saint Sophie Cathedral . This building is considered a symbol of the “golden age” in the Byzantine Empire. This cathedral is the second largest Christian church in the world and second only to St. Paul's Cathedral in the Vatican . With the construction of the Hagia Sophia, Emperor Justinian achieved the favor of the Pope and the entire Christian world.
During the reign of Justinian, the world's first plague pandemic broke out and spread throughout the Byzantine Empire. The largest number of victims was recorded in the capital of the empire, Constantinople, where 40% of the total population died. According to historians, the total number of plague victims reached about 30 million people, and possibly more.
Achievements of the Byzantine Empire under Justinian
The greatest achievement of Justinian the Great is considered to be his active foreign policy, which expanded the territory of Byzantium twice, almost regaining all lost lands after the fall of Rome in 476.
Due to numerous wars, the state treasury was depleted, and this led to popular riots and uprisings. However, the revolt prompted Justinian to issue new laws for citizens throughout the empire. The Emperor abolished Roman law, abolished outdated Roman laws and introduced new laws. The set of these laws was called "Code of Civil Law".
The reign of Justinian the Great was indeed called the “golden age”; he himself said: “Never before the time of our reign had God granted the Romans such victories... Thank heaven, inhabitants of the whole world: in your days a great deed has been accomplished, which God recognized as unworthy of all ancient world» Commemoration of the greatness of Christianity was built Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
A huge breakthrough occurred in military affairs. Justinian managed to create the largest professional mercenary army of that period. The Byzantine army led by Belisarius brought many victories to the Byzantine emperor and expanded the borders of the Byzantine Empire. However, the maintenance of a huge mercenary army and endless warriors depleted the state treasury of the Byzantine Empire.
The first half of the reign of Emperor Justinian is called the “golden age of Byzantium,” while the second only caused discontent on the part of the people. The outskirts of the empire covered revolt of the Moors and Goths. A in 548 During the second Italian campaign, Justinian the Great could no longer respond to Belisarius' requests to send money for the army and to pay the mercenaries.
The last time the commander Belisarius led the troops in 559, when the Kotrigur tribe invaded Thrace. The commander won the battle and could have completely destroyed the attackers, but Justinian at the last moment decided to pay off his restless neighbors. However, the most surprising thing was that the creator of the Byzantine victory was not even invited to the festive celebrations. After this episode, the commander Belisarius finally fell out of favor and ceased to play a significant role at court.
In 562, several noble residents of Constantinople accused the famous commander Belisarius of preparing a conspiracy against Emperor Justinian. For several months Belisarius was deprived of his property and position. Soon Justinian was convinced of the innocence of the accused and made peace with him. Belisarius died in peace and solitude in 565 AD That same year, Emperor Justinian the Great breathed his last.
The last conflict between the emperor and the commander served as the source legends about the poor, weak and blind military leader Belisarius, begging for alms at the walls of the temple. This is how he is portrayed - falling out of favor in his famous painting by the French artist Jacques Louis David.
A world state created by the will of an autocratic sovereign - such was the dream that Emperor Justinian cherished from the very beginning of his reign. By force of arms he returned the lost old Roman territories, then gave them a general civil law that ensured the well-being of the inhabitants, and finally - he asserted a single Christian faith, called to unite all peoples in the worship of the one true Christian God. These are the three unshakable foundations on which Justinian built the power of his empire. Justinian the Great believed that “there is nothing higher and holier than the imperial majesty”; “The creators of the law themselves said that the will of the monarch has the force of law«; « he alone is able to spend days and nights in work and wakefulness, so that think about the good of the people«.
Justinian the Great argued that the grace of the emperor's power, as the “anointed one of God,” standing above the state and above the church, was received directly from God. The emperor is “equal to the apostles” (Greek ίσαπόστολος), God helps him defeat his enemies and make fair laws. Justinian's wars gained character crusades - wherever the Byzantine emperor will be master, the Orthodox faith will shine forth. His piety turned into religious intolerance and was embodied in cruel persecution for deviating from his recognized faith. Every legislative act of Justinian puts "under the patronage of the Holy Trinity."
The greatness of the Roman Empire after the crisis of the 3rd century was greatly shaken. Then the prerequisites appeared for the split of the empire into Western and Eastern. The last emperor who led the entire territory of the country was Flavius Theodosius Augustus (379-395 reign). He died at a venerable age of natural causes, leaving behind two heirs to the throne - the sons of Arcadius and Honorius. According to the instructions of his father, the elder brother Arkady headed the western part - the “first Rome”, and the younger brother, Honorius - the eastern part, the “second Rome”, which was later renamed the Byzantine Empire.
The process of formation of the Byzantine Empire
Officially, the division into Western and Eastern occurred in 395, unofficially - the state split long before that. While the west was dying from civil strife, civil wars, and barbarian raids on the borders, the eastern part of the country continued to develop culture and live in an authoritarian political regime, submitting to its Byzantine emperors - the Basileus. Simple people, peasants, senators called the emperor of Byzantium “basileus”; this term quickly took root and began to be constantly used in everyday life of the people.
Christianity in cultural development states and strengthening the power of emperors played an important role.
After the fall of the First Rome in 476, only the eastern part of the state remained, which became the capital. great city Constantinople.
Duties of the Basileus
The emperors of Byzantium had to perform the following duties:
- command an army;
- pass laws;
- select and appoint personnel to government positions;
- manage the administrative apparatus of the empire;
- dispense justice;
- pursue a wise and beneficial domestic and foreign policy for the state to maintain its leader status on the world stage.
Elections for the position of emperor
The process of a new person becoming a basileus took place consciously with the participation large quantity of people. For elections, assemblies were called in which senators, military personnel and the people participated and voted. According to the vote count, who received larger number supporters were elected ruler.
Even a peasant had the right to run for office; this reflected the beginnings of democracy. Emperors of Byzantium, who came from peasant backgrounds, also exist: Justinian, Basil I, Romanus I. Justinian and Constantine are considered one of the most outstanding first emperors of the Byzantine state. They were Christians, spread the faith and used religion to impose their power, control the people, and carry out reforms in domestic and foreign policy.
Reign of Constantine I
One of the commanders-in-chief, elected to the post of Emperor of Byzantium, Constantine I, thanks to wise government, brought the state to one of the leading world positions. Constantine I reigned from 306-337, at a time when the final split of the Roman Empire had not yet occurred.
Constantine is famous primarily for establishing Christianity as the only state religion. Also during his reign, the first Ecumenical Cathedral in the empire was built.
The capital of the state, Constantinople, was named in honor of the believing Christian sovereign of the Byzantine Empire.
Reign of Justinian I
The great emperor of Byzantium, Justinian, reigned from 482-565. A mosaic with his image adorns the Church of San Vitalle in the city of Ravenna, perpetuating the memory of the ruler.
In surviving documents dating back to the 6th century, according to the Byzantine writer Procopius of Caesarea, who served as secretary to the great general Belisarius, Justinian is known as a wise and benevolent ruler. He carried out judicial reforms for the development of the country, encouraged the spread of the Christian religion throughout the state, compiled a code of civil laws, and, in general, took good care of his people.
But the emperor was also a cruel enemy for people who dared to go against his will: rebels, rebels, heretics. He supervised the spread of Christianity in the lands captured during his reign. So, with his wise policy, the Roman Empire returned the territory of Italy, North Africa, and partly to Spain. Like Constantine I, Justinian used religion to strengthen his own power. Preaching any religion other than Christianity in occupied lands was severely punished by law.
In addition, on the territory of the Roman Empire, on his initiative, it was ordered to build churches, temples, and monasteries that preached and brought Christianity to the people. The economic and political power of the state grew significantly thanks to numerous profitable connections and deals concluded by the emperor.
Emperors of Byzantium such as Constantine I and Justinian I established themselves as wise, magnanimous rulers, who also successfully spread Christianity throughout the empire to strengthen their own power and unite the people.