Byzantine Empire
Byzantium was the thousand-year successor to the Roman Empire in
the eastern Mediterranean. In AD 330, the first Christian emperor,
Constantine the Great (AD 305-337), re-founded Byzantium as
Constantinople (nowadays Istanbul), joint capital with Rome.
Christian art gradually emerged, drawing on pagan, classical and
Jewish sources. Under Justinian I (AD 527-565) the Byzantine empire
was at its greatest extent, regaining much of the old Roman western
Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Constantinople’s great church Haghia
Sophia was built, and Roman law was codified.
By the mid seventh century AD the Byzantine Empire was shrinking
due to Lombard, Avar, Slav and Islamic conquests. Iconoclasm, a
political and religious dispute, led to a ban on the worship of
religious images which lasted until AD 843. The subsequent Middle
Byzantine period saw regeneration and re-conquests under the
Macedonian dynasty. By the death of the emperor Basil II in 1025
the empire was its most extensive since Justinian I. This political
stability was accompanied by an artistic revival and many new
churches.
It was not to last. Byzantium gradually succumbed under pressure
from the Seljuk Turks and western European states. In 1204
Constantinople finally fell to the Crusaders. Despite recapturing
the capital in 1261, the next 200 years was a period of relentless
political and military decline for the Byzantines.
However, it was also a period of great creativity: the
last flowering of Byzantine art and architecture. Constantinople,
and the Byzantine empire, finally fell to the Turkish armies of the
Ottoman sultan Mehmet II on 29 May 1453.
Image caption: Icon of St John the
Baptist
Byzantine, around AD 1300. From Constantinople (modern Istanbul,
Turkey)