Discourse on Byzantium: Between a Colonizer and a Colony

Introduction

The Roman civilization is often considered the quintessential root of Western society. The originator of architecture, art, science, and religion that Europe and to some extent, the US still identify with (Cowan, 2023). The concept usually includes the Western Roman Empire, the one that fell in the fateful 476, under the barbarian invasion. Although the Eastern Roman Empire remained intact until the Ottoman conquest in early modernity, and its inhabitants did refer to themselves as Romans, early modern Europe invented and kept the name Byzantine Empire, fortifying its reputation as an imagined space (Aschenbrenner, N, Ransohoff, J. 2021, p. 1). This article will explore Byzantine culture’s complex position within the framework of the West. It will look at its position as both a colonizer and a culture whose study was based on a colonizing approach since its inception (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023). 

In equal parts an orientalist, decadent image, a tool in nationalistic polemics, a conceptualized border between Christendom and Islam, a literary canon without a modern heir, and a centre of arcane knowledge and esoteric traditions, the Byzantium has become a fantasy space throughout storytelling and discussions. What follows will discuss some of the major narrative discourses involving Byzantium and outline the development of Byzantine studies as a discipline with colonial roots. The aim is to highlight the complexity of post-colonial discourse analysis. Post-colonial theory as a framework accentuates the impossibility of understanding the contemporary world without the study and awareness of how it was shaped due to European and Western imperial and colonial practices (Elem, 2019). Apart from the cultures outside of what is considered to be Western civilization, a colonial approach can affect traditionally Western or semi-Western locations and peoples because of intersections of various factors like religion, ethnicity, and political motivations.

                   Figure 1: Creation, J. (2024). Constantinople. Emporium Romanum.

Byzantine Studies and the Question of Colonialism

What is understood as Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary unison of a variety of humanistic fields like literature, art, archaeology, philosophy, theology, etc. applied to the cultural environment of the geographical area encompassing parts of the Mediterranean, Balkans, and Asia that belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire from late antiquity to the Constantinople’s fall to the Ottomans in the 15th century (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p 1). The titular Byzantium is a peculiar case of a colonizer and a colony combined in one historical entity. As a huge state, it ruled its neighbouring peoples. However, in regards to the Western world, it remained not just marginal but heavily orientalized in concepts and fiction (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, pp. 1-2). In the book Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline, Toward a Critical Historiography, edited by Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova, the question of the origin of the study of the Eastern Roman state is examined, highlighting the idea that modern Greek studies can only be properly understood within the discourse of post-colonial studies and exploring the interplay between colonialism and nationalism, while fully understanding that the origin of Southeast European studies often employed the language of “then triumphant European colonists” (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p.5). The Byzantine studies as a discipline are based on a colonial foundation. The mere name, Byzantium, and the idea of the Eastern Roman State as a despotic and theocratic place was popularized by 18th century Edward Gibbon, the author of the famed The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The earliest student of Byzantium, Hieronymus Wolf, employed his knowledge in favour of the interests of early modern European colonialism since he relied on their patronage (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 31). Also, the flourishing interest in the Byzantine culture at the court of Louis XIV happened simultaneously with the establishment of the notable French colonies (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 32), confirming the colonial root of the mere interest in the discipline.

The early Byzantine studies can be described as a history of absence in the sense that the Eastern Roman state was absent from the intellectual preoccupations of early modern Europe and was relevant only to locations marginal to the concept of the West, like eastern and southeastern Europe (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, pp.4-6). For the Renaissance explorers, Byzantium was seen as the tomb of the classical treasures waiting to be found, however, this did not include any interest towards the Byzantines themselves, in a rather similar manner as what was the case with remnants of other ancient civilizations. They attracted European interest, and were often seen as their rightful legacy, but were not associated with their actual inhabitants (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 9), just like a symbol of a fantastical place to be conquered. The 19th and 20th-century literary phantasmagorias often included a theme of a lost city or land that haunts the imagination. The mystical cities of both Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany are amalgamations of orientalist fantasies and are often shrouded in dread, riddle, or enticing obsessive behaviour in a protagonist. The Canadian fantasy author R.S., Bakker included a fictionalized version of Byzantium in his Middle East/Mediterranean-inspired world, Eärwa. Despite the philosophical pseudo-bibliography that intersects the main narrative, the choice to choose this specific region as a setting and portray it as gruesome and almost wholly unredeemable is not without precedent. Western media has long relied on a fictional demonization of the Middle East (Piantanida, 2023). Byzantium, as the perceived bridge that separates the Western world from the imagined East, occupies a polyvalent position as both a historical and fantastical entity, manifesting through multiple ideologies and concepts that serve different political purposes. The representation of a real place in fantastical narratives can serve to reinforce the dominant view of the depicted culture. However, it can also serve as what the critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha would refer to as the virtual version of the third space - a site of cultural negotiation resulting in the creation of hybrid identities that defy binary oppositions such as colonizer and colonized (Bhabha, 1994, Bhandari, 2022). Although Bhabha primarily meant real places like taverns or bazaars, the contesting narratives can play the same role of challenging perception.

The Austro-Hungarian monarchy is another European former state that received a similar treatment. Although colonial itself, its influence was less far-reaching than that of England or France. Also, the Austro-Hungarian legacy does not belong to one direct modern nationalistic heir but is found in the narratives and cultures of Austrians, Hungarians, Slavs, and other minorities who occupied the territory, embodying the concept of the cross-cultural space of Central Europe, an ambiguous location found in many literary settings, but difficult to define (Petković, 2003). The former colonial forces which were mostly governing their neighbours and did not produce a neat, direct connection to one modern nation-state, found themselves in a precarious position in the nineteenth century, the starting period of European modern discipline and studies since the buddying historical studies and the fascination with the Middle Ages were pivotal factors for the creation of contemporary state nationalism. 

The Fall of the Roman Empire as a Western Obsession

 Figure 2: Cole, T. (cca 1833-1836). Destruction. Alison Morton.

The Roman civilization, especially its fall, has found its way into Western narratives, particularly British and American. As marginal European entities try to reestablish themselves as part of the West by highlighting themselves as the guardians of the cultural threshold, the dominant cultures are obsessed with the Empire's decline. In his book The Modern Cultural Myth of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the author Jonathan Theodore analyses dominant Western media in regard to the theme of Rome’s fall and argues that the current dominant cultures’ identification with the Roman civilization and their stories encapsulates the fears of their dominion’s instability (Theodore, 2016, p.122 ). Many famous American movies that feature ancient Romans express relevant contemporary social attitudes. For instance, narratives like Quo Vadis and Ben Hur envision the rise of a better Christian empire out of the remnants of the old, with clear analogies to modern forces, especially Christian America. The antiquity, although outstandingly fascinating, is portrayed as cruel and the upcoming new religion as an influence that will better the world (Theodore, 2016, p. 122). At the end of Quo Vadis, the protagonist comments on the fates of empires from Babylon to Rome, and their seemingly inevitable decline, reinforcing the idea of the despotic old empires and hinting at a new empire that will finally last (Theodore, 2016, p. 122). The imperial form of Christianity was the only one recognized as genuine at the time, standing in stark contradiction with the perceived barbarians, who, even when Christians themselves, would have their version of Christianity deemed as culturally inferior (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 8). Although the modern superpowers conceptualize their states as better than the Roman Empire due to being Christian, they are haunted by the idea of collapsing under invading members of other cultures. The idea of barbarians being the corruptive force of a respectable civilization in the English tradition can be traced to Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy. The author’s major point was the assumption that the overly upwardly mobile middle class would deteriorate British culture due to their lack of taste and a moral compass (Arnold, 1869). 

            

The Eastern Rome Between Orientalism, Nationalism, and Esotericism            

While being heavily orientalized or ignored by the West, the Byzantine state, romanticized as a victim of Christian betrayal, has remained the beacon of importance for orthodox nationalist peoples, in the attempt to fashion their own significance as defenders of the civilization against barbarians — most notably, Muslims and the rest of the non-Western world. By accentuating their role, they negotiate acceptance into the West.  The long-lived negative Western attitude resulted in a response from orthodox Christian nations who created an image of Byzantium as an intellectual beacon, mostly to serve their nationalistic projects (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 3). This Byzantium was the tragic victim of Muslim conquest, a brave border between civilization and barbarism. According to Anderson and Ivanova, In order to be properly examined, nationalism should be placed within the framework of colonial relations to explore a broader intellectual hegemony that connects the two projects (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 7). 

While the Western and orthodox nationalist narratives meander between Orientalism, nationalism and the conceptualization of the civilizational threshold, some authors use Byzantium as a metaphor for knowledge, and esoteric traditions. In Az, Croatian author Jasna Horvat imagines the lives of Cyril and Methodius, the icons of Slavic literacy, through a philosophical, spiritual and esoteric journey. Similarly, Serbian author Radoslav Petković tells a story of an esoteric order in his Remembering Death. Alongside the occult fiction, he provides a polyphony of points of view regarding the final fall of Constantinople in 1453, including multiple sides, as well as touching upon the imagining of the event by the protagonists in different centuries. If not envisioned as a weapon in nationalistic and religious polemics, a metaphor for modern power states and their own concern for a potential loss of supremacy, or an Orientalist dream of decadence and despoty, the Byzantine state serves as a place of wisdom, knowledge of different, earlier cultures, and the occult. 

Figure 3: Michael Psellos Tutoring (n.d.). Wikipedia.

Byzantine Art, Race and the Medieval World

Despite Eastern Rome’s position of “otherness” in the eyes of the West, the state has occupied the role of a colonizer and has been a part of the conception of medieval bigotry. According to some scholars, modern racism has its roots in the medieval world (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 15) and Byzantine art is an example of the representation of demons as dark-skinned. Many medieval stories, like the tenth-century Life of Saint Basil the Younger, depict visions of angels with white skin, fair hair and eyes, and demons with non-European physiques. The appearance of the latter was conceptualized as an outward manifestation of moral and aesthetic depravity (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 17). The contrast between demonic blackness and saintly clarity of vision was further developed in middle Byzantine hagiography. However, the motivation behind this depiction was not the intended subjugation of the Africans as it was during the peak of the colonial period, but to establish a clear visual distinction between the Christian and the Muslim world. In a fourteenth-century painting in the Monastery of the Archangel Michael in Lesnovo, which depicts the Arabian siege of Constantinople, the Saracens are vanished by Michael the Archangel. Their ethnicity is racialized as dark-skinned, and the angel's presence is meant to represent the just predominance of the Christian civilization ( Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 20). 

Byzantine state was often used in contemporary polemics with anti-Muslim attitudes. In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI used the Byzantine author and emperor Manuel II Palaiologos to position Christian Europe as the heir to Greek reason, as opposed to Muslims whose concept of divinity is transcendent and, therefore, cannot fathom the Western value of rationality (Anderson, Ivanova, 25). In 2016, Serbian president Tomislav Tadić drew a parallel between him and emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos who asked Europe for aid against the “infidels”, while appealing for help against the majority-Muslim state of Kosovo (Anderson, Ivanova, 2023, p. 25). 

Figure 4: Frescos from the Michael the Archangel Church of Lesnovo (n.d.). Wikipedia.

Literature Without a Canon — Byzantium and Modernity

Another obstacle to the integration of the Eastern Roman tradition into the West was the lack of a direct literary canon heir. The medieval world saw the Roman empire as the last stage of declining humanity to be followed by the Renaissance, determined to restore its image of the Greco-Roman antiquity, while fully ignoring Byzantium (Papaioannou, 2015, p. 195) One of the reasons for this attitude has remained in the fact that no modern nation directly claims Byzantine culture. As a religious centre, it has many heirs, but no modern state has claimed its cultural and literary canon as their own, which was the prerequisite of the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the Middle Ages as the roots of modern nation-states (Papaioannou, 2015, p. 198). There were several attempts at Byzantine literary analysis, one of them being Georg Misch’s The History of Autobiography. The overall attitude of the author was oriented towards the emergence of a modern European type of self-consciousness (Papaioannou, 2015, p. 204). Since the Byzantine written tradition is hybrid and fragmented, as well as ingrained in tradition as a tool for innovation and the process of individualization, the canon found no place within the linear frame of the Western concept of the emergence of modern subjectivity.

Conclusion

The study of the Eastern Roman Empire was not pivotal for European colonialist ambitions, therefore, it remained marginal. Envisioned as decadent, oriental, and effeminate, the so-called Byzantium served as a foil to the West, a remnant of antiquity in medieval times, a colonial, imperial force, but with small ambitions that only included neighbouring territories. As a powerful force, it contributed to medieval religious art as well as the conception of modern racism but due to the lack of a direct nationalistic heir, it has never become an official part of the conceptualized West. Some Orthodox nations have used it as a symbol of their own position as a threshold between the civilized world and the perceived non-Western barbarians, in an attempt to negotiate their place in the European community. As a literary, imagined place, Byzantium floats between an esoteric centre and a despotic fantasy, occupying an unresolved position in the conceptualization of the Western world. Its example highlights the arbitrary nature of civilization borders, inclusion and historical significance. It provides a better understanding of history as a nationalist program conceived in the 19th century, the era of the creation of modern states. Nationalism is built on the constructed past and reinforced by myths (Michael, 2010, pp. 149-159). By falling outside of nationalist history, Byzantium has, instead, become a part of mythology itself. 

Bibliographical References

Anderson, B. Ivanova, M. (2023). Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Introduction: For a Critical Historiography of Byzantine Studies. pp. 1-36. Penn State University Press.

Arnold, M. (2009). Culture and Anarchy. Oxford University Press. (Originally published in 1869, Cornhill Magazine. 

Aschenbrenner, N, Ransohoff, J. (2021). The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe. pp. 1-23. Harvard University Press.

Betancourt R., Taroutina, M. (2015). Byzantium/Modernism. The Byzantine as Method in Modernity. Chapter 7. Papaioannou, S. Byzantium and the Modernist Subject: The Case of Autobiographical Literature. Koninklijke Brill NV, pp. 195-211.

Bhandari, N.B. (2022). Homi K. Bhabha's Third Space Theory and Cultural Identity Today: A Critical Review. Prithvi Academic Journal.

Cowan, D. (2023). What the Romans did for the US. Engelsberg Ideas. Date Retrieved, December 10, 2024. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/what-the-romans-did-for-the-us/

Elam, J.D. (2019). Postcolonial Theory. Oxford Bibliographies. Date Retrieved, December 13, 2024.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0069.xml

Michael, N.M. (2010). History, Myth and Nationalism: The Retrospective Force of National Roles within a Myth-Constructed Past. Nationalism in the Troubled Triangle, pp. 149-159. Palgrave Macmillan.

Petković, N. (2003). Srednja Europa: Zbilja-Mit-Utopija/A Central Europe of Our Own. Adamić, Rijeka.

Piantanida, G. (2023). Representation of Arabs and the Middle East in Western Media. Al Fusaic. Date Retrieved, December 10, 2024. https://www.alfusaic.net/blog/convene/representation-of-arabs-and-the-middle-east-in-western-media

Theodore, J. (2016). The Modern Cultural Myth of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Chapter four. Roman Decline and the West in the Modern Age, pp.113-142. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Visual Sources

Figure 1: Creation, J. (2024). Constantinople. Emporium Romanum.

https://emporiumromanum.com/blogs/the-roman-empire-journal/the-byzantine-empire-the-continuation-of-rome-in-the-east

Figure 2: Cole, T. (cca 1833-1836). Destruction. Alison Morton.

https://www.alison-morton.com/2022/03/21/reasons-for-the-fall-of-rome/

Figure 3: Michael Psellos (n.d.). Wikipedia.

https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihael_Psel

Figure 4: Frescos from the Michael the Archangel Church of Lesnovo (n.d.). Wikipedia.

https://sh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datoteka:Frescos_from_the_Michael_the_Archangel_Church_of_Lesnovo_0109.JPG