Biography of the emperors of Byzantium

Nevertheless, both of them did not leave imperial ambitions and alternately for a year, they entered into a tactical union in order to jointly confront other applicants for the authorities, for example, the appointed Caesar after the abdication of Diocletian Flavius, then, on the contrary, entered into the struggle. The final victory of Konstantin over Maxencia in the battle on the Mulvi bridge across the Tiber River now in the line of Rome meant the unification of the Western part of the Roman Empire under the rule of Constantine.

Twelve years later, in the year, as a result of another war, now with Licinius - August and the ruler of the East of the Empire, which was appointed by Galerius Konstantin united the East and the West. A miniature in the center depicts a battle on a Mulvi bridge. From Homilia Gregory the Theologian. First of all, the legend of the wonderful sign of the Cross, which Konstantin saw in the sky before the battle, was facilitated-the truth is told about this, the Caesarean Caesarean OK in a completely different Eusebius Eusebius.

And although the publication of the edicts of religious freedom was not directly related to the fight against Maxencia in April of the year by Emperor Galeria, and the second - already in February in Milan Konstantin, along with Licinius, the legend reflects the internal connection of the independent political steps of Constantine, which was the first to feel not without consolidation of society, primarily in the field cult.

However, under Konstantin, Christianity was only one of the candidates for the role of a consolidating religion. The emperor himself was a long time as an adherent of the cult of an invincible Colnz, and the time of his Christian baptism is still a subject of scientific disputes. This meeting became the first universal cathedral - a collection of representatives of all local churches, which has the right to formulate the doctrine, which will then be recognized by all local churches to say exactly how many bishops participated in the cathedral, since its acts have not been preserved.

The tradition calls the number, it was, it is possible to talk about the “universal” character of the cathedral only with reservations, since at all at that time there were more than 1 I of the Ecumenical Council at that time - the key stage in the institutionalization of Christianity as imperial religion: its meetings were not held in the temple, but in the imperial palace, the Council itself was opened by Constantine I, and the closure was combined with the grandiose.

celebrations on the occasion of the flight of his reign. First Nicae Cathedral. Fresco from the monastery Stavropoleos. The symbol of Vera was recognized as the true, not subject to further doubts and discussions of the word of the Niko-Tsargrad symbol about Christ, which caused the most fierce disputes, in the Slavic translation they are like this: “[I believe] in the unified Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the hare of born before; Sveta from the light, God is true from God Ictinna, was born, inconsistent, consubstantial to the Father, and that all of the past ”..

Never before the direction of thought in Christianity was condemned by the fullness of the universal church and imperial power and no theological school was recognized by the heresy. The era of the Ecumenical Councils that has begun is the era of the struggle of orthodoxy and heresy, which are in constant self-and-relationships. At the same time, the same teaching could alternately be recognized by the heresy and the right faith - depending on the political conjuncture, this was the case with monophysitism in the 5th century, however, the very idea of ​​the possibility and necessity of protecting orthodoxy and condemnation of heresy with the help of the state in doubt in Byzantium has never been established.

His rival Licinius also changed the capital, but in the year, when the war began between him and Konstantin, his stronghold in Europe was the ancient city of Byzantium on the shore of the Bosphorus, known as Herodotus. The city gradually adopted the capital's functions: the Senate was established in it and many Roman Senate families were forcibly transported to the Senate.

It was in Constantinople that during his lifetime Konstantin ordered to rebuild the tomb for himself. A variety of wonders of the ancient world were led to the city, for example, a bronze snake column created in the 5th century BC in honor of the victory over the Persians under the Poles Battle of Poles G. Chronist of the VI century, John Malala, says that on May 11, Emperor Konstantin appeared at the ceremony of the city’s sanctification - a symbol of the eastern despot power, which is its Roman predecessors to whom its Roman predecessors Available in every possible way.

The displacement of the political vector was symbolically embodied in the spatial movement of the Center for the Empire from west to east, which, in turn, had a decisive influence on the formation of Byzantine culture: the transfer of the capital in the territory, which had been speaking in Greek for a thousand years, caused its Greek -speaking character, and Constantinople itself was at the center of the Mental Card of the Byzantine and was recovering with all of the imperials.

It is this date that can be conditionally considered the year of the birth of Byzantium.No more than ten bishops from approximately participants arrived on the I Ecumenical Council from the Western provinces; Most of the arrivals were not able to understand by ear the welcoming speech of Constantine, which he uttered in Latin, and it needed to be transferred to Greek.

Flavius ​​Odoacr on the obverse coin from Ravenna. Such an image is uncharacteristic for the emperors and is considered "barbaric." However, formally, the West was still connected with the East, and at the sunset of the Western Roman Empire, at the end of the 10ths, the Byzantine emperor Leo I, at the request of the Senate of Rome, made the last unsuccessful attempt to elevate his protege to the western throne.

In the year, the German Barbar-mercenary Odoacr shifted the last emperor of the Roman Empire Romulus Augustul and sent imperial insignia symbols of power to Constantinople. However, in reality, this was no longer reflected on the real political map of the Mediterranean. Opponents of monophysites were called diophysites from the Greek. The central state power continued to flirt with the monophysites both under the usurpator Vasilisk in the years, and in the first half of the VI century, under the emperors of Anastasia I and Justinian I.

Emperor Zinon in the year tried to reconcile the supporters and opponents of the Chalcedon Cathedral, without going into dogmatic issues. His conciliatory message, called “Enoticon”, provided peace in the east, but led to a summer split with Rome. The main support of the monophysites were the eastern provinces - Egypt, Armenia and Syria. In these regions, uprisings on religious grounds were regularly erupted and the independent monophysitic hierarchy and their own church institutions that gradually developed into independent, existing non-Hapidonist churches-Siro-Yakovtsky and Coptic, which recognized the Chalcedon Cathedral, was formed.

Finally, the problem has lost its relevance to Constantinople only in the 7th century, when, as a result of the Arab conquests, Monophysite provinces were torn from the empire. The heyday of early Byzantium 6. A fragment of the mosaic of the Church of San Vital in Ravenna. The Civil Law Code summed up the centuries -old development of Roman law. As a result of military campaigns in the West, it was possible to expand the boundaries of the empire, including in it the entire Mediterranean - North Africa, Italy, part of Spain, Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily.

Sometimes they talk about the "Justinian Reconkist". Part of the empire again became Rome. Justinian launched extensive construction throughout the empire, and in the year the creation of the new Cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople ended. According to legend, the plan of the temple was personally prompted by the emperor an angel in a vision. The construction of this scale has never been created in Byzantium: a grandiose temple, which received the name “Great Church” in the Byzantine ceremonial, became the focus of the power of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The era of Justinian simultaneously and finally breaks with a pagan past of the year the Athenian Academy of the Atheno Academy - a philosophical school in Athens, founded by Plato in the X year BC. Medieval culture contrasts itself with early Christian, assigning the achievements of antiquity at all levels - from literature to architecture, but at the same time discarding their religious pagan dimension.

The native of the lower classes, striving to change the life of the empire, Justinian met rejection from the old aristocracy. It is this attitude, and not the historian’s personal hatred to the emperor and reflects the “secret story” of the Procopius of Caesarea - an evil pamphlet on Justinian and his wife Theodore. In the year, Irakli and the direct defense of the city, Patriarch Sergius, managed to reflect the Avar-Slavic siege of Constantinople words that open the akathist of the Virgin, tell about this victory in the Slavic translation they sound like this: “The wonent, as if they were delivered from the evil ones, we are grateful, we are thanking your Rabi, the Virgin, but the Bogoroditsa, but the most possessing The state is invincible, from all the troubles of Svorodi, but we call TI: Rejoice, is unequal.

” In Jerusalem in the year, the abducted by the Persians of an honest cross, on which the Savior, was solemnly returned, was returned in the year. During the solemn procession, Irakli personally brought a cross to the city and laid it in the temple of the Holy Sepulcher. Under Irakli, the last take-off before the cultural break in the dark centuries is experiencing a scientific and philosophical neoplatonic tradition, which goes directly from antiquity: a representative of the last surviving ancient school in Alexandria-Stefan Alexandria comes to Constantinople at the imperial invitation.

A plate from a cross with images of a cherubim on the left and Byzantine emperor Irakli with Shahinshah Sassanids Khosrov II. Legends talk about how the Prophet Muhammad invited Irakli to accept Islam, however, in the cultural memory of the Muslim peoples, Heraclius remained precisely a fighter with the nascent Islam, and not with the Persians. Dark centuries and iconocraticism 8.Having lost the oldest Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria Patriarchate, the Byzantine Church, in fact, lost the universal character and became equal to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, who had no equal to it in the status of church institutions.

In addition, having lost fertile territories that provided it with grain, the empire plunged into a deep inner crisis. In the middle of the 7th century, there is a reduction in monetary circulation and the decline of cities both in Asia Minor and the Balkans, which were no longer threatened by Arabs, but the Slavs - they turned either into villages or into medieval fortresses. Constantinople remained the only large city center, but the atmosphere in the city also changed the ancient monuments brought there in the 4th century, and irrational fears began to inspire the townspeople.

A fragment of papyrus writing in the Coptic language of the monks Victor and Psan. Thebes, the Byzantine Egypt, approximately-years translation of a fragment of writing into English on the website of the metro-museum. Many literary genres disappeared, which had previously flourished the genre of history gave way to prophecy - having lost a cultural connection with the past, the Byzantines cooled to their history and lived with a constant sensation of the end of the world.

The Arab conquests, which served as the reason for this breakdown of attitude, did not find reflection in modern literature, their event row convey to us the monuments of later eras, and the new historical consciousness reflects only the atmosphere of horror, not facts. The cultural decline lasted more than a hundred years, the first signs of the Renaissance occur at the very end of the VIII century.

But modern scientists doubt the reliability of this information: most likely, in the year in Byzantine society, conversations began about the possibility of iconoclastic measures, the very first real steps dates back to the year. Miniature from Psalter Feodor Caesarea. This caused a rejection of some clergymen who saw in this a threat of returning to paganism. But the most fierce disputes about the icons fell on the rule of Konstantin V Kopronya-he carried out the necessary military-administrative reforms, significantly strengthening the role of the professional imperial guard TAGM, and successfully restrained the Bulgarian threat at the boundaries of the empire.

The authority of both Constantine and Leo, who reflected the years of Arabs from the walls of Constantinople, was very high, therefore, when the teachings of the icon readers were approved in the year, after the VII Ecumenical Council, the new round of war with the Bulgarians provoked a new political crisis, the imperial power returned to the iconoclastic policy.

The dispute about the icons gave rise to two powerful directions of theological thought. Although the teachings of the iconoclasts are known much worse than the teachings of their opponents, indirect data indicate that the thought of the iconoclasts of the Emperor Konstantin Koprony and the Patriarch of Constantinople John Grammar was no less deeply rooted in the Greek philosophical tradition than the thought-icon capture of John Damaskin and the head of the anti-iconoclastic monitoring opposition.

Theodore Studit. In parallel, the dispute developed in the church-political plane, the boundaries of the power of the emperor, the patriarch, monasticism and the episcopate were re-determined. It became possible thanks to mutual concessions, for example, the posthumous forgiveness of the iconoclast emperor Theophilus, whose widow was Theodore. The celebration of Orthodoxy, arranged by Theodora on this occasion, completed the era of universal cathedrals and marked a new stage in the life of the Byzantine state and the church.

In the Orthodox tradition, he copes to this day and the anathema of the iconoclasts, called namely, sound every year on the first Sunday of the Great Lent. Since then, the iconocraticism, which has become the last heresy, condemned by the fullness of the Church, began to mythologize in the historical memory of Byzantium. The daughters of Empress Theodora learn to read the icons of the Feoktista grandmother.

Miniature from the Madrid Code "Chronicle" John Skilitsa. Now this theory has become the official teaching of the Church - the creation and worship of the sacred images was henceforth not only resolved, but was charged with the duty of a Christian. From that time on, an avalanche-like growth of artistic products begins, the usual appearance of the East Christian temple with an iconic decoration is formed, the use of icons is built into liturgical practice and changes the course of worship.

In addition, the iconoclastic dispute stimulated the reading, copying and study of sources, to which the warring parties turned in search of arguments. Overcoming the cultural crisis is largely due to philological work in the preparation of church cathedrals. And the invention of the minuscule minusculus is a letter in lowercase letters, radically simplified and reduced the production of books.

The Macedonian era of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Pope fought for the spheres of influence primarily in Bulgaria, South Italy and Sicily.The proclamation of Charles the Great Emperor of the West in the year dealt a sensitive blow to the political ideology of Byzantium: the Byzantine emperor found a competitor represented by Carolingians.

The miraculous salvation of the Photius of Constantinople with the help of the Riza of the Mother of God. Fresco from the Assumption Princess of the Monastery. Papa Nikolai used this situation to approve the authority of the papal throne and expand the spheres of his influence. In the year, he withdrawn the signatures of his messengers who approved the construction of Photius, but Emperor Michael III found that this was not enough to shift the Patriarch, and in the year Fotiy betrayed the pope of Nicholas anathema.

However, after the death of Ignatius Fotiy, for another nine years, he returned to the patriarchal throne - formal reconciliation followed in - years, but the anti -Latin line laid down by the Photius in the district message to the bishop's thrones of the East formed the basis of the centuries -old polemic tradition, whose echoes were heard between the churches in the year, and during the discussion of the possibility of a church union in the church union in the course of discussion XIII and XV centuries.

Clarke 39 with the works of Plato. It is assumed that scholly comments in the fields are left by the Arefa himself.