the empire, the Byzantine farmer did prosper and was not only able to
feed the empire but to ship some of his surplus abroad as well.
This Byzantine farmer was very versatile. He grew wheat, olives,
every kind of fruit, and even flax and cotton. He maintained herds
of goats and sheep and cattle and horses. In his “more or less
self-governing” villages, there was not only uncleared woodland,
scrubby wastes, and unfenced pastures, but vineyards and garden
patches protected by deep ditches and palisades of pointed stakes.
The very existence of a special farmer’s law shows how important
he was. This law took care of everything from stealing or killing
livestock to accidentally plowing someone else’s land. The man who
did this lost his crop and also the time he had spent.
Another thing that shows how important the farmer was to the
Byzantine Empire is the size of a medium-sized farm: 100 yoke of
oxen, 500 grazing oxen, 80 horses or mules, 12,000 sheep. That was
what could be found on a typical farm!
Indeed, the main difficulties faced by the Byzantine farmer were
taxes, and the greediness of the big landowners. Taxes were high
and if one man did not pay them, the whole village was responsible
for his share. The greedy big landowner caused even more trouble.
Some of these “robbers in silk and velvet,” as they were called,
owned estates as big as provinces, but even that did not satisfy
them and they spent much of their time trying to get the land of the
neighboring small farmers.
They tried all sorts of tricks and schemes. For instance, if a small
farmer was sick or in trouble, his rich neighbor would offer to help
him out if the farmer would adopt him as his son. Then when the
small farmer died, the rich farmer inherited the land, and the small
farmer’s wife and his real children could beg or become farm hands or
slaves. Finally, an emperor who had been a small farmer himself made
a law to protect the small farmer. From then on the small farmer was
not allowed to give, sell, or even lease his land to a big farmer.
But this law did not last for long. The big farmer had too much
influence and had it repealed.
Next to farming in importance was Byzantine industry, and in the long
run this probably produced more wealth than the Byzantine farmers did.
It was, of course, necessary to feed the huge city population, and
in spite of all the produce grown and raised on their farms, the
Byzantines still had to import some of the things they needed. Wheat
was one of them, and sometimes salt fish, wine, and of course slaves.
It was also necessary to clothe the people, make shoes for them,
butcher their meat, bake their bread, cask wine for them, and build
and furnish their houses. This kept many hands busy.
But it was the luxury trades that brought the Byzantines their fame
and fortune. The goldsmiths made gold cups and chalices, gold inlaid
silver patens and plates, gold pectoral crosses (the cross worn by a
churchman upon his breast). They also made jewelry and enamel that
was so beautiful that people still say that the finest and most
exquisite craftsmanship of the Middle Ages was Byzantine.
The glassmakers made their famous Byzantine glass. It was noted for
its rich color, and no other glass equaled it until the Venetians
began making glass on the neighboring island of Murano in 1291. There
was a special kind of Byzantine glass called _fonde d’oro_. In this,
designs of pure gold were put between two layers of glass and then
fused together.
The Byzantines also made and exported the finest kind of china, ivory
carved with figures of saints and emperors, vases of honey-colored
agate, lawn and other delicate cloth, perfumes, strange and
sharp-smelling mixtures of spices and herbs, and too many other
things to mention. These Byzantine goods went all over the world.
Byzantine products have been found even in Scotland.
But perhaps the most important of all Byzantine industries was the
silk industry. Byzantine silks and heavy gold brocade were not
only needed throughout the empire for church services and imperial
functions. They, too, were widely shipped abroad.
In the days of the old Roman Empire, all silk came from China, where
Roman ambassadors had traveled 1,000 years before Marco Polo. The
silk was carried by caravan across the desert to Samarkand, and then
to the Persian border, where heavy duty had to be paid on it.
Silk still came from China—and there was still a heavy duty on it—in
the early days of the Byzantine Empire. But one day while Justinian
sat on his throne two Christian monks appeared before him, one of
them holding in his hand a hollow bamboo. He broke it open, and
inside were silkworm cocoons. They had been smuggled all the way from
distant Canton or Nanking.
From then on, the Byzantines had a silk industry of their own. The
silkworm was cultivated all over the empire, but especially in the
Peloponnesus, the peninsula of southern Greece, which now became
known as the Morea—the Latin word for mulberry leaf is _morus_—from
the mulberry trees grown there for the silkworms to feed upon. Silk
cloth was woven all over the empire, but principally in Greece and at
Constantinople.
As a matter of fact, some silk was even manufactured upon the very
grounds of the imperial Sacred Palace. This was a special royal silk,
and it was illegal to take any of it from the empire.
Bishop Liutprand of Cremona—the same one who saw the emperor
magically lifted up into the air at the Magnaura Palace—tried to
smuggle some out of Constantinople, but he was caught.
He tried to bluff his way through the customs by roaring, “Your
emperor Nicephorus came to his throne by lying and crime! He told me
I could buy all that I wanted to. Where is the imperial promise?”
But although Liutprand was an ambassador from the German emperor, the
Byzantines merely smiled at him.
“You poverty-stricken Italians and Germans are not meant to appear in
such gorgeous material. Only we Byzantines, who are unique in virtue,
have a right to wear them.”
They forced him to open his baggage and took five of the most
splendid pieces. But they did pay him back the money he had spent.
None of this Byzantine silk, and none of the other marvelous things
they made either, would have added very much to Byzantine gold and
glitter if the Byzantines had kept all for themselves. Little as the
average Byzantine liked to risk his money in foreign adventures, it
was foreign trade that brought most of their wealth.
Byzantine foreign trade reached out all over the world. The
Byzantines imported animal skins, slaves, and sometimes wheat from
Russia; precious stones from India; spices from Ceylon; embroidered
rugs from Spain and Morocco; ores and wrought metals from Italy and
Germany; wool and woolen goods from the Low Countries and England;
hemp, flax, and amber from the Balkans and the north. These were only
a few things they imported. Some of these things were shipped out
again; for instance, they shipped amber from the Baltic to the Far
East.
The Byzantines even penetrated darkest Africa. Not only did they do
business with the Ethiopian kingdom of Axum on the Red Sea where the
temperature sometimes went up to 120°, but they may even have gone
with the dark-skinned Axumite merchants to the mysterious city of
Zambabwe. There, in the heart of the jungle, Negro tribesmen built
towers, walls, and palaces so mighty that even today men look at the
ruins and wonder how they did it.
Gold seemed to be as plentiful as pebbles in Zambabwe, and you
traded with the natives in the following way: You built a thick
thorn breastwork, and on it you placed salt, iron, and the carcasses
of cattle. Then you went away, and the natives slipped out of the
forest and placed beans of gold upon each object. Later on you came
back and if you thought they had left enough, you took the gold and
the natives carried off the meat and salt and iron. If not, you
moved away and the natives were given a chance to leave more gold.
Sometimes this bartering went on for four or five days. Neither side
saw, or even talked to, the other.
The Byzantines were able to carry on this world business, because
their principal city, Constantinople, had one of the most strategic
locations in the known world of that time. It was like a spider in
the center of a spider web; practically every trade route in the
world passed through it.
The Byzantines also had a large number of unusually fine seaports
in other parts of the empire. Besides Constantinople itself, there
was Smyrna, Thessalonica, Patras, and in the early days, Alexandria.
There were several others, many of which are very good seaports even
today.
The Byzantines also knew how to promote business. We are apt to think
of a world’s fair as something modern, but the Byzantines knew all
about them. Every year, in October, they held an enormous trade fair
on the Vardar plain outside Thessalonica. There they built a huge
temporary wood-and-canvas city of booths and bazaars, and even amid
the troubled Middle Ages, merchants and peddlers flocked to it from
all over. It was only later, when the Byzantines became proud and
haughty, refusing to seek business while they sat on their doorsteps
waiting for business to come to them, that they got into trouble.
Then the energetic Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans took over.
But nothing had more to do with making the Byzantines successful in
world trade than the sound Byzantine money. Their gold coin, known to
us as the bezant, was one of the four most widely accepted pieces of
money the world has ever known. The other three are the Florentine
florin, which made the Medici bankers so rich, the English pound
sterling, and now the United States dollar. Any one of these would be
accepted anywhere in the world during the time it was in use.
[Illustration: GOLD BEZANT]
The reason the Byzantine coin was stable is that no one ever tampered
with the bezant. In the old days, kings used to clip their coins
(that is, use a little less gold in them), but no emperor ever
clipped the bezant. It was always kept at its full value.
An old Byzantine writer tells a story which shows both how valuable
the bezant was and how it traveled.
A Greek merchant was in Ceylon when he got into an argument with a
Persian merchant as to whose ruler was the more powerful.
“Mine,” said the Persian. “He is King of Kings.”
“Why argue?” asked the Greek. “They are both in the room. Compare
them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I have some bezants, and you have some dirhams. Put them
beside each other.”
There was no need for further discussion. The portrait of the
_basileus_ of the Romans was on the bezant, and the bezant was the
much more valuable coin.
I, myself, had an experience which proves the same thing. On my desk
in front of me is a real Byzantine gold piece. It was coined in the
reign of Basil I and his son Constantine, and cannot be a day less
than 1,090 years old. But I was able to buy it at a price that I
could afford. I asked the coin dealer why.
“Bezants were used all over the world, and so you find them
everywhere!” he answered.
Because the Byzantine emperors made their gold coins so stable in
value that everybody wanted them, I am able to own one today!
[Illustration: Two women]
THE BYZANTINE WAY OF LIFE
What did the Byzantine Empire do for itself, and for the world, and
even for us, during the eleven long centuries when it was almost
always—but not _always_—so rich and powerful?
You would not really know about the Byzantines unless you had the
answer.
First of all, it defended a large part of the warm, civilized
Mediterranean lands from the Asiatic barbarians. The word “Asiatic”
is important, but maybe “barbarians from the Asiatic steppes” would
be better, for these were barbarians of a special kind.
Our ancestors were barbarians, too, and the barbarians that came from
the forests of Germany and the sandy shores of Denmark were capable
of cruel destruction. But they were also free and independent, with
a gift for self-government and an instinct that told them that one
man has just as many rights as another. They even elected their
kings, cheering and lifting them on their shields, and the kings
they elected were men like Theodoric of Italy, Alfred the Great,
and Charlemagne, all men who wanted to absorb the very best of the
civilization they had taken over, and not merely tear things down.
If, instead of them, men like Attila and Genghis Khan, with their
hard-riding, slant-eyed followers, had become the rulers of western
Europe, iron discipline and a firm government might have been
established a whole lot sooner. But our democratic way of living
could never have been born. In other words, the Byzantines defended
Europe from the Asiatic hordes and made it possible for Western
civilization to develop in its own way.
The Byzantines would hardly be worth remembering if they had done
nothing more than defend.
They also created a civilization of their own, and you can still see
its influence in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and even
Russia. And there are still traces of it all over Europe and Asia.
If a Byzantine had come to life and looked at the coronation of
Elizabeth II of England over TV, he would have felt perfectly at
home, for in many ways it was a Byzantine ceremony. The fact that
this young woman was not only sovereign of the realm but head of
the official church was Byzantine, too. She was following in the
footsteps of the empresses Irene and Zoe.
In the East, even the Turks who finally conquered the Byzantines
took over many of their ideas. In its early days the Turkish Empire
was very much like the Byzantine Empire, except that it practiced
Islam, the religion founded by Mohammed. The Turkish _sanjaks_, or
provinces, had almost the same boundaries as the Byzantine _themes_,
or provinces. Their grand vizier, or prime minister—but there is
a difference, for the vizier’s name means “he who bears burdens,”
rather than “accountant”—was practically the same as the Logothete of
the Dromos. A Turkish _bey_ was not too different from a Byzantine
_strategos_, or governor general.
The Turks even used Byzantines to help them rule. A large number of
the governors whom they sent out to their conquered territories were
Phanariote Greeks, those Greeks who remained in Constantinople after
the empire fell. All but twelve of their forty-eight grand viziers
were either Byzantines or from former Byzantine provinces such as
Albania, Dalmatia, or Greece.
Byzantine civilization affected much more of daily life than
merely ceremonies and government, however. It entered into every
phase of life. It was the Byzantines who invented the fork. From
Constantinople it was taken to Italy, and medieval English tourists
brought it back to Britain. But for a long time a man was considered
sissy and affected if he used one instead of his fingers.
High on the list of the great accomplishments of the Byzantines is
Byzantine art. In fact, many people think of it first, and sometimes
it is the only thing they think about when they think of the
Byzantines. Not long ago it was not very much appreciated, but we now
realize that it is one of the finest arts there ever was. Besides
that, it bridged the more than thousand-year gap in art between the
wonderful statues of the Greeks and Romans and the oil paintings and
frescoes of the Italian Renaissance.
[Illustration: Two men painting]
The most famous Byzantine art is the Byzantine mosaics. A Byzantine
mosaic is a picture made of little pieces of glass and gold and
precious stones. These mosaics were usually very large and set
right into the walls of churches, and so it is almost impossible to
see one unless you visit the church itself. You would have to go at
least to Italy where there are some very fine ones in Rome, Ravenna,
and Naples. These Byzantine mosaics are quite stiff, and the people
in them usually look straight ahead. But if you ever see a real one,
or even a good picture of one, you will never forget it.
The Byzantines also did oil paintings and frescoes, particularly in
their later days and particularly in the Balkans and Greece. There
are frescoes in Yugoslavia and in southern Greece that are almost
as good as those of the great Italian artist Giotto, and they were
done 200 years before him. Byzantine sculpture ranged from richly
carved marble, like the big throne of a patriarch in Ravenna, to
ivory caskets and plaques. Byzantine illuminated manuscripts are also
among the most beautiful ever made. Most of them are Bibles and other
religious books, but there are several about the travels of Cosmas
Who-Sailed-to-India. They are filled with saints in blue and scarlet,
and one manuscript has a picture of a boatload of escaping martyrs
showing what travel was like in Byzantine days.
Byzantine art is not only wonderful itself, but it shows how the
Byzantines helped themselves to everything good that had been done
before them. On the walls of a famous tomb in Ravenna, there is a
mosaic of two doves at a drinking fountain that might have come from
the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. There is also Byzantine art that
bubbles over with Greek love of life. Some of it is filled with
early Christian saints and symbols, like the peacock and the fish.
There is some with the lions and eagles of the ancient Hittites, and
others whose fierce, bearded saints are like Assyrian warriors. But,
of course, this practice of blending the ideas of different peoples
wasn’t limited to art. It applied to everything the Byzantines did.
The Byzantines preserved classic culture. They preserved Greek
literature, Greek science, Greek learning, and even the Greek
language. And this at a time when almost everybody in the West had
completely forgotten Greek, and as a matter of fact, only churchmen
and a handful of ragged scholars even knew Latin.
This was a very important contribution. No civilization ever starts
from scratch, and our modern one is based on the renewed interest in
classic culture that is called the Revival of Learning. During that
time, great writers like Petrarch and Boccaccio were willing to spend
a fortune to get the services of some bearded ruffian who could teach
them Greek. When Constantinople fell, the Byzantine scholars who
escaped to Europe could sell any manuscript they brought with them
for enough money to live on for a long time.
The Byzantines never had to rediscover Homer, or Plato, or Euclid,
who invented geometry, or Eratosthenes, who knew the world was round
1,700 years before Columbus, even measuring its circumference as
25,000 miles, which is almost right. They never had to rediscover the
ancients; they knew about them all the time.
Another thing the Byzantines did was to insist on education. Even
the mighty French emperor Charlemagne had a hard time if he wanted
to spell his way through a book and sign his name. Most Byzantine
emperors could not only read and write but were thoroughly educated.
Theophilus studied everything from Greek to natural history. Leo
the Philosopher composed poems, sermons, and a life of his father.
Constantine Born-in-the-Purple was famous for his books on the
barbarians and on his empire. John IV and Manuel II, and above all
Anna Comnena, a princess, wrote astonishingly good histories.
It was not merely the emperors and some of their courtiers who were
learned. Although a few poor men—like the saint from Asia Minor who
had to tend his father’s swine and did not learn to read until he was
forty-seven—did not have the chance to be educated, most Byzantines
went to school or a university from the time they were five until
they were twenty.
If you had been a Byzantine, you would have trotted off to your
classes accompanied by a pedagogue—in the old days, he was a
slave—who carried your books and saw to it that you obeyed your
teachers. Until you were ten, you would have studied reading,
writing, and spelling. The last was very important because the way
words were pronounced was always changing, although the spelling
remained the same. After this you would have studied what the
Byzantines called grammar. But it was not exactly like our grammar.
It was more like literature. For instance, you would have had to
learn Homer by heart and been able to explain everything he had
written word by word. You were in trouble if you weren’t able to do
this. The teacher merely nodded to the pedagogue, who always had a
rod in his hand. After grammar, you would have studied rhetoric,
and to pass your rhetoric courses you had to be able to discuss
eloquently anything from a fable by Aesop to the pictures on the
walls of the city council. Finally, and this was especially important
if you were going to be a churchman or go into the government, you
would have gone on to a university. That was the case only if you
were a boy. Although many Byzantine women were as well educated as
the men, everything they learned was in the home. None of them went
to college or even to grammar school.
Besides giving us great art, keeping alive Greek culture and
civilization, and seeing to it that there was at least one place
in the world where everyone who wanted to be was educated, the
Byzantines protected and preserved the Christian faith.
Long before the word “crusader” was ever heard, the Byzantine emperor
Heraclius was fighting the Saracens in Damascus, Homs, Jerusalem,
and Antioch just as the crusaders did in the days of Richard the
Lion-Hearted 500 years later. Almost every Byzantine emperor who
followed him did the same. Among the caliphs whom they fought, but
could not defeat, was Harun al-Rashid, the hero of _The Arabian
Nights_.
They did defeat many another Moslem leader, however, and so although
the Arabs often advanced through the empire, they were never able to
pour into the Balkans as they had poured into France and Spain.
But the Byzantines did more than just battle the enemies of
Christianity, and they also did more than argue over the fine points
of religion.
They tried to practice Christianity as well as preach it. They
believed that _philanthropia_—from which our word “philanthropy,” or
“love of mankind” is derived—was the first duty of those who were
rich or had power. There were no people before the Byzantines, and
only a few since, who believed so sincerely that every man was really
and truly his brother’s keeper. And by being his brother’s keeper
they meant taking care of him in every kind of need.
In the Byzantine Empire there were homes for travelers and pilgrims.
There were homes for orphans. There were homes for the sick. There
were homes for foundlings. There were old-age homes.
All of these institutions were heavily endowed when they were not
actually supported by the government, and the officials in charge of
them were important people. Take the orphan homes, for example. There
were forty orphan homes in Constantinople alone. Each was headed by
an _orphanotrope_. The Grand Orphanotrope who was over all of them,
was appointed by the emperor himself. He held one of the highest
offices in the empire.
Many of the Byzantine laws were Christian as well. In the old days
of the ancient Roman Empire, the father was the absolute master of
the family. His wife’s property, including her dowry, became his, and
if he did not like her, he could divorce her with little more than a
word. At least in the very early days, he had power of life and death
over his slaves and almost as much over his children. If a son did
not please him, he did not have to leave him a penny in his will.
But the Byzantines did not want laws like that. They wanted laws
that the Saviour would approve of. In their opinion, Christ would
not have approved of divorce, and so although they could not stop
it altogether, they made it much more difficult to get. At one time
there were only four recognized reasons for divorce. One of them
was that you could get a divorce if your husband (or wife) tried to
murder you!
Women were given many other rights by the Byzantines. If a child
wanted to marry, he had to get his mother’s permission as well as
his father’s. A woman’s property did not belong exclusively to her
husband; her property and her husband’s property now belonged to both
of them. If the father died, the mother could become her child’s
guardian.