Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
BALKANS
Traian Stoianovich
POLAND
Bogna Lorence-Kot
BALKANS
Because of common biological foundations, societies have tended to divide childhood into two main categories, children under seven and children from seven to fourteen or fifteen. The age group from fourteen to twenty-one comprises a third life category, which most societies did not, for a long time, associate with childhood.
In classical Greek antiquity, Hippocrates distinguished between three phases of early human life: that of the paidion, the child until age seven; that of the pais, the child of sevento fourteen; and that of the mourakion, the person between fourteen and twenty-one, when males usually were admitted into their father's deme and females were married. In western Europe, in response to urbanization, commercialization, the development of schools, and the rise of chivalry, this third stage was recognized between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. With the diffusion of chivalry to the Serb lands between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, which required long training in knightly games, delayed marriage may have become almost as common among privileged Serbian males of the warrior class as it was in the West. For most social categories of the western and central Balkans, however, a long transitional stage between childhood and adulthood came into existence only after 1830.
The Domestic Family
From the fifteenth century until 1830, the Balkans divided on the basis of biosocial regimes into three areas: the western and west-central or Serb, Croat, western Bulgarian, and Albanian lands; the east-central Balkan or eastern Bulgarian
TABLE 1
lands; and the Adriatic, Aegean, and Black Sea coastlands. In the western and west-central lands, 60 to 80 percent of the population was included in extended households. In the east-central regions, the proportion fell to 40 percent; in the coastlands, to 20 percent.
Epistion was the ancient Greek term for household, meaning, literally, "(pertaining) to the hearth." The hearth was the place of assembly for the smallest socially defined unit for such common purposes as eating, celebrating, and grieving. The household could be small or large. Among the descendants of the Slavs who migrated into the Balkans in the sixth and seventh centuries, the term for household was the same as the word for house. In the early nineteenth century, however, south Slavic thinkers adopted the term zadruga to denote extended household, a term meaning "harmony" or "for the other." Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has suggested the use of another term, domestic family, for the extended household. We accept the suggestion but will define it in the sense of the extended household of the south Slavic or Balkan type. The latter was not just the product of a process of continuing lineal and lateral expansion and contraction but also of the aspiration to perdurability. It was a corporate body whose members identified land, work implements, and livestock as their common property.
Extension was a response to three circumstances. Pastoral transhumance, which needed the labor of male children from seven to fourteen years old, may have given an initial impetus to the formation of households of many adults and children. It was also a response to the need of agriculturalists and raisers of livestock alike for a household of more than two adults to assure the presence of someone to care for children in case of the death of one or two adults. Finally, large and strong families were a response to the need for protection against intruders during periods of insecurity.
By its very size, the vast Ottoman Empire created conditions under which long-distance transhumance was able to prosper and expand. It also engendered insecurity in the extensive marchlands formed with neighboring European states. Between the latter part of the fifteenth century and 1830, these marchlands remained an area of insecurity and of wide diffusion of a biosocial regime of domestic households, in which children up to fourteen years old made up well over 40 and even close to 50 percent of the population.
The Stages of Childhood
Records regarding the first phase of Balkan childhood are meager. Among the Balkan Turks, however, the sixteenth-century naturalist Pierre Belon du Mans, in a comparison of urban populations, says that children there were "never so stinky" or so difficult to bring up as the children of the "Latins," or Roman Catholics of western Europe. Turkish mothers breast-fed their infants until they were at least ten months old. They fed them no cereals or milk from a nonhuman source until that age, in contrast to the Latins, who gave them such foods much earlier. The infants were cradled until they were able to control their physiological needs. Through their cradles, which were made of taut leather, a hollow tube attached to the child's urinary member passed out through a small hole into a receptacle. In this way, mothers avoided the soiling of their rugs or carpets, diminished the need for linens, and kept their infants clean and comfortable.
Nineteenth-century and later observers note that infants were swaddled in almost all Balkan rural districts–lightly in Albania, round and round in Macedonia. In Macedonia, infants were allowed to have one hand free after their first smile; in Albanian districts, after they were forty days old. In southern Macedonia, mothers changed their children as soon as they wet themselves. Macedonian mothers fondled or tapped them playfully, tickled them around the lips, and told them stories. In Macedonia and Montenegro alike, infants normally were weaned in their third or fourth year. The functions of Balkan mothers later shifted to accustoming children to recognize male authorities and to teaching them the requirements of communal survival: to honor elders, observe age and sex differences, economize by not dropping crumbs, and respond to household needs.
In the second stage of childhood, the head of the household and the fathers and paternal uncles took over the task of teaching male children work tasks and instilling in them the need for collaboration. Mothers prepared female children for wifehood and motherhood.
Adolescence was virtually absent. Early marriage was common. In 146 of the villages enumerated in the county of Belgrade in 1530, only 13 percent of the male adults (males fourteen or fifteen years of age and over) were unmarried. In the Croatian Military Frontier during the Napoleonic era, females were married at age thirteen or fourteen, males at sixteen or seventeen. Table 1 shows certain other contrasts in the percentage of children in the total population.
Celibacy and late marriage suggest a low representation of children. Many Dubrovnik nobles married after age forty or fifty or remained celibate. Dubrovnik noblewomen did not marry until they were twenty-five or thirty. In the new city of Sarajevo in 1516, only 13.5 percent of the Orthodox males over fourteen or fifteen were unmarried compared to 39.6 percent of the Muslim males. In 1528, the proportion among Muslim males rose to 52.8 percent. In late nineteenth-century Istanbul, most males married after age thirty, and many remained bachelors. The city's females married after age twenty.
The practice of abortion, other means of birth control, and venereal disease curtailed the number of children. A French consul versed in medical matters, F. C. H. L. Pouqueville, noted in the 1790s that Muslim Moreot (Peloponnesian) women practiced abortion and had fewer children than the Orthodox Greek women of the peninsula. Ottoman attempts to curb abortion were of no avail. Instead, Orthodox Christian women, rural and urban alike, also resorted to the practice. Long known to the western Asian and Mediterranean cultures, the practice of abortion and of other modes of birth control was less common in interior Balkan districts. Conducive to their diffusion were a growing acceptance between 1830 and 1880 of European ideas of fashion, an increasingly favorable attitude toward European conceptions of modernity and individuality, and the affirmation of European models of urban organization. Such influences emanated from two directions. They spread from the east (Istanbul) and south (Thessaloniki), moving northward and westward. They were also diffused–and ever more vigorously during the second half of the nineteenth century–southward from Vienna and Hungary. Finding acceptance among the Serbs of Hungary, they made their way to Serbia and Bosnia. In their wake and under the effect of compulsory male military service, urbanization, growing literacy, intensified contact with Europe, the relaxation of the authority of elders, and a growing propensity to delayed marriage, birth-control practices and abortion–which together were known as the "white plague"–spread southward.
The practice of delayed marriage acted to promote an upward creeping in the rate of illegitimacy in Serbia. From 1880 to 1884, however, the illegitimacy rate in that country still stood at less than 1 percent of all births. In 1877, it was1.41 percent in Greece, 4.74 percent in Romania, 7.1 percent in France, and 7.4 percent in Hungary. In 1878, it stood at 7.15 percent in Italy, 7.44 percent in Germany, and 14.1 percent in Austria.
Revision of the Biosocial Regime
The revision of the biosocial regime of the Balkan interior, however, was a product not simply of diffusion but of earlier changes promoted by Balkan elites: demographic growth, urbanization, improved communication and transportation, commercialization, the obligation of military service for males, the diffusion of an ideology of freedom and individuality, and the voluntary adoption of western European political, social, economic, and cultural models. These innovations included the establishment of governments of law, with provisions for the security of life and property and a favorable disposition toward the formation of an informed, communicating society. These innovations were introduced in Wallachia and Moldavia after 1830, and in Greece, Serbia, and Croatia in the 1830s and especially 1840s. Aided by a growing cereal economy, they spread to the Ottoman Danube vilayet (northern Bulgaria). After the Crimean War and the Congress of Berlin, they found root in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The best-informed person in a domestic household was likely to be the pater familias or stares œina. The following incident suggests that he sometimes may also have been the member most responsive to the new institutions supportive of individual initiative and an informed society. The Serbian ethnographer Milan <Eth>uro Milicevic (1831–1908), relates that when he was a child, his eighty-five-year-old grandfather gathered together his sons, grandsons, and older nephews to tell them that what hitherto had been known as "ours" henceforth would be "ours, yours, and theirs." The household would have to separate. Eager to favor their own children, the women of such households later would also favor separation.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the spread of elementary, intermediate, and higher schools, and of opportunities for the sons of the privileged to study in other European countries, aided the process of creating self-instituted generations, made up of persons in their late teens and twenties who, under the impetus of some great issue, interest, or idea, emerged as groups able to influence the rest of the population until another strong interest or idea gave rise to the formation of a new generation. In Croatia, Serbia, Vojvodina, and Greece, such a generation, informed by the ideology of liberalism, arose in the 1840s. Its elders, constitutionalist notables, regarded the demonstrations and polemics of this generation in 1848 as the "games of children." In fact, the extension of higher education to the sons of the privileged had resulted in the creation of a life cycle of delayed marriage. One demand of the students of the Licej (lyceum, the future university) of Belgrade in 1848 was that they be allowed to wear swords and marten-skin caps, parts of the uniform of the Serbian bureaucracy, in recognition of their right to fill future governmental positions. In 1868, Svetozar Markovic (1846–1875), the son of a Serbian prefect, urged the formation of a "radical party" to wage a "struggle against everything that has grown too old." The Bulgarian poet Hristo Botev emerged as a critic of Bulgarian mothers for striving to prevent their sons and daughters from becoming realists. A fellow Bulgarian, Ljuben Karavelov, discoursed on the conflict of generations.
Another consequence of the new societal model was that rural houses began to be built of more durable materials and with more rooms. The typical Balkan rural house in lowland districts grew from a dwelling of one or two rooms (without the kitchen) in 1830 to a dwelling of four rooms in 1900. In highland rural districts, it grew from nothing more than a kitchen and all-purpose room to a building of two or three rooms. Households became smaller. Houses became larger. The idea of a separate room for children or of the separation of the sexes could be conceptualized only around or after 1900.
The formation of a new biosocial regime of childhood and adulthood similar to that of Western Europe, which was simultaneously furthered and arrested by two world wars and by political and economic crises, continued after 1945, at first mostly under communist but ultimately again under capitalist direction. Its affirmation has been least complete among rural Albanian, Kosovo, and Bosnian Muslims. Specific conditions under communism, however, did generate some distinctive features. Housing shortages in countries like Hungary, for example, generated more multigenerational households after World War II, when these were virtually disappearing in western Europe. More recent developments point to a resumption of convergence in the experience of childhood between the Balkans and the rest of Europe.
See also: Eastern Europe: Poland.
bibliography
Golden, Mark. 1990. Children and Childhood in Classical Athens. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hajnal, John. 1965. "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective." In Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography, ed. D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley. London: Edward Arnold.
Halpern, Joel Martin. 1967. A Serbian Village. New York: Harper and Row.
Hammel, Eugene A. 1968. Alternative Social Structures and Ritual Relations in the Balkans. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Hammel, Eugene A. 1972. "The Zadruga as Process." In Household and Family in Past Time: Comparative Studies in the Size and Structure of the Domestic Group over the Last Three Centuries in England, France, Serbia, Japan, and Colonial North America, with Further Materials from Western Europe, ed. Laslett, Peter, with the assistance of Richard Wall. Cambridge, UK: University Press.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1971. "The Family." In Man, Culture, and Society, ed. Harry L. Shapiro. New York: Oxford University Press.
Quataert, Donald. 1994. "The Age of Reforms, 1813–1914." In An Economic History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, ed. Halil Inalcik, with Donald Quataert. Cambridge, UK: University Press.
Stoianovich, Traian. 1992–1995. Between East and West: The Balkan and Mediterranean Worlds. 4 vols. New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas.
Stoianovich, Traian. 1994. Balkan Worlds: The First and Last Europe. Armonk, NY: Sharpe.
Traian Stoianovich
POLAND
The values of the nobility shaped the rearing of Polish children until the mid-to late eighteenth century, when Enlightenment influences and political developments led to major reforms. Enlightenment ideas about the nature and treatment of children had been seeping into Poland prior to the First Partition in 1772, when its territory was divided among Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The loss of territory, along with fear of further losses, also spurred reforms dedicated to national priorities instead of the goals of the nobility, because child-rearing practices and educational norms were perceived as being basic to national interests. Reforms included the secularization, nationalization, and Polonization of schooling. Girls were to be educated and mothers were encouraged to raise good citizens from infancy by taking physical and emotional care of their young. These measures contrast with the preceding distant and intimidating attitude of adults toward the young.
Public discussion about children waned following the Third Partition in 1795, because the occupiers had little interest in Polish issues and even less in progressive ideas. During the period of subjugation (1795–1918), Austrians did little to proscribe Polish identity, viewing Poland as the empire's hinterland. The other two occupiers, Prussia and Russia, sought absorption of Poles into their own cultures, but Polish resistance to integration became apparent with the failed Uprising of 1830 in Russian Poland. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the failed 1863 Uprising in Russian Poland provoked elimination of all Polish topics from public school curricula. Prussians pursued similar measures in the wake of German unification and Bismarck's Kulturkampf. But Poles, who made clear distinctions between nationality and state authority, felt no affinity for either Russians or Germans, and continued covert inculcation of Polish national identity in the young.
Historically, Polish cultural intransigence came as a surprise to those who knew that prior to the partitions, progressive Poles had shown little interest in Polish identity, preferring cosmopolitanism and everything French. In its serious version, that sentiment promoted the modernization of Polish culture for the purpose of preserving independence by aligning it with developments in Western Europe. Upon loss of independence Poles refocused on neglected national traditions, rediscovering some of what they had scorned in the eighteenth century. It may well be said that the partitions helped forge a modern Polish identity.
Identity apart, Poles always followed developing Western European trends. They were particularly interested in Progressive education, such as the educational ideals promoted by Friedrich Froebel and Maria Montessori. To the extent that private school funding was available and the censors were satisfied, a minority of Polish children experienced the best that the educational world could offer. As for the rest, improvised home education augmented, if not negated, state schooling. Efforts to sustain the Polish ethos in the children of literate parents were expanded to illiterate peasant children. Progressives supported these efforts because they viewed peasant children as Polish nationals in the making; conservatives shared those goals because they were anxious to buttress class distinctions and inculcate the proper work ethic.
By the 1880s, when political activism turned to improving society instead of battling for independence, young Poles of both genders were proselytizing on behalf of Polish culture. The defeat of 1863 had turned Poles toward so-called organic work, which focused on social and economic improvement rather than armed struggle. Norman Davies points out that thirty years of such missionary activity yielded a bumper crop of private, informal, and covert Polish cultural enterprises, which swamped the Prussian and Russian educational system. Poles were culturally intact when they gained independence in 1918, but they faced enormous practical difficulties. The task of creating an organic infrastructure for three territories that had been apart for over a century was daunting. The problem of unification was compounded by the high rate of illiteracy and by the existence of several ethnic minorities who did not necessarily identify with Polish culture. The nation was still in the process of becoming when World War II began.
Loss is the operative word for the Polish experience of World War II. Estimates indicate that Poland lost over 2.6 million children under the Nazi and Soviet occupations. The children represent 38 percent of all Polish human losses during the war. Of the two hundred thousand children taken to Germany for the purpose of Germanization, only 20 percent returned. Both German and Soviet invaders destroyed school facilities and annihilated educators. Yet in the midst of terror, Poles managed to print books to teach their children Polish subjects, their teenagers finished high school, and graduates took university courses. It is as if wartime was just a variation on the period of partitions.
At the end of the war Poles expected to pick up where they had left off in 1939. That illusion lasted only three years. In 1948, having gained political control, the communists began organizing school reforms whose stated goal was raising the level and quality of education, but whose real purpose was indoctrination of the young. Polish texts were replaced with Soviet works. Contact with Western educational practice disappeared. Again, Polish families did their best to offset what children learned in school by exposing them to views that were not politically correct.
Following the dissolution of communist control in 1989, members of the Solidarity Party–with the support of the Catholic Church–embarked on new school reforms. In 1991, a law was passed authorizing the post-communist National School Reform Act. This act opened the door to the establishment of private schools by individuals, foundations, municipal governments, and religious institutions, none of which was possible earlier. According to observers, the reforms have had mixed success so far. Their stated goal has been to modernize Polish education and to meet the criteria of the European Union. But, according to some Polish critics, the constant search for new programs, new texts, and new pedagogical approaches has, at times, undermined the stability of the public school system. Ironically, democracy appears to present greater educational opportunity, but also greater challenges, than Poles faced under various occupiers.
See also: Eastern Europe: Balkans; Education, Europe.
bibliography
Davies, Norman. 1982. God's Playground: A History of Poland. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lorence-Kot, Bogna. 1985. Child-Rearing and Reform: A Study of the Nobility in Eighteenth-Century Poland. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Lorence-Kot, Bogna, and Adam Winiarz. 2000. "Education in Poland." In Kindergartens and Culture: The Global Diffusion of an Idea, ed. Roberta Wollons. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Bogna Lorence-Kot
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
I n ancient times, Greece had built one of the world's greatest civilizations, a center of culture and science that reached its peak in the period 490–404 b.c. Even as Greece declined, its influence spread from Italy to Egypt to India, so that by the time the Roman Empire conquered Greece in 146 b.c., Rome had been thoroughly influenced by Greek civilization. Beginning in a.d. 330, the Roman Empire began to split into Greek, or Eastern, and Roman, or Western, halves. Divisions between the two lands widened after the West fell and the East became the Byzantine Empire. Ethnic differences further widened the gap: while Germans overran the western half of the continent, much of Eastern Europe came under the dominance of a people called the Slavs.
The Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine (BIZ-un-teen) Empire had its beginnings with Constantine, who in 330 founded a second Roman capital at a city overlooking the strait that separates Europe from Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). The city became Constantinople (kahn-stan-ti-NOH-pul), but later scholars used its old name of Byzantium (bi-ZAN-tee-um) to identify the entire Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine people, however, called themselves Romans, and their land the Roman Empire, which thus continued to exist in the East for another thousand years after the fall of the West.
Words to Know: Eastern Europe
- Civil service:
- The administrators and officials who run a government.
- City-state:
- A city that is also a self-contained political unit, like a country.
- Clergy:
- The priesthood, or all ministers.
- Clerical:
- Relating to priests.
- Deity:
- A god.
- Diplomacy:
- The use of skillful negotiations with leaders of other nations to influence events.
- Hagiography:
- An idealized biography, often of a saint.
- Icon:
- In the Eastern Orthodox Church, an image of a saint.
- Legal code:
- A system of laws.
- Madonna and Child:
- Mary and the baby Jesus, as depicted in religious art.
- Middle class:
- A group in between the rich and the poor, or the rich and the working class; usually considered the backbone of a growing economy.
- Missionary:
- Someone who travels to other lands with the aim of converting others to his or her religion.
- Nimbus:
- A halo-like cloud said to hover around a deity or exalted person.
- Patriarch:
- A bishop in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
- Plague:
- A disease that spreads quickly to a large population.
- Protectorate:
- A state dependent on a larger, stronger state for military protection.
- Siege:
- A sustained military attack against a city.
- Strait:
- A narrow water passageway between two areas of land.
In 500 Byzantium held most of the lands formerly controlled by the Eastern Roman Empire, including Greece and what is now Bulgaria, Asia Minor, a strip of land from Syria to Palestine, Egypt, and part of Libya. But Justinian (483–565; ruled 527–565), the greatest of Byzantine rulers, resolved to undertake the re-conquest of the Western Roman Empire from the barbarians. His brilliant general Belisarius (c. 505–565) won back North Africa from the Vandals in 534, and Italy from the Ostrogoths in 540. The Byzantines also took southern Spain from the Visigoths in 550.
These victories were costly, however, and except for a few parts of Sicily and southern Italy, the Byzantines did not hold their conquests for long. The empire soon had other troubles as well. Beginning in 541, a plague devastated Byzantium, and by the time it ended in the mid-700s, it had killed millions of people. Aside from everything else, this meant that the empire's tax revenues decreased dramatically, leaving it unable to pay for its armies. Enemies, including the Slavs, attacked from all sides, and the first successful rebellion in some three hundred years ended the life of the emperor Maurice (ruled 582–602). For more than a century, the empire was almost constantly at war with Persia, which conquered all Byzantine lands south of Asia Minor, and it was only with the help of the church that Heraclius (hair-uh-KLY-us; ruled 610–41) was able to hold on to Constantinople itself. It seemed that things could not get worse—but they did.
When the even more powerful Arab caliphate replaced the Persians, Byzantium seemed doomed. Yet thanks to reorganization of the military by Constans II (ruled 641–68), the Byzantines put up a strong defense of their homeland. They reached a turning point in 718, when the Arabs were forced to give up the siege of Constantinople. This had enormous significance for future history: if the Arabs had defeated the Byzantines, they would undoubtedly have conquered and forcibly converted Western Europe—which lacked unifying leadership at the time—to Islam.
By the 900s, Byzantium was on the offensive again, reconquering old territories and dealing severely with a tribe called the Bulgars, who had long posed a threat. These conquests reached their peak under Basil II (BAZ-ul; ruled 976–1025), nicknamed "The Bulgar-Slayer." Basil annexed Bulgaria in 1014, and by 1025 the empire had reached a second high point. Egypt, Palestine, and Lebanon were gone forever, but the Byzantine lands and protectorates stretched from southern Italy to Armenia, and from Croatia to Syria.
The Byzantine system
Justinian had laid the foundations for modern law with his legal code, or system of laws, completed in 535. Roman law dated back almost a thousand years, but Justinian's Code greatly simplified and organized it. Byzantium also had an excellent and highly organized civil service. Placed as they were between many lands in Europe and Asia, the Byzantines had to become skilled at diplomacy, or the art of negotiation. They also became masters at playing their enemies against one another; but when they had to go to war, they were a mighty force.
Having adapted to changing times, the Byzantines developed a strong cavalry, along with something the earlier Roman Empire had lacked: a powerful navy. In fact, the Byzantine fleet used the first modern-style chemical weapon, "Greek fire." The latter was a combination of petroleum, salt peter, quicklime, and sulphur; when sprayed on an enemy's ship it would cause it to burn.
One of the most significant military-related developments, however, had nothing to do with actual fighting. This was the reorganization of the army by Constans II in the mid-600s, an act that may well have saved the empire. With funds running low, he gave soldiers plots of land called "themes" and made them self-supporting. This not only saved money, but also promoted good will with the troops and encouraged a stronger defense, since now the soldiers were defending their own land.
The economy
The "themes" bear some resemblance to aspects of Western European feudalism. Certainly both Byzantine and Carolingian society were made of similar elements: a tiny elite consisting of royalty, nobility, priests, and military; and a vast mass of toiling peasants. The lives of the peasants may not have been much better than those of their counterparts in Western Europe, but thanks to the efforts of
the Orthodox Church, literacy was much more widespread in Byzantium.
The Byzantine Empire even managed to create a middle class, something virtually unknown in the West until the 1000s. Typically these were merchants who profited from the extensive trade routes running through Byzantium, linking Europe and Asia. Thus Constantinople became known as a crossroads for the world and emerged as a most splendid city. At a time when Rome had perhaps 30,000 inhabitants, the Byzantine capital boasted a quarter-million people.
Byzantine culture
From an early time, it was clear that there was not really just one Christian church. The Catholic Church conducted its services in Latin, the Orthodox Church in Greek. Catholics looked to the pope for leadership, members of the Orthodox faith to the patriarch (PAY-tree-ark) or bishop of Constantinople. Gradually the Orthodox church came to have its own saints, its own holidays, and its own rules concerning marriage among the clergy.
At the heart of the division between churches was a debate about the identity of Jesus Christ: for Western Christians, there could be no doubt that Christ was God, whereas most Eastern Christians maintained that the two were separate. In worldly matters, West and East also differed in their views on the relationship between church and state. In Western Europe, popes and kings vied for leadership, but in Byzantium the emperor's power was clear. He could even exercise final say in choosing the patriarch of Constantinople, and the Byzantines viewed the position of the emperor (though not necessarily any individual holding that position) as sacred.
In fact depictions of emperors and empresses in Byzantine art made use of an ancient pagan symbol called the nimbus, which was said to hover around a deity. Oddly, this was one of the few aspects of Byzantine culture that made an impact on the West, where artists began using a related symbol, the halo; but haloes were for Jesus, Mary, or the saints—not for rulers.
The Nika Revolt
Byzantine society in the 500s was dominated by two groups, the Blues and the Greens. The names came from the colors of their respective horse-racing teams, who competed regularly at the Hippodrome, or race track. Horse races in Byzantium were much more important than they are today: by cheering for the emperor's horse or that of a challenger, a citizen was making a political statement, and rivalries could often lead to violence.
It is not surprising, then, that a dispute that originated in the Hippodrome on January 13, 532, ended in massive bloodshed. This was the Nika Revolt, so named because Nika! or "Conquer!" was the favorite cheer of spectators at the races. In this particular instance, both the Greens and the Blues joined forces against the emperor Justinian, who had placed extraordinarily high taxes on his people and imprisoned members of both factions.
With an angry crowd gathering outside his palace, Justinian found himself unable to make a decision and began listening to advisors who suggested he should flee. It was then that the Empress Theodora (c. 500–548) stepped in and told him to act bravely: "For my own part," she said, "I hold to the old saying that the imperial purple makes the best burial sheet"—in other words, it is better to die defending the throne than to run away. Justinian listened to his wife's counsel and dispatched an army led by his general Belisarius to deal with the revolt. They trapped the rioters in the Hippodrome, where they massacred some 30,000 of them and reestablished order.
Iconoclasm
In the Byzantine world, the relationship between art, religion, and politics was a complicated one, and never more so than in the dispute over Iconoclasm (eye-KAHN-oh-klazm). The latter was the name for a movement, supported by Emperor Leo III (ruled 717–41), which held that all "icons," or images of religious figures, were idols, and hence went against Christian teachings. Under orders from Leo, icons were forbidden, and many existing ones were destroyed. A number of priests died trying to stop soldiers from tearing down statues, and under Constantine V (ruled 741–75) the persecution became even more vigorous.
Many medieval European rulers earned a title to distinguish them from others of the same name, a word or phrase that characterized the man, his reign, or his greatest achievement: thus Pepin III was known as "Pepin the Short," and Basil II became "the Bulgar-Slayer." Constantine's title—Copronymus, which means "name of dung"—says a great deal about the Byzantine reaction to Iconoclasm, which became more and more unpopular as the violence associated with it continued. Western church leaders meanwhile shared in the Byzantines' growing distaste for the Iconoclastic movement: indeed, Iconoclasm never had many supporters in the West, where few people could read. Images were an essential part of worship in Western Europe, and any attack on artwork was seen as an attack on Christianity itself.
Eventually the anti-Iconoclast movement—the Iconophiles (eye-KAHN-oh-fylz)—gained an important supporter on the throne, yet this did little to win favor with the pope in Rome. The new Byzantine ruler was a ruthless one; however, the real problem was that this emperor was an empress: Irene (ruled 780–802). It was considered bad enough that a woman ruled the empire, but she added insult to injury by using her authority to call the Second Council of Nicaea, which condemned Iconoclasm in 787.
The meeting was designated the seventh ecumenical council, implying that it brought together all Christians. In fact the split between East and West was only widening, and the pope's crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 was in part a reaction to Irene: since it was illegal for a woman to rule the Byzantine empire, the pope could claim that the Roman throne was vacant, and thereby crown Charlemagne. This in turn angered the Byzantines, who felt that the papacy had challenged their claim as the rightful heirs to the Roman Empire.
Byzantine art
As they became more cut off from "barbarian" Western Europe, the Byzantines became convinced that theirs was a superior culture that must be preserved unchanged. It is easy to understand how they believed this: there was their glorious Greek past, not to mention the fact that for many centuries, Byzantium was the only real civilization on the European continent. Thus the Byzantines developed a highly static, or unchanging, worldview.
This static quality translated to their art, which was brilliant if a bit
stiff. Iconoclasm caused Byzantine artists to develop a strong sense of abstract form—that is, designs and other non-representational shapes—but there was also a reaction to Iconoclasm; thus in the end, Byzantine art was more highly image-oriented than ever. Painting relied heavily on formal depictions of the Madonna and Child (Mary and the baby Jesus), as Western European art did later. The human figure in Byzantine art was elongated, with people's bodies much taller in proportion to head size than they really were. Babies looked like small adults, without the relatively large heads and "baby fat" that distinguishes real babies.
The Byzantines were masters in the form called mosaic (moh-ZAY-ik), usually created by arranging colored bits of glass or tile to form a picture. The most famous Byzantine mosaics are those depicting Justinian and Theodora in the Church of San Vitale at Ravenna, built during the brief Byzantine occupation of Italy. The greatest example of Byzantine architecture, however, was not the church in Ravenna but the Hagia (HAH-jah) Sophia in Constantinople. Built by Justinian, the Hagia Sophia was completed in 537 and quickly became recognized as one of the most magnificent structures in the world. It was dominated by a dome that, despite its enormous size—184 feet high and 102 feet wide—seemed to float over thin air. In fact it rests on four arches and the stone piers upholding them.
The Slavic peoples
Among the countless peoples inhabiting what is now western Russia during Roman times, later to be swept westward by the Huns, was a group called the Slavs. Twice they invaded the Byzantine Empire during its troubled years, but eventually they settled down and became mixed with the Avars, Bulgars, and Khazars, other nomadic groups in the region. Slavs and
Bulgars founded the first Slavic kingdom, Bulgaria, whose independence Byzantium recognized in 716.
In the 800s, two Byzantine missionaries, the brothers Cyril (SEER-ul; c. 827–869) and Methodius (mi-THOH-dee-us; c. 825–885), began preaching the Christian message in what is now the Czech Republic. This ultimately led to the conversion of the Bulgarians, whose King Boris embraced Eastern Orthodoxy in 865. In a pattern that would be repeated throughout Slavic lands, conversion did not spread upward from the people; rather, it went from the top down, with the king ordering his subjects to convert. Around the same time, the Byzantine protectorate of Serbia accepted Orthodoxy as well. St. Cyril even developed an alphabet, based on Greek letters, which the newly converted peoples adopted, and which Slavic Orthodox nations use today: the Cyrillic alphabet.
Catholic nations
Some eastern European peoples, while linguistically and ethnically Slavic, embraced Roman Catholicism. Instead of the Cyrillic alphabet, they adopted the Roman alphabet, used in virtually all Western nations (including the United States) today. Just to the north of Serbia was Croatia, whose people became a part of Charlemagne's empire, as did neighboring Slovenia. To the northeast was Hungary, one of the few nations in Eastern Europe that is neither Slavic nor Orthodox: its dominant Magyar population became Catholic after their defeat by Otto the Great in 955.
North of Hungary was Moravia, converted to Orthodoxy by Cyril and Methodius. Later it would become Catholic after its conquest by Bohemia, itself converted during the 800s by German missionaries. Bohemia and Moravia, today part of the Czech Republic, would enjoy periods of great influence during the Middle Ages. Moravia briefly conquered a large area, including Slovakia to the east, in the late 800s; and during the 1200s Bohemia emerged as a great power.
Byzantine Literature: Tall Tales and Gossip
Byzantine literature is remembered for two opposing tendencies. On the one hand, there was the literature of hagiography (hay-jee-AHG-ruh-fee), official biographies of the Eastern Orthodox saints. These were a mixture of truth and legend, designed to provide readers both with entertainment and a moral lesson. Hagiography exaggerated the best qualities of the subject. On the other hand, Byzantium's gossipy historians (who also sometimes presented tall tales as fact) often tried to make people seem worse than they were, not better.
Such was the case with Procopius (pruh-KOH-pee-us), a historian of the 500s. Though he wrote a highly acclaimed account of Justinian's wars of conquest, Procopius secretly held deep grudges against the emperor, the empress Theodora, and others. Therefore he wrote a work in which he told what he really thought. Procopius's Secret History was not published until many centuries after his death, and no wonder: had it been discovered, he would undoubtedly have been executed. Its chapters have titles such as "Proving That Justinian and Theodora Were Actually Fiends [i.e., demons] in Human Form."
The empress had been a prostitute in her younger days, and Procopius spared no detail regarding her shady past, his account at times verging on pornography. Other historians, by contrast, offer positive accounts of Theodora, and indeed it is hard to trust Procopius. He was a member of the Green faction, whereas Theodora supported the Blues, and this may explain some of his ill will.
Finally, there was the northernmost and most influential of the Slavic Catholic nations: Poland, whose king adopted Christianity in
966. Thus a large part of Slavic Eastern Europe was Catholic, yet to the east was a single Orthodox nation that became larger than all of Eastern Europe combined: Russia.
Kievan Russia
The region just north of the Black Sea has been inhabited since ancient times. All the tribes entering Europe from Asia, including not only the Huns and Turkic peoples but later the Mongols, passed through it; yet the Slavs remained. They were probably the founders of Kiev (kee-YEV), today the capital of Ukraine. Then in 862 the Vikings known as the Varangians arrived from Sweden and established the city of Novgorod (NAWV-guhrud). Eventually one of the Vikings, whose name was Rurik (died c. 879), emerged as their leader, and founded a dynasty that would remain influential until 1598.
Rurik extended Slavic influence north, into the land of the Finns; but the real empire-building began with Oleg (died c. 912), who merged Kiev and Novgorod into a single entity called Kievan Rus or Kievan Russia. Oleg's daughter-in-law Olga accepted
Eastern Orthodoxy; however, her son rejected it for fear that it would make him a subject of Byzantium. Conversion came during the reign of Vladimir the Great (VLAHD-i-meer; c. 956–1015), who in 987 agreed to marry Anne, the sister of the Byzantine Empire's mighty Basil II.
Vladimir set about forcibly converting Kiev and Novgorod while Basil occupied himself with the Bulgars. A power struggle followed the death of Vladimir, but Yaroslav the Wise (yuh-ruh-SLAHF; ruled 1019–54) restored order and began building a vast Russian empire that stretched the length of Eastern Europe, from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea.
The turning point for Eastern Europe
After 1054 and the death of Yaroslav, Kievan Russia began to decline, torn apart by rivalries between various city-states. Turkic nomads, by then a powerful force in Eastern Europe, became more involved in Russian affairs, and in 1097 a group of Russian nobles divided the empire with them. This would make Russia particularly vulnerable to the Mongol invasion about 150 years later.
The year 1054 also marked a turning point for Eastern Europe as a whole. It was then that the Eastern Orthodox Church formally broke with Rome over a number of issues, including clerical celibacy—that is, the question of whether priests could marry. Orthodox leaders held that they could and should; Rome, particularly after the split with the Orthodox Church, opposed marriage for priests.
Soon afterward, Byzantium experienced another, even more significant, turning point: its loss to the Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in Armenia in 1071. The Turks even took the Byzantine emperor prisoner, and soon afterward helped themselves to all of Asia Minor, thenceforth known as Turkey. Thus less than fifty years after the victories of Basil II, Byzantium lost everything it had gained, and though the empire would continue for three more centuries, Manzikert was a blow from which it would never recover.
How Basil Became the Bulgar-Slayer
In the 980s, Bulgaria's King Samuel (ruled 980–1014) began creating an empire to the north of Byzantium, one that ultimately included parts of Bulgaria, Macedonia, northern Greece, Serbia, and Albania. He even declared himself czar (ZAHR)—Slavic for "caesar."
The Byzantines' Basil II rightly saw this as a threat, and the two empires went to war. It took decades to subdue the Bulgarians, but Basil won the decisive Battle of Belasitsa on July 29, 1014. His army captured some 14,000 Bulgarian soldiers, and gouged their eyes out; every hundredth man, however, was allowed to keep one eye so he could lead the other ninety-nine home. It was said that when Czar Samuel saw his army limping home, he died of a heart attack.
For More Information
Books
Dijkstra, Henk, editor. History of the Ancient and Medieval World, Volume 8: Christianity and Islam. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1996, pp. 1045–68.
Dijkstra, Henk, editor. History of the Ancient and Medieval World, Volume 9: The Middle Ages. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1996, pp. 1243–66.
Dijkstra, Henk, editor. History of the Ancient and Medieval World, Volume 11: Empires of the Ancient World. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1996, pp. 1513–18.
Hanawalt, Barbara A. The Middle Ages: An Illustrated History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Roberts, J. M. The Illustrated History of the World, Volume 4: The Age of Diverging Traditions. New York: Oxford, 1998, pp. 48–95.
Periodicals
Treadgold, Warren. "The Persistence of Byzantium." Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 1998, pp. 66–91.
Web Sites
Byzantine Studies—Medieval History Net Links. [Online] Available http://historymedren.about.com/education/history/historymedren/msubbyz.htm (last accessed July 28, 2000).
Byzantium: The Byzantine Studies Page. [On-line] Available http://www.bway.net/~halsall/byzantium.html (last accessed July 28, 2000).
"The Slavs." Catholic Encyclopedia. [Online] Available http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14042a.htm (last accessed July 28, 2000).
Eastern Europe
EASTERN EUROPE
EASTERN EUROPE. SeeCentral Europe, Relations with .