In Our Time - Byzantium

Episode Date: July 19, 2001

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the culture, history and legacy of the eastern Byzantine Empire. In 453 with the Barbarians at the gate, through the gate and sacking the city of Rome “the wide arch of the ranged empire” finally began to fall...Or did it? In AD 395 the Emperor Theodosius had divided the vast Roman Empire between his two sons. The Northern and Western Europe provinces were governed from Rome, but the Eastern Empire became based on the Bosphorous in the city of Constantinople. And when Rome crumbled and the Dark Ages fell across Western Europe, the Eastern Roman Empire endured, with its ancient texts, its classical outlook and its Imperial society…for another one thousand years. How did the East survive when the West fell, were they really Romans and why do we know so little about one of the most successful and long lived Empires ever to straddle the globe? Did its scholars with their Greek manuscripts enable the Western Renaissance to take place? And why has it so often been sidelined and undermined by history and historians? With Charlotte Roueché, Reader in Classical and Byzantine Greek, Kings College London; John Julius Norwich, author of a three part history of Byzantium: The Early Centuries, The Apogee and Decline and Fall; Liz James, Senior Lecturer in the History of Art, University of Sussex.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, this is our last program in the present run, and we're going east. In the middle of the 5th century,

with the barbarians at the gate, through the gate, and sacking the city of Rome, the wide arch of the rangered empire, finally began to fall or did it. In AD 395, the Emperor Theodosius had divided the vast Roman Empire between his two sons, the northern and West European provinces was governed from Rome, but the Eastern Empire became based on the Bosporus in the city of Constantinople. And when Rome crumbled and the dark ages are supposed to have fallen across Western Europe,

the Eastern Roman Empire endured with its ancient text, its classical outlook and its imperial society for another 1,000 years. How did the Eastern Empire survive the fall of Rome? And why has it so often been sidelined, and undermined by history and historians. In today's program, we, like W.B. Yeats, will sail the season come to the Holy City of Byzantium. With me on this quest to the Forgotten Empire,

is Charlotte Roushé, reader in classical and Byzantine Greek at King's College London, and author of The Making of Byzantine History, John Julius Norwich, author of a three-part history of Byzantium, the early centuries, the apogee and decline and fall, and Liz James, a senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of Sussex, an author of Women, Men and Unix, in Byzantium. Charlotte Roushé, let's begin at the beginning. How did the Eastern Empire manage to survive for that thousand years when the West fell to the Goths in the middle of the 5th century?

Well, I'm always rather disappointed to think that the basic reasons may be geopolitical, because it would be much more fun if they were cultural. But I think a fundamental reason is that when Constantine took the city of Byzantium, renamed it after himself, and made it the capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. He was a general of considerable experience, and he knew that it was a very useful operational centre for the protection of the Roman Empire from the increasing threat from the Balkans. It also enabled a Roman Emperor to get quickly to the eastern borders of the Empire, which were also presenting an increasing problem in his period. So I think the strategic judgment of Constantine, in choosing Byzantium, little knowing that Byzantium being so much easier to pronounce that Constantinople was going to give its name to an entire culture, I think that strategic judgment must be one of the things that enabled Constantinople to survive.

and the Roman concept of empire meant that as long as the capital city survived, the empire was still in existence. Enemies of the Eastern Empire came to the walls of Constantinople more than once, and the rest of the empire could be almost entirely out of control. But it was only with the final conquest of the city of Constantinople in 1453. three, that the empire was perceived as being over. Why didn't the barbarians who marched on Rome, as it were, swing east and march on Constantinople?

They tried, and they did. The Roman story would have it that the nasty people in the East encouraged them by bribes and other forms of diplomacy, that it would be much more fun attacking the West than the East. That is an old attitude which will recur throughout Byzantine history. There is simply a longer, wider border to the northwestern provinces through all of which you can permeate, whereas in the end, you can protect Constantinople even if you only protect that peninsula. And there's a great wall across the peninsula,

now being excavated by a team from the University of Newcastle, put up in the late 5th century, to protect the end of the peninsula from barbarian raids. John Julius Norris, how did the Eastern Empire react to the fall of Rome? Did they see it as a permanent state of affairs or have any idea of what they thought? Quite honestly, I don't think they minded much. Because, I mean, the Western Empire, with its capital in Rome, had been going rapidly downhill for a very, very long time.

It was a sort of pathetic little sort of vestige, really, of what it had once been. Constantine, although he continued to allow the Western Roman Empire to exist, he really made absolutely no bones about the fact that Constantinople was now the real proper capital. I mean, he virtually sacked Rome and brought this vast quantity of marvellous stature and God knows what to beautify his new city. And he loathed Rome. He hardly ever went there himself. First of all, he deeply disapproved of the old Roman religion. As you know, he introduced Christianity to the – or he made Christianity the official religion.

of the Roman Empire, one of the two enormous earth-shaking things he did, the other one was moving the capital. I mean, I think with the possible arguable exception of Jesus Christ to the prophet Muhammad, I think that Constantine is probably the most influential man who ever lived, because he took these two colossal decisions, either of which would have changed the history of the world. And he did it twice. Did the people therefore in Constantinople, did they think of themselves as the real Romans and continue to think of themselves as Romans? They called themselves Romans until 1453. To this day, I'm told, Greeks in colloquial Greek refer to each other as Romayos.

Are you a Greek? They actually say, are you a Roman? Byzantium always strongly emphasized this fact that there was nothing new. It was the continuation of the old Roman Empire. It just happened to have moved to a different place, but this was the Empire of the Caesars that was still continuing. and I think this was an incredibly important part of their philosophy. But after, we don't quite know, we're probably after about the sixth century,

after Justinian's time, Greek was really the language, and of course, because Constantinople was in the Greek-speaking world, so they'd had no choice. I mean, they kept on, Constantine, brought Latin, and Latin was the official language for a few hundred years, but ultimately it had to go, because the whole Greek ambiance was too strong

and too all pervasive around them. they still call themselves Romance. Liz James, do you see this as the right sort of analysis that they didn't care much that Rome was withering on the vine, as it were, and that this was at the centre now? I don't think I'd put it quite as extremely as John Julius does. I think they did still care about Rome. They still valued what Rome stood for in a sort of conceptual sense,

this idea of the prestige, the authority, and above all of civilisation, you know, Rome was, in a sense, the beginning of civilization. The barbarians were at the gates of Roman, in a sense, Constantinople and the switch to Constantinople was a way of preserving a part of that civilization. And there's a very great thrust, particularly in the early days of the empire, Justinian in particular, the great conquering 6th century emperor who wants to go back and restore the Roman Empire, his conquest in Italy, in North Africa and even in Persia are all part of a great imperial dream

to restore the Roman Empire to its former glories to restore it back to its former boundaries and to have again one empire But not to go back to Rome, surely. I mean, he wanted to recapture Italy because he wanted obviously the empire, I mean the idea, and if you just called yourself a Roman Empire, which didn't include Italy,

it was ridiculous. He wanted to, as you rightly say, get the empire big and strong again. But, I mean, he never considered moving the capital back to Rome, did he? No, no, he didn't. And a later emperor, 7th century emperor, who did try to move the capital to Sicily,

got it in the neck pretty soon afterwards. I'm going to come in here, John Jew, if you don't mind. I just want to pursue this for a second. A point that's been raised by Charlotte and yourself, I want to pursue it with Liz. How do you see the people in Constantinople, later known as Byzantium? And how do you see them regarding themselves?

We've been told they think themselves as Roman, and yet they begin to speak Greek quite. So when does that crossover? When does the sort of segregation almost from Rome take place? I think it's a very long-drawn-out process. It's one of these things that you can never pinpoint. And I think the other influential aspect of all this is, of course, Christianity. That they're not only constructing themselves as Romans,

they've not only got this Greekness coming in, but they're also Christians. And at that point, in a sense, you have a weakening, perhaps, to some extent of the link with Rome because at the point that Constantine shifts the empire to Constantinople, the empire itself has only just become a Christian empire. So how far Christianity in those early days

is instilled into the consciousness of Rome and the Roman Empire as opposed to what's beginning to happen in the East? It's actually almost like Darwin's Finches, isn't it? Where they become less and less and less like Finchers and at the end they can't mate with each other. So I'm just trying to get, we've had the, it survives,

Constantine set it up, it survives. Justinian sails in to try to extend the empire to Italy, as John Julius has pointed out very firmly, not to bring Rome back in. But the change from Latin to Greek and the preservation and the singular development of the religion begins to make it into a different place. So I would like to know what the different place is, and then we can spend the rest of the program talking about Byzantium. Charlotte Ruchio, what characterizes that different place? Well, some of the differentness has been there from the beginning. Remember that the Roman Empire absorbed an already very confident, self-confident, Hellenistic Greek culture in the eastern half, in what became the eastern half of the Roman Empire.

There was an underlying fundamental culture there, which had been there since the days of Alexander, which spanned the whole eastern half of the Mediterranean. and that kind of self-confidence fits very cultural self-confidence, then fits very comfortably into a world of Roman political power and control, and then you add to that the certainties of Christianity. And I think one of the things to remember is one of the aspects of Byzantium is they're pretty low on self-doubt.

And that is perhaps another reason for survival. They know who they are. They know. It's not that they construct the idea that the Roman Empire. They are. And therefore, the changes that take place are in many ways, simply, some of them are just the sloughing off of the arrival of people from northwestern Europe

who've been around for a bit and now, fortunately, we've got rid of them again. You know, sort of like the end of the tourist season must be. So some of it is just a continuation and an enhancement of a pre-existing Hellenistic culture. But I think there is, in fact, a vast change, which is that from the loss of the Roman Empire, the West onwards, and from the resurgence of the powers of the East in the late 6th and early 7th century, the Eastern Roman Empire, which for convenience only we will call Byzantium, is surrounded by deeply significant and dangerous neighbours.

And the Roman Empire, in its heyday, had always thought of its neighbours as marginal barbarians, with the possible exception of the power in Mesopotamia, but even so never felt really very threatened. And one of the processes of change is a process of reasserting their cultural confidence in terms that would impress and frighten and also offer access to their neighbours.

That is, they drew up a wonderful construct of their culture, a description of their culture, which made them feel good, but also said to everybody next door, we're better than you, but you can copy us if you like. Right, just on this same question, John Julius, before we move on, Byzantium, when did it become, and we know that the term didn't come into later,

but the place we're talking about, when did become recognisably a place different from the West? Well, I think it was probably always fairly different. Already, I think, I mean, Byzantium, an old Greek city, is already part of the Greek world. And into this Greek world, the Roman Empire deliberately transplants itself. and I suppose Constantine probably thinks that this empire will continue to be basically Roman and surrounded by all these sort of rather unimportant barbarians but basically Roman and talking Latin until the end

but of course he's wrong I mean the place just very very slowly gets greaker and greaker and greaker Justinian said to have been the last emperor to speak to speak Latin I don't know whether that's true or not I mean he probably didn't even speak very good Latin because he was born in what's now Serbia but I think certainly that within by the following century, by the 7th century,

Greek was more or less the regular general language of the empire in everything but name. We've got that, we've had huge claims for the place, so let's turn to this question. Liz James, why is it that Byzantium and Emperor became the great empire, why has it got such a small entry in the cultural history of Europe until now, until you've arrived on the scene?

On the home it has a small entry, a small and dismissive entry. Why do you think that is? That's the question we always get asked and I think it's probably the one question that always annoys Byzantinists quite profoundly in the sense that, you know, one of you've missed it is before you answer. In 1869, the historian Lecky, you all know about this,

wrote of the Byzantine Empire and this was not uncommon. The universal verdict of history is that it constitutes without a single exception the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed. Its vices were the vices of men who ceased to be brave without learning to be virtuous.

and that sort of thing went on. So why was that attitude able to be trumpeted, not only discussed, for so long? I think there are a whole, again, complicated network of reasons that feed into this. One is the very basic historical reason. It's an empire that ceased to exist in 1453, and at that point became part of the Ottoman Empire. So at that point it immediately became very alien and very other

to what was happening in Western Europe in the 15th century. And at that time in Western Europe, with movements like the Renaissance, there was this rediscovery of the classical past, the classical heritage, and this increasing emphasis and privilege on it. Isn't this wonderful? Isn't this art great? Isn't this art fabulous sort of thing? And in that sense, because you're looking at Greece and Rome, you can forget Byzantium, because actually Greece and Rome are still just about within the boundaries of Western Europe. Western Europe can still access the treasures, the heritage, the literature. But what's happened in Byzantium is now, you know, after 1453, Constantinople becomes the capital of the Ottoman Empire, becomes inaccessible, and gets all tied up throughout the 18th and 19th centuries increasingly with, if you like,

the glamour of Orientalism. And so these are all things that are pulling it further away and taking it further away from our culture, which becomes increasingly identified with being, let's be nice and mainstream, Greece, Rome, Renaissance. that's how history runs. You know, Byzantia, well, they're slightly odd, they're Turkish, they're Orthodox Christians, so they're not us because they're not Catholic or Protestant.

We can't get there. Would you agree with that, Your Honor? Well, I was wondering, I think perhaps also it's rooted in what I talked about before is how the Byzantines packaged themselves to survive in the Middle Ages. They did package, they devoted a lot of energy to self-presentation. And the first grumpy Western description that we have is a 10th century Italian bishop visiting Byzantium

being very aware of being manipulated, being very aware of this society which treats him as an inferior and a foreigner. Can you get some examples? This is Bishop Lutpran. Lutpran of Cremona, yes. And he is very startled when he goes into the throne room and there the throne rises up in the air

and mechanical lions roar and the birds Twitter on the mechanical tree. He is clearly actually very impressed, but he's also aware why this is being done. He's very aware of being treated under very strict regulations for the control of foreigners. He's very aware of being treated as an outsider.

And that technique, which was very effective, I think, for the self-preservation of Byzantium, Their virtual invention of half the diplomatic techniques known to us has also stuck in a kind of memory of, which means that the word Byzantine is used to mean complex, secretive, exotic, and somehow dishonest. And that really goes back to that medieval memory of Byzantium seen from the outside. How true do you think it was in history, in fact, as it were, John Julius, the description that's just been given us by Charlotte Roche,

which is the description that hangs right to... Well, I mean, I think it was probably pretty accurate. I mean, Lut Prand of Cremona. Incidentally, he was published in a lovely new translation in paperback here, and I cannot recommend him too strongly. He's a frankly good read. He, as a highly intelligent observer, and I'm perfectly sure that everything that he describes did occur,

and the Byzantines were very like that. Nobody's ever suggested that Byzantines were very nice people. All people have suggested is that... is that they had a perfectly brilliant civilization. I don't think that civilization was, certainly, it was not ignored up to 1453. I mean, the Byzantine Emperor came and spent Christmas in England with King Henry IV.

You've got that marvelous picture of the penultimate emperor of John the 8th, by but not so godsily, you know, riding in that great procession in the Medici Chapel in Florence. And however far away it was, and however exotic it was, this was a place people went to and went back to, I mean, particularly in Venice, I mean, the constant traffic between the lagoon and the Bosphorus. But then, I think, first of all, of course, as Liz says, the fall of the city to the Ottoman Turks, turned it into something quite, quite different.

But I think it was also this feeling, particularly among 18th and 19th century historians like that bit you just quoted, started probably, I think, by Edward Gibbon, who in his last volume tears tremendous strips off the whole thing. And it was generally thought, I think, quite simply, by this civilisation, this Western civilization, that hero worshipped the ancient Greeks. That here were these sort of rather dark, swarthy people over there in Constantinople, who really had absolutely nothing to do with the great heroic Greeks

that everybody thought about, who did frequently behave very badly, though no worse than great many rulers in the West. And since then, I mean, they just thought that these people were not worth bothering about it. Go to Liz James. The received view, as it were then, has been given by John Julius Norwich. Can you just punch a few holes in it?

What it is, I mean, Gibbon's attitude comes very much from his own position, writing in the 18th century, writing the age of reason, from a very anti-Christian perspective. And he finds the whole Byzantine mentality, completely alien, you know, the stress that they place, that they are God's chosen people, they are, you know, the chosen empire. that everything relies on miracles and wonderworking. Bishops have this much power and eunuchs get in there as well,

and this is all totally disgusting and deprable, and no right-thinking Englishman should see this is a good thing in any sense. And because bishops do have power, and because eunuchs get a place in Byzantine history, they're quite significant there. People have gone on believing Gibbon, basically. And because you write so well and so entertainingly, it becomes very easy for that sort of thing to become,

accepted. And then what ends up happening is people start taking it apart and saying, well, is it really like this? And of course it isn't really like this, but in taking it apart, somehow it may become less exciting in some way that if, you know, once you say well, yes, they are eunuchs, but they're

not such a bad thing after all you know. It's not quite as dramatic as having depraved eunuchs lurking in the corridors of power, leaping out to garot, unsuspecting emperors. And so in that sense, you can lose the glamour. Well, Let's lose the glummer a bit and start to talk about what we think, what you think.

It really went on there. We've got this idea of a place from the end of the 19th and into this century. Byzantium intrigue, corrupt, eunuchs having a place in it, lovers in each other's arms, as we're told. More important, not exotic and distanced by being exotic. And somehow, and I want to get to this because this is important, somehow of no real account. That is what I've got from reading what you have written and what other people are written. Now then, Liz, what account do you think it had? I mean, they weren't their best friends in a way that the sixth century writer Procopius in the secret history gave everybody who wrote for them,

gave everybody the chance to say, well, we are a bit larky really. But can you just give us what you think the weight is of that place at that time, not the legacy, but what it was doing in the middle of those centuries out there under Bosphorus? It was producing, I mean, in civilised, in terms of civilisation, leaving aside the political and economic consequences for the moment, because they're also very significant. But in terms of civilisation, it was producing some of the most spectacular buildings, some of the most spectacular works of art that you will see.

Justinian builds the Church of Aesophia, which is the greatest monument in Christendom until perhaps St. Peter's. He builds that in the 560s. You know, what's going on in Western Europe? in the 560s. Well, not a great deal. A lot. Yes. Absolutely. I think we've got Stonehenge and that's about it really. Yet he's putting up these monstrous buildings. There are churches, there are mosaics, things like that. And this is also an art which is in the service of God. But with these buildings, with this art, with this emphasis on the spiritual, the civilized in a sense, what you're having is, and I can only come back this way,

a civilisation within Europe, at a time when, if we turn around and look at what's happening in Western Europe, but what have you got? You've got a series of barbarian kingdoms, you've got the Angles and Saxons, you've got the Franks, you've got the gradual build-up and coalescence of kingdoms into what we begin to understand as countries. In Byzantium in Constantinople, you've got cities, you've got big buildings, stone buildings, You've got golden mosaic. You've got running water, for heaven's sake. You know, you've got things that we would understand as civilization. You've got mud huts.

Can we come to the contrast, Charlotte? Not the contrast. Two messages are coming from, it's anew. One is to do with religion, and the other is to do with excess, whether it's in sexual excess or extravagance of goods, toys and that sort of thing. How do these two things, when you look at them, how do they, as it were, break down? I think the excess message, again, is the outsider's view of this rich culture. And from the Byzantine point of view, to display your wealth is to display both the fact that you are powerful,

but also the fact that God is on your side. Because if God was not on your side, you would not be wealthy and blessed. And that is a concept, you know, the same word for wealth and blessedness, goes back to ancient Greece. That is a very, very old concept. So the Byzantines make a display of their wealth, and this, I think, has become the function of that display. All of these things are things we're discovering very, very recently.

Byzantine studies are moving very, very fast. And there was a recent exhibition in New York. When was it two years ago, three? Well, you see, everything's longer than we think. It was wonderful. Absolutely. And what was so interesting about it was that it expressed the glory of Byzantium in terms of Byzantium's relationship with its neighbours.

I went to that exhibition thinking, oh yes, and went in the first two or three rooms, thinking, well, that's terrific, thinking it was over. There was another 17 rooms. I didn't know the amount in the development. I'm supposed to have read history and all. I just didn't know the amount of it. And it had huge impact apparently in New York. It really

I mean people were amazed. But I think it's noticeable that now in the metropolitan the exhibit of their Byzantine material has continued this emphasis on the multicultural, multi-related nature of Byzantium which is such an

important aspect that it is having to relate to so many cultures all at once. John Eulis, do you think that the notion of, rightly or wrongly, and you can tell us whether it's rightly or longly, the notion of the lasciviousness in, if I can use that word generally, in Byzantine

art and culture was one of the reasons why the West's rather averted its face for a while. Well, there was no lasciviousness in Byzantine art. O'Contrere. Life and culture. I hoped I'd said life and culture. Oh, sorry, I thought you said that. I often wonder

whether the lasciviousness was greater than that which existed in the West. I don't believe it was. The Byzantines... They were known to get up to all sorts of sexual tricks, but didn't people in the West do... I don't know. We don't know. Nor do we can necessarily trust

what we read from people like Procopius who lays it all on with a trowel about the Empress Theodora. Blinding her son so she could rule for another five years. No. That's Irene, isn't it? Unbelievable things in the hippodrome.

Theodore is the geese. Theodore is the geese. The geese. Oh, you remember. It's worth noticing that the secret history. This time in the morning between the geese and the blindinger. The secret history is the only bit of Procopius' very large, extensive history, Byzantium, which is available in Penguin. Not entirely surprisingly.

Yes, but exactly. But talk about our angles. It's the sturdy bits get left out. Of course. The ordinary narrative accounts of victory's success, whatever. The secret history is in multiple editions of. on a box bookstall near you. Well, even with Irene blinding her son,

I mean, that sort of thing, it wasn't unknown in the West at the time, was it? Also, you see, I mean, the violence of going for power is not particular to Byzantium, and yet just as a matter of interest, it's one of the things we laid on them as marking them rather than us. You see, I think any Byzantine would say,

well, would you rather be blinded or killed? Nutilation was a very unpleasant crime, but it was actually a fractionally better than having a throat cut or being garotid. You at least survived. In the West, King Richard III, if we're told right, you know. I mean, even if we don't take King Richard the Third. We can't stand the correspondence.

Take Henry the 8th. Have Henry the 8th, if you will. I mean, any number of those pantages, they were bumping people off right, left and center. So I really don't think that Byzantines were any worse. They've just had a worse press. I think part of the problem is that, as Charlotte was saying, what survived is this warren text by Copius, the secret history, which everybody's read, in a sense.

And this is one text surviving from the 6th century, but everyone thinks, well, this is what Byzantine was like all the way through. They were all at it like rabbits. Yes. You know, they were all after each other. All emperors walked down the palace corridors with their head under their shoulder, possessed by demons. As Procopius says of Justinian, you know,

all empresses were like Theodora, a shameless stripping off in the hippodrome to be. to perform on natural acts with birds, that sort of thing. They're all murdering each other, simply because Procopius is such a good read. Yes. And yet he's one text by himself. It's as if, if I'm allowed to use this power,

it's as if we were to take the Sun newspaper as representing the whole of British culture for all time in all places. And that's what we've done with Procopius. And even then, you've got to balance that with the tremendous cultural life that goes on, with the endless theological, speculation, which may not be to our taste, but

was to theirs. I mean, there was an immense intellectual life going on throughout. It's incredible. There's that anecdote about if you wanted to a baker's shop in Miss Antium, he would say, what do you think about the filius? Just Christ's argument. Why not? If that's

all, you know, they haven't got football teams. If you see what I don't know. They had the blues and greens, yes, but do you see what I mean? Just saying, the blues and greens. Factions supporting that the two colours under which chariot races took place in the hippodrome and you'll be shocked and horrified to hear

that such a corrupt culture this was that the supporters of different sides would fight something unimaginable in the civilised West where nobody would do that sort of thing. And also the blue, I mean I think the greens were monophysites, they thought Christ had one nature and the blues were I can't remember what

were they called. Possibly Orthodox, yes. Orthodox. So I mean two teams were divided by religion. I think the only parallel I can think of is present-day Glasgow. Perhaps this is another place where Byzantium's alienation

from us is most apparent that you have the great sporting fixture in Constantinople is the clash between the blues and the greens in the chariot, yet it's all underpinned by religion. And certainly to people like Gibbon and historians writing in the late 19th, 30, 20th century, any culture that is so much

underpinned by God, any culture that this is the only way that people in Byzantium could think is in terms of Christianity. That is going to be alien. Well, the other bit we're leaving out is that in terms of the Western view of Byzantium, is that after a trickle of visitors, you get a flood in the arrival of the First Crusade. And there, at the end of the 11th century, and there you have this confrontation of two cultures, both apparently committed to the Christian religion,

finding themselves in practical conflict over the conduct and the outcome of the Crusades because the Crusaders march into Byzantium to the disdain of the Byzantines who, however, support them, but they then reconquer land which should belong to the Roman Empire and hold on to it for themselves. And again, from there you see the Genesis, that gives the way. that gives the Westerners reasons to need to talk down Byzantium. And one of the reasons we think the way we do is because it has never been in anybody's interest to talk Byzantium up.

It is much nicer for us if it was a corrupt, ailing culture on the Bosphorus. And if it is, in fact, the bulwark which prevented the Arab conquest and later the Turkish conquest of the whole of northwestern Europe, We are prepared to see the victories in Spain in that regard. We are much less comfortable to see Byzantium as protecting the West. It doesn't suit our book, and it hasn't suited anyone's book. So we are actually the pawns of propaganda from an earlier period.

I think also that one of their great Trump cards, you see, for me, certainly, was this unbelievably magnificent art, the most spiritual art that's ever really been produced. And this was totally unappreciated. by English travellers. They thought it was crude, they thought it was barbaric, because it didn't follow the precepts of Renaissance humanistic thinking. But also most of it was invisible

until the early years of the 20th century. Most of the Byzantine art, which we know was simply not accessible to Western eyes at all. Much of it was lying under whitewash until the 20s. There were some Marx in Venice. Yes. There were a few places. Yes.

I mean, you know, I mean, Jeffel who had Sicily, Ravenna. Can we take this now more specifically talking about art? There is a view that Byzantium made the Western Renaissance possible. I know it's a, that is crudely put, but there you go.

Is there any truth in that, Liz James? Well, all I will say is that Byzantium, of course, never needed a renaissance. You know, I think it's, in a sense, indicative that we in the West privilege this sense of renaissance, which is actually just the West having to rediscover what it's lost instead of saying, you know, instead of saying it the other way around.

In the sense that Byzantian preserved the Greek classics literature, it did play a part in what went on in Italy in the 15th century, 14th, 50th centuries. In terms of art, I think it's more problematic. I think in terms of art, you can see early Italian art borrowing from Byzantine art and echoing elements of it, but then going off in a different direction and having different interests. And I think we need to understand it in terms of art having different interests and different agenda.

That Byzantine art is about one thing and seeks to do it in one particular way. And Renaissance art is actually about something else and is therefore doing it differently. But can we stick to these Greek manuscripts for a while? So I understand it's still in Byzantium. in the 13th century, they're speaking Attic Greek.

They are the manuscripts... The upper classes are. Yes, the manuscripts are not only there, they have been treasured. They have been transferred to, in ways which will preserve them. They've been selected. They've been worked over.

And the idea is that a trickle of scholars came across to Italy and began to teach people, ancient Greeks, so they got hold of these manuscripts and fed into the Renaissance, the rebirth of the Greek world through the sensibility of Europe.

Is there any sense in that at all? Oh, yes, it's a very exciting story, and we can trace it. By the time you're in the 14th, 15th, 15th centuries, we know a lot about these people as individuals, and you can trace the journey of individual scholars who realize that what people in the West want, you're about to become a refugee,

your culture is collapsing, the Turks are clearly going to conquer the place where you live. If you have an education, and if you have some manuscripts, you discover that that goes down well in the world, West and you can go and earn your money by teaching people Greek and that people will be really excited by this rediscovery. The interesting thing is, therefore, that you're left with one of the, well, what was Byzantium for? Well, its job was to preserve the classics for us. They didn't

understand it, but luckily they preserved it and now we've got it was one of the old views of Byzantium. One of people studying the classics often fail to remember is that our canon of the classical authors is defined by what Byzantine scribes in the 9th and 10th and 11th and 12th centuries decided to copy and recopy. Our canon is the Byzantine school canon in many ways. The plays of Sophocles that we have are those that were selected by the Byzantines for preservation, because if you don't recopy your manuscripts often enough, they just fall to bits. But it is, you can trace these people coming over, and there's a wonderful moment in the 1400s when the Byzantines come over to discuss union with the Western Church. But the real excitement, first in Ferrara and then in Florence,

the real excitement in Florence is the arrival of these scholarly people who know Greek, who can be asked out to give lectures on what does Greek culture really mean. So you see the new humanism confronting right adjacent to the old doctrinal dispute. Could you, is that your view of what happened as well, John Julius? Yes, I think it is. I think it, I mean, I'm always surprised at the extent to which Greek, the knowledge and understanding of Greek language and literature, such as we did possess, sort of didn't remain in northern Europe at all.

I mean, we all kept on talking Latin. But Greek was a totally forgotten language. There's marvelous right. I think Boccaccio, in the 14th century, decided he wanted to learn Greek, and he couldn't find anybody in Italy to teach it him. He eventually found some vile-smelling monk in a small orthodox monastery in Calabria who came up, nobody could get near him.

But that was the best way he knew. I think there was only one place in Europe where you could go and learn Greek. And that was Palermo, because by this time half Greek, half Arabic. If you wanted to learn Arabic, you went to Cordova or somewhere. If you wanted to learn Greek, you went to Constantinople. If you wanted to learn both, you went to Palermo.

So can we just summarise now, as we come into the end of it, Louis James, do you think there has been anything deeper in the almost anti-Eastern bias about the reluctance to take in Byzantium? As the three of you have said, Byzantium scholarship is on the beginning to get on the gallop now, and things are changing, but until very, very recently. I don't think there's been a sinister hidden agenda to this at all. I think it's just a culture that has fallen into so many of the gaps, if you like, and so many of the cultural prejudices that we just have almost as a matter of course,

the unspoken biases and prejudices, that it takes time to realize what they actually are, you know, into the gap of being alien another and oriental, into the gap of being the wrong sort of Christianity, into the gap of being a culture that's ruled by eunuchs instead of clean-limbed, right-thinking Englishman type of thing, just too many holes for Byzantium to fall into, and perhaps the biggest hole is Greek. John George, what more do you think is going to come into our consciousness about Byzantium?

What more that will strike people as significant and important for the way we regard our whole history? Well, as Charlotte says, I mean, Byzantine studies are coming on now, at a terrifying speed at the turn of the century. I mean, in 1900, I think people still despised it. Then came people like Stephen Rumsman and David Talbert Rice

and Robert Barron, who wrote this sort of astonishing book called The Byzantine Achievement at the age of 25. It's very much a young man's book, but that's what turned me on to Byzantium before anything else. It's a fascinating book. And suddenly, in the last, what, little more than half a second,

century, really. The whole situation is now changing very rapidly and I'm not a Byzantine scholar so I have no idea where it's going to lead. What I do hope very much is that I think there's quite a good chance that we may discover more wonderful frescoes and wonderful mosaics to increase

our knowledge of Byzantine art, which to me is the most wonderful out in the world. Well, finally then, Charlotte, why do you think it might lead over the next 15, 20 years? Well, I like difficult jobs, which is why I try to teach and study Byzantian literature, that is the most arguably the most inaccessible bit at the moment of Byzantine culture.

Byzantine art has become, understanding of Byzantine art has developed phenomenally. Its place in the history of the area is being understood better and better. The literature is still hard work. It's rooted both in classical and in biblical literature. There's a range of illusion which is difficult to deal with. And I would say the big job to be done at the moment is to create a better understanding of that literature and show where it fits in to the literature of the Middle Ages.

Well, thank you very much indeed, Charlotte Rochay, Liz James and John Julius Snorwich. We won't be back until October, but thank you very much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio 4.