Byzantine, Byzantium, Biz-zan-tee-um. It sounds like a new overpriced coffee at the local java house, right? Well, you’re close. However, this magically made up Greek term describes an enchanting time and place in Eastern Europe, known only as the Byzantine Empire. Now maybe your high school world history teacher gave a brief passing mention to these crazy people, but you probably don’t remember much aside the words ‘Iconoclasm’ and ‘Constantine’, and even there, you’re probably thinking about that weird Keanu Reeves movie of the same name.
The problem is nobody knows what the hell happened during the thousand years in which the Byzantines meandered around, copulated, and prayed to their sky god. Only a handful of university professors, theology scholars, and PBS can make a clear guess as to what happened. But we do know it happened sometime and somewhere in history, probably during the American Revolution or whenever the United States annexed Canada as ‘America Jr.’ This overshadowing is due in part by a more popular history, that of Rome. Byzantium then, is the divorced husband of Rome, who sort of felt that the relationship had lost that initial spark. So, they grew apart, Byzantium went and joined his buddies in the eastern Mediterranean while that promiscuous Rome kept up several abusive relationships with North Africa, Gaul, and basically, she kind of burned down or got gonorrhea. That’ll teach her to associate with Vandals and Visigoths. Byzantine would try and later make amends with Rome but he sort of got into a drunken fight with his enemy Turkey and died.
The Byzantine world then must be looked at then, from a separate perspective. One that doesn’t include all those cool emperors in Rome with all their crazy orgies. That doesn’t mean that Byzantine emperors didn’t know how to party mind you. Many of them were really happening guys. They also loved to blind people and slit their noses. Why did they do this, we’re not entirely sure. Perhaps they were amateur plastic surgeons and needed the practice. Byzantines also liked to start lots of wars, especially with Persia. Again, we’re not sure why they did this either. More importantly, Byzantines had a thing for Jesus, unlike Rome who sort of did the whole ‘Zeus’ thing. As you might recall, there was this guy named Constantine and he was probably tripping on some type of medieval acid or hopped up on speed. Nonetheless, he had this crazy dream that if he painted a cross on his shield, and forced his soldiers to do the same, then they would win a bridge. A Milvian Bridge. What is a Milvian Bridge, I don’t know but apparently Jesus demanded some impromptu arts and crafts to be done if it was to be won. So, after a long day of painting crosses on their shields, Constantine fought his enemies (which apparently were Roman also) and they won that bridge. Juice and cookies were distributed in victory. A resort casino was later built nearby it to commemorate the battle.
So Constantine fell in love with Jesus and the whole ‘God’ crew, and established a new city by the name of Constantinople. Mainly because ‘Jesus Town’ didn’t suit him or sound very attractive. It would be a glorious center for trade, commerce, slavery, prostitution, those neat little mosaics, and more prostitution. It would also have a ridiculously large church and a raceway for Nascar events. I believe it was called the Hippodrome, but sadly, it had nothing to do with hippos.
But that’s how things got started in C-Town and they did pretty well for awhile. Most of the succeeding emperors were okay like Justinian the Great. He too had a stripper/prostitute for a wife, as was common for most emperors. Sure enough though, they had to kill a few thousand people here and there, but this was needed. Emperors were being assassinated left and right. You pretty much had three years to live if you didn’t burn down Constantinople at least once a year to suppress rebel opposition. They also had to deal with the plague and nobody knows how that one started. And then they had to worry about the Turks and Persia, and those Armenians who always try to set up fake Italian restaurants in your neighborhood, and you know it never works out because its just not authentically Italian. And iconoclasm.
Iconoclasm is the most talked about issue in Byzantine studies, why? I would much rather talk about their use of primitive napalm or that aforementioned big church. Instead, people love iconoclasm because it sounds really intellectual and important. It is the pinnacle of late antiquity and early medieval studies. Just the mere mention of ‘iconoclasm’ at a trendy party will immediately place you as a high authority in Byzantine history. In reality, it is the stupidest element of Byzantine history. Let me break it down simply. There was a couple of emperors, who probably had names like ‘Leo’ or ‘Basil’ or ‘Tommy’ or ‘Jimmy’ or ‘Bloomberg’, and essentially they didn’t like statues and pictures of Jesus, Mary, Moses, and all those other adorable saints. Apparently, your average Byzantine man had a secret love or wacky fetish for these Christian ‘icons’ and the emperors didn’t like that. Now, I respect what a man and his family does in the privacy of their own home when it comes to icon worship. However, these backward emperors got way too high and outlawed all the pretty Jesus pictures and statues. That includes those neat mosaics and the St. Christopher medal your mom gave you so you could have ‘Safe travels’ on your ride back from the frat party. Anyway, this obviously brought a lot of ensuing death and destruction until future emperors made the ‘icons’ legal again. A party was held to celebrate this and in traditional Byzantine fashion, copious amounts of juice and cookies were served.
The Byzantine Empire sort of just hung out for awhile then. Sure, it had some tensions with the Huns and some other barbarians but it maintained itself well enough. And really, that’s all an empire needs to do. Especially if it is full of crazed, alcoholic, sex addicts parading around some religious notion to entertain themselves. Quite similar to how guns, ipods, and YouTube entertain us today. Yeah, Byzantium had a good run, but they got destroyed by Turkey because Turkey just wasn’t cool with Byzantine sleeping on his couch anymore or something like that. Now whatever remains of Constantinople is currently someplace called Istanbul. I hear it has nice beaches but I’m not sure if I want to visit.
