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The Return of the Roman Empire
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What had happened to the old Roman Empire?
Why had the Western part crumbled?
Where was the new center of the Roman
Empire?
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527 C.E. (A.D.) Justinian
ascended to the throne
He was not only the head of
state, but head of the church
Had absolute power
He decided to reclaim Rome
from the German tribes,
notably the Ostrogoths
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Byzantine had a hard time communicating
with the West (where Rome was)
The capital was Constantinople
People spoke Greek, not Latin
Citizens felt as thought they were sharing the
Roman traditions still even though they
weren’t in Rome
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Justinian ordered the laws of
Rome to be combed through
Outdated laws were
removed; new laws created
New code known as
Justinian’s Code
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Dealt with marriage, slavery, property,
inheritance, women’s rights, and criminal
justice
Combination of the Twelve Tables from the
West, and Hammurabi’s Code from the East.
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Justinian worked to rebuild Constantinople
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Built a 14 mile stone wall on the coast
Repaired the Western wall
Crowning glory was the Hagia Sophia
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“Holy Wisdom”
Had been a church and been destroyed in 532
Was considered the most splendid church
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The exterior of the church, which still stands
today
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Byzantine kept the Roman-Greco cultures alive
by teaching the classics
Children learned the Greek and Latin grammar
Students learned about Homer
Preserved the culture for the world
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Why was the Eastern Empire important?
What did Justinian do to improve the new
capital city?
How did Justinian keep order?
In what ways did Byzantine keep GrecoRoman culture?
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Christianity developed differently between the
Western and Eastern Roman Empires
In the West, the Pope became the central figure
In the East, Christianity developed from works
of early church fathers, like St. Basil.
A dispute arose over icons- East banned it,
West approved
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West- Roman
Catholicism
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Pope is the head over
all others
Services are done in
Latin
Priests can’t marry
No Divorce
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East- Eastern
Orthodoxy
Emperor heads all
patriarchs and
bishops
 Services done in
Greek
 Priests can marry
 Divorce is allowed
under certain
conditions
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The Pope excommunicated the Byzantine
emperor
1054- got even worse
The patriarch, the head of the Eastern Church,
and the pope, head of the Western Church,
excommunicated one another from the church
Led to the official split of the church: Roman
Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
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The Eastern church converted
Slavs, who lived near the Black
Sea
St. Methodius and St. Cyril
worked with the Slavs
They invented an alphabet for
the Slavic languages
Known as the Cyrillic alphabet
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Why was there a split in the church?
What is excommunication?
What were the two religions of the empire?
Who helped develop a new alphabet for Slavic
languages?
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A series of setbacks would occur
The plague came through and destroyed a
huge part of the population
Foreign enemies attacked the Byzantine Empire
constantly
Islamic armies rose and began attacking from
the Arabian peninsula
It would finally fall to the Ottoman Turks in
1453
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Compare and contrast the Western Roman and
Eastern Byzantine empires
Draw a Venn diagram