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Chapter 7
Byzantium
7.1 The Decline of Rome and the Ascendancy of Byzantium
Goals
Identify significant events that led to Rome’s demise.
Identify significant events that led to the ascension of Byzantium.
Discuss the development of Byzantine art.
Identify characteristics of Byzantine art.
Understand terminology related to Byzantine architecture.
This chapter traces briefly the slow waning of Roman power in the West by focusing on
two late Roman writers who are both Christians: Boethius, who wrote in provincial
Ravenna, and Augustine, who lived in Roman North Africa. As the wheel of fortune
turned Rome down, Byzantium began its ascent as the center of culture.
Byzantine Christianity had a readily recognizable look to it, a look most apparent in its
art and architecture. It was an art that was otherworldly and formal and profoundly
sacred. The mosaics [link to glossary] and icons [link to glossary] of this tradition were
intended as windows through which the devout might see the eternal mysteries of
religion.
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7.2 The Influence of Byzantine Culture
Goals
Discuss the influences of Byzantine art on Western culture.
Identify characteristics of Byzantine art present in Western culture.
The influence of this art was far-reaching. Italo-Byzantine styles of art persisted in the
West up to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance. Because Byzantium (centered in the
city of Constantinople) was Greek-speaking, the culture of ancient Greece was kept alive
in that center until the middle of the 15th Century, when the city fell to the Ottoman
Turks. The removal of much of that culture to the West was a strong influence on the
development of the Renaissance, as we shall see in subsequent chapters.
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