The
Byzantine Empire or
Eastern Roman Empire, was the
Roman Empire during the
Middle Ages, centered on the capital of
Constantinople, and ruled by
Emperors. It was called the
Roman Empire by its inhabitants and its neighbours, and was also known as Romania (
Greek ??µa??a,
Rhomanía). As the distinction between "Roman Empire" and "Byzantine Empire" is a purely a modern convention, it is not possible to assign a date of separation, but an important point is the Emperor
Constantine I's transfer of the capital from
Nicomedia (in
Anatolia) to
Byzantium on the
Bosphorus, which became
Constantinople (alternatively "
New Rome").
[n 1]The Empire remained one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe, despite setbacks and territorial losses, especially during the Roman–Persian and Byzantine–Arab Wars. The Empire recovered during the Macedonian dynasty, rising again to become the pre-eminent power in the Eastern Mediterranean by the late 10th century. After 1071 however, much of Asia Minor, the Empire's heartland, was lost to the Seljuk Turks. The Komnenian restoration regained some ground and briefly re-established dominance in the 12th century, but declined again under their successors. The Empire received a mortal blow in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, when it was dissolved and divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople and re-establishment of the Empire in 1261, under the Palaiologan emperors, successive civil wars in the 14th century further sapped the Empire's strength. Most of its remaining territory was lost in the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople and its remaining territories to the Muslim Ottoman Turks in the 15th century.
Until one century after the fall of its capital Constantinople, the Empire was known to its inhabitants and all over the world[citation needed] as the Roman Empire, the Empire of the Romans (Latin Imperium Romanum, Imperium Romanorum, Greek ?as??e?a t?? ??µa???, Basileía tôn Rhomaíon), Romania[n 2] (??µa??a, Rhomanía), and also as Rhomaís (??µa??).[4]
The designation of the Empire as "Byzantine" began in Western Europe in 1557, when German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of Byzantine sources. "Byzantine" itself comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city of Constantinople before it became the capital of Constantine. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre (Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ), and in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularized the use of Byzantine among French authors, such as Montesquieu.[5] It was not until the 19th century[citation needed], however, with the birth of modern Greece, that the term "Byzantine" came into general use in the Western world since before this time the term Greek had been used to refer to the Empire and its descendants within the Ottoman Empire.
