Byzantine

In common usage, the word "byzantine" means unnecessarily complicated, and it always carries a negative connotation. It is hard to imagine why "byzantine," the only remnant in our language of one of the greatest empires in the history of the world, should not reflect the glory that once upon a time could not be separated from this word.

The Byzantine Empire is virtually unknown in the contemporary age of the West. In his book "The History of Christianity," British historian Paul Johnson makes virtually no mention of the Orthodox East! Very few Americans know where it was, when it was, and what it stood for. It lasted for a thousand years, and it would probably be here today in a more visible form if it had not been under almost constant attack from the Catholic West and the Islamic East.

They did not call themselves Byzantines, for that name derives from the old name of its capitol, Byzantium. They called themselves "Romaios" and their Muslim neighbors called them "Rûm." It was the first great Christian empire and for about nine centuries it was a buffer between Europe and Islam. They had universal literacy when almost no one in the West could read or write. They had female physicians and tolerance for other faiths, including Islam. They practiced good hygiene when everyone in Western Europe smelled like a barnyard animal. Already weakened by repeated attacks by the Catholic west, it eventually vanished in an Ottoman Islamic tidal wave, and the world lost a great civilization.

But it is not entirely gone. Russia remains an Orthodox empire, and in the sixteenth century it was christened the "Third Rome" by a monk named Filofey. The Islamic world, particularly Turkey, borrowed heavily from the Byzantines, particularly in their architecture. Now I was always told that the Renaissance in Italy happened because of trade with the Arabs, who had preserved the Greek classics. In reality it happened because of all the Byzantine scholars who fled as the Turks advanced; they went to Italy and brought the embers of the forgotten Greek classics with them. Some eighty percent of the original Greek classic manuscripts we know of today were brought to the West by these Byzantines.

So Russia, Turkey and Islam, and the West after the Renaissance all bear the stamp of Byzantium. But in my opinion, there are Byzantines among us. You can't tell them by looking at them and some of them probably do not know they are neo-Byzantines. You can discern their nature only by perceiving the contents of their minds.

A Byzantine is someone who can see with the "three eyes:" Rationalism, empiricism and mysticism. The Byzantines know what these words mean and they know when the use of each one is appropriate. Most contemporary Americans can only see dimly with one, but the neo-Byzantine can see the cosmos is three dimensions, each perspective sharpening and clarifying the image of the other two.

The neo-Byzantines do not apologize for a love of learning, and they do not apologize for a love of God. By this criterion they are aliens in contemporary America, because it seems that in our age, academia and faith are perceived as incompatible with each other.

Finally, the thing that separates the neo-Byzantines most dramatically from the rest of contemporary society is that they are students of the pagan classics of ancient Greece and Rome to the same degree that they are students of the Bible, the Philokalia and so forth. Unlike Westerners, they do not see the two as incompatible, but rather complementary. Westerners of our age have returned to the Darkness of the European Middle Ages by discarding the ancient wisdom of the Greeks, condemning ourselves to relearning hard lessons with every generation.

I used to feel sadness that Byzantium is gone but then realized that it is all around us. A light that brilliant cannot be completely extinguished. While those of us who are its citizens-in-exile are for the time being few, I believe that this flame will blaze again in some other form. We will eventually dwell within the vastness of its borders, either in this age or more perfectly, in the next.

Copyright 2011, Robert Albanese Presentations