Byzantium

Introduction

Byzantium is the name given to both the state and the culture of the Eastern Roman Empire in the middle ages. Both the state and the inhabitants always called themselves Roman, as did most of their neighbors. Western Europeans, who had their own Roman Empire called them Orientals or Greeks, and later following the example of the great French scholar DuCange, Byzantines after the former name of the Empire's capital city, Constantinople.

在中古時期，拜占庭Byzantium是東羅馬帝國與其文化的稱謂；在當時其帝國與人民自稱為羅馬Roman。而左鄰的西歐人，當時的羅馬帝國（西羅馬帝國），稱其東鄰Orientals 或者Creeks。是後來法國學者DuCange定名位於拜占庭首都Constantinople的帝國Byzantium.

These names give witness to the composite nature of Byzantium. It was, without any doubt, the continuation of the Roman state, and until the seventh century, preserved the basic structures of Late Roman Mediterranean civic culture: - a large multi-ethnic Christian state, based on a network of urban centers, and defended by a mobile specialized army. After the Arab/Muslim conquest of Egypt and Syria, the nature of the state and culture was transformed. Byzantium became much more a Greek state [perhaps best seen in the emperor Heraklios' adoption of the Greek title Basileus], all the cities except Constantinople faded away to small fortified centers, and the military organization of the empire came to be based on a series of local armies.

拜占庭延續了羅馬帝國的傳統，直到七世紀仍保留了晚期羅馬地中海文明的大抵結構；一個多族群的基督教國家，以個別都市的網絡，有其機動專業化的軍隊。在阿拉伯/回教征服埃及與敘利亞之後，拜占庭的國家文化才開始有了轉變。拜占庭變得更像是一個希臘國家“Heraklios君王採取希臘 Basileus 的頭銜“，而軍隊組織是以地方駐軍的形態為主。

There is then a persistent ambiguity about the beginning of Byzantine history - between the building of Constantinople by Constantine I and the mid-7th century collapse of late antique urban culture.

要劃定出拜占庭歷史的起點是曖昧模糊的；是開始在君士坦丁一世建都Constantinople或者七世紀中期，晚期古城文化（late antique urban culture）的衰敗。

The seventh to ninth centuries are generally accounted a low point of Byzantine history. Little literature - even saints' lives - survives, and even less art. The period is studied above all for the history of the struggle over icons. This Iconoclastic Controversy bears witness to a continued intellectual vitality, and the emergence of one of history's most sophisticated analyses of the nature and function of art.

七世紀到九世紀的拜占庭歷史並沒有太突出的文化表現，少部份的文學與藝術（幾位聖人代表）。這段時期反對偶像崇拜，爭議中更見證了延續著的豐富智慧與孕育著歷史上最精緻的分析了其藝術本質與功能。

Under the Macedonian Dynasty [867-1056], Byzantium's political power reached its apogee as former territories were incorporated in the Empire, and an element of multi-ethnicity was restored. This period is also significant as the time in which Byzantine culture was spread among the Slavs and other Balkan peoples. Following massive Turkish attacks in the late eleventh century, the Empire was able to maintain a lesser but still significant political and military power under the Komnenian Dynasty: the cost was a social transformation which exalted a powerful military aristocracy, and gradually enserfed the previously free peasantry.

在馬其頓王朝[867-1056]，拜占庭的達到最高點，帝國領土擴展，涵納了許多族群文化。此外這段時期，拜占庭文化擴散至the Slavs and other Balkan peoples。直到十一世紀帝國版圖仍能在突厥人不斷的攻擊之下維持著【 Komnenian Dynasty】，而軍隊貴族化的權力把持，就逐漸剝奪農民的自由。

In 1204, internal Byzantine politics and the resurgent West, effectively ended the imperial pretensions of the Byzantine state. The Fourth Crusade [1204] succeeded in conquering Constantinople and making it a Latin principality for half a century. The Greek political leadership, under the Palaiologan Dynasty regained Constantinople in 1261, but the "empire" was just one state among many in the area for the final 200 years of its existence. Strangely, this period was among the most culturally productive, in art, in theology, and in literature.

西元1204年，拜占庭帝國的自信漸被瓦解；有外來的西方崛起，也有內部的政治壓力。第四次的十字君東征帶來了西方力量的介入，而投降的君士坦丁堡也帶入半個世紀的拉丁封邑時期。而Palaiologan王朝“the Palaiologan Dynasty“的希臘領袖在西元1261年奪回了君士坦丁堡，維持了拜占庭帝國，但兩百年的其間一個諸侯國單薄的持續著。又這段時期，意外地其藝術文化是最豐富與多產的一段時期。

It would be wrong then to present the later history of Byzantium as a "thousand year history of decline", leading inevitably to its conquest by the Ottoman Turks on Tuesday 29th May 1453. This perception, promoted disastrously by the English historian Edward Gibbon, reflects the origins in the classical studies of Byzantine studies. The classic periods of ancient cultures [the fifth and fourth centuries BCE in Greece and the late republican/early imperial period in Rome] have long appealed to modern Western sensibilities because - as times of rapid change and innovation in art and literature - echoes and origins of the present have been seen there. In comparison, Byzantine political culture changed slowly, and continuity was valued over change. Furthermore, classical secularism, so attractive to Renaissance and Enlightenment scholars, had no place in Byzantine thought worlds. As a result Byzantine culture was subjected to centuries of abuse as a time of barbarism and superstition.

如果說拜占庭帝國是一個千年長存的一段(衰敗)歷史，並且在西元1453年5月29日星期二敗亡於鄂圖曼土耳其；這個歷史概念在英國歷史學家Edward Gibbon的主張之下是非常錯誤的，還反應著拜占庭古典研究的那些起源。對於古文化的古典時期的認知[the fifth and fourth centuries BCE in Greece and the late republican/early imperial period in Rome]即使藝術與文學在時代的變遷之下，也長久的在現代西方的觀點裡反應著。相對於古典時期，拜占庭文化與政治轉變的較緩慢，其持續性的評價也不段的被改變。更不用說，古典偏狹主義者classical secularism是如此著迷於文藝復興與啓蒙時代的學者，導致了對於了解拜占庭文化的缺乏。更誇張的是拜占庭甚至被認定是一個蠻族的文化，一個迷信的邪教。

The counterpart to the dismissal of Byzantine culture was its exaltation by 19th-century Romanticism, and by a substrate of Christian, especially Anglican, intellectuals. [Even now Anglican seminaries are good places to locate books on Byzantine studies.] Byzantium was also "claimed" by some Orthodox Christian intellectuals. The result was that, after having been demeaned by the Enlightenment, Byzantium acquired defenders, but defenders who concentrated equally on the culture's religious aspects. Far from calm scholarship, Byzantine studies has ever been a locus of contestation, of defamers and champions.

十九世紀的浪漫主義與尤以英國國教的基督徒學者，支持著被否定的拜占庭文化。"到現今英國國教研討會仍舊是拜占庭研究發表的好去處“ 一些東方正教的學者也是支持著拜占庭文化的研究。可惜的是就是因為啓蒙時代學者的貶抑，拜占庭文化的研究也只是宗教層面為主。缺乏冷靜的學者，拜占庭的學術研究始終是一個具爭議的場域。

A third important strand of Byzantine studies has been the Marxist contribution. Marxist historians are often derided, especially in the United States, for fitting facts to theory [as if they alone were guilty of this!] In Byzantium, especially in the agricultural laws of the tenth century, which were presented at the time as addressing a struggle of the "poor" and the "powerful". Marxists saw a prime example of the beginning of "feudalism". While perhaps pushing some interpretations too hard, the Marxist tradition remains valuable in affirming a secular aspect of Byzantine culture.

再一個拜占庭學術研究的障礙，是過去馬克思主義學者，其歷史學家時常被嘲弄著，"尤其是在美國“十世紀時農業法，權力與貧窮的掙扎，馬克思主義者認為這個時期的拜占庭看見封建主義的興起。或許當時部份闡述過於激進了一點，也還是保留觀視拜占庭文化世俗觀點的價值。

Currently, Byzantine studies, reflecting its classical heritage, is still much more dominated by philological and art historical concerns than Western medieval history. Still, there are interesting transformations evident. The French Annales School, represented by such scholars as Helene Ahrweiler and Evelyne Patlagean has applied the specific social, cliometric and "long duree" methodologies to Byzantine studies with some gusto. Purely social history, without a Marxist slant, is now well established, with Angeliki Laiou among the most productive writers. The Russian Byzantinist Alexander Kazhdan was responsible for a whole variety of initiatives, including a willingness to study religious phenomena in secular perspective. Finally, and much later than in other areas of historical study, the history of women is now coming to the fore.

今日拜占庭的學術研究反映著其正統價值，也還是較關注在語言學或者藝術史，而不是中世紀西方史。The French Annales School, scholar -Helene Ahrweiler and Evelyne Patlagean has applied the specific social, cliometric and "long duree" methodologies to Byzantine studies with some gusto. Purely social history, without a Marxist slant, is now well established, with Angeliki Laiou among the most productive writers.拜占庭社會史，俄羅斯拜占庭研究學者起始著歷史與世俗觀點的宗教現象，還有女性的研究。

Byzantine civilization constitutes a major world culture. Because of its unique position as the medieval continuation of the Roman State, it has tended to be dismissed by classicists and ignored by Western medievalists. Its internal elite culture was archaicizing and perhaps pessimistic. But we should not be deceived. As the centrally located culture, and by far the most stable state, of the Medieval period, Byzantium is of major interest both in itself, and because the development and late history of Western European, Slavic and Islamic cultures are not comprehensible without taking it into consideration. While few would claim elevated status for much Byzantine literature [although its historiographical tradition is matched only by China's], in its art and architecture, Byzantine culture was genuinely, and despite itself, innovative and capable of producing works of great beauty. As an area of study, as I have tried to indicate here, Byzantine studies is complex, full of conflict, and still open to new questions and methods.

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