Quotes About Byzantium

Permanent bonds of culture began to be formed between the extreme East and the extreme West of Europe by intermarriage, by commerce, by the admission of the nobles of Byzantium within the orders of chivalry.

The sciences were financially supported, honoured everywhere, universally pursued; they were like tall edifices supported by strong foundations. Then the Christian religion appeared in Byzantium and the centres of learning were eliminated, their vestiges effaced and the edifice of Greek learning was obliterated. Everything the ancient Greeks had brought to light vanished, and the discoveries of the ancients were altered out of recognition.

Once out of nature I shall never takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths makeOf hammered gold and gold enamelingTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake;Or set upon a golden bough to singTo lords and ladies of ByzantiumOf what is past, or passing, or to come.

Ah, Constantinople, I would so love to visit Constantinople, to see its domes and minarets, to walk inside the Sancta Sophia and breathe the ancient air of Byzantium—

He's not too bad, actually. If you don't mind him going on about Byzantium, he can be quite nice.

The best surviving key to Rus greatness is Kiev's Santa Sofia Cathedral, built in 1037 by one of the greatest Riurik princes, Prince Yaroslav the Wise. From the outside it looks much like any other baroque Ukrainian church, its original shallow Greek domes and brick walls long covered in gilt and plaster. But inside it breathes the splendid austerity of Byzantium.

By choosing Christianity rather than Islam, Volodymyr cast Rus's ambitions for ever in Europe rather than Asia, and by taking Christianity from Byzantium rather than Rome he bound the future Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians together in Orthodoxy, fatally dividing them from their Catholic neighbours the Poles.

The situation facing Byzantium in the mid-1090s was not so much desperate as catastrophic.

A mere forty years after the death of Basil II, Byzantium found itself faced with new and aggressive enemies on all sides during the 1060s:

mere forty years after the death of Basil II, Byzantium found itself faced with new and aggressive enemies

Constantinople was now the largest and richest city in Europe

Even Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, who had fought against Byzantium before

that trumps any residual loyalty that some may have felt towards the resurgent Greek-speaking state of Byzantium.

So huge was the architecture of the conflict between Islam and Byzantium that no Muslim banners would be unfurled again before the city walls for another 650 years – a span of time greater than that separating us from 1453 – but prophecy decreed that they would return.

Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald, went further in providing a congenial atmosphere for philosophy. The leading philosopher of this period was John Scottus Eriugena, and he not only taught at the court but was also protected by his royal patron when his critics accused him of heresy.3 Culturally, Charles the Bald emulated Byzantium; it is no accident that his court philosopher learned Greek and translated and assimilated the Greek Christian Platonists

Take the tail of the female tuna—and I'm talking of the large female tuna whose mother city is Byzantium.

The history of this place with three names–Byzantion or Byzantium (c. 670 BC to AD 330), Constantinople, al-Qustantiniyye then Kostantiniyye (c. AD 330 to 1930), Istanbul or Stimboli (c. AD 1453 onwards)–is often isolated into discrete blocks: ancient, Byzantine, Ottoman, Turkish.

I saw Byzantium in a dream and knew that I would die there.. and the golden towers of Byzantium would be my tomb ~ Aidan

I saw Byzantium in a dream, and knew that I would die there. That vast city seemed to me a living thing: a great golden lion... I felt the dread jaws close on me as I stood screaming. Then I awoke; but my waking brought neither joy nor relief. For I rose not to life, but to the terrible certainty of death. I was to die, and the golden towers of Byzantium would be my tomb. ~ Aidan

Byzantium was both a source to emulate and a foil against which to define the distinctiveness of the Muslim regime.

Sir Steven Runciman, whose history of the Crusades is an imperishable work, because it demonstrates that medieval Christian fundamentalism not only constituted a menace to Islamic civilization but also directly resulted in the sack of Byzantium, the retardation of Europe, and the massacre of the Jews.

I can't claim to 'understand' 'Byzantium,' if any dance work can be 'understood,' but whenever I see it, I sense that it's charged with meaning.

While Byzantium drew its deepest identity from the belief that it was perpetuating the true tradition of the Roman Empire, it increasingly came to view the Western Church as a geopolitical rival whose power was ultimately as threatening to Byzantine power and identity as Islam itself. The Middle East was thus quite capable, without Islam, of developing aversion to the West.

Like most Istanbul Turks I had little interest in Byzantium as a child. I associated the word with spooky, bearded, black-robed Greek Orthodox priests, with the aqueducts that still ran through the city, with the Hagia Sophia and the red brick walls of old churches. To me, these were remnants of an age so distant there was little need to know about it. Even the Ottomans who conquered Byzantium seemed very far away.