For over a thousand years, from the end of the fourth century to the middle of the fifteenth, the Byzantine Empire was the centre of a civilization equal to that of any age in brilliancy, certainly the most brilliant known to the Middle Ages, and possibly even the only real civilization which prevailed in Europe between the close of the fifth century and the beginning of the eleventh. While the barbarian states of the West were laboriously developing the elements of a new culture from the ...

THE history of the Byzantine Empire under the rule of the Isaurian dynasty is one of the periods in the prolonged evolution of the monarchy least easy of comprehension. The work of the sovereigns usually called the Iconoclast Emperors has been, in fact, recorded for us practically only by opponents or victims, and their impassioned reports have obviously no claim to be considered strictly impartial. On the other hand, the writings defending and justifying the policy of the Emperors have ne...

THE eighth century had hardly entered on its second half when the last of the long-haired Merovingians was thrust from the throne of the Franks, and Pepin the mayor of the palace hailed as king. The change seemed slight, for the new dynasty had served a long apprenticeship. For more than a century the descendants of Clovis had been mere puppets in a king's seat, while the descendants of St Arnulf, though called only Mayors of the Palace or Dukes and Princes of the Franks, had managed, and ...

“THE future of the realm”, Conrad is said to have declared with his dying words, “lies with the Saxons”, and he bade his brother Everard to bear the royal insignia to Henry, the Saxon Duke, as the one man capable of restoring the glory of the German name. The union of Frank and Saxon had given the throne to Conrad on the death of Louis the Child; the same alliance was responsible for the ascendancy of the Saxon dynasty in 9191. Everard carried out the last injunctions of the late king, wai...

The alluring dream of Charles the Great has vanished; after his death no temporal prince was found capable of carrying on his work, and it fell to ruins. Nevertheless, the root idea which had inspired him still persisted: the idea of the unity of the Christian world, bound together and grouped round a single head, ready to give battle to the infidel, and to undertake the conversion of the barbarians. But it was the Church which now appropriated the idea, and which alone, amidst the surroun...

WHILE the Germans impressed their characteristic stamp on both the medieval and modern history of Western Europe, it was reserved for the Eastern Slays, the Russians, to build a great empire on the borderlands of Europe and Asia. But the work of civilization was far more difficult for the Russians than for the German race. The barbaric Germans settled in regions of an old civilization among the conquered Romans and Romanized peoples, whereas the geographical and ethnical surroundings enter...

THE term Viking is a derivative of the Old Norse Vik, a creek, bay or fiord, and means one who haunts such an opening and uses it as a base whence raids may be made on the surrounding country. The word is now commonly applied to those Norsemen, Danes and Swedes who harried Europe from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, and in such phrases as ‘the Viking age’, ‘Viking civilization’, is used in a still wider sense as a convenient term for Scandinavian civilization at a particular stage in...

IT was at his winter home at Doué, early in February 814, that Louis of Aquitaine received the news of his father's death, which had been immediately sent to him by his sisters and the magnates who had espoused his cause. It is a difficult matter to discern through the self-interested encomiums of biographers and the calumnies set afloat by political opponents, the real character of the man who had now taken over the burdensome heritage left by the Emperor Charles. Louis, who was at this t...

The Arabs first invaded Asia Minor during the commotions of 641. In 642 a plan of Valentine for a combined attack on them was frustrated by his defeat; but Theodore and Procopius penetrated as far as Batnae, and an Armenian force occupied Amida and nearly reached Edessa before they were routed. In 643, Valentine having returned to Constantinople, the enemy again entered Asia Minor, and Arabissus capitulated to Umair. In 644 Muawiya, amir of Syria, took and plundered Euchaita; and in 646 af...

OUR knowledge of Mahomet, his life and his teaching, is derived entirely from documents which have been handed down by Muslims; no contemporary non-Muslim account is extant, and the testimony of later non-Muslim writers has as little claim to consideration as the statements in the Talmud concerning Christ. Among our authorities the Koran, for obvious reasons, occupies the foremost place. The pieces of which it is composed are acknowledged, alike by those who assert and by those who deny it...

ON 9 July 518 the Emperor Anastasius died, leaving nephews only as his heirs. The succession was therefore quite undecided. An obscure intrigue brought the Commander-in-Chief of the Guard, the comes excubitorum Justin, to the throne. This adventurer had found his way to Constantinople from the mountains of his native Illyricum in search of fortune, and now became, at the age of almost seventy years, the founder of a dynasty.The position of the new prince did not lack diffic...

This process of history may be said to have entered on its effective stage in the West with Alaric's invasion of Italy. But it had been present, as a potentiality and a menace, for many years before Alaric heard the voice that drew him steadily towards Rome. The frontier war along the limes was as old as the second century. The pressure of the population of the German forests upon the Roman world was so ancient and inveterate, and so much of that population had in one way or anoth...