Byzantine (pronounced biz-uhn-teen, biz-uhn-tahyn, bahy-zuhn-tyne or bih-zan-tin)
(1) Relating to Byzantium, the Byzantine
Empire, or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
(2) Of or about a situation deemed excessively
complicated and typically involving a great deal of seemingly pointless administrative
detail (usually without initial capital).
(3) A citizen of Byzantium or the Byzantine
Empire.
(4) Of or belonging to the style of
architecture developed from the fifth century AD in the Byzantine Empire,
characterized especially by a central dome resting on a cube formed by four
round arches and their pendentives and by the extensive use of surface
decoration, especially veined marble panels, low relief carving, and colored
glass mosaics.
(5) Of the painting and decorative style
developed in the Byzantine Empire, characterized by formality of design,
frontal stylized presentation of figures, rich use of color, especially gold,
and generally religious subject matter.
(6) Characterized by elaborate scheming and
intrigue, especially for the gaining of political power or favour (usually without
initial capital).
(7) In numismatics, a coin issued by the Byzantine
Empire.
(8) A dark, metallic shade of violet.
1651 (in English use): From the Late Latin Bȳzantīnus (of Byzantium), the name derived ultimately from the ancient Greek city Byzantion on the Bosporus and
the Sea of Marmara, said to have been named in 657 BC for it founder, Byzas of
Megara. Constantine I (circa 272–337;
Roman emperor 306-337 (and the first to convert to Christianity) rebuilt the
city and renamed it Constantinople. The
city fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 although the modern-day name Istanbul
wasn’t (except in the Vatican and the Orthodox Church) universally adopted until the years after World War II (1939-1945). Although in Greek legend the ancient city name
Byzantion came from King Byzas, leader of the Megarian colonists, who is said
to be its founder, the etymology remains uncertain although most historians of
the period seem to agree it must be of Thraco-Illyrian origin and there’s no
doubt Byzantium is a Latinization of the original. Centuries later, in Western literature, the
name Byzantium became the standard term with which to refer to the Eastern
Roman Empire (the "Byzantine Empire” centred on the walled capital
Constantinople. For all the generations
which lived while the empire stood, the term would have been mysterious and it
gained currency only after 1555 when introduced by the German historian
Hieronymus Wolf (1516-1580), a century after Constantinople had fallen and the empire
had ceased to exist. Until Wolf
introduced the phrase, the word Byzantium was restricted to just the city,
rather than the empire which, in the way of such things, had waxed and waned. Byzantine is a noun & adjective; the noun
plural is Byzantines.
Byzantium
Standing for centuries on blood-soaked soil on the Bosporus where Europe ends and Asia begins, Greek forces laid siege during the Peloponnesian war and Sparta took the city in 411 BC before it was reclaimed by the Athenian military in 408 BC. Almost razed, by Roman forces in 196 AD, Byzantium was rebuilt by Septimius Severus (145-211; Roman emperor 193-211) and quickly regained its previous prosperity. The location of Byzantium attracted Constantine I (circa 272–337; Roman emperor 306-337 (and the first to convert to Christianity)) who in 330 AD re-created it as an imperial residence inspired by Rome itself and after his death, it was called Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολις (Konstantinoupolis (literally "city of Constantine"))). For a thousand years, it was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and a commercial, cultural & diplomatic centre and from its strategic position, Constantinople’s rulers controlled the major trade routes between Asia and Europe, as well as the passage from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. On 29 May 1453, in the first example of a major city falling to a siege by artillery, Constantinople fell to the Turks, becoming the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The great walls which for centuries had defied invaders from land and sea, crumbled to modern cannon fire. Even then, the Turks called the city Istanbul (from the Greek eis-tin-polin (to-the-city) although it was not officially renamed until 1930, almost a decade after the Empire was dissolved and it remains Turkey’s largest and most populous city, although Ankara is now the national capital.
The other senses of byzantine (as
often used without the initial capital): (1) “characterized by a devious and
usually surreptitious manner of operation, often for some nefarious purpose”
and (2) “something intricate, complicated; inflexible, rigid, unyielding” are both
of dubious historical validity. According
to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), “byzantine” was first used in English
in 1937 (of the impenetrable despotism of the Soviet Union which appeared to
those in the Foreign Office schooled in the classics to be much the same as
what they’d learned of the antics practiced in Constantinople) in the sense of “reminiscent of the manner,
style, or spirit of Byzantine politics; intricate, complicated; inflexible,
rigid, unyielding” but in French political scientists had earlier applied in the same figurative context, something which would surprise few
familiar with the politicians of inter-war France, a generally rotten crew about
whom it was remarked “they can’t keep a government for nine months, nor a secret
for five minutes”. Still, it was
probably the English who lent the word its loaded meaning. Edward Gibbon’s (1737–1794) magisterial The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (six volumes: 1776-1788) was influential for generations in
forming the construct of the period in the European imagination and he caricatured
the history of the empire as endless chicanery, shadyness, back-channel
deals, low skulduggery, back-stabbing, and naked grabs for power. Until late in the twentieth century, phrases
like “bewildering Oriental intrigue”
flowed easily from the pens of English historians and hints of the attitude,
cloaked in wokish words, appear even since they’ve switched to keyboards. Much modern scholarship though has been more
forgiving and there’s now an understanding that while like everywhere, low
politics and dirty deeds were sometimes done, a remarkable civilization grew on
the Bosporus.
The association
with needless complexity and pointless administrative duplication was probably
born of the same prejudices to which was added the view the empire was infused
with strange religious rituals and stubbornness in the way it clung to
superstition. Historians have of late have
refined this view, suggesting words like “intricate” or even “labyrinthine” might
better capture the spirit of the place which was, by any standards and certainly
those of medieval Europe, a complex and highly developed society. The loaded meaning though seems here to stay,
perhaps reinforced in the public imagination by the phonetic similarity between
“byzantine” & “bizarre”. Bizarre
means “strangely unconventional; highly unusual and different from common
experience, often in an extravagant, fantastic or conspicuous ways” and was
from the French bizarre (odd,
peculiar (and formerly “brave; headlong, angry”), either from the Basque bizar (a beard (on the notion that bearded
Spanish soldiers made a strange impression on the French) or from Italian bizzarro (odd, queer, eccentric, weird
(and, of a horse “frisky” in the sense of the English “bolter”)) of unknown
origin but thought probably related to bizza
(tantrum), which may be of Germanic origin.
In summary then, the Byzantines would have had their moments but were no
more nasty and duplicitous that politicians everywhere and when describing convoluted
things as byzantine it might be more accurate to instead call them labyrinthine
or just bizarre.
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