borderslynn

Thank you Wikipedia, illuminating my path of education as I search for understanding. Thank you also all the various sites on history and books of information on battles for control of areas of the known world which had previously been conquered by the Romans. 

I find this period so pivotal to the theme I am developing. I am asking myself, what kind of people conquered the New World? All this history culminates in Columbus setting off across the Atlantic with the unforeseen, devastating impact on the indigenous, still in Bronze Age mode, people of the Americas.

 It is amazing to me, to think in parts of the known world, humans were becoming sophisticated in battle; developing high levels of theology, science and maths; achieving amazing explorations and trading abilities, expressing high art in buildings and artefacts and displaying a huge range of cultural differences. 

The culmination of centuries of experience brought us to the point when Columbus left Italy and finally set foot on land as yet unknown to Europeans: The New World.

The impact is still reverberating today and that is why I am trying to get my mind round it, amateur as I am.

So here I go, putting together a timeline of some events which seem to show the seismic shift taking place over the centuries, up to the mid 1400s. I am focussing on the Byzantine Empire in this blog, in order to show how the last remaining Roman defence of the Empire was impinged by other empires until, as empires do, it was extinguished. Yet, throughout, whatever happened, the Christian religion spread and pervaded. Religion seems key to the true conquest of the minds of people, and what makes them embrace or reject ‘others’.

At 2010 statistics (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_population_growth) suggest Christianity was estimated to be by far the world’s largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31%) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth. 

Islam was second, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23% of the global population.

Having written about the Roman Empire elsewhere, I am taking up at the point when the Empire was divided for administrative purposes:

Image of coin with the head of Diocletian stamped on it:

In 285 CE the Roman Empire had grown so vast that it was no longer feasible to govern all the provinces from the central seat of Rome. The Emperor Diocletian divided the empire into halves with the Eastern Empire governed out of Byzantium (later Constantinople) and the Western Empire governed from Rome.

Map of divided Roman Empire:

In 376, the Visigoths (a western Germanic nomadic tribe, named later as ‘visigoths’ by Roman Cassiodorus) invaded the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. 

Relations between the Romans and the Visigoths were variable, alternately warring with one another and making treaties when convenient. The Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and sacked Rome in 410. After the Visigoths sacked Rome, they began settling down, first in southern Gaul and eventually in The Iberian Peninsula, where they founded the Visigothic Kingdom and maintained a presence from the 5th to the 8th centuries AD, until the Moors invaded.

After the Western Roman Empire fell in the 5th century AD, the Byzantine Empire remained for an additional thousand years (Late Antiquity) until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. 

During the Byzantine period, the people continued to think of themselves as Roman citizens belonging to Romania.

Below I have picked out significant battles and policies of notable emperors to plot the 977 years of the Byzantine expansion and then decline.

Some Notable emperors and events:

 • c. 330–337 Constantine I

Constantine I (r. 324–337) reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, and legalised Christianity. 

 • c. 375-395 Theodosius I 

Christianity became the Empire’s official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed.

410 The Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and sacked Rome (Western Roman Empire).

 • 457–474 Leo I

A native of Dacia Aureliana near historic Thrace, he was known as Leo the Thracian. Ruling the Eastern Empire for nearly 20 years, Leo proved to be a capable ruler. He oversaw many ambitious political and military plans, aimed mostly for the aid of the faltering Western Roman Empire and recovering its former territories. He is notable for being the first Eastern Emperor to legislate in Greek rather than Latin.

After the fall of Rome, the papacy was influenced by the temporal rulers of the surrounding Italian Peninsula; these periods are known as the Ostrogothic Papacy, Byzantine Papacy, and Frankish Papacy. Over time, the papacy consolidated its territorial claims to a portion of the peninsula known as the Papal States. Thereafter, the role of neighboring sovereigns was replaced by powerful Roman families during the saeculum obscurum, the Crescentii era, and the Tusculan Papacy.

 • 527–565 Justinian I

Under Justinian I (r. 527–565), the Empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including North Africa, Italy, and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries. The population of the Byzantineb Empire in 565 AD est. 26,000,000c 

After his invasion of Italy, the Gothic War (535–554), Emperor Justinian I forced Pope Silverius to abdicate and installed Pope Vigilius, a former apocrisiarius to Constantinople in his place; Justinian next appointed Pope Pelagius I, holding only a “sham election” to replace Vigilius; afterwards, Justinian was content to be limited to the approval of the pope, as with Pope John III after his election. Justinian’s successors would continue the practice for over a century.

The Byzantine Papacy was a period of Byzantine domination of the Roman papacy from 537 to 752, when popes required the approval of the Byzantine Emperor for episcopal consecration, and many popes were chosen from the apocrisiarii (liaisons from the pope to the emperor) or the inhabitants of Byzantine Greece, Byzantine Syria, or Byzantine Sicily. Justinian I conquered the Italian peninsula in the Gothic War (535–554) and appointed the next three popes, a practice that would be continued by his successors and later be delegated to the Exarchate of Ravenna.

It was during this century that the term “Visigoth” was invented by Cassiodorus, a Roman in the service of Theodoric the Great.

(Theodoric, was king of the Ostrogoths (475–526), ruler of Italy (493–526), regent of the Visigoths (511–526), and a patricius of the Roman Empire. His Gothic name Þiudareiks translates into “people-king” or “ruler of the people”.

Theodoric was born in Pannonia, now northern Croatia in 454, after his people had defeated the Huns at the Battle of Nedao. His father was King Theodemir, a Germanic Amali nobleman, and his mother was Ereleuv.

Cassiodorus used his term of “Visigothic” to match that of “Ostrogothic”, in his mind signifying “western Goths” and “eastern Goths” respectively. The western–eastern division was a simplification (and a literary device) of 6th century historians; political realities were more complex. Further, Cassiodorus used the term “Goths” to refer only to the Ostrogoths, whom he served, and reserved the geographical term “Visigoths” for the Gallo-Spanish Goths. This usage, however, was adopted by the Visigoths themselves in their communications with the Byzantine Empire and was still in use in the 7th century.

 • 610–641 Heraclius

The Empire’s military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use instead of Latin. Looking back at the reign of Heraclius, scholars have credited him with many accomplishments. He enlarged the Empire, and his reorganization of the government and military were great successes. His attempts at religious harmony failed, but he succeeded in returning the True Cross, one of the holiest Christian relics, to Jerusalem.

The Greek Popes (678–752)

Pope Agatho, a Greek Sicilian, started “a nearly unbroken succession of Eastern pontiffs spanning the next three quarters of a century”. Greek was the language of choice during this period as countless Easterners rose through the ranks of the clergy. According to Ekonomou, between 701 and 750, “Greeks outnumbered Latins by nearly three and a half to one”.

Although antagonism about the expense of Byzantine domination had long persisted within Italy, the political rupture was set in motion in earnest in 726 by the iconoclasm ( the social belief in the importance of the destruction of usually religious icons and other images or monuments, most frequently for religious or political reasons) of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (Isauria was a rugged isolated district in the interior of South Asia Minor).

Pope Zachary, in 741, was the last pope to announce his election to a Byzantine ruler or seek their approval.

 • 976–1025 Basil II

The early years of his long reign were dominated by civil war against powerful generals from the Anatolian aristocracy (as, for example Eustathios Maleinos (Greek: Εὐστάθιος Μαλεΐνος) was a leading Byzantine general and one of the wealthiest and most influential members of the Anatolian military aristocracy during the late 10th century. He held senior administrative and military posts in the East, and was involved in the aristocratic rebellions against Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025), fighting against Bardas Skleros but supporting the revolt of his nephew Bardas Phokas. After the failure of the latter, he was not punished, but his immense wealth caused his eventual downfall, as Basil II confined him to a mansion in Constantinople and confiscated his wealth after his death.)

Following their submission, Basil oversaw the stabilization and expansion of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire, and above all, the final and complete subjugation of Bulgaria, the Empire’s foremost European foe, after a prolonged struggle. For this he was nicknamed the Bulgar Slayer (Greek: Βουλγαροκτόνος, Boulgaroktonos), by which he is popularly known. At his death, the Empire stretched from southern Italy to the Caucasus and from the Danube to the borders of Palestine, its greatest territorial extent since the Muslim conquests four centuries earlier. His reign is therefore often seen as the medieval apogee of the Empire.

800 – the papacy recognised Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. This can be seen as symbolic of the papacy turning away from the declining Byzantium (Constantantinople) towards the new power of Carolingian Francia.

Charlemagne reached the height of his power in 800 when he was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day at Rome’s Old St. Peter’s Basilica.

During the reign of Basil II, the Crescentii clan (in modern Italian Crescenzi) essentially ruled Rome and controlled the Papacy from the middle of the 10th century until the nearly simultaneous deaths of their puppet pope Sergius IV and the patricius of the clan in 1012.

 • 1081–1118 Alexius I

Alexios I Komnenos was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118. Although he was not the founder of the Komnenian dynasty, it was during his reign that the Komnenos family came to full power. Inheriting a collapsing empire and faced with constant warfare during his reign against both the Seljuq Turks in Asia Minor and the Normans in the western Balkans, Alexios was able to curb the Byzantine decline and begin the military, financial, and territorial recovery known as the Komnenian restoration. The basis for this recovery were various reforms initiated by Alexios. His appeals to Western Europe for help against the Turks were also the catalyst that likely contributed to the convoking of the Crusades.(The Objectives of the crusades was at first to release the Holy Land, in particular Jerusalem, from the Saracens, but in time was extended to seizing The Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, the Slavs and Pagans from eastern Europe, and the islands of the Mediterranean. There were a total of nine crusades!)

Map at 1135 first and second crusades:

Michael VIII reigned as Byzantine Emperor 1259–1282. Michael VIII was the founder of the Palaiologan dynasty that would rule the Byzantine Empire until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. He recovered Constantinople from the Latin Empire in 1261 and transformed the Empire of Nicaea into a restored Byzantine Empire.

Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, after re-establishing Byzantine Imperial rule, established an alliance with the Mongols, who themselves were highly favourable to Christianity, many of them being Nestorian Christians.

He signed a treaty in 1263 with the Mongol Khan of the Kipchak (the Golden Horde), and he married two of his daughters (conceived through a mistress, a Diplovatatzina) to Mongol kings: Euphrosyne Palaiologina, who married Nogai Khan of the Golden Horde, and Maria Palaiologina, who married Abaqa Khan of Ilkhanid Persia.

 • 1449–1453 Constantine XI

Constantine Palaiologos reigned 8 February 1405 – 29 May 1453) and was the last reigning Byzantine Emperor,reigning as a member of the Palaiologos dynasty from 1449 to his death in battle at the fall of Constantinople. Following his death, he became a legendary figure in Greek folklore as the “Marble Emperor” who would awaken and recover the Empire and Constantinople from the Ottomans. His death marked the end of the Roman Empire, which had continued in the East for 977 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

So, in 1453 the capital, Constantinople, fell to the Ottomans who were commanded by the then 21-year-old Mehmed the Conqueror, the seventh sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The conquest of Constantinople followed a 53-day siege that had begun on 6 April 1453.

I’ve dipped into Wikipedia, History.com, Brittanica and the book, The Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia, by Arnold H. Matthew, to outline the process through which the Popes came into being. I wanted to understand the history of Christianity, the role of the Pope at the time Ferdinand II and his second cousin Isabella I were married, and what characteristics made the Conquistadors so determined and so dismissive of those natives of the New World.

Creation of the Roman Church

Since its inception, the Roman Catholic Church became powerful over 7 centuries during the Middle Ages.The struggles for power between kings and popes shaped the western world.

By the time the Roman Empire fell, the Catholic Church had already been created:

Constantine the Great was born in Naissus, Moesia Superior (modern day Serbia). Constantine was known as the first emperor to claim conversion to Christianity, and was baptised shortly before he died. Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 proclaiming toleration for the Christian religion, and convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325 whose Nicene Creed included belief in “one holy catholic and apostolic Church”. 

Emperor Theodosius I , born in Hispania, was a very devout Nicene Christian. Theodosius made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Thessalonica of 380.

When the Roman Empire fell in the 5th century, the Emperors were gone, but the Roman Church remained.
As the influence of the Catholic Church spread over the next 5 centuries, the clergy developed a model of church-state relations which was accepted by various Church and political leaders in European history until its eventual rejection by Martin Luther and Henry VIII.

During the Middle Ages, it was customary to classify the population of Christendom into laboratores (workers), bellatores (soldiers), and oratores (clergy). The last group, though small in number, monopolized the instruments and opportunities of culture, and ruled with almost unlimited sway half of the most powerful continent on the globe. This power created a hierarchy of institutionalised respect from workers and soldiers.

Major events were perpetrated when the Catholic Church’s authority peaked over all European Christians and the common endeavours of the Christian community. Examples include  the Crusades, the ejection of Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula and the conflict with Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. 

Creation of the institution of Pope

I found that the early popes retained their birth names, but after 533 they chose a new name upon their accession. Names are freely chosen by popes, and are not based on any system. Names of immediate or distant predecessors, mentors, saints, or even family members—as was the case with John XXIII—have been adopted.

Where the person-to be-pope was born was also was a factor, since the most powerful and influential position in Europe was sought by many ambitious families.

The Crusades

First Crusades 1095: Pope Urban II called on Christians from Western Europe to go to war against Muslim forces in the Holy Land. Urban denigrated the Muslims, exaggerating stories of their anti-Christian acts, and promised absolution and remission of sins for all who died in the service of Christ. As nobles and poor alike were usually squabbling, this plea focused their minds and they were inspired by Urban to believe they were to fight a righteous war to help their fellow Christians in the East and to take back Jerusalem. All told, between 60,000 and 100,000 people responded. 

Urban’s war cry caught fire, mobilizing clerics to drum up support throughout Europe for the crusade against the Muslims and to march on Jerusalem. Many European nobles saw their chance to increase land holdings and gain riches from the conquest. These nobles were responsible for the death of a great many innocents both on the way to and in the Holy Land, absorbing the riches and estates of those they conveniently deemed opponents to their cause. Although many of the untrained Christian peasants were hacked to death by professional Muslim soldiers, their superior numbers ensured that the Christians ultimately prevailed.

After the First Crusade achieved its goal with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, the invading Christians set up several Latin Christian states, even as Muslims in the region vowed to wage holy war (jihad) to regain control over the region.

Deteriorating relations between the Crusaders and their Christian allies in the Byzantine Empire culminated in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Third Crusade. 

Near the end of the 13th century, the rising Mamluk dynasty in Egypt provided the final reckoning for the Crusaders, toppling the coastal stronghold of Acre and driving the European invaders out of Palestine and Syria in 1291.

The fight against the Moors ( see  Overview ) in the Iberian Peninsula:

In 801, Charlemagne captured Barcelona and established Frankish control over the Spanish March, the region between the Pyrenees and the Ebro River. 

Asturian kings, presenting themselves as the heirs to the Visigothic monarchy which had ruled Spain prior to the Muslim conquest, capitalized on dissension within the Moorish ranks and expanded their holdings in the late 9th century. 

There was a resurgence of the Córdoban caliphate and a break between the Christian kingdoms of Castile and León in the 10th century.

Christian lands of northern Spain were briefly united under Sancho III Garcés (Sancho the Great), who greatly expanded the holdings of Navarre. Sancho created the kingdom of Aragon in 1035, and his successors there pursued the Christian reclamation of the peninsula in earnest. 

Alfonso I of Aragon captured the former Moorish capital of Zaragoza in 1118. 

In 1179 Alfonso II of Aragon and Alfonso VIII of Castile concluded the Pact of Cazorla, an agreement whereby the task of reconquering the Moorish kingdom of Valencia was reserved to the Aragonese crown. In exchange, Aragon relinquished all claims to other Moorish-held territory in the peninsula.

After suffering a crushing defeat at the Battle of Alarcos (July 18, 1195) at the hands of the Almohad caliph Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb al-Manṣūr, Alfonso VIII appealed to other Christian leaders.

In 1212 he won the support of Pope Innocent III, who declared a Crusade against the Almohads. Supported by the armies of Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal, Castilian forces routed the Almohad emir of Morocco, Muḥammad al-Nāṣir, at Las Navas de Tolosa (July 16, 1212) and so removed the last serious Islamic threat to Christian hegemony in Spain. The way was now open to the conquest of Andalusia.

The last king of León, Alfonso IX, was succeeded upon his death in 1230 by his son, Ferdinand III, who was already king of Castile. Castile and León were thus reunited, and the new sovereign at once embarked on a great series of campaigns to subdue Andalusia.

Those began with:

-the capture of Córdoba (1236) and culminated in 

-the surrender of Sevilla (1248). 

Influenced by the crusading zeal instilled into the Spanish church by the Clunia and Cistercian orders, Ferdinand at first expelled the Moorish inhabitants of the Andalusian cities en masse but was later forced to modify his policy by the collapse of the Andalusian economy that inevitably ensued. 

James I of Aragon completed Aragon’s part in the Reconquest:

– Occupied the Balearics (1235)

– Captured Valencia (1238). 

Unlike Ferdinand, James carefully worked to preserve the agricultural economy of the Moors and so established the final peninsular frontiers of Aragon.

In Portugal, Afonso III captured Faro (1249), the last Moorish stronghold in the Algarve. By the end of the 13th century, the Reconquest was, for all practical purposes, brought to an end. 

The last significant Muslim incursion into Christian Iberia culminated with the Battle of Río Salado (October 30, 1340), where Portuguese and Castilian forces administered a crushing defeat to the armies of Marīnidsultan Abū al-Ḥasan 

The kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, and Portugal spent the next century consolidating their holdings, until the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 united the Spanish crown. 

The Catholic Monarchs, as Ferdinand and Isabella came to be known, completed the conquest of Granada in 1492.  In the same year,  on the night of August 10-11, 1492 , the name of Spaniard, Rodrigo Borgia was drawn out of the electoral chalice. At dawn a window of the Conclave was opened and the election of Pope Alexander VI made known…..The news of Borgia’s election excited much displeasure in certain quarters, though we can hardly credit Guicciardini’s assertion that all men were filled with dismay, and that Ferrante of Naples, one of the most keen-sighted rulers of the day, told his wife with tears—tears which he had not shed even at the death of his two sons—“ This election will not only undermine the peace of Italy, but that of the whole of Christendom”.

Many historians believe that the crusading spirit of the Reconquista was preserved in the subsequent Spanish emphasis on religious uniformity, evidenced by the strong influence of the Inquisition and the expulsion of people of Moorish and Jewish descent.

  The Iberian reconquest, which began as a traditional war of conquest, became a crusade against Islam and fused an Iberian Catholicism that Spain and Portugal later transplanted around the globe. In the early 21st century its members represented nearly half of the world’s Roman Catholics. The Crusades (1095–1396) produced among many Christians an adversarial approach to those of other faiths and helped to develop a sense of communal identity against the obstacle of Europe’s deep political divisions. (Brittanica)

Since the 5th century A.D., the Christian religion was practised in the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula. Generally, in those early times, a person would live in isolation as a hermit. One of the earliest sites of a hermitage is beneath the monastery of Suso where Saint Emilian (Spanish: San Millán) lived. 

Saint Aemilian (in Latin Emilianus or Aemilianus) is an Iberic saint, born on November 12, 472 & died on June 11, 573. He was widely revered throughout Spain, and he lived during the age of Visigothic rule.

By the time of the Muslim Moorish Kings, there emerged Mozarabic, the Christian inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula. They constructed small monasteries during the sixth and seventh centuries. Many of these buildings reflect the traditional style of Mozarabic. One example of such a building is San Miguel de Escalada in the province of León, Spain, located 10 km from the Way of St. James pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. The building is an example of Mozarabic art and architecture or Repoblación art and architecture.

The second phase was developed with the arrival from France of the Benedictines of Cluny, during the Reconquista and several new orders developed at this time: Cistercian, military orders, Premonstratensian, Carthusians, Jeromes, Augustinians, Camaldolese and beggars.

The establishment of monasteries during the Middle Ages was paramount from a social and cultural standpoint, benefiting the arts and agriculture.

Monasteries are much less numerous in the south, Andalusia and the Canary Islands.

Isabella of Portugal was married to King John II of Castile as his second wife, making her also Queen of Castille. Her stepson became Henry IV of Castille.

Isabella was 19 when she married John, who was 42. After a difficult birth of her daughter, born 1451, she developed a serious case of post natal depression and became mentally unstable. This led to her paranoia about the unwanted influence of a friend of her husband’s. She then conspired to incriminate him in a killing and he was executed for the crime. She believed she was haunted by the ghost of the dead man.

 She had a son, Alfonso in 1454, a few months after her husband John II died. Isabella’s stepson, Henry IV, only 3 years her elder, became king of Castille, and he banished his stepmother to the Castle of Arévalo. Here, Isabella and her small children struggled to live in austerity, which further damaged her mental state.

Isabella ensured her daughter and namesake observed practical piety and a deep reverence for religion. But she became more paranoid and ill, the children were removed from her around 1461, and young Isabella, who was to become the wife of Ferdinand, did not see her mother again until she was dying in 1496.  

When Henry IV’s wife, Joan of Portugal, was about to give birth to their daughter Joanna, Isabella and Alfonso were summoned to court (Segovia) to come under the direct supervision of the King and to finish their education. Alfonso was placed in the care of a tutor while Isabella became part of the Queen’s household. This meant a considerable improvement in living conditions for the children. Henry forbade Isabella from leaving Segovia or involving herself in local feuding. But she was well aware of what was going on around her.

Those making trouble for Henry were noblemen, anxious for power and demanding that Alfonso be named his successor. The nobles had gained control of Alfonso, and fought to make him heir at the Second Battle of Olmedo in 1467. The battle was a draw. Henry agreed to recognise Alfonso as heir presumptive, provided that he would marry his daughter, Joanna. Soon after he was named Prince of Asturias;  Alfonso died in July 1468, perhaps of the plague. 

One other version of what befell Alfonso was that he died in suspicious circumstances and perhaps Isabella suspected that he had been murdered. Isabella had no reason to trust her half brother, Henry. Although he knew she had made her debut in the matrimonial market at the tender age of six, with a betrothal to Ferdinand. Ferdinand was the favourite and the younger son of John II of Aragon (whose family was a cadet branch of the House of Trastámara). Henry he was always trying to marry his half sister off to other financially suitable prospects to bolster his plans for his future heirs. But she had made her decision her co monarch would be Ferdinand and John II of Aragon secretly negotiated the wedding to his son Ferdinand. It seems she did not tell Henry when she was going to Valladolid to marry Infante Ferdinand of Aragon. Instead, she eloped, saying she was going to see her brother’s tomb in Ávila.

The marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand took place on 18 October 1469.

Since 1295, the remaining Muslim presence was in Southern Spain,  Grenada. Isabella was determined to expel them and it took until 1492 for her to do so.  This will be covered in my blog, Forceful Woman, Part II.