The Byzantines or East Romans () were the Byzantine Empire's main inhabitants. They understood their identity as Roman, within a predominantly Greek-speaking and Christian context. From the 6th century CE onward, they were increasingly associated in Western sources with a Greek identity and with what is now known as the Eastern Orthodox denomination. Following the decline of the empire and the fall of Constantinople, most Byzantines came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, where those remaining Christians were organised within the Rum millet.
Terminology
The adjective "Byzantine", derived from ( in Latin), the name of the Greek settlement on which Constantinople was founded, originally referred only to the inhabitants of the city. Its usage began to broaden when Theodore Metochites and Laonikos Chalkokondyles employed "Byzantine" to denote the people of the empire as a whole; a development later widely propagated by Hieronymus Wolf. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that historians began systematically applying "Byzantines" to the empire's inhabitants, and the term is now regarded by many scholars as contentious. For most of the preceding millennium, the "Byzantines" were more commonly described as "Greeks".
During most of the Middle Ages, the Byzantines identified as "Romans". "Roman, Greek (if not used in its sense of 'pagan') and Christian became synonymous terms, counterposed to 'foreigner', 'barbarian', 'infidel'. The citizens of the Empire, now predominantly of Greek ethnicity and language, were often called simply the 'people who bear Christ's name'".: "Roman, Greek (if not used in its sense of 'pagan') and Christian became synonymous terms, counterposed to 'foreigner', 'barbarian', 'infidel'. The citizens of the Empire, now predominantly of Greek ethnicity and language, were often called simply ό χριστώνυμος λαός ['the people who bear Christ's name'].".
The Latin term Graikoí (from Γραικοί, "Greeks") was also used,Paul the Silentiary. Descriptio S. Sophiae et Ambonis, 425, Line 12 ("χῶρος ὅδε Γραικοῖσι"); Theodore the Studite. Epistulae, 419, Line 30 ("ἐν Γραικοῖς"). which was rare in official Byzantine political correspondence prior to the Fourth Crusade of 1204.; ; . The name Hellenes was synonymous to "pagan" in popular use, but was revived as an ethnonym in the Middle Byzantine period (11th century)..
While in the West the term "Roman" acquired a new meaning in connection with the Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome, the Greek form "Romaioi" remained attached to the Greek-speakers of the Byzantine Empire.Encyclopædia Britannica (2009), "History of Europe: The Romans". Despite the shift in terminology in the West, the Byzantines Empire's eastern neighbors, such as the Arabs, continued to refer to them as "Romans", as for instance in the 30th Surah of the Quran (Ar-Rum). The signifier "Roman" (Rum millet, "Roman nation") was also used by the Byzantines' later Ottoman rivals, and its Turkish equivalent Rûm, "Roman", continues to be used officially by the government of Turkey to denote the Greek Orthodox natives (Rumlar) of Istanbul, as well as the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (, "Roman Orthodox Patriarchate"In Turkey, it is also referred to unofficially as Fener Rum Patrikhanesi, "Roman Patriarchate of the Phanar".).. The term Rum continued to be used as an exonym in various contexts.
Among Slavic populations of southeast Europe, such as Bulgarians and Serbs the name most commonly translated was "Greki" (Greeks). Some Slavonic texts during the early medieval era also used the terms Rimljani or Romei.Nikolov, A. Empire of the Romans or Tsardom of the Greeks? The Image of Byzantium in the Earliest Slavonic Translations from Greek. – Byzantinoslavica, 65 (2007), 31–39. At least one 11th-century Bulgarian source is attested which refers to "Ellini rimski" (Roman Hellenes). In most medieval Bulgarian sources the Byzantine Emperors were the "Tsars of the Greeks" and the Byzantine Empire was known as "Tsardom of the Greeks". Both rulers of the Despotate of Epirus and the Empire of Nicaea were also "Greek tsars ruling over Greek people".
Equally, among Nordic people such as Icelanders, Varangians (Vikings) and other Scandinavian people, they were called "Grikkr" (Greeks). There are various runic inscriptions left in Norway, Sweden and even in Athens by travellers and members of the Varangian Guard like Greece runestones and the Piraeus Lion which we meet the terms Grikkland (Greece) and Grikkr referring to their ventures in Byzantine Empire and their interaction with the Byzantines.Jakobsson, Sverrir. (2016). The Varangian Legend. Testimony from the Old Norse sources. pp. 346–361
History The Byzantines are a Greek-speaking and Orthodox Christian people that historically inhabited the lands of the Byzantine Empire during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages; They represented the dominant culture of the empire, which they called Rhomania (), primarily in the southern Balkans, Asia Minor, and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Throughout their history, they self-identified as Romans (, Rhōmaîoi); medieval Europeans called them Greeks in their languages, while in the Islamic world they were known as Rum.
Use of Greek was already widespread in the eastern Roman Empire when Constantine I () moved its capital to Constantinople, while Thrace and Anatolia (which now made up the core of the empire) had also been hellenized by early Byzantine times.Warren Treadgold, 2002, A Concise History of Byzantium, "Within the huge Prefecture of the East, the Diocese of Thrace and the dioceses of Asiana and Pontica in Anatolia made up the core of the new Byzantine Empire. They formed the empire's geographical and political center and the natural hinterlands of its new capital of Constantinople, which as it grew in population and wealth was already becoming the hub of the empire's trade routes. With the decline of the native Thracian and Anatolian languages and the spread of Greek, Anatolia and Thrace had also become the real center of the Greek world, richer and more populous than Greece itself and linked to the Hellenized coastlands of Syria and Egypt. All three dioceses fell under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople." The empire lost its predominantly non-Greek speaking provinces (Syria, Egypt, Africa) by the 7th century Muslim conquests and its population was overwhelmingly Greek-speaking by the 8th century.; . Unlike the early medieval West, the Greek education of the East was more advanced, resulting in widespread basic literacy. Success came easily to Greek-speaking merchants, who enjoyed a strong position in international trade.
After the fall of the empire, the Ottomans used the term "Rum millet" ("Roman nation") for their Greek and Eastern Orthodox populations.: "On the part of the Ottoman conquerors, already from the early years of the conquest, the word Rum meant at the same time their subjects of the Christian Orthodox faith and also those speaking Greek, as distinct from the neighbouring Albanians or Vlachs." It increasingly transformed into an ethnic identity, marked by Greek language and Orthodoxy, shaping modern Greek identity.. Although the term 'Hellen' was briefly revived by the Nicaenean elite and in intellectual circles by Gemistos Plethon and John Argyropoulos,. the Roman self-identification persisted until the Greek Revolution, when 'Hellen' came to replace it. Greeks still sometimes use "Romioi" ("Romans") in addition to "Hellenes", and "Romaic" ("Roman") for the Modern Greek language.; ; .
Culture Language
The Eastern Roman Empire was in language and civilization a Greek society.. Linguistically, Byzantine or medieval Greek is situated between the Hellenistic (Koine) and modern phases of the language.. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, during the Hellenistic era, Koine Greek had been the lingua franca of the educated elites of the Eastern Mediterranean, spoken natively in the southern Balkans, the Greek islands, Asia Minor, Thrace and the ancient and Hellenistic Greek colonies of Southern Italy, the Black Sea, Western Asia and North Africa.. At the beginning of the Byzantine millennium, the koine (Greek: κοινή) remained the basis for spoken Greek and Christian writings, while Attic Greek was the language of the philosophers and orators..
As Christianity became the dominant religion, Attic began to be used in Christian writings in addition to and often interspersed with koine Greek. Nonetheless, from the 6th at least until the 12th century, Attic remained entrenched in the educational system; while further changes to the spoken language can be postulated for the early and middle Byzantine periods.
The population of the Byzantine Empire, at least in its early stages, had a variety of mother tongues including Greek. These included Latin, Aramaic, Coptic, and Caucasian languages, while Cyril Mango also cites evidence for bilingualism in the south and southeast.. These influences, as well as an influx of people of Arabic, Celtic, Germanic, Turkic, and Slavic backgrounds, supplied medieval Greek with many loanwords that have survived in the modern Greek language. From the 11th century onward, there was also a steady rise in the literary use of the vernacular.
Following the Fourth Crusade, there was increased contact with the West; and the lingua franca of commerce became Italian. In the areas of the Crusader kingdoms a classical education (Greek: παιδεία, paideia) ceased to be a sine qua non of social status, leading to the rise of the vernacular. From this era many beautiful works in the vernacular, often written by people deeply steeped in classical education, are attested. A famous example is the four Ptochoprodromic poems attributed to Theodoros Prodromos. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, the last centuries of the Empire, there arose several works, including laments, fables, romances, and chronicles, written outside Constantinople, which until then had been the seat of most literature, in an idiom termed by scholars as "Byzantine Koine".
However, the diglossia of the Greek-speaking world, which had already started in ancient Greece, continued under Ottoman rule and persisted in the modern Greek state until 1976, although Koine Greek remains the official language of the Greek Orthodox Church. As shown in the poems of Ptochoprodromos, an early stage of modern Greek had already been shaped by the 12th century and possibly earlier. Vernacular Greek continued to be known as "Romaic" ("Roman") until the 20th century..
Religion
At the time of Constantine the Great (r. 306–337), barely 10% of the Roman Empire's population were Christians, with most of them being urban population and generally found in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. The majority of people still honoured the old gods in the public Roman way of religio.. As Christianity became a complete philosophical system, whose theory and apologetics were heavily indebted to the Classic word, this changed.. In addition, Constantine, as Pontifex Maximus, was responsible for the correct cultus or veneratio of the deity which was in accordance with former Roman practice.. The move from the old religion to the new entailed some elements of continuity as well as break with the past, though the artistic heritage of paganism was literally broken by Christian zeal..
Christianity led to the development of a few phenomena characteristic of Byzantium. Namely, the intimate connection between Church and State, a legacy of Roman cultus. Also, the creation of a Christian philosophy that guided Byzantines in their everyday lives. And finally, the dichotomy between the Christian ideals of the Bible and classical Greek paideia which could not be left out, however, since so much of Christian scholarship and philosophy depended on it. These shaped Byzantine Greek character and the perceptions of themselves and others.