The Roman Orthodox World (1393–1492)

Anthony Bryer

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521832311.032

24 - The Roman Orthodox World (1393–1492)

from Part III - The Byzantine Lands in the Later Middle Ages 1204–1492

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2010

Anthony Bryer

Edited by

Jonathan Shepard

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Anthony Bryer: Affiliation:
Emeritus Professor of History, University of Birmingham
Jonathan Shepard: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

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Summary

chronology and definition

Byzantines were perhaps more concerned than most medieval people with the insecure business of measuring time and defining authority. There was not much they could do about either, but naming is a taming of the forces of nature and anarchy, and placed the humblest in relation to the stability of God. Byzantines called this order taxis. They craved taxis all the more in the fifteenth-century anno domini (AD), because for orthodox Christians, who counted by the anno mundi (AM), it was, quite simply, the end of the secular world. For subjects of either, or both, emperor and patriarch in Constantinople, the world was created on I September 5508 BC. Gennadios II Scholarios (1454–6, 1463, 1464–5), Sultan Mehmed II’s (1451–81) first patriarch after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks on 29 May 1453, put matters in cosmic proportion by foretelling doomsday on I September 1492, the end of the seventh millennium am. In 1393, the first year of the last century of the world, Patriarch Antony IV (1389–90, 1391–7) put matters in taxis. Grand Prince Vasilii I of Moscow (1389–1425) had remarked that although there was a church, there did not seem to be a credible emperor in Constantinople. The patriarch replied: ‘it is not possible to have a church without an emperor. Yea, even if, by the permission of God, the nations [i.e. the Turks] now encircle the government and residence of the emperor … he is still emperor and autocrat of the Romans – that is to say of all Christians.’

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500–1492 , pp. 852 - 880

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521832311.032 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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24 - The Roman Orthodox World (1393–1492)

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