Near the end of Vladimir Putin’s first term as President of Russia, a film was released by the bishop of Yegoryevsk, Tikhon Shevkunov, Putin’s confessor. Fall of the Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium, written and narrated by Tikhon, describes Byzantium’s greatness and the decline of the empire due to economic and military forces from the east and the west, as well as internal political disunity. Critics have pointed out that the film seems directed more at modern Russia than ancient Byzantium, but indeed, the history of Byzantium and Russia are closely tied together. Dmitry Shlapentokh, in the article “Byzantine history and the discourse of the Russian political/intellectual underground,” says that the film has passed to some viewers the belief that “Russia is as doomed as the Byzantine Empire.”
The Byzantine Empire has been estranged from modern Russia in many ways, but Fall of the Empire has helped to reawaken interest in Russia’s Byzantine legacy. Charles Diehl, in the book Byzantium: Greatness and Decline, quotes an unnamed Russian writer: “From the dawn of Russian history, Russia’s ideal, greatness, and glory have been in Constantinople.” This nostalgia for the lost Byzantine Empire has permeated Russian history, which can be traced as far back as the origins of the Eastern Roman Empire.
By the fourth century AD, Rome’s influence had expanded throughout the Mediterranean, into Egypt and the Caucasus, Spain, Germany and Britain. For the emperor, the task of managing the vast empire became troublesome, which resulted in different attempts to divide power between more than one ruler. Starting in the late third century, Diocletian instituted a system known as the tetrarchy, which split Roman territory into four regions, each administered by a different ruler. This divide further widened the gap between the eastern and western portions of the empire due to the bouts of instability in the west and the general steadiness of the east. Constantine the Great, who had risen to power under Diocletian, emerged victorious over rival claimants to the position of emperor, and successfully ended the tetrarchy. Under his rule, the eastern and western empires were reunited. Constantine moved the capital of the empire to a city in the Bosphorus known as Byzantium, which he renamed after himself. “‘The city of Constantine’ was formally consecrated on 11 May 330,” according to Dr. Peter Sarris of the University of Cambridge in The Oxford History of Byzantium. The empire was effectively recentralized, and Christianity, to which Constantine attributed his victory over the rival claimant Maxentius, became a recognized religion throughout the empire.
With the shift of power to the east, the western half of the empire entered a period of decline, which was only made worse by constant attrition from foreign peoples–primarily Germanic tribes and the Huns. Emperor Theodosius I again divided power between an eastern and western ruler in 395. His grandson, Theodosius II, ruler of the eastern half, oversaw codification of the law and theological disputes, and paid off Attila the Hun to avoid war. Meanwhile his western counterpart, Valentinian III, lost immense territories in Africa, Spain and Gaul, and struggled to defend against attacks on Italy itself. Rome was sacked in 410 by the Visigoths. Attila the Hun, despite forging a deal with the eastern empire, invaded Italy in 452. Luckily for Rome, Pope Leo I met with Attila to negotiate before he could reach the city, and the Huns turned back. In 455, the Vandals approached Rome, and Leo requested that they enter peacefully. They honored this request, but proceeded to strip the city of its wealth.
The western empire’s fatal episode took place from 475-480. Emperor Julius Nepos, who came to power in 474, was deposed and forced to flee across the Adriatic Sea to Dalmatia. His usurper, Romulus Augustus, was in turn deposed by Odoacer, a barbarian of undetermined origin. Odoacer took control of the western capital, Ravenna, cooperated with the Roman senate to establish and maintain his rule, and even ceded to the authority of the emperor in the east. However, his rule over Italy was largely independent from the eastern empire. In Dalmatia, Nepos held onto the title of western emperor until his death in 480 at the hands of one of his own soldiers. Odoacer used the assassination as an excuse to invade and take over Dalmatia. The conquest of Dalmatia effectively ended the western empire, though it continued to exist nominally in the minds of the eastern emperors.
Under Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, the eastern empire flourished. “Between the years of 527 and 541, he undertook no less a project than the complete reconstruction of the Roman state,” states Sarris. Justinian built his Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) on the law code of Theodosius II, further asserting himself, the emperor, as the sole source of law. The Corpus was a massive and detailed compilation of thousands of laws, many of which conflicted before being reconciled in Justinian’s code. According to Sarris, he also enforced the idea that “the authority of the emperor and the authority of the priesthood derived from a common divine source.” He took a leadership role in the religion of his people, ordering the construction of the Hagia Sophia, which would be the largest Christian church in the world for nearly a thousand years. Similar to the new code of law, this new cathedral was constructed on the site of an older church built by Theodosius II. With the empire’s law and faith in his hands, Justinian set about reconquering lands in the west that previously belonged to Rome. Dalmatia, Italy, and parts of northern Africa came again under imperial rule.
Throughout Christianized territories controlled by the Roman, or Byzantine Empire, Christians espoused that they were part of “One, Holy, Catholic [Universal] and Apostolic Church.” However, distinctions developed in the way Christianity was practiced in the east and west. The Pope (papa or “father,”) the Bishop of Rome, was believed to be the leader of this universal church, having inherited his position from the first Bishop of Rome, St. Peter. Eastern patriarchs disagreed with the papal claim to authority over the entire church. Bishop Timothy Ware, author of The Orthodox Church: A Guide to Eastern Christianity, writes that “the Pope is the first bishop in the Church–but he is the first among equals.” As Rome’s importance deteriorated, with the movement of imperial power to the east under Constantine, followed by the fall of the western empire and the sacks of Rome in 410 and 455, influence over church affairs shifted to the patriarchs of the east. Constantinople became the site of several Ecumenical Councils, where patriarchs and bishops met to settle doctrinal disputes and root out heresy. Subjects of dispute included the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the other persons in the Trinity, God the Father and Jesus the Son; the relationship between Jesus’ divine and human natures; and the veneration of holy icons. Though the eastern and western halves of Christianity would not formally split until the Schism of 1054, the distance between the churches in Constantinople and Rome began to grow in the fifth and sixth centuries.
In eastern Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, a people emerged among the Slavic countryside known today as the Rus’. The origins of the Rus’ are a subject of debate among historians, largely due to a lack of records about them. One of the most prominent theories is that the Rus’ were norsemen who sailed across the Baltic Sea and eventually settled in modern-day Russia and Ukraine. Whether they were indeed norsemen or native Slavs may be undetermined, but the Rus’ rise to prominence in the 9th century had a significant impact on the development of eastern Europe. According to French historian Charles Diehl’s book Byzantium: Greatness and Decline, the Rus’ traded with the Byzantines along the Anatolian coast. He also says that “thousands of Russian mercenaries served in the imperial army and navy.” As the dominant power in eastern Europe, it is no surprise that the Rus’ were heavily influenced by the culture and power of Byzantium. “Like the Rome of other days, Byzantium was now the great educator of barbarians; Croats, Serbs, Bulgars and Russians owed their religion to it, their literary language, their arts, and their forms of government,” says Diehl. Despite Byzantium’s influence, the Rus’ did not immediately accept all the empire had to offer; Ware recalls that when a bishop was sent to Russia in 864, he was exterminated by Oleg of Novgorod, who took power at Kiev.
Oleg’s defiance of Byzantium did not end with the expulsion of the bishop. Earlier, in 860, a fleet of Russian ships had arrived along the coast of Byzantium, and the Rus’ raided the land surrounding Constantinople. At that time, the bulk of the Byzantine army–likely including the emperor himself–was busy fighting off an Islamic advance in Asia Minor. Oleg started a new campaign against the Byzantines in 907, which, according to the Primary Chronicle (a record of Russian history from c. 850-1100,) involved the mounting of wheels on ships so that they could be moved over land, around the defenses along the Bosporus. Emperor Leo (“the Wise”) managed to negotiate with Oleg, resulting in peace between Byzantium and the Kievan Rus’. The Chronicle includes a detailed record of the proceedings: “Emperor Leo honored the Russian envoys with gifts of gold, palls, and robes, and placed his vassals at their disposition to show them the beauties of the churches, the golden palace, and the riches contained therein.” Further described is the detailed treaty between Oleg and Leo: “First, that we shall conclude a peace with you Greeks [Byzantines], and love each other with all our heart… [we shall] exert ourselves as far as possible to maintain… the amity thus proclaimed by our agreement with you Greeks and ratified by signature and oath.” Thus, the violence between Byzantium and Russia ended for a time, and the Rus’ were introduced to the splendor of the empire’s capital, Constantinople.
The treaty between the Rus’ and Byzantium did not last long. In 941, Oleg’s successor, Igor of Kiev, besieged Constantinople once more. The reasons for this siege are unknown, but according to the Chronicle, the siege was foiled by Byzantine ships armed with Greek fire, a substance which burned even when floating in water. Byzantine sources claim that the entire Russian fleet had been destroyed, but somehow Igor was able to mount another attack on Constantinople in 944. This second campaign came to an end when the Byzantines managed to negotiate with Igor, and drafted a new treaty very similar to the previous one with Oleg. When the Byzantine envoys arrived before Igor, they are recorded in the Chronicle as saying, “The Emperor has sent us. He loves peace, and desires to maintain concord and amity with the Prince of Rus. Your envoys have received the pledge of our Emperors, and they have sent us to receive your oath and that of your followers.” The Chronicle further states that “Igor summoned the envoys, and went to a hill… The Russes laid down their weapons, their shields, and their gold ornaments, and Igor and his people took oath.”
Among the Rus’ who ceded to the treaty with Byzantium were many Christians, who took their oath in a nearby church, rather than the hilltop, where the pagans gathered. Ware writes that “Russia… continued to undergo a steady Christian infiltration from Byzantium… and there was certainly a church at Kiev in 945.” Olga of Kiev, who is now venerated as a saint by the Orthodox Church, was Igor’s wife, who took regency over the Kievan Rus’ after his death. Diehl states that she was the first female barbarian ruler to behold Constantinople when she visited Emperor Constantine VII in 957. “There were magnificent receptions… sumptuous banquets… gifts and the distribution of largesse… and finally the baptism,” says Diehl. Olga chose to be baptized as a Christian, and at the ceremony, Constantine was honored as her godfather. When her son Svyatoslav came of age, he refused to become Christian, and tensions rose again between Byzantium and the Kievan Rus’ during his rule.
After Olga’s conversion, “it was not until forty years later, when Vladimir, Olga’s grandson, was converted to orthodoxy, that Christianity really found a foothold in Russia,” writes Diehl. According to Abraham Ascher, Professor of History at the City University of New York, in the book Russia: A Short History, “Kievan princes sought to stabilize the new state, and a principal means to that end was the adoption of Christianity.” After consulting with his nobles, the boyars, Vladimir (“the Great”) began to search for the right monotheistic religion for his people. The Chronicle records that “Vladimir was visited by Bulgarians of Mohammedan faith… Then came the Germans, asserting that they were emissaries of the Pope… The Jewish Khazars heard of these missions, and came themselves… Then the Greeks sent to Vladimir a scholar.” It seems that the representatives of Eastern Orthodoxy interested Vladimir the most; Roger Crowley, author of 1453, writes that “It was the beauty of the liturgy in St. Sophia that converted Russia to orthodoxy after a fact-finding mission from Kiev.” “We knew not whether we were in Heaven or earth. For on earth there is no such splendour and beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that there God dwells among men,” reported the envoys.
Upon hearing about the splendour of orthodoxy, Vladimir himself became an Orthodox Christian in 988, and requested the marriage of Emperor Basil II’s sister, Anna. Basil was at first reluctant, but eventually agreed to Vladimir’s request in exchange for military assistance against Byzantine rebels. Diehl states that, upon returning to Kiev after his marriage, Vladimir commanded the mass conversion of his people. He destroyed pagan monuments, built churches and schools, and invited Greek priests and masters to preside over them. The influx of orthodox scholars led to an explosion of culture in Russia; Byzantine literature served as the model for Russian works in history, philosophy, science and religion, according to Diehl. Byzantine law code was introduced at Kiev, but Vladimir mitigated its more brutal features. “Vladimir was… deeply conscious of the Christian law of mercy,” writes Ware. Under Vladimir’s rule, there was no death penalty, torture or mutilation. His marriage to Anna was honored with close ties to Byzantium for the duration of his reign.
Vladimir’s work was continued by his son, Iaroslav (“the Wise”), after coming out on top in a struggle for power with his half-brother, Sviatopolk. Despite Kiev’s ties with Constantinople, due to his father’s marriage and the conversion of the Rus’ to orthodoxy, Iaroslav launched a naval campaign against Byzantium. Again, the Russian fleet was purportedly defeated by Byzantine ships armed with Greek fire, but Iaroslav managed to end the conflict with a favorable treaty, which included the marriage of his son to another Byzantine princess. He then engaged in the further Christianization of Russia. He built his own church dedicated to St. Sophia, along with a multitude of other churches, and copied the art and ceremony of Byzantium. Greek monks were invited to Russia to instate monastic rule there. Diehl states that “he wanted Kiev, his capital, to rival Constantinople,” and his efforts proved successful. Kiev was referred to as “the emulator of Constantinople and the fairest ornament of Greece.”
A new threat arose in the east during the thirteenth century, when the Mongols made their first advance into Russian territory. According to Ascher, they were accustomed to harsh winters, and their invasion began in the winter of 1235. The various Russian states–Kiev, Novgorod, Smolensk, Galicia-Volhynia, Vladimir-Suzdal, etc.–were disunited at that time, and proved unable to halt the invasion. Moscow was captured in 1238, and Kiev was sacked two years later. The Chronicle states that in 1240, “Batu Khan approached and surrounded the city of Kiev with a great multitude of soldiers… [He] ordered [his men] to attack the city with great fury… The inhabitants of Kiev were defeated.” When some of the defenders fled to the Church of the Virgin Mary, “the Tartars attacked them there and there was a bitter slaughter.” The Mongols stripped Kiev of its wealth, and a great number of its inhabitants were slain. “The Mongols caused enormous physical damage,” writes Ascher. “A number of cities were entirely destroyed… It has been estimated that… from 1237 to 1240, some ten percent of the population was killed.” Kiev never fully recovered from the sack, which meant that leadership among the Russian states had to be taken up elsewhere.
“It was the Church which kept alive Russian national consciousness in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,” says Ware. Under Mongol suzerainty, Eastern Orthodoxy was the defining characteristic of the subject Russians. In 1204, the center of the eastern faith, Constantinople, was sacked by disgruntled crusaders. It was at that point when the Roman Catholic Church in the west decided that crusades could be called not only against Muslims, but against other Christians as well. An order of warrior-monks from Germany, the Teutonic Knights, moved their operations from the Holy Land to East Prussia to convert–by persuasion or force–the pagans of the Baltic. It was not long before the crusaders began campaigning against the orthodox Russians as well. “The papacy… was keen to see its influence expand to the east, and was happy to see the Teutonic Knights lead crusading activity not only against the pagans of the Baltic, but also against the Orthodox Christians,” writes Michael Prestwich, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Durham, in his book Medieval People. With Byzantium under Latin control, the principalities of Russia had nowhere to look but within to fend off the crusading armies.
At the same time as the Mongol invasion, a young man named Alexander Nevsky took a leadership role in the military affairs of the Principality of Novgorod. His actions in the thirteenth century would earn him eternal fame as a defender of Russia. Rather than trying to overthrow the Mongols, he directed his attention towards the west. When a Swedish crusading army invaded in 1240, Alexander launched a surprise attack and successfully defeated them at the Battle of Neva, according to the book Crusades by Thomas Madden, Professor of History at St. Louis University. Only two years later, at Lake Peipus, Alexander’s army defeated another incursion of crusaders led by the Teutonic Knights. This engagement became known as the Battle on the Ice; according to legend, the ice over the lake split under the weight of the German knights, and they drowned in the frigid water. These victories ended western attempts to launch crusades into Russia, but they failed to lend Alexander security as a ruler. Ware states that he submitted to the Mongols to focus on his western enemies. Prestwich adds, “Alexander did not oppose the Mongols as he had the Teutonic Knights. Rather, he was subservient to them.” His failure to stand up to the Mongol overlords made him unpopular. In the early 1260’s, there were uprisings against Alexander, and he was forced to appear before a Mongol court to apologize for his failure to keep order. “He was little more than a puppet ruler controlled by the Mongols,” writes Prestwich. Because of the submission of rulers like Alexander, the Mongols remained a dominant power in Russia for nearly two centuries.
Moscow, which had been captured by the Mongols in 1238, was a young city. It was first mentioned in 1147, and its origins are still blurred in the pages of history. “Little is known about the origins of Moscow, a town that within two centuries enjoyed a spectacular rise from obscurity to prominence,” writes Ascher. Ware states that Kiev was never able to recover from the sack of 1240, which meant that power in Russia shifted north. Moscow grew to become a Grand Duchy under Mongol rule, a state powerful enough to act as a buffer between the kingdoms of the west and the Mongols in the east, to whom the Muscovites still pledged their allegiance. However, Mongol influence was declining in the fifteenth century, and according to Ware, their suzerainty was “largely nominal” by 1480.
One of the most significant events in the history of western civilization occurred in the year 1453. The Ottoman Turks had conquered much of the Byzantine Empire in preceding decades, but in that year, after a protracted siege, the final stronghold of Byzantium fell. The Turks, under Sultan Mehmet II, took Constantinople. Cambridge-educated author Roger Crowley presents a vivid account of the siege from both sides in his book 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West. News of the city’s fall sent shockwaves through Christian Europe. Crowley describes the scene in Venice when word of the city’s fall arrived:
When a fast cutter from Lepanto tied up at the wooden landing stage on the Bacino, people were leaning from windows and balconies avid for news of the city, their families… When they learned that Constantinople had fallen, ‘a great and excessive crying broke out, weeping, groaning… everyone beating their chests with their fists, tearing at their heads and faces, for the death of a father or a son or a brother…’ The Senate heard the news in stunned silence; voting was suspended… Many at first refused to believe reports that the invincible city could have fallen; when they did, there was open mourning in the streets.
Constantinople had been besieged many times throughout its history, and had only fallen once prior, to the crusaders in 1204. Now that the city had been taken not by Christians, but by the Muslims, there was much panic. In the west, there was fear that the Ottomans would continue pushing into Christian territory, and in the east, there was now a void at the heart of the Orthodox Church.
Ware writes that the Muscovites were freeing themselves of Tatar rule just as Constantinople fell: “God, it seemed, was granting them their freedom because He had chosen them to be the successors of Byzantium.” Since the Kievan period, the Russian church was subject to Constantinople. This ended in 1441 when Byzantium proclaimed unity with the Roman Catholic Church in an effort to gain more support from the west in their fight with the Turks. The Russians refused to take part in the union, and the church in Moscow became autocephalous. Ware says that “after the taking of Constantinople… there was only one nation capable of assuming leadership in Eastern Christendom.” Ivan III (“the Great”) assumed control in Moscow, and in 1472, he married Sophia Paleologue, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor. In 1480, the Mongols made a final attempt to consolidate their loosening power over the Muscovites. Khan Akhmat, according to the Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles translated by Basil Dmytryshyn, “was advancing with the entire Horde, with his sons and feudal lords and princes, in accordance with an agreement reached with King Casimir [of Poland], whereby the King incited him against the Grand Prince in order to destroy [Orthodox] Christianity.” After a lengthy standoff with the Russians under Ivan, the Tatars were forced to retreat, and their nominal power over Russia fell apart. Ivan went on to collect many of the Russian lands outside of Moscow into a single state.
Ivan’s marriage to Sophia was only a small part of Byzantium which was inherited by the Muscovites. “When the Byzantine Empire collapsed, Greeks poured into Moscow as they did into Italy,” writes Diehl. Russia was suddenly flooded with scholars, priests and artists of every sort, which spurred a renaissance there in the late fifteenth century. Ivan declared himself heir of the Greek emperors, and intended for Moscow to succeed Constantinople as Constantinople succeeded Rome. The monk Philotheus of Pskov declared in 1510 that Moscow had become a “third Rome;” the first had fallen to barbarians, and the second to the Turks. “Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands and a fourth there will not be.” After Ivan, rulers of Moscow took the title “Tsar,” a form of Caesar, the title of the Roman emperors, and the Tsars began to use the double-headed eagle, the symbol of the Byzantine Empire, as their own. In religion, politics, and culture, Russia successfully took on nearly every trait of the deceased Eastern Roman Empire. In Ware’s words, “the emperor of Byzantium had once acted as champion and protector of orthodoxy, and now the autocrat of Russia was called to perform the same task.”
Throughout the years between the fall of Constantinople and the end of the First World War, Russia continued the traditions of Byzantium. According to Diehl, the Tsars undertook the dual task of protecting the Christians in the east and taking revenge on Islam for the defeat of 1453. Russian rulers through the centuries dreamed of restoring Byzantium. As the unnamed Russian wrote, “From the dawn of Russian history, Russia’s ideal, greatness, and glory have been in Constantinople.” The Crimean War of 1853-56 was fought partially as a result of Russian expansion south. Russia, seeing itself as a guardian of Orthodox Christians, was at odds with the Ottoman Empire, wherein the eastern Christians were treated as second-class citizens. It is likely that if Russia had been more successful in the war–if they had not stood alone against Britain, France, and the Ottomans–Constantinople would have been their aim.
The Russian Tsardom survived until its overthrow in 1917. Nicholas II, the last Tsar, was forced to abdicate due to the widespread unpopularity of Russia’s involvement in the First World War, as well as the economic and social issues among the lower class. Unlike the rest of Europe, which had moved on to constitutional forms of government, the Tsardom was still an absolute monarchy, following Byzantine tradition; the flag of the double-headed eagle still flew over the royal palace in St. Petersburg. Nicholas and his family were executed by revolutionaries, and the government was taken over by communism. Soviet communism, which was “committed by its fundamental principles to an aggressive and militant atheism,” sought to repress and overthrow the Orthodox Church and its authority, and to eliminate all religious belief, according to Ware. The Church was made an illegal entity in 1918, and under Stalin, much of the orthodox clergy was executed. With the dissolution of the Tsardom and the Church, the last vestige of Byzantium seemed to be eliminated.
The Russian Orthodox Church was eventually reinstated, and in the 1980’s, it regained much of its property and influence across the country. That decade saw the celebration of the millennial anniversary of Vladimir the Great’s conversion to Christianity; the government sponsored many celebrations, and religious broadcasts were allowed on TV for the first time. The communists had thrown out Russia’s coat of arms in 1917, but the double-headed eagle was adopted again by the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia may not have seen a complete revival of its Byzantine ancestry in the past two decades, but at the very least, the shadow of the Soviet regime on the nation has been lifted.
Though modern Russia may not be the reflection of Byzantium that Tsarist Russia once was, the connections to the former Eastern Roman Empire still linger in the Russian subconscious. The film Fall of the Empire partially blames economic forces from western nations for Byzantium’s troubles, which seems a blatant allusion to current economic sanctions placed on Russia by the United States and other countries. Russia has also taken on a significant role in the fight against Islamic extremism. In cooperation with the Syrian government, Putin claims that he is making a stand against jihadists, specifically the Islamic State. Russia itself has a growing Muslim population, and very often faces threats of terrorism, which has likely reawakened the Tsarist goal of avenging Constantinople. Fall of the Empire very well portrays a resurgence in nostalgia for Byzantium, as many Russians today are becoming familiar again with their heritage.
Once more quoting Diehl, Russia “remained until the dawn of the the twentieth century the continuator and most faithful likeness of the vanished Byzantine empire, in its autocratic despotism, its Orthodoxy, its flexible diplomacy, and its conviction of having a religious and political mission to accomplish in the world.” Modern Russia was molded by Byzantium, and until recent history, the Russians have done an excellent job of carrying on Byzantine tradition. While Putin has a strong hold on power in Russia, it is not likely that the nation will ever return to the total autocracy of its former government. However, Russia’s defense of orthodoxy and leadership in world affairs will probably continue indefinitely, and in those things, the legacy of Byzantium will live on.
Written April 20-26, 2016. Published April 28, 2016.
References
- Ascher, Abraham. Russia: A Short History. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. Print.
- Crowley, Roger. 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West. New York: Hachette Books, 2014. Print.
- Diehl, Charles. Byzantium, Greatness and Decline. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957. Print.
- Dmytryshyn, Basil, ed. Medieval Russia; a Source Book, 900-1700. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967. Print.
- Madden, Thomas F., ed. Crusades. New York: Metro Books, 2012. Print.
- Mango, Cyril A., ed. The Oxford History of Byzantium. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.
- Prestwich, Michael. Medieval People: Vivid Lives in a Distant Landscape. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2014. Print.
- Shlapentokh, Dmitry. “Byzantine History and the Discourse of the Russian Political/intellectual Underground.” Science Direct. N.p., 2011. Web. Apr. 2016.
- The Fall of an Empire; the Lesson of Byzantium. Dir. Tikhon Shevkunov. Youtube.com. N.p., 15 Nov. 2012. Web. Apr. 2016.
- Vernadsky, George, ed. A Source Book for Russian History from Early times to 1917. Comp. S. G. Pushkarev. Vol. 1. New Haven: Yale UP, 1972. Print.
- Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity. 3rd ed. N.p.: Penguin, 2015. Print.
J.D. Smirl 