Rome and Byzantium

Paper Summary:

This essay discusses the reasons why Rome and Byzantium are linked together despite their great differences. The author explains the involvement of the Catholic Church in Byzantium.

From the Paper:

"This period was one of significant social and economic growth in Western Europe that was to some extent independent of the Crusades and to some extent caused by them. The religious and political effects of the Crusades on Europe can never be separated from each other. The Crusades tended to increase the power and prestige of Rome and the West while also making the West less parochial, so that by the end of the Crusades it might claim both Western power and Eastern knowledge, leaving Constantinople with little to call its own.
"The Crusades were one of the forces that increased contacts between Christian Western Europeans and both Muslims and Jews. Although it is a little difficult for us to believe this now, Jews actually were instrumental in helping the West to understand and appreciate Islam. Jewish thinkers often helped to transfer and explain the intellectual achievements of the Islamic world to Christendom, often creating a syncretistic blend of both Judaism and Islam. This introduction mostly as a result of the Crusades of Eastern philosophies into Europe was quickly seen as threatening and was met by a terrible backlash in the form of the Inquisition (created in 1231), which was a powerful religious institution designed to enforce religious and political unity. While at first it was turned against only Jews and Muslims along with those suspected of such heresies as witchcraft, in its later years it was also used to combat Protestantism."

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• Research Paper # 93616 : "Byzantium During the Iconoclastic Age"

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