final Flashcards
(59 cards)
Byzantine Empire
the eastern empire that continued on for another thousand years after the fall of Rome and the western empire;
Constantinople
originally Byzantium transformed by Emperor Constantine into a grand “New Rome” today called Istanbul;
Bosporus
a strait that runs through Istanbul Turkey and links the Black and Mediterranean seas serving as a link between Europe and Asia;
Justinian
the greatest Byzantine ruler of its earliest history who reigned from 527 until his death in 565 and recaptured and reconquered large areas of the old western Roman Empire for a brief time reuniting the Eastern and Western Roman Empires;
Justinian’s Corpus of Civil Law
a unified set of laws across the empire created to bring peace and stability to his domain based on a commission of legal experts who revised all Roman laws;
Hagia Sophia
a Christian church commissioned by Emperor Justinian in 532 meaning “Divine or Holy Wisdom” and one of the finest examples of Byzantine architecture later transformed into a mosque and then a museum and back to a mosque;
Icons
historically an image of Christ the Virgin Mary or an angel important people to Christians and were considered sacred objects believed to have special powers;
Iconoclast Controversy
led to a revolt that changed the fortunes of the empire and led it into a golden age under the Macedonian dynasty;
Macedonian dynasty
founded by Basil I under which its successors began reconquering territory that had once made up the extended Byzantine Empire and was considered part of the golden age;
Cyril and Methodius
two Byzantine Greek brothers who became missionaries to the Slavic people inventing an alphabet today the precursor of the modern Cyrillic alphabet;
The Decline (after 1071)
the period following the Iconoclast Controversy when the Byzantines experienced what is known as the “houd of troubles” losing territory to the Normans and Seljuk Turks and ruling a much smaller and weaker empire;
Vassal
gave military service and pledged loyalty to a lord in exchange for land to live on;
Feudalism
a political system that developed in Western Europe after the fall of Rome traditionally described as feudalism;
Manorialism
an economic social and political system where the lord’s estate or manor produced goods that supported the peasants the landowner and others and was a nearly self-sufficient farming village;
Serfs
agricultural workers who were bound to the land of their lord and were not free to leave the lord’s land without his permission and stayed with the land if lords sold it;
Knights
horse-riding warriors skilled in the use of swords who were commanded by powerful landowning nobles to protect their manors;
Commerce
the buying and selling of goods on a large scale;
Guild
an association of artisans or merchants formed to set quality standards establish prices for goods and help businesses;
Capital
money for use in starting a business or in search of larger infusions of capital;
Commercial Revolution
a shift from an economy based on self-sufficient agriculture to one based on international trade;
Clergy
religious leaders who were appointed by the church to perform ceremonies and explain church teachings and included priests who headed individual churches and bishops who oversaw groups of churches;
Cathedral
the principal church in a district administered by a bishop where schools were located in towns and cities;
Scholasticism
a philosophy developed by Roman Catholic scholars seeking to unify the study of religion and worldly subjects by applying human reason and logic to seek knowledge;
Mystic
a person who seeks knowledge of God through intuition or contemplation; Vernacular
