An Irrevocable Prejudice: Roman Impressions of Venetians and Normans in Twelfth Century Byzantium (thesis)

Abstract

The Mediterranean world during the twelfth century was a rapidly shifting and evolving sphere, influenced by the growing power of the papacy, the rise of more centralized states in the previously decentralized and internally divided West, and the collective threat of the Muslim states to the south and the east. None of these sources had held a candle for centuries to the highly cultured, deeply traditional, and seemingly unchangeable Roman empire, and Roman rulers and citizens would prefer for it to stay that way. The Romans' conception of their society, and their individual identities, rested on the foundation of the exceptionalism of Eastern Christendom, which had granted them a special religious designation and an impregnable political ideology, grounded in the teachings of their cultural and genealogical forefathers. These Eastern Romans had inherited the ancient Roman concept of caesaropapism and the ancient Greek practices of xenophobia and conviction in the barbarism of the other. [From Conclusion]