Our Interconnected World Through the Byzantines
The Byzantine Empire boasts a proud and illustrious history, full of technological marvels, religious fervor, and cultural achievements. As such, our students are taught all about it as a key component of their Middle Ages social studies education! Oh wait, sorry about that, I was lying to you. We actually teach them almost nothing about the Byzantines, only that they existed, had a city called Constantinople, were a splinter of the Roman Empire, and created the religion of Eastern Orthodoxy. In case you do not believe me on this, let us explore the social studies curriculum of the School District of Holmen. In particular, I would ask you to focus in on the Western Civilization 1 and Western Civilization 2 courses.
There are five obvious locations in the Western Civilization curriculum to bring in the Byzantine perspective. They are the decision to split the Roman Empire into East and West, the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Great Schism, the Crusades, and the Renaissance. In an analysis of the Homlen curriculum, I have determined that there is a near criminal dearth of focus on this extremely influential civilization.
Before someone in the back gets up and says “Mr. Batty, the Byzantines weren’t part of Western civilization”, let me address that. In two ways. One, of course they were, even the Byzantines referred to themselves as Romans. If this is the case and they continued Roman values and tradition, how could they be anything but Western? Secondly, the Byzantines provide a plethora of historical examples of how the East and West interacted and developed when they came into contact with each other. How is this interaction not valuable? Foreign relations are an integral part of any civilization and present important life lessons. Any culture has to accept that other people exist outside of itself. Now, back to the Holmen course of study.
The Holmen district very gently brushes by the Byzantines. I appreciate that they do not eliminate them, but the district owes it to its students to do more. The first reference to the Byzantines comes with the vocabulary term “Constantinople”. One of the most important cities in classical and medieval human history is reduced to a footnote. Happily, I can say that the curriculum dedicates a decent amount of time to Eastern Orthodoxy. While I wish it was more, I am satisfied that they address it enough for the time they have, even if they do not expand on how the religion affects the secular world. The next time the Byzantines should be mentioned is the Crusades, but instead the primary focus is the conflict between the Catholic empires and the Islamic caliphate. The Byzantines see themselves erased from history, just as much of their empire was shredded by their western Christian brothers. Even worse, when we turn to the Renaissance, the Byzantine influence is nowhere to be seen. It is as if a millennium of empire has been lost to the sands of time.
It is painfully clear to me that we cannot stand idle and trust that our current curriculums and textbooks are doing enough to demonstrate the importance of the contributions the Byzantines have made to human history. I suggest that we overhaul the understanding of the Byzantine existence in our Western Civilization courses. It is negligent to ignore that Western Civilization has interacted with the East for far longer than the modern era. We must bring that connection into the classroom, and the Byzantine Empire is the perfect testing ground. Bridging what many students see as an empty period of feudalism, squabbling princes, and dry religious ceremony, the Byzantines could help reveal to them that culture, science, even civilization did not stagnate during this period. Rather, it just moved inside those gorgeous Theodosian Walls.
My proposal is simple to lay out, but difficult to execute. To start, the Byzantines must be introduced with the split of the Roman Empire. A distinction must be made that, although they were certainly different, the Byzantines did view themselves as Roman and continued on Roman civilization. The Fall of Rome is the next checkpoint, where again students need to see that development did not just die. The Eastern Empire lived on and even prospered for a time. Of course, the rise of Eastern Orthodoxy, iconoclasm, and the Great Schism should remain, as they show the reality of our interconnected world. The Crusades must include the Byzantine perspective to enlighten students to the fact that most conflict is not binary but has unintended consequences. Finally, the idea that the Renaissance was purely Italian needs to be eliminated. Certainly, it occurred there, but it would not have been possible if not for the contributions of the Byzantines.
