Unit 18 Byzantine Empire

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 380.

DISCUSSION

1. Argue for or against the following statements:

a. Contracts must be written to be legal.

b. A spoken contract is less useful than a written one.

c. Contracts may include matters that were never discussed.

d. Westerners are more used to signing contracts than Easterners.

e. It is typical in your country to sign contracts connected with daily life.

f. Nothing can kill romance faster than the word “prenup”.

2. Discuss the importance of contract law in international business.

3. Prepare a short presentation on contract law in your country.

4. Prepare a short presentation on marriage law.

Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered around its capital in Constantinople. The term was invented in 1557, about a century after the fall of Constantinople. The 9^th century chronicles use the name Roman Empire more often.

Byzantium may be defined as a multi-ethnic unit that emerged as a Christian empire, that soon became the world-known empire and ended its thousand year history in 1453 as a Greek Orthodox state. The Byzantines identified themselves as the Romans which had already become a synonym for Hellenes – Greeks.

Byzantium was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State and maintained Roman traditions still oriented towards Greek culture; it was predominantly Greek-speaking rather than Latin-speaking.

There is no consensus on the starting date of the Byzantine period. Some place it during the reign of Diocletian (284-305) due to the administrative reforms he introduced, dividing the empire into a pars Orientis and a pars Occidentis. Others place it to the date of fall of Rome in 476 what ended the western half of the Roman Empire, and the eastern half continued as the Byzantine Empire.

330 is the most important date in the history of the state because when Constantine the Great took the city of Bizantium, which had grown from an ancient Greek colony founded on the European side of the Bosporus, he re-built it and inaugaurated his new capital here named Constantinople. The whole Empire may be described as the outcome of Constantine's work. Constantine introduced important changes into the Empire's military, monetary, civil and religious institutions. He has created the prototype of Parliament, coinage system and provided Christianity spreading.

Justinian I was one the greatest governors of Byzantium. He assumed the throne in 527 and had to maneuver between external and interior enemies. He managed to solve the tasks successfully having won the long Roman–Persian Wars in 561. After his death the empire weakened. Though its rulers continued to style themselves Roman long after Justinian's death.

In the late 11th century, Alexius I Comnenus sought help from Venice and the pope; these allies turned the ensuing Crusades into plundering expeditions. In the Fourth Crusade the Venetians took over Constantinople and established a line of Latin emperors. Recaptured by Byzantine exiles in 1261, the empire was now little more than a large city-state. In the 14th century the Ottoman Turks began to encroach. Their extended siege of Constantinople ended in 1453, when the last emperor died fighting on the city walls and the area came under Ottoman control.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/byzantine-empire#ixzz1uC0tF7E0

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/byzantine-empire#ixzz1uBsmUsVG