Byzantium and the Agents of the Renaissance

This is video 5 in the "Odyssey of Western Civilization" series of Freedom Academy videos hosted by Victor Davis Hanson. In this video:
When something is characterized as "byzantine," it's generally not a
compliment. But Byzantium, a.k.a. Constantinople, gets a bad rap it
doesn't deserve. After Rome, the city, fell in 476, Rome the empire
lived on in the eastern Mediterranean for another 1,000 years with
Constantinople as its capital, preserving Western civilization through
the so-called Dark Age, and serving as a Christian bulwark against the
onslaught of Islam. And, when Constantinople finally fell to the Turks,
Byzantine scholars fled west and planted the seeds that would flower as
the Renaissance.

[EbolaStew]

Great summary. The Byzantines deserve this recognition. For far more than just saving the West from Muslim conquest.

[Thomas-fuvp]

God bless Professor Victor Davis Hanson!!!! The generous gift of the Professor 's erudition in this platform is so very appreciated.

[bluesky]

THE ONLY CIVILIZED SHOW THAT CAN COMFORT CIVILIZED INDIVIDUALS IN THESE CORRUPT TIMES.

[christophalcmeonides]

THEY NEED TO SHOW THIS IN EVERY SCHOOL!!
Thank you Dr. Hanson for educating a wider audience in times of ...  intellectual siege and self-denial of western civilization.

[sravaniyadipecoraro]

Excellent. Thank you Dr. Hanson. Thoroughly enjoyed your description.

[globaljon]

Just a superb series of lectures with exact historic facts & interpretations that mean so much to western civilization. This series should become standard lectures in today’s middle & secondary schools. I congratulate the AFA on a job well done & a lesson to all of us long overdue.

[ΠαλιάΨυχή]

If i had seen that in school....Thank you!!! This is so great and amazing and well done and said!!! Thank you Professor V.D.Hanson. Thank you for uploading!

[panagiotisterpandrouzachar]

You honour us and our legacy, sir. We, the remnants of our great civilisation, send you our regards.
Thank you for voicing the truth.

[wilsontheconqueror]

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 has to be looked at as the catalyst that drove Spain and the rest of Europe to go across the Atlantic. So in that regard its decline led to the rise of the west all the way to America. God bless Constantinople!

[DaMeatGrinda]

The west had a chance to bring Constantinople back to the Greek hands after WW1. There may not be another chance like that.

[ralphwallace]

Really excellent lecture. Eye opening.

[jaimeriveras]

Great presentation. One comment, if I may: the kingdom that did the most to re establish the trade routes to the East was Portugal. It was Portuguese navigators that rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India.

[damaskosc]

The Hagia Sofia isn't dedicated to Santa Sofia, but to the 'Holy Wisdom of God'.

[artman]

Glad to hear what I'd reasoned out long ago. The arrogance of western Europe continues to this day and that arrogance is spelling our doom if we fail to recognize the debt our culture owes 'New Rome'. The war with Islam never ended and the last two centuries has only been a respite in that war. The Orthodox Church might be the 'last man standing' in that war should we continue to be the ignorant agents of our own destruction.

[VitorEmanuelOliver]

I was reading about the sack of Constantinople. The reason why byzantium was sacked was because of the venetians. They charged the crusaders to take them to the holy land in their ships. And they were out of money, so the first thing they did to pay the venetians was sacking Zara, a catholic city in the adriatic coast, the first atrocity that's not very talked about. Then they found a pretender to the throne of the byzantine empire, he promised to give the crusaders support and cash if they put him in charge as the emperor of the byzantine empire. They did it, but the people of Constantinople was very unhappy with the new emperor and with the crusaders taking part in byzantine affairs. So they killed the new emperor and held the crusaders out of the city. Without their promised support from the now dead emperor, owing money to the venetians and feeling betrayed by the byzantines, the crusaders assaulted the city and we're met with resistance, but they manage to defeat the garrison and the city was slaughtered. Even the byzantine churches were sacked. They looted all they could so they could pay the venetians and keep something for themselves

[Constantine_IA]

Victor Davis Hanson is an American Treasure🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[roobookaroo]

It is striking how our Most Erudite History Professor emphasizes as one great lesson of the past that it is not possible to ascribe one single factor as the CAUSE of the globalization of life and civilization around the Mediterranean at the time of the growth of the Roman world. It was unpredictable and the joint result of multiple factors coming into play simultaneously. No politician or strategist had planned it. And once after the fact, even professional historians were not able to identify a single factor as being the main CAUSE to the emergence of the global Roman Empire.
And, in the same spirit, when it comes to the fall of that global and powerful Roman Empire, it remained in essence unpredictable. Professional historians could not even agree on when it happened. Even though Edward Gibbons gave it a good try. There again events happened as the result of a nexus of factors working together at the same time. They emerged and their full meaning seemed to become apparent mostly through the retroactive reflexions of learned historians dissecting all the fragments of the past. Once again the owl of Athene takes her flight only at dusk, and the bodies can be counted only after the end of the battle. Again the expertise of historians consists in their eagerness and skill to ferret out possible linear causations to the unfolding of events, only to be left frustrated by the entangled complexity of interlocking forces.
There's a huge lesson for us about trying to predict the future development of our own American civilization. It has come into existence only a very few hundred years ago. And its future duration is stubbornly unpredictable. The best scholarly bet — if we follow Victor Hanson's insightful unraveling of some of the key forces and their multiple factors — is that it won't last too long. And that there's no immediate answer to the critical question of how long that will be. No divine guarantee here, and no historical guarantee either. The critical phases and moments of history emerge each time as a surprising and complex novelty.

[TheDNAGroup]

WoWWW! Who Knew! The Flips, dips, and trips of life on earth.

[skyfall]

17:05 how can you not mention Portugal? Portugal perhaps even more than Spain was key to the exploration of the sea. We were far ahead from Spain at the time... Our kings spent so much in exploration they even said no to Colombus and only then did he turn to the 2nd biggest explorational power, Spain.. (looking back it was a mistake of course).. Our navigatotors were the first to circumnavigate Africa naming the torment cape into the cape of good hope. We developed sails and ships, especially the Caravel. Yet, England and France are mentioned and they only went out to explore like 100 years after Portugal. Nothing against them but talking about exploration of the sea without mentioning Portugal is like making an omelet without eggs.

Other than this, very good series of videos so far, which Im enjoying very much!

[Thomas-fuvp]

Has the Professor Victor Davis Hanson done a lesson on the 'Serenissima'?