Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 Excerpt:...to the principles of Christianity. As soon as judicial functions were ill performed, general civilisation declined. The people, finding that justice was prostituted, and that there was no hope of reforming the administration, ceased to respect the Book Hi. central authority. The great moral tie which had ch-"'8 3' attached the inhabitants of the provinces to the emperors was then broken. A practical separation of the interests of different nations and territories ensued; and a marked change in the relations of those provinces which possessed a national character to the central government was the first manifest sign of the weakness of the empire. The operation of fiscal oppression in accelerating the revolution, and in separating every subject race except the Greek from the government, has been fully treated in the preceding pages. The Armenians, Cappadocians, Cilicians, Bulgarians, Sclavonians, Vallachians, and Albanians were, one after the other, driven to assert their independence; and the supremacy of the Hellenic race in the Byzantine empire, which may be dated from the extinction of the Basilian dynasty, prepared the way for internal revolutions and foreign conquest. The other nations struggled to preserve their independence; the Greeks bartered theirs for official and ecclesiastical power. The decline of the Byzantine empire must also be considered as closely connected with the identification of the Greek church with the Roman administration. This union of the ecclesiastical with the civil government may be also dated from the last years of the Basilian dynasty. It was consummated after the complete schism of the Greek and Latin churches in 1053, which was unfortunately effected by the Patriarch Michael Keroularios, with a degree of violence that...