Roman Empire (Byzantine Era)
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Roman Empire (Byzantine Era)’
In The Copybook
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Roman Empire (Byzantine Era)’
In The Copybook
Back in the eleventh century English refugees founded New York, but it wasn’t in North America.
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, a group of English noblemen sold their estates and set sail for anywhere not ruled by Normans. Their wanderings took them to Constantinople (or Micklegarth), at that time beset by another overbearing Norman, Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, and the Seljuk Turks.
In Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, a man from Kent founded a glittering church for English refugees.
Goscelin of Canterbury was a Flemish monk who settled in England during the 1060s. He preserved many records of the English just in time to save them from obliteration by the Normans, who overran the country’s highest offices following the Conquest of 1066. As he tells us, however, not everyone could bear to stay and watch.
According to legend, when the Venetians tried to kidnap it the Holy Table of St Sophia in Constantinople made a dramatic escape.
In 1204, Crusaders sacked and desecrated Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire and most honoured See of the Greek Orthodox Church. For almost sixty years thereafter, the communion Table in the grand basilica of Holy Wisdom (Agia Sophia) suffered itself to be used for Roman Catholic services, but in 1261 the retreating Latins tried to carry it away with them to Italy, and enough was enough.
A mother is determined to see that her disabled daughter gets the help she needs.
Fr George Skaramangás (1867-1944) was an energetic and popular figure on the Greek island of Paros, both as priest at the Ekatontapyliani (Church of the Hundred Doors) and as founder of the island’s Byzantine Museum. His adopted daughter married Spiros Mavris, a local hero of the Resistance. The following events took place in his time.
Shortly after Askold and Dir founded Kiev in 862, they launched a brazen but ill-fated assault on the capital of the Roman Empire.
In the 860s, just as the Great Army led by Vikings Ingwaer and Halfdan was swarming over England, Viking warlords Askold and Dir were establishing the great cities of Novgorod and Kiev as the foundations of Rus’. Almost at once the pagan settlers set their sights on the greatest prize of all, Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire.
After the Norman Conquest, thousands of disappointed Englishmen departed for a new life in the Byzantine world.
When William, Duke of Normandy, seized the English crown from Harold Godwinson in 1066, many Englishmen were unwilling to recognise their new Norman overlords. They turned first to friends in Scandinavia; when that failed, some set sail for Constantinople in the hope of enlisting the support of the Roman Empire.