All language subtitles for Byzantium The Lost Empire 3

The empire of Byzantium,

that golden dream.

The climax of ancient Rome and Greece.

One emperor,

one single faith.

The dream that lasted for a thousand years,

a dream shattered by the armies of the West.

The fame of Byzantium traveled
from Iceland to China,

from Ethiopia to Russia,

to every kingdom on the earth.

And, at its center, Constantinople,
the world's great marketplace.

Its fabled wealth,

its gold, its emeralds, its palaces,
its glittering churches.

A legend so rich it caused
its own destruction.

Founded in year 330,
the Christian Empire of Byzantium

had its center here in Istanbul
in modern Turkey.

The Byzantines called this city Constantinople.

A thousand years ago
it was the richest city of them all,

the eye of all the world.

In the very center,
the ancient Church of Saint Sofia,

converted now into a mosque.

Here, the emperors of Byzantium
met the King of Heaven,

the lords of this world and the next,
the center of the Christian universe.

Visions of this holy city and its golden emperors

filled the mind and the imagination of
every medieval prince and king

until one day an army of the Christian
west came here and destroyed it.

Beside the church, above the sea,
a shadowed park

with five centuries of buildings in it,

the palace of Byzantium.

A thousand years ago there
were gold pavilions here,

chapels, mansions, set in a sea of green.

An earthly paradise,

one of the most potent ancient legends
of our planet,

the home of God's emperor on earth.

So, where is the Holy Palace
of Byzantium in modern Istanbul?

There's a lump of it there.

A sad, pathetic pile of brick.

You have to go into the streets
and to the alley ways.

You really need a map.

Look, I'll show you. Modern Istanbul...

why do maps always run the wrong way?

Modern Istanbul, ancient Constantinople.

I'll show you what I mean.

Look! There's the great Roman roads coming
into the center of town,

the Hippodrome where the people met the emperor,

the great church just beside it. And there!

Between that wall and that one there, that
whole area was all palace.

Dozens of buildings,
dozens of churches, all together,

high and glittering right across the hill!

So, you might ask,
"Where the hell is it now?"

The golden palace is buried beneath
old Istanbul.

The little streets are haunted
by its lost pavilions,

by ghosts of ancient gardens,

by the shadows of its courtiers
and generals.

The enormous curve of the imperial race
track still stands there,

shattered wonder of the medieval world.

We're right at the very heart of the palace
of imperial Byzantium.

There's a corner shop.

Well, at least you can say the Byzantines
invented corner shops.

They had a law about them.
There should be one in every street,

they said, for the necessities of life.

That there, though, that's something else.

That's a part of the palace itself.

Just part of the foundations, though.

Once they held a great high terrace,

not that tea house up there,

where the emperors walked each evening
in the fading light,

their fine silks flowing gently
in the fresh sea breezes.

Constantinople was the greatest sea port
in the medieval world.

Arab, Russian, Viking, and Italian boats

once sailed along these walls.

This is the ruin of an imperial pavilion,
some fourteen centuries old.

The warm sea once splashed
against these walls.

Those are the doors through which the emperor
once walked to board the

royal yacht, The Greyhound.

The emperors liked to live beside
the seaside,

so it's always a good idea to, when you're
walking along the seaside walls

of Constantinople,

to look and see if these little gates give you
something of the entrance of the palace.

Some of them don't look much today,

but, they're very interesting.

See, this Greek text?

It's part of a Greek version
of the book of Habakkuk,

a text we know once was
laid around the base

of a great statue of the
emperor Justinian,

who stood in the center of the city.

So this, then, is not an ancient gateway,

because that statue was still
standing a few hundred years ago.

Where on earth can we find the picture
of the palace of Byzantium?

It's still here, of course,

in its imitations and echoes
of the great palace of Constantinople

that stand in Sicily and Spain
and Syria and Rome.

Villas, gardens, the verandahs,
all set like tents across the hill.

Scented courtyards,

splashing fountains,

a world that ordinary people never saw.

Some of their very stones were plundered
from the golden palace of Byzantium.

There were churches, too,
filled with the holiest of relics.

Fragments of the true cross,
set in gold and blood red rubies

and great jeweled cups,

made for the emperor's own communion.

And at the heart,
at the very center of this magic palace,

Byzantium's throne room,
the throne room of the emperor of Christendom.

As you approached the imperial throne
of Byzantium,

you'd have felt as naked as a man
on Judgment Day,

utterly defenseless.

The man who sat on that chair
didn't rule by the will of God,

he was "The will of God on earth".

He was God's instrument,
he was "Divine providence personified."

Some Byzantines believed that the end
of world history would come

when that man on that throne took his crown off
and laid it on the rock of Calvary.

It's probably the most total form of
government the world has ever seen.

You don't have, for example,
participatory government in this.

Who could participate in the will of God?

You can only bow before it.

You can't have morality or loyalty.
You can't have good kings or bad kings,

because, who could know the workings of
the will of this astonishing emperor?

That is Byzantine politics.

Byzantium, ruled with cosmic certainty.

It didn't dominate its neighbors
with vast armies,

but, with images of God and government

with bars of gold and promises of princesses
in marriage and alliance,

all dressed up in the silk robes
of Byzantium.

The Byzantines operated a kind
of cultural imperialism,

and at the center of the show
was Constantinople,

the golden palace, and its emperor.

The rituals of its church and court.

In the tenth century,

diplomats and merchants, Easterners
and Westerners,

all gave astonishing descriptions
of a weekly procession that

wound through the cloisters and the gardens
of the palace, all filled

with singing choirs

and ran up to the great Church
of Saint Sofia.

"Behold, the morning star!" they sang,
as the emperor approached.

"In his eyes the sun's rays are reflected!

Adore him, ye nations!

Bow the neck to his greatness!"

The whole world agreed that this was
the most magnificent, the most

awe inspiring sight on earth.

At its ending, the procession passed up
a wooden walkway

that ran right up to the gallery
of a great church

and entered Saint Sofia through this door.

Here, high up in the gallery of Saint Sofia,

was the chapel of the emperors and the court.

Below the balcony, in the incense
and darkness of the ancient church,

pilgrims from Asia, Africa, and Europe

visited and kissed a thousand holy relics...

a little holy land of marble,
gold and bronze.

In this smaller, private space above,
the emperors held courtly services

and were enrobed for the vast ceremonials
that took place each week in

the church below.

And, here they are still,

the dynasties of old Byzantium,

still walking in the grand procession
from a thousand years ago.

That's the emperor, John the Good up there,

all decked out in his Sunday best and
carrying a bag of gold for the church.

He was a good king.
He was from the Camejanie family.

It was a noble dynasty, died out in 1185.

That's his wife, Irenae.

She was a Hungarian princess.
See, she's got blonde hair.

And that poor little weedy chap
around the corner is their son Alexis.

John desperately wanted him
to succeed to the throne,

but, he died young.

That person there is the most
celebrated, most married monarch of

the Macedonian dynasty,
the empress Zoe.

Zoe ruled Byzantium in her own
right in the 1050's.

But, Zoe also had royal blood
in her veins, and she legitimized three

successive husbands as emperors.

That's the last of them,
Pius Constantine the Ninth.

If you look closely, you can see
that the head of that figure's been changed.

I bet there were portraits of her
other two husbands underneath.

Now the funny thing about this
mosaic is that Zoe's portrait's been

changed along with her husband, too.

You know, some historians have said
that she was very vain.

It's certain she was beloved of the
people of Constantinople who thought

her very beautiful.

And, you know, she was almost sixty
when that portrait was made.

In the year 987,

Russian ambassadors came south into the
sun to see Byzantium.

They told their prince,
the ambitious Prince of Kiev,

that they couldn't begin to describe the
splendor of Saint Sofia.

They could only say
that God dwelt here within it,

and they were all baptized.

Just as it intended, Byzantium had dominated
its neighbors with pious splendor

and magnificence.

These Russians, though,
were tough and warlike.

Despite their new found faith,

they still hovered dangerously on
Byzantium's northern borders.

Rather than dispatch grand armies
to subdue them,

the Byzantines employed images
of God and government.

They built churches in central Europe the
like of which the Northerners had

never seen.

And sometimes, too, the Byzantines sent
bishops and ambassadors,

men laden with wisdom and relics
and the word of God.

The Byzantines didn't like to travel north
in the winter.

The diplomats had to go sometimes with
little bars of gold stamped with

the emperor's name,

wrapped in furs and stuffed under
the sledge out of the way,

the gold to bribe local chieftains
to attack one another

rather than to go and attack Constantinople.

It was a terrifying journey.

First of all, you went to a Byzantine
border fort.

There the governor tried to grab a few of
the sons of the local princes to keep

them under control.

And, then, you set out across the icy wastes.

When you met some
villagers you might give

them some silk brocade,
or pepper, or leather.

But, always out there as shadows hiding
in the woods, the Epechenade.

These were ancient tribesmen who really
prided themselves on killing travelers

who drank from their gold bound skulls

that hung on the walls of their tents,
so it was said.

After months of travel,

you'd arrive at the side
of the frozen river Nepa,

and look up at the great fortress of the
ruler of Kiev, the Prince of the

Verangian Russe.

Before Byzantium, the princes of Kiev
had all lived in wooden huts.

These towers and domes and all the dreams
they hold came here from old Byzantium.

And, the story of their making
is an extraordinary tale.

This little area here was once the center
of Kiev Enrusse,

a little stockade just six hundred yards across.

Now, you've got to think, it's the year 988.

There's Prince Vladimir, a Byzantine bishop,
and a lot of Byzantine craftsmen are

coming out here.

It's just before dawn. It's very cold.

And, at a particular holy moment,
after a prayer is said,

they plot the position of the altar.

And then, as the sun comes up
and a shadow is cast across the snow,

a nobleman called Simon, so tradition
tells us, took off a golden belt.

They measured out twenty golden belt lengths.

And, that would be the first church
in Vladimir's kingdom.

It's an astonishing moment in history!

It's the old technology of Greece and Rome

a thousand years after those empires
are gone

going into parts of the world that
they had never managed to conquer!

Vladimir's church is gone now.

There's still a few bits
of the floor left, though.

Some precious relics of a tremendous
Byzantine achievement.

You know, it's at times like this
archaeology really comes alive.

You know, this isn't just a little bit of
old brick or mortar or something.

These are the first bricks ever laid
in central Europe.

It's not just stone on stone, either.

This is like somebody got into a Cadillac

and drove it into the middle of the Amazon

and parked in a village where nobody's ever
seen outside people before.

This is astonishing.

Look!

It's only a bit of ceramic
and a bit of mortar.

You need two separate kiln masters
with two separate kilns for that.

They have to find the lime to make the mortar.

They have to go to the river to find the clay,
down the road here.

They have to build their kilns,
cut the trees.

And then, they've got them cutting stone,

local stone hewn from open quarries
for the first time.

The Russians didn't like working stone.

There's an old Russian proverb,
"It is easier to teach an ill tempered wife

than it is to cut stone."

But, actually, their real problem
was the weather.

It was truly terrible.

It was either freezing, freezing cold...

and they complained bitterly that it was
so difficult to lay bricks in fur lined

coats and mittens.

And then, when it thawed,
this area was almost a mass of mud

and they had to devise incredibly
elaborate wooden structures

to hold the building up at all
when they extended the foundations.

So, this is an extraordinary enterprise.

How ingenious those people were coming
from the South. How determined!

It took them eight years to
get this place up.

They learned, though.

The next time they built a church
in five years.

This is the church they built,
the Cathedral of Saint Sofia of Kiev.

Beneath the old Ukrainian domes,

Byzantine brick and ancient Greek geometry.

These could be the walls of an imperial
church in ancient Constantinople.

Inside, memories of the palace of all palaces,
and the church of all churches,

the original Saint Sofia of Constantinople.

And gleaming mosaics, too,
made by Byzantine craftsmen

sent here to work for Vladimir's son,
Prince Yeroslav.

Carefully preserved images of Jesus,
Mary and the saints,

images of government and holiness
to pacify the North.

The heavenly court of old Byzantium,

floating high above the Prince of Kiev.

The heavenly court, now entirely mirrored
in Yeroslav's new court on earth,

aided and abetted by a Byzantine bishop

who wants him to punish sinners, to feed the poor,

and to fight the enemies of Byzantium.

But, there's something else going on
in this wondrous building,

something else yet more subtle.
It's like a soap opera here.

It imparts manner. It imparts gesture.

It shows you the Byzantine way
of walking and talking.

Between that fierce structure
and this new manner,

the old order of Russe was entirely
swept away.

But, you know, despite all of that the
Byzantines never really trusted the Russe.

They needn't have worried, though.

The Russians had learned their lesson very,
very well, indeed.

And, centuries later, when Constantinople
itself had been thrown away,

when Constantinople the second Rome had gone,

then, Moscow, the new capitol of the Russe
declared itself as the third Rome.

Just as the dangerous northern tribes passed
under Byzantium golden spell,

so did it's southern European neighbors,
Greece and Italy, and the islands of

the Mediterranean.

Venice, that ancient little town set on the
mud banks of the north Italian salt marsh,

was the owner of a powerful fleet of warships,

as much a menace to Constantinople
as were the tribesmen of the north.

Beneath the stones of Venice, the bricks
and columns,

the technology and arts of old Byzantium.

Just like Kiev, Venice's first churches

and its most powerful images of God

and government all came
here from Byzantium.

This was the old Venetian's single most
powerful portrait of the "Face of God".

The Pallidoro, made for the high order
of the Simbarcks.

It's a funny old thing, actually.

It's cobbled out from all sorts of things,
gold strips, bits ofjewelry.

It's all there, like a magpie's nest.

The single most beautiful things about
this is these wonderful plaques of enamel.

They're Byzantine imports.

They were made in the imperial workshops
in the year 1105

and they're probably copied from the
decorations of a chapel in the imperial palace

of Constantinople.

That's Christ in the center.

All around him and all in order, large to
small, is laid out the court of heaven,

just as Byzantium's foreign kings and
princes decorated the emperor's court

at Constantinople.

If you were a useful ally for Byzantium,

and you sent off thirty of forty pounds of
gold to Constantinople with a humble letter,

the emperor might just honor you
with some of these panels...

pictures of God and your local saints
and portraits, too,

of you amongst the golden prophets
and the angels of Byzantium.

This was the power of Byzantium abroad,

its prestige, its foreign policy.

This little chap here is Oldelafo Fallia,

the ruler, the doge of Venice.

He's the man who commissioned the greater
part of the Pallidoro.

Now, this is where you can start to see something
of that provincial envy of

Byzantium starting to work,

that envy that almost rose up and threatened
to destroy the great imperial empire.

Look! See what I mean.

There's the man, there's the Virgin Mary,

and there you would expect the man's wife,
but, it isn't his wife.

It is the Empress Irenae of Byzantium.

So, what's going on here?

Well, I think the Venetians have sort
of rejigged it

so the dear old doge of Venice who,

by Constantinoplian rights was a minor
official on the edge of empire,

suddenly popped up as, you know,
married to the great empress.

They're also, the Venetians,
cunning devils, given him a halo.

You see, they've soldered a whole new head
on there.

The Byzantines would never have sent
a figure of a local ruler with a halo on.

So, he's sort of really bumped up
in the holy heirarchy here.

But, there's one thing the Venetians missed,

and this is quite funny,

because, rulers in the celestial
universe wear red socks.

The Virgin Mary has red socks,
the empress has red socks,

all the kings on this have red socks.

Poor old Oldelafo doesn't.

So, he isn't really at the top of
Byzantium's holy heirarchy.

You don't think that's important?

Oldelafo would have, though.

Deep down, he knew that the
great Byzantine god,

that ordered everything within
this Christian universe,

had seen that dubious halo.

Also, that this same god held the power
of eternal life and death.

By the Middle Ages, Byzantium's most powerful
images of God and government

had crossed the Mediterranean
and penetrated central Europe, too.

And, always, at the very heart of this
Christian universe, was the golden emperor

of Byzantium and the glittering city
of Constantinople.

What did that legendary city really
look like?

In modern Istanbul, one single precious
district of the city

still holds something of the air of ancient
Constantinople, buried underneath it.

Part built from the stones of
the city's ancient marketplaces,

Istanbul's bazaars still stand
in Byzantium's thin streets.

That old electric mix of races and religions,

trades and professions,
is still here as well,

just as it was a thousand years ago.

Oh my god, what are they now?

Leeches.

Yes, leeches. Leeches.

So, clean your shoes, clean your blood.

Doctor's eczema heumatisma...

That's amazing. Old Byzantine leeches.

Yes.

They're good for everything, huh?

Yes.

Set between the East and West, Constantinople
was the world's great marketplace,

a living legend.

Goods from Byzantium's bazaars

are found today in excavations in Sweden,
in Afghanistan, in England, and in Russia.

And, like Coke cans in the Gobi desert,

they give out a very special buzz.

Something for your constipation?

Henna for your fingernails?

Cumin?

Everything a Byzantine, Sultanas would need.

Bet they didn't call it that!

In Byzantium, women mostly made the deals.

Nowadays, though, the traders here are men.

Bolta Ghamda, African gold and ivory,

Asian gemstones,

eastern silks and spices,

and multinational traders, Italians mostly,

buying and selling everything
you could think of.

There were fortunes to be made out of
Byzantium.

You know, the weavers, the great silk
bazaars of Byzantium

have been famous for centuries upon centuries.

In the West, they just had little bits
of Byzantine silk

and they used it to wrap the bones of saints

and to put upon the high altars of cathedrals.

So, you can imagine that when a Western
diplomat came here, about 950 AD,

and actually bought two whole rolls of
silk for his own clothes

that he was very pleased with himself.

But, when the bishop got to the borders,
the customs, the Byzantine customs took the

cloth away from him.

They said that even great bishop Louit Prand

of Cremona, the embassy
of the king of Germany,

wasn't grand enough to wear this fine fabric.

You know, the Byzantines had a knack of

making great kings feel like
little lads from the country.

The old bazaars had ancient wisdom up
for sale, as well.

In Byzantium's book market,

the best part of the learning of the ancient

world was copied out by
publishers and merchants.

And here it is still today,
the oldest book store in the world.

You know, this is an amazing place.

Just think, six hundred years ago there
was a very famous Arab travel writer

and he was coming through here rummaging
about in the bazaar, looking for books,

Ibn Battuta he was called.

Anyway, there he was rummaging around.

There would have been more people here then,
lots of scribes actually writing them.

And, a Byzantine magistrate who's walking
through the square recognized him.

And, the old two men got together,

the Arab and the Christian,

and they sat down and they talked
about writing books.

They talked about travel and the joys
of scholarship.

Westerners really loved the book bazaar
in Byzantium.

They could find things there
that were real legends,

magical lost works like this, for example.

This is a copy, Greek copy,

of an ancient work made in Alexandria
by an ancient Greek.

And it concerns the workings of the universe.

Westerners only knew this from the talk
of learn�d Arabs.

Now, after visiting the bazaar,

they can actually own a copy of
Ptolemy's Alchemist.

Books like the Alchemist gave algebra
and chemistry to western Europe.

To westerners, it must have seemed that
all the wealth and wisdom of the world

was held inside Constantinople

and in the houses of the lucky people
of Byzantium.

The Byzantines lived in a very face
to face community.

It was a very tight, enclosed world.

They were incredibly superstitious,

always looking for signs as
they looked at each other,

things that might change the meaning of
their relationships with one another.

The angle of a man's shoulders could
tell you if he was having an affair.

If you had a dream that you've put on a pair
of shoes and weren't going anywhere,

could mean you might be getting married.

You could nod at a woman and it meant that

you would be having an affair
with her very shortly.

Superstitions everywhere!

They divine the future by listening
to thunder,

but, above all, they loved charms
and trinkets,

things you can buy in bazaars,
glittering treasures.

And this, that is the greatest charm of all.

It's been around for thousands of years
before Byzantium

and it'll go on for a thousand years
beyond us all.

It's a charm against the Evil Eye.

The Evil Eye, of course, is envy.

That thing that's so destructive inside
small communities,

and so destructive for Constantinople, too.

Constantinople was called the eye
of all the world.

Everybody envied its gold and silk
and pretty princesses.

Not everybody, though, was allowed
a glimpse of heaven.

Poor old bishop Louit Prand of
Cremona had come to Constantinople

for silks and for a Byzantine
princess for his prince,

hadn't got either of them.

The Byzantines lectured him upon
the gross behavior of his prince

and sniffed at the very idea of
sending an imperial princess to such

a barbarous and distant kingdom.

Louit Prand greatly resented these
haughty Byzantines,

especially the great warrior emperor,

Nakafouras Fokas,
who came to the throne in 963.

You wouldn't want to meet him on a

dark night, bishop Louit Prand
reports to his prince.

He's a monstrosity in a smelly old robe,

a dwarf with the eyes of a mole,
disfigured, disgraced, pig like, an Ethiopian.

Every week, Louit Prand continues,
like some crawling monster,

the emperor walks in procession to
the great church and the singers cry,

"Behold, the morning star approaches!"

They might just as well say, "Come on
you burned out old crow,

old woman, clod hopping barbarian!"

As Western diplomats, like Louit Prand,
reported on the weakness of the emperors

and on the thousand years of treasure
in their city,

so western Europe's princes grew ever
stronger, ever more powerful, and ever

more envious of Byzantium.

In 1204, the Venetians managed to divert
a cutthroat army of Crusaders

from their sacred vows to capture
Palestine for Christendom.

Promising them the plunder of Byzantium,

they provided lists of the treasures and
the holy relics inside Constantinople.

On the thirteenth of April, Venetian war
galleys sailed up to the city walls

and the knights of France and Germany,
of Italy and England,

jumped from the boats onto the battlements.

The campaign that followed was a nasty
mix of treachery and chaos.

But the ending, the city's walls were

breached and the imperial
throne was overturned.

Many Byzantine nobles fled here to the
palace of Blachenai,

where they were besieged by Henry,
the noble Prince of Flanders.

Now, the Venetians knew exactly what was
in this palace.

They even had an inventory of its contents.

When the nobles gave up the fight,
they took everything they could out

of the building...

gold, silver, precious jewels, silks,
satins,

ermine, minerva,

the hold was tremendous.

More booty, it's said, was taken from this
town than from all the cities

since creation.

Over the next fifty years

half of Constantinople was boxed up, crated,

and shipped out of the city to Venice
and the West.

At the very heart of Venice,

between the state palace and Saint Marks,
the old state church,

is the city's ancient treasury,

and the root of that treasure
was the plunder of Byzantium.

It was Europe's pawn shop, really.

Emperors left their crowns here for cash.

The king of France actually bought
the Crown of Thorns from this room.

And, in the 1790's, when Napoleon
and his armies turned up in Italy,

he was able to take half a ton of gold
from this room and melt it down

just to pay his troops.

But, despite all of that,
despite all the losses,

this is still the single place in all
the world where you can get a glimmer,

just a flash, of the treasure
that once filled Byzantium.

A glass bowl enameled with classic images,

taken from the emperor's own quarters
in the palace.

From the palace chapels,
the cups of the imperial communion.

A golden icon of Saint Michael,
studded with Indian emeralds...

the Byzantines used its glowing colors
to foretell the future.

This, too, came from the palace,

probably from the chambers of the queen.

Inside Saint Marks, as well,
the altar's filled with the holy

relics looted from Constantinople.

This superb Madonna,
Venice's most holy icon,

had been carried into battle
by the emperor Alexis Mozouflos.

The Venetians tore it from
his abandoned war chariot.

It's not just the inside of
Saint Marks that filled with the

plunder of Byzantium,

the whole outside of the cathedral
is covered in stones stripped from the

churches of Constantinople

and shipped by the Venetian navy.

A great new balcony was built from
the stones of old Byzantium

and four bronze horses, said to
have come from the very heart of

Constantinople,
were set up high upon it.

Saint Marks was plated with the
plunder of Byzantium.

Today, the old brick church has all
but disappeared beneath the foreign marble.

Shiploads of columns from Constantinople
now decorate the doorways of the church.

These beautiful square pillars from
an ancient church that had stood on

the main highway of Constantinople
were used as gallows.

The Venetians hung criminals from them.

Other fragments of this lost masterpiece

once stood in Crusader chapels
from Spain to Austria.

This is an interesting piece.
It has an amazing history.

You see, when the Venetians first
took the sculpture from the boat,

they found that one of the feet had
been broken off.

So, they made a new foot out of a
lighter, whiter stone.

You see that?

Now, just a few years ago, in Istanbul,
the Turkish archaeologists actually dug

up the original foot.

So, now we know where this sculpture
came from.

It came from the monument of Constantine
the Great,

the first king of Byzantium.

Those were his four sons.

Think of that! We have bits and pieces
here from all ages, all styles.

This stone is from Egypt. Others are
from Syria, from Greece,

all that style, that richness that went

into Byzantium then has gone to make
the city of Venice itself.

Byzantium didn't just make Venice beautiful.

All the courts of western Europe now held
the plunder of Constantinople,

objects whose hypnotic sparkle crackled
through western Europe.

In modern Germany, the little town of
Limburg still holds one of

these most alien objects,

a piece of the cross on which Christ
was crucified,

transformed by a Byzantine into one of
the world's great jewels,

and then carried off to Germany by Heinrich
von Ullman, the crusading knight.

In 1235, when this church was just
being finished

and the Crusaders were still ruling
in Constantinople,

that doorway would have been surrounded

by the ill, the mad,
and the crippled and the bored.

They weren't just standing there
waiting for handouts.

What was going on was something
rather unusual.

Inside this church, inside all churches

in western Europe where
there was a relic of a saint,

there was a special power.

This power came, actually, from heaven,

and in lieu of hospitals,
that was the best thing

these people could hope for was a cure.

After all, Jesus had cured the poor.

Now, saints were denominated as holy men
by two things,

by the actions of their lives,

and by the fact that their bodies
didn't decay.

So, their little fragments of bone
and flesh were very important.

When people went up to their shrines
and touched them,

they were in touch, you might say,
with a little bit of heaven,

as if there was a hole in the holy ozone.

You could reach up through heaven,
through the words of the priest,

and the incense and the music,

and some of these blessings could
rain down upon you.

The relics of Byzantium though weren't relics
of local saints.

They'd been brought from the holy land.

They were the personal possessions,

some of the very things that Jesus
and Mary had touched,

and they were never used to cure the poor.

These holy things were held in the imperial
churches and in the palaces of Byzantium.

In that extraordinary world,
halfway between earth and heaven

they confirmed the divine role of the
emperor on earth.

By stealing these powerful objects
from Constantinople

the pious kings of western Europe had
gained a confidence they'd never had before.

This then, that taking of the relics,

was the taking of the holiness of the
divine right of kings,

the beginning of Western Europe,
of Eurocentricity, and almost,

you might say, of the modern world.

Back at Constantinople,

the Crusaders' colonial administration failed.

The knights couldn't balance the books.

Driven by debts and petty wars,
they left for home.

On August the fifteenth, in the year 1260,

a new emperor, Michael the Eighth,
walked in solemn procession

through the ancient gates,

dressed in the imperial robes of
silk and gold

with his choirs, his soldiers,
and all his priests.

Safe inside, he addressed the adoring
people of the city

who had labored under foreign rule
for fifty years,

and now celebrated the return of Christ's
true emperor to the very center of the earth.

A while ago, God was angry with us

and made the West into a great wind
that blew us from our city,

and we lived like the birds beneath
the branches of a tree.

But, just as he'd promised Abraham
the promised land,

just as he granted my ancestors
eternal victory,

so, he has given me back the sacred city.

Michael might have
thought that God had put

Byzantium back into the
center of the cosmos.

The truth was,

the Crusaders had wrecked Constantinople,

plundered it, broken it,

destroyed it.

And, the emperor's return to great
power-politics was suicidal.

Michael and his Byzantines
didn't know that, though.

As Michael said,

they thought that God had restored
the cosmic balance,

that the golden dream was up
and running as before.

In the imperial chapel,
in the gallery of Saint Sofia,

their artists made a celebratory mosaic
for the emperor's return,

Jesus, Mary, and Saint John the Baptist.

You'd think the world had never changed.

Just twenty feet away,

the stone is said to mark the grave of
the Venetian who led the Western armies

to Constantinople,

Inricus Dandolo, the man who
broke Byzantium.

His bones, they said, were thrown out
the window into the street,

and even the dogs wouldn't eat them.

The great mosaic though, humane,
transcendent, optimistic,

is the finest single work of
all Byzantium's mosaic masters.

See how it takes the light.

The court of heaven shimmers
in the church.

This is the Christ the Byzantines
had always worshipped.

Not a Western Christ upon a cross,

impaled in dismal earthly history,

but, the old Eastern Christ.

Christ of all times and of all places,

Christ of the palace,

Christ of Kiev and of Venice,

Christ, Lord of Byzantium.

The same Christ whose relics and whose images

now fill the churches and imagination
of the West,

the Christ whose soft, impassive face

would watch his Eastern empire gently
fade away.