Was it ever possible for the Byzantines to stay Western in character and culture?

Euphemios

Euphemios

Obviously, the core of the East was always in Greece, but was the obsoletion of the Latin language and culture inevitable?
What developments would be needed to prolong or indefinitely keep it? If a later Emperor had some nostalgic ideas, is a later revival possible?
Retainment seems to have a definite cut off around the early 7th century, when Heraclius disposed of the last remnants of Latin.
 
VirginianHistorian

VirginianHistorian

The east had always spoken Greek, even in the Roman Empire. With the loss of most of Italy, Greek was by far the most prevalent and most important language in the East Roman Empire. I would say the best option would be to retain Italy and maybe other Latin-speaking lands to make Latin a large minority, and important enough to be the official language.

As for the later revival, as time goes on the idea becomes less and less plausible, as Greek becomes more cemented and Latin becomes the Romance languages of today. It would be a waste of effort to switch languages from a language spoken by most citizens to an extinct language.
 

Kerney

I would say no. Because 'western' at it's heart is the blending of Latin and Germanic elements along with other trace elements that the Eastern Roman Empire never really was a part of.
 

ike225

If the Byzantine were able to keep large parts of Italy or if the territory they controlled in Italy wasn't absolutely devastated by the Gothic Wars and they kept the entire Balkan Adriatic Coast where at least a variant of Latin was spoken, then yes it would have been possible that Latin was kept longer than IOTL.
 

Gloss

This wouldn't make the Byzantines Westenr but maybe you could have the Romance spakers in the Balkans be more prominent demographically in the Byzantine lands and maybe even have some major relocations of Latin speakers from the West.
 
Tyrann Philip II

Tyrann Philip II

An idea: Have Constans II live longer, and continue his project of building up Sicily and Southern Italy. Take my word with a grain of salt due to unclear and vague sources and historical records of course, but some have assumed that he was trying to restructure the Empire back into an Italic one after a string of defeats at the hands of the Arabs.
 

Silver01

Tyrann Philip II said:
An idea: Have Constans II live longer, and continue his project of building up Sicily and Southern Italy. Take my word with a grain of salt due to unclear and vague sources and historical records of course, but some have assumed that he was trying to restructure the Empire back into an Italic one after a string of defeats at the hands of the Arabs.
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It's a myth for all the sources we have it paints a picture that it was a rumor
 
SunKing105

SunKing105

If the Byzantines survive as a rump state in Italy and North Africa, as a result of either the Sassanids winning the war of 602-628, or the Arabs taking Constantinople in 678, could accomplish this. Even though by Heraclius, even in the army Latin had ceased to be spoken and the empire had already discarded many Latin elements, relocating to those areas would make it much more important.
 
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Practical Lobster

Practical Lobster

Euphemios said:
It should be clear that the Latin culture in Rome, as with the Western Empire, is meant.
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That's an awfully narrow definition of Western.

In answer to your question, the east had always been Greek speaking and the late Empire during the Dominate deemphasized the position of Italy in favor of the broader imperial institution.

This means that Latin's best hope for survival is as an administrative and courtly language, divorced from the day-to-day reality of life. Which would mirror most of western europe, and certainly there's no reason that couldn't hang on the East for a few more centuries.

As far as culture, well, the East was always culturally distinct. Latin language and Roman culture had it's strongest roots in Illyria and Pannonia, but that's a fraction of the territory of any Eastern empire. Unless the western roman empire doesn't fall, things are going to change eventually.

Edit: the culture and sociopolitical world of the Byzantines, which you identify as eastern, was really a direct outgrowth of the late Empire, both east and west. It isn't something fundamentally alien to "being Roman" but rather the closest direct outgrowth of what it meant to be Roman in the late Empire.
 
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Practical Lobster

Practical Lobster

Euphemios said:
What would a broader definition allow for?
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A recognition that the Byzantine Empire was just as much a part of the western world as say, Spain or France?

Seems weird to cut them out because they spoke Greek, which was the language of science and philosophy across the entire western world for centuries, or because they practiced a nearly identical form of Christianity with a different liturgical language, or because they had an absolute monarchy who ruled by divine right - (a horribly eastern concept that would never have been used in the western world except in *checks notes* France, Prussia, and Austria during the enlightenment).

If, as someone claimed above, being "western" requires a blending of Germanic and Latin roots, someone needs to explain to the Irish, Scots, and Norwegians, among others, that they're kicked out of the western world.
 

Gloss

Practical Lobster said:
A recognition that the Byzantine Empire was just as much a part of the western world as say, Spain or France?

Seems weird to cut them out because they spoke Greek, which was the language of science and philosophy across the entire western world for centuries, or because they practiced a nearly identical form of Christianity with a different liturgical language, or because they had an absolute monarchy who ruled by divine right - (a horribly eastern concept that would never have been used in the western world except in *checks notes* France, Prussia, and Austria during the enlightenment).

If, as someone claimed above, being "western" requires a blending of Germanic and Latin roots, someone needs to explain to the Irish, Scots, and Norwegians, among others, that they're kicked out of the western world.
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There is no reason to believe that any use of western here has to refer to the early modern to modern concept of West(which basically means European) as we know and use it, I certainly did not take it to mean that.

Edit: This is especially clear when Euphemious says that Greece was core of the "East", to me it's very clear he was using those terms in the context Roman territories and the dichtomy between the Latin West and Greek East which can be argued against but certainly is not a fringe concept.
 
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Otto Kretschmer

Banned
WRE would probably evolve in a roughly similar way to Byzantium had it survived, the only major definition would be that it would have Latin as administrative language and not Greek.
 
Practical Lobster

Practical Lobster

Gloss said:
There is no reason to believe that any use of western here has to refer to the early modern to modern concept of West(which basically means European) as we know and use it, I certainly did not take it to mean that.

Edit: This is especially clear when Euphemious says that Greece was core of the "East", to me it's very clear he was using those terms in the context Roman territories and the dichtomy between the Latin West and Greek East which can be argued against but certainly is not a fringe concept.
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The top line question is "Western in character and culture" - which feels like it must necessarily be asking something more than "how could the Eastern Roman Empire maintain a Latin-speaking bureaucracy?" Again in the post, OP asks about culture.

And yes, the East and the West of the Roman Empire had cultural differences and I'm not arguing against that - in fact I pointed out above that those differences predated the Roman Empire and had basically always existed, even if papered over to varying degrees by the uniformity of imperial administration.

What I was proposing was that a broader definition of "Western" more aligned with the modern definition of the term would help clarify that the Empire was part of a unified continuity of what it meant to be Roman - and frankly a clearer evolution of "Romanness" than the various Germanic successor kingdoms - that there wasn't a cultural shift within the eastern half of the empire away from Roman culture, but rather a separate, parallel Roman culture that endured in a more or less continuous form.
 

Nikoloz

Go back to the fourth century AD and have Constantine bring in tens of thousands of Latin speakers (from e.g. Moesia and Illyria) to settle his new capital. A romanophone Constantinople exponentially increases the odds of Latin surviving as at least the language of government.
 

HistoricalArthropod

Banned
Practical Lobster said:
A recognition that the Byzantine Empire was just as much a part of the western world as say, Spain or France?

Seems weird to cut them out because they spoke Greek, which was the language of science and philosophy across the entire western world for centuries, or because they practiced a nearly identical form of Christianity with a different liturgical language, or because they had an absolute monarchy who ruled by divine right - (a horribly eastern concept that would never have been used in the western world except in *checks notes* France, Prussia, and Austria during the enlightenment).

If, as someone claimed above, being "western" requires a blending of Germanic and Latin roots, someone needs to explain to the Irish, Scots, and Norwegians, among others, that they're kicked out of the western world.
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By that logic, wouldnt basically all of the Slavs (including Russia) and also Caucasus polities like Georgia also be "western"?
 
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