HIS 1122 Lecture 1: Rome's Three Heirs
Document Summary
Rome"s three heirs: the byzantine, islamic and early. A new period in the history of western civilization began in the 7th century when it became clear that there would no longer be a single empire governing the territories surrounding the mediterranean. It was the least economically advanced and face organization weakness in both government and religion. However, as we shall see, christianity and the latin language would eventually form the basis for greater religious and political cohesiveness. For some time, the study of western christian civilization has often eclipsed the study of. Though this is, in any respects, justi ed, we want to spend some time studying. Byzantine and islamic civilization for both their own sake and for a better understand ing of their in uence on western christian civilization. On the one hand, gibbon had a point, byzantine civilization was not very innovative and was continually troubled by grave external threats by external weakness.
