Talk:Derogatory use of "Byzantine"

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[edit] Theology

I thought it came from "Byzantine arguments" on theology. --Error 03:44, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Truth in references

I don't have a copy of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to hand, but does Gibbon really say in chapter 53 that he disingenuously exploited Porphyrogenitus' works to confirm his own prejudices against Byzantium? Because if he doesn't, the assertion that he needs an appropriate reference. As it stands, it looks rather like a Wikipedian read Decline and Fall, had a problem with Gibbon's methodology and decided to write up that problem as a Wikipedia article. Which, of course, runs into WP:NOR.

The citation of Runciman is a good start. But if he's the only critic of the Western attitudes toward Byzantium (which, of course, he's not), then the article needs to say much more prominently, "Everything in this article can be found in the work of Steven Runciman."

Similarly, the last paragraph, in which claims are made about the stability and political utopia of Byzantine politics that are just as fanciful as the misconceptions this article is intended to debunk, also needs an overhaul that would do well to start with citation. Binabik80 00:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I can only tell that the stability of the byzantine empire is compared by John Haldon and he writes that it´s stability is the same as all the kingdoms of that era.Flamarande 18:06, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Norwich disagrees, he writes in volume 1 of his history of byzantium (the early centuries), that Byzantium was somewhat more stable than European states. The western europeans have always hated the Greek (except the philhellenes), and in an effort to surpass him they try to attribute that pure latin side of the greco-roman history as their own.

[edit] I am adding a quote (in second hand) along with the source

Hi, as there is some problems about the veracity of derogatory use of the term byzantine I am copying a quote from a book that I own, as a example and hopefully as a prove. The quote is from a scholar (at that time-18th century) who probably saw the "byzantine" term throug his own rosa-shades (english gentleman in the victorian age). The whole quote is inside of "Byzantium a history" by John Haldon ISBN 0-7524-2343-6 page 10.

"Of that Byzantine empire, the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, whithout a single exception, the most thouroughly base and despicable form that civilation has yet assumed. There has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely destitute of all forms and elements of greatness, and none to which the epithet "mean" may be so emphatically applied...The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude." by Historian William E. H.Lecky, A history of european morals from Augustus to Charlemagne" 2 vols (London 1869) II, 13f. Flamarande 18:07, 3 January 2006 (UTC)