Lifestyles of the theologically querulous and infamous

The Byzantine Empire is the most romantic of all forgotten polities. The adjective Byzantine conjures images of luxury, extravagance and sophistication with just a dusting of ageless menace. It creaks in the background of our collective memories, like some too-old vampire, irrelevant in its significance.

Byzantium is so Romantic it is almost Gothic.

Let me count the ways...

Forbidding, almost inexplicable monuments? Check.

Emerging from a distant age? Check

Like us, and yet completely foreign? Yep

Fighting an impossible battle for survival. For sure.

But within the gilded frame that we set about this civilisation, people were people. They lived their lives, shat in buckets, haggled over fish, shaved their coins, argued about leavening the communion bread, built things, had babies, went to church, and died.

The blog you are reading is devoted to them, the Byzantines. Finding descriptions of the battles, or the controversies, or the lists of the emperors: not hard.

Here, we will be looking at the lives of the people: the rich, the poor, the in-between and the completely made up. The content will veer between intensively researched essays on the lives of the people and sloppily researched and anachronistic creative writing.

But if we can taste the retsina, or smell the incense, or hear the bells of the churches of Konstantinopolis; then we can all make believe that the Byzantine world is still out there: dynamic, vital and wondrous.