More particularly was the new sect of Christians selected as the objects of vengeance. These people had already gained the intense dislike of Rome. The austerity of their manners, the severe tenets of their faith so opposed to the...

Some 40 villages grouped in eight parks situated in north-western Syria provide remarkable testimony to rural life in late Antiquity and during the Byzantine period. Abandoned in the 8th to 10th centuries, the villages, which date from...

Constantine, the first Christian emperor, removed the capital of the world-empire from Rome to Byzantium, henceforth to be called Constantinople. Though the court, with all its splendor and power, was thus transferred to a city where...

Saracen Arms. Charlemagne now had to deal with certain non-Germanic peoples who were threatening his borders. These were the Saracens, Slavs, and Avars. The Mohammedan Saracens, or Moors, had gained possession of the whole of Spain, but...

Byzantine Constantinople had been the capital of a Christian empire, see Christendom, successor to ancient Greece and Rome. Throughout the Middle Ages Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city, known as the Queen of Cities...