0 00:00:02,135 --> 00:00:04,000 The empire of Byzantium, 1 00:00:04,371 --> 00:00:06,100 that golden dream. 2 00:00:06,906 --> 00:00:09,534 The climax of ancient Rome and Greece. 3 00:00:10,443 --> 00:00:11,535 One emperor, 4 00:00:11,678 --> 00:00:13,373 one single faith. 5 00:00:15,949 --> 00:00:18,975 The dream that lasted for a thousand years, 6 00:00:19,119 --> 00:00:22,646 a dream shattered by the armies of the West. 7 00:00:53,086 --> 00:00:57,113 The fame of Byzantium traveled from Iceland to China, 8 00:00:57,257 --> 00:00:59,350 from Ethiopia to Russia, 9 00:00:59,492 --> 00:01:02,222 to every kingdom on the earth. 10 00:01:05,165 --> 00:01:10,899 And, at its center, Constantinople, the world's great marketplace. 11 00:01:11,571 --> 00:01:13,095 Its fabled wealth, 12 00:01:13,239 --> 00:01:18,404 its gold, its emeralds, its palaces, its glittering churches. 13 00:01:20,346 --> 00:01:25,010 A legend so rich it caused its own destruction. 14 00:01:45,505 --> 00:01:49,965 Founded in year 330, the Christian Empire of Byzantium 15 00:01:50,110 --> 00:01:54,012 had its center here in Istanbul in modern Turkey. 16 00:01:55,248 --> 00:01:58,513 The Byzantines called this city Constantinople. 17 00:01:58,985 --> 00:02:02,250 A thousand years ago it was the richest city of them all, 18 00:02:02,388 --> 00:02:04,788 the eye of all the world. 19 00:02:08,261 --> 00:02:12,994 In the very center, the ancient Church of Saint Sofia, 20 00:02:13,133 --> 00:02:15,328 converted now into a mosque. 21 00:02:19,205 --> 00:02:24,006 Here, the emperors of Byzantium met the King of Heaven, 22 00:02:24,144 --> 00:02:29,377 the lords of this world and the next, the center of the Christian universe. 23 00:02:32,218 --> 00:02:35,016 Visions of this holy city and its golden emperors 24 00:02:35,155 --> 00:02:39,182 filled the mind and the imagination of every medieval prince and king 25 00:02:39,325 --> 00:02:45,730 until one day an army of the Christian west came here and destroyed it. 26 00:02:52,739 --> 00:02:57,369 Beside the church, above the sea, a shadowed park 27 00:02:57,510 --> 00:03:00,001 with five centuries of buildings in it, 28 00:03:00,146 --> 00:03:02,444 the palace of Byzantium. 29 00:03:10,223 --> 00:03:13,715 A thousand years ago there were gold pavilions here, 30 00:03:13,927 --> 00:03:17,454 chapels, mansions, set in a sea of green. 31 00:03:20,099 --> 00:03:22,124 An earthly paradise, 32 00:03:22,268 --> 00:03:25,897 one of the most potent ancient legends of our planet, 33 00:03:26,439 --> 00:03:30,034 the home of God's emperor on earth. 34 00:03:33,012 --> 00:03:37,608 So, where is the Holy Palace of Byzantium in modern Istanbul? 35 00:03:37,951 --> 00:03:39,612 There's a lump of it there. 36 00:03:39,752 --> 00:03:41,982 A sad, pathetic pile of brick. 37 00:03:42,121 --> 00:03:44,385 You have to go into the streets and to the alley ways. 38 00:03:44,524 --> 00:03:46,151 You really need a map. 39 00:03:46,292 --> 00:03:50,251 Look, I'll show you. Modern Istanbul... 40 00:03:50,630 --> 00:03:52,291 why do maps always run the wrong way? 41 00:03:52,432 --> 00:03:55,731 Modern Istanbul, ancient Constantinople. 42 00:03:55,868 --> 00:03:56,926 I'll show you what I mean. 43 00:03:57,003 --> 00:04:02,532 Look! There's the great Roman roads coming into the center of town, 44 00:04:02,675 --> 00:04:05,667 the Hippodrome where the people met the emperor, 45 00:04:07,146 --> 00:04:10,343 the great church just beside it. And there! 46 00:04:10,483 --> 00:04:16,080 Between that wall and that one there, that whole area was all palace. 47 00:04:16,222 --> 00:04:19,988 Dozens of buildings, dozens of churches, all together, 48 00:04:20,126 --> 00:04:22,788 high and glittering right across the hill! 49 00:04:22,929 --> 00:04:26,490 So, you might ask, "Where the hell is it now?" 50 00:04:31,771 --> 00:04:35,537 The golden palace is buried beneath old Istanbul. 51 00:04:36,276 --> 00:04:39,803 The little streets are haunted by its lost pavilions, 52 00:04:39,946 --> 00:04:42,176 by ghosts of ancient gardens, 53 00:04:42,315 --> 00:04:45,648 by the shadows of its courtiers and generals. 54 00:04:49,122 --> 00:04:53,582 The enormous curve of the imperial race track still stands there, 55 00:04:54,260 --> 00:04:57,787 shattered wonder of the medieval world. 56 00:05:05,772 --> 00:05:10,675 We're right at the very heart of the palace of imperial Byzantium. 57 00:05:11,010 --> 00:05:12,238 There's a corner shop. 58 00:05:12,378 --> 00:05:16,542 Well, at least you can say the Byzantines invented corner shops. 59 00:05:16,683 --> 00:05:19,243 They had a law about them. There should be one in every street, 60 00:05:19,385 --> 00:05:21,910 they said, for the necessities of life. 61 00:05:22,055 --> 00:05:24,080 That there, though, that's something else. 62 00:05:24,223 --> 00:05:26,953 That's a part of the palace itself. 63 00:05:30,530 --> 00:05:32,896 Just part of the foundations, though. 64 00:05:33,199 --> 00:05:35,531 Once they held a great high terrace, 65 00:05:35,668 --> 00:05:37,898 not that tea house up there, 66 00:05:38,471 --> 00:05:41,907 where the emperors walked each evening in the fading light, 67 00:05:41,974 --> 00:05:46,536 their fine silks flowing gently in the fresh sea breezes. 68 00:05:51,617 --> 00:05:56,111 Constantinople was the greatest sea port in the medieval world. 69 00:05:56,356 --> 00:05:59,325 Arab, Russian, Viking, and Italian boats 70 00:05:59,459 --> 00:06:01,654 once sailed along these walls. 71 00:06:05,631 --> 00:06:10,728 This is the ruin of an imperial pavilion, some fourteen centuries old. 72 00:06:13,106 --> 00:06:16,769 The warm sea once splashed against these walls. 73 00:06:19,312 --> 00:06:22,713 Those are the doors through which the emperor once walked to board the 74 00:06:22,915 --> 00:06:25,611 royal yacht, The Greyhound. 75 00:06:31,057 --> 00:06:33,890 The emperors liked to live beside the seaside, 76 00:06:33,993 --> 00:06:38,555 so it's always a good idea to, when you're walking along the seaside walls 77 00:06:38,698 --> 00:06:40,222 of Constantinople, 78 00:06:40,366 --> 00:06:46,271 to look and see if these little gates give you something of the entrance of the palace. 79 00:06:46,406 --> 00:06:48,567 Some of them don't look much today, 80 00:06:48,708 --> 00:06:50,369 but, they're very interesting. 81 00:06:50,510 --> 00:06:52,774 See, this Greek text? 82 00:06:53,513 --> 00:06:57,279 It's part of a Greek version of the book of Habakkuk, 83 00:06:57,417 --> 00:07:00,045 a text we know once was laid around the base 84 00:07:00,186 --> 00:07:02,848 of a great statue of the emperor Justinian, 85 00:07:02,955 --> 00:07:05,082 who stood in the center of the city. 86 00:07:05,358 --> 00:07:08,418 So this, then, is not an ancient gateway, 87 00:07:08,561 --> 00:07:12,019 because that statue was still standing a few hundred years ago. 88 00:07:12,632 --> 00:07:18,730 Where on earth can we find the picture of the palace of Byzantium? 89 00:07:28,381 --> 00:07:29,871 It's still here, of course, 90 00:07:29,949 --> 00:07:34,613 in its imitations and echoes of the great palace of Constantinople 91 00:07:34,754 --> 00:07:39,123 that stand in Sicily and Spain and Syria and Rome. 92 00:07:41,928 --> 00:07:46,365 Villas, gardens, the verandahs, all set like tents across the hill. 93 00:07:52,271 --> 00:07:53,966 Scented courtyards, 94 00:07:54,106 --> 00:07:56,040 splashing fountains, 95 00:07:56,175 --> 00:07:59,144 a world that ordinary people never saw. 96 00:08:00,246 --> 00:08:05,912 Some of their very stones were plundered from the golden palace of Byzantium. 97 00:08:14,594 --> 00:08:18,860 There were churches, too, filled with the holiest of relics. 98 00:08:20,032 --> 00:08:25,026 Fragments of the true cross, set in gold and blood red rubies 99 00:08:27,173 --> 00:08:29,266 and great jeweled cups, 100 00:08:29,408 --> 00:08:32,309 made for the emperor's own communion. 101 00:08:39,485 --> 00:08:43,012 And at the heart, at the very center of this magic palace, 102 00:08:43,155 --> 00:08:48,320 Byzantium's throne room, the throne room of the emperor of Christendom. 103 00:08:50,263 --> 00:08:53,892 As you approached the imperial throne of Byzantium, 104 00:08:55,067 --> 00:08:58,230 you'd have felt as naked as a man on Judgment Day, 105 00:08:58,604 --> 00:09:00,731 utterly defenseless. 106 00:09:01,407 --> 00:09:07,004 The man who sat on that chair didn't rule by the will of God, 107 00:09:07,146 --> 00:09:10,673 he was "The will of God on earth". 108 00:09:10,983 --> 00:09:16,319 He was God's instrument, he was "Divine providence personified." 109 00:09:16,556 --> 00:09:20,617 Some Byzantines believed that the end of world history would come 110 00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:26,130 when that man on that throne took his crown off and laid it on the rock of Calvary. 111 00:09:27,633 --> 00:09:33,333 It's probably the most total form of government the world has ever seen. 112 00:09:34,073 --> 00:09:37,236 You don't have, for example, participatory government in this. 113 00:09:37,376 --> 00:09:39,435 Who could participate in the will of God? 114 00:09:39,579 --> 00:09:41,547 You can only bow before it. 115 00:09:41,914 --> 00:09:45,680 You can't have morality or loyalty. You can't have good kings or bad kings, 116 00:09:45,818 --> 00:09:50,881 because, who could know the workings of the will of this astonishing emperor? 117 00:09:51,624 --> 00:09:54,457 That is Byzantine politics. 118 00:10:03,636 --> 00:10:07,333 Byzantium, ruled with cosmic certainty. 119 00:10:09,475 --> 00:10:12,740 It didn't dominate its neighbors with vast armies, 120 00:10:12,878 --> 00:10:15,745 but, with images of God and government 121 00:10:16,649 --> 00:10:20,813 with bars of gold and promises of princesses in marriage and alliance, 122 00:10:20,953 --> 00:10:24,354 all dressed up in the silk robes of Byzantium. 123 00:10:28,160 --> 00:10:32,153 The Byzantines operated a kind of cultural imperialism, 124 00:10:33,165 --> 00:10:36,362 and at the center of the show was Constantinople, 125 00:10:36,636 --> 00:10:39,196 the golden palace, and its emperor. 126 00:10:40,506 --> 00:10:42,997 The rituals of its church and court. 127 00:10:49,649 --> 00:10:51,173 In the tenth century, 128 00:10:51,317 --> 00:10:54,286 diplomats and merchants, Easterners and Westerners, 129 00:10:54,420 --> 00:10:58,550 all gave astonishing descriptions of a weekly procession that 130 00:10:58,691 --> 00:11:02,320 wound through the cloisters and the gardens of the palace, all filled 131 00:11:02,461 --> 00:11:04,088 with singing choirs 132 00:11:04,230 --> 00:11:07,666 and ran up to the great Church of Saint Sofia. 133 00:11:10,936 --> 00:11:14,895 "Behold, the morning star!" they sang, as the emperor approached. 134 00:11:15,041 --> 00:11:18,238 "In his eyes the sun's rays are reflected! 135 00:11:18,811 --> 00:11:20,142 Adore him, ye nations! 136 00:11:20,279 --> 00:11:22,543 Bow the neck to his greatness!" 137 00:11:22,848 --> 00:11:26,750 The whole world agreed that this was the most magnificent, the most 138 00:11:26,952 --> 00:11:29,614 awe inspiring sight on earth. 139 00:11:33,459 --> 00:11:37,361 At its ending, the procession passed up a wooden walkway 140 00:11:37,496 --> 00:11:40,932 that ran right up to the gallery of a great church 141 00:11:42,334 --> 00:11:45,462 and entered Saint Sofia through this door. 142 00:11:53,245 --> 00:11:56,942 Here, high up in the gallery of Saint Sofia, 143 00:11:57,083 --> 00:12:00,052 was the chapel of the emperors and the court. 144 00:12:12,465 --> 00:12:17,801 Below the balcony, in the incense and darkness of the ancient church, 145 00:12:17,937 --> 00:12:20,531 pilgrims from Asia, Africa, and Europe 146 00:12:20,673 --> 00:12:24,302 visited and kissed a thousand holy relics... 147 00:12:24,643 --> 00:12:28,340 a little holy land of marble, gold and bronze. 148 00:12:31,584 --> 00:12:36,920 In this smaller, private space above, the emperors held courtly services 149 00:12:36,989 --> 00:12:41,187 and were enrobed for the vast ceremonials that took place each week in 150 00:12:41,327 --> 00:12:42,988 the church below. 151 00:12:43,796 --> 00:12:45,559 And, here they are still, 152 00:12:45,698 --> 00:12:47,928 the dynasties of old Byzantium, 153 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:52,960 still walking in the grand procession from a thousand years ago. 154 00:12:55,808 --> 00:12:58,072 That's the emperor, John the Good up there, 155 00:12:58,210 --> 00:13:02,613 all decked out in his Sunday best and carrying a bag of gold for the church. 156 00:13:03,149 --> 00:13:06,118 He was a good king. He was from the Camejanie family. 157 00:13:06,252 --> 00:13:10,211 It was a noble dynasty, died out in 1185. 158 00:13:11,223 --> 00:13:14,886 That's his wife, Irenae. 159 00:13:15,027 --> 00:13:18,394 She was a Hungarian princess. See, she's got blonde hair. 160 00:13:19,932 --> 00:13:23,231 And that poor little weedy chap around the corner is their son Alexis. 161 00:13:23,369 --> 00:13:25,997 John desperately wanted him to succeed to the throne, 162 00:13:26,138 --> 00:13:27,503 but, he died young. 163 00:13:35,781 --> 00:13:40,218 That person there is the most celebrated, most married monarch of 164 00:13:40,352 --> 00:13:43,947 the Macedonian dynasty, the empress Zoe. 165 00:13:44,390 --> 00:13:48,383 Zoe ruled Byzantium in her own right in the 1050's. 166 00:13:48,527 --> 00:13:52,588 But, Zoe also had royal blood in her veins, and she legitimized three 167 00:13:52,731 --> 00:13:55,393 successive husbands as emperors. 168 00:13:55,534 --> 00:14:00,904 That's the last of them, Pius Constantine the Ninth. 169 00:14:01,173 --> 00:14:05,769 If you look closely, you can see that the head of that figure's been changed. 170 00:14:06,679 --> 00:14:10,308 I bet there were portraits of her other two husbands underneath. 171 00:14:11,116 --> 00:14:14,483 Now the funny thing about this mosaic is that Zoe's portrait's been 172 00:14:14,620 --> 00:14:17,248 changed along with her husband, too. 173 00:14:17,556 --> 00:14:20,491 You know, some historians have said that she was very vain. 174 00:14:20,626 --> 00:14:23,993 It's certain she was beloved of the people of Constantinople who thought 175 00:14:24,129 --> 00:14:25,756 her very beautiful. 176 00:14:25,931 --> 00:14:29,799 And, you know, she was almost sixty when that portrait was made. 177 00:14:36,275 --> 00:14:38,243 In the year 987, 178 00:14:38,377 --> 00:14:43,314 Russian ambassadors came south into the sun to see Byzantium. 179 00:14:44,483 --> 00:14:48,317 They told their prince, the ambitious Prince of Kiev, 180 00:14:48,454 --> 00:14:52,584 that they couldn't begin to describe the splendor of Saint Sofia. 181 00:14:52,992 --> 00:14:56,052 They could only say that God dwelt here within it, 182 00:14:56,195 --> 00:14:58,220 and they were all baptized. 183 00:15:00,032 --> 00:15:05,595 Just as it intended, Byzantium had dominated its neighbors with pious splendor 184 00:15:05,738 --> 00:15:07,365 and magnificence. 185 00:15:11,443 --> 00:15:14,173 These Russians, though, were tough and warlike. 186 00:15:14,313 --> 00:15:15,974 Despite their new found faith, 187 00:15:16,115 --> 00:15:20,950 they still hovered dangerously on Byzantium's northern borders. 188 00:15:28,494 --> 00:15:31,292 Rather than dispatch grand armies to subdue them, 189 00:15:31,764 --> 00:15:35,165 the Byzantines employed images of God and government. 190 00:15:36,468 --> 00:15:40,564 They built churches in central Europe the like of which the Northerners had 191 00:15:40,706 --> 00:15:42,105 never seen. 192 00:15:46,278 --> 00:15:50,908 And sometimes, too, the Byzantines sent bishops and ambassadors, 193 00:15:51,317 --> 00:15:55,651 men laden with wisdom and relics and the word of God. 194 00:16:01,360 --> 00:16:04,352 The Byzantines didn't like to travel north in the winter. 195 00:16:04,496 --> 00:16:08,660 The diplomats had to go sometimes with little bars of gold stamped with 196 00:16:08,801 --> 00:16:10,234 the emperor's name, 197 00:16:10,769 --> 00:16:13,738 wrapped in furs and stuffed under the sledge out of the way, 198 00:16:13,906 --> 00:16:16,898 the gold to bribe local chieftains to attack one another 199 00:16:17,042 --> 00:16:19,875 rather than to go and attack Constantinople. 200 00:16:19,945 --> 00:16:21,913 It was a terrifying journey. 201 00:16:22,047 --> 00:16:25,016 First of all, you went to a Byzantine border fort. 202 00:16:25,351 --> 00:16:28,115 There the governor tried to grab a few of the sons of the local princes to keep 203 00:16:28,253 --> 00:16:29,481 them under control. 204 00:16:29,621 --> 00:16:32,590 And, then, you set out across the icy wastes. 205 00:16:43,235 --> 00:16:44,566 When you met some villagers you might give 206 00:16:44,703 --> 00:16:47,729 them some silk brocade, or pepper, or leather. 207 00:16:48,640 --> 00:16:53,339 But, always out there as shadows hiding in the woods, the Epechenade. 208 00:16:53,479 --> 00:16:57,108 These were ancient tribesmen who really prided themselves on killing travelers 209 00:16:57,249 --> 00:16:59,774 who drank from their gold bound skulls 210 00:16:59,885 --> 00:17:03,286 that hung on the walls of their tents, so it was said. 211 00:17:17,736 --> 00:17:19,567 After months of travel, 212 00:17:19,705 --> 00:17:23,141 you'd arrive at the side of the frozen river Nepa, 213 00:17:23,275 --> 00:17:27,268 and look up at the great fortress of the ruler of Kiev, the Prince of the 214 00:17:27,413 --> 00:17:29,745 Verangian Russe. 215 00:17:32,918 --> 00:17:39,016 Before Byzantium, the princes of Kiev had all lived in wooden huts. 216 00:17:39,391 --> 00:17:45,591 These towers and domes and all the dreams they hold came here from old Byzantium. 217 00:17:46,231 --> 00:17:50,895 And, the story of their making is an extraordinary tale. 218 00:17:55,307 --> 00:18:01,439 This little area here was once the center of Kiev Enrusse, 219 00:18:01,580 --> 00:18:05,346 a little stockade just six hundred yards across. 220 00:18:05,484 --> 00:18:08,851 Now, you've got to think, it's the year 988. 221 00:18:08,954 --> 00:18:14,586 There's Prince Vladimir, a Byzantine bishop, and a lot of Byzantine craftsmen are 222 00:18:14,726 --> 00:18:15,624 coming out here. 223 00:18:15,761 --> 00:18:18,958 It's just before dawn. It's very cold. 224 00:18:19,932 --> 00:18:23,629 And, at a particular holy moment, after a prayer is said, 225 00:18:24,103 --> 00:18:26,594 they plot the position of the altar. 226 00:18:26,738 --> 00:18:32,040 And then, as the sun comes up and a shadow is cast across the snow, 227 00:18:32,311 --> 00:18:36,338 a nobleman called Simon, so tradition tells us, took off a golden belt. 228 00:18:36,482 --> 00:18:40,145 They measured out twenty golden belt lengths. 229 00:18:40,419 --> 00:18:43,946 And, that would be the first church in Vladimir's kingdom. 230 00:18:44,089 --> 00:18:46,523 It's an astonishing moment in history! 231 00:18:46,658 --> 00:18:49,388 It's the old technology of Greece and Rome 232 00:18:49,528 --> 00:18:51,894 a thousand years after those empires are gone 233 00:18:51,997 --> 00:18:55,956 going into parts of the world that they had never managed to conquer! 234 00:19:00,939 --> 00:19:02,736 Vladimir's church is gone now. 235 00:19:03,408 --> 00:19:05,638 There's still a few bits of the floor left, though. 236 00:19:05,777 --> 00:19:10,111 Some precious relics of a tremendous Byzantine achievement. 237 00:19:37,009 --> 00:19:41,343 You know, it's at times like this archaeology really comes alive. 238 00:19:41,647 --> 00:19:47,552 You know, this isn't just a little bit of old brick or mortar or something. 239 00:19:49,354 --> 00:19:53,290 These are the first bricks ever laid in central Europe. 240 00:19:53,659 --> 00:19:55,286 It's not just stone on stone, either. 241 00:19:55,427 --> 00:19:57,952 This is like somebody got into a Cadillac 242 00:19:58,096 --> 00:19:59,688 and drove it into the middle of the Amazon 243 00:19:59,831 --> 00:20:03,995 and parked in a village where nobody's ever seen outside people before. 244 00:20:04,136 --> 00:20:05,763 This is astonishing. 245 00:20:05,904 --> 00:20:06,871 Look! 246 00:20:07,172 --> 00:20:09,436 It's only a bit of ceramic and a bit of mortar. 247 00:20:09,575 --> 00:20:13,739 You need two separate kiln masters with two separate kilns for that. 248 00:20:13,879 --> 00:20:16,040 They have to find the lime to make the mortar. 249 00:20:16,181 --> 00:20:18,649 They have to go to the river to find the clay, down the road here. 250 00:20:18,784 --> 00:20:21,446 They have to build their kilns, cut the trees. 251 00:20:21,687 --> 00:20:23,678 And then, they've got them cutting stone, 252 00:20:23,822 --> 00:20:26,655 local stone hewn from open quarries for the first time. 253 00:20:26,792 --> 00:20:28,851 The Russians didn't like working stone. 254 00:20:28,994 --> 00:20:33,158 There's an old Russian proverb, "It is easier to teach an ill tempered wife 255 00:20:33,298 --> 00:20:34,765 than it is to cut stone." 256 00:20:35,234 --> 00:20:38,135 But, actually, their real problem was the weather. 257 00:20:38,270 --> 00:20:39,430 It was truly terrible. 258 00:20:39,571 --> 00:20:42,233 It was either freezing, freezing cold... 259 00:20:42,374 --> 00:20:46,140 and they complained bitterly that it was so difficult to lay bricks in fur lined 260 00:20:46,278 --> 00:20:47,302 coats and mittens. 261 00:20:47,446 --> 00:20:50,472 And then, when it thawed, this area was almost a mass of mud 262 00:20:50,616 --> 00:20:54,211 and they had to devise incredibly elaborate wooden structures 263 00:20:54,353 --> 00:20:57,948 to hold the building up at all when they extended the foundations. 264 00:20:58,090 --> 00:21:00,524 So, this is an extraordinary enterprise. 265 00:21:00,659 --> 00:21:03,924 How ingenious those people were coming from the South. How determined! 266 00:21:04,062 --> 00:21:06,724 It took them eight years to get this place up. 267 00:21:06,932 --> 00:21:07,694 They learned, though. 268 00:21:07,833 --> 00:21:11,325 The next time they built a church in five years. 269 00:21:26,752 --> 00:21:32,019 This is the church they built, the Cathedral of Saint Sofia of Kiev. 270 00:21:34,660 --> 00:21:37,595 Beneath the old Ukrainian domes, 271 00:21:37,729 --> 00:21:41,221 Byzantine brick and ancient Greek geometry. 272 00:21:41,667 --> 00:21:46,161 These could be the walls of an imperial church in ancient Constantinople. 273 00:21:48,707 --> 00:21:54,942 Inside, memories of the palace of all palaces, and the church of all churches, 274 00:21:55,280 --> 00:21:58,181 the original Saint Sofia of Constantinople. 275 00:22:03,188 --> 00:22:06,885 And gleaming mosaics, too, made by Byzantine craftsmen 276 00:22:06,958 --> 00:22:11,327 sent here to work for Vladimir's son, Prince Yeroslav. 277 00:22:15,033 --> 00:22:19,629 Carefully preserved images of Jesus, Mary and the saints, 278 00:22:19,771 --> 00:22:24,071 images of government and holiness to pacify the North. 279 00:22:26,144 --> 00:22:29,170 The heavenly court of old Byzantium, 280 00:22:29,314 --> 00:22:32,306 floating high above the Prince of Kiev. 281 00:22:42,728 --> 00:22:47,665 The heavenly court, now entirely mirrored in Yeroslav's new court on earth, 282 00:22:47,799 --> 00:22:49,926 aided and abetted by a Byzantine bishop 283 00:22:50,068 --> 00:22:53,629 who wants him to punish sinners, to feed the poor, 284 00:22:53,772 --> 00:22:55,706 and to fight the enemies of Byzantium. 285 00:22:55,841 --> 00:22:58,639 But, there's something else going on in this wondrous building, 286 00:22:58,977 --> 00:23:02,105 something else yet more subtle. It's like a soap opera here. 287 00:23:02,247 --> 00:23:04,909 It imparts manner. It imparts gesture. 288 00:23:05,050 --> 00:23:08,747 It shows you the Byzantine way of walking and talking. 289 00:23:08,987 --> 00:23:12,582 Between that fierce structure and this new manner, 290 00:23:12,958 --> 00:23:16,155 the old order of Russe was entirely swept away. 291 00:23:16,495 --> 00:23:21,728 But, you know, despite all of that the Byzantines never really trusted the Russe. 292 00:23:21,933 --> 00:23:23,264 They needn't have worried, though. 293 00:23:23,402 --> 00:23:25,927 The Russians had learned their lesson very, very well, indeed. 294 00:23:26,071 --> 00:23:30,667 And, centuries later, when Constantinople itself had been thrown away, 295 00:23:30,809 --> 00:23:33,903 when Constantinople the second Rome had gone, 296 00:23:34,012 --> 00:23:40,008 then, Moscow, the new capitol of the Russe declared itself as the third Rome. 297 00:23:44,189 --> 00:23:49,024 Just as the dangerous northern tribes passed under Byzantium golden spell, 298 00:23:49,361 --> 00:23:54,060 so did it's southern European neighbors, Greece and Italy, and the islands of 299 00:23:54,199 --> 00:23:55,928 the Mediterranean. 300 00:23:58,270 --> 00:24:04,072 Venice, that ancient little town set on the mud banks of the north Italian salt marsh, 301 00:24:04,409 --> 00:24:07,606 was the owner of a powerful fleet of warships, 302 00:24:07,746 --> 00:24:12,774 as much a menace to Constantinople as were the tribesmen of the north. 303 00:24:15,554 --> 00:24:19,513 Beneath the stones of Venice, the bricks and columns, 304 00:24:19,658 --> 00:24:23,219 the technology and arts of old Byzantium. 305 00:24:26,398 --> 00:24:29,333 Just like Kiev, Venice's first churches 306 00:24:29,468 --> 00:24:31,936 and its most powerful images of God 307 00:24:32,070 --> 00:24:35,130 and government all came here from Byzantium. 308 00:24:45,417 --> 00:24:57,727 This was the old Venetian's single most powerful portrait of the "Face of God". 309 00:25:00,332 --> 00:25:06,464 The Pallidoro, made for the high order of the Simbarcks. 310 00:25:08,340 --> 00:25:10,365 It's a funny old thing, actually. 311 00:25:10,809 --> 00:25:15,542 It's cobbled out from all sorts of things, gold strips, bits ofjewelry. 312 00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:19,411 It's all there, like a magpie's nest. 313 00:25:21,686 --> 00:25:27,147 The single most beautiful things about this is these wonderful plaques of enamel. 314 00:25:27,425 --> 00:25:29,154 They're Byzantine imports. 315 00:25:29,294 --> 00:25:33,560 They were made in the imperial workshops in the year 1105 316 00:25:33,698 --> 00:25:37,532 and they're probably copied from the decorations of a chapel in the imperial palace 317 00:25:37,669 --> 00:25:39,330 of Constantinople. 318 00:25:42,140 --> 00:25:44,165 That's Christ in the center. 319 00:25:47,245 --> 00:25:53,309 All around him and all in order, large to small, is laid out the court of heaven, 320 00:25:53,685 --> 00:25:58,679 just as Byzantium's foreign kings and princes decorated the emperor's court 321 00:25:58,823 --> 00:26:00,848 at Constantinople. 322 00:26:10,702 --> 00:26:13,170 If you were a useful ally for Byzantium, 323 00:26:13,305 --> 00:26:18,538 and you sent off thirty of forty pounds of gold to Constantinople with a humble letter, 324 00:26:18,777 --> 00:26:22,440 the emperor might just honor you with some of these panels... 325 00:26:22,581 --> 00:26:26,073 pictures of God and your local saints and portraits, too, 326 00:26:26,217 --> 00:26:31,245 of you amongst the golden prophets and the angels of Byzantium. 327 00:26:33,224 --> 00:26:36,022 This was the power of Byzantium abroad, 328 00:26:36,261 --> 00:26:39,992 its prestige, its foreign policy. 329 00:26:42,701 --> 00:26:47,035 This little chap here is Oldelafo Fallia, 330 00:26:47,172 --> 00:26:49,606 the ruler, the doge of Venice. 331 00:26:49,741 --> 00:26:53,177 He's the man who commissioned the greater part of the Pallidoro. 332 00:26:53,311 --> 00:26:57,680 Now, this is where you can start to see something of that provincial envy of 333 00:26:57,816 --> 00:26:59,147 Byzantium starting to work, 334 00:26:59,284 --> 00:27:04,347 that envy that almost rose up and threatened to destroy the great imperial empire. 335 00:27:04,489 --> 00:27:06,423 Look! See what I mean. 336 00:27:06,558 --> 00:27:09,220 There's the man, there's the Virgin Mary, 337 00:27:09,361 --> 00:27:12,762 and there you would expect the man's wife, but, it isn't his wife. 338 00:27:12,897 --> 00:27:15,229 It is the Empress Irenae of Byzantium. 339 00:27:15,367 --> 00:27:16,527 So, what's going on here? 340 00:27:16,668 --> 00:27:19,637 Well, I think the Venetians have sort of rejigged it 341 00:27:19,771 --> 00:27:22,331 so the dear old doge of Venice who, 342 00:27:22,474 --> 00:27:25,932 by Constantinoplian rights was a minor official on the edge of empire, 343 00:27:26,077 --> 00:27:29,569 suddenly popped up as, you know, married to the great empress. 344 00:27:29,714 --> 00:27:34,117 They're also, the Venetians, cunning devils, given him a halo. 345 00:27:34,252 --> 00:27:36,777 You see, they've soldered a whole new head on there. 346 00:27:36,921 --> 00:27:41,620 The Byzantines would never have sent a figure of a local ruler with a halo on. 347 00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:45,025 So, he's sort of really bumped up in the holy heirarchy here. 348 00:27:46,931 --> 00:27:48,899 But, there's one thing the Venetians missed, 349 00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:50,126 and this is quite funny, 350 00:27:50,268 --> 00:27:55,137 because, rulers in the celestial universe wear red socks. 351 00:27:55,407 --> 00:27:58,035 The Virgin Mary has red socks, the empress has red socks, 352 00:27:58,176 --> 00:28:00,838 all the kings on this have red socks. 353 00:28:03,048 --> 00:28:06,575 Poor old Oldelafo doesn't. 354 00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:13,619 So, he isn't really at the top of Byzantium's holy heirarchy. 355 00:28:14,025 --> 00:28:15,754 You don't think that's important? 356 00:28:15,894 --> 00:28:17,862 Oldelafo would have, though. 357 00:28:18,063 --> 00:28:21,123 Deep down, he knew that the great Byzantine god, 358 00:28:21,266 --> 00:28:24,201 that ordered everything within this Christian universe, 359 00:28:24,335 --> 00:28:27,031 had seen that dubious halo. 360 00:28:27,439 --> 00:28:32,672 Also, that this same god held the power of eternal life and death. 361 00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:47,358 By the Middle Ages, Byzantium's most powerful images of God and government 362 00:28:47,492 --> 00:28:51,895 had crossed the Mediterranean and penetrated central Europe, too. 363 00:28:52,697 --> 00:28:58,192 And, always, at the very heart of this Christian universe, was the golden emperor 364 00:28:58,336 --> 00:29:02,500 of Byzantium and the glittering city of Constantinople. 365 00:29:05,877 --> 00:29:09,369 What did that legendary city really look like? 366 00:29:15,220 --> 00:29:19,554 In modern Istanbul, one single precious district of the city 367 00:29:19,691 --> 00:29:25,186 still holds something of the air of ancient Constantinople, buried underneath it. 368 00:29:26,231 --> 00:29:29,894 Part built from the stones of the city's ancient marketplaces, 369 00:29:30,034 --> 00:29:35,404 Istanbul's bazaars still stand in Byzantium's thin streets. 370 00:29:38,910 --> 00:29:41,504 That old electric mix of races and religions, 371 00:29:41,646 --> 00:29:44,137 trades and professions, is still here as well, 372 00:29:44,282 --> 00:29:47,115 just as it was a thousand years ago. 373 00:29:51,356 --> 00:29:53,051 Oh my god, what are they now? 374 00:29:53,191 --> 00:29:57,287 Leeches. 375 00:29:57,662 --> 00:30:01,120 Yes, leeches. Leeches. 376 00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:04,561 So, clean your shoes, clean your blood. 377 00:30:04,702 --> 00:30:10,766 Doctor's eczema heumatisma... 378 00:30:11,943 --> 00:30:16,039 That's amazing. Old Byzantine leeches. 379 00:30:16,181 --> 00:30:16,670 Yes. 380 00:30:16,815 --> 00:30:18,282 They're good for everything, huh? 381 00:30:18,416 --> 00:30:19,314 Yes. 382 00:30:24,022 --> 00:30:28,857 Set between the East and West, Constantinople was the world's great marketplace, 383 00:30:28,993 --> 00:30:30,722 a living legend. 384 00:30:34,032 --> 00:30:35,465 Goods from Byzantium's bazaars 385 00:30:35,600 --> 00:30:41,197 are found today in excavations in Sweden, in Afghanistan, in England, and in Russia. 386 00:30:41,806 --> 00:30:44,400 And, like Coke cans in the Gobi desert, 387 00:30:44,542 --> 00:30:47,306 they give out a very special buzz. 388 00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:51,271 Something for your constipation? 389 00:30:52,283 --> 00:30:54,012 Henna for your fingernails? 390 00:30:54,552 --> 00:30:55,780 Cumin? 391 00:30:57,055 --> 00:31:00,547 Everything a Byzantine, Sultanas would need. 392 00:31:00,692 --> 00:31:01,989 Bet they didn't call it that! 393 00:31:04,028 --> 00:31:07,896 In Byzantium, women mostly made the deals. 394 00:31:07,966 --> 00:31:10,696 Nowadays, though, the traders here are men. 395 00:31:24,616 --> 00:31:29,451 Bolta Ghamda, African gold and ivory, 396 00:31:30,755 --> 00:31:31,983 Asian gemstones, 397 00:31:32,123 --> 00:31:34,819 eastern silks and spices, 398 00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:38,929 and multinational traders, Italians mostly, 399 00:31:39,063 --> 00:31:41,759 buying and selling everything you could think of. 400 00:31:42,867 --> 00:31:45,700 There were fortunes to be made out of Byzantium. 401 00:31:51,643 --> 00:31:55,374 You know, the weavers, the great silk bazaars of Byzantium 402 00:31:55,513 --> 00:31:58,277 have been famous for centuries upon centuries. 403 00:31:58,416 --> 00:32:01,874 In the West, they just had little bits of Byzantine silk 404 00:32:01,986 --> 00:32:04,216 and they used it to wrap the bones of saints 405 00:32:04,355 --> 00:32:07,256 and to put upon the high altars of cathedrals. 406 00:32:07,592 --> 00:32:12,757 So, you can imagine that when a Western diplomat came here, about 950 AD, 407 00:32:12,931 --> 00:32:17,891 and actually bought two whole rolls of silk for his own clothes 408 00:32:18,036 --> 00:32:19,901 that he was very pleased with himself. 409 00:32:20,271 --> 00:32:25,607 But, when the bishop got to the borders, the customs, the Byzantine customs took the 410 00:32:25,743 --> 00:32:26,971 cloth away from him. 411 00:32:27,111 --> 00:32:29,773 They said that even great bishop Louit Prand 412 00:32:29,948 --> 00:32:32,746 of Cremona, the embassy of the king of Germany, 413 00:32:32,951 --> 00:32:35,476 wasn't grand enough to wear this fine fabric. 414 00:32:36,254 --> 00:32:38,381 You know, the Byzantines had a knack of 415 00:32:38,523 --> 00:32:43,222 making great kings feel like little lads from the country. 416 00:32:46,998 --> 00:32:50,525 The old bazaars had ancient wisdom up for sale, as well. 417 00:32:51,002 --> 00:32:52,833 In Byzantium's book market, 418 00:32:52,971 --> 00:32:54,939 the best part of the learning of the ancient 419 00:32:55,073 --> 00:32:58,372 world was copied out by publishers and merchants. 420 00:32:59,043 --> 00:33:04,276 And here it is still today, the oldest book store in the world. 421 00:33:05,750 --> 00:33:08,981 You know, this is an amazing place. 422 00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:15,491 Just think, six hundred years ago there was a very famous Arab travel writer 423 00:33:15,626 --> 00:33:18,925 and he was coming through here rummaging about in the bazaar, looking for books, 424 00:33:19,063 --> 00:33:21,031 Ibn Battuta he was called. 425 00:33:21,366 --> 00:33:23,527 Anyway, there he was rummaging around. 426 00:33:23,668 --> 00:33:27,195 There would have been more people here then, lots of scribes actually writing them. 427 00:33:27,338 --> 00:33:31,570 And, a Byzantine magistrate who's walking through the square recognized him. 428 00:33:32,310 --> 00:33:34,073 And, the old two men got together, 429 00:33:34,212 --> 00:33:35,804 the Arab and the Christian, 430 00:33:35,947 --> 00:33:38,575 and they sat down and they talked about writing books. 431 00:33:38,716 --> 00:33:42,982 They talked about travel and the joys of scholarship. 432 00:33:45,490 --> 00:33:49,017 Westerners really loved the book bazaar in Byzantium. 433 00:33:49,327 --> 00:33:52,956 They could find things there that were real legends, 434 00:33:54,232 --> 00:33:57,167 magical lost works like this, for example. 435 00:33:57,301 --> 00:34:00,964 This is a copy, Greek copy, 436 00:34:01,105 --> 00:34:05,064 of an ancient work made in Alexandria by an ancient Greek. 437 00:34:05,209 --> 00:34:07,439 And it concerns the workings of the universe. 438 00:34:07,578 --> 00:34:11,412 Westerners only knew this from the talk of learnéd Arabs. 439 00:34:11,549 --> 00:34:13,039 Now, after visiting the bazaar, 440 00:34:13,184 --> 00:34:17,644 they can actually own a copy of Ptolemy's Alchemist. 441 00:34:20,658 --> 00:34:25,595 Books like the Alchemist gave algebra and chemistry to western Europe. 442 00:34:26,831 --> 00:34:31,564 To westerners, it must have seemed that all the wealth and wisdom of the world 443 00:34:31,702 --> 00:34:34,102 was held inside Constantinople 444 00:34:34,772 --> 00:34:38,538 and in the houses of the lucky people of Byzantium. 445 00:34:42,346 --> 00:34:46,578 The Byzantines lived in a very face to face community. 446 00:34:47,418 --> 00:34:50,046 It was a very tight, enclosed world. 447 00:34:50,188 --> 00:34:51,917 They were incredibly superstitious, 448 00:34:52,056 --> 00:34:54,524 always looking for signs as they looked at each other, 449 00:34:54,659 --> 00:34:58,459 things that might change the meaning of their relationships with one another. 450 00:34:58,696 --> 00:35:03,497 The angle of a man's shoulders could tell you if he was having an affair. 451 00:35:04,202 --> 00:35:08,002 If you had a dream that you've put on a pair of shoes and weren't going anywhere, 452 00:35:08,139 --> 00:35:09,731 could mean you might be getting married. 453 00:35:09,907 --> 00:35:12,273 You could nod at a woman and it meant that 454 00:35:12,410 --> 00:35:14,878 you would be having an affair with her very shortly. 455 00:35:14,979 --> 00:35:17,413 Superstitions everywhere! 456 00:35:17,648 --> 00:35:20,310 They divine the future by listening to thunder, 457 00:35:20,451 --> 00:35:24,182 but, above all, they loved charms and trinkets, 458 00:35:24,322 --> 00:35:28,918 things you can buy in bazaars, glittering treasures. 459 00:35:29,060 --> 00:35:32,291 And this, that is the greatest charm of all. 460 00:35:32,430 --> 00:35:35,331 It's been around for thousands of years before Byzantium 461 00:35:35,466 --> 00:35:38,367 and it'll go on for a thousand years beyond us all. 462 00:35:39,504 --> 00:35:42,564 It's a charm against the Evil Eye. 463 00:35:44,008 --> 00:35:46,772 The Evil Eye, of course, is envy. 464 00:35:46,944 --> 00:35:50,710 That thing that's so destructive inside small communities, 465 00:35:50,848 --> 00:35:53,612 and so destructive for Constantinople, too. 466 00:35:53,951 --> 00:35:56,511 Constantinople was called the eye of all the world. 467 00:35:56,654 --> 00:36:01,853 Everybody envied its gold and silk and pretty princesses. 468 00:36:07,765 --> 00:36:11,428 Not everybody, though, was allowed a glimpse of heaven. 469 00:36:11,736 --> 00:36:15,502 Poor old bishop Louit Prand of Cremona had come to Constantinople 470 00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:19,041 for silks and for a Byzantine princess for his prince, 471 00:36:19,177 --> 00:36:20,872 hadn't got either of them. 472 00:36:22,246 --> 00:36:25,977 The Byzantines lectured him upon the gross behavior of his prince 473 00:36:26,117 --> 00:36:29,883 and sniffed at the very idea of sending an imperial princess to such 474 00:36:29,954 --> 00:36:32,787 a barbarous and distant kingdom. 475 00:36:38,696 --> 00:36:42,496 Louit Prand greatly resented these haughty Byzantines, 476 00:36:42,633 --> 00:36:45,602 especially the great warrior emperor, 477 00:36:45,736 --> 00:36:50,435 Nakafouras Fokas, who came to the throne in 963. 478 00:36:53,211 --> 00:36:54,405 You wouldn't want to meet him on a 479 00:36:54,545 --> 00:36:57,139 dark night, bishop Louit Prand reports to his prince. 480 00:36:57,281 --> 00:36:59,749 He's a monstrosity in a smelly old robe, 481 00:36:59,884 --> 00:37:06,187 a dwarf with the eyes of a mole, disfigured, disgraced, pig like, an Ethiopian. 482 00:37:09,660 --> 00:37:13,619 Every week, Louit Prand continues, like some crawling monster, 483 00:37:13,764 --> 00:37:17,564 the emperor walks in procession to the great church and the singers cry, 484 00:37:17,702 --> 00:37:20,500 "Behold, the morning star approaches!" 485 00:37:22,506 --> 00:37:25,441 They might just as well say, "Come on you burned out old crow, 486 00:37:25,576 --> 00:37:29,535 old woman, clod hopping barbarian!" 487 00:37:33,951 --> 00:37:38,354 As Western diplomats, like Louit Prand, reported on the weakness of the emperors 488 00:37:38,489 --> 00:37:41,686 and on the thousand years of treasure in their city, 489 00:37:41,993 --> 00:37:48,057 so western Europe's princes grew ever stronger, ever more powerful, and ever 490 00:37:48,199 --> 00:37:50,963 more envious of Byzantium. 491 00:38:01,746 --> 00:38:06,706 In 1204, the Venetians managed to divert a cutthroat army of Crusaders 492 00:38:06,884 --> 00:38:10,911 from their sacred vows to capture Palestine for Christendom. 493 00:38:13,190 --> 00:38:15,590 Promising them the plunder of Byzantium, 494 00:38:15,726 --> 00:38:21,631 they provided lists of the treasures and the holy relics inside Constantinople. 495 00:38:24,302 --> 00:38:29,330 On the thirteenth of April, Venetian war galleys sailed up to the city walls 496 00:38:31,342 --> 00:38:34,937 and the knights of France and Germany, of Italy and England, 497 00:38:35,079 --> 00:38:38,537 jumped from the boats onto the battlements. 498 00:38:41,652 --> 00:38:46,749 The campaign that followed was a nasty mix of treachery and chaos. 499 00:38:48,993 --> 00:38:50,893 But the ending, the city's walls were 500 00:38:51,028 --> 00:38:55,260 breached and the imperial throne was overturned. 501 00:38:58,936 --> 00:39:03,600 Many Byzantine nobles fled here to the palace of Blachenai, 502 00:39:03,741 --> 00:39:08,144 where they were besieged by Henry, the noble Prince of Flanders. 503 00:39:10,681 --> 00:39:13,309 Now, the Venetians knew exactly what was in this palace. 504 00:39:13,451 --> 00:39:16,113 They even had an inventory of its contents. 505 00:39:16,253 --> 00:39:19,347 When the nobles gave up the fight, they took everything they could out 506 00:39:19,490 --> 00:39:20,650 of the building... 507 00:39:20,791 --> 00:39:23,851 gold, silver, precious jewels, silks, satins, 508 00:39:23,994 --> 00:39:25,518 ermine, minerva, 509 00:39:25,663 --> 00:39:27,654 the hold was tremendous. 510 00:39:27,932 --> 00:39:32,335 More booty, it's said, was taken from this town than from all the cities 511 00:39:32,470 --> 00:39:34,199 since creation. 512 00:39:37,308 --> 00:39:38,673 Over the next fifty years 513 00:39:38,809 --> 00:39:42,210 half of Constantinople was boxed up, crated, 514 00:39:42,346 --> 00:39:45,873 and shipped out of the city to Venice and the West. 515 00:39:56,594 --> 00:39:58,721 At the very heart of Venice, 516 00:39:59,296 --> 00:40:03,096 between the state palace and Saint Marks, the old state church, 517 00:40:03,234 --> 00:40:05,532 is the city's ancient treasury, 518 00:40:06,437 --> 00:40:10,669 and the root of that treasure was the plunder of Byzantium. 519 00:40:13,377 --> 00:40:15,743 It was Europe's pawn shop, really. 520 00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:19,179 Emperors left their crowns here for cash. 521 00:40:19,316 --> 00:40:23,412 The king of France actually bought the Crown of Thorns from this room. 522 00:40:23,554 --> 00:40:28,753 And, in the 1790's, when Napoleon and his armies turned up in Italy, 523 00:40:28,893 --> 00:40:32,795 he was able to take half a ton of gold from this room and melt it down 524 00:40:32,930 --> 00:40:34,329 just to pay his troops. 525 00:40:34,465 --> 00:40:37,366 But, despite all of that, despite all the losses, 526 00:40:37,601 --> 00:40:42,368 this is still the single place in all the world where you can get a glimmer, 527 00:40:42,506 --> 00:40:47,500 just a flash, of the treasure that once filled Byzantium. 528 00:40:50,981 --> 00:40:54,849 A glass bowl enameled with classic images, 529 00:40:54,985 --> 00:40:58,921 taken from the emperor's own quarters in the palace. 530 00:41:00,291 --> 00:41:05,092 From the palace chapels, the cups of the imperial communion. 531 00:41:17,942 --> 00:41:22,470 A golden icon of Saint Michael, studded with Indian emeralds... 532 00:41:23,714 --> 00:41:28,617 the Byzantines used its glowing colors to foretell the future. 533 00:41:28,986 --> 00:41:31,045 This, too, came from the palace, 534 00:41:31,188 --> 00:41:33,782 probably from the chambers of the queen. 535 00:41:36,961 --> 00:41:40,692 Inside Saint Marks, as well, the altar's filled with the holy 536 00:41:40,831 --> 00:41:43,959 relics looted from Constantinople. 537 00:41:47,771 --> 00:41:52,640 This superb Madonna, Venice's most holy icon, 538 00:41:52,776 --> 00:41:57,839 had been carried into battle by the emperor Alexis Mozouflos. 539 00:41:58,415 --> 00:42:02,442 The Venetians tore it from his abandoned war chariot. 540 00:42:13,430 --> 00:42:16,126 It's not just the inside of Saint Marks that filled with the 541 00:42:16,267 --> 00:42:17,894 plunder of Byzantium, 542 00:42:18,002 --> 00:42:22,371 the whole outside of the cathedral is covered in stones stripped from the 543 00:42:22,506 --> 00:42:24,269 churches of Constantinople 544 00:42:24,642 --> 00:42:27,236 and shipped by the Venetian navy. 545 00:42:35,419 --> 00:42:39,515 A great new balcony was built from the stones of old Byzantium 546 00:42:39,657 --> 00:42:43,354 and four bronze horses, said to have come from the very heart of 547 00:42:43,494 --> 00:42:47,430 Constantinople, were set up high upon it. 548 00:42:48,299 --> 00:42:52,395 Saint Marks was plated with the plunder of Byzantium. 549 00:42:55,039 --> 00:43:00,409 Today, the old brick church has all but disappeared beneath the foreign marble. 550 00:43:04,281 --> 00:43:10,618 Shiploads of columns from Constantinople now decorate the doorways of the church. 551 00:43:15,559 --> 00:43:19,757 These beautiful square pillars from an ancient church that had stood on 552 00:43:19,930 --> 00:43:25,129 the main highway of Constantinople were used as gallows. 553 00:43:26,036 --> 00:43:29,164 The Venetians hung criminals from them. 554 00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:32,070 Other fragments of this lost masterpiece 555 00:43:32,209 --> 00:43:36,646 once stood in Crusader chapels from Spain to Austria. 556 00:43:40,417 --> 00:43:44,183 This is an interesting piece. It has an amazing history. 557 00:43:44,321 --> 00:43:47,916 You see, when the Venetians first took the sculpture from the boat, 558 00:43:47,992 --> 00:43:50,722 they found that one of the feet had been broken off. 559 00:43:50,861 --> 00:43:53,921 So, they made a new foot out of a lighter, whiter stone. 560 00:43:53,998 --> 00:43:54,930 You see that? 561 00:43:55,065 --> 00:43:59,001 Now, just a few years ago, in Istanbul, the Turkish archaeologists actually dug 562 00:43:59,136 --> 00:44:01,536 up the original foot. 563 00:44:01,672 --> 00:44:04,140 So, now we know where this sculpture came from. 564 00:44:04,441 --> 00:44:07,604 It came from the monument of Constantine the Great, 565 00:44:07,745 --> 00:44:08,973 the first king of Byzantium. 566 00:44:09,113 --> 00:44:11,877 Those were his four sons. 567 00:44:11,982 --> 00:44:16,282 Think of that! We have bits and pieces here from all ages, all styles. 568 00:44:16,420 --> 00:44:19,651 This stone is from Egypt. Others are from Syria, from Greece, 569 00:44:19,790 --> 00:44:21,417 all that style, that richness that went 570 00:44:21,558 --> 00:44:25,892 into Byzantium then has gone to make the city of Venice itself. 571 00:44:35,773 --> 00:44:38,708 Byzantium didn't just make Venice beautiful. 572 00:44:39,043 --> 00:44:44,003 All the courts of western Europe now held the plunder of Constantinople, 573 00:44:44,715 --> 00:44:49,516 objects whose hypnotic sparkle crackled through western Europe. 574 00:44:50,954 --> 00:44:54,515 In modern Germany, the little town of Limburg still holds one of 575 00:44:54,658 --> 00:44:57,252 these most alien objects, 576 00:44:57,828 --> 00:45:01,093 a piece of the cross on which Christ was crucified, 577 00:45:01,231 --> 00:45:06,100 transformed by a Byzantine into one of the world's great jewels, 578 00:45:06,336 --> 00:45:12,206 and then carried off to Germany by Heinrich von Ullman, the crusading knight. 579 00:45:16,980 --> 00:45:20,279 In 1235, when this church was just being finished 580 00:45:20,417 --> 00:45:23,875 and the Crusaders were still ruling in Constantinople, 581 00:45:24,154 --> 00:45:26,714 that doorway would have been surrounded 582 00:45:26,924 --> 00:45:30,052 by the ill, the mad, and the crippled and the bored. 583 00:45:30,561 --> 00:45:32,893 They weren't just standing there waiting for handouts. 584 00:45:32,996 --> 00:45:36,090 What was going on was something rather unusual. 585 00:45:38,435 --> 00:45:40,801 Inside this church, inside all churches 586 00:45:40,938 --> 00:45:43,532 in western Europe where there was a relic of a saint, 587 00:45:43,674 --> 00:45:46,074 there was a special power. 588 00:45:47,344 --> 00:45:50,438 This power came, actually, from heaven, 589 00:45:50,581 --> 00:45:52,640 and in lieu of hospitals, that was the best thing 590 00:45:52,783 --> 00:45:54,114 these people could hope for was a cure. 591 00:45:54,251 --> 00:45:56,651 After all, Jesus had cured the poor. 592 00:45:57,321 --> 00:46:01,121 Now, saints were denominated as holy men by two things, 593 00:46:01,258 --> 00:46:02,850 by the actions of their lives, 594 00:46:02,993 --> 00:46:05,120 and by the fact that their bodies didn't decay. 595 00:46:05,262 --> 00:46:08,527 So, their little fragments of bone and flesh were very important. 596 00:46:08,665 --> 00:46:11,031 When people went up to their shrines and touched them, 597 00:46:11,168 --> 00:46:13,762 they were in touch, you might say, with a little bit of heaven, 598 00:46:13,904 --> 00:46:16,395 as if there was a hole in the holy ozone. 599 00:46:16,540 --> 00:46:19,407 You could reach up through heaven, through the words of the priest, 600 00:46:19,543 --> 00:46:20,567 and the incense and the music, 601 00:46:20,711 --> 00:46:24,203 and some of these blessings could rain down upon you. 602 00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:33,251 The relics of Byzantium though weren't relics of local saints. 603 00:46:33,390 --> 00:46:35,449 They'd been brought from the holy land. 604 00:46:35,793 --> 00:46:37,226 They were the personal possessions, 605 00:46:37,361 --> 00:46:41,127 some of the very things that Jesus and Mary had touched, 606 00:46:41,465 --> 00:46:44,093 and they were never used to cure the poor. 607 00:46:47,271 --> 00:46:53,039 These holy things were held in the imperial churches and in the palaces of Byzantium. 608 00:46:53,443 --> 00:46:58,039 In that extraordinary world, halfway between earth and heaven 609 00:46:58,182 --> 00:47:02,642 they confirmed the divine role of the emperor on earth. 610 00:47:03,787 --> 00:47:07,223 By stealing these powerful objects from Constantinople 611 00:47:07,991 --> 00:47:13,452 the pious kings of western Europe had gained a confidence they'd never had before. 612 00:47:16,333 --> 00:47:18,733 This then, that taking of the relics, 613 00:47:18,902 --> 00:47:21,928 was the taking of the holiness of the divine right of kings, 614 00:47:22,072 --> 00:47:25,337 the beginning of Western Europe, of Eurocentricity, and almost, 615 00:47:25,475 --> 00:47:28,103 you might say, of the modern world. 616 00:47:35,118 --> 00:47:36,915 Back at Constantinople, 617 00:47:37,054 --> 00:47:40,615 the Crusaders' colonial administration failed. 618 00:47:40,757 --> 00:47:43,317 The knights couldn't balance the books. 619 00:47:45,162 --> 00:47:49,292 Driven by debts and petty wars, they left for home. 620 00:47:54,738 --> 00:47:57,935 On August the fifteenth, in the year 1260, 621 00:47:58,075 --> 00:48:02,273 a new emperor, Michael the Eighth, walked in solemn procession 622 00:48:02,412 --> 00:48:03,845 through the ancient gates, 623 00:48:03,981 --> 00:48:06,677 dressed in the imperial robes of silk and gold 624 00:48:06,884 --> 00:48:09,978 with his choirs, his soldiers, and all his priests. 625 00:48:14,057 --> 00:48:17,720 Safe inside, he addressed the adoring people of the city 626 00:48:17,895 --> 00:48:20,420 who had labored under foreign rule for fifty years, 627 00:48:20,564 --> 00:48:27,436 and now celebrated the return of Christ's true emperor to the very center of the earth. 628 00:48:28,672 --> 00:48:31,641 A while ago, God was angry with us 629 00:48:31,775 --> 00:48:34,972 and made the West into a great wind that blew us from our city, 630 00:48:35,112 --> 00:48:38,240 and we lived like the birds beneath the branches of a tree. 631 00:48:38,382 --> 00:48:41,283 But, just as he'd promised Abraham the promised land, 632 00:48:41,418 --> 00:48:44,581 just as he granted my ancestors eternal victory, 633 00:48:44,721 --> 00:48:47,952 so, he has given me back the sacred city. 634 00:48:48,759 --> 00:48:50,750 Michael might have thought that God had put 635 00:48:50,928 --> 00:48:53,158 Byzantium back into the center of the cosmos. 636 00:48:53,297 --> 00:48:54,264 The truth was, 637 00:48:54,398 --> 00:48:57,026 the Crusaders had wrecked Constantinople, 638 00:48:57,167 --> 00:48:58,998 plundered it, broken it, 639 00:48:59,136 --> 00:49:00,398 destroyed it. 640 00:49:00,537 --> 00:49:05,998 And, the emperor's return to great power-politics was suicidal. 641 00:49:13,583 --> 00:49:16,746 Michael and his Byzantines didn't know that, though. 642 00:49:17,587 --> 00:49:18,952 As Michael said, 643 00:49:19,089 --> 00:49:22,616 they thought that God had restored the cosmic balance, 644 00:49:22,759 --> 00:49:25,956 that the golden dream was up and running as before. 645 00:49:27,264 --> 00:49:30,859 In the imperial chapel, in the gallery of Saint Sofia, 646 00:49:31,001 --> 00:49:35,131 their artists made a celebratory mosaic for the emperor's return, 647 00:49:35,605 --> 00:49:40,133 Jesus, Mary, and Saint John the Baptist. 648 00:49:41,511 --> 00:49:44,503 You'd think the world had never changed. 649 00:49:50,921 --> 00:49:52,616 Just twenty feet away, 650 00:49:52,756 --> 00:49:57,125 the stone is said to mark the grave of the Venetian who led the Western armies 651 00:49:57,260 --> 00:49:59,228 to Constantinople, 652 00:49:59,730 --> 00:50:04,531 Inricus Dandolo, the man who broke Byzantium. 653 00:50:06,370 --> 00:50:10,136 His bones, they said, were thrown out the window into the street, 654 00:50:10,273 --> 00:50:13,242 and even the dogs wouldn't eat them. 655 00:50:16,380 --> 00:50:21,682 The great mosaic though, humane, transcendent, optimistic, 656 00:50:21,818 --> 00:50:26,949 is the finest single work of all Byzantium's mosaic masters. 657 00:50:29,259 --> 00:50:31,557 See how it takes the light. 658 00:50:31,795 --> 00:50:34,821 The court of heaven shimmers in the church. 659 00:50:39,436 --> 00:50:43,202 This is the Christ the Byzantines had always worshipped. 660 00:50:43,607 --> 00:50:45,632 Not a Western Christ upon a cross, 661 00:50:45,776 --> 00:50:48,609 impaled in dismal earthly history, 662 00:50:49,212 --> 00:50:51,840 but, the old Eastern Christ. 663 00:50:51,982 --> 00:50:54,974 Christ of all times and of all places, 664 00:50:55,318 --> 00:50:56,945 Christ of the palace, 665 00:50:57,087 --> 00:50:59,419 Christ of Kiev and of Venice, 666 00:50:59,556 --> 00:51:02,548 Christ, Lord of Byzantium. 667 00:51:05,495 --> 00:51:08,623 The same Christ whose relics and whose images 668 00:51:08,765 --> 00:51:13,225 now fill the churches and imagination of the West, 669 00:51:13,370 --> 00:51:16,669 the Christ whose soft, impassive face 670 00:51:16,807 --> 00:51:21,972 would watch his Eastern empire gently fade away.