Lecture 15- 5/18/10

Yesterday's lecture covered Jerusalem's role in the Byzantine era of the Roman empire. An era marking the city's transition into a fully "Romanized" city, Jerusalem during the Byzantine period quickly became a city whose primary religious function lay within the Christian faith. With the Edict of Milan legalizing the faith in 313 and Theodosius making it the state religion in 391, Christianity's influence across the Roman empire grew enormously during this stage of the empire's development. Spurned by the "first" pilgrimage of Helena (Constantine's mother), the city attracted flocks of Christian pilgrims during the Byzantine era, attracted by holy sites such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Nea ("New") Church.

However, the Byzantine era was also one marked by tension involving the entire Roman empire, tension rooted in both internal and external forces. In addition to the ongoing disputes over the orthodoxy (or lack thereof) that the new Christian church should adopt, the Roman empire itself was undergoing significant political turmoil. During the period, the expansive Roman empire was split, laying the foundation for the political and religious divide that would cement itself between the Christian empire centered in Rome and that which emerged to the east, in Constantinople (Istanbul). Ultimately, this political and religious schism would create a power vacuum leading directly or indirectly to the eventual conquest of the eastern empire (including Jerusalem) by the forces of Islam during the middle stages of the first millenia CE.