Documentary. Death of the Empire. Byzantine lesson. Watch online

Putin's confessor taught Russia a tough lesson

— Yuri Viktorovich, in your opinion, can the lesson of the February revolution really be projected onto our current situation in order to draw conclusions and prevent the collapse of the country?

“I hope that the situation now is not as catastrophic as it was in February 17th.” But, of course, lessons must be learned. There are, after all, a variety of moods in society, but they should not result in bloody consequences.

— For Shevkunov, a running thread in the film is the idea that there was an alienation of the elite, including the monarchical one, from the people, from the interests of Russia, and largely because of this, the revolution took place.

— There are always people who are ahead of their time. Some thoughts go forward, and some thoughts are conservative - people are satisfied with how society is developing, their position, peace. In this sense, one can understand the average person who wants stability. They are not interested in shocks. But society is developing. And it cannot be said that there was only bad in the revolution. From a political point of view, a very bloody event really happened. And from a cultural point of view... Look at the outpouring of poets: Mayakovsky, Blok... And our cinema? "Battleship Potemkin" is still the best film of all time. Although, of course, some kind of agreement is possible in society. And the government that exists must listen to the aspirations of the people. Understand them and do not resist. Don’t be absolutely at the top, like Nicholas II, to whom the Empress wrote two weeks before the revolution - urgently return to St. Petersburg, there are riots and drunken sailors. And he answered in the sense that he was busy with high state affairs. But it was impossible to lose sight of internal positions. Therefore, in my opinion, rulers must listen to the people.

— The revolution was not started by the people...

“Then the situation was fueled by various strata of society. The monarchists overthrew the tsar and called in Miliukov, one of the most educated people in the country. And now, a demonstration passed by my window the day before yesterday. And I didn’t see anyone hungry or poorly dressed there. These are not demonstrations of the hungry. These are people with some ideas. It is obvious that they want to be listened to. Perhaps this needs to be done. Maybe not the supreme leadership, but there are different parties. We could listen.

— The philosopher Dugin recently said that now almost 70% of our elite are absolutely pro-Western people. It’s just like in Shevkunov’s film. You yourself say that conservatism is strong among our people. Is this different goal setting between the elite and the people dangerous?

“I don’t know where Dugin got these numbers from.” But then you listen - first one official, then another, then a third - their children study in the West and so on. And they become hostages of foreign policies with their Western capital. And since many of them have key positions, this is not good for Russia. It’s good that the president consistently prohibits them not only from having accounts, but even from vacationing abroad. In this sense, state security must work. Of course, I would like more consciousness among the people themselves. After all, it is obvious that Western countries are brazenly attacking Russia, there is a struggle for resources, for our resources.

— Is Father Tikhon an Imperial?

- Yes, in my opinion, he doesn’t hide it. And he claims that Soviet Russia was also an empire.

—Is the Empire our way?

— What’s bad about the fact that Russia can now be an empire? There is the United States - an empire. There is the European Union - an empire. The Chinese Empire is now advancing on everyone. And Russia, with our wonderful thinkers, with our resources, of course, can be an empire.

— And without Ukraine, maybe?

— This myth remains that we cannot live without Ukraine. But it turns out that we can do it. If Ukrainians simply don’t want to be slaves... But it’s traditional for them - Western Ukraine, which was part of Austria-Hungary, so they were slaves there. And for them this “visa-free” and so on - being slaves - is familiar. I had personal experience. I was in Italy for a nature selection. Went out to the beach. And there are Italian women and they all have nannies. In Lviv there is a center that hires Ukrainian women, and in Naples the center distributes them to families. And one of the nannies found out that I was from Ukraine. She was not embarrassed that I was from Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. He says: “Come on, I’ll introduce you to my lady so that she can see that not all Ukrainians are slaves.” Therefore, I hope that there will be Bogdan Khmelnitsky who wants to create an empire in alliance with Russia, and let it be an independent Ukraine, but in alliance with Russia. So that Ukrainians can travel to any country as imperial people, and not as slaves to Italy.

— Did Shevkunov guess the timing of the film’s release? Released it exactly when you needed it?

“I think he felt it was timely.” After all, even then there was no special preparation for the revolution. It’s a pity that we have few thinkers, including in the church, who would understand what is happening and the historical parallels. This film is really needed right now. Another thing is that it was not very conveniently shown. But I got really interested and watched all 18 episodes. There would be more films like this. Putin said at the Address that he read some textbooks and saw how terrible it was. But he would watch films. Otherwise they show him one a year, some patriotic one and that’s it. He should have looked at what we are filming, what shows are going on with people eating feces. I haven’t been filming for six years now – I don’t bring any projects to any project. And they launch something that doesn’t fit into any gates. And before the February revolution there was also a huge decline in morals.

— Don’t you think that this is exactly how the elite works? These aren't people from the street, are they?

- I would not agree. They still listen to the president. Just now he spoke about textbooks... And about domestic films - after all, so far we were talking only about quantitative indicators. So that our viewer goes. But what did you do? Like second-rate American films? Or really our films, real ones, about our lives. Which would tell about a simple person, and about a teacher, and about a scientist. I would like the president to pay attention not only to textbooks.

"The Death of an Empire. Byzantine lesson"

Dear visitors to our Orthodox island!

We present to you a wonderful documentary film by Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) - “The Death of an Empire. Byzantine lesson." All facts presented in the film are based on true historical events.

"The Death of an Empire. Byzantine lesson"

In 1453, the Byzantine Empire collapsed. This city was once called Constantinople, and 6 centuries ago it was, without any exaggeration, the capital of one of the world's greatest civilizations - the Byzantine Empire.

The legal state that is so familiar to us today, formed on the basis of Roman law, was created right here, in Byzantium, 1500 years ago. The legal system, which is the basic basis for all types of laws in most modern states, is a colossal creation of Byzantine jurisprudence from the era of Emperor Justinian.

The system of school and higher education first appeared in the world in Byzantium; it was here that the first university appeared in the 5th century. In Byzantium, the most stable financial system in the history of mankind was created, which existed almost unchanged for more than 1000 years. Modern diplomacy with its basic principles, rules, etiquette was created and honed here in Byzantium.

The engineering art and architecture of Byzantium had no equal, and even today the masterpieces of Byzantine masters, such as the dome of Hagia Sophia, amaze with the perfection of technical execution.

No other empire in human history has lived as long as Byzantium. It existed for 1123 years. For comparison: the great Rome collapsed 800 years after its founding, the Ottoman Sultanate collapsed after 500 years, the Chinese Qing Empire - after 300 years, the Russian Empire lasted 200 years, the British - 150 years, the Austro-Hungarian Empire - about 100 years.

During its heyday, the Byzantine Empire was home to one sixth of the world's population. The empire extended from Gibraltar to the Euphrates and Arabia. It included the territories of modern Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, part of Italy, Spain and Portugal. There were about 1000 cities in Byzantium - almost as many as in modern Russia.

The fabulous wealth, beauty and sophistication of the capital of the empire - Constantinople - literally shocked the European peoples, who were in a state of deep barbarism during the heyday of Byzantium.

One can imagine, and history tells us the same thing, that the rude and ignorant Scandinavians, Germans, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, for whom the main way of existence in those days was primitive robbery, coming from some Paris or London with a population of tens of thousands people in a metropolis of millions, in a city of enlightened citizens, scientists, brilliantly dressed youth crowding around the imperial university, only dreamed of one thing: to capture and rob, rob and capture.

By the way, when they first succeeded and the troops of the Europeans, who called themselves crusaders, in 1204, instead of liberating the Holy Land, treacherously broke into Constantinople and captured this most beautiful city in the world, they carried out the treasures of Byzantium in an endless stream for 50 years. Hundreds of tons of precious coins alone were exported, and this despite the fact that the annual budget of the richest countries in Europe was then no more than 2 tons of gold.

Venice. Cathedral of St. Mark. All the columns, marble, and precious interior decoration were stolen precisely then. By the way, these are the very horses of the imperial quadriga stolen by the crusaders from Constantinople.

Priceless shrines and works of art were taken away, but even more were simply destroyed by the barbarians from Brussels, London, Nuremberg, and Paris - melted down into coins or thrown away as trash. To this day, European museums are bursting with looted Byzantine treasures. But let us take into account that what has survived is only a small part.

It was the immense wealth of Constantinople that fed the monster of the usurious banking system of the modern world. This now small city in Italy - Venice - was New York in the 13th century. Here the financial destinies of nations were decided then. At first, most of the loot was hastily transported by sea to Venice and Lombardy (that’s where the word “pawnshop” came from). The first European banks began to appear like mushrooms after rain. Less nosy than the Venetians of that time, the Germans, Dutch and British got involved a little later; They, using the Byzantine money and treasures that poured into Europe, began to create that famous capitalism with its insatiable thirst for profit, which, in fact, is a genetic continuation of the excitement of military robbery. As a result of speculation in Constantinople relics, the first large Jewish capitals were formed.

An unprecedented flow of free money caused the rapid growth of Western European cities and became a decisive impetus for the development of crafts, sciences, and arts. The barbaric West became the “civilized” West only after it captured, plundered, destroyed and absorbed the Byzantine Empire.

Our ancestors, too, admittedly, who were not distinguished by a refined upbringing at that time, repeatedly succumbed to the barbaric temptation to profit from the countless riches of Constantinople. But to their credit, and to our happiness, the thirst for military gain did not overshadow the main thing for them: the Russians understood what the greatest treasure of Byzantium was. It was not gold, not precious stones, not even art and science. The main treasure of Byzantium was God.

And, having traveled to all the countries of the world known at that time, it was here that Prince Vladimir’s ambassadors realized that there is real communication between God and man, that a living connection with another world is possible for us.

“We don’t know where we were, in heaven or on earth,” our shocked ancestors said about their presence at the Divine Liturgy in the main temple of the empire, Hagia Sophia. They realized what wealth could be obtained in Byzantium, and with this treasure our great ancestors created not banks, not capital, or even museums and pawn shops. They created Rus', Russia, the spiritual successor of Byzantium.

So why did it become possible that at some point this greatest and extraordinarily viable state in world history rapidly began to lose its vitality?

The most interesting thing is that the problems that Byzantium faced during the period of its decline - external aggression, natural disasters, economic and political crises - were not at all new for this more than thousand-year-old state with a proven mechanism for getting out of the most dangerous situations. The country has successfully overcome such challenges more than once. Yes, there were many envious enemies in both the east and the west, there were earthquakes, there was a plague, but they were not the ones who defeated Byzantium. All problems would have been overcome if the Byzantines had been able to defeat themselves.

Today we will talk specifically about that internal enemy that appeared in the spiritual depths of Byzantine society and crushed the spirit of a great people, making it a defenseless victim of those challenges of history that Byzantium was no longer able to respond to.

Video - category>>

Gavrilov defended Metropolitan Tikhon’s film “The Death of an Empire. Russian lesson"

Metropolitan Tikhon of Pskov and Porkhov in his film “The Death of the Empire. Russian Lesson” tried to identify historical processes that could be repeated in Russia. The head of the State Duma Committee for the Development of Civil Society, Sergei Gavrilov, told FAN .

“We are surprised to see the controversy surrounding the film,” he said. — It’s strange that among us there are people who call themselves patriots, who make harsh critical statements about the author of this project, as well as historians and philosophers who positively assessed the film. In particular, the religious publicist Mikhail Tyurenkov.”

The deputy is confident that every person has the right to evaluate and express their subjective opinion about the materials presented in the film. At the same time, he is convinced that Bishop Tikhon carried out a deep analysis of past events in order to identify historical processes that could be repeated in Russia.

According to Gavrilov, information related to the February events of 1917 can make you think and may even encourage you to check, study those facts, and also provide food for thought.

“The categorical rejection of the author’s opinion throws back the analysis of historical events,” the parliamentarian noted.

Nevskie News / Viktor Sukhorukov

He recalled the words of the speaker of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, who said that the film presented an example of how “things ended badly” if “the elite worked for other states.” The development, sovereignty, and welfare of this state depend on the orientation of the state’s elite, Gavrilov added.

To summarize, the politician noted that historical events and the role of individuals in the life of the state can be assessed in different ways, and each point of view has its place.

“I believe that the era of justice, respect for working people, patriotism, friendship of peoples created by the Soviet state was a worthy way out of the current crisis of the elites. The consequences of the events of 1917 and the 1990s have something in common and show the true price of “freedom,” he said.

Gavrilov is confident that refusal to analyze the historical situation could threaten disintegration, colonization, and destruction of the spiritual and moral foundation of Russia.

Earlier, some “dogmatic” monarchists sharply criticized Bishop Tikhon’s film for what they believed was an unacceptable position towards the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II.

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Death of the Empire. Byzantine lesson

Scriptwriter and presenter: Archimandrite Tikhon

Documentary film “The Death of the Empire. The Byzantine Lesson,” which aired on the Rossiya TV channel on Wednesday, caused serious controversy in the KP editorial office. Although, it would seem, why?! The film is historical, ancient times, half-forgotten. And not even Leninist-Stalinist ones, which could still be a reason for discussion. But the fact of the matter is that Fall of an Empire is not a film about the past. Its author, Archimandrite Tikhon, who, according to persistent rumors, is close to President Vladimir Putin and is considered his spiritual father, speaks about the present and future... of Russia. How about Orthodox Byzantium, a boundless empire, which, according to Tikhon, should learn from the lessons of the great state that collapsed seven centuries ago. Otherwise, Tikhon hints, Russia will fall from the sword of the barbarians. Moreover, the decline of Byzantium is very reminiscent of Russian reality. For example…

Entry into the WTO “The West, by hook or by crook, began to involve Byzantium in the then emerging prototype of a pan-European trade organization.” Vertical of power Political stability is one of the main conditions for a strong state. This was the testament of the great emperors of Byzantium. But this covenant was neglected. There was a period when emperors changed on average every four years. In such conditions, was it possible to talk about some kind of rise of the country, the implementation of truly large-scale government projects that required many years of work? Of course, Byzantium had very strong emperors. This was, for example, Vasily the Second, by the way, the godfather of our holy Prince Vladimir. He took control of the empire after a severe crisis. The country was actually privatized by the oligarchy. Vasily, first of all, strictly built the vertical of power. He crushed separatist movements, suppressed rebellious governors and oligarchs who were planning to dismember the empire... confiscated huge stolen sums to the treasury... Successors Well, someone, and the Byzantines were the best specialists in successors in the world... Wanting to ensure the transfer of power to a worthy heir, emperors usually elected one or two successors (they were called junior emperors) and actively involved them in state affairs, assigned high responsible positions in the government and looked closely at them. All this was very reasonable, but no matter how much they honed this system, in the end it became clear: with a successor everything is simple - either you are lucky or not. The ancient Berezovsky Question of succession of power turned out to be a matter of life and death for the empire. Continuity and stability of development will be maintained, the country will have a future. No - she will collapse. But the people often did not understand this and from time to time demanded new changes. Various kinds of adventurers and fugitive oligarchs played on such innovations. Usually they took refuge abroad and from there supported intrigues with the goal of overthrowing the emperor they disliked, securing power for their protege and new redistributions of property. So, in Rome in the 15th century there sat a certain Vissarion, who fled from Byzantium and received political asylum..., who from Rome coordinated all the opposition in Constantinople and caused a lot of headaches for the government... “One” and “Other” Byzantium In Byzantium, from the end of the 13th century, two parties. One called to rely primarily on one’s internal strengths... to develop the colossal potential of one’s country... Another pro-Western party, whose representatives pointed to the undoubted fact that Europe was developing more and more successfully, began to loudly declare that Byzantium had historically exhausted itself... And they demanded a radical restructuring all state institutions on the model of Western European countries. Kondopoga in Byzantine style The catastrophe was that the peoples who joined the empire did not become Romans (as the Byzantines called themselves - Ed.), but forever became strangers, aggressive, hostile... The newcomers did not treat Byzantium as a new homeland, but as potential prey, which sooner or later must fall into their hands. And this is only a small part of the “random” coincidences that Archimandrite Tikhon turned into “Byzantine lessons” for our country. If you watch the film carefully, you will find the ancient mayor of the capital (the mayor of Constantinople, who was too “carried away by the construction of multi-storey buildings”), and a warning to Alexy II against meeting the Pope (“the last and most terrible blow to Byzantium was the church union with Rome”). . Even on the Russian military reform with its contract soldiers, the author struck with ancient history - the mercenaries, they say, turned out to be money-grubbers and traitors... So, the Byzantines succumbed to the influence of the West - the intelligentsia began to worship European art, officials gave key enterprises to overseas merchants, the pro-Western party corrupted voters... And the empire collapsed . Because she made so many obvious, in the author’s opinion, mistakes that she simply could not help but collapse. And Tikhon’s conclusion was interesting: “Research on Byzantium was resumed in 1943 at the direction of Stalin... Former seminarian Dzhugashvili finally understood from whom he needed to learn history...” OPINION OF A HISTORIAN Vladimir Vasilik, Associate Professor of the Department of History of Slavic and Balkan Countries of St. Petersburg State University, specialist in Byzantium: “We must try not to repeat ancient mistakes” - It is clear that any comparison is lame, but we cannot do without such “lame people.” Otherwise, you will have to live in the world here and now, without coordinates, without past and future. Byzantium and Russia have a lot in common. Community of faith, community of consciousness - the idea of ​​“one God, one king, one empire”, preference for the state over the individual, the comparative weakness of public institutions and the strength of state structures, awareness of the state and the inner world as enduring values. Modern attempts to reform Russia along Western lines, to create a so-called civil society where human rights are higher than public responsibilities, have created problems that Byzantium also faced. For example, Byzantine-style privatization enriched not only its own magnates, but also foreigners, to whom the emperors were forced to cede privileges in exchange for help. As a result, Italian entrepreneurs strangled Byzantine trade and craft. Shouldn’t we also be afraid of a similar fate given the abundance of foreign enterprises and companies on Russian territory? The observations are also correct regarding corruption in Byzantium, which at times is reminiscent of Yeltsin’s recent past. An eloquent case: the husband of one of the sisters of Empress Euphrosyne, wife of Emperor Alexei III, megaduk (admiral of the imperial fleet) Mikhail Strifi, nicknamed Fat-bellied, together with drungari (vice-admiral) of the fleet Stirion, openly traded property from the arsenals of the naval department. Everything was used - anchors, sails, ropes, nails, oars. As a result, by the time the crusaders arrived, there was not a single combat-ready ship in the roadstead. All this vividly reminds us of our nineties, when the Russian military fleet was reduced several times as a result of predatory privatization. As a result, when in 1999 the question arose about sending the Black Sea Fleet to the shores of Yugoslavia, not a single combat-ready ship was found. The film, of course, is not free from flaws. But if we do not want to share the fate of the Byzantine Empire, all of us (and not just those in power) must stock up on sobriety, insight, courage and sacrifice. This is exactly what this film calls for. Go outside and compare. I haven’t watched such scary and visionary films for a long time. In principle, apocalyptic predictions predicting chaos and collapse in Russia are now in great demand. This is our “collective unconscious” at work, trying to warn us about upcoming trials. But we do not hear these voices or consider prophecies as fairy tales that invigorate the blood. This will never happen to us, right? Not true. And all this has already happened. And not with some hostile and alien empire, but with our spiritual mother - Byzantium. I am not a Byzantine historian; it is difficult for me to judge where the authors bent their souls when comparing the two empires - the Russian and the Byzantine. Perhaps some facts were leveled out for the sake of the coherence of the narrative... But it is impossible to pull the wool over the ears and falsify hundreds of facts at once. Moreover, the symptoms of the collapse of a huge and rich state can be seen not only by opening a history textbook, but also by simply going outside. Byzantium dominated its region, receiving its main income from trade and customs duties. It was impossible to bypass Byzantium if you wanted to trade with the East, and neither Europe nor the East itself really liked this. Reminds one of the situation in Russia today, doesn’t it? The empire was falling apart from the inside, consistently - through “progressive” reforms suggested by Western advisers. They tried to cross Catholicism and Orthodoxy, that is, to question the truth of their Faith. Through the initially innocent settlement of the center of Byzantium by people from the outskirts, the country received subjects who did not consider it their homeland. And the empire began to devour itself, from the inside - through merchants and moneylenders, incompetent and corrupt rulers. The richest Constantinople did not give anything to the provinces, except for its tax collectors, who regularly collected taxes. It ended quite predictably. What should we do? The filmmakers do not answer directly. But they hint. What was the greatness of Byzantium based on? Where is the core that held the empire together? And there was only one core - Faith. This is what the film is about, everything else is vanity from the evil one. Dmitry STESHIN

Article by VLADIMIR VORSOBIN February 3, 2008 Komsomolskaya Pravda

The movie itself:

https://www.vizantia.info/docs/13.htm

Full text of the announcer's text:

https://www.vizantia.info/docs/1.htm

In addition, you can find a lot of interesting things on the official website

https://www.vizantia.info/

cultural policy

Grigory Kommersant-Revzin

Yesterday on TV Channel 2 a film by Father Tikhon (Shevkunov) “The Death of an Empire” was shown. Lessons from Byzantium." This film is seen as an ideological message from the Russian church, which is experiencing a change of power.

The film tells the story of Byzantium. There was a great empire that stretched from northwestern Africa to the Middle East and Eastern Europe. For the first time, a legal state, a university, science and art were created in it. But next to her was the West. To please the West, Byzantium gave foreign entrepreneurs the basis of state wealth - trade and customs. In Byzantium itself, supporters of the West arose, seduced by its spirit of vice, consumerism and individualism. They became oligarchs who undermined the state from within, stole wealth, and some fled to the West, sat in Rome and led anti-state activities from there (the monk Vissarion, who was sitting in Rome, is cited as an example). The stabilization fund of Vasily II was wasted, interethnic strife arose in the state. The intelligentsia, also attracted by the spirit of individualism and freedom, took the side of the West. They tried to replace the recruitment with a professional army - as a result, they lost their army and did not create a new one. They even entered into a union with the West; as a result, the people stopped believing in their power, fell into pessimism, and a demographic crisis resulted. The West treacherously took and captured Constantinople in 1204 during the Crusade. The banking houses of Venice and Lombardy and the entire system of capitalism arose from the looted wealth. Byzantium was never able to recover from this blow. And as a result, it was conquered by the Turks.

History can be interpreted in different ways, but when you come across a completely non-canonical interpretation, you first perceive it as an outright lie. The main lie is that there is no Islam in this picture at all. Father Tikhon speaks about the Turks who seized the empire in the sense that they are Turks, what can we take from them? We are shown a Turkish student smoking on the grass in Istanbul, somewhat nervous that for some reason he is being filmed, and they say that Sultan Mehmed, who captured Constantinople, was the same age, and it is really clear that there is nothing to take from the Turks. Accordingly, there is no history of Byzantium’s struggle with Islam at all, but only a struggle with the West. The fact that the empire was gigantic in the 6th century, and 600 years later, when the stories with the crusaders began, the Turkish sultan sat in Nicaea, 40 km from Constantinople, is not mentioned. Accordingly, it turns out that the contacts with the West themselves were not caused by the desire to receive military assistance (and in the first Crusade they received it - Emperor Alexei Komnenos followed the crusaders and regained Nicaea and other pleasant lands where all the Turkish resorts are now located ), but by a certain temptation of capitalism. This is a major lie to the concept of the film as a whole - those who killed it are not named as guilty of the death of the empire.

There are dozens of small oddities. What the stabilization fund of Vasily II is is beyond comprehension. Michael Psellus, a Byzantine historian, whom Father Tikhon mentions several times, constantly complains that, under that sovereign, the treasury was full, and at the same time it was wasted, but there was never any stabilization fund in Byzantium. The reform of the army is completely unknown, because the recruitment of the rural population traditionally existed in Byzantium in the early and middle Byzantine period, when this population was large, and when there was none left in the 14th century, a professional army appeared. Why the “golden bull” of Emperor Manuel, which granted trade rights to the Venetians and Genoese, turned out to be a distribution of the foundations of the state’s wealth to foreign entrepreneurs is unclear. This trade did not bring much income, and it was given to foreigners, because the costs were many times higher than the profits. True, the Genoese and Venetians quickly enriched themselves from this trade - well, in the end, two wild pogroms followed, when their quarters in Constantinople were simply cut out. That's the whole story of foreign entrepreneurship before the same Venetians and Genoese sacked Constantinople in 1204 in revenge. This has approximately the same relation to the events of 1453, when Constantinople fell from the Turks, as the existence of the German settlement under Peter the Great to the problems of today's Russia's accession to the WTO. I can’t understand at all who the Byzantine oligarchs are. There were no figures there at all capable of arguing with the state, everything was controlled by the state bureaucracy, officials, and when the Isaurian dynasty came, all officials became Isaurians, and when the Macedonian dynasty came, the influence of the Macedonians increased. There was never a Byzantine intelligentsia who was passionate about the West; they despised the West because they were very wild. There were indeed several Byzantines who went to Rome and greatly influenced Rome - because they knew Latin, Greek, they had books, etc. But there is no reverse influence at all. One of these people who left was the monk Vissarion, but he did not lead any opposition in Constantinople from Rome. It is difficult to understand what spirit of individualism and capitalism in Europe of the 11th-14th centuries Father Tikhon is talking about. As illustrations of the temptations of the West, he cites paintings from the high Renaissance and Baroque era, that is, examples of culture that appeared a hundred years after the fall of Constantinople. There's a problem with the video in general. Suffice it to say that he takes scenes of the siege of Constantinople from illustrations to historical chronicles. There people are sailing along the Bosphorus in boats, and he calls them oligarchs trying to escape, and further declares that in the West they have been shamelessly robbed, citing as illustrations paintings by Hieronymus Bosch of the torment of sinners in hell. The film says that it is all based on true historical facts, and that is true - it is, but it too easily breaks away from these foundations into the free flight of Boschian fantasy.

But there is secular knowledge about the history of Byzantium, there is church knowledge, and there are different traditions. For the church there was never any doubt that Constantinople fell not from the Turks, but from a union with the West, and the Turks were simply sent for their sins, and this is exactly what Father Tikhon sets out. It is unlikely that he can be convinced. But taking the position of the Orthodox Church, one can be amazed at how little is actually Christian in his film. He does not mention at all the development of the Orthodox tradition in Byzantium, the teachers of the church, writers, and philosophers. Even the saints Emperor Constantine and Empress Helena, who accomplished the grandiose work of arranging the holy places around Jerusalem, are not mentioned at all. Speaking about the sack of Constantinople in 1204, Father Tikhon places great emphasis on gold, which he eagerly counts in tons, but does not remember the thousands of Christian relics and relics that were exported, as if this seems insignificant to him. We took the true faith from the Greeks, but what kind of faith it was, he is silent about this.

In general, this is the weakest part of the film - our connection with Byzantium. There, some Arab-looking young man walks around the frames, either in a blue or in a red tunic. Towards the end, when Constantinople has already fallen, this Arab leaves the painted city along with a cartoon cow, bird and lion, and then alone he finds himself serving in the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow, of which Father Tikhon is now the rector. In fact, these are the symbols of the four evangelists - the Eagle (John), the Lion (Mark), the Bull (Luke) and the man (Matthew), and this Arab is like Matthew. I don’t know why Father Tikhon made him such an Arab, just some kind of Hussein, not Matthew, but on the other hand, he was an Aramean, that is, a Syrian, well, in principle, maybe. But whether the audience will understand that this is how the grace of Orthodoxy came to us in the form of this Arab student with a lost cow, I don’t know.

It is customary to say about Father Tikhon that he has influence on the highest spheres of government and is even Putin’s confessor and, accordingly, his preaching directly influences the minds of the state. This is a strange point of view. His film lacks, first of all, an ecclesiastical, pastoral word. It is not he who has influence on the highest government spheres, but vice versa. They talk, and he agrees. They are the stabilization fund, and he, yes, yes, is the breadwinner, the stabilization fund must be uh, ah, ah, must be maintained, so Vasily II, the Byzantine Emperor, was also in this sense. They are Berezovsky to him, and he is the viper Berezovsky, and the monk Vissarion sat in Rome and also shit. They are like an army to him. And he - in Byzantium, too, they didn’t build a professional army, but they lost theirs. They are to him - but they are foreign entrepreneurs, and he is to them - oh, father, it was through them that Byzantium fell. On his own behalf, Father Tikhon tells only an unconvincing story about this Arab.

It’s probably convenient to have a confessor who only agrees with you and tells you fairy tales. But he is completely unsuitable as a propagandist. Sergei Eisenstein, telling Comrade Stalin about Ivan the Terrible, also lied a lot and significantly distorted the images of Kurbsky, Adashev, Sylvester towards similarity with the little-respected figures of Trotsky, Bukharin and Rykov. But he succeeded - propaganda! When Tsar John exclaims: “Let us stand for the Russian land!” - it makes you tremble. This is what I understand as agitation; it’s immediately clear where Putin’s Munich speech comes from. And here? There is nothing uplifting here, just some fears. If, they say, we are seduced by the West, squander the stabilization fund, indulge in the oligarchs and do not harass Berezovsky, then we will perish like Byzantium. And if not? What then? Then the Arab will leave us with the cow? If I were the responsible comrades, I would prefer Mikhalkov, or something. At least he can talk. And this one just assents.

Churched Empire (+VIDEO)

Conversation 1. Who was interested in the history of the Byzantine Empire and why?

The second conversation in the series is devoted to the ideal of a Christian state that Byzantium tried to embody. What was this ideal? How were ideal and reality related? How were the spiritual and worldly perceived – in unity or opposition? Which problems have proven most difficult to solve and why? What did holiness mean to the Byzantines? What Byzantine lessons are especially important for us to learn? Historian Pavel Kuzenkov tells.

Byzantium is still the subject of lively debate, a topic open to discussion. I believe it is time to take a closer look at this truly remarkable civilization - to learn from its historical legacy: to continue the successes that were built in the Byzantine era, and to avoid, if possible, the problems and weaknesses that were demonstrated by the Byzantines.

Christian spirit of Byzantium

So what is Byzantine civilization, what kind of phenomenon is it? We can speak even more broadly – ​​about the phenomenon of Eastern Christianity. It must be understood that we are talking about the Roman Christian Empire. The word “Roman” in its name suggests that we are dealing with the political order that was founded by Caesar Augustus, with all the wealth of Roman political, legal, legal, economic culture, which was formalized in a classical form under Emperor Constantine in the 4th century . But the most important thing for us is that it was a Christian civilization. And the Roman Empire began to be called Byzantium in our vocabulary in order to distinguish between the pagan empire and the Christian empire. But the self-name of this state - the Roman Empire, that is, the Roman Empire - did not change, it remained that way until its fall.

The main thing in the self-determination of the Byzantines was the concept of “Christians”. What does it mean? For the first time in history we encounter the experience of creating a churched state. This is precisely what expresses the very spirit of Byzantium and Byzantism, as it was customary to call the totality of the features of this civilization at the beginning of the twentieth century in Russian historical science. Emperor Constantine, having adopted Christianity, did not limit himself only to the personal choice of following Christ; Christianity was not just his personal faith - he made a rather daring attempt to create a Christian empire, to create a state living according to the law of Christ, according to the law of the New Testament. There is no need to say how difficult and high this task was. And we, of course, see that in specific historical conditions, in the conditions of a specific foreign and domestic political situation, the solution to this problem encountered a huge number of difficulties.

The state takes care of the body of the people, and the Church takes care of the people’s soul

But the most important thing for us is that such a task was set, that the state, from the 4th century until the very end of the empire, actually made the Church the core of the system of educating society, and itself retreated to the political path, to the political, if you like, flank, and that system was formed , which in the preamble to the 6th novella of Justinian the emperor calls a symphony. This is a special system of relations between the priesthood and the kingdom, in which the state and the Church lead the people, society to prosperity, the achievement of good, but at the same time the state takes care of the body of the people, and the Church takes care of the people’s soul, that is, education, edification, creation moral person.

What is correct here is that the state and the Church set themselves the same task, and the achievement of material benefits and spiritual benefits is not opposed to each other, but is perceived as an integral part of a single whole. Since every good comes from the Lord and every good belongs to the Lord, then any blessings, including material ones, cannot be achieved by moving away from God. This is the “recipe for survival” of Byzantium, its prosperity, its political, military, economic victories and achievements.

And this was not just a program: a lot was done for its practical implementation. The holy Emperor Constantine himself undertook a large-scale reform of the legal system of the state. It was not abrupt, gradual, but, nevertheless, Roman society changed a lot. It began to change in its ideological foundations. And this affected the attitude towards women, children, and family, first of all - Emperor Constantine began with this. And subsequently it developed progressively into the field of social relations.

Problems of the old man

Emperor Basil I and his son Leo VI

This concerned, first of all, the ideal, including in economic activity, which the Roman Empire inherited from the ancient economic model, but under the influence of New Testament, Christian norms, tried to ennoble and bring into some form more consistent with the gospel ideals. This was far from easy to do. The economy of the ancient world was built on the principle of ancient capitalism, which was based on private property, personal enrichment, etc. But the New Testament ideal, as we know, is completely different. The apostolic community had common property, and any attempt at selfish, individual separation from the brethren was condemned. This antinomy, a certain problem of the relationship between a prosperous economy based on private property and the ideal of communal property ownership, remained one of the most painful throughout the history of Byzantine civilization.

It was in the monasteries that the ideal of Christian economics was realized

But a form was found in which these two ideals - old and new - could be combined: this is the form of monastic life. It was in the monasteries, which appeared immediately after the strengthening of monastic life, after the establishment of Christianity as the dominant religion, that the ideal of Christian economics was realized. This is an ideal associated with common property and the absence of any divisions into masters, slaves, employees, etc. The monasteries were a kind of models - all other people gravitated towards them to one degree or another, but in general the economic model remained the same, and this certain contradiction of the declared Christian values ​​​​and the practice of everyday life was one of those weaknesses of the Byzantine civilization that ultimately led her to a certain decline. And we should know about this.

But an ancient action, borrowed from ancient political models, also played a key role in this - first of all, this concerns the political struggle associated with the achievement of power, wealth, with selfishness, selfish corporate solidarity - this often changed the social organism of Byzantium, often led to civil wars. It often happened that the Byzantines, in their internal strife, resorted to the help of external forces, as was the case on the eve of 1204, which became a disaster for Byzantium. The empire practically died for some time. It was revived, but it was already a weak semblance of its former greatness. And subsequently, the idea of ​​external assistance in the fight against one’s own ailments became one of the most painful for Byzantine society as a whole, since it was associated with the need to sacrifice certain national interests and national principles.

Ultimately, in the 15th century, the empire died - literally a few years after the conclusion of the Union of Florence, which in its form was nothing more than the spiritual capitulation of Byzantium, a recognition of its inferiority as a bearer of Orthodoxy. And by everyone without exception, including Latin Christians, this was perceived precisely as a form of concession on the part of Byzantium for military and economic assistance - primarily, of course, military assistance - from the Western world against Turkish aggression.

It all ended with Byzantine society being deeply demoralized, split and becoming an easy victim of the enemy.

These problems—the problems of the old man, as one might call them—are characteristic of all Christian political communities in general. And, in fact, this is the main task of the Christian Church, to solve them. And this movement from the old man to the new man, from the era of Law to the era of Grace always occurs painfully and very slowly. This movement takes centuries, millennia of continuous struggle for human improvement. Since we are talking about nothing more than a deep internal metamorphosis of the very nature of fallen man, who, although redeemed by the Savior during His descent into the world, remains at the same time gravitating towards this old, old, Adamic nature. And therefore, all those temptations that are characteristic of the Old Testament man also affect the New Testament man. But, unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament gives a clear recipe for how to fight these temptations, and this fight lies beyond the law - this is also very important. Emperor Constantine was the first of the Christian sovereigns to understand this.

State of Saints

It is impossible to make a person perfect with the help of the state apparatus. It is impossible to use coercion to force people to live in a community and to give up personal and private property. You cannot make a person a saint with the help of police and military measures. And this feeding, the cultivation of holiness was the main task of the Byzantine civilizational model.

We can say that Byzantium is a state of saints. This is most clearly expressed in the examples on which Romans were raised from childhood. If ancient people were brought up on the examples of ancient heroes, politicians, some successful figures who left their names throughout the centuries - those who are called famous people, then for a person living in Byzantium, the most important model of behavior was the saints. It was the lives of the saints that formed the educational series on which generations of Byzantines learned to live. Of course, it was difficult to expect that all people would be capable of such feats as the saints, but, nevertheless, it was the saints who set the moral bar, and most importantly, those ideological foundations and behavioral models that a person was guided by in later life. He could violate them, he could not live up to them, but he understood them, and this is very important.

The Byzantines understood: holiness is their ideal and norm

When we talk about Byzantium as a state of saints, we do not say that all Byzantines were saints. But they all understood that holiness was their ideal and norm. This is also a very important point that distinguishes Byzantine civilization from Western civilization, where there were also many saints, but saints were perceived as a supernatural state for a person - the state of such a “normal person” who was neither a saint nor a criminal, the state of Aristotle, was recognized as more natural. golden mean."

The Byzantine Orthodox Eastern Christian tradition followed a path closer to the New Testament idea: everyone must be saved - and in order to be saved, you need to be a saint. And it is no coincidence that the first Christian communities called each other that way - communities of saints, and no one perceived this as some kind of supernatural state. This holiness, this desire to be close to God permeated the entire life of Byzantine society.

The churching of the state should be distinguished from the merger of the state with the Church - this is a very important point. The Byzantine tradition since the times of the emperors Constantine and Justinian and the Church itself very strictly ensured that the state did not suppress the Church, did not absorb it, did not make it its institution. The Church had to remain not of this world - this is a very important point. If the Church becomes part of the world, becomes a public organization, it will lose the opportunity to heal fallen humanity, it will lose the opportunity to heal its ailments, because it itself will begin to suffer from them. This is the difference between the Church and the law enforcement system, from the system of laws, from the so-called morality, which, being part of the public worldview - a certain system of values, turns out to be incapable of healing itself from mistakes.

But it is very important that the idea of ​​striving for the Kingdom of Heaven, the perception of one’s existence here precisely as a stage towards entering a future life, was also manifested in the fact that the Byzantines lived to a large extent almost as if in monasticism. Prayer has become an important element of everyday life. Prayer accompanied the person from morning to evening. And not only a church person, but any person. First of all, this applied to high-ranking people. An interesting treatise in many respects, “Strategikon,” written by a high-ranking military leader of the 11th century, has reached us. "Strategikon" is a manual on military affairs: it talks about command and control, etc. But the most important part of the Strategikon is occupied by moral teachings. Why? – Because in the Byzantine worldview, no military victories were possible without a moral sense of truth, without moral health, Christian piety.

Piety was a condition for achieving any good. And love for God, the desire to please Him, to know His Providence led to the fact that people spent a lot of time reading the Holy Scriptures, meditating on the words of Christ, and studying the works of the patrists. And even in this “Strategikon” the military leader writes: “When you have free time, read historical works and church books,” that is, the Holy Scriptures and the works of the holy fathers. “And don’t think,” he writes, “that this is of no benefit to the military. You will receive enormous benefits." Because it was there, in the sacred texts, that a person drew the main models of behavior that guided him in life situations. It was not only a historical experience, which is also important, but also a spiritual experience.

Therefore, there was constant communication between emperors, military leaders, and high-ranking officials with clergy, monks, and people who retired to the deserts, to the mountains and were perceived by everyone as those on whose prayers the empire rests. This feeling is almost Old Testament, but it was also spiritualized, enlivened by the experience of practical holiness, because in Byzantium there were not only ancient saints, but also every century produced a host of its own ascetics, glorified by some kind of exploits and miracles.

The education system was built in exactly the same way. Education was not based on the method of saturation with knowledge, but primarily as a form of spiritual enlightenment: a person had to learn to behave correctly, to correctly define good and evil. And therefore, Orthodoxy provided the main basis for the education system, which did not exclude the use of the ancient tradition, called external wisdom, external philosophy, which formed the basis for worldly sciences.

Civilization know-how

Pavel Kuzenkov. Photo: Pravoslavie.Ru

For Byzantium, the synthesis of the worldly and spiritual is organic

In general, for Byzantium the synthesis of the worldly and the spiritual is very organic, and this, I think, can be called one of the main distinguishing parameters of Byzantine civilization. There was never a painful pedaling of theocratic, religious dominance, it was truly harmony, the desire for a harmonious combination of the spiritual and secular, and most importantly, a clear understanding that worldly successes are part of spiritual successes. This is very well expressed in the preamble to the 6th novella of Justinian, where it is said that “if the Church is holy and the Kingdom is just, then this will give all the benefits to the human race.” And he will produce this very symphony, which is nothing more than a complete analogy of a musical symphony, when the state and the Church play their musical parts, but do not go out of tune, and all this gives rise to amazing harmony.

This is very important: there is actually only one way to achieve success - to please the Lord, to know His Providence, to live up to the high rank of a person and not for a second, not for a minute, to give up working to fight your sins, temptations, and always strive for spiritual improvement. This is also a high, one might say, unattainable ideal, but the formulation of this task itself is very important here. We are not talking about how successfully or not successfully it was solved, but the fact that this task was posed at the official worldview level is the main source of all the positive, successful achievements of Byzantium, and it is important for us to call this, probably, its main civilizational innovation. how.

Byzantium is one of the longest living civilizations, if not the only one since the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, when, in fact, this phenomenon of Byzantine civilization arose: IV-XV centuries - more than a thousand years. And Byzantium not only existed during this period as a virtually unchanged civilizational model, as a single state with civilizational continuity, but it extended this model to the vast expanses of Eurasia, and Western European states - modern Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, including Russia, can rightfully be called heirs of the great Byzantine tradition. I did not make a reservation: the West also inherited the Byzantine tradition, because the Western Empire was also the possession of Constantine the Great. Moreover, he came to the East from the West. And the triumph of Christianity began precisely with the western half of the Roman Empire. But Eastern Christianity, the eastern half of the empire, created a foundation, primarily cultural, because the Greek language was the language of culture of the Roman Empire, and it is no coincidence that the Gospels and the Old Testament have been preserved to this day in Greek. It is important here that the unity of the Western and Eastern Christian world, which persisted until the early Middle Ages, was based on one ideological civilizational foundation - the foundation of a churched empire, a churched state.

Controversies surrounding Byzantium

Natalia Narochnitskaya,

Doctor of Historical Sciences,

Head of the Paris Institute for Democracy and Cooperation

Film by Archimandrite Tikhon “The Death of an Empire. The Byzantine Lesson" is very important today, primarily because it lifts modern man above his immediate goals, showing where the river of universal history flows.

But this is not easy to accept. Modern man is inclined to see only the tiny bend of the coast allotted to him and believe that this is the main direction. And when they try to show him in a panorama the whole path and its meaning, point out the origins and open the perspective, he plugs his ears and closes his eyes. This irritates him because it burdens him with responsibility for how his life influences the direction of human history. And not everyone can bear such responsibility. She's a burden.

This largely explains the wave of criticism that followed the film's release. Its meaning is too incompatible with stereotypes, with a person’s orientation towards the autonomy of the individual from all religious, moral, national and family foundations. Atomization is a feature of modern consciousness, which tends to isolate itself from great issues and become isolated on consumerism in all spheres.

But of all earthly creatures, only man has a history; he alone is guided in his actions not only by momentary circumstances, but also by an understanding of the role that he is called upon to fulfill in history. Only man has both a chronicle and legends, along with his own concepts about his historical tasks and his historical responsibilities. We must learn from our historical experiences if we want to have a future.

This is why this film is so necessary. And this is precisely why he so irritates critics, whose quibbles with details and accusations of schematism are so insignificant! Of course, a certain schematism is inevitable in such a genre. Otherwise, it would be necessary to accompany each thesis with volumes of documents. Although it is famously poster-like, the film is distinguished by deep and laconic formulations. And he is truthful.

Another thing is that assessing the truthfulness and accuracy of a film is an impossible task for many today. A modern person does not have sufficient knowledge in his head, and therefore much of true history seems incredible, far-fetched, and distorted. Thus, some of the terms in the film, which critics laugh at, are, in their opinion, artificially thrown back from today to the past, but they precisely came to us from ancient times. For example, “oligarchy” is the power of a group, always accompanied by ochlocracy – the power of the crowd, controlled through the processing of consciousness, a term coined by Aristotle and Polybius as a perversion of democracy.

The universal significance of the Byzantine heritage has been removed from human consciousness. And therefore it seems implausible to a contemporary that for a millennium and a half, Byzantium was the cultural metropolis of the world, and the West was its backyard, where rude morals reigned, dirt, stench and sewage floated right through the streets. But it was true.

And the film is just as reliable when it comes to the sources of the sharp enrichment of the West as a result of the robbery of Byzantium. The scale of wealth exported from Byzantium and then from South America during the Conquest, comparable to the labors of generations, is still underestimated. This is an inconvenient truth for many.

The film is even more annoying to critics when it talks about the role of the West in the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. And during the thunderstorm over Byzantium, the Christian sister, and today in relation to the Serbs, isn’t the same thing repeated: if you want protection, go into submission.

Russia must know that Byzantium is our foremother. Therefore, the truth about the greatness and causes of decline should be given to us in its entirety, not only for the sake of curiosity. After all, even the recognized expert on world history A. Toynbee directly admitted that Russia is alien to the West not because of imaginary expansionist aspirations. “The Russians incurred the hostility of the West because of their stubborn adherence to an alien civilization, and right up to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, this Russian “barbarian o,” admits Toynbee, who refutes “the prevailing notion in the West that Russia is an aggressor.”

It's hard to escape the impression that criticism of the film is actually covering up fear of a debate about Russia's place in the world. But isn’t a reconciliation with the historical compass overdue? Opponents are afraid of discourse in broad historical and philosophical categories. But without this, one cannot find a historical project that connects the past, present and future, connecting Russia and the world, one cannot find agreement on such burning questions as: “Who are we?”, “Are we Europe?”, “What is Europe - yesterday, today, tomorrow?”, “Do we need modernization, do we want to continue in it?”, “What is democracy and what is today’s liberalism?”

The film encourages you to think about Russia and the world. There is no need to hate the West at all. We must be able to consider Europe as the integrity of two experiences and Russia itself - as a value without which the world is incomplete, and see our position among the centers of power and civilizations, socio-economic tasks, spiritual and moral state, national culture in a single context of the continuation of Russian civilization in modern modernization project.

And it is certainly not appropriate to turn away from obvious facts, historical analogies, and call them distortions and speculations. It is necessary to destroy the myths and stereotypes created in relation to some countries as absolutely untouchable from the point of view of criticism, and, on the contrary, turning other countries into outcasts. And Archimandrite Tikhon in his film destroys old stereotypes, speaks honestly about important and poignant things, and helps us understand a lot about ourselves.

The hints that the author is flirting with the authorities are also unfounded. There is no flattery towards the authorities in the film. On the contrary, it contains very bold, even daring reflections that if the elite has decayed and lost its civic sense, then neither successful successors nor any other measures will help. And it is directly stated about the danger, even for a successful and creative government, of remaining a separate responsible government.

It is indicative how enthusiastically this film is received in society. It is even discussed on trams. There is no need to dumb down our people. He accepts and understands the most serious challenges, and is able to feel the depth of truly pressing problems. Despite the fact that he is heavily fed “Full House” and endless TV series.

against

Peter Weil,

writer

The main thesis of the film's author, Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov): although Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, in fact the Byzantine Empire was destroyed by the West, which had been jealous of Byzantium for centuries and “dreamed of one thing - to capture and rob.”

The prosperous empire was undermined by Western temptations of individualism and consumerism.

In a film, only the text is important. The video sequence was made sloppily and out of place (showing paintings created after Byzantium - Bosch, Carpaccio, etc.). The text is presented in a literate, free language—perhaps even too free. The parallels between Byzantium and present-day Russia are drawn so persistently that an unplanned comic effect arises: “The country was actually privatized by the oligarchy.”

Vasily II, first of all, strictly built a vertical power structure. He crushed separatist movements on the outskirts, suppressed rebellious governors and oligarchs.” But later, despite the fact that Vasily II “left a stabilization fund to his successor,” everything went wrong. “An unusually viable state began to lose its vitality,” “The people stopped wanting to live.”

So is it viable or not? What's happened? “The state has lost control of trade and industry.” But why? No explanation, except that “the West looked on with envy and greed.”

These are not mistakes, this is a principle. History can be handled freely. For example, in small things. “The organ, too (like everything else? - P.V.) was invented in Byzantium. In the 9th century it was brought to Western Europe, and since then it has taken root here.” But Pope Vitalian, by his decree, introduced the organ into worship in the middle of the 7th century. That's how he got used to it.

The same thing, and in a big way. “The rule of law,” says the presenter, recalling Roman law, codified by Emperor Justinian (6th century). But Justinian rewrote this right, adapting it to authoritarian power, merging the Church and the state. More precisely, by subordinating the Church to the state: this was later called “Caesaropapism,” which was in Russia during the Synodal period of 1700-1917 and continues now.

An authoritarian state is not and cannot be a legal state, since it does not recognize in practice the division of power into three branches - legislative, executive and judicial. Moreover, without recognizing the “fourth estate” - the free press.

“The main treasure of Byzantium was God,” says the presenter, falling into blasphemy, unthinkable in the mouth of a clergyman. Not the Church, not religion, not faith, but namely God. Byzantium had a monopoly on God - its own, not like everyone else?

“West,” the presenter calls all the time. What kind of generalized “West” is this? What, England was like Spain? Yes, even for centuries. Italy of the 12th century would not have recognized itself in Italy of the 14th. By the way, in 1337-1453. The Hundred Years' War was going on, occupying this very West much more than Byzantium. It was in the year of the fall of Constantinople that it ended with the surrender of the British in Bordeaux. There is no time for Byzantium here.

In the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries, Constantinople was attacked by the Huns, Ostrogoths, Avars, Slavs, Persians, and Arabs. Which one is “West”? The leader of the Bulgarians, Krum, in 811 drank from the skull of Emperor Nikephoros, who he killed.

What kind of map appears on the screen - from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Caucasus? Has Byzantium always been this big? No, already in the 7th century the eastern provinces were captured by the Arabs, Armenia was lost in 636, Cyprus in 643, Rhodes in 655, Carthage in 698. There is very little Byzantium left.

The imperial form was not supported by imperial content (military force, developed economy, territory). In letter it was Roman law, in essence it was justice dependent on the supreme power. “The only true Christianity,” but the Church is completely subordinate to the court. These are the real reasons for the collapse of Byzantium. Reluctance to change. Immobility.

Talking about how Stalin saved Russian Byzantine studies, the presenter says: “Former seminarian Dzhugashvili understood from whom we should learn history.” The reference point is unambiguous. And - meaningless. The Lenin-Stalin empire lasted a historically ridiculous number of years - 74 years. But it collapsed for the same reason as the Byzantine one: because of the reluctance and inability to change.

Yes, Byzantium was the bearer of civilization at a time when Europe was in a cultural darkness. But only in the first half of his term. Over the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire in Europe, the Song of Roland and Marco Polo, Francis of Assisi and Westminster Abbey, the troubadours and Notre Dame, Dante and Giotto, the Hanseatic League and Chaucer, Huss and Brunelleschi, Joan of Arc and Gutenberg arose in Europe. We are talking about colossal mobility and diversity.

“The financial system has not changed for a thousand years,” the presenter says proudly. Yes, this is bitterness, not pride. Europe, at the junction of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, invented banks, bills of exchange, insurance, statistics, and accounting. In 13th-century Genoa, it was possible to insure a wife against unsuccessful childbirth! And here... “hasn’t changed for a thousand years.”

Byzantium cherished the preservation of the form. 153 chapters (!) in the “Book of Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court”: everything is regulated - right down to the length of the emperor’s hair. The country was ruled not by ministers, but by officials - eunuchs: castration excluded the possibility of hereditary power.

Averintsev writes about the Byzantine “detachment from meaningful connection with historical time.” Is it not in historical indifference to the category of content, in the inability to meet the challenges of the time, that is, in Byzantine origins, that the origins of the ease with which another Christian empire fell in 1917?

From this angle, it is clear that Archimandrite Tikhon’s film, with its emphasis on the harmfulness of change, praising the rigidity and isolationism of “one’s own way,” is essentially revealing of Byzantium and (given the persistent emphasis on parallels) anti-Russian. What kind of people, society, country is this that is so easily taken in by fear, by the machinations of foreign intriguers, by the cheap price of a “beautiful life”? Such an empire certainly does not deserve anything good.

And then the film is interrupted by advertisements for Scandinavian beer and French cosmetics - how bad can it be?