The Roman Empire, as historians of all times and peoples unanimously assert, fell, destroyed from within by wealth, idleness and self-interest. The final division of the Roman Empire into two constituent parts - Western and Eastern (Byzantine) - was approved by Theodosius the Great, distributed between his sons in 395 AD.
Under Emperor Justinian (527-565), the Eastern Roman Empire reached its peak. Justinian made an attempt to return Italy, North Africa and even Spain, which were captured by the barbarians. However, the lands conquered by Byzantium later could not be held.
Nevertheless, under Justinian I, a code of laws was created, in which the union of ecclesiastical and secular authorities was consolidated. The ambitious emperor, seeking to revive the Roman world power, decided to put a legal basis for this. Collected by Justinian scholars of Roman law, both Roman jurisprudence and evidence of the work of Roman courts were carefully examined. From the processed materials, the commission removed everything that had become obsolete, unsuitable for use in the new conditions.
As a result of their work, a legal code appeared, the so-called Justinian Code, which included all the best from Roman law, embodied in clear laws and legal formulas. The creators of this code, following the Romans, argued that only the execution of laws can preserve order in the state and in relations between people.
This body of Roman law became the basis for many subsequent legal systems. Its norms and definitions are used in modern law.
The standard for all time
In addition to laws, the Eastern Roman Empire also had a large modern army. And the walls of Byzantine cities saw different invasions - they were shaken by the uprisings of the plebs and religious conflicts, but this did not diminish the power of the empire.
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At the same time, the inhabitants of the empire had reason to be proud - the country was the center of world trade; products of Constantinople artisans for centuries have become the standard of quality for the whole of Europe.
In addition to the capital, Ephesus, Thessaloniki, Trebizond were the centers of craft and trade. Blacksmiths, weavers, jewelers were united into corporations.
Gypsies began to migrate from Persia to this blessed and calm country. It is believed that the first mention of the Gypsies in Byzantium dates back to 1054. The source, to which all gypsy scholars refer, is the "Life of St. George" created in Georgia.
According to this source, the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomakh (1042-1054), whose daughter Maria became the wife of the Kiev prince Vsevolod Yaroslavovich and the mother of Vladimir Monomakh, went hunting.
In the extermination of wild animals he was assisted by "the Sarmatians, the descendants of Simon the Magus, called atsingani, recognized sorcerers and villains." These people helped the emperor to hunt. They scattered enchanted meat everywhere, and the animals that ate it were poisoned.
Constantine wished to experiment on his dog, and the atsingani sorcerers enchanted a piece of meat in front of his eyes. Saint George, who was present, baptized the meat, and the dog remained alive.
The emperor, struck by the power of the saint, invited him to always remain with his person, so that henceforth he would not be afraid of poisoning. A comment is required on the cited source. In Byzantium there really was a religious sect whose members were called "atsingani". The official church considered them heretics. It is from the Greek "atsingani", again according to the words of gypsies, that the Russian word "gypsy" originated (as well as the German Zigeuner, French Tsigane, etc.)
The mention of the name of Simon the Magus in the text is not accidental and is not made for the red word. And a detailed story about Simon the Magus is necessary for a further understanding of how the Gypsies perceived the Christian teaching, mixing it with their previous beliefs taken from Persia and India. This is partly the theoretical sources of magic and witchcraft, which are attributed to the gypsies.
Returning to the heart of the matter, it should be noted that the Christian religion has long rejected "alien" magic. At the same time, the confrontation between "Christian magic" and "pagan witchcraft" manifested itself already during the very birth of Christian mythology and morality.
Descendants of Simon the Magus
We are talking here about a legendary historical figure, about Simon the Magus. In the "Acts of the Apostles" (chapter 8), it is said that Simon, a Samaritan by birth, conjured and amazed the people with his miracles. At the same time, "he pretended to be someone great," and the people, believing him, said: "Behold, there is the great power of God." When the Apostle Philip began to preach Christianity, Simon was also baptized, that is, in fact, he submitted to a more powerful wizard with his magic.
According to the traditional Christian version, Simon, seeing the miracles performed by the Christian apostles "by the power of the holy spirit", wanted to receive the same power transmitted by the "ordination", and thus "find out the secret", for which he offered money.
After that, he was cursed by the Apostle Paul: "Your silver will be with you to your destruction … So, repent of this evil of yours and pray to the Lord, perhaps the intent of your heart will be released to you." Since then, however, the sale of church offices ("ordination") has been called "simony."
In apocryphal writings, Simon the Magus is usually portrayed as an unsuccessful rival of Simon-Peter (the apostle Peter, who was Simon by birth, but Jesus called "Peter" - "stone"). This is a famous wandering story about the "duel of wizards". Simon the magician tries to compete with Simon the “Stone” and fails, also enters into a debate on the foundations of the Christian doctrine and again fails.
Despite such unluckiness, it is said that Simon the magician knows how to enter and exit unharmed from the fire, throw off his chains, change his appearance, fly through the air and raise the dead.
He was a contemporary of Christ and began to preach around the same time.
It is noteworthy that Jesus Christ of the New Testament could only “walk on water”, that is, “tamed” the element of water, while Simon the magician was “subject” to fire and air - other elements. And both of them can raise the dead. But the supernatural abilities of Simon the Magician were invariably attributed by Christians to the result of devilish instigation.
Simon the magician gathered followers around him, who formed an independent sect of Simonian, and soon appeared in Rome under the emperor (according to some sources - Nero, that is, in 54-68 AD, according to others - under Claudius, a little earlier, from 41 to 54 AD).
According to the version of the Acts of Rome, he tried to take off and jumped from a high tower to prove his power over the powers of heaven. Demons obedient to him catch him, but the Apostle Peter forces them to retreat, and the sorcerer is smashed to death on stones.
The present time and circumstances of Simonam-g's death remain unknown. Separate groups of Simonian continued to exist for another two or three centuries, but they were not respected even in Gnostic circles due to the abuse of some extreme forms of witchcraft.
The Great Explanation
It is believed that the system of Simon the Magus was expounded by him in a treatise called Arophasis Megale ("Great Explanation"), which apparently played the role of "holy scripture" among the Simonians. Significant fragments of this work have survived as part of a book by the Christian writer Hippolytus of Rome (2nd century AD), who polemicized with various heretical "false teachings".
According to Christian authors, Simon the Magus claimed that he was sent into the world by the Lord himself, since the angels who ruled the Earth began to poorly cope with their work, being absorbed in an incessant struggle for primacy, and the human race fell into final decline and savagery. Accordingly, only a radical change in the religious paradigm, prepared and preached by the magician himself and his associates, is able to save the world.
They are guided by similar considerations throughout the Christian era to this day, more and more heresiarchs appear and appear.
In order for his message to be heard and accepted by all nations, Simon the Magus allegedly appeared before the Samaritan compatriots as God the Father, before the members of the first Judeo-Christian common people - as the innocently killed and risen God the Son, and before the pagans - as the Holy Spirit, clothed flesh. Thus, he combined the three hypostases of the supreme Christian Deity.
At the heart of being, according to the teachings of Simon the Magus, is fire, which has both a clear and a secret essence. From the fire, by emanation, three marriage couples arose: mind and thought, sound and name, reasoning and experience. Unlike the apostles of Christ, Simon the magician considered ceremonial magic one of the shortest paths to comprehending God.
Therefore, he won the glory of the most powerful sorcerer of his time.
Thus, the very term designating the nomadic people and their "false teacher" Simon the Magus was the first step towards creating a negative stereotype that still haunts the Roma.
Historical documents that have come down to us testify that the Gypsies in Byzantium lived both in the center of the empire and on its outskirts (sometimes ruled by the central government, sometimes out of control). Everywhere they knew how to sell their products and services.
Nomadic people
As for their nomadic way of life, they were just trips through a very limited area: artisans were looking for a market to sell their products, artists needed an audience for performances. Moreover, the Roma were recognized as such a useful population that in a number of places their leaders are given certain privileges. The diplomas that the gypsies received in 1378 in the Peloponnese and in 1386 on the island of Crete are interesting.
The documents are remarkable in that they already indicate the occupation of the gypsies - it is written that these are craftsmen engaged in metal processing. Byzantine sources mention such professions of the gypsies as fortune telling and animal training.
The earliest sources speak of the spell of snakes, then the emphasis is transferred to driving a bear. It is very interesting to mention that snake charmers wondered along the way - they turned to people from the crowd: "You were born under a good star, and you were under a bad one." After such an introduction, they began to predict fate.
Gypsies in that era went from house to house, doing fortune telling. It is also known that the making of sieves and sieves was the most important occupation of the Byzantine Gypsies. And yet the main craft in that era was blacksmithing.
The nomadism, as such, was not at all a consequence of an innate "craving for changing places", it was dictated by the nature of the occupations that fed the Roma, and the presence of documents (certificates of privileges), the way of life of many camps was actually semi-settled.
And this was facilitated, as we indicated earlier, primarily by the behavior of citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was regulated in detail in civil legislation. Byzantine laws did not recognize the way of life led by the Roma as criminal and did not persecute them only on the basis of ethnicity.
"Convenient" national minority
In general, we can say that the Roma were a "convenient" national minority against the background of the militant barbarians. They did not take up arms, did not seize territories by force. Already on the territory of Byzantium, the Roma made their first contacts with representatives of Western Europe. This happened during the first crusades that had begun by that time.
Due to its geographical location, Byzantium became a gathering place for knights who set off on foot to Palestine. And they were followed by the nomadic tribes of the Gypsies, thus penetrating into Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and then into the countries of North Africa.
It was during this period that nomads capable of languages received their first communication skills with Western Europeans. During the passage, the crusaders plundered the local population; Byzantine diplomats barely managed to keep the first crusading campaigns within the framework of the "official task." Later, however, the knights found it more profitable to attack their Christian ally.
The split of faith and the world
After the church schism in 1054, Orthodox Byzantines were heretics for Catholics. The topic of church schism is in itself interesting to any person professing the Christian religion, but we will also be interested in it from the point of view of the influence of this issue on the perception of the world of converted Christians - Roma. Therefore, in order to understand the further narration, I consider it necessary to dwell on this issue in more detail.
In history, the split of the Christian Church in 1054 is an event after which the division of the Christian Church into the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church with the center in Constantinople took place.
In fact, the disagreements between the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople began long before 1054. However, it was in 1054 that Pope Leo IX sent legates to Constantinople, led by Cardinal Humbert, to resolve the conflict, which began with the closure of the Latin churches in Constantinople in 1053.
However, it was not possible to find a way to reconciliation, and on July 16, 1054, in the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, the papal legates announced the overthrow of Patriarch Michael Kirularius and his excommunication from the Church. In response, on July 20, Patriarch Kirularia anathematized the legates.
The split has not yet been overcome, although in 1965 the mutual curses were lifted, but, in my opinion, for the wide majority of our contemporaries, the exact reasons and grounds for the split are unknown. But in such ideological and church strife, 150 years passed, and in 1204 the participants of the fourth crusade (Catholics), instead of sailing to Palestine, besieged Constantinople, took it by storm.
Decline of a great state
Further events were tragic. In the process of the struggle between Catholics and Orthodox Christians, the state entered a period of decline and crisis.
The territory of Byzantium began to shrink, the living conditions of the poorest strata, which included the Roma, would sharply deteriorate. And then the gaze of the leaders of the Gypsy people, facing the threat of a large and protracted war, turned to Europe. This is most likely the main reason for the first wave of Roma migration or the beginning of the so-called "Great Gypsy campaign".
But to the question: "What gypsies went to Western Europe at the beginning of the 15th century?" modern gypsy studies suggest that these were ordinary camps. True, there is also an alternative statement that the camps that set off on the "great campaign" were unusual - they were a conglomerate of people with an adventurous psychology.
This conclusion is not accidental. We have already described the professions of the Gypsies of Byzantium. In general, they were working people: artisans, artists or trainers. Meanwhile, the chronicles and documents of European countries do not record crafts or performances with animals among the aliens' occupations!
From the very beginning and the next few decades, emigrants from Byzantium were engaged only in begging, fortune-telling and petty theft. This version has the right to life, because honest workers (as their psychological makeup dictates) hoped that they would adapt to everything and stayed in their habitable places. They were not ready to go where the Latin crusaders came from.
Orthodox gypsies
Let us emphasize once again - the adherence of the Roma to fortune telling in Byzantium did not entail any repressive measures. The maximum that the researchers managed to find was the statements of the higher clergy, where the parishioners were forbidden to let fortunetellers into their homes.
Of course, this is not a Western-European anti-Roma law at all. The punishment, and even then not secular, but spiritual (temporary exclusion from communion), threatened only the clients of the fortune tellers - these gypsies could practice their craft without hindrance. Thus, these measures were a manifestation of the usual "fight against superstition" for the church.
It is quite obvious that the absence of repression is proof that the Roma did not cause much concern to the authorities. Let's say more: the very small number of mentions of Roma in Byzantine sources once again proves how successfully they have grown into a new society for them.
If the situation had developed differently, this would inevitably affect the internal policy of the state and would certainly have been recorded by local authors (as everything that was more or less significant on other issues was recorded).
Thus, we can conclude that crime among the Roma was not higher than among other peoples of the eastern empire. In addition, the Roma adopted Orthodoxy and became co-religionists with the Greeks.
Then a new powerful force enters the historical scene - the Ottoman Empire. In 1453 the Turks took the Byzantine capital, and by 1500 almost the entire territory of Greece, Bulgaria, Transylvania, the Crimean Khanate was under Turkish control. The Turks drove all Christians out of the few remaining trade centers. That was the strongest impetus for the further migration of Roma in search of freedom and markets for their goods and services to European countries.
The gypsies who left Byzantium hoped to use the psychology of the Catholics to their advantage. These emigrants went for a reason: their leaders had a deceptive version prepared in advance, intended for the rulers of Western European countries. The gypsies have unmistakably determined that the string that can be played is religious fanaticism.
Author: V. Brovko
Source: Interesting Newspaper. Secrets of history №1 2013