Why the term Byzantine Empire shouldn't be used any more!

2 years ago
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Many scholars use the term Byzantine Empire for the Eastern Roman Empire, but hilariously, this is a term that was coined in the 16th century in western Europe, a hundred years after the Fall of Constantinople, by a scholar with the name of Hieronymus Wolf. He was the one to first introduce the term Byzantine Empire, but the Eastern Romans did not even know this term. They always saw themselves as Romans, in greek Romaioi. The Western European kingdoms however wanted to de-legitimize the Eastern Romans as not being the true successors of the Roman Empire, and so this term was used as a derogatory term to degrade the Eastern Romans to mere Greeks, and to bolster their own claims to the succession of Rome. So if you would travel back in time to 1000 AD and call the Eastern Romans Byzantines, you would likely end beaten up in a back-alley of Constantinople. Thus, I personally try to avoid the term Byzantine Empire or Byzantine the best I can, and I am quite surprised to find many scholars adapting this derogatory term so willingly. I want to call the people of the Eastern Roman Empire what they truly were, namely Romans, and not use a made up term by a biased 16th century historian.

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