Compare And Contrast Byzantium And Western Europe

The decline of the great Roman Empire led to the occurrence of events that would alter the European world far more than any person could have possibly imagined. The most significant of these creations being the three heirs, Byzantium, the Islamic Empire, and Western Europe. All three have blaring similarities and differences that can be accounted for due to the decline of Rome. Byzantium found its stability from its previous life alongside the previous Great Empire of Rome, it took away Rome’s legal institutions and even their political structure. Western Europe also made use of some of Rome’s older policies as well and even the main religion of Byzantium and Western Europe were both Christianity. Religion is where massive and subtle differences between the heirs begins to emerge. …show more content…
Despite these fundamental differences, the Byzantine and Islamic empires not only had similar cultural moments but also were viewed in similar ways by the people of Western Europe, who saw them both as outsiders. Coming back to the earlier statement about imagery, the Islamic Empire bans all icons and images of religious figures to avoid idol worship, and Byzantium followed this way of thinking in the eighth century when Emperor Leo III ordered for the destruction of all religious icons. Western Europe was more for religious icons and disagreed with the lack of any religious icons. The Western Church in Rome viewed Byzantium’s eradication of religious icons as unwarranted Islamic influence on the Byzantines, and thus their sudden destruction of religious icons supplied evidence to their view of the Byzantines and Muslims as equally