Modern "greeks" pre-1821 did not think Byzantine Empire was 'greek'

[TrueMacedonian]

[TrueMacedonian]

The myths just seem to unravel themselves after a while. Modern "greeks" this is becoming effortless. You might as well use Risto Stefovs name "ArvanoVlachia" as your nations name.

[Pelister]

This is why some writers refer to it as "the Macedonian Christian Empire" because the language of Christianity in Ottoman Europe was for the most part in Macedonian, not Greek.

It kinda makes sense.

[TrueMacedonian]

I just like how Terra returns to this forum after a 2 day goodbye and has pretty much avoided everything on this section of the forum. The truth ultimately does hurt I guess.

[osiris]

tm sorry batska i must protest i was using arvanovlachia quite a few years ago. but thats not enough these days, wannabbees is a better ethnic description.

[Daskalot]

TM, TerraNova is an ultra apologist.....

[TrueMacedonian]

Originally Posted by osiris

tm sorry batska i must protest i was using arvanovlachia quite a few years ago. but thats not enough these days, wannabbees is a better ethnic description.

That's true you were using it for a while. I remember the anger that alot of the pseudo "greeks" would spew at you when you referred to them as either Neo-Hellenes or ArvanitoVlachs And they said you had no basis for such names,,,yet here we are reading about their Albanian, Vlach, and Slav heros in their war for independence

[TrueMacedonian]

Originally Posted by Daskalot

TM, TerraNova is an ultra apologist.....

Terrable Nova fears the Truth!

[TrueMacedonian]

It appears that Paparrigopolous didn't think the 'Byzantine Empire' was a very Hellene empire either.

[indigen]

On topic and very revealing on how "Byzantines" (up to 1821) perceived themselves is the following:


CYRIL MANGO

BYZANTIUM: THE EMPIRE OF NEW ROME

PULISHEED BY WEIDENFELD AND NICOLSON
ISBN 0-297-793779-9
Copyright Cyril Mango 1980.

CHAPTER 10

THE PAST OF MANKIND

[...]

The interest of the annus mundi for our purpose is that it reflected the entire conception of the human past that was held by Christians in the Late Antique and Byzantine periods, a conception that was both 'historical' and symbolic and also had to take account of certain astronomical factors. This system was enshrined in a type of book known as the `universal chronicle' or, as the Byzantines usually called it, the `chronicle from Adam'. When the average Byzantine wished to inform himself on the course of past history, it was to this type of book that he turned. As a result, the universal chronicle enjoyed a wide circulation, and since it was meant for the ordinary reader, it was couched in simple language. As time went on, chronicles were supplemented with an account of recent events. They were treated, in fact, not as literary works, but as handbooks or almanacs that called for periodic revision. This circumstance has caused much difficulty to scholars desirous of identifying the successive layers of such compilations. Here, however, we are concerned not with particular problems of attribution, but with the genre as a whole and the ideas it contains.

The first impression that Byzantine chronicles produce on the reader is one of naïveté, but the triviality of much of their content should not blind us to the extreme complexity of their conceptual framework. They are, in fact, the product of along evolution and of much scholarly endeavour, and we must pause briefly to examine their ancestry. The story they tell is not that of one nation, but of the whole world as it was then known. The principal strand of that story is provided by the Bible, but several other threads -Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman have been intertwined with it. The synchronization of these separate histories required an overall chronological framework. More importantly, the chronicles set out to explain the working of divine Providence and, since God acts in an orderly fashion, history, too, must express not only His moral purpose, but also the symmetry of His design. By what process, then, was this vast panorama built up?

[.....]

The foregoing, somewhat arid, discussion was necessary to explain the chronological skeleton of the Byzantine view of history. The main structure of the universal chronicle was erected in the third century, perfected by Eusebius at the beginning of the fourth and further systematized ,in the fifth by the Alexandrians Panodorus and Annianus. The work of these pioneers has come down to us only in fragments. The earliest preserved Byzantine chronicle, that by the Antiochene John Malalas, dates from the sixth century, and is followed by the Paschal Chronicle in the seventh, George Syncellus and Theophanes at the beginning of the ninth, George the Monk towards the middle of the ninth, the several versions of Symeon Logothete in the tenth and so forth. The tradition of the universal chronicle was continued even after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks and supplied the historical reading matter of the Greek people until the revolution of 1821.

[...]