The Byzantine empire in the seventh century

Abstract

At the beginning of the seventh century, the Byzantine Empire was part of a political configuration focussed on the Mediterranean world, which had been familiar for centuries and was characterised by two factors, one external and the other internal. The administration of the Byzantine Empire, both civil and military, was essentially what had emerged from the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine in the late third and early fourth centuries. The authors describe the life of the Byzantine church in the seventh century emerging from the 102 canons of the Quinisext Synod, called by the emperor Justinian II in 692.The end of the seventh century saw the Byzantine Empire still in a process of transition and redefinition: the Arab threat to Constantinople was to continue well into the eighth century, and Iconoclasm, which is seen as a further stage in the Byzantine Empire's search for its identity and ways of expressing this in the aftermath of crisis of the seventh century.