The people who lived in the “Byzantine Empire” never knew nor used the word “Byzantine.” They knew themselves to be Romans, nothing more and absolutely nothing less. By transferring the Imperial capital from Rome on the Tiber to the New Rome on Bosphorus, dubbed Constantinople, the Emperor Constantine I had transferred the actual identity of Rome to the new location. Long before Constantine I, the idea of “Rome” had become dissociated from the Eternal City on the Tiber. For a Roman meant a Roman citizen, wherever he lived. Before the Imperial period, in 89 BC, a Roman law had granted Roman citizenship to people throughout Italy. Afterwards, citizenship became extended to an increasing number of people in different parts of the Empire. In 212, Emperor Caracalla declared all free persons in the Empire to be Roman citizens, entitled to call themselves Roman, not merely subject to the Romans. Within a few decades, people begin to refer to the entire Empire less often [in Latin] as “Imperium Romanorum” [Domain of the Romans] and more often as “Romania” [Romanland]. The Empire at Constantinople should not be called the “Byzantine Empire” at all, the very name “Byzantine Empire” is, in fact, an insult.
Greek-speaking Byzantines adopted the Slavic name Vlach (originally Germanic) for the Pastoral Care of Romance-speakers of the Balkan Peninsula and beyond. We have reason to believe that in their own language the Vlachs called themselves Romans or Ruman. In his De Administrando Imperio, written in the 10th century, Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitos describes the Latin-speaking Romanoi as distinct from the Greek-speaking Romaioi. By the 8th century Greek had replaced Latin as the language of the administration of the empire. Even so, the Byzantines considered themselves the continuators of the original Roman Empire, and they called their empire Romania. The term Byzantine Empire did not even exist until some time after the fall of the Empire to the Ottomans in the 15th century. So why did the Byzantine Greeks adopt the term Vlach? One explanation is that they had lost contact during the Slavic migrations and especially during the existence of the First Bulgarian Empire, from the 9th to the 11th century.
The Pope placed the Imperial crown on Charlemagne’s head at Christmas, 800. After his coronation, Charlemagne called himself “Carolus Augustus Imperator Romanorum gubernans Imperium” [Charles Augustus, Emperor governing the Domains of the Romans]. The authorities at Constantinople did not wish to recognize the claims of the Frankish upstart in the West, although political reality forced a compromise on the part of Emperor Michael I [811-813]. Michael began to call himself [Michael, Roman Emperor]. Before this change, no Roman Emperor had ever used the word “Roman” in his official titles: the Emperor was simply the “Imperator Caesar Augustus.” Diplomatists at Constantinople would soon argue that “Basileus Romaion” and “Basileus” were two different things. In that view, “Basileus Romaion” stood as a superior and unique title reserved for the ruler at Constantinople. According to this clever theory, Michael had really conceded Charlemagne nothing except a royal title, “Basileus” in the sense of “King.” equivalent to the Latin “Rex.” No wonder “Byzantine” means duplicitous. Not until the time of Emperor Otto III [983-1002] did Western Emperors consistently start calling themselves “Imperator Romanorum” [Roman Emperor] in direct challenge to the “Basileus Romaion” of Constantinople.
Medieval Westerners referred to the territory of the Romaion Empire with the name “Romania” [Romanland]. Case in point: from the sixth to the eighth century, the city of Ravenna was the capital of the Romaion province of Italy, the headquarters of the Exarch. The region close to Ravenna was directly governed by the Imperial authority. In the minds of the Lombards, the Germanic people who wrested much of Italy from Imperial control, the area around Ravenna was “Romania.” To this day, the same region of Italy is called “Romagna,” derived from “Romania.”
Centuries later, the “Franks” of the Fourth Crusade stormed Constantinople in 1204. In the subsequent Imperial hiatus, these adventurers, largely French, elected their own Emperor and established their own Frankish or Latin Empire.The Frankish or Latin Imperial title was “Imperator Romaniae” [Emperor of Romania]. The “Imperator Romaniae” was something different from the “Imperator Romanorum.” In Western Europe, the title the “Imperator Romanorum” belonged to the German successors of Charlemagne and Otto III when they were crowned by the Pope in Rome. Until 1800, most Europeans, particularly Catholics, spoke of the “Sacrum Romanorum Imperium” [Holy Roman Empire] as a serious and important enterprise. Nonetheless, Western Europeans did not call themselves Romans or refer to their homeland as Romania. These words were conceded, albeit grudgingly, to Constantinople.
In the eleventh century, a branch of the Seljuk Turks established a Sultanate in Asia Minor, after the Battle of Manzikert [1071] in which Emperor Romanus IV fell into the hands of the Turks as a prisoner. This Turkish state in Asia Minor was called “Rum” from Rome (and Romanus IV). The later Ottoman Turks adopted the term “Rumelia” to designate the portions of the Balkan Peninsula that they acquired from the Romaioi in the fourteenth century. “Rumelia” was a dimunitive word. If Anatolia was Rome [Rum], than the European territories were Lesser Rome [Rumelia].
After Wallachia and Moldavia coalesced into a single entity in 1859, the name “Romania” was selected in 1862 to describe the combined state. At the time, Romanian unity and independence required the support of France under Emperor Napoleon III [1852-1870]. The “Latin connection” with France aided the Romanian cause by inspiring French interest in their “sister nation” of Romania. For more than a millennium, the state that we call, inaccurately, the Byzantine Empire was “Romania.” Modern Greeks call themselves “Hellenes,” like the ancient Greeks did. The switch from “Romaioi” back to “Hellene,” like the switch from “Vlach” to “Romanian,” came from the politics of nationalism in modern times.
