Word: byzantium
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...untrustworthy, and acted accordingly. These theological differences, multiplied by the Crusaders' greed and frequent acts of cruelty, cost them the active sympathy of many native Christians. The great failure of the Crusades, however, was the lack of unity between the Western Europeans and the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), whose army, until late in the 12th century, was still the strongest and best disciplined in the world. Working with the Byzantines, the Crusaders might have pushed the Moslems back into Asia. The Western Europeans were never strong enough to do the job by themselves...
...brought enough men with them to make force decisive. While the proud barons quarreled, the Moslems were at last growing united. By 1176 the Emir Saladin made himself master of Egypt and Syria, and turned the full force of his armies against the Crusaders. Europe was far away, and Byzantium was now powerless to help...
...greatest artists Russia ever produced were the profoundly religious painters of icons of 15th Century Novgorod and Moscow. Their serene holy families and saints, compacted of austere line and pure color, were a legacy from Byzantium. But icon-painting went out of fashion when Peter the Great imported more sophisticated Western painting (along with field artillery, shaving and ballroom dancing) in the 18th Century...
Each year some 2,000,000 visitors roam the marble vastness of Washington's National Gallery. Its 4½ acres of art treasures cover the history of Western painting from Byzantium to Bellows (George). The visitors always linger over such masterpieces as Giorgione's Adoration of the Shepherds and Raphael's Alba Madonna, but their favorite is one of the gallery's least-assuming pictures-Auguste Renoir's A Girl with a Watering...
...Their man & wife dictatorship has few precedents. Some have compared it with the dual reign of Spain's Ferdinand & Isabella. Perhaps a closer parallel in history was established by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian, who married Theodora, onetime actress and reputedly the most beautiful woman in Byzantium, and enthroned her as co-ruler at his side...