Word: byzantium
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...year was 1262, and the glorious city-state of Venice was enmeshed in a vicious naval campaign against the emperor of Byzantium and his Genovese allies. The Venetian government needed money, so the Great Council drafted the Ligatio pecuniae. The decree guaranteed 5% interest on money lent to the city-state for its war. The Venetians prevailed and, in the process, established the precursor to the system of borrowing on which every modern government relies. Without it, we wouldn't have deficit financing, Treasury bills or Alan Greenspan...
Furthermore, Adomanis writes that Pera, a colony near Constantinople, suffered by forsaking “a greater sense of Western kinship” and failing to associate itself with Byzantium. This sense of “Western kinship” is bizarre; modern European states have a good deal more in common, in terms of political and economic infrastructure, with the Ottoman empire that with the antiquated structures of Byzantium or, for that matter, of Pera. The only logical definition Adomanis can have in mind for “Western kinship,” then...
...work, for the enemies the Byzantines faced, much like those we face today, were not the kind that could be easily bought off or dissuaded; their goal in life was not to be left alone but to aggressively expand and conquer. The Turks who laid waste to Byzantium were not concerned merely with gaining money, trade privileges, leverage, or power; they were ghazis whose goal was to establish Islam as the preeminent faith over the entire world. Had the Byzantines cast their lot squarely with the West, things would have turned out differently...
...cited W.B. Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium,” which he said he taped above his toaster when...
...publishing record is no less distinguished. During his early years at the British Museum, Kitzinger published the comprehensive and accessible book, Early Medieval Art in the British Museum. Later works such as The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West: Selected Studies earned equal praise...