Page 49 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Greek Islands

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Byzantine Greece
In the 4th century AD, the Roman empire was succeeded by the
Byzantine empire. This was based at Constantinople, with the
Greek Islands seen as unimportant backwaters. Christianity
became the official reli gion in 380 AD, and the famed Athenian
philo so phy schools closed as Christianity supplanted Classical
thought. Many churches and monasteries were built across the
islands in this time, leaving a wealth of Byzantine religious art
and buildings. However, piracy and invasion were constant
across the islands, com pel ling Byzantium to seek Genoese aid RELIGIOUS ART
in return for ceding the Northeast Aegean islands to them. Religious art in 16th-
and 17th-century
Crusader and Venetian Greece Venetian Crete imbued
When Constantinople fell to the Crusaders in 1204, Greece was Byzantine iconography
divided between the Venetians and the Franks. The Venetians with Renaissance sen-
fortified many islands, holding them for centuries. Their rule, sibilities. Masters of
which promoted Catholicism, was resented in these Orthodox the style included Mihïl
lands, although it left a rich cultural and architectural legacy. Damaskinos, Theodore
The Knights Hospitaller, a military order tasked with defending Poulakis, Emmanouil
the Holy Land, came to Rhodes after Jerusalem fell in 1291, Tzanes and El Greco.
eventually conquering the island and most of the Dodecanese.

313 and 325 AD 1204 AD
Roman emperor Constantine The Fourth Crusade sacks
the Great issues edicts Constantinople and deposes
encouraging Christianity. the Byzantine emperor.

1054 AD 1309 AD
The Great Schism takes The Knights
place between the Hospitaller conquer
churches based in Rome Rhodes and the
and Constantinople. Dodecanese.
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