International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Manuela Dobre
University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania; 
[e-mail]
The Image of the West in the 15
th
Century Byzantine Sources
The 15
th
century, more precisely the period between the beginning of the reign of Manuel 
II Palaeologus (1391) and the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (1453) is a time of the 
hopelessly decline of the Byzantine state. Lacking real ability to decide its own fate, Byzantium 
became the object rather than the subject of the events that are taking place in the Balkans and in 
the Mediterranean area. 

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Meanwhile, Byzantines attitude is marked by a feeling of discouragement, but also by a 
willingness to rescue; people react, but each according to its own social condition, level of culture 
and their interests. A part of Byzantine society becomes less intolerant towards the Westerners, 
starting to look to the West as the only source of military aid. What we want to emphasize in our 
work is the manner in which the western world is viewed by the Byzantine authors and if the sources 
of that period really reflects a desire for closer rapprochement with the West. 
Having the image of the Other as a topic for our study, it is necessary to examine the alterity 
in connection to the identity, first to define the Byzantine citizen’s typical features before taking 
the Other into discussion. During their empire’s existence, the Byzantines defined themselves in 
connection to the realities that the Byzantine world’s unity relied on, which is the State, the culture, 
and especially the Church. Consequently, the characterization of the alterity supposes the same 
respects approaching, although together with the physical and moral features also important in the 
process of the Other comprehension.
Under the circumstances of the crisis produced by the Turkish conquests and especially of 
the fall of Constantinople, the Byzantine perception on the Western world is radically changed 
compared with that of the 12-13
th
centuries: the Westerners are no longer in the field of the barbarian 
otherness, and even if they remain hostile and fierceful from some viewpoints, they are seen as 
a dialogue alterity and the political and cultural discrepancies between them and the Byzantines 
gradually lose their importance.