History of the name "Byzantine

History of the name "Byzantine

The term ''Byzantine Empire'' is an invention of historians and was never used during the Empire's lifetime. The Empire's name in Greek was Basileia tōn Rōmaiōn — "The Empire of the Romans" — (a translation of the Latin name of the Roman Empire (Latin: Imperium Romanōrum); or just Rōmania (Greek: Ρωμανια).The designation of the Empire as "Byzantine" began in Western Europe in 1557, when German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ By­zantinæ, a collection of Byzantine sources. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre (Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ), and in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularized the use of Byzantine among French authors, such as Montesquieu.Before this, the Empire was described by Western Europeans as Imperium Graecorum (Empire of the Greeks)—Byzantine claims to Roman inheritance had been actively contested from at least the time of the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in 800. Whenever the Popes or the rulers of the West wanted to make use of the name Roman to refer to the Byzantine emperors, they preferred the term Imperator Romaniæ instead of Imperator Romanorum, a title reserved only for Charlemagne and his successors.The term "Byzantine" itself comes from "Byzantium", the name Constantinople had before it became the capital of Constantine.