Basileios I said:
The HRE or the Ottomans don't have good claims to the title of Emperor. But the Byzantine Empire is a continuation of the Roman state, so why shouldn't we call it "Roman"? They themselves and most of their contemporaries called it "Roman Empire". :wacko:
HRE had damn good claims - just as good, if not better.
At any rate, Byzzies were not consistent themselves. e.g. when discussing ecclesiastical matters, the Byzantines referred to themselves as "Greeks" and referred to the Latins as "Romans". Whacky ain't it?
Also, just read an interesting article on the usage of the term "Romania". (R.L. Wolff, 1948, Speculum): Here goes a synopsis:
Seems like the term
wasn't used as frequently as you'd think. Byz writers started using it from the 6th C. on, but it wasn't until
after 1080s, during the reign of Alexius Comnenus, that we see it appear on imperial documents. (they called themselves "Roman Emperors" before that, but they didn't refer to their empire a "Romania" (land of Romans) but only as "orbis Romanum" (Roman world))
In the west, it appears hardly anywhere before that, except in an isolated Anglo-Saxon document from the 7th C. And the rare case of John the Deacon's chronicle where he adapts the 'romani' nomenclature of Byz usage. Otherwise when "Romans" and "Romania" was used in the west, it almost invariably referred to Roman Italy (ergo "Romagna" today), not the eastern bit.
More interestingly, it seems that in the Italian maritime states with extensive commercial connections with the east, there are
no documents - not even the Latin translations of Byz treaties - which refer to the east as Romania,
except from the late 12th C on. In Venice, the Romania & Roman Emperor reference is rather explicitly to the
Latin Empire. In Pisa & Genoa, the reference is practically unknown until
after 1204, when it becomes indeed a reference the exiled Greek state (which they take great relish in using as a way to diminish the Venetian-controlled Latin Empire).
But before that, (again with a couple of exceptions) it is almost never seen. Almost always "Imperator Constantinopolum", "Constantinopolitanum imperium" and "Terra Graecorum", "Graecorum imperator", or at best "Romanum Imperator Constantinopolum". In a couple of instances, even weird-ass "imperator romeum" (a direct sound transliteration of the Greek word, rather than translating it to Latin).
Outside of the maritime states, in all the correspondence & accounts with the east with the Pope, the Frankish Emperors, the Anglo-Saxons, etc. it is
never referred to as "Roman" until c. 1200. Pope Nicholas I uses it once only to admonish the Byz Emperor to stop calling himself that, Leo IX used it once in "New Rome" form ("imperatori novae Romae") during an attempt to heal the Photian schism. All other western popes, kings, dukes & co., in all their massive correspondence,
never used it at all. Nor in any other literature but a couple of direct translations of Greek texts.
The Norman & southern Lombard chronicles documents make use of the term occasionally after the 1080s (after it had become common use among Byzzies themselves), and then for Byz Italy alone (east is still Terra Graeca). But even so a rarity until the 1200s.
In the Crusader chronicles, "Romania" is naturally used liberally - but most frequently to refer to Asia Minor alone! i.e. explictly without Constantinople & Greece! This is a good indicator the Crusaders were probably taking their terminology from how the Arabs/Turks used it (Rum for the Anatolian territory they roamed over - which is what the term was narrowed down to in Arab usage during the 9th C., BTW), rather than how the Byzzies wanted to use it (Roman for the empire as a whole) Only in a couple of instances does it refer to the Byz empire (The weirdest case is a Crusader-era chronicle relating a 1190s address by Barbarossa, from "Imperatorum romanum Fridericum" to "Imperatorum romaniae Ysaac".)
The chansons de geste of the era, when it uses Roman to refer to Byz, uses it in those two common terms: the Byz lands in Italy alone
or Asia Minor alone, but
never Constantinople, Greece or the Byz Empire per se. That is always "Greek".
So apparently the only people who called them "Romans" were the Byzzies themselves and, for a short while, the Arabs. Whoop-dee-doo.
And, even so, the Byzzies only really took it up
after 1080s. Sounds like the "Romani" nomenclature was a late revivalist thing to do - like the latter-day Astur-Leonese taking to calling themselves "Goths". So much for "continuity".
