Abstract
As a thousand-year empire (324-1453), the universal state that was disparagingly called Byzantium by new-age historians, was the Christian and medieval continuation of the Roman Empire whose inhabitants called themselves Romaioi Romans. Christianity as the state religion and Constantinople as the capital represents the major differences between this medieval Roman Empire and the former, antique one. Its major specificity consisted in reducing Roman law, Greek culture and Christianity into an until then unknown unparalleled synthesis for the whole Mediterranean basin. With its unique legal system, faith, ideology, culture and identity, Byzantium was an unrenewable synthesis across three continents, a bringing together of the temporal and spatial quantum without parallel in history. It is especially important not to lose sight of the economic cohesion of the Christian empire of the Romaioi. It was the only continuation of the antique urban civilization and its monetary economy at a time when the subsistence economy and the primitive exchange of goods were prevalent in other parts of Europe. The stability and universality of Byzantine coinage are one of the most reliable indicators of the superiority of its civilization in a much larger area, extending over three continents and gravitating toward the Mediterranean basin as the cradle of the most advanced civilization in that period.
