R120Tunisia t1_j4d3z5n wrote on January 14, 2023 at 9:37 PM

Reply to comment by HumanMan00 in I think that the term Byzantines is rightly used for adressing the Eastern Roman Empire. by VipsaniusAgrippa25

>other peoples called them Roman

Depends. Arabs called them Romans because they saw a continuity in the East between Roman and Byzantine rule. In the West, there was no such continuity and medieval Europeans called them just Greeks.

>but latin speakers were always present

By the 10th century the only Latin speakers in the Empire were a few Vlach/Aromanian sheperds in the Balkans.

>latin was till widely used

By the time of Heraclius, Latin was only used in offical military documents, something he got rid of because it was literally just something left from old imperial administration which wasn't useful in an empire where Greek was the majority language as well as the lingua franca.

HumanMan00 t1_j4d70k3 wrote on January 14, 2023 at 9:58 PM

First off, “a few latin speakers” is what we have today. At that time there were so many Vlachs and Armonians that we had special laws to cover them. And they were all over the place from Croatia to the Black Sea and from Vojvodina till the south of Greece.

The “few” latin speakers boosted the populations of Slavic states and still managed to create Romania later on. That’s how few they were.

In the 12th century there are still quite a few latin speakers in Constantinople.

On top of that,

Since when are Greek and Roman culture separated to a degree that a change of language is to be considered a change of culture? As far as i know Romans and Greeks functioned in synergy for a long time.

The status of Roman heritage between Rome and Constantinople in other words Catholics and Orthodox is a political thing.

Serbs called them Romei, Bulgarians called the Romei, Bosnians called them Romei. This i know for sure.