Forms and Aspects of the violence and intolerance
in the Byzantine and Balkan world of the 11th-13th centuries
The complex and contradictory Byzantine society of the 11th-13th is distinguished by two extremes: a special refinement of its civilization, but also through a violence sometimes taken to the paroxysm. This second feature was to be transmitted to Balkan states emerged and developed in the 12th and 13th centuries on the ruins of Byzantium that was temporally disappered under the bows of the participants in the 4th Crusade, which were pretending to be the heiresses of the Byzantium and its political traditions. Among the manifestations forms of intolerance and violence specific to the Byzantium and Balkan world, one can distinguish: violence as state policy practiced against both external and internal enemies, ethnic intolerance practiced in certain political context in relation to various ethnic groups inside the empire, respectively the Balkan states, and popular violence, as a result of the uncontrolled surge of the masses.
Keywords: political violence, ethnic intolerance, popular violence, Byzantium, Constantinople, Byzantine world, Balkan world.