ABSTRACT
The medieval eastern Roman world was a society in which the virtues of peace were extolled and war was condemned. Fighting was to be avoided at all costs. Yet the Byzantine empire nevertheless inherited the military administrative structures and, in many ways, the militaristic ideology of the non-Christian Roman empire at its height. The tensions which these traditions generated were resolved by a political-religious ideology or world view which melded Christian ideals on the one hand, with the justification of war as a necessary evil on the other, waged primarily in defence of the Roman world and Orthodoxy – literally, correct belief. From the 4th and 5th centuries on in the eastern Mediterranean and Balkan regions this blending of ideas generated a unique culture, that could adhere unreservedly to a pacifistic ideal, yet on the same grounds could legitimate and justify the maintenance of an efficient and effective military apparatus.
