Introduction: Late Patristic - Medieval, Eastern

Abstract

The later Eastern Christian tradition we may take to last from the reign of Emperor Justinian, 527-565, up to the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Such a demarcation, however, is more for our historical convenience than reflective of any epochal shift in the thinking and practice of the Christian faith by Easterners. Just as politically and culturally, a certain continuity was the keynote-the Eastern Roman Empire survived the Western by a thousand years-so the piety of the Constantinopolitan Church and its daughters continued the mind-set (phronema) of the Fathers of the Church, with some shifts, developments, and losses.