In this week of the course, you will be studying the early history of Eastern Europe. 
When the Western Roman empire ceased to exist in the fifth century, Roman
civilization continued to flourish as the Byzantine Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean
for another thousand years.  There, in addition to Roman traditions, Greek influences
played a major role in shaping Byzantine society. The Byzantine empire was credited
with bringing Christianity to much of Eastern Europe and Russia and with
developments such as the code of Justinian, a massive compilation of all existing
Roman law in the sixth century, and architectural monuments such as the Hagia
Sophia.

Over the course of the thousand years of its existence, the Byzantine empire distinctly
shaped the politics, economies, religions and cultures of Eastern Europe, Russia and
Anatolia.  With respect to Russia, this was especially so.  Most of the surviving
historical sources about early Rus' are sources that were either Byzantine in origin or
that deal with connections to Constantinople, for example, trade documents, records of
military expeditions and chronicles of relations between the church in Constantinople
and the growing Christian community in Russia.

For Russian history, what proved to be of lasting impact was the fact that Russia
adopted Christianity in the tenth century based on the "Greek" model in
Constantinople.  This was at the same time that Christianity was splitting into two
distinct churches, the Eastern, or Orthodox, and Western, or Latin.  The fact that
Russia remained close to Constantinople meant that Russia became part of the
Eastern Orthodox Church and remained apart and isolated from events in the sphere of
the Western church.  This was no particular problem in the tenth century because
affairs in Western Europe were not exactly thriving, and one might say that civilization,
especially urban civilization, was far more advanced in the Eastern Mediterranean than
in Western Europe, but the situation had reversed itself by the thirteenth century.