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Deep reddish purple. B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte) The color Byzantium is a particular dark tone of purple. It originates in modern times, and, despite its name, it should not be confused with Tyrian purple ( hue rendering ), the color historically used by Roman and Byzantine emperors. The latter, often also referred to as "Tyrian red", is ...
Byzantine flags and insignia. For most of its history, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire did not use heraldry in the Western European sense of permanent motifs transmitted through hereditary right. [1] Various large aristocratic families employed certain symbols to identify themselves; [1] the use of the cross, and of icons of Christ, the ...
As a result, 'purple' is sometimes used as a metonym for the office (e.g. the phrase 'donned the purple' means 'became emperor'). The production of Tyrian purple was tightly controlled in the succeeding Byzantine Empire and subsidized by the imperial court, which restricted its use for the colouring of imperial silks.
Purple in the Byzantine Empire and Carolingian Europe. Through the early Christian era, the rulers of the Byzantine Empire continued the use of purple as the imperial color, for diplomatic gifts, and even for imperial documents and the pages of the Bible. Gospel manuscripts were written in gold lettering on parchment that was colored Tyrian purple.
Byzantine coinage. Byzantine currency, money used in the Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of the West, consisted of mainly two types of coins: gold solidi and hyperpyra and a variety of clearly valued bronze coins. By the 15th century, the currency was issued only in debased silver stavrata and minor copper coins with no gold issue.
Shades of purple. There are numerous variations of the color purple, a sampling of which is shown below. In common English usage, purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue. [1] However, the meaning of the term purple is not well defined. There is confusion about the meaning of the terms purple and violet even among ...
British Museum. In the Middle Ages, the term bezant ( Old French: besant, from Latin bizantius aureus) was used in Western Europe to describe several gold coins of the east, all derived ultimately from the Roman solidus. The word itself comes from the Greek Byzantion, the ancient name of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire .
Andrzej Piotrowski writes that Byzantine churches after Justinian's Hagia Sophia often had gold-covered domes with a ring of windows and that gold, as "the most precious metal and the paradigm of purity, was a sign of light and divinity in the writings of St. Basil and Pseudo-Dionysius. It 'does not rust, decompose, or wear and can be beaten to ...