Angels & Demons Byzantine was founded on a pure Christianity-based background. Beginning in Rome with Emperor Constantine, he rooted his strong Christian beliefs in Constantinople, which later became known as Byzantine. Ever since the religion developed, the idea that there was a place for the saved and a place for the damned remained strong. Byzantines held a belief that the earth was part of a huge universe, with another world serving as the afterlife.
The empire further raised the idea that one’s experiences during their lifetime would factor into whether they would end up in Heaven or Hell after death.Heaven was believed to be “upper-worldly” rather than “otherworldly” due to the belief that when one looked up onto the night sky – they would usually look at the stars of the Milky Way – it was really catching a glimpse of beyond, or God’s Paradise. In between earth and Heaven, these supernatural beings were considered either angels or demons, and were able to roam with the humans. As angels were pure and even physical since early Christianity, demons eventually developed over the centuries. Lurking in homes, bodies of water, ruins, and even deserted places, demons began to gain skills and become associated with certain places.Read also this Summary -
com/just-walk-on-by-by-brent-staples-summary-347/">Brent Staples "Just Walk On By"Byzantines of all classes believed in these demons and even associated some with magic. The people of Byzantine were rather dramatic about their views on death and the afterlife. Christian imaginations would look at the moment of death as an instantaneous contact with the other world. Death itself marked a process where the committed sins in a Byzantine citizen’s lifetime came into consideration to determine if they were going to progress to Heaven. There would be many witnesses during a death or a funeral because they were usually made public unless appointed otherwise.Saints and the popes would automatically go to Heaven because they would be expected to not have sinned.
However, people who attended some funerals claimed instances of Hell on earth. Few experiences of death would explain about “possession by demons, vengeful flames…” when someone would undeniably go to Hell. According to the Byzantines, seeing flames shoot out of the coffin would mean that the deceased was descending into the ground at that moment because of the sins they committed. The ideas of Heaven and Hell steadily continued on from early Christianity beliefs.Despite Heaven resembling the same Kingdom of God, Hell was eventually defined with the presence of physical supernatural beings; not only was the earth closely connected with angels, but simultaneously with demons as well.
------ “The End of the Ancient Other World: Death and Afterlife between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages”, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 31 January 2011.. Veyne, Paul (ed). A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard College, 1987.
