The single-headed Roman imperial eagle use in Byzantium, although far more rarely. Symbolism of Byzantine Flag Single-headed

In 1453 a flood of Byzantine churchmen and nobles fleeing the Ottomans ended up in Moscow, the center of the last free major Orthodox polity. Less obvious is the reason for its use by the Russians.

Most obvious of these is the Greek Orthodox Church, the place is on center in theory in Istanbul to this day, and so it is not surprising that the Church would use the flag. The double-headed eagle had in the two centuries of Palaiologos rule become identified not just with the dynasty but with the Empire itself and, more generally, with institutions and cultural ideas outside the Byzantine Empire that still remained centered on Constantinople. Michael’s descendants stayed on the Byzantine throne until the city and the Empire fell to the Ottomans in 1453. The double-headed eagle symbolized the dynasty’s interests in both Asia and Europe and keep despite the fact that virtually all of the Asian possessions were gobbled up by the Ottomans within a generation of the recapture of the city.

The double-headed eagle was the symbol of the Palaiologos, the last Greek-speaking “Roman” dynasty to rule from Constantinople.Įmperor Michael VIII Palaiologos recaptured Constantinople from the Crusaders in 1261, from a state-based in Asia Minor. The Byzantine flag is yellow with a black with a double-headed eagle on it.

Flag of the byzantine empire