A new dynasty, which comes to be called Macedonian, takes the throne of the East Roman Empire in 867, and its forces soon begin to roll back the tide of Islamic expansion.

Antioch, Syria, Georgia, and Armenia are reconquered.

The military conquests of the Macedonian Dynasty initiate a period of economic growth and prosperity and a cultural renaissance.

Agriculture flourishes as conditions stabilize and, as emperors increasingly use land grants to reward military service, the area under cultivation expands.

The prosperity of improved agricultural conditions and the export of woven silk and other craft articles allowed the population to grow.

Expanding commercial opportunities increase the influence of the nearby Italian maritime republics of Venice, Genoa, and Amalfi, which eventually gain control of the Mediterranean trade routes into Greece.

The extension of Greek interests to the Adriatic raises again the question of imperial claims to South Italy and, indeed, to the entire western part of the old Roman Empire.

The physical separation of that empire into East and West had been emphasized by the settlement of the Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula and in Greece, and since the seventh century, the two worlds have developed in their different ways.

Their differences have been manifested in ecclesiastical conflicts, such as the Photian Schism.

The conversion of the Slavs has produced bitterness between the agents of the rival jurisdictions, but the reestablishment of imperial authority in Greece and eastern Europe, added to the gains against the Muslim powers in Asia, reinforces Constantinople’s belief in the universality of the empire, to which Italy and the West must surely be reunited in time.

The fiction is maintained that, until this time comes, the rulers of western Europe, like those of the Slavs, hold their authority by virtue of their special relationship with the one true emperor in Constantinople.