Byzantine Madonna
And Child On A
Curved Throne
c.1200's
With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, Europe entered the so called Medieval period, the thousand years between the fall of Rome and beginning of the Renaissance. The Eastern Empire with its capital at Byzantium (thus the Byzantine Empire) would manage to survive for approximately those same thousand years.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire and the lose of the civil and military authority of Rome, Western Europe was thrown almost back to the Stone Ages. With the subsequent lose of faith in the old Gods, who had failed to save them, people turned more and more to the new religion of Christianity in both the East and the West, for Christianity offered it's adherents something new, Paradise. While the Old Gods were suppose to protect you now, or at the least improve your life in the present (at which they had obvious failed), the New God offered you the prospect of eternal paradise in the future...ashes now or paradise later. In this time of chaos and uncertainty, when all you had believed in (the continuation of the Empire) has collapsed and the barbarian are literally beating on the gates Christianity sounded pretty good.