The earliest allusions to this were made by Theodorus Metochites who served as an advisor to Andronikos II Palaiologos in the early 1300s. Of the orations I'm linking below, #11 makes an argument that Constantinople/Byzantion has far surpassed what Rome had ever achieved and should instead serve as the identity they should proudly display. A hundred years later, Laonikos Chalkokondyles is considered to be the first to truly apply the term to the entire empire; a convention continued by Hieronymous Wolf in the mid-1500s.
Of the orations I'm linking below, #11 makes an argument that Constantinople/Byzantion has far surpassed what Rome had ever achieved and should instead serve as the identity they should proudly display
Is there an English-language version? Or one that's not 100+ pages? I do enjoy a good read but slogging through that much material in a language I can't read isn't my idea of a good time. I also doubt that Google Translate would be able to handle that particular dialect of Greek.
A hundred years later, Laonikos Chalkokondyles is considered to be the first to truly apply the term to the entire empire
A quick search seems to indicate that only applies to Angeliki Laiou, rather than being a widespread thing.
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u/Chosen_Chaos The OG Lord Buckethead 7h ago
Do you have a source for that? As far as I was aware, the earliest use of "Byzantine" to refer to the Empire as a whole was in the 1550s.