| A | B |
|---|
| clergy | people, such as priests and bishops, ordained for religious services |
| laity | lay members of a church (not ordained) |
| icons | a representation or picture of a sacred Christian person, the picture or statue itself regarded as sacred |
| iconoclast | supporter of Emperor Leo III, who ordered all icons removed from churches because he believed the encouraged superstition and worship of idols |
| schism | a separation of the church in A.D. 1054 that created the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the East |
| mosaic | a kind of picture the Byzantine artists excelled at creating, made by setting small pieces of glass or tile into mortar |
| illuminated manuscript | the art of decorating a book page with elaborate designs, beautiful lettering, or miniature paintings as practiced by religious scholars of the Byzantine Empire and later adopted in western Europe |
| steppe | an immense semiarid grass-covered plain found in southeastern Europe and Siberia |
| boyar | a member of the council of landowners and wealthy merchants who assisted princes in early Russia |
| tsar | an emperor of early Russia |
| Constantine | the Roman emperor that built Constantinople in 330 A.D. in the very strategic penninsula between Europe and Asia, the Black Sea and the Mediterraniean Sea |
| Justinian | the Emperor Who Never Sleeps, he ruled the Byzantine Empire at its height |
| Theodora | a supportive wife of Justinian and an active participant in government, she advocated that a wife had the right to own land equal to her wealth at betrothal |
| Leo III | the emperor who ordered all icons to be removed from churches in A.D. 726 |
| Cyril | a missionary who invented an alphabet for the Slavic languages in order to spread the Orthodox Christianity |
| Seljuk | the Turks from central Asia who converted to Islam, they defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert |
| Turks | a person speaking the Turkic language, and from th area of Asia Minor |
| Rurik | the Viking leader who accepted the invitation of the Slavs to instill order in the area called Rus |
| Vladimir | he became Grand Prince in A.D. 980 and brought Eastern Orthdoxy to Kievan Russia |
| Alexander Nevsky | the prince of Novgorod who defeated the invading Swedes in A.D. 1240 |
| Ivan III | he married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor in A.D. 1472 and claimed the title tsar (caesar) and claimed himself Sovereign of All Russia |
| Constantinople | strategic city of the Byzantine Empire located on the penninsula between Europe and Asia, and the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, birthplace of the Eastern Orthodox religion |
| Balkan Penninsula | a penninsula in southeastern Europe bounded by the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas to the east and the Adriatic and Ionian Seas to the sest and the Black Sea to the east |
| Asia Minor | the western penninsula of Asia, lying between the Black and Mediterranean Seas |
| Adriatic Sea | an arm of the Mediterranean Sea extending between Italy and the Balkan Penninsula |
| Manzikert | a town in the northeast of Asia Minor where the Seljuk defeated the Byzantines |
| Dnieper River | a river flowing 1,420 miles south into the Black Sea and the 3rd longest in Europe, it cuts across the steppes and thick forests of eastern Europe |
| Kiev | located high on a bluff on the Dnieper River; in A.D. 880, this became the 1st capital of Rus |
| Moscow | Alexander Nevsky became ruler of this small town and expanded the influence of Muscovy and which eventually replaced Kiev as the capital of Russia |
| Volga River | the longest river in Europe, it begins in the Valdai Hills and flows 2,290 miles southeast to the Caspian Sea, cutting across the steppes and forests of eastern Europe |
