Byzantine Empire: positive or negative influence to the Greek cultural evolution?

Answer 1

Since I am a Byzantinist, I must say positive. We may consider Byzantium as a decline of Greek classical art, but think about the west at that time. The Middle Ages were a decline everywhere, and in fact Byzantium managed to create a great civilisation and especially art.

Answer 2

Both.
Positive and negative!
The most positive fact is the transformation of the eastern Roman Empire into a Medieval Greek empire!
Although it started as a Greek dominate multinational empire, gradually- especially after the fall of the non Greek provinces- the empire became entirely Greek!
The survival of the empire was based on the Greek nationalism and after the fatal end the Greek nation concentrated on the memory of the great empire they had in the past!
It was a way to survive and a way to regain the lost provinces from Turkey.
Especially with the 13th- 15th century Palaioligian renascences the ancient Greek learning almost revived in the Byzantine Empire.
The negative was mainly in the early centuries of the Empire! The ancient Greeks were considered as ancestors but the ancient Greek religion and learning was considered pagan and was battled by the early zealots Christian emperors such as Theodosius the (false)great.
The Greeks were never the same after that. This is why now we are still Greek orthodox and the Greek Orthodox Church acts like a leader of the nation!

Answer 3

Not only negative but catastrophic. To begin with Constantine the "Great" who established the dogma "One sovereign on earth, One God in heaven". The east roman empire became cristian by force, and his successors utterly massacred the priests and followers of the former (old) belief, confiscated their fortunes, shut down the philosophical schools, forbid the Olympic and any other games, works of art and temples were destoyed and on their ruins they bult churches to demostrate the thriumph of cristian religion on the old.
Manuscripts of ancient greeks authors have been burnt as heretic or scratched off the texts of wisdom to write stories (synaksaria) of the saints on (these are the so-called "palinpsista").
A few intellectuals (considered also weird by the others) like Michael Pselos or Anna Komnini were limited in using the Attic dialect in their written speech, but nothing further.
Greece as a territory (Thema Ellinikon) was neglected for centuries and therefore invaded by any kind of ethnic groups having no relation with ancient greek spirit and way of life.
Only in the 13th century the Paleologues sent some Bysantine families to Peloponisos for the language to be enforced. A language which was not the result of a normal evolution, but it was the common (Koini) language of the godspels, spoken also by Syrian, Egyptian, even Jewish upper classes in previous years.
The concept of looking at things from all sides (periopton) in all aspects, was substituted by the depiction and view of things in two dimensions (comparison between ancient greek and bysantine art).
Rennaisance, that is revival of ancient greek spirit is owned to Arabs, who preserved ancient Greek wisdom (their neo-platonic school of Ispahan is a perfect example) and science (mathematics, astrolonomy, chemistry, medicine etc) and through the Kingdom of Granada trasmitted it to Europe.
Where it came back to Greece from, not very succesfully I believe...

Answer 4

Both..Dont forget that the byzantines gave also many rights to the turks, and when the West proposed the 2 curches to be united this had been refused...Visarion who was supposed to help, returned back to Venice disappointed by the religious fanatisme..
Although the byzantine architecture left so much...the byzantines had so many conflicts between them...
The ottomans were approaching, Constantinos Palaiologos came for help and gave his life for it...
However, there are also dark parts in the byzantine empire and these dark sides had also in one part of course contributed to the lost of Constantinopolis...