Byzantine commonwealth

The Byzantine commonwealth is a term coined by the twentieth-century historian Dimitri Obolensky for the area where Byzantine liturgical and cultural influence was spread during the Middle Ages by the Byzantine Empire and its missionaries. It covers approximately the modern countries of Greece, Cyprus, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, southwestern Russia and Georgia, the region of Eastern Orthodoxy in Europe. Obolensky described it as an international community within the sphere of authority of the Byzantine emperor, bound by the same profession of Orthodox Christianity and accepting Romano-Byzantine law. The concept is criticised by scholars who dispute Byzantine cultural supremacy, and Christian Raffensperger proposed recasting it as the Byzantine ideal.