Talk:Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae

"imperium Romaniae"
This cannot be simply translated as "the Roman Empire". The normal Latin name for the Roman Empire is imperium Romanum or imperium Romanorum. The term used here, imperium Romaniae, would mean "the empire of [the land called] Romania". It is true that Romania had been in vogue for a short while in late antiquity in the west as an alternative name for the Roman Empire, but (Wolff observes) with the end of the Roman Empire it "lost its meaning of Orbis Romanus" there (Wolff, p. 32). From then on, when the term Romania was used, it normally meant "the Romagna". Much later, near the end of the 11th century, a different Romania came into general use with the meaning of "the territory of the Byzantine Empire" (=Greek Rhomanía), due to contacts with the Byzantines (Wolff, p. 32). Of course the Byzantine Empire had always continued to be "the Roman Empire" in the eyes of its inhabitants, but it was not normally recognized as such in the west. This was the usage followed by the crusaders in 1204 when they called their empire Romania (Wolff, p. 33): it was the territory of the former Byzantine Empire, known as Romania. To translate Romania or imperium Romaniae with "the Roman Empire" would be misleading. Iblardi (talk) 20:03, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

But what does the opinion of the West matter? Isn't Byzantium is a direct continuation of the Roman empire?! Jotaro97 (talk) 16:39, 18 November 2016 (UTC)