It was, of course, necessary to feed the huge city population, and in spite of all the produce grown and raised on their farms, the Byzantines still had to import some of the things they needed. Wheat was one of them, and sometimes salt fish, wine, and of course slaves.
It was also necessary to clothe the people, make shoes for them, butcher their meat, bake their bread, cask wine for them, and build and furnish their houses. This kept many hands busy.
But it was the luxury trades that brought the Byzantines their fame and fortune. The goldsmiths made gold cups and chalices, gold inlaid silver patens and plates, gold pectoral crosses (the cross worn by a churchman upon his breast). They also made jewelry and enamel that was so beautiful that people still say that the finest and most exquisite craftsmanship of the Middle Ages was Byzantine.
The glassmakers made their famous Byzantine glass. It was noted for its rich color, and no other glass equaled it until the Venetians began making glass on the neighboring island of Murano in 1291. There was a special kind of Byzantine glass called fonde d’oro. In this, designs of pure gold were put between two layers of glass and then fused together.
The Byzantines also made and exported the finest kind of china, ivory carved with figures of saints and emperors, vases of honey-colored agate, lawn and other delicate cloth, perfumes, strange and sharp-smelling mixtures of spices and herbs, and too many other things to mention. These Byzantine goods went all over the world. Byzantine products have been found even in Scotland.
But perhaps the most important of all Byzantine industries was the silk industry. Byzantine silks and heavy gold brocade were not only needed throughout the empire for church services and imperial functions. They, too, were widely shipped abroad.
In the days of the old Roman Empire, all silk came from China, where Roman ambassadors had traveled 1,000 years before Marco Polo. The silk was carried by caravan across the desert to Samarkand, and then to the Persian border, where heavy duty had to be paid on it.
Silk still came from China—and there was still a heavy duty on it—in the early days of the Byzantine Empire. But one day while Justinian sat on his throne two Christian monks appeared before him, one of them holding in his hand a hollow bamboo. He broke it open, and inside were silkworm cocoons. They had been smuggled all the way from distant Canton or Nanking.
From then on, the Byzantines had a silk industry of their own. The silkworm was cultivated all over the empire, but especially in the Peloponnesus, the peninsula of southern Greece, which now became known as the Morea—the Latin word for mulberry leaf is morus—from the mulberry trees grown there for the silkworms to feed upon. Silk cloth was woven all over the empire, but principally in Greece and at Constantinople.
As a matter of fact, some silk was even manufactured upon the very grounds of the imperial Sacred Palace. This was a special royal silk, and it was illegal to take any of it from the empire.