<P> Of the approximately two to three thousand volumes of Byzantine literature that survive, only 330 consist of secular poetry, history, science and pseudo-science . While the most flourishing period of the secular literature of Byzantium runs from the 9th to the 12th century, its religious literature (sermons, liturgical books and poetry, theology, devotional treatises, etc .) developed much earlier with Romanos the Melodist being its most prominent representative . </P> <P> The ecclesiastical forms of Byzantine music, composed to Greek texts as ceremonial, festival, or church music, are, today, the most well - known forms . Ecclesiastical chants were a fundamental part of this genre . Greek and foreign historians agree that the ecclesiastical tones and in general the whole system of Byzantine music is closely related to the ancient Greek system . It remains the oldest genre of extant music, of which the manner of performance and (with increasing accuracy from the 5th century onwards) the names of the composers, and sometimes the particulars of each musical work's circumstances, are known . </P> <P> The 9th century Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d . 911); in his lexicographical discussion of instruments cited the lyra (lūrā) as the typical instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre) and the salandj (probably a bagpipe). The first of these, the early bowed stringed instrument known as the Byzantine lyra, would come to be called the lira da braccio, in Venice, where it is considered by many to have been the predecessor of the contemporary violin, which later flourished there . The bowed "lyra" is still played in former Byzantine regions, where it is known as the Politiki lyra (lit . "lyra of the City" i.e. Constantinople) in Greece, the Calabrian lira in Southern Italy, and the Lijerica in Dalmatia . The second instrument, the organ, originated in the Hellenistic world (see Hydraulis) and was used in the Hippodrome during races . A pipe organ with "great leaden pipes" was sent by the emperor Constantine V to Pepin the Short, King of the Franks in 757 . Pepin's son Charlemagne requested a similar organ for his chapel in Aachen in 812, beginning its establishment in Western church music . The final Byzantine instrument, the aulos was a double reeded woodwind like the modern oboe or Armenian duduk . Other forms include the plagiaulos (πλαγίαυλος, from πλάγιος "sideways"), which resembled the flute, and the askaulos (ἀσκός askos--wine - skin), a bagpipe . These bagpipes, also known as Dankiyo (from ancient Greek: angion (Τὸ ἀγγεῖον) "the container"), had been played even in Roman times . Dio Chrysostom wrote in the 1st century of a contemporary sovereign (possibly Nero) who could play a pipe (tibia, Roman reedpipes similar to Greek aulos) with his mouth as well as by tucking a bladder beneath his armpit . The bagpipes continued to be played throughout the empire's former realms through to the present . (See Balkan Gaida, Greek Tsampouna, Pontic Tulum, Cretan Askomandoura, Armenian Parkapzuk, and Romanian Cimpoi .) </P> <P> The Byzantine culture was, initially, the same as Late Greco - Roman, but over the following millennium of the empire's existence it slowly changed into something more similar to modern Balkan and Anatolian culture . The cuisine still relied heavily on the Greco - Roman fish - sauce condiment garos, but it also contained foods still familiar today, such as the cured meat pastirma (known as "paston" in Byzantine Greek), baklava (known as koptoplakous κοπτοπλακοῦς), tiropita (known as plakountas tetyromenous or tyritas plakountas), and the famed medieval sweet wines (Commandaria and the eponymous Rumney wine). Retsina, wine flavored with pine resin, was also drunk, as it still is in Greece today, producing similar reactions from unfamiliar visitors; "To add to our calamity the Greek wine, on account of being mixed with pitch, resin, and plaster was to us undrinkable," complained Liutprand of Cremona, who was the ambassador sent to Constantinople in 968 by the German Holy Roman Emperor Otto I . The garos fish sauce condiment was also not much appreciated by the unaccustomed; Liutprand of Cremona described being served food covered in an "exceedingly bad fish liquor ." The Byzantines also used a soy sauce like condiment, murri, a fermented barley sauce, which, like soy sauce, provided umami flavoring to their dishes . </P>

Who controlled the church in the byzantine empire