High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, religion, art, science, economy, and politics of the Byzantine Empire. The discipline's founder in Germany is considered to be the philologist Hieronymus Wolf, a Renaissance humanist who gave this name to the eastern Roman Empire which continued after the western part collapsed in A.D. 476, and approximately 100 years after the final conquest of Byzantium by the Ottomans, began to collect, edit, and translate the writings of Byzantine philosophers. Other 16th-century humanists introduced Byzantine studies to Holland and Italy. Byzantine studies is the discipline that addresses the history and culture of Byzantium. Thus the unity of the object of investigation stands in contrast to the diversity of approaches that may be applied to it. - There were already "Byzantine" studies in the high medieval Byzantine Empire.