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Summary:
Byzantium. The name evokes grandeur and exoticism--gold, cunning, and complexity. In this unique book, Judith Herrin unveils the riches of a quite different civilization. Avoiding a standard chronological account of the Byzantine Empire's millennium--long history, she identifies the fundamental questions about Byzantium--what it was, and what special significance it holds for us today.
Bringing the latest scholarship to a general audience in accessible prose, Herrin focuses each short chapter around a representative theme, event, monument, or historical figure, and examines it within the full sweep of Byzantine history--from the foundation of Constantinople, the magnificent capital city built by Constantine the Great, to its capture by the Ottoman Turks.
She argues that Byzantium's crucial role as the eastern defender of Christendom against Muslim expansion during the early Middle Ages made Europe--and the modern Western world--possible. Herrin captivates us with her discussions of all facets of Byzantine culture and society. She walks us through the complex ceremonies of the imperial court. She describes the transcendent beauty and power of the church of Hagia Sophia, as well as chariot races, monastic spirituality, diplomacy, and literature. She reveals the fascinating worlds of military usurpers and ascetics, eunuchs and courtesans, and artisans who fashioned the silks, icons, ivories, and mosaics so readily associated with Byzantine art.
An innovative history written by one of our foremost scholars, Byzantium reveals this great civilization's rise to military and cultural supremacy, its spectacular destruction by the Fourth Crusade, and its revival and final conquest in 1453.
Customer Reviews:
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Byzantium
Customer Rating:
I bought this book, Byzantium, by Judith Herrin as I had been advised to read it before visiting the excellent exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. Judith gives a great deal to readers: like the builders mentioned at the start, I had little idea of Byzantium or what byzantine art was about. She writes a clear historical and often witty account of Constantinople through its Christian era from the 4th to the 15th centuary. This beautiful city is described in detail and one follows with excitement the lives of the emperors, their religious beliefs, belief in the power of icons,their disagreements with Rome, the expanding and contracting empire, the disaster of the Fourth Crusade and the final sacking by the Turks. Her scholarship is indisputable but her easy use of the English language and prose makes the book a delight to read.
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
Customer Rating:
This is an excellent book for those interested in all things Byzantine. It is a well-researched, scholarly work. I highly recommend it!
Old-fashioned, clunky, with dismaying lapses
Customer Rating:
This book may, as its newspaper reviews suggest, fill a need for a general reader's overview of Byzantium, but it doesn't do it very well. I doubt the "two men in hard hats", whose curiosity (Herrin says) originally motivated her to write it, would be much stimulated or enlightened by the instant descent into theology (full of Greek terms regarding the nature of God) and architecture (equally full of narthices and pendentives). Theology and architecture (especially the former) are vital for understanding Byzantine history, but the general reader (this one, at least) would be better served by insights into why they were so important to the Byzantines, rather than plunging into the technical detail. Herrin, in short, fails to stand back from from her academic framework (which I suspect is a rather old fashioned one anyway) and give us the big picture in coherent terms. The book gets better as it goes on, and from time to time one is able to get some feeling for how Byzantium operated and how its people lived, but it's a gold-panning task.
Also, given Herrin's academic eminence, I was deeply disappointed to find elementary errors of chronology and fact in the first few pages (as I've remarked in another review, it shakes the confidence when a person with a mere general reader's knowledge finds simple errors in a specialist's work). For example: "... the last Roman emperor in the west was deposed in 476, leaving a half-Vandal, half-Roman general, Stilicho, in control of Italy" (p.13). Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor in the west, was indeed deposed in 476, but by Odoacer the Goth (even that magnificently bad film `The Last Legion' managed to get that bit right). Stilicho the Vandal had been murdered by his nominal master the emperor Honorius two generations earlier, in 408. Such an error (about events in Herrin's specialist period) would expose her to professional sniggering if committed in a peer-reviewed scholarly work. I submit that when writing for the general reader the duty of scrupulous accuracy lies, if possible, even heavier.
A Good Survey of the Subject
Customer Rating:
Because the Byzantine Empire lasted 1,129 years (from Constantine's founding of Constantinople in 324 AD to Sultan Mehmet II's capture of the city in 1453), the historian writing about the empire faces a daunting task. Write about it in the traditional chronological manner, and space limitations will force a laundry list approach with little meaningful content.
What Judith Herrin (a professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College, London) has elected to do instead is to break the subject down into 28 topics under 4 general subject headings and then deal with each topic chronologically:
I. FOUNDATIONS OF BYZANTIUM 1. The City of Constantine 2. Constantinople, the Largest City in Christendom 3. The East Roman Empire 4. Greek Orthodoxy 5. The Church of Hagia Sophia 6. The Ravenna Mosaics 7. Roman Law
II. THE TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO MEDIEVAL 8. The Bulwark Against Islam 9. Icons, a New Christian Art Form 10. Iconclasm and Icon Veneration 11. A Literate and Articulate Society 12. Saints Cyril and Methodios, `Apostles to the Slavs'
III BYZANTIUM BECOMES A MEDIEVAL STATE 13. Greek Fire 14. The Byzantine Economy 15. Eunuchs 16. The Imperial Court 17. Imperial Children, `Born in the Purple' 18. Mount Athos 19. Venice and the Fork 20. Basil II, `The Bulgar-Slayer' 21. Eleventh Century Crisis 22. Anna Komene 23. A Cosmopolitan Society
IV VARIETIES OF BYZANTIUM 24. The Fulcrum of the Crusades 25. The Towers of Trebizond, Arta, Nicaea and Thessalonike 26. Rebels and Patrons 27. `Better the Turkish Turban than the Papal Tiara' 28. The Siege of 1453 Conclusion: The Greatness and Legacy of Byzantium
The core of the book consists of 333 pages, which means that each topic is limited to an average of 12 pages. As a result, the writing is information-dense, slowing the reader's progress. Additionally, the author's writing style is academic (i.e., somewhat tedious), although the shortness of the chapters makes reading the book manageable.
There are 41 photographs of varying quality, many in black and white. They appear to have been chosen haphazardly. NOTE: A good source of high quality reproductions of Eastern Orthodox religious icons is Holy Image, Hallowed Ground (Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum).
As the above discussion suggests, this is a book that will primarily interest an academic reader. Those interested in a more comfortable approach may wish to consider Kenneth Harl's excellent course for the Teaching Company Great Courses World of Byzantium Parts 1 and 2 (365 and 366) (Teaching Company)
Quick Depth
Customer Rating:
Judith Herren's study of Byzantium is a quick jaunt into the stream of history for the novice or expert. Anecdotal but thorough, the book sweeps through more than a thousand years of history without pausing for tendentiousness. A fine book.
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