'The scope and shape of Herrin's survey of Byzantine history and culture are impressive.

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.Īn 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. She describes the transcendent beauty and power of the church of Hagia Sophia, as well as chariot races, monastic spirituality, diplomacy, and literature. She walks us through the complex ceremonies of the imperial court. Herrin captivates us with her discussions of all facets of Byzantine culture and society. 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. 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.īringing 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. In this unique book, Judith Herrin unveils the riches of a quite different civilization. The name evokes grandeur and exoticism-gold, cunning, and complexity. In this way she makes accessible and understandable the grand sweeps of Byzantine history, from the founding of its magnificent capital Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 330, to its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.Byzantium. Instead, each short chapter is focused on a theme, such as a building (the great church of Hagia Sophia), a clash over religion (iconoclasm), sex and power (the role of eunuchs), an outstanding Byzantine individual (the historian Anna Komnene), a symbol of civilization (the fork), a battle for territory (the crusades). Judith Herrin's concise and compelling book replaces the standard chronological approach of most histories of Byzantium. For a thousand years an extraordinary empire made possible Europe's transition to the modern world: Byzantium.Īn audacious and resilient but now little known society, it combined orthodox Christianity with paganism, classical Greek learning with Roman power, to produce a great and creative civilization which for centuries held in check the armies of Islam.

Byzantium by Judith Herrin