Aspects of Byzantine History
IN recent years quite a number of books intended for the general rather than the specialised reader have been published in English on Byzantine art and history, so filling a need which previously could only be satisfied by reference to books in foreign languages. But the various other aspects of Byzantium's very complex civilisation, religion, literature and so on still remained, the preserve of specialists, and on such subjects as economics or finance the only material that existed was hidden in journals far from easily accessible. A volume which contains chapters by a number of authorities of international reputation on all aspects of Byzantine culture is thus welcome ; especially so when, like this one, it is well produced, delightfully illustrated and reasonable in price.
The book begins with an introduction by Professor Baynes, in which he examines what we mean by the term Byzantine in history, arid defines the limits of the period. He sets out what the civilisa- tion stood for and what it gave to the world both directly and indirectly, and in a brief summary shows how very considerable that contribution was. The chapters that follow complete the details of the picture that he paints in brief, but with great brilliance, in the introduction. The chapters on history and art are in the main summaries of a very extensive literature, and both have been so often treated that in the short limits entailed by such a book as this there is little space for original research. But at the end of the chapter on art Diehl includes material that will be new to most people in this country regarding the later developments of Byzantine painting and the extension of Byzantine schools to include the Balkans and Russia.
M. Gregoire's chapter on the Church is again inevitably to some extent a summary of the work of others, and what he -says will already be familiar to students of Church history. But this subject actually has a_very wide significance. As Baynes points out in the introduction, an essential part of the Byzantine make-up was a confidence in Byzantium's role as predicted by the Almighty, and' with such a belief more or less universally held, religion assumed an importance in State affairs unequalled in almost any other society. The numerous debates on theological questions, the great schisms of the Church, the major rift with the West and the Iconoclast controversy were all of much more than purely ecclesiastical importance, and at times influenced the whole turn of events, not to mention the conduct of social life. In his excellent chapters on economics and finance M. Andreadis brings this out ; the Christian outlook, urging support of the weak and poor, thus affected the attitude of the Government towards peasant landholders, and they were supported against the great landowners until the eleventh century, when the Government became too weak to enforce its rules.
Though it exercised less effect on political history than did theology, monasticism was none the less of vast importance from the domestic point of view, and the whole of Byzantine social life was to a greater or lesser extent tinged by it. In early time the solitary hermits not only exemplified a life of self-sacrifice, but also came to be regarded almost as seers, whom even an Emperor might at times consult on matters of state. In later days the great monasteries were so numerous over the Byzantine world that the countryside and life therein would have assumed a different com- plexion without them. The story of monasticism, as told by M. Delehaye, is fascinating and is particularly welcome.
The chapters on education and language, are of rather narrower scope, in that they are subjects which had less apparent effect on history, but they are informative and interesting, as is that on the imperial administration. That on literature is likely to appeal to a wider circle of readers, even though the Byzantine world produced practically no writers of the first rank from the purely literary point of view. There were, however, a number of important writers on theology and history, and the task accomplished by Byzantium in preserving and editing the classics was of course enormous. A chapter on the Byzantine contribution to the development and codification of laws might also have been added here. The last four chapters in the book are concerned not so much with the affairs of the Byzantine world itself as with its relations with its neighbours. In Byzantium and Islam Vasiliev discusses links with the East ; here Byzantium probably-received more than she gave. In Byzantium and the Slays Runciman shows the closeness of the links that bound Bulgaria, Serbia and later Rumania to Byzantium. There were numerous wars, no doubt, but the ties were so close that the whole Balkan area can in many respects be treated as a part of the Byzantine world. The debt of Russia to Byzantium was almost as great.
Miller's chapter, The Byzantine Inheritance in South-Eastern Europe, would perhaps have been better placed at the end of the volume rather than before those dealing with the Balkans and Russia, for it carries the story of Byzantine culture in Greece down to well nigh the present day. Those who have written on Byzantium in the past have often tended to regard the Latin Conquest of 1204 as almost the end of the Byzantine age ; at best the Palaeologue period has been accepted as a sad and feeble extension until the Ottoman conquest in 1453. In fact the Ottoman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, represented in some ways a renewal of the old Byzantine one, and many elements of Byzantine life were preserved in Greece and the Balkans under Turkish rule, as if in cold storage. It was the world-wide disruption of the twentieth century that put an end to many an institution dating from early Byzantine times, rather than the invasion of East Europe by Islam.
D. TALBOT RICE.
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