%{search_type} search results

• Contents
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Preface
• Maps
• Introduction
• 1. The Birth of a New Empire 500-641
• The End of the Ancient World
• Civilization in Transition
• 2. The Struggle to Survive 641-867
• Withdrawal and Defense
• The New Order
• 3. The Golden Age of Byzantium 867-1081
• Rebirth and Reconquest
• Confidence and Classicism
• 4. From False Dawn to Cataclysm 1081-1204
• The Challenge from the West
• Tradition and Innovation
• 5. Defeat and Disintegration 1204-1453
• The Long Decline

• The Residence of Culture Notes
• Chronological Table
• List of Emperors
• Bibliography
• Index

This revised edition presents the history of the Byzantine Empire from the 6th to the 15th century, not merely in terms of political events, but also through the art, literature, and thought of Byzantine society. It emphasizes the constant tension between continuity and change, between conservation of the traditions of the Roman Empire of Augustus and Trajan and the Christian Roman Empire of Constantine and his successors on the one hand, and on the other, the need to react positively to the loss of the Latin-speaking west and the successive challenges offered by the Arab conquests, the Crusades, and the inexorable expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Browning rejects the almost traditional concept of decline and fall - an empire whose decline lasted a thousand years must have had an inner strength of its own - in favour of that of a changing and developing state that at some periods was the ""superpower"" of Europe. But great power status is always fragile, and the story of the Byzantines' response to being overtaken by others is not without its lessons for today. The complex problems of relations between the Christian and Muslim worlds, and between the Catholic/Protestant western Europe and Orthodox eastern Europe (including Russia), cannot be understood without some acquaintance of Byzantine history. Addressed to the general reader as well as to students and scholars, this volume encourages readers to be wary of unconscious prejudice and to reject hasty and superficial solutions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Michael Angold's book is a clear, concise and authoritative history of the successor to Roman imperial power: the Byzantine Empire. Byzantium was a Greek "polis" on the Bosphorus that gained importance in 324 AD when it was re-founded by Constantine the Great and named Constantinople. One of the pre-eminent cities of the Middle Ages, Constantinople played a vital role in the emergence of the medieval order in which Byzantium, western Christendom and Islam became three distinct civilizations. This book charts precisely the development and characteristics of Byzantine art and society. Angold begins in Constantinople, from which the new empire emerged, and examines the city in relation to the world of the early Middle Ages. He shows how the foundation and subsequent growth of the city altered the equilibrium of the Roman Empire and shifted the center of gravity eastwards; he describes the emergence of political factions and their impact on political life; analyzes the disintegration of the culture of late antiquity; and elucidates the reaction among Muslims and western Europeans to Byzantine iconoclasm. Angold concludes with an account of the end of imperial Byzantium and its disintegration. His book is an excellent introduction to one of the most important, and least well known, of Europe's civilizations. .
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Part 1 The early centuries.
• Part 2 The Apogee.
• Part 3 The decline and fall.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

John Julius Norwich brings together the most important and fascinating events from his trilogy of the rise and fall of the Byzantium empire.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

At a moment when the splendors of Byzantine art are being rediscovered and celebrated in America, John Julius Norwich has brought together in this remarkable edition the most important and fascinating events of his dazzling trilogy of the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire. With wit, intelligence and an unerring eye for riveting detail, Lord Norwich tells the dramatic history of Byzantium from its beginnings in AD 330 when Constantine the Great moved the imperial capital from Rome to the site of an old Greek port in Asia Minor called Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople, to its rise as the first and most long-lasting Christian empire, to its final heroic days and eventual defeat by the Turks in 1453. It was a history marked by tremendous change and drama: the adoption of Christianity by the Greco-Roman world; the fall of Rome and its empire; the defeat by the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071; the reigns of Constantine, Theodosius the Great, Justinian and Basil II. There were centuries of bloodshed in which the empire struggled for its life; centuries of controversy in which men argued about the nature of Christ and the Church; centuries of scholarship in which ancient culture was kept alive and preserved by scribes; and, most of all, centuries of creativity in which the Byzantine genius brought forth art and architecture inspired by a depth of spirituality unparalleled in any other age. After more than fourteen centuries, the ever-dazzling brilliance of the mosaics of Ravenna and the ethereal splendor of the great church of St. Sophia in Istanbul still have the power to take one's breath away.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Translators' Note Introduction Guglielmo Cavallo
• 1: The Poor Evelyne Patlagean
• 2: The Peasantry Alexander Kazhdan
• 3: Soldiers Peter Schreiner
• 4: Teachers Robert Browning
• 5: Women Alice-Mary Talbot
• 6: Entrepreneurs Nicolas Oikonomides
• 7: Bishops Vera von Falkenhausen
• 8: Functionaries Andre Guillou
• 9: Emperors Michael McCormick
• 10: Saints Cyril Mango Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

For more than a thousand years, Byzantium flourished at the crossroads of the Eastern and Western worlds. But who were the people of the first modern civilized state? What features distinguished them from earlier civilizations, and what cultural characteristics, despite their multi-ethnic origins, made them uniquely Byzantine? Through a series of detailed composite portraits, an international collection of contributors have created a clear vision of the Byzantines and their social world. Paupers, peasants, soldiers, teachers, bureaucrats, clerics, emperors, and saints are presented in the context of ordinary Byzantine life.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• vol.
• 1. Institutions and society.

This revised edition presents the history of the Byzantine Empire from the 6th to the 15th century, not merely in terms of political events, but also through the art, literature, and thought of Byzantine society. It emphasizes the constant tension between continuity and change, between conservation of the traditions of the Roman Empire of Augustus and Trajan and the Christian Roman Empire of Constantine and his successors on the one hand, and on the other, the need to react positively to the loss of the Latin-speaking west and the successive challenges offered by the Arab conquests, the Crusades, and the inexorable expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Browning rejects the almost traditional concept of decline and fall - an empire whose decline lasted a thousand years must have had an inner strength of its own - in favour of that of a changing and developing state that at some periods was the ""superpower"" of Europe. But great power status is always fragile, and the story of the Byzantines' response to being overtaken by others is not without its lessons for today. The complex problems of relations between the Christian and Muslim worlds, and between the Catholic/Protestant western Europe and Orthodox eastern Europe (including Russia), cannot be understood without some acquaintance of Byzantine history. Addressed to the general reader as well as to students and scholars, this volume encourages readers to be wary of unconscious prejudice and to reject hasty and superficial solutions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)