Histoire de Byzance

by John Julius Norwich

Византийская империя.
"Второй Рим".
Великое государство, колыбель православия, очаг высокой культуры?
Тирания, безжалостно управлявшая множеством покоренных народов, давившая в подданных всякий намек на свободомыслие и жажду независимости?
Путешественники с восхищением писали о блеске и роскоши "Второго Рима" и с ужасом упоминали о жестокости интриг императорского двора, о многочисленных религиозных и политических распрях, терзавших империю, о феноменально скандальных для Средневековья нравах знатных византийцев...
Византийская империя познала и времена богатства и могущества, и дни упадка и разрушения.
День, когда Византия перестала существовать, известен точно: 29 мая 1453 года.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Medieval History, European History, Ancient History, Middle East

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

John Julius Norwich was an English historian, writer, and broadcaster known for his engaging books on European history and culture. The son of diplomat and politician Duff Cooper and socialite Lady Diana Manners, he received an elite education at Eton, Strasbourg, and Oxford, and served in the Foreign Service before dedicating himself to writing full-time.
He authored acclaimed works on Norman Sicily, Venice, Byzantium, the Mediterranean, and the Papacy, as well as popular anthologies like Christmas Crackers. He was also a familiar voice and face in British media, presenting numerous television documentaries and radio programs. A champion of cultural heritage, he supported causes such as the Venice in Peril Fund and the World Monuments Fund.
Norwich’s wide-ranging output, wit, and accessible style made him a beloved figure in historical writing.

Reviews

[Brett C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a highly-detailed and researched history of the Byzantine Empire. Having said that, it also was fast-paced as it swiftly moved from one topic to the next. This was the condensed version of a much larger three-volume and intrusive work by John Julius Norwich. The three major works were abridged to fit into this smaller paperback: The Early Centuries, 337 to 802, The Apogee, 802 to 1081, and The Decline, 1081 to 1453.

The Roman Empire of the East was founded by Constantine the Great on Monday, 11 May 330; it came to an end on Tuesday, 29 May 1453. During those one thousand, one hundred amd twenty-three years and eighteen days, eighty-eight men and women occupied the imperial throne, excluding the seven who usurped it during the Latin occupation. There were a lot of leaders to follow: Constantine and his successors, Justinian, Heraclius, two Basils, Alexius Comnenus—possessed true greatness; a few like Phocas, Michael III, Zoe and Angeli—were contemptible. The Byzantines, on the contrary were a deeply religious society in which illiteracy—at least among the middle and upper classes—was virtually unknown, and in which one Emperor after another was renwoned for scholarship; a soceity which alone preserved much of the heritage of Greek and Latin antiquity, during these dark centuries in the West when the lights of learning were almost extinguished; a society, finally, which produced astonishing phenomenon of Byzantine art. Restricted this art may have been, largley confined to the great mystery of the Christian faith; within this limtation, however, it achieved a degree of intensity and exaltation unparalleled before or since, antiquities which entitle the masterpieces. (pgs 382-3)

Overall this was a thorough history of a rich empire of Western culture and civilization. I would like to read the full three-volumes one day to get a more extensive look into the history. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to learn about the Byzantine Empire. Thanks!

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is history the way you always wished it could be but never is. It is a scarcely-believable catalogue of violent deaths (try being pierced at close range by hundreds of arrows until you bleed slowly to death), sexual intrigues (one Empress had specially-trained geese to peck corn from her nether regions), and religious oddities (men who live their whole lives on top of a column, for instance).

With barbarian hordes, crusading knights, treasures and quests, the whole thing is like Tolkien got together with David Lynch to invent something that you could never get away with if it were fiction.

There are times, especially near the beginning and end, where you can tell that this has been abridged from the three-volume edition (which doesn't seem to be easily available any more). But on the whole it's a very enjoyable and fascinating canter through a period of history which is still not well known, and which is the link from the classical world to the mediaeval world. Great fun.

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 5 out of 5]

По времето, когато “Св. София” в Истанбул още беше музей, турският ни екскурзовод, виждайки ни да оглеждаме недоверчиво изкъртена част от малкото останали византийски мозайки от пъстри и златни тесери, доволно заяви: “Това е от кръстоносците, не от османците.”

Византия, съществувала 1123 години без прекъсване, и много повече, ако броим “стажа” и като част от старата Римска империя, пада под меча на четвъртия кръстоносен поход през 1204 г. Кръстоносците “леко” се отклоняват от първоначалната си цел Египет по простата причина, че няма как да платят на Венеция превоза си, и се озовават в ролята на платена банда наемници. Follow the money. Просъществувалата 57 години Латинска империя разкъсва Византия на деспотства и държави, и век по-късно турците се срещат с обезкръвена сянка на някогашното величие. А много византийци считат тюрбана за по-малко унижение от Римската църква, дошла с кръстоносците. Излишно е да се коментира също така, че разбирателството никога не е било в изобилие на Балканите, и съседите на Византия (сред които и България) се държат подобаващо безочливо и неадекватно.

Не мисля, че сър Джон Джулиъс Норуич е бил фен на “Игра на тронове”, предвид рождената му дата през 1928 г. Но определено е фен на историята като жива тъкан, която диша и трепти и в днешния ден. В тази действително кратка историческа хроника на императори и битки от 330 г. до 1453 г. той скицира “героите” си с техните човешки качества, оцелели нейде сред пристрастността и оскъдността на историческите материали за империята. При проблем с имената, читателят все пак бързо ще се сети, че Византия е управлявана от император без нос, от пленен император, от арменец, от съпруг на бивша куртизанка, от многоженец и от безчет генерали, приели имперските си почести първо върху щитовете на войската си.

Книгата проследява в задъхващ ритъм възхода, апогея и падението на това забележително държавно формирование. Гласовете на първата и втората българска държава, на готи, хуни, кръстоносци, венецианци, перси, турци, представители на Рим и Папството са част от този стар, поизбелял, но зашеметяващ гоблен.

Лично аз все така се обърквам за причините за схизмата между източната и западната църква, а Норуич определено също не е силен в богословието. Покрай приключенията на василевси и генерали не остава и кой знае колко терен за анализ на обществените нрави, икономиката и културата. На моменти се губят и връзките между някои събития, което в този съкратен вариант не ме притесни особено, но ще потърся допълнителни източници на информация, като например по-разширената тритомна поредица на Норуич за Византия, и лекциите на Петър Мутафчиев.

Книгата е писана от любител за любители. Но любителят се отличава с добра култура, толерантност, неограничена от география и епохи, любопитство, хумор и заразяващ ентусиазъм. Византия заслужава да бъде обичана и има много какво да разкаже.

⭐️4,5 звезди⭐️

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

If we view ourselves from a great height, it is frightening to realize how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end.

Sebald was talking about flying over densely settled areas, but to read the compressed chronicle of a thousand year empire is also to view our species from a great height, and the experience offers just as frightening a vantage. From the heights of historical survey, from the distance of many centuries, the professed, the “higher” motivations and justifications barely reach our ears. “Christendom” as a united bloc of believers seems a fantasy; or a joke, an easy irony; as “democracy” will one day be; and all we can see are the compulsive collisions of states; the borders receding, the borders advancing; the cities built by some, and torn down by others; the usurpers and regicides ascending supposedly sacred thrones (each Byzantine emperor was acclaimed “equal to the Apostles”); the political entities in their periods of strength exploiting and devouring, in their periods of weakness exploited and devoured by others; the universal wolf. (Sir Philip Sidney said a great conqueror is but the momentary “cock of this world’s dunghill.”) Just as we fly over cities knowing that human beings are guiding those toy cars and emitting that industrial smoke, so also do we scan each war-filled page knowing that thousands of people, way, way down there – slightly clouded over by “battle was joined” or “the looting lasted three days” – are being raped and robbed and murdered; or are raping and robbing and murdering.

And that last ditch narrative, of “Decadence,” is story we Band-Aid over our confusion, a story that does not clarify our situation – does not point a direction or describe a momentum. Norwich’s remark that the pivotal catastrophe of Byzantium - defeat by the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071 - occurred three centuries before the Emperor became a vassal of a different Turkic state, the Ottomans (by which time the Seljuk order had been shattered in its turn by Tamburlaine’s Mongols), and four centuries before the Empire finally, cinematically “fell” (Constantine XI, last emperor and namesake of the millennium-distant founder, when he saw the Turks had breached Constantinople's land walls cast off his purple robes and led a last desperate charge, his body never to be identified or recovered*), made me pull down my copy of Richard Gilman’s Decadence: The Strange Life of a Epithet, in which I saw that I had once underlined this:

One begins to suspect that whatever “decadence” may be it plays a scapegoat role as a word, an ascription. And it serves, it seems, to cover up our ignorance of, or refusal to see, how the world operates in one of its deepest dimensions independently of what we call cause and effect…History is not a chronicle of discrete events or epochs, nor is it to be understood in categorical ways. Everything connects. The reason “decadence” will not do as a description of Rome is that it does injustice to both her past and her future; she did not wind down, she did not disappear, nor did she bring down upon herself her own fate. Fate was there, and fate is another word for change.

-----


* He was long thought to slumber in a cave, awaiting the hour when he would reconquer Constantinople/Istanbul for Christianity. What is it with Eastern Orthodoxy and agelessly slumbering heroes? The 18th century Russian field marshal and scourge of the Ottomans Aleksandr Suvuorov was also believed to sleep deeply within a mountain, to awake in the Motherland's hour of greatest peril. This belief was so durable and widespread that during WWII Red Army soldiers were propagandistically conflated with Suvorov's shade:

http://www.ganesha.org/hall/suvorov1.jpg

[فؤاد · Rating 4 out of 5]

بخش سوم و پایانی کتاب، به جنگ‌های صلیبی و سقوط بیزانس می‌پرداخت که برای من اهمیتی نداشت. برای من که می‌خواستم از وضعیت منطقه در زمان ظهور اسلام و دو سه قرن ابتدایی اسلام مطلع بشم، دو بخش اول کتاب کافی بود.

کتاب خیلی خوبی بود، برای این که یک بار برای همیشه بدونم چی شد. درسته که خیلی از وقایعی که نقل می‌کرد، خیلی از پادشاه‌های یک روزه‌ای که با کودتا سر کار می‌اومدن و با کودتا سرنگون می‌شدن، فاقد اهمیت تاریخی بودن، اما برای من این خلأ آزارنده بود، این که نمی‌دونستم چی شده. وقتی امپراتوری بیزانس رو خوندم این خلأ رو خیلی حس کردم. حالا دیگه با خیال راحت می‌تونم برم سراغ موضوعات دیگه.

برای بیزانس چند کتاب دیگه هم در نظر دارم که نمی‌دونم کی بخونمشون:
انحطاط و سقوط امپراطوری روم
تاریخ تمدن - عصر ایمان
Byzantium: A Very Short Introduction

[Jaidee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.9 "epic, valiant, tantalizing" stars !!!

The Byzantine Empire lasted over 1100 years in Southeastern Europe and Asia Minor from the early 300s to the mid 1400s. In between you have some of the most interesting narratives around conquest, rulership, Christianity and Art. You have brave Emperors, powerful Empresses, ascetic priests and scheming eunuchs. A story so convoluted and complex with ethnicities involved from France, to North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia to Hungary and beyond. This is mostly, however, about the Greeks and their erudition, contradictions and their sense that their world was specially protected by the Holy Virgin Mother.

To fit all of this in 500 pages is a remarkable feat and my hat goes off to Mr. Norwich who presents this history in an opinionated, respectful and somewhat irreverent manner. He has prepared this reader to begin understanding the sequence of events and the players involved in this most mysterious and misunderstood of great empires.

I am going to take a break and then read the third and final book in my Byzantine project.

Byzantine Reading Project:

1. Byzantium by Judith Herron (topical and an almost excellent 3.8 stars)
2. This Book (3.9 stars)
3. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (a whopping 1228 pages)- to be read in 2027 or 2028

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roman Body, Greek Mind and Oriental Soul

A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich offers a quick and fascinating insight into the history of the Byzantium Empire. The writing is easy to understand, the analysis and point of view is fair and balanced. The story is epic. It is one of the greatest and most tragic in history and after years of blunders, intrigue, tragedy and politics it went down in glory. With the last Emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus serving over 1100 years of history justice and honour. Like Rome itself this is a poetic symmetry begging and ending with Constantine (Rome began with Romulus, Imperial Rome with Augustus and ended with Romulus Augustulus).

A Short History of Byzantium of course could easily be 1500 pages long and would miss out key moments and exciting events. This is not the purpose here, this is an overview. The headlines of a long and complex history. It’s a starting point to understand the Eastern Empire and the history of Europe in general. The Byzantine Empire is so important in understanding Russia and the formation of the third Rome (Moscow). So much of the story of the emperors, their lives and fate is transferred to that of the Tsars.

Even though the book is short, I came away with a complete increase in knowledge. Why the Eastern and Western Church’s split, why the fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 was devastating, why the Battle of Manzikert was a turning point. The influence of the Franks, Pope, Venice and Genoa and ultimately the Ottoman Sultans. Which emperors were good or great, which were bad and some that could have achieved greatness of not for the circumstances. I throughly enjoyed it and feel like I have a good overview, but not any expert knowledge. I would read A Short History of Byzantium again or at least intend to use as a reference point.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Norwich compresses three volumes into one in his Short History covering the 1100 years and 88 emperors of Byzantium. As you turn the pages, the centuries roll by quickly. It soon becomes hard to remember exactly who did what to whom and when. Although some figures stand out such as Constantine I, Justinian I and Basil II. There is an upside to this compacted presentation. One gets a feel for the sweep of history. It is easier to see what changes and what stays the same over the centuries. Below are some notes on a few things that caught my attention.

First there was the extreme brutality practiced routinely by the Byzantines and every tribe or state they encountered. Poisoning, stabbing, hacking to death, raping, blinding, castrating, nose slitting, cutting out tongues and off ears, hands and feet were all just part of a day’s work. Such measures were imposed on foreign enemies and competing family members alike. Second was the constant war and infighting. Palace intrigues and coups were constant. There was always a war underway or in preparation be it with the Goths, Vandals, Huns, Persians, Franks, Bulgars, Normans, Turks, Arabs, whoever. Of course these groups were also constantly engaged in infighting and wars with their neighbors. In violence at all levels there seemed to be little difference between any century or people.

Third were the unbelievably arcane religious disputes within Christianity that had significant geopolitical consequences. Particularly intense were the disputes over the nature of Jesus which created deep divisions and tensions. The predominant Christian view was adopted by the Council of Ephesus in 431. It held that Jesus was of one substance with the father and was Devine and human united in one individual existence (one being with a dual nature). Arianism was adopted by some Roman emperors and Goths, Vandals and Lombards. It held that Jesus was created by the Father and subordinate to Him (in essence more human than God). Monophytism was popular in the early Christian Middle Eastern churches. It held that Jesus had one nature, Devine (more God than human). Also popular in early Eastern Christian churches was Nestorianism which held that Jesus had two loosely united natures, human and Devine (essentially occupying two separate existences, one God and one human).

If heresy over the dual nature of Christ didn’t make your blood boil (perhaps literally for those caught in the wrong place and time), then there was the equally unfathomable Filioque controversy which engendered intense animosity between Orthodox and Roman Christianity. The Latin Church believed as in the Nicene Creed that the Holy Spirit processes from the Father and the Son. The Orthodox Church believed that the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father. This dispute had important consequences since the Popes used this controversy to portray the Orthodox “schismatics” as evil as the infidels. Thus Western European states were often encouraged to not only deny Byzantium support against the Turks but to attack it for its heresy. When Byzantine emperors desperate for Western support tried to compromise by saying the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father through the Son, they were ostracized by both churches.

The Byzantine Empire was founded by Constantine the Great in 330. This Eastern Roman Empire would survive a thousand years past the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. The last truly Roman Emperor of Byzantium was Justinian I in the in the sixth century. It was during Justinian’s reign that the empire reached its greatest extent encompassing most of the Mediterranean coast, North Africa, Italy, the Balkans and the Arab Middle East. The last Emperor who ascribed to Roman traditions was Heraclius in the seventh century. Afterwards Greek titles would be used and the Greek language become official as it had been in the Eastern Church.

In the seventh century the rise of the Muslim world changed the usual mix of wars Byzantium fought with the Persians and the barbarian tribes (Goths, Vandals, Bulgars, Huns). The Muslims were soon laying siege to Constantinople. The author contends that “Had the Saracens captured Constantinople in the seventh century rather than the fifteenth, all Europe - and America - might be Muslim today.” The Byzantine Empire was one of ceaseless power battles and cruelty. While the Byzantines had a much higher literacy rate than the barbarians, the savagery was equally distributed.

The Empire diminished following Justinian. The 8th century found it caught up in a passionate internal religious dispute that would last 100 years. Iconoclasm held that sacred images should not be allowed, similar to Islamic beliefs. As the movement gathered steam, a vast amount of fine Byzantine art was destroyed. Byzantium regained its mojo in the late ninth, tenth early eleventh century under the Macedonian Dynasties with Constantinople becoming the wealthiest city in Europe. The Empire reached its apogee under Basil II in the early eleventh century. From that point on it would decline. In 1054 the Eastern Orthodox and Western Roman Catholic churches permanently split, something that had been a long time in coming.

In 1203 Byzantium was sacked by the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade. The Crusade had started out as a Western Christian effort to recapture Jerusalem which had earlier fallen to Saladin. However the Doge of Venice, the eighty year old blind Enrico Dandolo, wanted to take down Byzantium. With the promise of the plunder of the richest city in the world he got the crusaders to forget Jerusalem much to the consternation of the Pope. Instead the crusading Franks and Germans joined the Venetians to conquer and ravage Constantinople. The mass murder, rape, pillaging and destruction devastated Byzantium. Permanently weakened it would never again be able to adequately defend itself and would ultimately fall to the Ottomans. Ironically men fighting under the cross did what the Saracens never could. Without a viable Byzantium the rest of Christendom was left vulnerable to Muslim attack.

The Latins ruled Constantinople for 57 years. The Greek Orthodox tradition was carried on in small states in Anatolia and the Adriatic Coast. The Mongols occupied the attention of the Bulgars and Turks while the Franks and Venetians in Constantinople grew weaker. Finally a deal with Genoa returned Constantinople to Orthodox leadership. But the theological split between the Western and Eastern Church had turned to one of bitter hate for what the Latins did to Constantinople, now a ruined city never to regain its splendor. Byzantium lingered on for two more centuries despite constant threats from its numerous enemies and devastating bouts of plague. By the time it fell in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks, it was a shell of its former self consisting only of Constantinople and an impoverished small populace.

I have mixed feelings about this book. As a learning experience it was time well spent. Norwich delivers an authoritative overview of Byzantium and lets us see Western Europe and the Middle East through the eyes of the Byzantines. I appreciated this different perspective. However a huge amount of history was condensed into just 400 pages. Trying to save time by selecting Norwich’s abridged version I probably shortchanged myself. I suspect his full length history is much more enjoyable. For in the intervals where Norwich isn’t just reciting facts, I can see he is an engaging writer. When my interest again returns to the Middle Ages I’ll definitely check out the three volume set.

[Margarita Garova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ако историята на една държава се простира цели 1123 години, 700 от които тя е твой съсед - понякога най-големият ти враг, понякога неохотен съюзник, то тази държава заслужава много повече от бегло споменаване в учебниците, повече от отреденото й академично внимание и най-вече – по-голямо присъствие в популярната история и култура.

За да компенсира този присъщ и на западната историография грях и дълговековно пренебрежение за сметка на Древен Рим, английският дипломат (забележете, поредният не-историк!) Джон Норуич възкресява историята на Византия за непредубедения от информация читател.

За тази цел, Норуич е сгъстил максимално наратива, за да изпълни очакванията, както сам признава, за краткост и яснота. Това обаче създава известни затруднения при възприемането на текста, може би дори в по-голяма степен, ако авторът се беше придържал към разгърната версия на историята – тук-там има бели полета и дребни неясноти, както и на моменти едно безкрайно струпване от хора, събития и места. Но нищо от това, разбира се, не омаловажава живото и интересно писане, с което толкова (и с право) може да се гордее английската школа.

Прочутото византийско хитроумие, лесно преливащо в политическо и лично коварство, неизброимите политически обрати, невероятната жестокост към явни или подозирани врагове (със сигурност характерна не само за Византия), възходът и падението на династии, славни военачалници, амбициозни съпруги, майки и сестри на василевси, безкрайните теологични препирни и най-вече размахът в строителството, естетическото великолепие и процъфтяващата книжнина – всичко това е предадено в пределно концентриран вид, без амбицията за изчерпателност, но с максимална духовитост, запомнящи се характерови описания и интелигентен хумор. Не са подминати и други участници в събитията – българи, кръстоносци, италианските републики, перси, османци и вездесъщите папи.

В крайна сметка, това, което “остава” след подобно шеметно препускане из една хилядолетна история не са толкова отделните имена на владетели и техните дела (признавам, аз не ги запомних, а и вероятно ще препрочитам някои пасажи многократно), а едно цялостно усещане за величие, дори и в упадъка, за един особен вид носталгия, който само четенето на историята ни дава – копнежа да присъстваме и да видим с очите си, нещо което вече не може да се види, но чийто далечен отглас можем да усетим чрез добре написани книги.

Вратата към плашещо богатата и бурна история на Византия е открехната по най-добрия начин – начинаещите като мен има върху какво да стъпят, ако решат да задълбаят допълнително. Не се плашете, историята на Византия чака да бъде преоткрита от повече читатели.

[GoldGato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hey now, this was one long "short" history. 431 pages of murder, usurption, blinding (lots of blinding), mutilation, and just plain history. I'm exhausted. I also couldn't stop reading.

Being thoroughly confused about the Eastern Roman Empire and wanting to learn more about the great Justinian, I added this volume to my collection with the view that I would just leaf through for a bit and then put it in the queue for a future reading. Wrong! I became enslaved to every new emperor and shook my head at the sacking of Constantinople by the whacked-out western Crusaders. I wanted to be there when the Byzantine Empire was at its height, before sloth and the good life weakened future rulers.

I've stayed away from John Julius Norwich because one of his books entrapped me in a library once and I didn't want that to happen again. But he is splendid at writing history and illuminating lost civilizations. Beginning with Constantine the Great, Norwich takes the reader through a rollercoaster of an empire, one that just didn't seem to realize its time would eventually come to an end. The Roman Empire didn't stop with the fall of Rome, but the eastern portion certainly took a different path. If you want to learn more about the Byzantines, without reading the original three volumes by Norwich, then this is certainly an excellent way to get it done.

"One of the extraordinary phenomena in all history is the way suddenly, from one moment to the next, one city or small country is touched by the angel's wing. And then just as suddenly, it's gone."

Book Season = Spring (no delusions, no mercy)

[Creighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is deserving of more than just five stars; it needs a 10 star rating, because it really was a wonderful book. The ending of this book was written in a way that made me feel like I was getting ready to cry; it is those kinds of books that are well written. The author wrote a 3 volume series on Byzantium, and this book was his compression of that into one book, and I imagine his 3 volume series is just as great, if not better. I was glad I picked this book from the shelf of my local library. History buffs, I recommend this book to you, because you'll love it.

I took a lot away from this book. So much tragedy, so many things that could've been better, and even more saddening is a great empire with it's culture was lost forever. I took a medieval history class at the beginning of this year, and I will tell you I learned more from John Julius Norwich than I probably could ever learn from any college textbook. It is books like these that encourage me to read, because books are much more informational than classes, TV shows, and documentaries. I will admit, I think the history of Byzantium is deserving of a historically accurate (maybe even historical fiction) TV series focused around Constantinople, the emperors, and the history of this nation. Maybe something like that would enlighten more people about this empire and it's significance in history.

After reading this book, I came away with an enlightenment about this empire, and I admit that now I am a fan of Byzantine history, more than I ever was before.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an incredible, epic, history. I knew very little about the Eastern Roman Empire when I decided to read it, and consequently this book was rather like drinking from a firehose. 1100 years of some of the most staggering and implausible history you've ever read condensed into 383 pages, finishing off with a heroic last stand and the legends it inspired.

I don't mean this to be the end of my acquaintance with Byzantium, but it was an electrifying introduction.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow they sure did a lot of gouging out of eyes and tongues and noses and throwing people off cliffs! Everyone is all, hey this new emperor will be great I bet we won't have to murder him with poisoned mulberries or whack him with a soap dish or behead him. Then the poor little lamb takes power, has some good ideas, but reverts to insanity as quickly as he can and someone races to get the perennially-useful soapdish and cheerfully start anew. What years of glee! And when they weren't having those fun times they were running rampant through the streets beating each other up about obscure theological issues and hiding ikons under their cloaks and excommunicating one another. So, basically... I loved it.

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 384-page condensation of the original three-volume history gives readers a complete introduction to the direct descendent of the Roman Empire.

The book relates fascinating incidents about the main people, including an eyebrow-raising commentary on Empress Theodora’s early sex life, salaciously recounted by the contemporary historian Procopius. The book explains the famous differences over Church dogma, which characterize the Byzantines for us today, and which eventually drew even me into the fray: As I read along I found myself siding with the Iconoclasts and abhorring Norwich’s favoritism toward the icons. How strong Byzantium's mystique is, to cause people even now to take sides in its maddening disputes! The book provides a useful index, several maps at the front and an intricate imperial genealogy for those who dare.

The author is at fault in a couple of places. The photographs, set off in three sections, are black-and-white while their subjects, including Byzantine art, scream for color. The text itself runs through the empire’s 1100-year history and 88 emperors with an even tone that leaves readers unsure as to which events were decisive and which incidental to Byzantium’s fate. We learn that there were great thinkers in the empire, but not what they thought. In fact, the only real glimpse we get of who the Byzantines were and what they were made of comes at the end of the book, during the amazing last day of their existence. The author drops the ball again in his epilogue, which really should have explored Byzantium's legacy much more than it does in its one thin page.

The history of this empire is interesting enough in its own right to hold one’s attention, and Norwich does an adequate job with the material he uses. By no means is this a tedious account. It just doesn’t tell us quite what it could. Even in this abridged version, A Short History of Byzantium could have been a bit more engaging than it is.

[zed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing nothing of the Byzantium Empire this must be as good as it gets for a short history. My only complaint was that the authors opinions as to the individuals was a touch too prominent for me and the lack of footnotes is also a small complaint. I suspect I will never read another book that has so many eyes "put out" Brutal!

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Short History of Byzantium
John Julius Norwich
Read it in Hardcover at 431 pages including extensive Index, biblio, Maps, Lists, etc.

This is the third Norwich this year for me. While not a historian by trade he's managed to write some pretty fantastic history in both this and Kingdom of the Sun. A Short History of Byzantium is actually a trimmed up work from a previous publication. The original being a much more detailed account which I had a hard time finding (it was published in three volumes). Since this is my first work on Byzantium I wanted a pretty quick pace and Norwich does just this but in some instances it's kind of a whirlwind so this isn't the book for people looking for a more detailed record.

That's not to say it isn't extensive though because it is. Norwich uses 383 pages to cover over 1000 years of history. A lot happens. Some people and events get significantly more pages than others, the broader analysis of issues facing the empire are cut for a streamlined approach in which Norwich tries to focus on the most important things and motivations but has to cut an in-depth look on the Empires opponents. Somehow he still manages to paint a detailed picture. Byzantium itself is full of intrigue between the ruling families, their sunder with the West involving the Papacy and Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire as an eternal thorn, and ater threatened by the rise of the Muslim Dynasties in the Levant and later Crusades. Byzantium's existence was a tight rope walk full of blinding's, castrations, banishments, battles, and assassinations. The Roman East still held onto all of the intrigue of Ancient Rome and it's absolutely fantastic reading.

I'd suggest this to anyone looking for an exciting historic whirlwind through the Byzantium Empire.
3.5 rounding up for Goodreads deficient 5-star system.

[Hana]

I ought to check my home library top shelves more often (or at least dust them from time to time). There, seated appropriately but shyly between From Pagan Rome to Byzantium and Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II was this treasure, bought several years ago in advance of a long trip to Turkey.

But then I was distracted by the more proximate history of the Ottomans. This time around, my interest in Byzantium, as well as its antecedents, neighbors and many descendents, is deeper, more informed and hopefully more lasting. The only (and eternal) question is....which of the three books do I read first?

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great beginning! First comes a date I can easily remember: the Byzantine Empire was founded by Constantine the Great on Monday, May 11, 330. Then Norwich quotes Alice In Wonderland: "Begin at the beginning, and go on until you come to the end: then stop." Very promising indeed!

What a great ending! Norwich is a nonfiction author who can use prose and present his story as effectively as a great novelist. I expected that the end would be depressing (as I observed years ago, everyone dies at the end when you're reading nonfiction) but I didn't expecting it to be beautiful and satisfying.

Everything in between was great too. In general, this is a great book, but I read it way too fast. I hope to read the three volume edition next year, just to be fair to the author and Byzantium. I also want to be fair to myself by giving myself a chance to learn a great deal about Byzantium --- I can't retain many details when they are coming at me as thick and fast as they do in this history (though the fact that they came too fast was my fault. . .).

Several interesting observations:

(1) The Byzantine Empire contained much fear of religion, but little fear of God.

(2) Considering the fact that people can't go around assassinating presidents and setting up new leaders with minimal difficulty and protestation from the people, I'd say we in the United States should be pretty thankful.

(3) According to Norwich, every last emperor died either too soon or too late.

(4) According to me, every last emperor was not the sort of person I'd like to meet in a dark alley. That may be a slight exaggeration, but it's certainly true of the majority of emperors.

In conclusion, I'm glad the bit we learned in school about Byzantium made me want to learn more, and that this book made itself available as a source that could teach me! I suggest reading it when you can take plenty of time and many, many notes (Guess who didn't do that. . .). It's very fast-paced book --- how else do you cover 1,123 years and 18 days of history in 383 pages? --- but should be read and savoured unless you're reading simply for entertainment. It does offer colorful entertainment, that's a fact!

[Vicky P · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed it, but I think I would have preferred to slog through the 3-volume version, as this one leaves out some detail that I think I personally needed to keep all the names and characters straight. If you're not so worried about that, I recommend!

[Czarny Pies · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a truly ghastly book by an historian who has written several outstanding works. I wish now that I had stopped at the introduction in which the author explains that his "Short History" is an abridged version of his trilogy on the history of Byzantium. Abridgments of this sort are typically lifeless as indeed this one is. A bare bones narrative exists but the passages that provided narrative flow and spirit are gone. Norwich's 900 page narrative of the 200 year history of the Normans Kingdom in Italy zips along. The Short History of Byzantium which takes 380 pages to cover 1100 years gets bogged down in a meaningless string of names and events that seem to take forever to read. When Norwich writes at the length that he is comfortable with, he produces full fleshed characters and dynamic narratives. When he cut to make this book, the result was a senseless list of events.

What Norwich actually says about Byzantium actually makes sense. He argues that Byzantium (a.k.a.) in its very long existence enjoyed many great moments, and that its history should not be presented as a single long decline as Gibbon did. In Norwich's view Byzantium was very stable from the fourth to the eleventh centuries. Then three factors caused it to go into decline. First, the conquests by Islamic dynasties greatly undermined Byzantium's political power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Second, the Crusaders caused great damage whenever then crossed Byzantium on their way to the Holy Land. The sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade had a particularly devastating impact of the fortunes of Byzantium. Finally, the rise of Venice caused Byzantium to lose its position as the dominant trading power in the region. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks finally conquered Byzantium which had many afflictions at the end but which had also had seven centuries of true glory.

In his introduction, Norwich being if nothing else honest, explains that he did not read any of the original histories in Greek as they were available in English translation. This of course begs the question: should the reader simply not read the same classical histories instead of Norwich's book. Most professors teaching undergraduate courses on Byzantium (a.k.a. the late Roman Empire)make their students read "The Secret History" by Procopius and tge Chronicles of the Crusades by Geoffrey Villehardouin and Jean de Joinville). My own feeling that both of these works would be more worthwhile for the general reader interested in Byzantium that Norwich's "Short History of Byzantium."

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. I learned a lot of emperors' names and results of campaigns, and I guess I wanted that. Sometimes you need a basic general history, but there's almost no social or economic history in here at all and no explanation.

Norwich makes a lot of anachronistic moral commentary, such as one emperor being "shamelessly bisexual," some theological dogma being a triumph of "West over East, clarity over mysticism," and three or four emperors having saved Western civilization from barbarism or "the Islamic tide" or whatever. Even worse, at each point in the narrative when an emperor dies he indulges in a judgment of their lives and says things like "It is hard not to feel sorry for him" and "Nevertheless, he did his best." He also gives moral judgment on power politics but tries to have it both ways - he makes a token protest against child emperors being blinded and strangled but then also criticizes other emperors who failed to ruthlessly eliminate their rivals. He even tries to blame a group of mercenaries for not living up to their contract and betraying the emperor, instead of blaming the emperor for relying on mercenaries or better yet trying to explain why the empire couldn't defend itself anymore. The explanations he does give aren't any more detailed than "The economy had been in decline for the past half-century."

Maybe all the crucial detail in the three-volume set was cut for this summary but I doubt it. It's basically the worst kind of sentimental tribute to 'lost empires and fallen glory.' Everything's triumphant and splendid until later it's very wistful and sad but at least they produced some great art.

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

norwich is like the batty old art history professor you had in college who seemed more interested in the scandalous stories behind the scenes of each moment in history than the traditional information that fills the usual history texts. he tells the history of byzantium in such a fun and lightning-paced way. its like a circus soap opera riding through history on a speeding roller coaster. its great fun reading about all the intrigue, scandal and destruction throughout the empire, and norwich revels in every minute of it. you can almost hear him snickering along at certain points of absurdity. if you want a dry recollection of historical dates then this isn't for you. but if you want an almost hilarious telling of the specific individuals, scandals and stories of an underrated and often forgotten empire and its people then this is for you.

[Ashley Nef · Rating 5 out of 5]

Constantinople fell today 563 years ago. Kind of poetic I finished the story of its 1000 year history today as well (this was totally unplanned). I just love Byzantium - its history is even crazier than Game of Thrones, and the setting is the stuff of dreams: gold mosaics, enamel pieces, rich silks, scintillating jewels, massive defensive walls designed by angels, nigh on mythic emperors and emperesses, and the Hagia Sophia rising above the city skyline above the Bosphorus. Gotta love John Julius Norwich! He spins a good story that captured my imagination. I can't wait to visit Istanbul one day.

[Max Nova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greed? Check. Ambition? Check. Murder? Check. If “Game of Thrones” isn’t quite doing it for you, consider checking out John Julius Norwich’s “A Short History of Byzantium.”

Most of us (in America, at least) have a Byzantium-sized hole in our knowledge of the history of the Middle Ages. Which is a shame, because if ever there was a historical model for walking the line between East and West, it was Byzantium. This book is actually a distillation of a much larger 3 volume set. As such, it does feel a bit rushed and it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with all the names, dates, and places. But overall, Norwich does a pretty good job of bringing some of the more colorful episodes to life and he can’t help himself from occasionally inserting some British dry humor. Although Norwich does his best to keep the pace brisk and lively, the book still feels like it drags on a bit, particularly towards the end.

Still, the book was a great introduction to Byzantium and I’m inclined to read Norwich’s other book on the history of the papacy.

Some of the best quotes below:

#################################

# Constantine the Great
No ruler in all history has ever more fully merited his title of “the Great”; for within the short space of some fifteen years he took two decisions, either of which alone would have changed the future of the civilized world. The first was to adopt Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. The second was to transfer the capital of that Empire from Rome to the new city which he was building on the site of old Byzantium and which was to be known, for the next sixteen centuries, by his name: Constantinople. Together, these two decisions and their consequences have given him a serious claim to be considered - excepting only Jesus Christ, the Buddha and the Prophet Mohammed - the most influential man in all history.

The battle of the Milvian Bridge made Constantine absolute master of all Europe. It also marked, if not his actual conversion to Christianity, at least the moment when he set himself up as a protector and patron of his Christian subjects.

# Julian the Apostate
His real tragedy lies not in his misguided policies or in his early death, but in the hairsbreadth by which he failed to achieve the greatness which he in so many ways deserved… he also possessed two faults, which made any lasting achievement impossible: first, his religious fanaticism; second, a lack of sharpness and definition in his thinking.

# Empire at Bay (Theodosius)
It was a turning-point in the history of Christendom - the first time that a Churchman had had the courage to assert the rights of the spiritual power over the temporal and the first time that a Christian prince had publicly submitted to judgement, condemnation and punishment by an authority which he recognized as higher than his own.

# Rise of Justinian
It has seemed worth describing the religious riots in some detail simply to emphasize that aspect of daily life in Byzantium the twentieth century finds hardest to comprehend: the involvement by all classes of society in what appear today to be impossibly abstruse doctrinal issues

In Tribonian, Justinian found the one man capable of bringing a long-cherished dream to fruition. This was a complete recodification of the Roman law, removing all repetitions and contradictions, ensuring that there was nothing incompatible with Christian teaching, substituting clarity and concision for confusion and chaos.

Belisarius was a supreme strategist and superb commander; there was only one quality that he lacked: the ability to inspire the loyalty of his subordinates

# Justinian - The Last Years
There is no more convincing testimony to the ability of Belisarius than the collapse of Byzantine power in Italy after his departure in 540.

Economically, despite all his efforts, Justinian left the Empire prostrate: for that reason alone, he cannot be considered a truly great ruler… more than any other monarch in the history of Byzantium, he stamped the Empire with his own character.

# The First Crusader
The appearance of the Emperor Phocas was distinctly unprepossessing. Under a tangle of red hair, his thick, beetling eyebrows met across his nose; the rest of his face was deformed by a huge, angry scar that turned crimson when he was aroused, giving it a still more hideous aspect. He was not, however, as pleasant as he looked. Debauched, drunken and pathologically cruel, he loved nothing more than the sight of blood.

On 14 September 628, Heraclius entered his capital in triumph. Before him went the True Cross… it was, perhaps, the most moving moment in the history of the Great Church.

Without his leadership, Constantinople might well have fallen to the Persians, and would then inevitably have been engulfed by the Muslim tide, with consequences for Western Europe that can scarcely be imagined.

# Iconoclasm
But Leo conferred a still greater benefit on himself: the right to appoint, and to invest with crown and sceptre, the Emperor of the Romans… By what authority, then, was his extraordinary step taken? The answer to this question leads us to the most momentous - and the most successful - fraud of the Middle Ages: that known as the Donation of Constantine, according to which Constantine the Great diplomatically retired to the “province” of Byzantium, leaving his imperial crown for the Pope to bestow on whomsoever he might select as temporal Emperor of the Romans. It was a totally spurious document, but it was to prove of inestimable value to the papal claims for well over 600 years.

# The Images Restored
This decade saw the rise of Krum, the most formidable leader the Bulgars had ever produced.

Charlemagne’s Empire was soon to disintegrate. But the Pax Nicephori is no less important for that. It marked the acceptance, for the first time, of two simultaneous Roman Emperors, genuinely independent of each other, each pursuing his own policies but at the same time recognizing and respecting the claims of his counterpart. In doing so, it created the mould in which later medieval Europe was to be formed.

To say that Michael II ascended the Byzantine throne with blood on his hands is an understatement. Many other Emperors, to be sure, had done the same; none, however, had dispatched his predecessor more cold-bloodedly, or with less excuse… His motivation, in short, was ambition alone.

[Of Theophilus] Like his exemplar, the great Caliph Harun al-Rashid, he early adopted the habit of wandering incognito through the streets of Constantinople, listening to the grievances of the people and endlessly investigating prices - especially of food.

John… had also been given 36,000 gold pieces to distribute as he liked… where all this wealth came from remains a mystery… he could never have saved a quarter of the amount his son dispensed with such largesse. Yet Theophilus never ran into debt and was to leave his treasury a good deal fuller than he found it. Some time towards the end of Michael’s reign, therefore, the Empire must suddenly have had access to a new and seemingly inexhaustible source of wealth, possibly the opening of certain gold mines in Armenia; but we shall never know.

# Of Patriarchs and Plots
In the high summer of the year 860, the people of Constantinople underwent as terrifying an experience as any of them could remember. Suddenly on the afternoon of 18 June, a fleet of some 200 ships from the Black Sea appeared at the mouth of the Bosphorus and made its way towards the city, plundering the monasteries that lined the banks… it was the Byzantines first real confrontation with the Russians. The leaders were probably not Slavs at all but Norsemen.

Does this mean that the baby boy, Leo, to who she gave birth on 19 September 866 was not Basil’s child but Michael’s? If so, what we call the Macedonian dynasty was simply a continuation of the Amorian; we shall never know.

Basil’s ambition had been fulfilled. The transition from stable-boy to Emperor had taken him just nine years.

In little over a decade, the illiterate Armenian peasant, who had reached the throne by way of the two vilest murders that even Byzantium could recall, had proved himself the greatest emperor since Justinian.

# The Scholar Emperor [Constantine Porphyrogenitus]
From his father Leo the Wise he had inherited a passion for books and scholarship which he had had plenty of time to indulge; and the body of work he left behind him is impressive by any standards. No other Emperors have contributed so much to our knowledge of their time.

As recently as 928 the infamous Marozia, Senatrix of Rome - mistress, mother and grandmother of Popes - had had her mother’s lover, Pope John X, strangled in the Castel Sant’Angelo in order ultimately to install her son by her own former paramour, Pope Sergius III.

# The Tale of Two Generals
[John Tzimisces] In his short reign, he proved himself one of the very greatest of the Byzantine Emperors. He had conquered the Russians, the Bulgars, and the Caliphs of both Baghdad and Cairo; he had regained the greater part of Syria and the Lebanon, of Mesopotamia and Palestine. He had been admired by allies and enemies alike for his courage, his chivalry, his compassion. His radiant personality, like his golden armour, leaves us dazzled. Yet it can never quite blind us to another, darker vision: that of a pitiful misshapen heap lying huddled on a palace floor, while another figure - spare, sinewy and immensely strong - gazes contemptuously down, and kicks.

# The Bulgar Slayer
How, he asked him, could he best guard against any further rebellions by the ‘powerful’? Sclerus recommended that they should be kept on the tightest of reins, taxed to the hilt, financially persecuted, even deliberately and unfairly victimized; they would then be far too preoccupied to pursue any schemes of personal ambition. Basil remembered those words for the rest of his life.

There she [Anna] and Vladimir were duly married… the Prince of Kiev was baptized by the local bishop in the most fateful religious ceremony in Russian history. The conversion of Vladimir marked the entry of Russia into the Christian fold.

Poor Zoe: if she and Otto had had a son, he might have inherited not only the Western Empire but - in the absence of any other male heir - the Eastern as well, uniting them at last and ruling from France to Persia; and the history of the world would have been changed.

It was now that Basil meted out the punishment for which he is chiefly remembered. Of each hundred prisoners, ninety-nine were blinded; to oneman a single eye was left, that he might conduct the remainder to the presence of their king… at the sight of his once-splendid army Samuel, already a sick man, collapsed in a fit of apoplexy, dying two days later.

He had been a phenomenon: effortlessly dominating Church and State and - by virtue of his ability to combine the strategic vision of a commander-in-chief with the meticulous attention to detail of a drill-sergeant - showing himself one of the most brilliant generals the Empire had ever seen. More remarkable still… he was utterly devoid of glamour. His campaigns generated no thunder or lightning. Under him the imperial army was more like a flood of volcanic lava, advancing slowly but inexorably. After his youthful humiliation at Trajan’s Gate - which he never forgot, and for which the entire Bulgarian war was, in a sense, an act of revenge - he took few risks and suffered few casualties. But although he was trusted by his troops, they never loved him. No one ever did. No lonelier man ever occupied the Byzantine throne… Basil was ugly, dirty, coarse, boorish, philistine and almost pathologically mean… he cared only for the greatness of his Empire. No wonder that in his hands it reached its apogee.

# The Decline Begins
… Michael V proceeded to his consecration. No Emperor ever had less title to the throne. His birth was lowly, his military record non-existent. He owed his elevation to the machinations of a self-seeking minister and to the weakness of a foolish old woman.

Tuesday, 20 April 2014, was one of the bloodiest days that Constantinople had seen in all its history. In that one day over 3,000 perished. In the early hours of Wednesday morning the palace fell and the whole vast complex of buildings was overrun by a frenzied mob, pillaging and looting wherever it went but with one supreme objective in mind: to find the Emperor and kill him.

# Manzikert
The battle of Manzikert was the greatest disaster suffered by the Empire in the seven and a half centuries of its existence… the fate of the Emperor, too, was unparalleled since the capture of Valerian by the Persian King Shapur I in AD 260… thus it came about that tens of thousands of Turkoman tribesmen swarmed into Anatolia… The Empire still retained western Asia Minor and its former Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts; but it had lost at a single stroke the source of much of its grain and more than half its manpower.

# Alexius Comnenus
Sichelgaita needs some explanation. She was cast in a Wagnerian mould, the closest approximation in history to a Valkyrie. A woman of immense build, she hardly ever left her husband’s side - least of all in battle, one of her favourite occupations. At such moments, charging into the fray, her long blonde hair streaming from beneath her helmet, deafening friend and foe alike with huge shouts of encouragement or imprecation, she must have looked - even if she did not altogether sound - worthy to take her place beside Brunnhilde herself.

Antioch fell to Crusader arms; and finally on 15 July 1099, amid scenes of hideous carnage, the soldiers of Christ battered their way into Jerusalem, slaughtering all the Muslims in the city and burning all the Jews alive in the main synagogue.

# Manuel Comnenus
He gained many victories, but he consolidated none of them; and he left the Empire in a worse state than he found it.

# The Fourth Crusade
It remained only for the Saracens to mop up the isolated Christina fortresses one by one. When they came to Jerusalem, its defenders resisted heroically for twelve days… Saladin’s magnanimity was already celebrated. Every Christian, he decreed, would be allowed to redeem himself by payment of a suitable ransom… Everywhere, order was preserved. There was no murder, no bloodshed, no looting. Few Christians ultimately found their way to slavery.

Thus it was the Venetians who were the real beneficiaries of the Fourth Crusade; and their success was due, almost exclusively, to Enrico Dandolo.

# Exile and Homecoming
From the start, the Latin Empire of Constantinople had been a monstrosity. In the fifty-seven years of its existence it had achieved nothing, contributed nothing, enjoyed not a moment of distinction or glory… But the dark legacy that it left behind affected all Christendom - perhaps all the world.For the Greek Empire never recovered from the damage, spiritual as well as material, of those fateful years… now that unity was gone. There were the Emperors of the Trebizond… There were the Despots of Epirus… how, fragmented as it was, could the Greek Empire continue as the last great eastern bulwark of Christendom against the Islamic tide?

# The Angevin Threat
Michael Palaeologus is principally remembered today for the recovery of the capital, for which he deserves little of the credit. But then he was never really a soldier-Emperor; he was above all a diplomat, perhaps the most brilliant that Byzantium ever produced.

# The Two Andronici
The battle of Pelekanos marked the first personal encounter between an Emperor of Byzantium and an Ottoman Emir. It had not been a disaster, but it had shown that the Turkish advance in Asia Minor was unstoppable.

# The Reluctant Emperor
In the spring of 1347 Constantinople was stricken by the Black Death. One contemporary chronicler claims that it eliminated eight-ninths of the entire population.

# The Sultan's’ Vassals
When in 1389 Sultan Murad advanced on to the plain of Kosovo, ‘the field of blackbirds’, they were there to meet him. The battle that followed on 15 June has entered Serbian folklore and has inspired one of the greatest of all medieval epics; but the Serbs’ defeat was total.

# The Fall
But the problem of manpower was more serious still: a census of all able-bodied men in the city, including monks and clerics, capable of manning the walls amounted to just 4,983 Greeks and rather less than two thousand foreigners. To defend fourteen miles of wall against Mehmet’s army of a hundred thousand, Constantine could muster less than seven thousand men.

He [Mehmet II] had achieved his ambition. Constantinople was his. He was just twenty-one years old.

# Epilogue
The Roman Empire of the East was founded by Constantine the Great on Monday, 11 May 330; it came to an end on Tuesday, 29 May 1453… eighty-eight men and women occupied the imperial throne… a few - Constantine himself, Justinian, Heraclius, the two Basils, Alexius Comnenus - possessed true greatness; a few - Phocas, Michael III, Zoe, and the Angeli - were contemptible; the vast majority were brave, upright, God-fearing men who did their best, with greater or lesser degrees of success. Byzantium may not have lived up to its highest ideals, but it certainly did not deserve the reputation which, thanks largely to Edward Gibbon, it acquired in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Byzantines were, on the contrary, a deeply religious society in which illiteracy - at least among the middle and upper classes - was virtually unknown, and in which one Emperor after another was renowned for his scholarship; a society which alone preserved much of the heritage of Greek and Latin antiquity.

One of the first and most brilliant of twentieth-century Philhellenes, Robert Byron, maintained that the greatness of Byzantium lay in what he described as ‘the Triple Fusion’: that of a Roman body, a Greek mind and an oriental, mystical soul

[Tim Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

_A Short History of Byzantium_ by John Julius Norwich was a well-written and comprehensive overview of largely the political history of the Byzantine Empire. At times the book felt a bit hurried as Emperor after Emperor rushed by, but then that is understandable given several facts. First, Norwich was covering the entire history of Byzantium, its 1,123 year lifespan from its founding as the Roman Empire of the East by Constantine the Great in 330 to its end when Constantine XI died fighting with his men the forces of the Turkish sultan Mehmet II in 1453. During that time 88 men and women occupied the imperial throne, some for very short periods of time. Second, this work is a condensed version of an earlier trilogy Norwich had written on the history of Byzantium, the three volumes titled _The Early Centuries_, _The Apogee_, and _The Decline and Fall_. At times one could feel that there was more to a particular story than the author was relating or that he could have gone into more detail but space in the 383 page book would not allow it. Still, it was a very useful and interesting introduction to an often popularly neglected period of world history.

The stars of the book are the rulers of the Byzantine Empire, the eighty-eight men and women as well as the seven rulers who usurped the throne during the Latin occupation as a result of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. They ranged across the spectrum of political rulers, from highly skilled diplomats to great generals to thugs and self-absorbed pleasure seekers and hedonists, from those dominated by bureaucrats to darlings of the military. Notable ones included Justinian I, who had restored much of the lost Roman Empire in the sixth century and was the "last truly Roman Emperor;" Heraclius (565-641), who defeated the Persian Empire forever and saved Byzantium, even besting one of its leaders in personal combat, and who made Greek, long the language of the people and the Church, the official language of the Empire, and John Palaeologus, who in 1366 was the first Emperor to leave his capital as a petitioner for much needed aid from the Christian West.

Also major players in the book were the succession of enemies that challenged Byzantium through the centuries, ranging from the final days of the Western Roman Empire to Byzantium's end in the 15th century. At various times the Goths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, Persians, Arabs, Bulgars, Turks, Russians, Normans, Venetians, French, and Serbs threatened the Empire, each dealt with in their turn until the Turks proved in the end victorious. Norwich profiled some of the great adversaries of the Empire, including the great Gothic leader Alaric in the fourth century, fifth century Attila, the Great Bulgar Khan known as Krum from the ninth century, twelfth century Roger II King of Sicily, and the Doge Enrico Dandolo, the blind Venetian leader who in his eighties was instrumental in conquering Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.

Norwich impressed upon the reader how deeply concerned with religion the rulers and common people of Byzantium were, commenting that it may be difficult for modern day readers to comprehend the involvement, indeed passion, of all classes of society in what would appear today to be "impossibly abstruse doctrinal niceties." Strangely, from the first Constantine the Great was tolerant of pagan faiths (and even one emperor, Julian the Apostate - 337-363 - sought to turn back the clock to paganism) but not of heretical Christian ones. Much of Byzantine history was concerned with struggles against various sects and schisms in Christendom, the Emperor and the religious leaders of Constantinople conflicting with the Donatists of North Africa and the Meletians of Egypt in the 4th century, the 5th century Arian heresy (its devotees, the Nestorians, preaching that Christ had two distinct persons, one human, one divine) and the monophysites (who believed in a single divine nature of Christ), the monophysites again in the 6th century, and on many occasions the Pope in Rome. The biggest and most culturally and political wrenching of the religious conflicts was arguably the iconoclasm conflict; starting in the 720s a group known as the iconoclasts felt that there was too much veneration of sacred objects and in particular sacred paintings, mosaics, and sculptures, with iconodules openly worshipping and praying to particular icons and statues.

The Byzantines had a big monastic movement, so large that some Emperors, such as Constantine Copronymus, sought to close monasteries and force monks and nuns to marry and worried about a dangerous depopulation trend and plummeting manpower for farming and military use.

Emperors personally were deeply involved in religion. Some Emperors sought an end to upstart sects or to heal the breach with Rome for political reasons; others due to intense theological interest, and some for both reasons. Many an Emperor or Empress abdicated and retired from public life to a monastery or a convent. Also quite a few were sent there against their will, sometimes several times, as the result of various courtly intrigues and power struggles.

Speaking of power struggles, for all their religion the Byzantines could be a cruel people. Though there were many benevolent Emperors, quite a few were not and even some of the good ones rose to power through murder, torture, and mutilation (though also several of them sincerely regretted that later in life). A number of Emperors dispatched the children, even young children, of past rulers as well as their adult supporters, the more benign ones exiling them to monasteries or convents, others imprisoning them, or sometimes personally strangling them with bowstrings, beheading them, or even slowly torturing them to death. Blinding was a very common fate for rivals, particularly rival claimants to the throne, sometimes done publicly. For a time something called rhinokopia, the removal of the nose, was performed, the idea being no Emperor could rule that had obvious physical defects, though Justinian II "Rhinotmetus" proved he could rule without a nose, pretty much ending the practice.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Julius Norwich's [apparently] famous 1200-page "History of Byzantium" trilogy gets condensed to just under 400 pages, in the hopes that by making it accessible - and not force readers to commit to 3 books, instead reading just one and getting the most important info. So yes - the pace is a bit break-neck, but Norwich still manages to explain things satisfactorily, yet never condescendingly.

Besides all the "history" being skimmed over (with 383 pages for about 1200 years of Byzantine Empire, there's no other way), what especially struck me is that a lot of them - the "main cast" if we can call it that - had a lot of the same names, so it got a bit hard to keep track of them all individually. And sometimes some of them had different names but then changed it to one that had been used oh so many times before. It got to the point that at times I just stopped trying to keep it all clear in my head, and just plowed on to the next section. It also led to some annoyance on my part, so much that I'm just glad I finished it. And I seriously doubt I'll be reading the original trilogy. It was informative, yes, but ultimately did not make me care. Byzantium couldn't stay on top forever. All empires must some day crumble, to be replaced by other empires. The wheel was turning and it was Byzantium's turn.

It's ridiculous how many plots and counter-plots they went through. One crisis after another! Assassinations, blinding people (thousands upon thousands of people!), cutting off noses, East/West religion schisms, excommunications, ever-shifting alliances, concubines, second/third/fourth wives, invasions, sieges, treaties signed (and broken at a whim), protection money payoffs, co-Emperors, patricides, fratricides, regicides, etc. Make it stop!

There are plenty of illustrations (photos and paintings), all in black & white. It would've been nice to have them printed in colour on glossy paper. It would be at least that. Norwich supplies lots of maps, family trees (which come in very handy in the later chapters of the book), and lists of Emperors, Sultans, and Popes.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 ended what the population always identified as the Roman Empire, but has become known as the Byzantine Empire that John Julius Norwich thought had been given a bad reputation in “the West”. In “A Short History of Byzantium” Norwich condensed his three-volume history of the Greek-flavored Roman Empire into a general history for those interested in history but do not have time for lengthy studies.

In covering almost 1200 years of history in about 400 pages, Norwich had to trim to the barebones of Byzantine history with only tidbits of detail that whet the appetite to want to know more for those interested. While frustration as it might be for those who want more than a “general history”, for those looking for just a straight-forward informative history this book is concise and lively written to keep you from falling asleep.

For those wondering if they should read Norwich’s three-volume history of Byzantium then this book will let you know the author’s writing style as well as make you want to purchase the multi-volume series. For those looking only for a concise history of a nearly 1200 year old empire this is a book for you.

[Rupert Legge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was disappointed in this book, which is a condensed version of a previous multi-volume history by the author. He focusses primarily on bios of the various rulers of Byzantium over the years, with the history going on around them as more of an afterthought. This may be fine for some people, but I would have preferred the opposite. Bio after bio becomes repetitious after a while, and you never get a sense of how what was going on in Byzantium fit in with the overall history of the world at the time. As a result I did not get the larger historical picture I was looking for.

The previous multi-volume history may rectify this, but I'll leave that to someone else to determine.

[Jay Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent history of Byzantium. It is well researched and the writing is conversational. If there is a problem, it is that is that times it is too conversational for a serious history (that is a critiques shared with many other authors).So you have the beautiful, the ugly and the cruel. This probably was one of the bloodiest times in history. Life was worthless and there were constant wars. The importance is that civilization continued after the fall of Rome. This history is another broad overview and not an "in depth" analysis of any particular period.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary of his standard work in three parts. Method: description per emperor, with accent on the events around the court. So above all a military-political history; economics and culture are grossly neglected. And no synthesis. Also peculiar: Norwich sides for or against the main players.