People and Power in Byzantium: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies

by Alexander P. Kazhdan, Giles Constable

An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies

Genres: History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Peter Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book that seeks to reset the study of Byzantine history within the "Annales" school. It therefore disregards a narrative approach and seeks instead to address the broad sweep of historical trends. It tackles subjects such as society, behaviour, the material world, art, literature, and religion. For such a small book the scope is therefore really broad. For all that it gives a real sense of the development of Byzantine life. Kazhdan specifically assesses Byzantine society as being characterised by "individualism without freedom", by which he means that society is not structured hierarchically in the way that western feudal society was with both horizontal (community) and vertical (dominating) relationships. Rather the individual and the nuclear family form the basis of society within an untrammelled imperial power. I'm not sure this argument is wholly convincing, but it certainly illuminates areas of Byzantine life such as monasticism and religious art.

In short an interesting attempt to refocus on Byzantine society and people instead of a "kings and things" story.

[Justinian]

2006-08 - People and Power in Byzantium: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies. Alexander Kazhdan, Giles Constable. 1982. 240 pages.

This book was lent to me by a friend back in Minnesota. It fills in a lot of gaps for me. It frames issues in context rather than as standalone. The book was written by people trained in the Marxist school, yet they have been westernized enough to not be constantly trotting out the Marxist dogma. The only real remnant is in a chapter on the economy and a focus on the proles. In fact I applaud their notion of telling the story of your everyday Byzantine person. It speaks well of how the Byzantines saw themselves, how others saw them and of the gap between reality and ideal. Some of the cultural prejudices … I am much more a Roman then a Byzantine, but then I knew that. I had had questions about some Church/Theological stuff and this book provided the context of the events outside of the faith and also did a very good … actually excellent job of explaining it from the Orthodox view (both in practice and in projection). I had to send the book back but eventually I will purchase my own copy.