La magnificenza, nella bellezza e nell'orrore, dell'Impero Romano d'Oriente non cessa di affascinarmi. La cultura, la forza, gli intrighi, la violenza, la religiosità, la teologia ... nulla è piccolo qui.

JJ Norwich has probably forgotten more about Byzantium than half the world knows. Very intersting, but a bit tedious. This history is very (too?) centered on the byzantine emperors,their court and their actions. IMO the wider context is missing too often.

This book starts out in the early 200s of the Roman Empire, with Emperor Diocletian deciding to share his power with a co-emperor, and each of them then divides their responsibility for their respective regions with a Caesar who is supposed to succeed them. Four men with lusts for power. Doesn't turn out so amicably. Byzantium becomes the power center of the eastern part of the Empire, and Rome's luster is fading. Constantine the Great isn't just baptized into Christianity, he is a fundamental force in its continuance, exaltation, and definition of orthodoxy. The book spans more than 5 centuries, from the date that the Roman Empire is divided in two until 802 when Charlemagne reunites the Empire again for the first time under one emperor. The author, John Julius Norwich, is astounding at being able to make these historical figures, some large, some small, and some inconsequential, come alive as human beings. What this book primarily did for me is explain in comprehensible detail (although I often had to re-read things, keep checking on maps, and keep looking up the family trees) how the Roman Empire came to be divided and why it stayed that way, what happened to Christianity along the way and what was decided at each of the Ecumenical Councils (I'm quite versed now in the Nicene Creed and its many versions and why they are the way they are), who exactly the "barbarians" were and why they insisted on invading the empire's frontiers (they were running from even worse barbarians and wanted protection or better places to live), and more. The empire's wars with Persia, the rise of Islam and what that meant, the losses and gains of territories. All extremely fascinating. Considering that in some cases there were too few sources, Norwich has done a remarkable job of showing how people thought, warred, lived, and traveled in those days. I only hope I can remember some of what I read.

It's almost a year ago, in Bold Street's Oxfam Bookshop, where I buy the last volume of Byzantium, and the hairy book geek behind the counter beams at me, Good choice! Then, of course, he asks if I've read vols 1 & 2, to which I dumbly shake my head. Because already embarrassed from having lived next door to Byzantium for almost three decades, my lack of pre-Ottoman knowledge is, well, limited to the Greco-Roman period. I should add here, I arrived in Istanbul in November 1992 with echoes of Yeats' words in my ears,

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre
And be the singing masters of my soul.

But I was not a tired old man, and spent my first month in Turkey crossing and recrossing the “mackerel crowded” sea on foot, exploring the back streets, monuments and museums on either side of the Bosphorus. Since then, I have acquired many books on Turkish history, visited a great many ancient Greek, Lykian, Phrygian and Roman sites throughout the country, plus done much complementary reading of the Greek and Roman classics. But Byzantium has always somehow eluded my focus. There are always too many layers at work. At Troy you will see the attempts of archaeologists to pick between about a thousand years of one city built on top another... ending with the late Roman touristification of the site. Then there is little for the better part of two thousand years. There are basilicas just about everywhere else you go in Turkey, often built next to the temples of the ancient gods. Some churches date back only a century or so, as orthodox Greeks were encouraged to recolonise parts of the country in the final decades of the Ottoman empire. Those folks the Turks call “Rum” (pronounced “roum”) lingered on in towns such as Trabzon (on the Black Sea) for centuries after Byzantium itself was snuffed out, and it wasn't until the population exchanges at the end of the Greco-Turkish War - in 1922 - that most of their churches were closed down. Even to this day, the Patriarch (the spiritual leader of the Greek Orthodox Church, a kind of Eastern Pope) is still housed in Istanbul. As late as 2001, we visited a completely Greek village high up in the mountains on the Turkish island of Gökçeada (known in Greek as Imbros).

There is this discrepancy between what history tells us and what we find on the ground. The discovery of nine thousand year-old megaliths at Göbeklitepe (questioning a thousand ingrained notions of the origins of human society) is itself a monument to mismatch. Byzantium and the Turks have left us Aya Sofya (the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, built in its final form by the emperor Justinian in the fifth century AD) and the other churches of Istanbul, plus the ancient icons that survived the purges of the late first millennium. But Byzantium is more of history than of relics and archaeology. This is not simply because the Eastern Roman Empire built with less skill than the West did. Nor is it only because five and a half centuries of Muslim dominance has erased them. In fact, many churches (including those in Trabzon and Iznik - Nicaea) were converted to mosques with the coming of Islam, and therefore still stand today. And many generations quarried the buildings that came before them: look at most of the castle walls in Turkey - in Harran, Ankara, Gölyazi (ie from the vast to the small) – and you will see stones that were clearly cut and sculpted for earlier buildings. Byzantine cities were overrun by the Persians of the late pagan period, by the Goths, Huns, Bulgarians and Slavs; by the so-called Saladins (Muslim Arabs), and by the Crusaders who were meant to save them; and then by the Seljuk Turks... long before the Ottomans arrived at their walls. Byzantium, firstly as a Christian refinement of the Roman Empire and then as its oriental transformation, grew into a bastion of Christian survival that would last for a thousand years. During that time, its cities endured wave after wave of rebuilding. Ancient temples, amphitheatres, baths, agoras and hippodromes were unsympathetically torn down to supply the hard core and building blocks of protective walls. Surely this means it was Christianity – in all its imperfections – that was fighting for survival, not just the empire itself. While the West – based on Rome – clung on “by the skin of its teeth” (to quote Kenneth Clark), Byzantium managed to preserve itself more or less intact. And yet what is left in the twenty-first century is less of stone than the notion of pastiche; that peculiar mixture of pagan and Christian, of East and West that is Byzantium. Perhaps there is more history in the layers of cheese, spinach and pastry that make up the Greek lasagna known as pastichio (or ispanokopita) than any old carved stone walls?

So, what of John Julius's Volume 1? I couldn't bring myself to dip into the Vol 3 I had bought before I'd found the first two. After several trips back to Liverpool, I finally gave up on Oxfam and turned to Amazon, buying the missing two volumes. Therefore I'm now reading them in order.

The book geek in Oxfam, combined with the author's aristocratic name – John Julius (Viscount of Norwich), gave me the impression this reading adventure would be a bit like discovering Kenneth Clark's “Civilisation” for the first time. Of course, Clark's Western art history course was originally a TV series, and his book is more an enhancement of the viewing experience; but Baron Clark has a way with words. When you read – or listen – the combination of love for and authority about the subject only enhances his patrician tone. You never feel you're being talked down to by some erudite academic bore; it's more like you're being let into the secrets of the world. So could M'Lord of Norwich compete with that?

Alas, not quite. Perhaps the study of history has to be drier than the contemplation of art? That much time spent with nose in book rather than stood in front of subject doth weary the man?

I suppose what I dread in chronicles of this type is the dry reportage of succeeding warrior kings, their battles, palace struggles and sheer numbers... Vol 1 of Byzantium gets through six Constantines, four Leos, three each of Constantius, Valentinian, Tiberius & Theodosius, plus two Anastasiuses, Justinians, Justins & Constanses. So it comes as a relief to have names like Julian, Zeno and Irene that stand without ordinals. I appreciate that all these reigns must be got through somehow, but it is the skill of the writer to carry us onward without drumming our fingers to the beat of wooden facts & figures. Lord Norwich largely concentrates on those emperors whose reigns were most prominent in the records: for example, Theodosius the Great, Justinian the Great, Heraclius and Leo III. Beginning with the founder of the city, the peer indicates one difficulty of the historian's task by apologising for the confusion Constantine caused by naming his many children with variations on his own: Constantius, Constantina, Constantia, Constans etc...

Motives for Constantine's decision to build a new Roman capital are woven into the first three chapters of the book, but I think Norwich prefers to present his findings rather than draw any conclusions. We're not shown the founding of Constantinople with intimations of how or why the empire would eventually split, though the principle of having two beaks had gone back to Diocletian. Nor do we get much background information on the way a marginal and persecuted spin-off from Judaism had been taken up by so many Roman citizens. What we do get, though, is a thorough account of the hardly Christian behaviour of Constantine and his antecedents, who regularly tortured, disfigured and murdered their rivals in the pursuit of power and revenge. The constant building and rebuilding of Constantinople that goes on between its founder (Constantine reigned 306-24) and Justinian (527-65) pushes ahead as if the city had a life of its own as well as an imperial imperative.

Lord Norwich by no means ignores religion, but concentrates mainly on the Eastern church's unending theological disputes, principally concerning the divine or human nature of Jesus Christ. First with the Arian heresy, then the tendency towards Monophysitism, followed by the rise of iconoclasm, time and time again the Eastern church risked tearing itself apart. All this while Rome (under the Pope) seems to just carry on as if bemused. For most of the fourth century, Rome and Constantinople remained joint capitals, leaving the Pope to administer theological decisions taken at the Council of Nicaea (325). In the fifth century, the empire was more formally divided, with thrones in Rome and Constantinople. Thereafter, the city of Rome fell into the hands of the Goths and other so-called barbarian peoples. But as many of these had become Christians, the Pope – as spiritual rather than temporal leader - maintained a degree of independence. It wasn't until the coming of Charlemagne, early in the ninth Century, that a specifically Roman emperor would re-emerge, by which time the Eastern Church had become preoccupied with iconoclasm – a phenomena the West would not really experience until the Reformation, six hundred years later. This means there are actually more better preserved Byzantine monuments at Ravenna (in Italy) than in typical cities of the east.

In the meantime, much of the Byzantine empire had been overrun, first by the Persians (Sasanians), then the Muslim Caliphate. Before the middle of the seventh century – just decades after the Hegira - Syria, Egypt and Carthage had all gone. The city of Jerusalem was briefly liberated by Heraclius in 629 (Norwich calls him the First Crusader), but soon the remnants of the Western empire would find themselves fighting invasions via Spain and Sicily. Though periodically halted by internecine power struggles of their own, the Saladins brought a new kind of religious fanaticism to the battlefield. Conversely, once the brutality of their conquests was over, they practised religious tolerance, so that many communities – such as at Jerusalem – preferred their rule to that of the often intolerant anti-Monophysite Byzantines.

Norwich often gives us vivid accounts of the struggles in palaces and at battle. He's particularly good at Greek Fire, Byzantium's secret weapon. He describes methods of blinding and splitting noses which should be rated PG. He's not so good on items of daily life in Byzantium; and at one point gives some credence to a tale of starving Arabs who, during the 717 siege of Constantinople, allegedly ate human flesh baked in excrement. He reproduces verbatim Procopius's exaggerated account of the Empress Theodora's nymphomania from The Secret History without acknowledging the similarity that text has with spiteful accounts of the first century Empress Messalina.

Given history writing has supposed to have moved on from remorseless accounts of palace struggles and battles, I am more than a little disappointed with Lord Norwich's approach. Many times immense casualties are reported - 90,000 Christians supposedly murdered by Jews at Jerusalem in 614; 22,000 Saladin soldiers butchered by the Bulgars in 718). But the sources are chroniclers writing fifty or a hundred and fifty years later. To counter-balance this, I want more contemporary detail, flavour and atmosphere; a feeling that the researcher has trod the ground as well as delved through the manuscripts. True, Norwich does give us some useful structural information about the empire; for example, Heraclius's reorganisation of the territory into Themes populated by soldier-farmers. But I want to know what such military households looked like. Did they resemble the manses of medieval barons in France or England? Some readers will argue that such is the preserve of historical novelists, and I don't disagree with rules against making stuff up. But Byzantium eludes us by the arcane nature of its system, and we need to see chinks of light through its splendid mosaics. There are no real dynasties here, as the Greek Romans inherited the tradition of armies appointing their own Caesars (raising a successful general on their shields). So, how important was family life? Why is it that the Empress Irene – who had murdered her own son – was accepted as sole ruler (at least initially)? The Holy Roman Empire (as it would come to be) under Charlemagne would never accept inheritance passing to a female. I don't think Lord Norwich has given over enough space (at least in Vol 1) to gender issues; or to the roles of slaves and eunuchs. The main problem with listing kings and battles is it ignores social change, it skips over long periods of peace and prosperity, it plonks settlers (such as the Bulgars or Huns) on the ground and just leaves them there without exploring the effect of one culture on another.

It may sound as though I'm not enjoying the series enough to continue; in which case, I've given the wrong impression. Viscount Norwich, who died this year at the age of 88, has attempted to cram a thousand years of history into something like fifteen hundred pages, which in itself is no mean feat. To give him his due, he's certainly kept my interest up, even if I'm not particularly enamoured of his means or method. The books contain useful appendices and good (if not wonderful) illustrations. In Vol 2, rubbing his hands, this old man shall see how the empire survives The Great Schism.

Norwich at his knowledgeable best. Read and enjoy!

BIZANCIO, LOS PRIMEROS SIGLOS, de John Julius Norwich. Monumental ensayo que consta de tres partes y que, ahora, Ático de los Libros, saca por fin la primera. La obra data de finales de los años 80 del siglo pasado y es inexplicable que hasta el día de hoy no haya visto la luz en España. En un mercado donde no hay casi nada acerca del Imperio Bizantino en lengua española, esta obra es de obligado interés para el estudio y acercamiento de dicho imperio. La obra comienza con Constantino, desde su nacimiento hasta la refundación de la ciudad de Bizancio en Constantinopla, en el 330 d. C. Aquí, es donde Norwich asegura empieza la historia del Imperio Bizantino. Y acaba en el 808 d. C., con la aparición de Carlomagno y con el Imperio Bizantino sólidamente establecido. En estos primeros siglos, asistimos al derrumbe del Imperio Romano Occidental, al establecimiento de los reinos bárbaros, el resurgir del Imperio con Justiniano, las controversias de las iglesias orientales y occidentales, las cruentas guerras contra el imperio persa, el nacimiento del Islam y las grandes intrigas, miserias, crueldades, maravillas y hazañas que coronaron todo este extenso periodo de tiempo. El genio bizantino, además, fue una luz de cultura, arte y arquitectura en un mundo antiguo que se derrumbaba y daba paso a unos siglos oscuros de decadencia y guerra tanto en occidente, como fuera de las fronteras orientales. Todo esto nos lo narra Norwich con un estilo muy ameno sin que por ello le falte ni un ápice de rigurosidad y documentación. Quizás, lo que se eche en falta es entrar más en detalle en la vida cotidiana del ciudadano de a pie del Imperio, ya que el ensayo se centra demasiado en las figuras importantes (emperadores, papas, enemigos, etc.) y menos en los campesinos, mercaderes, comerciantes, artesanos, etc. Por lo demás, llevaba años esperando tener una buena obra acerca del Imperio Bizantino y no puedo más que decir que Norwich no me ha defraudado.

Consatine is cooked

Chi-Rho looks pretty cool

What is the nature of Christ?

Severely weaken empire multiple times over the question of the Jesus juice

Justinian big builds

Chariot racing hooligans - literally called green team and blue team

Fell in love with empress Theodora. It's not healthy for me to fall in love with women from the 500s

Belisarius is best bro. Big feels for the guy

Empire goes to shit

Heraclius saves empire then loses his mind - classic

Greek fire solves a lot of problems.

Goes to shit again

Empire saved again leo by Leo but fucks up with getting iconoclasm started

Chipping off noses gets popular

A change in trend from nose cutting to putting out eyes

Donation of Constantine is proto mergers and acquisitions

Rebirth of infatuation for empress Irene. Time period does not change the level of unhealthiness.

It's not easy to cover 500 years of history in under 500 pages, and do it with authority and insight while, at the same time providing an entertaining read. Norwich manages to do so and it's quite remarkable because he's dealing with the darkest of the dark ages; comparatively, very few sources exist about the events between the sixth and ninth centuries.

To that, one must add the sad fact that "modern" historians have traditionally reviled Eastern Roman Empire, simply stamping on it a few labels such as "decadent" or "weak". While this book is not a primary source that brings new data or research about the Empire, it indeed offers a refreshing and rich perspective, both human and political.

Un recorrido por casi 500 años de historia del Imperio Romano del Este. Tenía un desconocimiento bastante amplio sobre el tema, a parte de saber algunos nombres y hazañas por allí y por allá, de hecho lo sigo teniendo y desde luego que me gustaría indagar más.

Es especialmente interesante como la religión tenía una importancia social espectacular, pero muy diferente a la que tenía en el Oeste. Tanto los emperadores como la gente de a pie se volvían locos por la teología causando más de una revuelta y bastantes problemas. También es interesante como poco a poco el antiguo espíritu romano se va diluyendo hasta que prevalecen los valores griegos, la llegada del Islam sacude al Imperio y estoy deseando ver cómo se desarrollan los conflictos hasta que en 1453 los otomanos toman Constantinopla.

Al libro le pongo 4 estrellas porque aunque haya aprendido bastante es un plastón bastante curioso, me ha costado bastante acabarlo, quizá que la edición que me leí fuera en inglés no ha ayudado mucho en esto. Me leeré el segundo libro, pero me tengo que mentalizar para ello.

Great survey of the early years of Byzantium. Informative and well written without being academic though it does not lack analysis. It pealed my interest in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire and have have picked up the remaining two volumes and Peter Heather's Rome Resurgent for further study. Looking forward to reading the remaining two volumes in the series.

The story of Byzantium in itself is unbelievable but told by Mr. Norwich it's simply outstanding. It's a towering achievement of storytelling, scholarship, and style. The things that happened to and in Byzantium are... byzantine to say the least but Mr. Norwich guided me through it with clarity and a clear sense of purpose, he never lost sight of his goal: to tell the story of this hugely important and almost completely forgotten, 1000 years old empire.

Love how every Tom, Dick and Harry who writes a book review starts it with a summary of its content. Ma sparatevi