Bizancio

For a thousand years an extraordinary empire made it possible for Europe to achieve modernity: Byzantium. The Byzantine Empire was a bold and resilient society that combined Orthodox faith with paganism on the one hand, and classical Greek wisdom with Roman might on the other, to produce a civilization as dynamic as it was powerful, which stood up for years to come. centuries to Islam. Judith Herrin's fascinating work discards the chronological approach of the usual histories of Byzantium to dedicate each of the chapters to a specific theme, such as architecture (with the construction of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople), a religious conflict (iconoclasm), sex and power (the role of the eunuchs), an extraordinary character (the historian Anna Kommene), a symbol of civilization (the fork) or an expansive war (the crusades). Thus, he achieves a more readable and accessible history of the empire from the founding of its magnificent capital, Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), in 330 to its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. A fascinating and detailed overview of the forces and beliefs prevailing during the medieval millennium, this book is also an original contribution to works of history. It presents the results of many recent investigations, while recreating life in Byzantium for the general public. Written in the tradition of the Enlightenment, it finally does away with the stereotypes and caricatures of Byzantium's passivity and decadence made popular by Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Gibbon.