New Rome
ALTHOUGH our tables overflow with picture- books of St Sophia, and the cataphracts of Byzantine scholarship have invaded the quad- rangles of Oxford, commentators in the daily press continue to regard the study of the empire of New Rome as a kind of occultism or dilettantism, almost as a bolt-hole for escapist historians. Only ignorance can excuse such an attitude. Byzantium saved Christendom more than once; she gave Christianity to the Slays; her art is a most precious legacy; and the catastrophe that severed the churches of east and west must be understood before any restoration can be hoped for. Professor Jenkins is justified in feeling that there is no short narrative history of the Byzantine empire that meets the needs of the general reader. Ostrogor- sky and Vasiliev are for students; he has aimed at something shorter and lighter.
Byzantium (or Constantinople) was the capital of an empire for more than eleven centuries, and it would clearly be impossible to cover the political and military history of such a long space of time in a single manageable volume. Professor -Jenkins therefore begins in 610 with the accession of Heraclius and ends with the disaster of Manzikert in 1071. Speaking less accurately, this takes us from the death of Justinian to the 'schism' of 1054. Once granted the necessity, in spite of the inadequacy, of periodising history, this division is fair enough. Justinian was in many ways the 'last of the Romans' in the east, and though the battle of Manzikert was a symptom rather than a cause of collapse, it was also point of no return. Yet without some previous knowledge, the beginner will find it difficult, even when aided by a short introductory chapter, to get his bearings. To end in 1071 is perhaps even more unsatisfactory. Byzantium had still much to endure, and much to give of beauty and spirituality, before the end.
With these reservations, the reader will find here a chronologically well-balanced and ade- quate account of imperial history in short compass, with incisive, if sometimes debatable, judgments on men and policies, and a style that is never dull, though occasionally almost collo- quial. The tempo quickens notably when the tenth century is reached, and the reader's atten- tion is held even if judgments tend to become more summary. The book brings out very well the strange dialectic between perpetual and often violent change and static identity, between hideous barbarity and cultured bureaucratic efficiency, to which no other Christian state has offered a parallel.
All this, and the repeated emergence of men of genius on the throne, is seen very clearly. What does not reach the reader is an awareness of religious, artistic and civil life. Professor Jenkins disclaims expertise on art, and has little about social and economic affairs. As for religious history, as distinct from the intrigues of the patriarch for the time being, he is almost silent. The monks appear only to get a crack on the head, and Constantine (St Cyril), the apostle of the Slays, is mentioned but once as a 'philospher, linguist and diplomat'; Methodius has no mention at all. Yet at the very end of the book, in a chapter which reads almost as a separate 'talk' on Byzantium, three pages (383-5) give an excellent precis of the Byzantine achieve- ment.
DAVID KNOWLES
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