By Robert Browning, 1980, Morrison & Gibb, Edinburgh
A condensed history of the Byzantine empire by an apparently erudite scholar. Roughly 200 pages, the book covers the history of 1,000 years, the quality of which is not compromised by the parsimonious writing.
The history of the empire is divided into five stages: the birth of a new empire (500-641); the struggle to survive (641-867); the golden age of Byzantium (867-1081); from false dawn to cataclysm (1081-1204) and defeat and disintegration (1204-1453). Each stage consists of two parts: the first a brief outline of the period's history, the second a description of the period's literature, arts and architecture.
Images of the architecture, fresco, paintings and sculptures of each period, emphatically selected, accompany the text and compliment the telling of that history. Many images of Christ crowning kings. What appears the most curious for me is that Christ's hands, when not holding a crown, rested in a position most found in Buddhas – the tip of the ring figure touching the tip of the thumb, while extending other rings. Such hand positions are common among other deities as well.
Much of the medieval paintings appear strange to the modern eye. The images are flat, facial depictions surreal and structures disproportionate. Over the centuries, outside influences transformed the art.
Some excerpts:
"(caption) King Krum feasting after his victory over the Byzantines; on the right, his cup-bearer brings in a goblet carved out of the skull of the Emperor Nicephorus. Illustration from a fourteenth-century manuscript of the Slavonic version of the Chronicle of Manasses."
"Other scholars have seen in early Paulician theology traces of aphthartodocetism, in other words the doctrine that Christ's body, being divine, was in reality incorruptible, and that hence the crucifixion was an illusion. Be that as it may, the Paulicians were bitterly opposed to the adoration of holy images, which to their eyes was idolatry. "
"Rhetoric, philosophy and belles-lettres were both the product and the status symbol of an urban aristocracy, confident of its position and sure of its future. Artists needed patrons, who usually belonged to the same class. The reduction in the revenues of the state put an end to the lavish imperial patronage of an earlier age. And the opposition of the Iconoclasts to the representation of the personages of scripture or hagiographical tradition imposed new limitations upon the work of artists."
Really, the whole book needs to be excerpted. Another book to buy and keep.