Judith Herrin

"The three empresses... profoundly altered the course of history"
By sally tarbox on 27 August 2017
Format: Paperback
I got interested in Byzantine history- about which I knew very little - during a visit to Greece.
This is an extremely well-written work, requiring no background knowledge, which focusses on three 9th century empresses - Irene, Euphrosyne and Theodora - and the role they played in restoring icons to a church which had previously banned them. The reader gets a good overview of the show more empire at this time - the court life, the importance of monasteries (in one of which Euphrosyne grew up, in enforced seclusion with her repudiated mother), the politics, and also the wider world - Arab and Slav invasions and an at-times difficult relationship with the West.

I wouldn't call it a heavy read but it requires concentration. You're not going to remember all the events, but I think it leaves the reader with a good general understanding of an era we hear little about. Most informative and interesting. show less

Histories tend to focus on the "men in funny hats", or the kings, emperors, popes and generals that direct civilization. I don't subscribe to this theory. Men in funny hats are influential in history's course, but no more than the culture and societies from which they spring.

So it was with great relish that I read Herrin's book which focused primarily on the culture of Byzantium and not the tedious listing of emperor after emperor. It was rich, colorful, and even I, a hardcore Byzantinist, show more learned quite a bit from what is ostensibly a book for "Byzantine newbies".

I have a couple of reservations, however. Her method of documenting the "forgotten empire" was different: each topic was given its own chapter and the topic was explored in its entirety from Constantine's time to 1453. This is interesting, but confusing. She drops names in an early chapter, but doesn't discuss them in detail until later, or she talks about a person and then name drops them later and expects the reader to remember every detail. In addition, the chapters are so comprehensive that names and dates and facts whiz past your head. Finally, I was served well by this book because I have a mental timeline of Byzantine history, but someone who is not familiar with at least the basics of its rise and fall might struggle a bit.

Regardless, it's still a fantastic book with a great focus and one that will certainly go towards helping those willing to pick it up with understanding the world's "forgotten empire". show less

Judith Herrin argues here that neither later medieval/modern Western Europe nor the Islamic World would have developed as they did without the Byzantine Empire, and that religion was a key structural force in these varying developments. Byzantium was a buffer between the Dar al-Islam and much of Christian Europe, yet it was heavily influenced by Muslim aniconism; a rejection of iconoclastic extremes and also of Byzantine caesaropapism shaped how Christian institutions and particularly show more Carolingian power developed in western Europe. There are definite shades of Pirenne here, and parts of The Formation of Christendom have been superseded by later scholarship in the 30 or so years since this book was still published. Despite this and some other minor quibbles, there's still much to benefit from here; Herrin's explication of the icon controversy is authoritative. show less

As Rome declined in the later years of the Roman Empire, various other cities grew to rival it for power and influence. Constantinople is the most famous of these, of course, but Ravenna was another of the "New Romes." It benefited from an enviable location as a port city on the Adriatic that was surrounded by marshy land which made it difficult to besiege. Judith Herrin here recounts the city's history from the fifth through to the ninth century, arguing for its importance to understanding show more the development of early medieval Europe.

It's an argument which I think has some merit to it, but I'm not sure that the structure of the book was the best way for Herrin to make it. The need to provide framing political context meant that the narrative was constantly jumping away from Ravenna for extended stretches, while the written sources that survive from the city are fairly fragmentary. I came away from Ravenna with a clearer picture of some of the key political figures associated with it over the centuries than I did of what it might have been like to walk the city's streets—though undoubtedly with the wish to visit the city and see some of the magnificent buildings and mosaics about which Herrin writes with such knowledge and affection. show less