The History Book Club discussion

For those of you who have completed the book and/or who want to discuss aspects of the book which are beyond our weekly assignments in the non spoiler threads, this thread is a spoiler thread where you can discuss those points.

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We try to move along the discussion slowly on the weekly non spoiler threads but realize that some folks like to move along swiftly. So we have options for both groups of folks.

by Judith Herrin

Even though the monasteries of Mt Athos are not the focus of our reading until chapter 18, I didn't want to risk anyone missing the opportunity to watch the archived video of the 60 Minutes segment devoted to the Mt. Athos monasteries. Here's a link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7...

The 60 Minutes crew was granted an almost unprecedented access to the Mt. Athos monasteries, including interviews with monks and abbots and views of priceless icons and other centuries old art and architectural wonders.

To wet your appetite with just a single detail that gives you an idea of how isolated these communities are from our modern world, they note that no woman has set foot on Mt. Athos for a thousand years! Monks are called to prayer by a monk tapping on a large board of ancient wood, a practice that antedates the widespread manufacture of bells.
Virtually nothing has changed here for centuries and we get to see much of what is usually hidden from the view of anyone besides the monks themselves.

Thank you Tacman; placement here is fine.

Tacman, I just finished watching the 60 minutes crew and the Mt Athos segments - very enlightening and probably the only place on earth still following Byzantine time.

How many living remnants of ancient civilizations exist that have remained so unchanged over centuries?

Mt Athos must be unique.

The Vatican has ancient traditions but has adopted most elements of the modern world. As much animus as the strictest Muslim countries and movements have for modernity, they are futurists compared to these Mt Athos monks, as are Mennonites and Masons.

No television, no radio, no internet. Prayer for eight hours every day. Chanting the same words used in apostolic liturgy.

Amazing.

I have to agree Tacman and the team from 60 minutes seems to think that even if their grandchildren and great grandchildren went to visit that there would be no changes whatsoever. Yes, the same ancient words that were used in the Byzantine empire. Amazing isn't it.

And I thought my Sunday service was long (smile) - an 8 hour service singing every day.

I cannot imagine how the buildings are still standing on those cliffs.

Not sure if this is the right place for this post, but (alas) I had to return Byzantium to the library. I'm hoping to take it out again in a week or two and continue with the discussion.

Mary Ellen, I hope you get back the book soon.

I really appreciated Byzantium for the clear way Herrin presented the issues within a kind of rough outline of the long-gone eras. It's not just a detailed blow-by-bloody-blow chronology of politics and the military. There is a very strong social history, the religion and literacy of the people, which has been incorporated.

Another book I read not too long ago about Constantinople is by Orhan Pamuk. This book is not about the ancient history so much as more recent times But it has a chapter called "Conquest or Decline? The Turkification of Constantinople." In that Chapter Pamuk kind of very briefly explains what happened to the old Greek, Christian Orthodox citizens of Byzantium. There is a small part of Istanbul which is still populated by these folks. Many of them intermarried over the years - but not all by any means, while many others emigrated to Greece.

One telling sentence:
"You can often tell whether you're standing in the East or in the West, just by the way people refer to certain historical events. For Westerners, May 29, 1453, is the Fall of Constantinople, while for Easterners it's the Conquest of Istanbul."

by Orhan Pamuk - p. 172.

Great post Becky and a very telling sentence

Awesome, Becky. Truly one's perspective plays a big role in how one labels an event.

Overall impression of the book is that I think I'm not quite the audience Herrin was aiming at. I knew absolutely NOTHING about Byzantium before the book. I think Herrin was aiming at people who had vague notions that Byzantine stuff was bad or uncultured or otherwise negative in some respect. My previous knowledge was limited to the ability to sing "Istanbul Was Constantinople" as performed by the group They Might Be Giants. (I even thought "Istanbul" was the original name of the city, not the other way around!)

Anyway, I think the thematic approach was a good idea, but I needed more historical framework as a basis first. And I wish Herrin had been able to not overlaps the stories so much. There were some things, such as the mutual excommunication of Pope Leo and Patriarch Michael, that were mentioned over and over again. While it was funny each time, it got a little old. Basically, I think we got different details on the story each time. I would rather have read the whole story once with all the details.

In other areas, such as the "born in the purple" term, I thought we had to wait too long before finding out what it really meant.

I'm not sure if all these problems are just due to my initial ignorance, or if the thematic approach is more to blame, or perhaps Herrin's mind is just organized differently from mine.

Regardless of my complaints, I think Byzantium was a good book, even if not a great book. I learned tons from reading it. And when I have time to look up the extra info provided by others in the discussion threads, I learn even more. Herrin took on a Herculean task to introduce me to a thousand years of history in less than 400 pages. I'm grateful she did.

I,too, just finished the book and share many of your views, but I feel that Ms Herrin took on an impossible task. Too much history to be done justice to in 336 pages.
That combined with the unfamiliar and repetitive Greek names made it hard to retain even the most interesting of it's material.

I am also glad I read the book and come away with a new found respect for the contribution of the Byzantines to our collective cultural heritage.

Good point, Tacman. It really was an impossible task. I'm not sure what could have been done to make the task itself more reasonable.

Elizabeth you are making me laugh and now I cannot get that song out of my head (lol).

And your review was very well done. I think this book is an amazing sampler journey through the time of the Byzantines. It is like being at a wine tasting party or a restaurant that serves tapas and you want to sample all of the wares but you are not sure which one to taste first because they are all new to you.

Tacman, hope that you pop in to the other threads and give us your input about what surprised you the most about each chapter as we go along. I agree that the Greek names being unfamiliar for quite a few of us made it difficult to remember them all or many.

But I also have a new found respect for the contributions of the Byzantines. The Metropolitan Museum in NYC has an entire area devoted to Byzantine art as well as another section dedicated to the art and artifacts of the Middle East. I was there last weekend and just could not do it justice in one visit and must go back.

Folks, this thread is always open for those folks who have completed the book and would like to give us their impressions of the book as a whole and final thoughts.

Remember this is a spoiler thread.

I enjoyed this book enormously. I knew a shade about Rome and Medieval Europe, but very little in between. Relating a thousand years of history is a daunting task. Herrin's approach worked for me -- many colourful anecdotes that almost serve as teasers to learn more, with a bit of a chronological thread in the background. It was such a curious crossroads of Western Europe, the Arab and Persian Empires, and points east. It also raised my curiosity about the history of Bulgaria and other nations with which they were at times in conflict.

I just finished the book and have to say I've got mixed feelings on it. I really appreciate that Herrin took on the task of surveying Byzantine history in 400 pages. Not knowing much about the topic, it served as a good primer. I certainly left with a grater appreciation for the culture and their contributions. I also learned a fair bit about the Orthodox faith that was new to me.

But, the thematic approach really frustrated me. The book never felt like a cohesive story, just fragments. I was never able to really sink into the book. There were a lot of names, and that's to be expected in a survey, but the jumping around over a 1000+ year period is what got me. I'm very glad I read it and very much enjoyed the discussions, but am not sure it would be a book I'd recommend.

I am reading a book that is a natural follow up to Herrin's book. Roger Crowley has written an excellent history of Venice, which features it's long and complicated entanglement with Byzantium.

I am particularly enjoying his history of the infamous Fourth Crusade which sacked Constantinople instead of proceeding to Egypt and the Holy Land as it was intended. This is a better account of the same incident in Herrin's book, that I think would interest anyone who now seeks other material on this fascinating period.

Roger Crowley

Karolyn wrote: "I just finished the book and have to say I've got mixed feelings on it. I really appreciate that Herrin took on the task of surveying Byzantine history in 400 pages. Not knowing much about the topi..."

Very much agreed, Karolyn.

This was a tough book for me Byzantium was a very new subject to me and I found Herrins thematic approach just didn't work. The way the book jumped around was very difficult to follow. I think the timescale a thousand years was the main reason the organisation into themes just didn't work for me.

Having said that I did learn a lot from this book and it has left me wanting to know more about Byzantium.

I've read the book a few days ago, and in general found it extraordinary in the way it familiarized me with the empire I think is so little known today. Well, at least my history classes didn't include much of the Byzantine history but the Great Schism, the sack and the fall of Constantinople (by the way, awesome quote, Becky!). The anecdotes were really entertaining - I didn't know so many things about their culture, values and beliefs. Considering that, the subject division of the book was great idea, but I missed a better conclusion, something that would bind together all I have learnt. I guess the last chapter was supposed to manage that, but for me, it was too short, and also, in there the author totally puzzled me with the objections against the Pope's speech - that seemed somehow off-topic, as she didn't openly criticised nobody else troughout the book, at least not a still living person, or I missed something. It was kind of... off-putting.
I do not want to seem harsh, I think the book was really worth reading, and I'm grateful that this bookclub pointed my way to it and guided me the whole way through it, it was really awesome experience.

This was one of the toughest subjects that any historian and writer could ever tackle and this book was selected and voted for by the group members. I probably would not have picked this up otherwise but I am glad that I did.

@Jim - I felt similarly Jim and this book is encouraging me to read more about the subject and other ancillary ones.

@Karolyn - In the introduction, Herrin laid out her reason for writing the book, her approach and why, her layout and why and I have to say that she did accomplish all of the above. She did not tell one story, but multiple ones.

@Tacman - Good follow-up to a rather great introduction by Herrin.

@Karen - Glad that you came away from the book with some newfound knowledge on the subject. At the very least, it was not a waste of time for you. I think for some who had no knowledge whatsoever of Byzantium; some of these folks wanted more than any author could possibly have given on such a complex and convoluted subject.

@Zeljika - Some great insights. I think it is odd too that she criticized the Pope after not really finding fault with any of the plunderers, emperors and the like who came before. Everything she had to say before was measured. I guess she has a thing against the Catholic Church, pope, etc which she could not disguise. It is odd sometimes how great historians cannot camouflage some of their true opinions or biases.

I just finished this and enjoyed all the tidbits on Byzantine civilization. I didn't mind the thematic approach, though I think the book would have worked a bit better as a follow on read to supplement a more traditional linear history. But as a jumping off point for more study, it was great.

Tacman, I just watched the first 15 minutes of that video from CBS news on Mt. Athos; it looks wonderful. The link in your comment has gone bad so I'm putting a new one in here: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mt-athos-...

Thank you Hana