Abstract
It is often remarked that we live in a Hellenistic age, sharing its enthusiasm for encyclopaedias and other ways of assembling knowledge. The latest twist to this in our time is the emergence of ‘short introductions’, to which SPCK has added its series of ‘Very Brief Histories’. SPCK has done well in engaging scholars of the first rank to write them: in the last batch, John Barclay (on Paul), Anthony Kenny (on the Enlightenment), and Averil Cameron. Cameron has been a pioneer in rescuing Byzantium from centuries of neglect and so is the obvious choice to write this ‘Very Brief History’ on Byzantine Christianity, but it has to be said that it is the historian who is most manifest. The book is divided into two parts – history and legacy – with the former twice the length of the latter, for, as Cameron says in her preface, there is little that can be taken for granted in telling the history of Byzantium. The first part is a marvel of conciseness: Cameron evokes a sense of the Christian Empire of Byzantium from 330, and the foundation by Constantine of his city on the site of ancient Byzantion, to the fall of the city (‘Istanbul’) to the Ottomans in 1453. To those who know, the depth of Cameron’s learning and her insight will be manifest; to those who don’t, they can be assured that the account is accurate. The second part is more questionable. From the beginning, Cameron is concerned to emphasize that Byzantine Christianity is not the same as ‘Orthodoxy’, but, to my mind, she doesn’t make very clear what the differences are. The picture is, perhaps inevitably, somewhat external, and so she is reluctant to evoke what Byzantine Christianity means and tends to concentrate on things. The chapter on ‘The setting of worship’ closes with a couple of pages on ‘Religious objects’, and begins, ‘Museums and collections are also full of objects’ (p. 94). But is it really to museums and collections that we are to go to find out about the legacy of Byzantium, rather than to the living communities indebted to Byzantium? The rest of the chapter is about church buildings, icons and relics – again things. Although we are told several times that the Orthodox call the Eucharist or Mass the Divine Liturgy, there is not a word on what happens in that service or what is distinctive about it. Cameron talks about canon law and its importance, which is good (though the Orthodox speak of the ‘holy canons’), but, even though she mentions monasticism and Mount Athos, there is nothing about spiritual fatherhood, which is a prominent feature of Orthodox life today for many Orthodox. What Cameron does give us is a sympathetic picture of orthodoxy as it appears to a learned outsider. We Orthodox might learn a lot from it.