The Formation Of Christendom - Hardcover

Judith Herrin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0631151869 ISBN 13: 9780631151869

Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell, 1987

Synopsis

`This wide-ranging book is an extraordinarily significant contribution to the study of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean world. The author is in complete control of current scholarship, but she brings a comparative vision to the material that is uniquely her own. For a work of such breadth and boldness, the balance that reigns throughout is quite astonishing.' Professor G. W. Bowersock, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton `Miss Herrin's scholarship is unerring, her scope is wide and her style fluent...Debate about where modern Europe came from will continue. But it will be enriched by this civilised and accomplished book.' Economist `Dr Herrin writes with remarkable lucidity and intellectual grasp about these centuries.' Sunday Telegraph `A most rewarding book...to which both specialists and those more generally nterested in Soviet literature will turn with pleasure and gratitude.' The Slavonic and East European Review In this history of what used to be termed `The Dark Ages', Judith Herrin outlines the fate of the Roman Empire from the end of late antiquity to the coronation of Charlemagne. She describes the clash between nascent Islam and stubborn Byzantium as the central contest that allowed `Europe' to develop, thereby placing the rise of the West in its true Mediterranean context. Her inquiry contres on the notion of `Christendom'. In a path-breaking account of the arguments over Christian doctrine, she shows how the northern sphere of the Roman world divided into two distinct and self-conscious areas, as the Arabs swept through the southern regions.

About this title

Review

"The main argument of Judith Herrin's The Formation of Christendom is that what she calls the 'initial particularity' of Europe is to be sought in the period between the fourth and the ninth centuries. . . . Herrins's scholarship is unerring, her scope is wide and her style fluent. . . . The treatment of the so-called iconoclastic controversy, the dispute over the veneration of images in Christian worship which convulsed the Byzantine world in the eighth century, is sparkling. . . . Debate about where modern Europe came from . . . will be enriched by this civilized and accomplished book."--The Economist

". . . Herrin follows some magnificent themes with the lucid dispassion of a good detective."--Thomas D'Evelyn, The Christian Science Monitor

"It is [the] binding together of distant past and immediate present which makes Judith Herrin's scholarship so exciting: she can convince the reader that the roots of Western distinctiveness really do lead all the way to forgotten episcopal meetings in small towns in Asia Minor in the fourth century."--Michael Ignatieff, The Observer

"...a learned, challenging, and gracefully written interpretation of the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages."--Robert L. Wilken, Commonweal

"Judith Herrin has produced an ambitious, learned, lucid, and instructive book."--Alexander Murray, The Times Literary Supplement

"...it will no longer be possible to hop from pagan antiquity to Carolingian Europe as if nothing had happened in between. Judith Herrin has laid her sheet of paper over the map of that 'dark' age and rubbed and rubbed until the rich web of connections and cracks has shown through."--Marina Warner, The Independent

"This is a serious and powerful book....a grand synthesis on a scale few people would dare now to attempt, ranging across diverse societies with considerable assurance."--Christopher J. Wickham, The International History Review

Book Description

One of the most important books on Europe during the so-called 'Dark Ages', this work has become a classic.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0631151869
• ISBN 13: 9780631151869
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 456