Byzantine Christianity by Averil Cameron, SPCK, 128pp, £7.99 "I have often had occasion to realise that Byzantine Christianity is poorly understood except by specialists, and I hope that this book will help to fill what I feel is a real gap.” Thus Averil Cameron concludes the preface to this new addition to the SPCK “Very Short History” series. Professor Cameron begins by giving a brisk shake to some of the easier assumptions readers may hold – assumptions that would, for instance, separate Byzantine Christianity too readily from early Christianity as a whole, or identify it too narrowly with Eastern Orthodoxy. Arguments flare up on every other page. When the Arab armies arrived in Syria in 634, the Christian population was split: “Not only were there both dyophysites and miaphysites; still others held that Christ had only a human nature.” The great ecumenical councils of the 4th to 8th centuries, all held in the East and all called to settle theological controversies, gave rise to further divisions. Some debates, such as the one on iconoclasm, simply wore themselves out over the course of generations. The dispute with Rome over the Filioque wording in the Creed marked an early stage in the long process that led to schism. Byzantium was a theological and cultural powerhouse. However, the rise of schools and universities in the Latin west, and with them the rise of scholasticism, had no parallels in the eastern empire. Equally, there was no authority in Byzantine Christianity to compare with the Catholic magisterium. Even so, the importance of tradition and citing authorities has made for a conservative approach among modern Orthodox churches. Byzantine Christianity is in two parts: history and legacy. Constantine himself comes and goes in three pages, seizing sole power when, to begin with, Christians were to be only a tiny minority among his subjects; establishing the new capital in the East; summoning the Council of Nicaea; and setting the religion of the Roman empire on a new, irreversible path. Moreover, before Constantine, churches were relatively modest, but “his example as a church builder and his enabling legislation opened the possibility of giving them new visibility in urban settings, a process assisted by the wealth that now found its way into the Church”. Despite the centuries of rise and fall, of waxing and waning, it is salutary to be reminded of an empire that, at its height, stretched from Italy to the borders of Iran, and included Egypt and a substantial part of North Africa. And it wasn’t just the incursions of Arabs and Turks that caused the empire to contract: the taking of Bari by the Normans was a major blow. Constantinople was captured and sacked by the Fourth Crusade, causing further fragmentation. By the end of the 13th-century Asia Minor was lost. As one might hope, there are some fascinating nuggets of information. For instance, Emperor Manuel II, touring Europe trying to raise funds for the defence of Constantinople, spent Christmas 1400 as the guest of King Henry IV at Eltham Palace. More significantly, I hadn’t known that when Constantinople finally fell in 1453, it had, technically at least, been back in union with Rome since the Council of Florence 15 years before. Nor had I paid sufficient attention to how the forms of medieval piety familiar in the West have left far less trace in the East, even though the Passion of Christ was, of course, a central issue in Byzantine theology. The section on legacy opens with a useful reminder of what unites Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians, before opening out into a tour d’horizon of themes such as the setting of worship; the role of icons; music, art and literature; and church-state relations. These are all seen through the prism of Byzantine influence on modern Orthodoxy and indeed the modern world. Every paragraph reads like a quick summary of several whole volumes. Professor Cameron understandably opts for efficiency over flair in covering the ground and a certain flimsiness inevitably manifests itself here and there. Continuously on the gallop, the professor lands glancing blows on some of the shakier notions that have percolated outwards from the world of Byzantine studies to a wider audience. For instance, the idea that the Copts of Egypt hated Constantinople and welcomed the Arab invaders is “hard to demonstrate from the contemporary evidence”. It is also usually claimed that the Greek philosophical tradition passed directly into Arabic and was thus preserved. Again, Professor Cameron takes issue and points out that translations from Greek into Syriac, already frequent in the 5th and 6th centuries, and the activity of Christian scholars, were “key to this cultural transfer”. The general reader will undoubtedly learn from this book. Stay alert, though – the decades, movements and characters hurtle by.