![]() ![]() ![]() it is very clear that without cyril and methodius, for example, there would be no cyrillic alphabet, which was in fact the first written alphabet for the slavs. wells explains how even as the byzantine empire was disintegrating, learned men from byzantium were travelling to europe and the slavic countries, as well as to what we now call the middle east, to meet with other learned men and in fact to create more. from this carefully organized book i can see how that connection was made for the italian renaissance, the arabic enlightenment, and the rise of the slavs into russia. i have often felt that my connection with istanbul exists because much of our christian culture is related to this place (nicea of the nicene creed is just across the sea from here, for example). ![]() i think this was one of the most readable books. You may know if you have read my other “book reports” that i have been reading a lot about byzantium. there are a few footnotes, but they are briefly explanatory. ![]() colin wells does not burden the reader with annoying notes (i hate those little raised numbers that you have to find somewhere else in the book), though in the back you can see where he got a lot of his information. at any rate, this book was a very easy read, full of interesting details, but not boring at all. i think the title may be a play on words of a title by william butler yeats, sailing to byzantium. this is another book that i recently read. Sailing from byzantium: how a lost empire shaped the world. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |