The aim of this book is to make accessible to a wider audience the works of Nicholas Mesarites, who deserves to be better known than he is. He was an ecclesiastic, who from the turn of the twelfth century provides a vivid record from personal experience of his troubled times, which saw the descent of the Byzantine Empire into factionalism, the loss of its capital Constantinople in 1204 to the armies of the fourth crusade, and its eventual reconstitution in exile as the Empire of Nicaea. Nicholas Mesarites is difficult to place, because the record he left behind was not that of a historian, more that of a social commentator. He preferred to highlight individual incidents and to emphasise personal experience and family relationships. He does not try to make sense of events; only to record their immediate impact. His is a fragmented autobiographical approach, which brings the reader closer to events, but leaves him to construct the bigger picture for himself; whether it is an eyewitness account of a palace coup that failed; a description of the relics of the passion; the memories of a brother, who became a defender of Orthodoxy; the detailed evocation of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople; the portrayal of his own nervous collapse following the loss of Constantinople; a character study of an ecclesiastical rival; or not least the mishaps -often for comical effect - suffered in the course of his travels. Because he was writing, as he tells us, largely to please himself, Nicholas Mesarites provides an idiosyncratic view of the society in which he moved, and, as he was less bound by literary convention than his contemporaries, he writes with a refreshing directness.

The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 marked the end of a thousand years of the Christian Roman Empire. Thereafter, world civilisation began a process of radical change. The West came to identify itself as Europe; the Russians were set on the path of autocracy; the Ottomans were transformed into a world power while the Greeks were left exiles in their own land. The loss of Constantinople created a void. How that void was to be filled is the subject of this book. Michael Angold examines the context of late Byzantine civilisation and the cultural negotiation which allowed the city of Constantinople to survive for so long in the face of Ottoman power. He shows how the devastating impact of its fall lay at the centre of a series of interlocking historical patterns which marked this time of decisive change for the late medieval world. This concise and original study will be essential reading for students and scholars of Byzantine and late medieval history, as well as anyone with an interest in this significant turning point in world history.

The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 marked the end of a thousand years of the Christian Roman Empire. Thereafter, world civilisation began a process of radical change. The West came to identify itself as Europe; the Russians were set on the path of autocracy; the Ottomans were transformed into a world power while the Greeks were left exiles in their own land. The loss of Constantinople created a void. How that void was to be filled is the subject of this book. Michael Angold examines the context of late Byzantine civilisation and the cultural negotiation which allowed the city of Constantinople to survive for so long in the face of Ottoman power. He shows how the devastating impact of its fall lay at the centre of a series of interlocking historical patterns which marked this time of decisive change for the late medieval world. This concise and original study will be essential reading for students and scholars of Byzantine and late medieval history, as well as anyone with an interest in this significant turning point in world history.

This volume brings together in one compass the Orthodox Churches - the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople and the Russian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Syrian Churches. It follows their fortunes from the late Middle Ages until modern times - exactly the period when their history has been most neglected. Inevitably, this emphasises differences in teachings and experience, but it also brings out common threads, most notably the resilience displayed in the face of alien and often hostile political regimes. The central theme is the survival against the odds of Orthodoxy in its many forms into the modern era. The last phase of Byzantium proves to have been surprisingly important in this survival. It provided Orthodoxy with the intellectual, artistic and spiritual reserves to meet later challenges. The continuing vitality of the Orthodox Churches is evident for example in the Sunday School Movement in Egypt and the Zoe brotherhood in Greece.

This volume brings together in one compass the Orthodox Churches - the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople and the Russian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Syrian Churches. It follows their fortunes from the late Middle Ages until modern times - exactly the period when their history has been most neglected. Inevitably, this emphasises differences in teachings and experience, but it also brings out common threads, most notably the resilience displayed in the face of alien and often hostile political regimes. The central theme is the survival against the odds of Orthodoxy in its many forms into the modern era. The last phase of Byzantium proves to have been surprisingly important in this survival. It provided Orthodoxy with the intellectual, artistic and spiritual reserves to meet later challenges. The continuing vitality of the Orthodox Churches is evident for example in the Sunday School Movement in Egypt and the Zoe brotherhood in Greece.

In this major study the theme of "church and society" provides a means of examining the condition of the Byzantine Empire at an important period of its history, up to and well beyond the fall of Constantinople in 1204.

The aim of this book is to make accessible to a wider audience the works of Nicholas Mesarites, who deserves to be better known than he is. He was an ecclesiastic, who from the turn of the twelfth century provides a vivid record from personal experience of his troubled times, which saw the descent of the Byzantine Empire into factionalism, the loss of its capital Constantinople in 1204 to the armies of the fourth crusade, and its eventual reconstitution in exile as the Empire of Nicaea. Nicholas Mesarites is difficult to place, because the record he left behind was not that of a historian, more that of a social commentator. He preferred to highlight individual incidents and to emphasise personal experience and family relationships. He does not try to make sense of events; only to record their immediate impact. His is a fragmented autobiographical approach, which brings the reader closer to events, but leaves him to construct the bigger picture for himself; whether it is an eyewitness account of a palace coup that failed; a description of the relics of the passion; the memories of a brother, who became a defender of Orthodoxy; the detailed evocation of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople; the portrayal of his own nervous collapse following the loss of Constantinople; a character study of an ecclesiastical rival; or not least the mishaps -often for comical effect - suffered in the course of his travels. Because he was writing, as he tells us, largely to please himself, Nicholas Mesarites provides an idiosyncratic view of the society in which he moved, and, as he was less bound by literary convention than his contemporaries, he writes with a refreshing directness.