Sailing from Byzantium (32 page)

To help the general reader, I have marked with an asterisk (∗) those primary and secondary sources that I consider especially valuable, accessible, or both.

Boethius.
The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy.
Translated by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973. Bilingual Latin and English text in the Loeb series.

St. Basil (Loeb Classical Library).
The Letters
(vol. IV). Translated by Roy J. Deferrari. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1934. Bilingual Latin and English text in the Loeb series.

Boccaccio.
The Genealogy of the Gods.
In Charles Osgood,
Boccaccio on Poetry.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930.

Cassiodorus.
Institutiones.
Edited by R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937. English translation by L. W. Jones in
An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings.
New York: 1946.

Cassiodorus.
Variae.
Translated and edited by S. J. B. Barnish. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992.

Choniates, Nicetas.
O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates.
Translated by Harry J. Magoulias. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984.

∗Comnena, Anna.
The Alexiad of Anna Comnena.
Translated by E. R. A. Sewter. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969. A good read. Combine with Michael Psellos and Procopius’
Secret History
(see p. 311) for a Penguin sampler of Byzantine history.

Constantine Porphyrogenitus.
De Administrando Imperio.
Greek text edited by Gy. Moravcsik. English translation by R. J. H. Jenkins. New, revised edition. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1967. Bilingual Greek and English text.

Cydones, Demetrius.
Apology for His Own Faith =
Mercati, G.,
Notizie di Procoro e Demetrio Cidone.
Vatican: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1931.

Cydones, Demetrius.
Letters I = Démétrius Cydonès Correspondance.
Edited by R.-J. Loenertz. (2 vols.) Vatican, 1956-60.

Cydones Demetrius.
Letters II = Démétrius Cydonès Correspondance.
Edited by G. Cammelli. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1930.

∗Geanakoplos, Deno John.
Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen Through Contemporary Eyes.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Selections from a wide variety of Byzantine sources, arranged thematically.

Geoffroy de Villehardouin. “The Conquest of Constantinople,” in
Chronicles of the Crusades.
Translated with an introduction by M. R. B. Shaw. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.

Ibn Khaldun.
The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History.
Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Edited and abridged by N. J. Dawood. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. A handy one-volume abridgment of this classic work of historiography.

Kantor, M., trans.
Medieval Lives of Saints and Princes.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983. Includes
vitae
of Cyril and Methodius.

Koran.
Translated by N. J. Dawood. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.

Kurbsky, A. M.
Prince A. M. Kurbsky's History of Ivan IV.
Edited with a translation and notes by J. L. I. Fennell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

Patrologia graeca.
Edited by J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1866. This monumental collection of Greek patristic texts is the place to find (in Greek) the writings of John Cantacuzenos, Barlaam, Chrysoloras, Manuel II, and a great many of the other Byzantine authors referred to in the text and in the secondary sources.

Petrarch.
Francesco Petrarcha: Le Familiari.
Edizione critica per cura di Vittorio Rossi, vol. 3. Florence: Sansoni, 1937.

Photius.
The Homilies of Photius.
Translated by Cyril Mango. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.

∗Procopius.
History of the Wars III.
Translated by H. B. Dewing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919. Bilingual Greek and English text in the Loeb series. Covers Justinian's Gothic Wars in Italy.

∗Procopius.
The Secret History.
Translated by G. A. Williamson. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966. Racy gossip on Justinian and Theodora. See note on Anna Comnena above.

∗Psellus, Michael.
Fourteen Byzantine Rulers.
Translated by E. R. A. Sewter. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966. See note on Anna Comnena above.

Robert of Clari.
The Conquest of Constantinople.
Translated by Edgar Holmes McNeal. New York: Octagon, 1966.

∗
Rosenthal, Franz.
The Classical Heritage in Islam.
Translated by Emile and Jenny Marmorstein. London and New York: Routledge, 1992 (1975). Includes English translations of selections from Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Ibn an-Nadim
(Fihrist),
and other Arabic sources. An easily available and extremely helpful book for the curious reader, since many of these writings are not otherwise available in English.

Russian Primary Chronicle (Laurentian Text).
Translated and edited by Samuel Hazzard Cross & Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1973.

A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917. Vol. I: Early

Times to the Late Seventeenth Century.
George Vernadsky, senior editor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.

Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus De Niccolis.
Translated with notes by Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991 (1974).

Angold, Michael.
The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204.
Second edition. London: Longman, 1997. Good political history of the late Macedonian and Comnenan periods.

Armstrong, Karen.
A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
New York: Ballantine, 1993.

Islam: A Short History.
New York: Modern Library, 2000.

Bark, William. “Theoderic vs. Boethius: Vindication and Apology.”

American Historical Review
49 (1943-44): 410-26.

Baron, Hans.
The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955. In this influential work Baron introduces the widely accepted idea of Florentine civic humanism.

∗Baxandall, Michael.
Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Credits Chrysoloras with inspiring the development of pictorial composition and linear perspectives in painting.

Baynes, Norman.
The Byzantine Empire.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925.

Berlin, Isaiah.
Russian Thinkers.
Henry Hardy, ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

∗
Billington, James H.
The Icon and the Axe: An Intepretive History of Russian Culture.
New York: Vintage, 1970 (1966). A well-written and insight-ful narrative account of Russian cultural history, with an enlightening discussion on Hesychast mysticism vs. rationalism in Russian history.

Bolgar, R. R.
The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954.

Bowersock, Glenn.
Hellenism in Late Antiquity.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996 (1990).

Brock, Sebastian. “Greek into Syriac and Syriac into Greek.” Reprinted with original pagination (Study II) in Sebastian Brock,
Syriac Perspectives on Late Antiquity.
London: Variorum, 1984.

Syriac Perspectives on Late Antiquity.
London: Variorum, 1984.

∗Brown, Peter.
Augustine of Hippo.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Indispensable.

The Cult of the Saints.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

———.
The Making of Late Antiquity.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993 (1978).

———.
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity.
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.

———.
The Rise of Western Christendom.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Insightful exploration of early Christianity by the master of Late Antiquity. Despite the title, offers much on Christianity's early context in the eastern Mediterranean world.

———.
Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Contains an excellent article on the Iconoclast controversy, “A Dark Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclast Controversy,” and much else of value besides.

———.
The World of Late Antiquity AD 150-750.
New York: Norton, 1989 (1971). The book that opened up Late Antiquity as a hot academic field.

∗Browning, Robert, ed.
The Greek World: Classical, Byzantine, and Modern.
London: Thames and Hudson, 1985. Articles by leading scholars in a handsome coffee-table book.

———.
The Byzantine Empire.
Revised edition. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992. Excellent introduction to Byzantine history and civilization by a respected scholar.

Byzantium and Bulgaria.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.

Church, State, and Learning in Twelfth Century Byzantium.
London: Dr. Williams's Trust, 1980.

Brooker, Gene.
Renaissance Florence.
New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1969.

∗Bullock, Alan.
The Humanist Tradition in the West.
New York: Norton, 1985.

Burckhardt, Jacob.
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.
New York: Phaidon, 1950.

Burke, Peter.
The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

Bury, J. B.
A History of the Later Roman Empire.
2 vols. New York: Dover, 1958 (1923). Classic, if dated.

∗Cameron, Averil.
Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

“Early Christian Territory After Foucault.”
Journal of Roman Studies76
(1986): 266-71.

———. “Images of Authority: Elites and Icons in Late Sixth-Century Byzantium.”
Past and Present
84 (1979): 3-35.

———.
The Later Roman Empire, AD 284–430.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Excellent narrative history of this transitional period for the vigorous general reader.

———.
The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, AD 395-600.
London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Read with her
Later Roman Empire
for superb coverage of the Mediterranean world in the centuries before Islam.

———. “New Themes and Styles in Greek Literature: Seventh-Eighth Centuries.” In
The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, Vol. I: Problems in the Literary Source Material,
edited by Averil Cameron and Lawrence I. Conrad. Princeton: Darwin, 1992.

———.
Procopius and the Sixth Century.
London and New York: Routledge, 1996 (1985). Essential reading on Procopius and his times by a leading scholar of early Byzantium.

“The Theotokos in Sixth-Century Constantinople: A City Finds Its Symbol.”
Journal of Theological Studies,
new series 29 (1978): 79-108.

“The Virgin's Robe: An Episode in the History of Early Seventh-Century Constantinople.”
Byzantion
49 (1979): 42-56.

Cammelli, Giuseppe.
I Dotti Byzantini e le Origini Dell’Umanismo I: Manuele Crisolora.
Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1941.

Cardwell, Donald.
The Norton History of Technology.
New York: Norton, 1994.

∗Cavallo, Guglielmo, ed.
The Byzantines.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Excellent thematic introduction to Byzantine society with articles by leading scholars.

Crone, Patricia.
Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Dawson, Christopher.
Religion and the Rise of Western Culture.
Doubleday, 1991 (1950).

Demus, Otto.
Byzantine Art and the West.
New York: New York University Press, 1970.

∗Diehl, Charles.
Byzantium: Greatness and Decline.
Translated by Naomi Walford. Edited and with an introduction by Peter Charanis. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957. Holds up well, a classic. Especially good on the Byzantine cultural legacy.

Drijvers, Jan Willem, and Alasdair MacDonald.
Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.

Dvornik, Francis.
Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970.

The Making of Central and Eastern Europe.
Second edition. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1974.

Photian and Byzantine Ecclesiastical Studies.
London: Variorum, 1974. Collected studies; valuable for Photius.

Edgerton, S.
The Renaissance Discovery of Linear Perspective.
New York, 1975.

Fakhry, Majid.
A History of Islamic Philosophy.
Second edition. New York: Longman, 1983.

A Short Introduction to Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism.
Oxford: Oneworld, 1997.

Fine, John V. A., Jr.
The Early Medieval Balkans.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983.

∗Fowden, Garth.
Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Flogaus, Reinhard. “Palamas and Barlaam Revisited: A Reassessment of East and West in the Hesychast Controversy of 14th Century Byzantium.” In
St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly
42, 1 (1998): 1-32.

Franklin, Simon. “Greek in Kievan Rus.”
Dumbarton Oaks Papers
46 (1992): 69-87.