Byzantium and the Crusades (Crusader Worlds)
The Byzantine Empire was a diffident supporter of the Crusades' efforts to redeem Jerusalem from infidels. This tepidness of Christian solidarity over the more than two centuries of crusading provoked hostility in the knights and kings marching Constantinople's way, but the Byzantine emperors and their councillors had good reasons to be unenthusiastic about their visitors. Harris presents the Byzantine viewpoint in an unstuffy narrative well suited to the general reader, ascribing the conflict not to a West/East culture clash but to the pursuit of well-developed Byzantine ideology. This viewpoint rests on twin precepts of prestige: that Byzantium was the successor state to the Roman Empire, and that Orthodox Christianity was the universal creed of the faith. Recounting Byzantine policy to secure the crusaders' acknowledgment of Byzantine religio-political primacy, Harris enlivens the emperors or usurpers who conducted it, retrieving them from their flat portrayals as villains or saints in the source material. Assured and fluid, Harris perceptively narrates events in this tempting presentation for the history buff.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.