Customer Reviews

The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford History of the Christian Church S)

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This book outlines the history of the Byzantine Church from the 7th century to the fall in 1453. If you want to know all the names of the all the Patriarchs of Constantinople and what they did etc., then you can probably find them in this book. Its broad coverage of the Church is both a strength and a weakness. A strength in the fact that you can learn something about anybody and a weakness in the fact that you might not care to read about them (the author's language is not overly enjoyable to plough through).

The book is divided into a history section and a Organization and Life of the Church section. The history was as is described above. The Organization section was extremely tedious and I skimmed most of it. However, it might be invaluable to one who wants to know about administration of the Church.

Overall, an OK read. However, I recommend Myendorff's Theology of Byzantium over this, to get a better grasp on the doctrines and theology. Hussey's book though will give you more of the 'historical' facts though,so to speak, and less of the meaning of the beliefs.

This book is very well researched and organized. I especially appreciated the amount of space in the bibliographic section dedicated to explaining where the author's sources originated. This is an essential companion to Runciman's "The Great Church in Captivity.

Anyone who wants to know more about the history of the Orthodox Church needs to read this book. It is excellent.

This book was one of the best and easiest to read and understand of all books on the history of the Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Emoie.