Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the WorldRandom House Publishing Group, 31. srp 2007. - Broj stranica: 368 A gripping intellectual adventure story, Sailing from Byzantium sweeps you from the deserts of Arabia to the dark forests of northern Russia, from the colorful towns of Renaissance Italy to the final moments of a millennial city under siege…. Byzantium: the successor of Greece and Rome, this magnificent empire bridged the ancient and modern worlds for more than a thousand years. Without Byzantium, the works of Homer and Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Aeschylus, would never have survived. Yet very few of us have any idea of the enormous debt we owe them. The story of Byzantium is a real-life adventure of electrifying ideas, high drama, colorful characters, and inspiring feats of daring. In Sailing from Byzantium, Colin Wells tells of the missionaries, mystics, philosophers, and artists who against great odds and often at peril of their own lives spread Greek ideas to the Italians, the Arabs, and the Slavs. Their heroic efforts inspired the Renaissance, the golden age of Islamic learning, and Russian Orthodox Christianity, which came complete with a new alphabet, architecture, and one of the world’s greatest artistic traditions. The story’s central reference point is an arcane squabble called the Hesychast controversy that pitted humanist scholars led by the brilliant, acerbic intellectual Barlaam against the powerful monks of Mount Athos led by the stern Gregory Palamas, who denounced “pagan” rationalism in favor of Christian mysticism. Within a few decades, the light of Byzantium would be extinguished forever by the invading Turks, but not before the humanists found a safe haven for Greek literature. The controversy of rationalism versus faith would continue to be argued by some of history’s greatest minds. Fast-paced, compulsively readable, and filled with fascinating insights, Sailing from Byzantium is one of the great historical dramas–the gripping story of how the flame of civilization was saved and passed on. |
Sadržaj
Between Athens and Jerusalem | 36 |
Chrysoloras in Florence | 66 |
Byzantine Émigrés in the Quattrocento | 89 |
BYZANTIUM AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD | 115 |
The House of Wisdom | 138 |
The Arabic Enlightenment | 158 |
BYZANTIUM AND THE SLAVIC WORLD | 175 |
A Threat from the North | 177 |
The Rise of Kiev | 219 |
The Golden Age of Kievan Rus | 233 |
The Rise of Moscow | 252 |
The Third Rome | 273 |
Epilogue The Last Byzantine | 283 |
Authors Note | 295 |
Acknowledgments | 297 |
Notes | 301 |
The Mission of Cyril and Methodius | 189 |
Wars of Emulation | 201 |
Serbs and Others | 210 |
Bibliography | 309 |
329 | |
Ostala izdanja - Prikaži sve
Uobičajeni izrazi i fraze
Abbasid al-Mamun Alexis ancient Greek Arabs Athos Averroes Baghdad Balkans Barlaam Basil Bessarion Boethius Boris Bruni Bulgaria Bulgars Byzan Byzantine Empire Byzantine humanists Byzantium caliph Cambridge Cantacuzenos capital Cassiodorus century Christian Chrysoloras civilization classical Constantine Constantinople Cosimo Crusaders cultural Cyprian Cyril and Methodius death decades Demetrius Cydones Dimitri Dnieper Dome dynasty early emperor falsafa faylasufs Florence Florentine grand prince Greek literature Hesychast Hunayn icons imperial Islamic Islamic world Italian Italy John Kiev Kievan lands later Latin learning Manuel Metochites metropolitan Michael monastery Mongols monks Moravia Moscow Muawiyah Muslim Nestorian Nicholas Old Church Slavonic Orthodox Ottoman Palamas patriarch Persian Petchenegs Petrarch philosopher Philotheos Photius Plato Pletho political pope Primary Chronicle religious Roman Rome rule ruler Russian Salutati scholars Serbia Serbs Slavic Slavs studies Svyatoslav Symeon Syria texts Theoderic Theodore Metochites tine tion translation Turks Umayyad University Press Venetians Venice Vladimir West Western