Margins and Metropolis: Authority across the Byzantine Empire by Judith Herrin (review)

Judith Herrin’s recent publications on Byzantium have continued the tradition of noted academics and authors such as John Julius Norwich, George Ostrogorsky, Warren Treadgold, and Cyril Mango. She joins their company by writing meticulously researched yet very readable and fascinating history books on the subject these authors share. Herrin is a British archaeologist and historian of Late Antiquity and professor emeritus of Late Antique and Byzantine studies at King’s College London. Herrin’s books accomplish the dual purpose of continuing to discover and develop the previously scant historical record of Byzantine history while rehabilitating the reputation of the Byzantine Empire in both academic circles and in the general perception of Western society.

The word Byzantium continues to call to mind intangible associations with an exotic or mysterious eastern Mediterranean society of alien and indecipherable rituals, beliefs, and customs. As most who read about the Byzantine Empire know, the term is the modern name for the East Roman Empire—which split with the West Roman Empire at the end of the fourth century. The so-called Eastern Empire continued to endure for another thousand years. It began its tenure as the last and strongest remnant of Western civilization, preserving the great academic and artistic heritage of antiquity from the onslaught of the Dark Ages. It was also the protector of the See of Rome and bulwark against the spread of Islam into Europe and the Mediterranean world. Over the course of ten centuries, it transformed into a regional power that competed with Western civilizations for trade, resources, and territory. It also championed a form of Christianity that was eventually declared heretical by the West. By the end of its existence, the empire, which had transitioned from Latin to Greek, was increasingly perceived by the West to be as alien as the cultures of Asia, Egypt, and the regions beyond.

Herrin has penned the great historical arc of Byzantine history in Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire and authored excellent books on specific aspects of Byzantine history, such as Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium. For Margins and Metropolis: Authority across the Byzantine Empire, Herrin once again includes the epic and tragic decline of the Byzantine Empire, but in this book it remains in the background of the events that she describes, an unavoidable fact of the ever-growing impotence of the state and its eventual disappearance.

Margins and Metropolis is a collection of short histories, research projects, and essays the author contributed to a variety of conferences, symposiums, and academic journals over the course of her distinguished academic career. Herrin has structured the book so that it contains a narrative thread for most of the volume—the theme being Byzantium’s loss, reestablishment, and terminal decline of internal authority, control, and influence in the provinces, on both land and sea, and on the international stage.

Herrin starts her history on the margins of Byzantium, the Balkan Peninsula (roughly modern day Greece), and at the dawn of the seventh century. At this point the Byzantine Empire had reached it first nadir, as the armies of Mohammad swept away the provinces of Asia and Africa and the Slavs breached the Danube River and permanently settled in the Balkans, occupying most of the Balkan Peninsula. This period was a second Dark Age for Greece, and the historical record is meager at best. The imperial authority in Constantinople was preoccupied with two subsequent major wars in the east and was struggling for its very survival. Utilizing a variety of sources, including monastic records and contemporary letters, Herrin provides a methodical and thorough argument for the way in which the Slavs were Hellenized. She describes how the wealthier Greek population at first was displaced from the peninsula but then returned after imperial military campaigns eventually allowed imperial authority to return and organize new administrative regions and revise the bishoprics to more effectively handle the Slavic influx and...