Why the marginalized story of Byzantium has much to teach us about Western history

For many, Byzantium remains byzantine—obscure, marginal, difficult. Despite the efforts of some recent historians, prejudices still deform understanding of the Byzantine civilization, often reducing it to a poor relation of Rome and the rest of the classical world. In this book, renowned historian Averil Cameron addresses misconceptions about Byzantium, suggests why it is so important to integrate the civilization into wider histories, and lays out why Byzantium should be central to ongoing debates about the relationships between West and East, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and the ancient and medieval periods. The result is a compelling call to reconsider the place of Byzantium in Western history and imagination.

"Byzantine Matters is a fighting book. . . . [A]s a program for Byzantine studies in themselves, it is a crackling description of an intellectual trajectory."—Peter Brown, New York Review of Books
"No one has written about the history and culture of Byzantium with such luminous intelligence as Averil Cameron."—Peter Thonemann, Times Literary Supplement
"A book on a mission. . . . [I]t sets out to do nothing less than make its readers realise why Byzantium is not something long ago and far away but something that should matter to us all."—Liz James, Anglo-Hellenic Review
"A must-read for anyone studying Byzantium."—Library Journal

Averil Cameron is professor of late antique and Byzantine history at the University of Oxford and former warden of Keble College, Oxford. Her many books include Byzantine Christianity: A Very Short History, Arguing It Out, and Dialoguing in Late Antiquity.