Download or read book The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire written by Edward Luttwak and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-11 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the distinguished writer Edward N. Luttwak presents the grand strategy of the eastern Roman empire we know as Byzantine, which lasted more than twice as long as the more familiar western Roman empire, eight hundred years by the shortest definition. This extraordinary endurance is all the more remarkable because the Byzantine empire was favored neither by geography nor by military preponderance. Yet it was the western empire that dissolved during the fifth century. The Byzantine empire so greatly outlasted its western counterpart because its rulers were able to adapt strategically to diminished circumstances, by devising new ways of coping with successive enemies. It relied less on military strength and more on persuasion—to recruit allies, dissuade threatening neighbors, and manipulate potential enemies into attacking one another instead. Even when the Byzantines fought—which they often did with great skill—they were less inclined to destroy their enemies than to contain them, for they were aware that today’s enemies could be tomorrow’s allies. Born in the fifth century when the formidable threat of Attila’s Huns were deflected with a minimum of force, Byzantine strategy continued to be refined over the centuries, incidentally leaving for us several fascinating guidebooks to statecraft and war. The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire is a broad, interpretive account of Byzantine strategy, intelligence, and diplomacy over the course of eight centuries that will appeal to scholars, classicists, military history buffs, and professional soldiers.
Download or read book The Works of Edward Gibbon written by Edward Gibbon and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Christianity Volume 5 Eastern Christianity written by Michael Angold and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-17 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume encompasses the whole Christian Orthodox tradition from 1200 to the present. Its central theme is the survival of Orthodoxy against the odds into the modern era. It celebrates the resilience shown in the face of hostile regimes and social pressures in this often-neglected period of Orthodox history.
Download or read book The Expansion of Orthodox Europe written by Jonathan Shepard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume aims to clarify the context for the expansion of Western Europe by focusing on what had been the greatest power in early medieval Europe, the Byzantine empire, and on the continuing strengths and expansion of the Orthodox world. Byzantine 'orthodoxy' offered a format for faith, hope and fear in various combinations, involving religious beliefs and an idealised world-order. Its multifaceted nature helps explain Byzantium's success - the resilience of the earthly empire and the appeal of its religious organisation and rites to other societies. The volume reprints a set of key studies, combining classic treatments of Byzantine and Slavic history with far-reaching explorations of the extent of those worlds. Part I focuses on the empire in its heyday: some studies illustrate the sense of manifest destiny bolstering the imperial order until - and even beyond - Constantinople's fall to the fourth crusaders in 1204. The spread of the Byzantines' cult enlarged their trading zone northwards across Rus, while Byzantine-based merchants were more active than is generally realised in the Eastern Mediterranean. Part II includes an overview of the 'fragmentation' following 1204. Studies show how Byzantine rites and ideals of rulership were adopted by Serb and Bulgarian dynasts. Particular attention is paid to Rus: although subjugated by the Mongols, Rus churchmen, monks and leading princes all drew on Byzantine religious texts and imagery. From the later fifteenth century Moscow's rulers began to be portrayed as new guardians of religious correctness, even as the World's End supposedly drew nigh. The Introduction contextualises the studies included here, highlighting the significance (and not just in terms of rivalry) of the Byzantine Orthodox world for developments in Western Europe.
Download or read book The Library of Photius written by Saint Photius I (Patriarch of Constantinople) and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire written by Edward Luttwak and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-05-18 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A newly updated edition of this classic, hugely influential account of how the Romans defended their vast empire. At the height of its power, the Roman Empire encompassed the entire Mediterranean basin, extending much beyond it from Britain to Mesopotamia, from the Rhine to the Black Sea. Rome prospered for centuries while successfully resisting attack, fending off everything from overnight robbery raids to full-scale invasion attempts by entire nations on the move. How were troops able to defend the Empire’s vast territories from constant attacks? And how did they do so at such moderate cost that their treasury could pay for an immensity of highways, aqueducts, amphitheaters, city baths, and magnificent temples? In The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, seasoned defense analyst Edward N. Luttwak reveals how the Romans were able to combine military strength, diplomacy, and fortifications to effectively respond to changing threats. Rome’s secret was not ceaseless fighting, but comprehensive strategies that unified force, diplomacy, and an immense infrastructure of roads, forts, walls, and barriers. Initially relying on client states to buffer attacks, Rome moved to a permanent frontier defense around 117 CE. Finally, as barbarians began to penetrate the empire, Rome filed large armies in a strategy of “defense-in-depth,” allowing invaders to pierce Rome’s borders. This updated edition has been extensively revised to incorporate recent scholarship and archeological findings. A new preface explores Roman imperial statecraft. This illuminating book remains essential to both ancient historians and students of modern strategy.
Download or read book Byzantine Diplomacy written by Jonathan Shepard and published by Variorum Publishing. This book was released on 1992 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together papers arising from the 24th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies held in Cambridge in 1990. It represents a comprehensive investigation of Byzantine diplomacy from the emergence of the empire in late antiquity to its final throes as it fell to the Ottoman Turks. This is not just a narrow study of political relations, but a broad sweep from Italy to the steppes of Central Asia, from the imperial court to the marriage bed, from the scriptorium to the barracks. The book also includes a mysterious communication from a long-dead emperor.
Download or read book Paul VI Beatified written by Luigi Villa and published by . This book was released on 2010-10-07 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bishops in Flight written by Jennifer Barry and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Flight during times of persecution has a long and fraught history in early Christianity. In the third century, bishops who fled were considered cowards or, worse yet, heretics. On the face, flight meant denial of Christ and thus betrayal of faith and community. But by the fourth century, the terms of persecution changed as Christianity became the favored cult of the Roman Empire. Prominent Christians who fled and survived became founders and influencers of Christianity over time. Bishops in Flight examines the various ways these episcopal leaders both appealed to and altered the discourse of Christian flight to defend their status as purveyors of Christian truth, even when their exiles appeared to condemn them. Their stories illuminate how profoundly Christian authors deployed theological discourse and the rhetoric of heresy to respond to the phenomenal political instability of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Download or read book Philostorgius written by Philostorgius and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2007 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philostorgius (born 368 C.E.) was a member of the Eunomian sect of Christianity, a nonconformist faction deeply opposed to the form of Christianity adopted by the Roman government as the official religion of its empire. He wrote his twelve-book Church History, the critical edition of the surviving remnants of which is presented here in English translation, at the beginning of the fifth century as a revisionist history of the church and the empire in the fourth and early-fifth centuries. Sometimes contradicting and often supplementing what is found in other histories of the period, Christian or otherwise, it offers a rare dissenting picture of the Christian world of the time.
Download or read book Against Eunomius written by St. Basil of Caesarea and published by Catholic University of America Press. This book was released on 2011-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Basil of Caesarea is considered one of the architects of the Pro-Nicene Trinitarian doctrine adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which eastern and western Christians to this day profess as ""orthodox."" Nowhere is his Trinitarian theology more clearly expressed than in his first major doctrinal work, Against Eunomius, finished in 364 or 365 CE. Responding to Eunomius, whose Apology gave renewed impetus to a tradition of starkly subordinationist Trinitarian theology that would survive for decades, Basil's Against Eunomius reflects the intense controversy raging at that time among Christians across the Mediterranean world over who God is. In this treatise, Basil attempts to articulate a theology both of God's unitary essence and of the distinctive features that characterize the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--a distinction that some hail as the cornerstone of ""Cappadocian"" theology. In Against Eunomius, we see the clash not simply of two dogmatic positions on the doctrine of the Trinity, but of two fundamentally opposed theological methods. Basil's treatise is as much about how theology ought to be done and what human beings can and cannot know about God as it is about the exposition of Trinitarian doctrine. Thus Against Eunomius marks a turning point in the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century, for the first time addressing the methodological and epistemological differences that gave rise to theological differences. Amidst the polemical vitriol of Against Eunomius is a call to epistemological humility on the part of the theologian, a call to recognize the limitations of even the best theology. While Basil refined his theology through the course of his career, Against Eunomius remains a testament to his early theological development and a privileged window into the Trinitarian controversies of the mid-fourth century.
Download or read book Against the Heathen written by and published by Fig. This book was released on with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecclesiastical History written by Evagrius (Scholasticus) and published by . This book was released on 1846 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Monastery of Saint Catherine written by Oriana Baddeley and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Travels in Syria and the Holy Land written by John Lewis Burckhardt and published by IndyPublish.com. This book was released on 1822 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Christian Topography of Cosmas written by Cosmas (Indicopleustes) and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Messianic Legacy written by Henry Lincoln and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The startling, frighteningly convincing sequel to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that reveals the very nature of the Messianic Legacy. After the shocking revelations of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail the authors, in their quest to determine the discrepancies between early and modern 'Christian' thought, found that they were forced to ask such questions as: *Was there more than one Christ? *Was Christ the founder of Christianity? *Were the disciples as peace-loving as it is traditionally assumed? *What links the Vatican, the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia, Freemasonry, P2, Opus Dei and the Knights Templar *What mysterious modern crusade implicates British industry, Churchill and de Gaulle, the EEC and Solidarity? The Messianic Legacy offers enthralling new investigations into the shadowy society of the 'Prieure de Sion' - 'The Guardians of the Holy Grail' - as the authors discover the murky world of politics, finance, freemasonry, and religion that exists beneath the most solid and conservative seeming of European institutions: the Church. The ominous global conspiracy of disinformations they uncovered ensures that The Messianic Legacy us an up-to-the-minute thriller and a work of biblical detection that is even more significant than The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
