Peace and War in Byzantium

Catholic University of America Press
T. Miller
ISBN: 081320805X
price: $49.95   hardcover

In recent years scholars have shown considerable interest in early Christian attitudes toward peace and war. Some researchers have expanded this field of study to include Augustine's views and their elaboration during the Middle Ages; others have focused on Reformation concepts about the virtues of peace and the causes of armed conflicts. Very few scholars, however, have considered how Byzantine theologians, politicians, and secular intellectuals conceived of the two. This volume of essays, compiled in honor of prominent Byzantine scholar George T. Dennis, S.J., is the first to examine the Byzantine Christian tradition of peace and war.
Grouped into three distinct sections, the essays collected here offer the reader an opportunity to examine aspects of a Christian tradition different from that of Roman Catholicism or Protestantism. The first essays examine how Byzantine society conceived of peace, the essays in the second section treat the manner in which the Byzantines waged war and how their soldiers actually lived, and the essays in the third section address specific sources for Byzantine military history. Although this last part is primarily for specialists, even here one finds information of general interest.
While the essays focus on many diverse aspects of Byzantine military history, two major themes emerge: first, that Byzantine religious and political writers considered peace the highest gift of God and the principal purpose of any legitimate state; and second, that the soldiers of Byzantium, both as the Empire's protectors from impious barbarians and as members of a profession stained with blood, held an ambivalent position in society.
Because an examination of the Byzantine moral perspective on the problem of organized violence may provide valuable new insights on the challenge of preserving peace in our time, this collection of original scholarly essays should appeal to a diverse audience--not only to those with an interest in Byzantine history but also to individuals interested in social and military history, theology, canon law, and the psychology and justification of war.