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siria's review against another edition
informative
3.75
Judith Herrin argues here that neither later medieval/modern Western Europe nor the Islamic World would have developed as they did without the Byzantine Empire, and that religion was a key structural force in these varying developments. Byzantium was a buffer between the Dar al-Islam and much of Christian Europe, yet it was heavily influenced by Muslim aniconism; a rejection of iconoclastic extremes and also of Byzantine caesaropapism shaped how Christian institutions and particularly Carolingian power developed in western Europe. There are definite shades of Pirenne here, and parts of The Formation of Christendom have been superseded by later scholarship in the 30 or so years since this book was still published. Despite this and some other minor quibbles, there's still much to benefit from here; Herrin's explication of the icon controversy is authoritative.
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