Worlds of Byzantium contributes significantly to contemporary discussions of world history, world Christianity, and the limits of traditional West European historiography. It is also a monumental book (over 700 pages), beautifully presented and bound, with over 200 full-color plates, many of them images of objects that are largely unfamiliar and unpublished. It comprises essays on topics ranging from Stephen Rapp’s account of the substantial weight of Persianate culture in Georgia to Eve Krakowski’s detailed discussion of Rabbinate Judaism in Late Antiquity. A comprehensive review of each of these essays is impossible, not to mention beyond this reviewer’s expertise. I will therefore content myself with a short statement and a longer analysis. The short statement: this book belongs in many scholars’ bibliographies, comprising as it does essays on Byzantium’s place in world history; the social reality of the medieval Near East; the historiography of “the Byzantine Commonwealth”; the interaction of Arabic, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, Syriac, and other languages and material cultures from Late Antiquity through the early modern period; Ethiopian Christianity; Late Antique Judaism; Armenian Christianity; and Georgian culture.

My longer analysis focuses on church history, as seems appropriate for this journal. The editors and authors of Worlds of Byzantium argue that Byzantine Studies should be expanded beyond the imperial territory of the East Roman Empire to include “the Byzantine Near East,” which “was a notional confederation based upon an inherited Christian vision that asserted the perennial idea that God had worked through the Roman Empire to bring about the triumph of Christianity” (9). As a Byzantine historian, I have reservations about this formulation, but as a church historian, I find it salutary. Too often, accounts of church history follow the journeys of the Apostle Paul from Palestine to Rome; tell the story of Constantine’s conversion; recount the ecumenical councils; and then limit themselves to the story of Chalcedonian Christianity, including Eastern Orthodoxy. Such accounts barely mention non-Chalcedonian churches – or, for that matter, Chalcedonian churches in non-Byzantine polities. It is as if the religion inspired by Jesus of Nazareth traveled only north and west from Palestine, staying primarily on the northern shore of the Mediterranean. In fact, of course, it traveled in all directions, and this volume repeatedly reminds us of its diffusion in the Near East.

Columba Stewart’s chapter on the study of the Byzantine Near East and historiography of the non-Chalcedonian churches analyzes the ways in which modern nationalist and confessional concerns have shaped the field. Averil Cameron’s chapter discusses the common historical practice of assuming or explicitly asserting a “civilizational divide” between the Christian West and the Islamic Near East – a divide that erases the Christian churches of the Near East. Alicia Walker and Cecily Hilsdale present monumental and liturgical objects that exemplify connections between Christians and churches in the East Roman Empire, in Muslim Mesopotamia, and in the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and their Muslim and Christian neighbors, on the other. Chapters by Karel C. Innemée, Lucas Van Rompay, Dobrochna Zielińska, Jack Tannous, and Hieromonk Justin of Sinai demonstrate the lack of solid cultural and even linguistic boundaries between Coptic, Syriac, Greek, Arabic, and Georgian Christians. Tannous’s article even demolishes one of the standard arguments for a high wall between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians. Christina Maranci and Stephen Rapp, Jr. present the complex web of cultural, artistic, linguistic, and political relations between Georgia, Armenia, the East Roman Empire, and the various rulers of Persia. Rapp’s and Maranci’s chapters also share with George Hatke’s survey of Christianity in Ethiopia an emphasis on the constant interaction between these smaller and less well-known Christian communities and the larger worlds of Persia, the Hellenistic oikoumene, the East Roman lands, and the medieval Near East – again, both Islamic and Christian.

For church historians, this mass of information and analysis is a lot to absorb, but one message seems crucial. The boundaries that have separated fields and scholars – often for very practical reasons, such as language training and disciplinary boundaries institutionalized in university departments and schools – are our boundaries. Byzantine historians may know little about Ethiopia; that does not mean that Ethiopia and the East Roman Empire knew nothing of one another. The authors of the volume argue that “East Roman history” should expand to include “places like the Kingdom of Aksum, for instance, which might mint coins with Greek inscriptions and show an awareness of Roman motifs and ideology and also be involved in sixth-century Great Power rivalries in the Arabian peninsula” (653). Since “East Roman” and “Byzantine” both imply, for me, the imperial polity, I do not entirely agree. Should Byzantinists be paying attention to the other cultures and peoples of the Near East? Absolutely. Does it add to our understanding of Aksum or Byzantium if we consider Aksum “Byzantine”? Or do we risk a kind of Byzantine colonialism, claiming all Near Eastern cultures for the Byzantinist?

Again, however, I would stress that the central thesis of the volume is crucial for church history. The Byzantine/East Roman Empire was not so much global as connected to other parts of the globe. The traditions of Christianity, including Scriptures, liturgies, and material culture, were global. To limit our focus to the Greek- and Latin-speaking types of Christianity, with perhaps a nod toward the Slavic Orthodox, is to misconstrue the history of Christianity. The essays in Worlds of Byzantium are a salutary reminder of the need to include the churches “east of Byzantium” (and south of Byzantium) in the global history of Christianity.