These are two very different books. Byzantine Orthodoxies deals with the problem of Orthodoxy, while Byzantine Christianity addresses Orthopraxy and presents itself as a ‘historical anthropology’, which in practice means a great deal of description. It is volume iii of A People's History of Christianity, which ‘breaks new ground by looking at Christianity's past from the vantage point of a people's history’, in other words from the ground up. The former is another in the series of Spring symposia and follows a tried and tested formula by concentrating on a large historical problem, in this case the nature of Orthodoxy in a Byzantine setting. The symposiarch Andrew Louth sets out the problem in his introduction, where he does not shrink from sketching Orthodoxy's often oppressive and intolerant character, a feature taken up by Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash) with a study of ‘Byzantine hymns of hate’, which he judges to be ‘a peculiarity of the Byzantine Orthodox tradition’. These were directed against heretics, such as Arius. It is with Arius that Byzantine Orthodoxies begins. He is at the heart of John Behr's opening paper on the ‘Question of Nicene Orthodoxy’. It deals with many of the problems raised by Orthodoxy: its relationship to heresy; its historical evolution; its reception by the body of the faithful. John Behr presents Orthodoxy as having ‘less to do with recapturing a pristine past than envisioning the future’. So, far from being called to deal with a heresy, the First Council of Nicaea established new doctrine, which excluded a large body of the faithful, usually referred to as ‘Arians’, even if they were not necessarily followers of Arius. On this reading heresy becomes an inevitable result of the establishment of Orthodoxy. But why should abstruse theological debate have generated intense popular interest? John Behr concedes that it is very unlikely that it was doctrine per se: rather it was doctrine ‘imagined’. By this he means the transformation of theological formulae into an ‘image’ of Christ, which then became ‘the focal point of the Christian faith’. There is a suggestion here that Orthodoxy is in the end fixed by the community at large rather than by theologians.

If this line of thought is not followed up in Byzantine Orthodoxies, it receives indirect treatment in Byzantine Christianity, where Georgia Frank presents the kontakia of Romanos as an outlet for popular emotionalism, which concentrated on an ‘image’ of Christ, while Jaclyn Maxwell underlines the independence of Christian communities by reminding us that John Chrysostom's attempts to lay down the norms of Christian behaviour often foundered on his congregation's own sense of piety. She concludes that ‘they incorporated religion into their lives in ways that originated from their own experiences and logic, rather than solely following the instructions from church authorities’. Without itemising every contribution it is sufficient to say that Byzantine Christianity provides a comprehensive coverage of almost all aspects of the religious experience of the laity: pilgrimage; the impact and meaning of the church building and decoration; death and dying; icons, amulets, reliquaries and crosses; and the special experience of women and children. To my knowledge there is nothing quite like this volume, which offers a rather different way of looking at Byzantine society and more than justifies its claim to be breaking new ground. Not the least of its strengths are the excellent illustrations.

Byzantine Orthodoxies is far more traditional, containing the usual mixture of conference papers. One that catches the eye is the late Sergei Averintsev's closing paper on ‘Some constant characteristics of Byzantine Orthodoxy’, which even in print still conveys the excitement of a really good conference paper. In it he considers Father Pavel Florensky's contention that Orthodoxy was not only a matter of doctrine and ritual, it was also one of taste. This is a notoriously difficult area, which Averintsev examines from a variety of angles. He thinks that the keyword is ἀκρíβεια, for which, he claims, there is no exact equivalent in any other language. It unites all aspects of Orthodox life: from ‘exactitude of reasoning’ to correct ritual and proper Christian conduct. This time Byzantine Christianity does not even provide indirect commentary. This is hardly surprising given the lack of common ground between the two volumes. I found a single point of intersection. Both seize on a remark let slip by Gregory Melissenos (not Melissimos) during a visit to a Latin church during the Council of Ferrara/Florence (1438–9), to the effect that he could not revere any of the saints depicted ‘because I do not recognise them’. This is taken, probably correctly, as typical of the Byzantine reaction to Latin religious art. However, it is worth looking at this incident more closely, because it reveals an interesting paradox. As V. Laurent established exactly fifty years ago, Gregory Melissenos went on to become the unionist Patriarch Gregory iii (1443–50), who was forced out of Constantinople and had to flee to the safety of Rome. Byzantine Orthodoxies is at its strongest when dealing with uncertainties of this kind, which underlay the apparent solidity of Orthodoxy. Tia M. Kolbaba is excellent on the concessions which twelfth-century Byzantine theologians were willing to make to their Latin counterparts. But the crucial question still remains: why did their moderation produce no concrete results? Was Sir Steven Runciman correct to link this failure to the ‘growth of popular animosity’? Did an accommodation with the Latins threaten the popular ‘image’ of Christ? Whatever, in Byzantium's last phase the influence of the hated Latins pervaded its art and music to an unprecedented extent, as we learn from Robin Cormack and Alexander Lingas. Insights of this kind make Byzantine Orthodoxies uncomfortable reading, because they emphasise the contingent difficulties involved in the definition, defence and adaptation of Orthodoxy. In contrast, Byzantine Christianity sets out an idealised view of Orthodox life, but it was exactly this idealised view, best caught in the layout and decoration of an Orthodox church, which helped to sustain Orthodoxy.