Relations Between East and West in the Middle Ages

In the Roman Empire, relations between East and Westmeant connections between the eastern and western partsof a unified structure of empire. Romans sometimes complainedabout the corrupting influence on their city of Greeksand Orientals, but they employed Greek tutors to educatetheir sons. People did not think of the eastern and westernparts of the empire as being separate entities whose relationswith each other must be the object of careful study. Evenat the moment of the empire’s birth, there was a clear ideaof where the Latin West ended and the Greek East began.This began to change with Constantine, when the RomanEmpire was split in two, with Rome itself in decay.This volume, first published in 1973, derives from acolloquium on medieval history held at Edinburgh University.Its theme was the fl uctuating balance-of-powerof Latin West and Greek East, Rome and Constantinople.The book starts with Justinian’s attempt to reunite the twohalves of the old Roman Empire and then goes on to considerthe polarization of Christianity into its Catholic andOrthodox sectors, and the misunderstandings fosteredby the Crusades; and ends with the growing power andconquests of Islam in the fourteenth century.The contributions included in Relations between Eastand West in the Middle Ages are: Old and New Rome inthe Age of Justinian, by W. H. C. Frend; The Tenth Centuryin Byzantine-Western Relationships, by Karl Leyser; Williamof Tyre, by R. H. C. Davis; Cultural Relations betweenEast and West in the Twelfth Century, by Anthony Bryer;Innocent III and the Greeks, Aggressor or Apostle? by JosephGill; Government in Latin Syria and the CommercialPrivileges of Foreign Merchants, by Jonathan Riley-Smith;and Dante and Islam, by R. W. Southern.