A Cautionary Message from History

Sailing from Byzantium by Colin Wells describes how Byzantine sources influenced Italy after the Dark Ages, influenced the Arabs after the rise of Islam, and influenced the Slavic peoples. One of the themes of the book is the tension between Athens and Jerusalem:

• Athens refers to the humanistic tradition, derived from ancient Greek philosophy, that is both secular and rational;
• Jerusalem refers to the faith-based tradition, derived from revelation, mystical and other non-rational sources.

The book makes the point that the tension existed in Western European, Russian, and Arab cultures, but the tension was resolved in quite different ways. Italy, during the Renaissance sought out and learned from the ancient Greek and Roman sources preserved and elaborated in Byzantium – especially “Athens”, while Russia (according to Wells) ultimately adopted much more of the mystical tradition – “Jerusalem. Wells describes the Arabs as adopting practical knowledge from ancients via Byzantium, but less of the philosophical. An inescapable question arises. Why did different aspects of Byzantine culture catch hold and prosper in each of the three adjacent areas? I can't begin to answer that question, and I think there are few people who could with any degree of legitimate confidence.

The book chronicles the complex political history from the fall of the Roman Empire until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. Dynasties rose and fell, war was a common feature, causing boundaries to expand and contract, and trade routs changed, while ruler succeeded ruler. Monotheistic religions triumphed over polytheistic ones; the period saw the rise of Islam and the split formalized between the orthodox and roman churches. Indeed, this was a time when languages changed significantly, sometimes by the unification of linguistic groups. Wells points out that Arabs in the Umayyad empire adopted Byzantine laws as they confronted the needs to govern more urban societies, incorporating them into the body of sharia law.

I was struck especially by the degree to which the culture of writing and books disseminated by its own timetable, influenced by far from synchronous with the evolution of political or religious institutions.

By chance, last month I was in Jordan and had the opportunity to visit several museums. They showed items of material culture such as mosaics and oil lamps. They tended to be labeled with terms like Nabatian, Ammonite, Moabite, Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, or Moslem. Yet there was an apparent continuity in these objects from epoch to epoch. Thus material culture was changing at a pace that appeared to be different than that of political institutions.

The thousand-year period was long enough to have seen both environmental and climatic changes, although Wells does not describe them. Still, the little ice age occurred toward the end of the period he describes, which is described in other sources as having serious economic and social repercussions. It seems likely that changing patterns of urbanization, changing population densities, and changing technologies over a thousand years would indeed influence the environment, which would in turn influence economic and social institutions.

Culture is a historically-contingent and complex web of political, social, economic, religious, legal and other institutions adapted to the environment in which the society lives, the knowledge and technology it commands, the wealth it owns, and the opportunities and threats deriving from its neighboring societies. Changes in one aspect of intangible or tangible culture are enhanced or hindered by the characteristics of other aspects of that culture. As Wells points out, the changing military situations engendered religious actions which then influenced the spread of book culture. All of this was contingent on the characteristics of influential individuals, and on unpredicted events such as storms that destroyed fleets, epidemics, or deaths of leaders.

A broad sweeping history such as Wells’ suggests how very complicated is the process of nation building, and how much it seems beyond our understanding much less our ability to manage closely. Not only is the process likely to be one that lasts centuries rather than decades, but it is one that is highly contingent on processes that are essentially unpredictable.

The history of the spread of the culture of the book, and of the tension between Athens and Jerusalem seems especially cogent at a time in which so many people hope to develop knowledge societies. I was especially struck by the historical swings of pendulums from rational Athens to mystical Jerusalem, and the seeming triumph (at least for long periods) of anti-rationalists. This seems a book with a cautionary message for our time.