Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownworth is an engaging book that covers a period and place in history that may be unfamiliar territory to many western readers.
The Roman Empire fell in 476 AD…sort of. The truth is, only the western half fell. The eastern portion of the Roman Empire, centered in the ancient city of Byzantium, lived on. Renamed Constantinople by Emperor Constantine, the city kept the Roman Empire alive for another thousand years, coming to an end only at the hands of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire.
The story of the Byzantine Empire comes alive in the hands of Brownworth, a former high school history teacher. Brownworth launched his interest in Constantinople with a podcast, 12 Byzantine Rulers, on iTunes, and continues his work in Lost to the West.
I didn’t know much about the Byzantine Empire before reading the book but was fascinated by what I learned. From the establishment of Constantinople as the capitol of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire to the city’s prominence in the dark ages to its pillaging at the hand of Christian crusaders to its ultimate downfall at the hands of of the Turks, history comes alive in ways that it rarely seems to in a classroom. In fact, sometimes it seems more like you’re reading a novel than a history book.
While the book isn’t about church history, the political world and it’s interaction with the church, both East and West, fills the book. Most people with an interest in church history know about the split between the Western (Roman Catholic) church and the Eastern (Orthodox) church but there were hundreds of years of tension, animosity and political intrigue between the two. Such was the animosity between the two that the Fourth Crusade ended up with crusaders sacking Constantinople and weakening the Eastern Empire to the point that it eventually fell to the invading Muslims.
From the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 came scholarship and ancient texts new to the west. Ancient Greek and Roman authors were rediscovered. Greek manuscripts of the New Testament surfaced. In many ways, the fall of Constantinople added fuel to the fire of the Renaissance that was gaining speed in Europe. But it also removed a centuries’ old bastion standing between Muslim Asia and Christian Europe. Without the Byzantine Empire to hold back the rising tide of Islam, Europe soon found itself dealing with a new Muslim presence on the continent.
I enjoyed reading Lost to the West as much as any history book I can remember reading. And on nearly every page I learned more about how life in Western Europe was impacted by what happened in a city I knew little about before reading the book. It’s definitely worth adding to your reading list.
Lost to the West by Lars Brownworth is 329 pages long and is available in both hardcover ($26 list price) and paperback ($15 list price). It includes footnotes, a bibliography, index and a listing of the emperors of Constantinople. Available from Amazon.
Our take: Highly Recommended
