To all:
A new book has come out of recent entitled:
"Byzantine Christianity: A People's History of Christianity (A People's History of Christianity)"
It is the third volume of a series.
Instead of concentrating on doctrinal and organizational issues as well as biographies of famous and infamous personalities, this book is a breath of fresh air in that it covers the "Common" people and how their Christian faith filled their lives.
It is non-polemic.
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From the Publisher (taken from Amazon.com's website)
"What ordinary Christians did in distant periods has an obvious interest, but is not easily studied. Through a series of series of essays of uniformly high quality and at times striking originality, the authors of Byzantine Christianity detail many aspects of daily life: how Christians prayed before meals and while they worked, how they protected themselves against evil forces of all sorts with amulets and other talismans, how they aspired to look at icons with tear-filled eyes, how the faith was taught to the young and practiced by women; and even how many ecclesiastical holidays the people of Constantinople celebrated: 120 plus an additional 43 half days. For too long, Anglophone histories of Christianity have focused only on Western Europe and America. Byzantine Christianity reveals worlds that are familiar and unfamiliar in ways that general readers will find fascinating and meaningful." � Robert Nelson, Yale University, author of Hagia Sophia, 1850-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
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I highly recommend it. I got my copy from the local Evangelical Bookstore since the Catholic one doesn't have anything on Eastern Christianity. I thought it was interesting how many covers of Evangelical books are now graced with Byzantine iconography.
Joe Thur
