Jubilees are good to think with, obviously. They provide a fitting opportunity to look back, to take stock, and to offer some thoughts about the future. As a scholar working on Byzantine history (and only slightly older than BMGS at that) I recognize that the state of the field has changed immensely in the last fifty years. First, there was a major expansion in departments and programmes dedicated to Byzantine studies, followed more recently by a contraction. And yet, even while Byzantine studies are offered in fewer academic institutions, there is an immense proliferation of academic research and publications on the Byzantine Empire – trend accelerating. Exact numbers may be hard to come by, but a quick search on WorldCat for books published in 2023 with the word ‘Byzantine’ in the title brought forth almost two hundred books – in English alone. If we add journal articles (there are over twenty major journals devoted solely to Byzantine studies), chapters in edited volumes, and, especially publications in languages other than English, we would probably reach the low thousands, all in one year. To survey, much less to read with care and absorb all this new knowledge, has become impossible. How handy would it be if someone else took over this task for us – processing research and synthesizing it in a clear, concise and readable volume. It is highly doubtful that such a book could be produced today, but there is a work that fulfilled these functions for a very long time, one of the most cited and recommended textbooks in Byzantine history, Georg Ostrogorsky's History of the Byzantine State.

In what follows (and which has been conceived more as a feuilleton piece than an academic study; I hope that other scholars will produce the definitive critical assessment of Ostrogorsky's workFootnote ¹), I am going to discuss how relevant and how useful this celebrated book is today in the function it was intended for, namely as a handbook of Byzantine history. The short answer surely must be that a book originally written nearly a century ago cannot by definition be up to date and that its usefulness as a textbook must be low. But that is obviously not the whole story. I will first place the book in its original context, discuss its extraordinary success as it went through revised editions and was translated into several languages, and conclude that the development of scholarship on the Byzantine Empire in the last fifty years means that the book can no longer fulfil its original function.

Georg Ostrogorsky was born in St Petersburg in 1902. His family left Russia in 1920; he took his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg in 1925 and completed his Habilitation at the University of Breslau in 1928. He began teaching at Breslau but his license to teach (Lehrbefugnis) was revoked in 1933 as a result of the Nazi legislation against non-Aryans – his paternal grandparents and his father had been Jewish. In the same year he emigrated to Prague and from there to Belgrade, where he accepted a post as Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University in the same year.Footnote ²

Ostrogorsky signed the contract to write ‘a history of the Byzantine Empire [. . .] in one book (without separation into political, economic and administrative history’ before 1 December 1933, when he mentioned it in a letter to Percy Ernst Schramm.Footnote ³ This requires some unpacking. Ostrogorsky's book was part of a series that went back to 1885, the Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft.Footnote ⁴ The series aimed to produce authoritative handbooks that provided a competent synthesis of current knowledge on all aspects of the study of the ancient world, their target audience being teachers and pupils at Gymnasien, the highest type of German secondary schools, as well as interested members of the general public. Karl Krumbacher published the first Byzantinist volume for this series in 1891, the History of Byzantine Literature (Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur) to great acclaim for both author and work. In 1897 a second edition of the work was published that included not only a significantly enlarged version of Krumbacher's text, but also a section on theological literature in prose by Albert Ehrhard (pp. 37–218) and an outline of Byzantine imperial history by Heinrich Gelzer (pp. 911–1067).Footnote ⁵ Walter Otto, who took over the direction of the series in 1920 (and dropped the ‘klassischen’ from its title) decided to devote a whole subsection to Byzantium and therefore to commission volumes that would form a ‘Byzantine Handbook’. In his preface to Ostrogorsky's volume in 1940 (omitted from the English translation) he describes what must have been his editorial brief to the author: to avoid overlapping (with the other commissioned volumes for the series) and to reduce the book's size, sections on constitutional, administrative and economic matters would be incorporated to the narrative of imperial history; to engage with ecclesiastical history as little as was possible without compromising clarity; to leave Byzantine art and literary history out, and to subsume the project under the title of History of the Byzantine State.Footnote ⁶ Ostrogorsky submitted the manuscript two years before it was actually published in early 1940 as the second volume of the first part of the Byzantinisches Handbuch.Footnote ⁷ In his preface, the author writes that ‘the internal development of the State is given greater prominence than in previous general surveys of Byzantine history’ [. . .]. In conformity with the plan of the series the account of the early Byzantine period is confined to a description of its main features with only such detail as is essential for an understanding of the history of the medieval Byzantine state.Footnote ⁸ To summarize: the History of the Byzantine State is a book written in the 1930s within quite specific parameters in terms of audience but also coverage and focus. The rest, as they say is, history.

The book was highly successful, both academically and – judging from its two revised editions and translations into several languages – commercially. In several languages it is still in print. In the discussion of the book's merits and weaknesses in this text I will be referring to the third and final revised edition of the German book (1963) and to the second revised translation in English which was based on it, unless otherwise indicated. I have not cross-checked the first two editions of the German text (1940, 1952), nor the first English translation (1956). Ostrogorsky's prefaces to the three German editions and to the first English translation outline the major changes between them: he corrected mistakes pointed out in reviews, updated the bibliography, and made adjustments to his own ideas based on more recent research, re-arranged sections, and so on. However, despite all the changes (which did not result in a substantially augmented number of pages between the editions) Ostrogorsky states in the preface to the third edition: ‘There are of course limits to such alterations. For whatever the author may wish, the structure of a work cannot be altered when preparing a new edition.’Footnote ⁹

The book was very widely and positively reviewed, despite being published in wartime.Footnote ¹⁰ The same positive reception continued for the revised editions in 1952 and 1963 as well as the various translations. It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment when the book attained the status of the most accepted and recommended handbook in the field – I assume by its second edition at the latest. This status may be less universally accepted today, but the book is still present in most syllabi of Byzantine history as well as in most published histories of the Empire as a still valuable manual. Such an outstanding (and unique) success has to be explained.

The book, following what I assume must have been the general guidelines of the series (these traits appear in volumes that preceded Ostrogorsky's), is, first of all, very clear and user-friendly. Each chapter begins with a fairly thorough discussion of the key sources for the period in question and each section within each chapter is preceded by a bibliography of important references; on top of that, there are ample footnotes (often outlining specific issues or adding updated references) as well as (at least in the German editions) a set of very clear maps. The text is relatively concise at around 500 pages in the original German, given that it covers a millennium of history; it is learned and readable and foregrounds primary sources, which lends it authority. But I believe one of its strongest points is the confident authorial voice: Ostrogorsky delivers a tight narrative that very rarely allows room for doubts or discussion; he lectures rather than argues, no doubt also because he had to keep the book concise. Users obviously responded positively to a text that provided certainties on topics they may have known little about. The image of the Byzantine state that emerges from the book is serious and sober; unlike many of his predecessors (including his teacher Charles Diehl), Ostrogorsky does not (or at least not primarily) lure his readers with a vision of decadence and exoticism, nor of Byzantium as a monolithic and immobile Other. On the contrary, the book posits Byzantine history as dynamic: ‘[e]verything was in constant flux, always being modified or built anew’.Footnote ¹¹ No doubt, the book's quasi-universal acceptance after World War II cannot have been only the result of its virtues. Perhaps Ostrogorsky appealed in different ways during the Cold War: a Russian scholar behind the Iron Curtain, who was at the same time also a German-trained polyglot who could read and process scholarship in all major languages in the field (including Russian and other Slavic languages, little read in the West) and whose handbook remained reassuringly unmodern when new theories were emerging and challenging established certainties.

This was then (perhaps by the end of the 1960s or a little later); but how is the situation now? Allow me a provocative suggestion: perhaps the majority of those who currently include the book in their recommendations have not read it recently and/or in its entirety and/or critically. The book's status and the endorsement of generations of Byzantinists suffice for its iconic function, perhaps accompanied by careful caveats that it may be (somewhat) outdated (in parts), but that it remains valuable. Depending on what one expects of a handbook, this may be true for some audiences, to fulfil certain functions, while it is not true at all for others. The point of view I am adopting for this text is that of a teacher: would I recommend this book to students, especially undergraduates? Furthermore, would I recommend it to interested readers without specialist knowledge in the field? My answer is no.

Many aspects of the book have not aged well, as can be expected after such a long life. The style, for example. Emperors and key personalities are characterized aphoristically – Brehier considered it one of the book's fortesFootnote ¹² – but the phrases now sound quite stale. ‘The grave weaknesses in his [Justinian's] character pale before the quality of his all-embracing intellect (p. 70)’; ‘His [sc. the prophet Muhammad's] work was undeveloped and devoid of intellectual quality, but was full of primitive energy and dynamic in the extreme (p. 110)’; ‘the truly oriental delight in mutilation [in the Ecloga] (p. 159)’; ‘It was the tragedy of the old Empire that, at a time when one of the greatest rulers stood at the head of the Frankish kingdom [Charlemagne], its own history was determined by women and eunuchs (p. 183)’; This extraordinary beautiful, but entirely immoral and immeasurably ambitious woman [Theophano, empress of Romanos II] (p. 284)’; ‘Basil II, who soon emerged to show himself as a man of iron strength of purpose and unique ability; amongst all the descendants of Basil I, he alone was a natural ruler and a truly great statesman (p. 299)’; ‘Alexius III (1195–1203), a weakling, possessed of a lust for power (p. 408). Leaving aside the orientalist and sexist language, these characterizations make clear a belief in the Great Man theory: history is shaped by strong emperors and Ostrogorsky seems to reserve his greatest praise for emperors who distinguished themselves in war: Herakleios, Basil II and Alexios I above all.Footnote ¹³

The most serious issue, however, is the fact that the book is badly outdated in terms of its content; again, to be expected in a book whose latest references are sixty years old. To illustrate my point, I hope that one case study may suffice. I have chosen to analyse the creation and development of the themata, one of the most debated issues in Byzantine history. In many ways, it forms the backbone of the book as Ostrogorsky clearly believed that the armies of peasant soldiers (and their grant of land by the state) were responsible for the greatest Byzantine successes and that their decline and demise after the eleventh century brought Byzantium's downfall.Footnote ¹⁴

Ostrogorsky's reconstruction of the reforms that brought the themata into existence runs as follows: during Herakleios’ campaigns against the Persians (in the late 610s and early 620s) ‘[t]he territory in Asia minor which still remained untouched by the enemy was divided into large military zones, called ‘themes’, and thus the foundations were laid of a system which was to characterize the provincial administration of the medieval Byzantine state for centuries.’ The themata signalled a break with the Late Roman administration; they were ‘each under the control of a strategus, who exercised the highest military and civil power in his district’. Footnote ¹⁵ Furthermore, ‘[i]nalienable grants of land (called in later sources στρατιωτικὰ κτήματα) were made to the soldiers on condition of hereditary military service.’Footnote ¹⁶ ‘The system of the themes was the basis on which an effective native army was built up, and it freed the Empire from the expensive necessity of recruiting unreliable foreign mercenaries [. . .].’Footnote ¹⁷ He suggests, albeit somewhat indirectly, that many of the ‘soldier-farmers’ were Slavs who had been moved to Anatolia and settled in the themata. ‘The new army drawn from the themes consisted of soldier-farmers who were settled on their own land, and whose soldiers’ farms provided the economic means whereby they were maintained and equipped. [. . .] [T]he granting of these soldiers’ farms also helped to strengthen the position of the free small-holder. ’Footnote ¹⁸

Any current scholar of Byzantine history will recognize that this reconstruction is no longer believed to be correct. In fact, this interpretation was contested even at the time Ostrogorsky was writing, a fact that the non-specialist reader would not be able to recognize from the text itself, as alternative views are summarily acknowledged but not discussed in any detail.Footnote ¹⁹ This is obviously not the place to offer a comprehensive outline of research on the themata, but some key points will suffice. Scholarly consensus now sees the emergence of the themata as a gradual development, rather than the result of one emperor's policy. The technical term thema to denote a military province and the strategos as its military and civil commander does not emerge before the early ninth century – the previous system comprised of strategiai, which had some similarities with the themata, but also significant structural differences. Finally, the granting of land to farmer-soldiers was neither a development of the period before the ninth century, nor was it as universally applied as Ostrogorsky seems to suggest.Footnote ²⁰ In short, this reconstruction is utterly outdated and unfit for the purpose of providing a solid basis of knowledge for non-specialists. Wolfram Brandes remarked some years ago that Ostrogorsky's general acceptance meant that ideas on the themata that ran contrary to his own could not easily break through to the mainstream, and therefore, for example, general works of reference simply continued repeating Ostrogorsky's outdated and erroneous analysis of this central aspect of Byzantine history.Footnote ²¹

It is not just the treatment of the themata that no longer represents scholarly consensus in this book. In my mind, all the major issues of Byzantine history fare similarly. To name but the most important: the view of Byzantium as primarily preserving and passing on Graeco-Roman culture; the causes, timing and impact of Iconoclasm; the understanding of the eleventh century as a period of growth or crisis; the reasons and timing for the debasement of the gold coinage; the clear binary between the civil and the military aristocracy; the use of feudalism as an explanatory model, the emergence and development of pronoia and so on. For all these reasons this book should no longer be used as a handbook. On the other hand, its significance for the formation of Byzantine studies in the twentieth century is unsurpassed and therefore both author and text certainly deserve to be studied in more depth: Ostrogorsky's vision when preparing and revising his text; how his background, studies and vicissitudes of life had an impact on the book and its reception; and perhaps also what Ostrogorsky's choices and emphases meant for the development of the field of Byzantine Studies once his book had become so important.

When Ostrogorsky first wrote this book the potential target audience consisting of Byzantinists or a general readership that was aware of and therefore interested in this state was certainly small. To make Byzantium familiar he must have chosen to scaffold the knowledge about this relatively new topic on areas he could expect his German readers to be familiar with. In that light, the insistence on using feudalism as the backbone of his narrative, for example, can be easily understood. Likewise, the prominent position he assigned to Iconoclasm might be more easily explained as another topic that German audiences would have been quite familiar with through the analogy with the destruction of images during the Reformation. Judging from the vast outpouring of publications I mentioned above, audiences interested in Byzantium are no longer small, and their familiarity with it is very different to the time Ostrogorsky first wrote the book. And yet, despite a substantial number of books on the history of the Byzantine Empire in the last decades, no individual publication has managed to gain the general acceptance in the field that Ostrogorsky's handbook once enjoyed; no book has become ‘the new Ostrogorsky’. In my mind, this does not suggest something lacking in these books, a magic formula that was not attained, but something altogether different. Every generation writes its own history of the past as H. Morse Stephens wrote in 1915; each new version is informed by the preoccupations, problems and sensibilities of the present. Perhaps the traditional mode of a book written by/with one strong authorial voice and thus one perspective is not fit for our globalized, fragmented world where multiple perspectives (often contradicting one another) are much more acceptable – the certainty of tone associated with the one-author-version makes this difficult to achieve. I am not suggesting an edited volume with multiple voices as the alternative, but rather a fully collaborative work that combines more than one author working together to produce an integrated narrative that has space for questions, even doubts. Or, perhaps, ours is not a time for consensus and certainties altogether. Here's to those who will discover the answer in the next fifty years.