In this study Averil Cameron, chair of the Oxford Centre of Byzantine Research, focuses on the prose dialogues in twelfth century Greek and on what they can tell us about the society and culture of an era when western Europe was itself developing a new culture of schools, universities, and scholars. Yet it was also the period in which Byzantium felt the fateful impact of the Crusades, which ended with the momentous sack of Constantinople in 1204. Despite revisionist attempts to play down the extent of this disaster, it was a blow from which, arguably, the Byzantines never fully recovered.
The book was published in the Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lecture Series, vol. 8
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