The Byzantine Patriarchate 451-1204 by George Every S.S.M.

When approaching a book like this which has been sat on your father’s study bookcase for some 45 years (and was published 20 years before that) a degree of caution does need to be exercised as there is the chance that scholarship might have moved on in the intervening decades.  In particular, I was a little wary of the account of the changing nature of the papacy during the period.  This seems to support a particular Anglican version of history in which the Church of England’s split from Rome was no revolution.  Rather it was a restoration of its proper status as a “National Church” that had pre-existed the Popes overstating of their authority from about the tenth century onwards.

The majority of the book is a narrative account of the Emperors, Patriarchs, and Popes and their relationships with one another. It is only really the last chapter, “The nature of the schism”, that is, as it were, operative.  Once we are looking at a great sweep of history and the division, and ultimately mutual-denial, of the Western and Eastern Churches you get the sense that the outcome was in fact determined by the personalities of individuals. 

There were theological differences between East and West, but these were for most of the period held in tension within the scope of a single Church, it was issues of power, status, and jurisdiction that ultimately resulted in separation.  I am not sure whether it is a comforting or a depressing thought that a millennia later you could apply the same sentence to the Anglican Communion.  As Anglicans we talk a lot about our theological differences, between “liberals” and “conservatives”, but what really drives those differences to become open conflict is issues of power, status, and jurisdiction.  

Maybe the message of this book is, really, that there is nothing new under the sun…

So many ways to begin by Jon Mcgregor

This was this year’s Greenbelt “Big Read” and despite hating last year’s Big Read book I still decided to give this one a go. This was most definitely a good move.

I will flag up that it will be fairly hard to talk much about the book without running the risk of spoilers – therefore if that is a problem for you perhaps you should stop now. The power of the book is rooted in the way the Mcgregor depicts the ordinariness of life with such clarity and pathos, the drama of the book is on a very domestic scale – but it is still the scene for gut wrenching tension.

There is a parallel with the Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and the honest account of depression is central to the narrative. The success with which the reality of depression is shown in this book makes it a very powerful read, but also in some ways a test of the reader’s endurance. The persistence of love between David and Eleanor even when their daily life together has become devoid of any outward sign of tenderness is both beautiful and harrowing.

We are fed a diet of TV soaps where stories move quickly and even in the midst of tragedy there is a buzz from the pace of the time line. This is almost the exact opposite, after the long years of ordinary pain it appears that a resolution is going to come, only for hope to be dashed, and yet in that moment it is not a return to despair but contentment that emerges.

It felt like a privilege to see into the private, and often dark, spaces of David and Eleanor’s lives.

Thank you Greenbelt for choosing this book and thank you to all the others who came along to the Big Read session to share their own experience of it.