ABSTRACT
It is particularly evident in the 'western' scholarship on Byzantium as an Orthodox society, and conversely in Orthodox writing about Byzantium. It is only surprising that European Byzantinists have not given this cultural background the weight which it clearly deserves. Part of the reason undoubtedly lies in the still relatively undeveloped field of literary criticism as applied to Byzantine material, but the issue goes far deeper than the purely literary. It is clearly a project of some Byzantinists today, and particularly of Greek scholars, to claim the universality of Byzantine civilization, to point out its lack of ethnic prejudice and its willingness and ability to integrate peoples and individuals of many different origins through cultural rather than ethnic mechanisms, and in so doing to situate Byzantium more firmly within the mainstream history of Europe. The place of Byzantium and its importance in European history are of course well recognised and familiar to Byzantinists.
