Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century

Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century by Meyendorff, John. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780881410792.

The history of Russia is often considered as though that immense country had always been an isolated continent. However, at the time of its rise as a nation, it was politically a province of the Mongol Empire, whose capital was in Central Asia; ecclesiastically, it was a dependency of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, of Byzantium. This book describes the role of Byzantine (predominately ecclesiastical) diplomacy in the emergence of Moscow as the capital of Russia in the fourteenth century, and the cultural, religious, and political ties which connected the Northern periphery of the Byzantine Orthodox "Commonwealth" with its center in Constantinople.