J. V. A. Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans ( Ann Arbor, Mich., 1983), a good synthesis of recent research.

C. Foss, Byzantine and Turkish Sardis ( Cambridge, Mass., 1976), like his Ephesus after Antiquity ( Cambridge, Mass., 1979), traces the evolution of a Byzantine city, but his views have met with some criticism.

R. J. H. Jenkins, Byzantium, the Imperial Centuries, A.D. 610-1071 ( London, 1966), sound but unimaginative.

C. Mango, Byzantium. The Empire of New Rome ( London, 1980), the most stimulating of many surveys of Byzantine civilization; concentrates on the early period.

D. Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth ( London, 1971), a masterly account of Byzantium's relations with her Balkan neighbours.

G. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State ( 2nd edn. Oxford, 1968), the best political handbook, although some of his conclusions are now questioned.

THE CHURCH IN EAST AND WEST

A. A. M. Bryer and J. Herrin (eds.), Iconoclasm ( Birmingham, 1977), an invaluable collection of papers from a symposium.

P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo ( London, 1967), a masterly biography, full of insights into the life of the fifth-century Church.

J. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire ( Oxford, 1986), a thorough and scholarly survey.

C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism ( London, 1984), one of the few treatments of a surprisingly neglected subject, rather cursory on the early Middle Ages.

J. M. Richards, Consul of God ( London, 1980), a clear but limited biography of Pope Gregory the Great.

----- The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages, 476-752 ( London, 1979), a straightforward account which eschews some wider theoretical issues.

AFRICA

C. Courtois, Les Vandales et l'Afrique ( Paris, 1955), the best survey of the Vandal kingdom.

D. Pringle, The Defence of Byzantine Africa from Justinian to the Arab Conquest ( Oxford, 1981), discusses politics and administration as well as military and archaeological developments.

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