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Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman CH FBA (7 July 1903 – 1 November 2000), known as Steven Runciman, was an English historian best known for his three-volume A History of the Crusades (1951–54).

The Honourable Sir Steven Runciman CH FBA
Born	James Cochran Stevenson Runciman (1903-07-07)7 July 1903 Northumberland, United Kingdom
Died	1 November 2000(2000-11-01) (aged 97) Radway, Warwickshire, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge
Occupation	Historian
Known for	A History of the Crusades
Parent(s)	Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford Hilda Stevenson

He was a strong admirer of the Byzantine Empire. His history's negative portrayal of crusaders and contrasting more favourable view of Byzantine and Muslim societies had a profound impact on the popular conception of the Crusades.

Biography

Born in Northumberland, he was the second son of Walter and Hilda Runciman.[1] His parents were members of the Liberal Party and the first married couple to sit simultaneously in Parliament.[2] His father was created Viscount Runciman of Doxford in 1937. His paternal grandfather, Walter Runciman, 1st Baron Runciman, was a shipping magnate.[2] He was named after his maternal grandfather, James Cochran Stevenson, the MP for South Shields.

Eton and Cambridge

It is said that he was reading Latin and Greek by the age of five. In the course of his long life he would master an astonishing number of languages, so that, for example, when writing about the Middle East, he relied not only on accounts in Latin and Greek and the Western vernaculars, but consulted Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, Armenian and Georgian sources as well.[3][4] A King's Scholar at Eton College, he was an exact contemporary and close friend of George Orwell.[2][1] While there, they both studied French under Aldous Huxley.

In 1921 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a history scholar and studied under J. B. Bury, becoming, as Runciman later said, falsely, "his first, and only, student".[2] At first the reclusive Bury tried to brush him off; then, when Runciman mentioned that he could read Russian, Bury gave him a stack of Bulgarian articles to edit, and so their relationship began. His work on the Byzantine Empire earned him a fellowship at Trinity in 1927.[1]

Work as a historian

After receiving a large inheritance from his grandfather, Runciman resigned his fellowship in 1938 and began travelling widely. Thus, for much of his life he was an independent scholar, living on private means.[2] He went on to be a press attaché at the British Legation in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, in 1940 and at the British Embassy in Cairo in 1941. From 1942 to 1945 he was Professor of Byzantine Art and History[2] at Istanbul University, in Turkey, where he began the research on the Crusades which would lead to his best known work, the History of the Crusades (three volumes appearing in 1951, 1952 and 1954). From 1945 to 1947 he was a representative in Athens of the British Council.[1][2]

Most of Runciman's historical works deal with Byzantium and her medieval neighbours between Sicily and Syria; one exception is The White Rajahs, published in 1960, which tells the story of Sarawak, an independent state founded on the northern coast of Borneo in 1841 by James Brooke, and ruled by the Brooke family for more than a century.

Jonathan Riley-Smith, one of the leading historians of the Crusades,[5] denounced Runciman for his perspective on the Crusades.[6] Riley-Smith had been told by Runciman during an on-camera interview that he [Runciman] considered himself "not a historian, but a writer of literature."[7]

According to Christopher Tyerman, Professor of the History of the Crusades at Hertford College, Oxford,[8] Runciman created a work that "across the Anglophone world continues as a base reference for popular attitudes, evident in print, film, television and on the internet."[9]

Interest in the occult, and homosexuality

In his personal life, Runciman was an old-fashioned English eccentric, known, among other things, as an æsthete, raconteur and enthusiast of the occult. According to Andrew Robinson, a history teacher at Eton, "he played piano duets with the last Emperor of China, told tarot cards for King Fuad of Egypt, narrowly missed being blown up by the Germans in the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul and twice hit the jackpot on slot machines in Las Vegas".

A story from his time at Eton of an incident with a then friend, Eric Blair (who became famous writing as George Orwell) is told in Gordon Bowker's biography of Orwell: "Drawing from new correspondence with Steven Runciman, one of Orwell’s friends at Eton (which he attended from 1917 to 1921), Bowker reveals the (perhaps surprising) fascination of Blair with the occult. A senior boy, Phillip Yorke, had attracted the disfavour of both Blair and Runciman so they planned a revenge. As Runciman recalled, they fashioned an image of Yorke from candle wax and broke off a leg. "To their horror, shortly afterwards, Yorke not only broke his leg but in July died of leukaemia. The story of what happened soon spread and, in somewhat garbled form, became legend. Blair and Runciman suddenly found themselves regarded as distinctly odd, and to be treated warily."[10][11]

Runciman was homosexual.[12] There is little evidence of a long-term lover but Runciman boasted of a number of casual sexual encounters—telling a friend in later life: "I have the temperament of a harlot, and so am free of emotional complications." Nevertheless Runciman was discreet about his homosexuality, partly perhaps because of religious feelings that homosexuality was "an inarguable offence against God". Runciman also felt that his sexuality had potentially held back his career. Max Mallowan related a conversation where Runciman told him "that he felt his life had been a failure because of his gayness".[13]

Last year and death

He died in Radway, Warwickshire, while visiting relatives, aged 97.[14] He never married. Earlier the same year, he had made a final visit to Mount Athos to witness the blessing of the Protaton Tower at Karyes (the capital of the monastic community), which had been refurbished thanks to a gift from him.[4][15]

Assessment

Edward Peters (2011) says Runciman's three-volume narrative history of the Crusades "instantly became the most widely known and respected single-author survey of the subject in English."[16]

John M. Riddle (2008) says that for the greater part of the twentieth century Runciman was the "greatest historian of the Crusades." He reports that, "Prior to Runciman, in the early part of the century, historians related the Crusades as an idealistic attempt of Christendom to push Islam back." Runciman regarded the Crusades "as a barbarian invasion of a superior civilization, not that of the Muslims but of the Byzantines."[17]

Thomas F. Madden (2005) stresses the impact of Runciman's style and viewpoint:

It is no exaggeration to say that Runciman single-handedly crafted the current popular concept of the crusades. The reasons for this are twofold. First, he was a learned man with a solid grasp of the chronicle sources. Second, and perhaps more important, he wrote beautifully. The picture of the crusades that Runciman painted owed much to current scholarship yet much more to Sir Walter Scott. Throughout his history Runciman portrayed the crusaders as simpletons or barbarians seeking salvation through the destruction of the sophisticated cultures of the east. In his famous "summing-up" of the crusades he concluded that "the Holy War in itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.[18]

Mark K. Vaughn (2007) says "Runciman's three-volume History of the Crusades remains the primary standard of comparison." However, Vaughn says that Tyerman "accurately, if perhaps with a bit of hubris, notes that Runciman's work is now outdated and seriously flawed."[19] Tyerman himself has said, "It would be folly and hubris to pretend to compete, to match, as it were, my clunking computer keyboard with his [Runciman's] pen, at once a rapier and a paintbrush; to pit one volume, however substantial, with the breadth, scope and elegance of his three."[20]

Honours

• Runciman was knighted in the 1958 New Year Honours List and appointed a Companion of Honour in 1984.[21][22] He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1957[15] and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1965.[23]
• Streets in Mystras, Greece, and Sofia, Bulgaria, were named in his honour.[24]

Works

Published works of Runciman include the following.[25]

• The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and His Reign: A Study of Tenth-Century Byzantium at Google Books ISBN 978-0-521-06164-3
• A History of the First Bulgarian Empire at Google Books ISBN 9780598749222
• Byzantine Civilization at Google Books ISBN 9780713153163
• The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy at Google Books ISBN 9780521061667
• A History of the Crusades, Volume One: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at Google Books ISBN 9780521347709
• A History of the Crusades, Volume Two: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187 at Google Books ISBN 9780521347716
• A History of the Crusades, Volume Three: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades at Google Books ISBN 9780521347723
• The Eastern Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the XIth and XIIth Centuries at Google Books ISBN 978-1597520966
• The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century at Google Books ISBN 978-0521437745
• The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 at Google Books ISBN 9780521128995
• The Fall of Constantinople 1453 at Google Books ISBN 9780521398329
• The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence at Google Books ISBN 9780521071888
• The Last Byzantine Renaissance at Google Books ISBN 9780521097109
• Orthodox Churches and the Secular State Steven Runciman at Google Books ISBN 9780196476131
• ———— (1974). "The Empress Irene". In Hoover, Dwight W.; Koumoulides, John T. A. (eds.). Focus on biography. Conspectus of history. Vol. 1/#1. Muncie, Indiana: Ball State University. pp. 1–11. Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
• Byzantine Style and Civilization at Google Books ISBN 9780140137545
• ———— (1977). "Balkan Cities — Yesterday and Today". In Hoover, Dwight W.; Koumoulides, John T. A. (eds.). Cities in history. Conspectus of history. Vol. 1/#4. Muncie, Indiana: Ball State University. pp. 1–12. Archived from the original on 14 May 2021. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
• The Byzantine Theocracy: The Weil Lectures, Cincinnati at Google Books ISBN 9780521545914
• Mistra: Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese at Google Books ISBN 9780500250716
• The First Crusade at Google Books ISBN 9780521232555
• A Traveller's Alphabet: Partial Memoirs at Google Books ISBN 9780500015049

References

Sources

• Andrea, Alfred J.; Holt, Andrew (2015). Seven Myths of the Crusades. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1624664038 – via Google Books.
• Carras, Lydia (Director) (1987). Sir Steven Runciman: Bridge to the East (DVD). London: Amaranthas Films : Distributed in North America by GOTelecom (published 2010). OCLC 701719496.
• Sir Steven Runciman: Bridge to the East at IMDb
• "Alan Bates Television Archive: "Bridge to the East"". Archived from the original on 14 June 2007. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
• Minoo Dinshaw @ 5x15 - Outlandish Knight. YouTube. 14 December 2016. Archived from the original on 3 March 2022. Retrieved 3 March 2022.

External links

• Runciman, Steven. "Greece and the later crusades". Myriobiblos Library. Archived from the original on 6 January 2022. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
• Portraits of Steven Runciman at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Works by or about Steven Runciman at Internet Archive
• Works by or about Steven Runciman in libraries (WorldCat catalog) at YouTube

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