Runciman was also well known for his linguistic abilities, which began as early as the age of three when his governess began teaching him French. By the age of eleven he had reportedly learned Latin, Greek, and Russian. Later in his life, he picked up various Islamic languages that greatly informed his research of the Middle Ages, especially the Crusades.
While a young man at Eton College, Runciman was a contemporary and friend of George Orwell. Later, in 1921, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. His work in Byzantine History won him a fellowship at Trinity in 1927. After receiving a large inheritance from his grandfather, Runciman resigned his position at Cambridge in 1938 and began to travel extensively. From 1942-1945 he was Professor of Byzantine Art and History at Istanbul University.
While in Istanbul, he began his research on the Crusades, which led to his most popular and well known work, The History of the Crusades.His other popular works include, The Medieval Manichee, The Fall of Constantinople-1453, and 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.
Runciman did not portray the crusaders with sympathy. For Runciman, the crusaders destroyed the last bastion of Antiquity, Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. In his portrayal of the history of East-West relations during this time he was unabashedly pro-Byzantine and much more sympathetic to the Muslims than many previous western writers.. His obituary from the The Times, Thursday 2 November 2000, described the nature of Runciman's work as follows.
His most important work, the three- volume History of the Crusades, took a more
sceptical line than any previous Western historian, and was freshly informed by a
reading of Islamic sources. Two hundred years earlier Gibbon had portrayed the
crusades as doomed romantic escapades, and wrote of "the triumph of barbarism
and superstition". But in Runciman's eyes the crusaders were not a chivalrous host
who captured but failed to keep the Holy Land: they were the final wave of the
barbarian invaders who had destroyed the Roman Empire. They completed this work
by destroying the real centre of medieval civilisation and the last bastion of antiquity,
Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. In charting the medieval phase of the endless
struggle between East and West in the Middle East, Runciman's sympathies were
unambiguously with Byzantium against the bigots and wreckers of the West.
His final judgement of the crusading enterprise is perhaps best summed up in his own words:
High ideas were besmirched by cruelty and greed, enterprise and endurance by a
blind and narrow self righeousness, and the Holy War itself was nothing more than
a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
Runciman's influence on both modern and scholarly perceptions of the crusades is still dominant. Yet among crusades specialists, led by scholars like Jonathan Riley-Smith and Thomas Madden, a new shift in the historiography of the crusades is developing in which the crusades and the crusaders are not viewed so negatively. Dr. Riley-Smith has demonstrated that it is inaccurate to ascribe the crusading movement to only greed, while Dr. Madden has pointed out that roughly two-thirds of the Christian world had been conquered by Islam before the crusaders responded.
Steven Runciman Greece and the Later Crusades Lecture given in Monemvasia on July 31, 1982.
Steven Runciman [Excerpt]The Children's Crusade-1212 A History of the Crusades 3 Vols.The History Guide
Giles Constable Sir Steven Runciman Myriobiblios.org
University of St. Andrews The Library of Sir Steven Runciman Newsletter
Obituaries from The Times and The Daily Telegraph
Dr. Jonathan Riley-Smith- Crusades-Encyclopedia
Dr. Thomas Madden- Crusades-Encyclopedia
Fourth Crusade- Crusades-Encyclopedia
(c) Andrew Holt, April 2005- Permission is granted for electronic copying and distribution in print for educational and personal reasons. No permission is granted for commercial use.