Byzantium, the successor of Greece and Rome, was a magnificent empire that bridged the ancient and modern worlds for more than 1,000 years. Without Byzantium, the works of Homer and Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Aeschylus, would never have survived.

The story of Byzantium is a real-life adventure of electrifying ideas, high drama, colorful characters, and inspiring feats of daring. In Sailing from Byzantium, Colin Wells tells of the missionaries, mystics, philosophers, and artists who, against great odds and often at peril of their own lives, spread Greek ideas to the Italians, the Arabs, and the Slavs.

Their heroic efforts inspired the Renaissance, the golden age of Islamic learning, and Russian Orthodox Christianity, which led to a new alphabet, new forms of architecture, and one of the world's great artistic traditions.

The story's central reference point is an arcane squabble called the Hesychast controversy. It pitted humanist scholars, led by the brilliant, acerbic intellectual Barlaam, against the powerful monks of Mount Athos, led by the stern Gregory Palamas, who denounced pagan rationalism in favor of Christian mysticism.

Within a few decades, the light of Byzantium would be extinguished by the invading Turks, but not before the humanists found a safe haven for Greek literature. And the debate between rationalism and faith would continue to be engaged by some of history's greatest minds.