Note on the Text
When terms such as ‘Eastern Christianity’, ‘Eastern Churches’ or ‘Christian East’ are used without further specification, this is done in order to encompass together communities characterised by different ecclesial, doctrinal and ritual specificities (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, etc.). While this usage runs the risk of echoing the language of the sources and the Roman view of the existence of an abstract Oriens christianus, throughout the book we have tried to balance the respect for the specificity of each Christian tradition with the need to move beyond a history limited to bilateral relations between the Church of Rome and specific individual Eastern Churches, in order to grasp more general and long-term dynamics.
Eastern Christians mentioned in archival sources are cited according to the form used there, unless another form of their name is better known. Armenian terms are transliterated scientifically, according to the system of the Revue des études arméniennes; Arabic is transliterated according to the IJMES system, which does not employ diacritics for proper names (except when the scientific transliteration is specified in brackets). For Greek, Ge‘ez and Syriac names, we use a simplified transliteration; consistency has not always been possible. The ecclesiastical names of patriarchs are given in the Latin or anglicised form that is usual in English. For toponyms, personal names and bibliographic references in Slavic Cyrillic scripts, we use the scholarly transliteration system.