Thoughts on Runciman

In preparation for the recent in-class debate, I was reading Steven Runciman's famous "The Summing-Up," from his "A History of the Crusades, vol. 3." Granted, I have not read his entire book; however, I was quite surprised by the quality (or lack thereof) of his chapter.
Throughout these ten pages of text, Runciman makes unsupported claims, doubles back on his arguments, and, reveals an extreme bias that feels more like blind accusation than scholarly hypothesis.

One example of this is Runciman's flat statement on the link between the Crusades and the beginning of the Renaissance. He argues that the Crusades had virtually nothing to do with Europe's emergence from the "Dark Ages," and consequent transformation to the period we now entitle "rebirth." However, one of the tenants of the Renaissance period was a push back towards classical learning, facilitated by access to ancient texts taken from the Byzantine Empire and the Middle East (a result of the Crusades). In addition, as Runciman himself points out later in his paragraph, the Crusades did facilitate and open trade between Europe and the Levant, another element in the development of the Renaissance.

Another example is Runciman's analysis of the Muslim world. He argues that the Crusades, by providing a distraction, drastically weakened Muslim presence in the in the Middle East. It is important to note, however, that the Muslim world was divided by both ethnic and religious sects. Turks, Abbasids, and Fatimids were all Muslim and enemies; they had been fighting wars before the Crusaders entered the picture, and they continued to fight when the Crusaders left. The Ottoman Empire, whose principal religion was Islam, lasted another half dozen centuries until the beginning of the twentieth century. Moreover, even with Crusader presence in the Middle East, Muslim influence still remained both strong and powerful.

One last example to offer: on pp. 398-399, Runciman writes: "The Italian Renaissance is a matter of pride for mankind. But it would have been better could it have been achieved without the ruin of eastern Christendom." However, his very next sentence is: "Byzantine culture survived the shock of the Fourth Crusade. In the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries Byzantine art and thought flowered in splendid profusion." How is it possible that eastern Christianity both was ruined and flourished at the same time?

Overall, I was very disappointed with Runciman, although it made my debate preparation a bit easier.
~C. Erba