("I promise you, it's not confusing in the film," he said after unpacking one particularly Byzantine detail).
Later developments were caused largely by western European and Greek (particularly Byzantine Christian) influences and by contact with Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, which led to innovations in the vocabularies of the East Slavic and South Slavic languages.
That's not to say EMI - which earlier this year transformed the ostensibly simple process of handing critics the Coldplay album into something resembling a particularly Byzantine episode of Spooks - haven't really pushed the boat out for Kate Bush's return after a 12-year absence.
In 917, a particularly strong Byzantine army led by Leo Phokas the Elder, son of Nikephoros Phokas, invaded Bulgaria accompanied by the Byzantine navy under the command of Romanos Lekapenos, which sailed to the Bulgarian Black Sea ports.
The decline of the Roman Empire brought with it a significant drop in the production and consumption of wine in western and central Europe, but the Eastern and Western Church (particularly the Byzantines) preserved the practices of viticulture and winemaking.
In addition to its highly regarded permanent collection, particularly strong in Byzantine, African, Surrealist and contemporary art, the Menil will offer an exhibit of lunar photographs from 1959 to 1969: "Lunar Landscapes: Unmanned Space Photography," through June 4.
The great theological struggles over the use of images within the church, particularly in the Byzantine Empire, during the period of the so-called Iconoclastic Controversy in the 8th and 9th centuries indicate how a new understanding of images emerged on the basis of Christian doctrine.
She studies military and diplomatic interactions between Christendom and Islam and is particularly interested in Byzantine cultural attitudes and beliefs in the centuries leading up to the Crusades.
These were particularly elaborate in the Byzantine church, centred in Constantinople.
Another distinct workshop, centred at Lyon and responsible (c. 1215 20) for the apse windows of Lyon Cathedral, is characterized by a strong Byzantine influence, particularly in iconography.
If, as a writer in a far colder land than this once wrote, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, then the Auburn family's unhappiness seems particularly Southern, tangled in byzantine politics, ancient grudges and, above all, college football.
