John Bagnell Bury's textbooks continue to be frequently used by scholars of younger generations, due to the originality of their research and the unparalleled style of their writing. They are among the most frequently referenced works for over a century now, and the main ones among them adorn the general tables of short biographies of important recent independent or collective works. Many later Byzantinologists praised in their works his methodicalness and his great visual and synthetic ability. As Georgios Ostrogorsky (1902-1976), the leading Byzantinologist of the 20th century and the substantive founder of Byzantine studies in Yugoslavia from the 1950s, emphasized, just as Russian Byzantinologists laid the foundation for the research of Byzantine rural economy, so did John Bagnell Bury inaugurate the systematic research of Byzantine administrative institutions, which would later be successfully continued by Ernst Stein and Franz Dolger. John Bagnell Bury considered history as a systematic science, which, however, contains several unpredictable factors, making it impossible to formulate general laws or draw didactic conclusions. However, his skepticism was limited. In general, he represents Victorian thinking and expresses its belief in the omnipotence of logic, as well as its ability to illuminate the European past and interpret the present.

Professor Dr. Alexios G.K. Savvidis