§ 136. Learning in the Eastern Church.
The Eastern church had the advantage over the Western in the knowledge of the Greek language,
which gave her direct access to the Greek Testament, the Greek classics, and the Greek fathers;
but, on the other hand, she had to suffer from the Mohammedan invasions, and from the intrigues
and intermeddling of a despotic court.
The most flourishing seats of patristic learning, Alexandria and Antioch, were lost by the
conquests of Islam. The immense library at Alexandria was burned by order of Omar (638), who
reasoned: "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God (the Koran), they are useless
and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed."^765 In
the eighth century, however, the Saracens themselves began to cultivate learning, to translate Greek
authors, to collect large libraries in Bagdad, Cairo, and Cordova. The age of Arabic learning
continued about five hundred years, till the irruption of the Moguls. It had a stimulating effect upon
the scholarship of the church, especially upon the development of scholastic philosophy, through
the writings of Averroës of Cordova (d. 1198), the translator and commentator of Aristotle.
Constantinople was the centre of the literary, activity of the Greek church during the middle
ages. Here or in the immediate vicinity (Chalcedon, Nicaea) the oecumenical councils were held;
here were the scholars, the libraries, the imperial patronage, and all the facilities for the prosecution
of studies. Many a library was destroyed, but always replaced again.^766 Thessalonica and Mount
Athos were also important seats of learning, especially in the twelfth century.
The Latin was the official language of the Byzantine court, and Justinian, who regained,
after a divorce of sixty years, the dominion of ancient Rome through the valor of Belisarius (536),
asserted the proud title of Emperor of the Romans, and published his code of laws in Latin. But the
Greek always was and remained the language of the people, of literature, philosophy, and theology.
Classical learning revived in the ninth century under the patronage of the court. The reigns
of Caesar Bardas (860–866), Basilius I. the Macedonian (867–886), Leo VI. the Philosopher
(886–911), who was himself an author, Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus (911–959), likewise an
author, mark the most prosperous period of Byzantine literature. The family of the Comneni, who
upheld the power of the sinking empire from 1057 to 1185, continued the literary patronage, and
the Empress Eudocia and the Princess Anna Comnena cultivated the art of rhetoric and the study
of philosophy.
Even during the confusion of the crusades and the disasters which overtook the empire, the
love for learning continued; and when Constantinople at last fell into the hands of the Turks, Greek
scholarship took refuge in the West, kindled the renaissance, and became an important factor in
the preparation for the Reformation.
The Byzantine literature presents a vast mass of learning without an animating, controlling
and organizing genius. "The Greeks of Constantinople," says Gibbon,^767 with some rhetorical
(^765) Gibbon (ch. 50) doubts this fact, related by Abulpharagius and other Mohammedan authorities; but Von Hammer,
Silv. de Sacy, and other Oriental scholars accept it as well authenticated. See the note of Smith in his edition of Gibbon (vol.
V. 358 sq.). The library was variously estimated as containing from four to seven hundred thousand volumes.
(^766) A library of 120,000 volumes, begun by Constantius and Julian the Apostate, was burned by accident under Basiliscus
(478). Another Constantinopolitan library of 33,000 volumes perished in the reign of the iconoclastic Leo the Isaurian, who is
made responsible for the calamity by Cedrenus and other orthodox historians.
(^767) Decline and Fall, Ch. LIII. (V. 529).