No More Learning

When, at the beginning
It was
CH. XXIV.
49--2


## p. 772 (#814) ############################################

772
Power of the great nobles
of the thirteenth century, the Latins conquered the Byzantine Empire,
they easily identified the Greek archon with the Western baron, and
the peasant tied to the land (Trápoukos) with the villeins they had at
home. And indeed the place occupied in this apparently absolute
monarchy by feudalism was not the least curious nor the least surprising
thing in the history of Byzantium.
Nor was this all. By the fact of regional recruiting, the soldiers who
were placed under the command of these great nobles in the army were
very often their clients and vassals in civil life; they knew their leaders,
their illustrious descent, their wealth, and their exploits; they appreci-
ated their liberality and the value of their protection. These soldiers
therefore displayed whole-hearted devotion and fidelity to their generals;
they obeyed these leaders whom they admired much more readily than
the distant Emperor. Moreover, although the great barons were generally
faithful subjects, they were always unruly ones; they treated the Emperor
almost as an equal; they considered that they had a right to give him
advice, and were very much surprised if he did not follow it in every par-
ticular. Finally, a firm solidarity arising from community of interests, rein-
forced by numerous family marriages and maintained by a common life of
exploits and dangers, united the members of this aristocracy. Entrenched
in their impregnable castles, proud of their wealth, their popularity, and
their prestige, these great feudal lords were therefore quite naturally
inclined to lay down the law to the Emperor, to express their dissatis-
faction, or to manifest their ambition by formidable insurrections. The
second half of the tenth century was full of these great feudal insurrections,
with which are associated the names of Bardas Phocas and Bardas Sclerus,
and which caused such serious trouble to the Byzantine Empire. There
we see what close bonds of devotion and fidelity united the great barons
and the men of their native province, how community of interests and of
sentiments made all these archons into one caste, and what proud and
magnificent figures were produced by this aristocratic Byzantine society.
The epic of Digenes Akritas gives a good picture of the life of these
great Asiatic barons, a life of luxury, wealth, and splendour; the beauty
of their palaces built in the midst of gardens and glittering with jewels
and gold and with shining mosaics ; the marvellous feasts which were
given in these castles, the unparalleled extravagance of costume and
arms, the great hunting expeditions, the adventures in love and in war,
and the wonderful exploits of which their life was full. There also is
shewn the independent temper of these great barons; and above all we
realise the violent and brutal, chivalrous and heroic, existence which was
led on the frontiers of Asia, subject to the perpetual menace of a Muslim
invasion and to the constant care for the defence of the Empire and the
Orthodox religion. It was a land of fine feats of arms, of single combats,
abductions, pillage, massacres, adventure, war. No doubt the epic has
embellished it with a touch of the marvellous ; it has adorned with grace


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The Byzantine character
773
and courtesy the real and permanent background of brutality and cruelty
which characterised this society. Nevertheless it explains how good a
preparation for life and for warfare this rough existence was to these
men of the provinces, and how it enabled these indefatigable warriors to
become the real strength of the monarchy.
The provinces, and especially the Asiatic provinces, supplied the
Empire with its best soldiers and with the greater part of the crews for
the fleet. The themes of Anatolia, as has been said, “really formed the
Roman Empire. ” When contrasted with the capital, the Byzantine
provinces appear as a hardy element, healthy and strong, with their
rough peasants, their tenants of military fiefs (raßartupcoi), and their
great nobles marvellously trained for war from boyhood. These men
indeed had their faults and they were often dangerous to the Empire.
The curious little book in which one of them, Cecaumenus, towards the
middle of the eleventh century summed up the lessons of his long experi-
ence, and of his realistic and somewhat disillusioned wisdom, reveals them
as rather mistrustful of the capital as too refined, too elegant, and of the
court as too fertile in humiliations and disgraces. They lived on their
estates and were eager to enrich themselves; as loyal and faithful subjects
they served in the army; above all, they wished to remain independent.
But such as they were, they were the strength of the Empire. As long
as Byzantium was mistress of Asia, she was strong militarily and economi-
cally. When, at the end of the eleventh century, she lost the greater
part of Anatolia, it was a terrible blow from which the Empire never
recovered.
V.
We must now seek to ascertain from the sources at our disposal
what was the mentality of the medieval Greeks, and to discover the
general character, so complex and cornplicated, of the Byzantine mind.
We have already described some of the dominant tastes of this society,
the place held by religion both in public and private life, the love of
shows, of ceremonies, of the games in the circus, the taste for intrigue
and for magnificence; we have referred to the industrial and commercial
activity, the stout military energy, and above all the intellectual
superiority which characterised it. To arrive at a complete understanding
of the Byzantine character, we must also remember of how many dif-
ferent elements and how many different races this medieval Greek society
was composed. Situated on the borders of Asia and Europe, and subject
alike to the influences of the Persian and Arabian East and the infiltration
of all the Northern barbarians, this society was essentially cosmopolitan.
Here Slavs, Thracians, Armenians, Caucasians, Italians, and Arabs met
and mingled; certain races, such as Slavs and Armenians, at certain
moments exercised a preponderating influence. By the prestige and
power of her civilisation Byzantium indeed succeeded in assimilating
CH. XXIV.


## p. 774 (#816) ############################################

774
Oriental, Greek, and Christian influences
יל
and transforming these apparently opposed and refractory elements, and
such was the strength of the classical tradition with which this society was
imbued that Hellenism stamped its impress deep on all these foreigners,
and that Greek, the language of the Church, of the administration, and
of the literature, acquired, as has been said by Rambaud, “a false air of
being the national language” in the Byzantine Empire. But under this
common stamp there existed many contrasts, and the Byzantine mind
presented a mixture, often contradictory and sometimes disconcerting,
of high qualities and startling vices.
In many ways the Byzantine was an Oriental. As we have seen, he
delighted in magnificent spectacles ; it did not displease him if these
spectacles were bloody and savage. We know the atrocity of Byzantine
punishments, the refinements of torture with which the people wreaked
their
anger on their victims. By contact with the East these Greeks
acquired a cruel mentality; they were pitiless as they were unscrupulous;
they delighted in alternations of bloodshed, sensuality, and death. When
their passions were aroused, when their anger was excited, when their
religious or political hatred was unloosed, these nervous and impression-
able people were capable of all kinds of violence. And like the Turks of
the present day, whom they resemble in many particulars, these same
men, when cool, shewed themselves to be gifted with strong qualities
and real virtues. Among the Byzantine middle class, as depicted by
Psellus, and even among the aristocracy, we find charming examples of
the close ties of family life. But in these same exquisite minds there
was sometimes to be found a singular hardness of heart, and their
religious preoccupation encouraged in them a lack of balance and
steadiness, and a mystic exaltation, which rendered them dangerous to
handle.
But, although they were akin to the East, the Byzantines were also
Greeks, keenly interested in all things of the mind, curious about en-
quiries and subtleties of all kinds, and generally intelligent to a very
high degree. Like true Greeks, they delighted in the refinements of
argument, applying the methods of ancient sophistry to religious matters
with a passionate ardour. They delighted in words; in their eyes
eloquence was always the supreme virtue. And they also delighted in
gossip, in raillery, and in abuse, whether it were vulgar or witty. But
although they were thereby indeed the heirs of the Athenians of
Aristophanes, Christianity had given another direction to these tend-
encies. The Byzantines believed in miracles, in soothsayers, in magic,
in astrology; they lived in an atmosphere of exalted mysticism, and
when their piety was involved, they were prepared to sacrifice everything,
even their country, to their desire to prove their case and triumph in
the controversy.
Under this twofold influence a very complex character became formed.
In great moments indeed—and these were frequent—the Byzantines


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Virtues and defects of the Byzantines
775
were capable of valour, of delicacy, of disinterestedness, of devotion.
There were many very worthy men in Byzantine society. Nevertheless the
morality of most was indifferent, or even doubtful. In spite of the
apparently severe segregation of feminine life, there was great corruption
in the Greek world of the Middle Ages. The administration, in spite of
the great services it rendered to the State, was honeycombed with vices.
As places were sold, so were favours and justice. To make a fortune and
gain advancement, merit was of less use than intrigue, and even among
the best, by the side of undeniable good qualities, there is visible an
eager pursuit of selfish aims, whether of pleasure or of adventure, wealth
or power, and a manner of conducting life which left too much scope for
skilful acuteness, for successful cunning, and for cleverly calculated
treachery. And this explains why these supple and subtle Greeks, in
spite of their real virtues, were always regarded with distrust by the blunt
and straightforward Latins, and why so many lamentable prejudices
arose in the West against Byzantium which have survived to the present
day.
What is specially noticeable in the Byzantines, who were as extra-
ordinarily ardent for good as for evil, is a frequent lack of balance and
steadiness, and above all a striking discrepancy between their intelligence,
which is unquestionable and often admirable, and their character, which
was not up to the level of their mentality. We feel that they were over-
burdened by their past, that their energies were soon exhausted, and that
they were wanting in moral principles. Whether we consider Psellus,
who was certainly one of the most remarkable men produced by Byzan-
tium, and the most finished type of courtier, or, in a somewhat different
social grade, John Cantacuzene, or again Andronicus Comnenus, or a
provincial mind such as is revealed in the writings of Cecaumenus-every-
where we find the same characteristics: a prudent cleverness untroubled by
idle scruples, a wary caution bordering on cunning, unmeasured ambitions
and vile intrigues, a subtle intelligence which is not supported by
moral principles. But although demoralisation was undoubted and deep-
seated, the Byzantines were always supremely talented. Compared with
the barbarians who surrounded them, these ingenious and cultivated
Greeks, who reflected on complex and difficult themes and speculations,
and who knew how to express their thoughts in fine language, who were
capable of comprehending and discussing the most delicate problems, who
understood how to resolve all the difficulties of life with elegant ingenuity,
and who moreover were not hampered by idle scruples, seem like men of
a higher race, like educators and masters. It was for this reason that
Byzantine civilisation exercised such profound influence on the whole
medieval world, as much by its external splendour as by its innate value,
and that it rendered eminent services alike to the Arabs and Slavs in
the East and to the Latins in the West.
CH. XXIV.


## p. 776 (#818) ############################################

776
The inheritance of Europe from Byzantium
VI.
לל
To the Slav and Oriental world Byzantium was what Rome has been
to the Western and Germanic world, that is to say the great educator,
the great initiator, the bringer both of religion and of civilisation. She
supplied the Serbs, Croats, Bulgars, and Russians, not only with the
Orthodox faith but with all the elements of their future greatness, the
conception of government, the principles of law, the forms of more
refined life and of intellectual and artistic culture. Byzantium gave the
Slavs their alphabet and their literary language on the day when Cyril
and Methodius, “the Apostles of the Slavs,” translated the Scriptures
into a Slavonic dialect for the use of the Moravians whom they were
about to convert, and invented the Glagolitic script in which to write
their translation. Not only by her missionaries but also by her architects
who built churches for the new converts and her artists who decorated
them with mosaics and frescoes, Byzantium brought historic life and
civilisation to all the Slav nations of the East; over all of these and also
over the nations of the Asiatic East, the Armenians and even the Arabs,
she exercised supremacy to a greater or lesser degree, by means of her
literature, her art, her laws, her religion. To all of them she presented
a marvellous model ; and thereby Byzantium accomplished a very great
work in the general history of civilisation.
To the West she also gave many things. For centuries, as we know,
the Greek Empire possessed more or less important parts of Italy, and
the imperial government made so great and successful an effort to
assimilate its Italian subjects, that even under the Norman and Angevin
kings the peninsula seemed like a new Magna Graecia. We have referred
to the active relations which Syrian and Byzantine merchants maintained
in the Western Mediterranean and the numerous establishments founded
there by Greek monks. We have called special attention to the marvellous
prestige which the imperial city enjoyed among Western peoples, and how
all works of art which were difficult of execution or of rare quality were
sought in Constantinople. The close relations established by the Crusades
led to yet greater knowledge of the Byzantine world. From this incessant
contact the West derived enormous intellectual benefit.
It was from Byzantium that there came the knowledge of the
Justinianean Law, and the masters who taught it in Bologna from the close
of the eleventh century played no small part in spreading the principles
from which jurists derived absolute monarchy and divine right. It was
from Byzantium that there came the great artistic movement which,
between the fifth and seventh centuries, created the monuments in
Ravenna and Rome, and which later, in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, made the splendour of Venice and of Norman Sicily. St Mark's,
which is a reproduction of the church of the Holy Apostles in Constanti-
nople, with its five domes, the richness of its marbles, metal-work, and
Tif


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Byzantium and the Renaissance
777
mosaics, the gleam of the purple and gold which illuminate it, offers
the most exact picture of Byzantium as she was in the days of the
Macedonian renaissance. The mosaics at Cefalù, in the Capella Palatina
at Palermo, in the Martorana Church, and at Monreale are admirable
examples of the genius of Byzantine artists. For centuries Byzantine art
was, as has been said, “the standard art of Europe," and in the Middle
· Ages only Gothic art was capable of an equally vast and fruitful growth.
Both the Carolingian and the Ottonian renaissance were infinitely in-
debted to Byzantium ; Romanesque architecture and decoration were
inspired by Byzantine lessons and models far more than is generally
believed. No doubt the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in
1204 and the half-century of Latin supremacy which followed were a
serious blow for the Greek capital and for Byzantine civilisation from
which politically the Empire never recovered. But even though under
the Palaeologi decadence was evident, Constantinople still remained a
wonderful city, and the Greek world still retained part of its intellectual
and artistic superiority. The Italian Primitives of the Trecento were
in many ways Byzantines. It was in the school of Byzantium that
fourteenth-century Italy learnt Greek; the great professors in the days
of the Palaeologi were the initiators of the revival of Greek studies, and
they contributed in no small measure to prepare the great movement
of humanism. Finally, it was from Byzantium, which from the eleventh
century had restored it to a place in education, that Italy learnt the
Platonic philosophy. And though indeed it is an exaggeration to say,
as has been done, that without Byzantium the world would perhaps
never have known the Renaissance, it is at least undeniable that Byzantium
played a great part in bringing it to pass, and that, by the services it
rendered to the European world as well as by its own brilliancy, Byzantine
civilisation deserves an eminent place in the history of thought, of art,
and of humanity.
CH. XXIV.


## p. 778 (#820) ############################################



## p. 779 (#821) ############################################

779
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS OF TITLES
OF PERIODICALS, SOCIETIES, ETC.
18 y.
(1) The following abbreviations are used for titles of periodicals :
AB. Analecta Bollandiana. Brussels.
AHR. American Historical Review. New York and London.
AKKR. Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht. Mayence.
AMur. Archivio Muratoriano. Rome.
Arch. Ven. (and N. Arch. Ven. ; Arch. Ven. Tri. ). Archivio veneto. Venice. 40
vols. 1871-90. Continued as Nuovo archivio veneto. 1st series. 20
vols. 1891-1900. New series. 42 vols. 1901-1921. And Archivio
veneto-tridentino. 1922 ff. , in progress.
ASAK. Anzeiger für schweizerische Alterthumskunde. Zurich.
ASHF. Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de France. Paris.
ASI. Archivio storico italiano. Florence. Ser. 1. 20 v. and App. 9 v.
1842–53. Index. 1857. Ser. nuova.
1855-63. Ser. III.
26 v. 1865–77. Indexes to II and III. 1874. Suppt. 1877. Ser. .
20 v. 1878–87. Index. 1891. Ser. v. 49 v. 1888–1912. Index.
1900. Anni 71 etc. 1913 ff. , in progress. (Index in Catalogue of
The London Library vol. 1. 1913. )
ASL. Archivio storico lombardo. Milan.
ASPN. Archivio storico per le province napoletane. Naples. 1876 ff.
ASRSP. Archivio della Società romana di storia patria. Rome.
BISI. Bullettino dell'Istituto storico italiano. Rome. 1886 ff.
BRAH. Boletin de la R.
Academia de la historia. Madrid.
BZ. Byzantinische Zeitschrift. Leipsic. 1892 ff.
CQR. Church Quarterly Review. London.
CR. Classical Review. London.
DZG. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft. Freiburg-im-Breisgau.
DZKR. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Kirchenrecht. Leipsic.
EHR. English Historical Review. London.
FDG. Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte. Göttingen.
HJ. Historisches Jahrbuch. Munich.
HVJS. Historische Vierteljahrsschrift. Leipsic.
HZ.
. Historische Zeitschrift (von Sybel). Munich and Berlin.
JA.
Journal Asiatique. Paris.
JB.
Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft im Auftrage der historischen
Gesellschaft zu Berlin. Berlin. 1878 ff.
JHS. Journal of Hellenic Studies. London.
JRAS. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain. London.
JSG. Jahrbuch für schweizerische Geschichte. Zurich.
JTS. Journal of Theological Studies. London.
MA.
Le moyen âge, Paris.
MIOGF. Mittheilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung.
Innsbruck
Neu. Arch. Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde
Hanover and Leipsic.
NRDF. Nouvelle Revue historique du droit français. Paris.
QFIA. Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken.
Rome.
RA. Revue archéologique. Paris.


## p. 780 (#822) ############################################

780
Abbreviations
RBén. Revue bénédictine. Maredsous.
RCHL. Revue critique d'histoire et de littérature. Paris.
RH. Revue historique. Paris.
RHD. Revue d'histoire diplomatique. Paris.
RHE. Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique. Louvain.
Rhein. Mus. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. Frankfort-on-Main.
RN. Revue de numismatique. Paris,
RQCA. Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchen-
geschichte. Rome.
RQH. Revue des questions historiques. Paris.
RSH. Revue de synthèse historique. Paris.
RSI. Rivista storica italiana. Turin. See Gen. Bibl. 1.
SKAW. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Vienna.
[Philos. -hist. Classe. ]
SPAW.
Sitzungsberichte der kön. preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Berlin.
TRHS. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. London.
VV. Vizantiyski Vremennik (Bučavtivà Xpovika). St Petersburg (Petrograd).
1894 ff.
ZCK. Zeitschrift für christliche Kunst. Düsseldorf.
ZDMG, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft. Leipsic.
ZKG. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte. Gotha.
ZKT. Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie. Gotha.
ZMNP. Zhurnal ministerstva narodnago prosveshcheniya (Journal of the Ministry
of Public Instruction). St Petersburg.
ZR. Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte. Weimar. 1861-78. Continued as
ZSR. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtswissenschaft. Weimar. 1880 ff.
ZWT. Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie. Frankfort-on-Main.
(2) Other abbreviations used are:
AcadIBL. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
AcadIP. Académie Impériale de Pétersbourg.
Allg DB. Allgemeine deutsche Biographie. See Gen. Bibl. 1.
ASBen. See Mabillon and Achery in Gen. Bibl. iv.
ASBoll. Acta Sanctorum Bollandiana. See Gen. Bibl. iv.
BEC. Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes. See Gen. Bibl. 1.
BGén. Nouvelle Biographie générale. See Gen. Bibl. 1.
BHE. Bibliothèque de l'École des Hautes Études. See Gen. Bibl. 1.
Bouquet. See Rerum Gallicarum. . . scriptores in Gen. Bibl. iv.
BUniv. Biographie universelle. See Gen. Bibl. 1.
Coll. textes. Collection des textes pour servir à l'étude et à l'enseignement de l'histoire.
See Gen. Bibl. iv.
CSCO. Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium.