DISPERSION OF GREEK SCHOLARS, AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON REVIVAL
OF LEARNING; GREEK A BOND OF UNION AMONG PEOPLES OF EMPIRE;
DISAPPEARANCE OF BOOKS AFTER LATIN CONQUEST; DEPARTURE OF
SCHOLARS TO ITALY BEGINS AFTER 1204; THEIR PRESENCE STIMULATES
REVIVAL OF LEARNING; ENTHUSIASM AROUSED IN ITALY FOR STUDY
OF GREEK; STUDENTS FROM CONSTANTINOPLE EVERYWHERE WELCOMED;
INCREASED NUMBERS LEAVE AFTER MOSLEM CONQUEST; RENAISSANCE
LARGELY AIDED BY GREEK STUDIES; MOVEMENT PASSES INTO NORTHERN
EUROPE; MSS. TAKEN FROM CONSTANTINOPLE.
Against the manifold evils resulting from the destruction of the
empire by the Turks must be set off the dispersion of Greek scholars
throughout Italy and the consequent spread of a knowledge of Greek
literature throughout Europe.
[Sidenote: Influence of Hellenism upon empire.]
The Greeks of Athens and others belonging to the Hellenic race
continued during the whole period of the existence of the empire to
exercise a powerful influence upon the thought of the empire, upon its
government, and upon the Church. At all times there were two influences
striving against each other for leadership, one Asiatic and the other
Hellenic. Without entering upon the interesting question how far these
different and often hostile tendencies left their trace upon the
Church and government, it is sufficient for my present purpose to note
that the Greek influence prevailed for centuries and, aided by the
commercial spirit of the Greek race, which had given them the leading
part in the trade of the empire and hellenised every port on the Aegean
and the Marmora, succeeded in causing Greek speech to become the
general language of the Church and empire.
[Sidenote: Greek, a bond of union.]
The Greeks who were of Hellenic blood had never forgotten their own
language or their classical writers. Others who had adopted their
language came in time to consider themselves of Greek descent and
gloried in the writings of ancient Greece, as if they were the works of
their ancestors. Language and literature led to the belief in a common
origin. Just as Shakespeare and the English Bible are a bond of union
among English-speaking people, so the possession of the Greek classics,
of the New Testament, and the Liturgies of the Church knit together
the various Greek-speaking peoples under the empire. The common people
learned to love the old Greek stories, to treasure the beautiful half
religious, half mythical tales, the exploits recorded by Homer, no
less than the simple mixture of inspiriting and patriotic historical
narrative with the garrulous and ever pleasant stories of Herodotus. A
long series of successive generations were nursed upon them, as they
have indeed continued to be down to the present day.[539]
There thus arose a traditional, historic, and patriotic feeling
which bound together all Greek-speaking peoples, whether actually
descendants from the Hellenic race or not. It existed in all sections
of the community and led to a pride of race which has rarely been
equalled. One curious illustration of the affection which existed for
their reputed ancestors is noted by Dean Stanley and other writers. In
mediaeval pictures still remaining in the monasteries of Mount Athos
and elsewhere, the originals of which were painted many centuries ago,
Pericles and Leonidas and other great men of their race are introduced
among the occupants of heaven.
The wealthier classes, the scholars, the nobles and their wives, down
to the last period of the existence of the empire aimed at speaking and
writing Greek with elegance and purity. They recognised that they were
the heirs of literary treasures which were greater than those possessed
by any other European people. They realised that in the long series of
Greek authors from classical times down through nearly two thousand
years to the period in which they were living they had an historical
literature longer and more complete than any race known to them.
[Sidenote: Disappearance of books after 1204.]
There had been indeed dark periods in the literary history of the
empire as in that of other countries. In Constantinople during the
four centuries which preceded the Turkish conquest, though to a less
extent than in Western Europe, learning and literature had been largely
neglected. After the time of the great scholar Photius (patriarch
of Constantinople between 877 and 885) few works of importance had
been produced. The students of Constantinople had come to take but
small interest in any study which did not concern theology, law,
or history. Possibly they ceased even to guard the treasures they
possessed with the like care which their predecessors had shown. Many
valuable manuscripts disappeared. The Latin conquerors are admittedly
responsible for the destruction of a large number of books. In the
_Myriobiblion_ of Photius, an abridgment of two hundred and eighty
authors which is rich in extracts from historians, he gives us all we
possess of certain writers. But two thirds of the works he enumerates
have been lost since the time of the Fourth Crusade and will probably
never be recovered.[540] No writer quotes any of the lost authors after
1204.[541]
[Sidenote: Service rendered by empire in preserving Greek language and
literature.]
But beneath the cloud of ignorance which had descended during the
Middle Ages not only upon the empire but upon all Europe, there
were always in Constantinople a considerable number of scholars and
students. These men kept alive the love of Greek learning. While none
of them produced any work which deserves to be classed as literature of
a high order, they rendered immense service by preserving that which
existed. The lawyers and clergy had greatly assisted in maintaining the
vigour and clearness of Greek speech. The knowledge and practice of
law in a form not materially different from that in which it had been
left by the great jurists of the sixth and seventh centuries furnished
a field for the exercise of the most acute intellects, and trained men
in precision of thought and exactitude of expression. The legal maxims
of the lawyers of the New Rome in their Latin form had given a set
of principles of law for all Europe, and still claim the admiration
of those who take pleasure in lucidity and epigram. The dissensions
and heresies in the Church in like manner contributed to the use of
Greek in a correct form. Exact definition in matters of dogma was a
necessity, and incidentally helped to preserve Greek in its ancient
form. The writings of theologians were judged by a well-educated caste
which required that they should approximate to the language which to
them was accepted as a model.
The Histories of Nicetas, of Anna Comnena, of George Acropolitas, of
Pachymer, and of others down to Critobulus, which help to fill up the
period between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, are all written in
respectable Greek and show a feeling for literary effect which recalls,
though it too often seeks to imitate, the writings of the Greek
classical historians. The education of the higher clergy was in Greek
philosophy and theology; and schools for the study of these subjects
continued in existence down to the final conquest. The remark of Gibbon
is probably true that ‘more books and more knowledge were included
within the walls of Constantinople than could be found dispersed over
the extensive countries of the West.’[542]
[Sidenote: Departure of Greek scholars for Italy]
While not losing sight of the fact that the Greek Church from the time
of Justinian had exercised influence in Venice and Calabria, it may
yet be stated that the departure of Greek scholars from Constantinople
for the West began with the Latin conquest. Italy, on account of her
commerce with the East and the intimate relations which had existed
between Venice and other cities and the New Rome before the Latin
occupation, was the country to which most of the fugitives turned their
steps. Venice, owing to the part she took in the Latin conquest of the
city, had become Queen of the Seas, and naturally received at first
the largest contingent. But the supremacy of Venice was now shared by
various rivals, and Greek students found their way to other cities.
Greek was still spoken in Calabria, where the liturgy was said in that
language and where, indeed, the language is still spoken,[543] but
with this exception nowhere else in Italy had any knowledge of Greek
been preserved, Boccaccio asserts that even the Greek characters were
unknown.[544] In the troubles which existed during the century and a
half preceding the Moslem conquest the number of exiles increased.
Many priests and monks were glad to escape from the disorders in their
native land by seeking refuge in Italy.
[Sidenote: aids revival of learning in Italy.]
While these voluntary exiles contributed largely to awaken an interest
in the study of Greek, it must be noted that their arrival in Italy
was at an opportune period. Gibbon remarks that in ‘the resurrection
of science Italy was the first that cast away her shroud.’ The study
of the Latin classical authors had already been recommenced. There had
been a gradual awakening from the stupor, the indifference, and, in
spite of a few individual exceptions, the deep contented ignorance
of the Middle Ages. Antiquity as represented by its architecture, its
sculpture, and its literature, was now to furnish the ideal of the
Renaissance. A great movement arose for the reproduction of classical
architecture. But contemporary with it came the study of Latin
classics. Virgil had never been altogether neglected and had, indeed,
been regarded with a superstitious reverence. He was now glorified
and imitated. Other Latin authors were diligently studied, and then
the natural result followed. The students of Cicero and Virgil began
to look for their models to the authors whom the Romans had admired
and had imitated. The study of the great Latin classics inevitably
called for a knowledge of those written in Greek. The leaders in the
revival of the study of the Latin authors were those who led the way
also in the study of Greek. Petrarch and Boccaccio shared with Dante
not merely the honour of forming Italian as a modern language but
that also of leading the way to the appreciation of Greek learning by
the scholars of Western Europe. Greek scholars were welcomed. We have
seen that Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, the short, eager, stammering
controversialist, whose bitter tongue, learning, and subtilty made him
the leader in the angry controversy in Constantinople regarding the
Inner Light in the time of Cantacuzenus, was sent on an embassy to
Italy by the emperor. Cantacuzenus, though favouring the other side,
attests the learning and ability of Barlaam and his acquaintance with
Plato and Aristotle. At Avignon, he was persuaded by Petrarch to act
as instructor in Greek, and with him the poet[545] read the works of
Plato. Petrarch, though his acquaintance with Greek did not enable
him to read the manuscript of Homer with which he had been presented,
yet speaks of the gift in terms which show his admiration of Greek
literature to have been profound and enthusiastic. It is recorded of
him that he was able to select the greatest of the Greek poets by
listening to the reading of their works although he was unacquainted
with their language.
A few years afterwards, in 1360, Boccaccio, for twenty years the
friend of Petrarch, persuaded a certain Leontius of Salonica, a pupil
of Barlaam, to give public lectures upon Homer at Florence. Leontius
lodged in the house of Boccaccio, was paid by the republic of Florence,
and was probably the first professor of Greek in Italy or any Western
country. His appearance was against him, for he was ill clad, had an
ugly face, with long unkempt hair and beard, and a sullen manner. But
all was excused on account of his knowledge of the Greek language and
his delight in its literature. His public reading of Homer pleased
the Florentines, and Boccaccio obtained a prose translation of the
Iliad and Odyssey made by his _protégé_. At the end of three years
the lecturer resigned his post and went to Constantinople. Boccaccio
himself not only learned Greek but became a lecturer throughout Italy
upon its literature and helped to create an enthusiasm for its study.
[Sidenote: Enthusiasm in Italy for study of Greek.]
Manuel Chrysoloras, about 1366 or the following year, after he had
failed in his mission from the Emperor Manuel to France and England to
obtain aid against the Turks, returned to Florence, the centre of the
new intellectual movement in Italy, to teach the Greek language and
explain its literature. His lectures were followed with delight. Boys
and old men were among his audience. The study of Greek became the
fashion. One of his pupils, Leonard Aretinus, who subsequently became
the secretary of four successive Popes, tells how his soul was inflamed
with the love of letters and how on hearing Chrysoloras it was a hard
struggle to decide whether he should continue the study of law or be
introduced to Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, and those poets, philosophers,
and orators who are celebrated by every age as the great masters of
human science. He gave himself up to Chrysoloras, and so strong,
he declares, was his passion for the new studies that the lessons
he imbibed during the day were the constant subject of his nightly
dreams.[546]
The school of Chrysoloras was transferred from Florence to Pavia,
thence to Venice, and finally to Rome, and everywhere was well
attended. Aroused by his teaching, some of his pupils went to
Constantinople to increase their knowledge of Greek and to acquire
books and manuscripts. In that city, between 1400 and 1453, the
libraries and monasteries were freely opened to the Italian students.
The libraries were still stocked with the treasures of Greek learning
and literature, and every effort was made by Italian scholars to draw
upon their stores. The trading agents of the Medici and other great
Florentine houses were instructed to buy manuscripts without regard to
cost and to send them to Florence. The best credentials that a young
Greek could bring from Constantinople was a manuscript. The discovery
of an unknown manuscript, says Tiraboschi, was regarded almost as the
conquest of a kingdom. Aurispa, one of the pupils of Chrysoloras,
returned to Venice in 1423, with two hundred and thirty-eight volumes.
The Florentines had led the way in the acquisition of Greek and the
collection of manuscripts. The chiefs of the political factions were
also the leaders of intellectual progress and vied with each other in
the noble rivalry of encouraging the new studies as much as they did
in building libraries. Cosimo, the head of the Medici, carried out a
well-organised plan for encouraging the revived learning. The leaders
of his school in Florence were Niccolo di Nicolo and Lionardo Bruni,
the latter of whom died in 1443. The chief ecclesiastics were hardly
less eager than other scholars. The popes themselves threw their
influence into the new movement. In 1434 Eugenius the Fourth took up
his residence in Florence when he was expelled from Rome. Amid his
own serious troubles, with refractory Councils, a hostile capital,
the Bogomil and Hussian heresies, and the ever vexed question of the
reunion of the Churches, Eugenius found time to encourage the study
of Greek and to give a welcome to all Greek priests and students who
brought with them their precious manuscripts. He appreciated the
profound learning of Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, who had come
to take part in the council at Ferrara and afterwards, in 1438, at
Florence, retained him, as we have seen, after the Council, and made
him in the following year cardinal. His patronage of Bessarion is the
more remarkable since the Greek was an adherent and exponent of the
philosophy of Plato as opposed to that of Aristotle. The other Greek
Church dignitaries who were present at the Council, and who were hardly
less distinguished, were welcomed as scholars even by those who treated
them with scant courtesy as priests of the Orthodox Church. George
Gemistos, who adopted the name of Plethon, the founder of a school of
Neoplatonism, was one of them, and was popular generally except with
the priests. George Scholarius, whom we have seen as the leader of the
anti-unionist party in Constantinople, and afterwards as patriarch,
Theodore Gaza, Andronicus, Philelphus, and others of repute, were
also present. Cosimo de’ Medici, through the influence of Gemistos,
undertook the task of translating Plato. When Gemistos died, in 1450,
in the Morea, his body was taken to Florence as a mark of respect for
his services in teaching Greek. The patronage of Eugenius was continued
by his successor Nicholas the Fifth, the first ‘humanist’ who was made
pope and the founder of the Vatican library.
The succession of scholars was kept up by constant new arrivals from
Constantinople. Philelphus (or, in its Italianised form, Filelfo), who
had married a daughter of Chrysoloras, was for a while secretary to
the Venetian bailey in Constantinople, and had gone thither in 1420
mainly in order to study Greek. He was sent as envoy to Murad. He
states that, though when in Constantinople he found the Greek of the
common people much corrupted, yet that the persons attached to the
imperial court spoke the language of Aristophanes and Euripides and
of the historians and philosophers of Athens, and that the style of
their writing continued to be elaborate and correct. It is especially
interesting to note that the most elegant and purest Greek was spoken
by the noble matrons.[547] He gained, upon his return to Italy, by
his knowledge of Greek and his great learning, a wide reputation and
came to be regarded as the most universal scholar of the age. On his
visit to Naples, in 1453, he was treated as an equal by princes.[548]
Many other distinguished teachers also during the same period visited
Constantinople in pursuit of learning or manuscripts.
But while I have mentioned some of the leading Greeks who contributed
before the Moslem conquest to the revival of the study of Greek
literature in Italy, it should be noted that there were a host of
others less known to fame who sought refuge from the disorders of the
empire and found profitable employment in their new homes. Between the
death of Petrarch, in 1374, and the conquest of Constantinople, in
1453, Italy had recovered the Greek classics. The intellectual movement
caused a great increase in the reproduction of manuscripts. Among the
professional copyists, those who could write Greek were specially
esteemed and received very large pay.[549] They did their work so
admirably that the new invention of printing with moveable types which
came in just about the time of the Moslem conquest of Constantinople
was regarded as unsuitable for, or unworthy of, important books. The
envoys of Cardinal Bessarion when they saw for the first time a printed
book in the house of Constantine Lascaris laughed at the discovery
‘made among the barbarians in some German city,’ and Ferdinand of
Urbino declared that he would have been ashamed to own a printed
book.[550] Notwithstanding this prejudice, Greek books were soon
printed in Italy--though, for several years, only in Italy.
[Sidenote: Increased number of fugitives after 1453.]
The impulse given to the study of Greek by exiles during the
half-century, preceding the conquest of Constantinople and by the
enthusiasm of a series of scholars from Petrarch and Boccaccio down to
1453, was greatly stimulated by the increase of fugitives consequent
on the capture of the city. Among the scholars who made their way
westward the best known are Lascaris, who rose to high distinction as
a statesman, Callistos, Argyropulos, Gaza, and Chalcondylas. Between
1453 and the end of the century, Greek was studied with avidity. Youths
learned to speak as well as to write it.
[Sidenote: Renaissance _in excelsis_.]
The arrival of numbers of scholars in Italy shortly before and shortly
after 1453 is contemporaneous with the full springtime of the great
revival of learning. A series of remarkable efforts had been made
to restore ancient Roman and Greek glory as seen in literature and
architecture. Learning was regarded as a new and improved evangel.
The learning of the ancients was compared with the ignorance of the
Churchmen. The new movement marked a great reaction and went to
unjustifiable extremes. Some of the advocates for classical influence
went to the extent of discarding Christian in favour of Pagan morality.
A curious passionate enthusiasm for the classic and venerated past took
possession of the most enlightened men in Italy. Paganism, because
it was contemporaneous with the classical period, invaded the Church
itself. All the architecture, art, and literature of Christianity was
bad except in so far as it approximated to Pagan models. The late J. A.
Symonds gives a striking illustration of the distance this enthusiasm
carried men, in suggesting that Faust may be taken as the symbol of
the desire during the Renaissance for classical learning. Faust is
content to sell his soul to the devil, but in return he sees Homer
and Alexander and obtains Helen as his bride and is satisfied.[551]
The careful study of the Latin classics, the marvellous development
of painting, architecture, and sculpture, but, above all, the keen
interest felt in the newly developed study of Greek with its Platonic
philosophy and its new vision of life, were all to produce wonderful
fruit within a generation after 1453 and to culminate in Italy in an
age of singular intellectual brilliancy.
[Sidenote: Study of Greek taken up in Northern Europe.]
The study of Greek, at first almost confined to Florence, gradually
spread over the whole of the peninsula and finally passed north of
the Alps into Germany, where it was taken up with great earnestness.
Opposed by the ignorant monks everywhere, and by others who feared
that the authority and repute of Latin authors would be terminated,
it gradually won its way. In 1458 a Greek professor was appointed in
Paris, and one in Rome. Similar professorships were established in most
of the Italian universities, following in this respect the example
of Florence. In the reign of Henry the Seventh, Oxford consented to
receive Grocyn and Linacre as teachers of Greek.[552]
As the zeal for a knowledge of Greek died out in Italy it took deeper
root in Germany. Chrysoloras and George of Trebizond were followed by
a succession of students, until we meet with the names of Germans and
Dutchmen who had gone to Italy to make themselves acquainted with the
recovered language and literature. Among them that of Erasmus holds the
foremost place.
The movement known as ‘The Revival of Learning’ was accomplished before
the end of the fifteenth century, and all investigators are agreed that
it had been very largely contributed to by Greek exiles during the
half-century preceding and following the Moslem conquest.
Its paganisation of Christianity proved temporary. But the critical
examination of the text of the Greek New Testament and of the Greek
Fathers had more durable results. It called attention to the contents
of a book which had hitherto been taken as outside controversy. When
the study of Greek passed north of the Alps, the examination of the
sacred writings was no longer in the hands of _dilettanti_ who
looked upon the text with the contempt of scholars disposed to accept
paganism as the complement of a higher form of civilisation, and who
had no patience with what they regarded as trivialities, but in those
of religious and earnest German students, with results, in Erasmus,
Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and others, the end of which is not yet
visible.
[Sidenote: MSS. destroyed or carried away.]
The manuscripts which were taken to Italy were the seed destined to
yield a rich literary harvest, and their removal from Constantinople
was an advantage. It is otherwise with the manuscripts which perished.
In 1204 the rude Venetians and Crusaders destroyed great numbers for
the sake of their covers.[553] A manuscript which had cost many months
of labour, which was written and perhaps illuminated with great skill,
was worthy of a costly covering. Some of the bindings were enriched
with jewels or with silver or gold clasps and other decorations. The
covers rather than the interior were the objects then coveted. There
is reason to believe that in the two subsequent centuries thousands
of manuscripts disappeared, many possibly stolen or sold for their
bindings. But as learning in Constantinople made little progress after
the Latin occupation, it is probably to the ignorance of the monks
that the disappearance of many of them ought to be attributed. Yet all
the evidence which exists shows that an enormous number of manuscripts
remained in Constantinople until 1453. We have seen that Ducas declares
that during the days following the sack of the city ten volumes on
theology and other studies, including Aristotle and Plato, were sold
for a small silver coin, and that an incredible number of manuscripts
of the Gospels after they had been stripped of their gold and silver
bindings were either sold or given away.[554] Critobulus adds that
while a very great number of books were burnt or ignominiously trampled
to pieces, the larger number were sold at ridiculous sums, not for the
sake of their price, but in contemptuous wantonness.[555] I am unaware
what authority Hody has for stating[556] that after the capture of the
city a hundred and twenty thousand books were destroyed, but that the
destruction was great cannot reasonably be doubted.[557]
After the conquest the treasures guarded by the Greek monks rapidly
began to disappear, and especially from the capital. The octagonal
libraries, one of which formed usually an adjunct to every church,
were taken from the Christians by the victorious Turk and applied to
other uses,[558] and the contents were for the most part dispersed or
destroyed. Successive travellers for two centuries found rich gleanings
among them, and the number of manuscripts taken or sent away suggests
that the original stores in Constantinople had been enormous. Janus
Lascaris returned to Italy with two hundred books, eighty of which were
as yet unknown in the libraries of Europe. Even as late as the time
of Busbeck, who was ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor to Suliman
in 1555, he was able to conclude the announcement of his return home
by saying: ‘I have whole wagon-loads, if not ship-loads, of Greek
manuscripts, and about two hundred and forty books which I sent by sea
to Venice. I intend them for Caesar’s library. I rummaged every corner
to provide such kind of merchandise as my final gleaning.’[559]
While it is beyond doubt that the dispersion of students from
Constantinople aided the intellectual movement in Western Europe
by introducing new ideals of poetry, of history, and of philosophy,
as well as by modifying the conceptions of classical art and
architecture,[560] there is no ground for the belief that, if the city
had not been captured, Greek influence would not have made itself
felt in the Renaissance. The dispersion hastened the development of a
movement which had already begun, awakened a spirit of inquiry, and
conducted scholars into new fields of thought earlier than they would
have arrived if not thus aided. In this sense, and to this extent, it
may be claimed as a beneficial result of the capture of Constantinople.