BYZANTINE
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BYZANTINE
What then were the cultural effects emanating from
this complex organism?
The most momentous effect of the establishment of the Eastern Roman Empire on European civiliza- tion was the division of the latter into two parts: one Romance and Germanic, the other Greek and Slavic. Ethnographically, linguistically, ecclesias- tically, and historically, both cultures are sharply distinct from each other, as is evident from a com- parison of alphabets and calendars. The former division is the more progressive; the latter is the more conservative, and very slow to adapt itself to tin- West. Byzantium exerted a decided and effective influence only in the eastern half of the empire. Russia, the Balkan countries, and Turkey are the modern offshoots of Byzantine civilization; the first two particularly in ecclesiastical, political, and cul- tural respects (through the translation and adapta- tion of sacred, historical, and popular literature); the third in respect to civil government.
For the European West the Byzantine Empire and its culture are significant in a twofold way. Indirectly, this Empire affected the West in forming a strong bulwark against the frequent advances of the Asiatic races and protecting Europe for centuries from the burdens of war. Byzantium was also the store- house of the greatest literature of the ancients, the Greek. During the Middle Ages, until the capture of Constantinople, the West was acquainted only with Roman literature. Greek antiquity was first un- locked for it by the treasures which fugitive Greek humanists carried to Italy. Byzantine culture had a direct influence especially upon Southern and Cen- tral Europe, that is to say on Italy, in church music and church poetry, though this was only in the very early period (until the seventh century); it had a permanent and wider influence in ecclesiastical arch- itecture, through the development of the so-called Romanesque style (in the tenth and eleventh cen- turies), the Oriental and Byzantine origin of which has been more clearly recognized of late. This in- fluence was transmitted through the Prankish and Salic emperors, primarily Charlemagne, whose rela- tions with Byzantium are well known. Probably it was also in this way that Byzantine titles and cere- monial were introduced into Central Europe, and that Central and Eastern European official life assumed its hierarchical and bureaucratical character. Finally, though not very numerous, the effects of Byzantine culture upon the countries of the Near East, especially upon the Armenians, the Persians, and the Arabs, must not be underestimated. Even if Byzantium re- ceived from these nations more than it imparted, still the Byzantines gave a strong intellectual im- pulse to the Orient, particularly by enriching its scholarly literature, though even in this they served chiefly as intermediaries.
In the following account Byzantine literature is classified in live groups. The first three include rep- resentatives of those kinds of literature which con- tinued the ancient traditions: historians (including also the chroniclers), encyclopedists, and essayists, and writers of secular poetry. The remain it groups include the new literary species, ecclesiastical and theological literature, and popular poetry.
I. Historians and Annalists. -The two groups of secular prose literature show dearly the dual char- acter of Byzantine intellectual life in its social, re- ligious, and linguisti from this point of view historical and annalistic literature supplement each other; the former is aristocratic, the latter is of the people, both in origin and aim; the former is secular, the latter ecclesiastical and monastic; the former is classical, the latter popular. The works of the historians belong to scholarly literature, those of the annalists (or chroniclers) to the literature of the people. The former are carefully elaborated, the
latter give only raw material; the former confine
themselves to the description of the present and the
most recent past, and thus have rather the charac-
ter of contemporary records; the latter cover the
whole history of the world as known to the Middle
Ages. The former are therefore the more valuable
for political history; the latter for the history of
civilization. The following detailed account will
bring to light still further differences.
A. Historians. — Classical literary tradition set the standard for Byzantine historians in their grasp of the aims of history, the manner of handling their subjects, and in style of composition. Their works are thoroughly concrete and objective in character, without passion, and even without enthusiasm. Ar- dent patriotism ami personal convictions are rarely evident. They are diplomatic historians, expert in the use of historical sources and in the polished tact called for by their social position; they are not closet- scholar-;, ignorant of the world, but men who stood out in public life: jurists like Procopius, Agathias, Evagrius, Michael Attaliates; statesmen like Joannes Cinnamus, Nicetas Acominatus, Gcorgius Pachy- meres, Laonicus Chalcondyles; generals and diplo- mats like Nicephorus Bryennius, Georgius Acropoli- tes, Georgius Phrantzes; and even crowned heads, like Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Anna Comnena. John VI Cantacuzene, and others. The Byzantine historians thus represent not only the social but also the intellectual flower of their time, resembling in this their Greek predecessors, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius, who became their guides and models, In some eases a Byzantine chooses one or another classic writer to imitate in method and style. The majority, however, took as models sev- eral authors, a custom which gave rise to a peculiar
style, quite characteristic of the Byzantines. This was nol always due to mere caprice, but often resulted from a real community of feeling, effectually preventing, however, any development of an indi- vidual style. For the continuity of historical style it would surely have been desirable for an historian of such great influence on posterity as Procopius to have chosen as his model Polybius rather than Thucy- dides. That such was not the case, however, is not the fault of the Byzantines but of the "Atticists", who had checked the natural course of the develop- ment. Nevertheless, within the limits of this devel- opment, it is certainly no accident that military characters like Nicephorus Bryennius (eleventh and twelfth centuries) ami Joannes Cinnamus (twelfth century) emulated Xenophon in the precision of their diction, and that a philosophic character like Nicephorus Gregoras (thirteenth century) took Plato as his model. On the other hand, it is doubtless due to chance that writers trained in theology like Leo Diaconus and Georgius Pachymeres elms,, t,, orna- ment their pages with Homeric turns. On the whole it is in the later historians thai the dualism of By- zantine civilization — ecelesiastico-political matter in el. ical form — becomes most apparent.
Although the Byzantine historians are thus for the most part dependent on foreign models, and while, to outward appearances, they form a con- tinuous series in which each begins where his prede-
topped, ye( they do not blend into a uniform whole, distinguishable only under the light east on them from classic literature. There are. on the con- trary, clearly marked groups within which individual personalities stand out with distinctness. Most of
the historians come in either the period embracing
the sixth and seventh centuries, or that extending from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, i. e. either
during the reif Roman emperors or those
of the i i ilogi. At the time of
its zenith under the Macedonian emperors (the ninth ami tenth centuries) the Byzantine world produced
