586 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
§ 136. Learning in ike 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 inter meddling of a despotic court.
The most flourishing seats of patristic learning, Alexandria and Antioch, were lost by the conquests of Islam. The im mense 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."1 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 Averroes 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 imme diate vicinity (Chalcedon, Nicsea) the oecumenical councils were held ; here were the scholars, the libraries, the imperial patron age, and all the facilities for the prosecution of studies. Many a library was destroyed, but always replaced again.2 Thessalo-
1 Gibbon (ch. 50) doubts this fact, related by Abulpharagius and other Mohammedan authorities; but Von Hammer, Silv. de Sacy, and other Ori ental 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.
2 A library of 120,000 volumes, begun by Constantius and Julian the Apos tate, was burned by accident under Basiliscus (478). Another Constantino-
2 136. LEARNING IN THE EASTEKN CHURCH. 587
nica 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 Home 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, phi losophy, and theology.
Classical learning revived in the ninth century under the patronage of the court. The reigns of Csesar Bardas (860-866), Basilius I. the Macedonian (867-886), Leo VI. the Philosopher (886-911), who was himself an author, Constantino 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 Em press 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,1 with some rhetorical exaggeration, " held in their lifeless hands the riches of the fathers, without inheriting the spirit which had created and
politan 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.
1 Decline and Fall, Ch. LIII. (V. 529).