588 FOUKTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
improved that sacred patrimony : they read, they praised, they compiled; but their languid souls seemed alike incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added to the speculative systems of antiquity ; and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of history, philo sophy or literature has been saved from oblivion by the intrin sic beauties of style or sentiment, of original fancy, and even of successful imitation. . . . The leaders of the Greek church were humbly content to admire and copy the oracles of antiquity, nor did the schools or pulpit produce any rivals of the fame of Athauasius and Chrysostom."
The theological controversies developed dialectical skill, a love for metaphysical subtleties, and an over-estimate of theo retical orthodoxy at the expense of practical piety. The Monotheletic controversy resulted in an addition to the christological creed; the iconoclastic controversy determined the character of public worship and the relation of religion to art.
The most gifted Eastern divines were Maximus Confessor in the seventh, John of Damascus in the eighth, and Photius in the ninth century. Maximus, the hero of Monotheletism, was an acute and profound thinker, and the first to utilize the pseud o-Dyonysian philosophy in support of a mystic ortho doxy. John of Damascus, the champion of image-worship, systematized the doctrines of the orthodox fathers, especially the three great Cappadocians, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa, and produced a monumental work on theology which enjoys to this day the same authority in the Greek church as the "Summa" of Thomas Aquinas in the Latin. Photius, the antagonist of Pope Nicolas, was the great est scholar of his age, who read and digested with independent judgment all ancient heathen and Christian books on philology,
g 137. THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIAN WKITINGS. 589
philosophy, theology, canon law, history, medicine, and general literature. In extent of information and fertility of pen he had a successor in Michael Psellus (d. 1106).
Exegesis was cultivated by CEcumenius in the tenth, Theophylact in the eleventh, and Euthymius Zygabenus in the twelfth century. They compiled the valuable excgetical col lections called "Catense."1 Simeon Metaphrastes (about 900) wrote legendary biographies and eulogies of one hundred and twenty-two saints. Suidas, in the eleventh century, prepared a Lexicon, which contains much valuable philological and his torical information.2 The Byzantine historians, Theophanes, Syncellus, Cedrenus, Leo Grammaticus, and others, describe the political and ecclesiastical events of the slowly declining empire. The most eminent scholar of the twelfth century was Eustathius, Archbishop of Thessalonica, best known as the commen tator of Homer, but deserving a high place also as a theologian, ecclesiastical ruler, and reformer of mouasticism.
§ 137. Christian Platonism and the Pseudo-Dionysian Writings.
LITERATURE.
I. Best ed. of Pseudo-Dionysius in Greek and Latin by Balthazar Corderius (Jesuit), Antwerp, 1G34; reprinted at Paris, 1644; Venice, 1755; Brixise, 1854; and by Migne, in "Patrol. Gr.," Tom. III. and IV., Paris, 1857, with the scholia of Pachymeres, St. Maximus, and va-
1 So called from being connected like chains, actpai, catena. Other term?* are: intro/uai or ovMoyal ep/*7?v£iav, glossce, postillce. Among Latin collections of that kind, the Catena Aurea of Thomas Aquinas on the Gospels is the moat famous. See Fabricius, Biblioth. Grceca, vol. VII., and Noesselt, De Catenis Patrum Grcecorum in N. T. Hal., 1762. What these Catenas did for patristic exegesis, the Oritici Sacri (London, 1660 sqq.; Frankfort, 1695 sqq.; Amster dam, 1698-1732, with supplements, 13 vols.), and Matthew Poole's Synopsis (London, 1669 sqq., an abridgment of the former) did for the exegesis of the reformers and other commentators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
2 Still indispensable to Greek scholars, and important to theologians and historians for the biblical glosses, the explanations of theological terms, and the biographical and literary notices of ecclesiastical writers. Best editions by Gaisford (Oxford, 1834), and Bernhardy (Halle, 1853, 4 vols.).