608 FOUKTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
cile the perfect attributes of Deity with the apparent disorders of his moral and physical government." *
GREEK AND HEBREW LEARNING.
The original languages of the Scriptures were little under stood in the West. The Latin took the place of the Greek as a literary and sacred language, and formed a bond of union among scholars of different nationalities. As a spoken language it rapidly degenerated under the influx of barbaric dialects, but gave birth in the course of time to the musical Romanic lan guages of Southern Europe.
The Hebrew, which very few of the fathers (Origen and Jerome) had understood, continued to live in the Synagogue, and among eminent Jewish grammarians and commentators of the Old Testament; but it was not revived in the Christian Church till shortly before the Reformation. Very few of the divines of our period (Isidore, and, perhaps, Scotus Erigena) show any trace of Hebrew learning.
The Greek, which had been used almost exclusively, even by writers of the Western church, till the time of Tertullian and Cyprian, gave way to the Latin. Hence the great majority of Western divines could not read even the New Testament in the
1 Decline and Fall, Ch. 39 (vol. IV. 138). Ebert (Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. I. 472) assumes a partial influence of Christianity upon this work. " Boetius" he says, "war nur ein Namenchrist, aber dock immerhin ein solcher; die erste christliche Erziehung war keineswegs spurlos an ihm voriibergegangen. Sein Werk ruht zwar seinem ganzen Gehalt nach auf der heidnisch-antiken Philosophic, hauptsdchlich dem Plat.onismus, und zwar in der neuplatonischen Form, wie schon eine sehr fliichlige Kenntniss desselben alsbald zeigt, und in alien Einzelheiten, freilich nicht ohne einige Uebertreibung, von Nitzsch nachgewiesen warden ist; aber das Werk erhdlt nicht bloss durch das starke Hervortreten stoischromischer Ethik einen chrixtlichen Anschein, sondem diese nimmt hier auch mitunter in der That eine specifisch christliche Fdrbung an, wie es denn selbst auch an Reminiscenzen aus der Bibel nicht ganzfehlt. Hb'chst merkwilrdig ist, wie in diesem Werke des letzfen der romischen Philosophen, wie Zeller ihn mit Recht nennt, diese verschiedenen, zum Theil ganz heterogenen Elemente sich durchdringen zu einer doch einigen Gesammtwirkung in Folge des sittlichen Moments, worin seine, wie iiberhaupt des romischen Eklekticismus Starke beruht."
I 139. EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS OF THE CHURCH. 609
original. Pope Gregory did not know Greek, although he lived several years as papal ambassador in Constantinople. The same is true of most of the schoolmen down to the sixteenth century.
But there were not a few honorable exceptions.1 The Monotheletic and Iconoclastic controversies brought the Greek and the Latin churches into lively contact. The conflict between Photius and Nicolas stimulated Latin divines to self-defence.
As to Italy, the Greek continued to be spoken in the Greek colonies in Calabria and Sicily down to the eleventh century. Boethius was familiar with the Greek philosophers. Cassiodorus often gives the Greek equivalents for Latin technical terms.2
Several popes of this period were Greeks by birth, as Theo dore I. (642), John VI. (701), John VII. (705), Zachary (741); while others were Syrians, as John V. (685), Sergius I. (687), Sisinnius (708), Constantino I. (708), Gregory III. (731).— Zachary translated Gregory's " Dialogues " from Latin into Greek. Pope Paul I. (757 — 768) took pains to spread a know ledge of Greek and sent several Greek books, including a grammar, some works of Aristotle, and Dionysius the Areopagite, to King Pepin of France. He provided Greek service for several monks who had been banished from the East by the iconoclastic emperor Copronymus. Anastasius, librarian of the Vatican, translated the canons of the eighth general Coun-
1 Comp. Cramer, De Greeds medii czvi studiis, and the pamphlet of Lumby quoted on p. 584.
2 E. g. in De Artibus, etc., cap. 1 (in Migne's ed. II. 1154) : " Nominis paries sunt :
Qualitas, TTO/^C. Comparatio, Genus, yevog. Numeric, aptdu6$. Figura,
In the same work he gives the divisions of philosophy and the categories of Aristotle in Greek and Latin, and uses such words as ##of, rrotfof, TrapfKftaat?, araxr^, araoLr f avrtyi&qpa, avrlaraai^, TrpayuaTiKT/. cnro^ei^i^. Kiri^eip^uara. etc.