by Peter Watson
By the end of the sixth century the decline of learning and culture had become serious. The only vital educational institutions in the main part of the empire were the imperial university at Constantinople, founded around 425, and a clerical academy under the direction of the patriarchate. The school at Alexandria was by now isolated. And, before things could get better, there was the notorious controversy over icon-worship (see below, this chapter). For three centuries–from the middle of the sixth century to the middle of the ninth (the true dark ages)–there is no record of the study of the classics and hardly any education. Very few manuscripts of any kind remain from this period.
The few schools of the time were located at Athens, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Alexandria, Gaza and Beirut. The latter, and Antioch, were devastated in earthquakes in the sixth century, and Antioch was also sacked by the Persians in 540. We cannot say, therefore, that the loss of learning, which was pronounced by the sixth century, was due to any one overriding reason: natural causes, the barbarian invasions, the rise of Christianity, the rise of the Arabs–all played their part. But by the end of the sixth century there were fewer and fewer signs of a literary life. There was, for example, a decline–almost a disappearance–in the knowledge of Greek. Even if Constantinople had never been a completely bilingual city, both Latin and Greek had always been well understood (Greek was, for example, Justinian’s first language). The most famous example of this state of affairs is a letter by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 which says that in Constantinople ‘it is not possible to obtain a satisfactory translation’.27 And though the age of Justinian (527–565) was brilliant in many respects, there are grounds for thinking that book production had already begun to decline during his reign. Certainly, the withdrawal of the Greek and Latin worlds from each other was a crucial development. By the sixth century virtually no western scholar was able to understand Greek.
But this was a near-death experience for the book, and for learning, not, as it turned out, terminal decline. One reason for this is that a concerted effort was made to preserve the classics, in Byzantium. In an address to the Emperor Constantius on 1 January 357, the Byzantine scholar Themistius (c. 317–c. 388) outlined a plan ‘to guarantee the survival of ancient literature’.28 He was a man of such insight as to see that a scriptorium ‘for the production of new copies of the classics’, the survival of which was alleged to be threatened by neglect, would ensure that Constantinople would become a centre of literary culture. The authors most in need of this treatment were specified as Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Isocrates and Thucydides. ‘But,’ continues Themistius, ‘the successors of Homer and Hesiod, and philosophers such as Chrysippus, Zeno and Cleanthes, together with a whole range of other authors, are not in common circulation, and their texts will now be saved from oblivion.’29 In 372 an order was issued to the city prefect, Clearchus, to appoint four scribes skilled in Greek and three in Latin ‘to undertake the transcription and repair of books’.30 Fifteen years had passed since Themistius had had the idea, but at last it was done. He had less influence than he had hoped.
Another reason for the eventual survival of classical ideas is that there was a set of writers who have become known as the ‘Latin transmitters’, men–encyclopaedists, mainly–who kept alive classical thought (or at least the texts of classical thought) and provided a crucial bridge between the fourth century and the Carolingian renaissance four hundred years later. Marcia Colish, among others, has described their work.
The first of these transmitters was Martianus Capella, a contemporary of Augustine and a fellow north African. Capella was probably a Christian but his religion is referred to nowhere in his writings. His main work bears a strange title: The Marriage of Philology and Mercury. The structure and text of the book are no less bizarre, but in a very readable way, which make it clear that he at least thought that the seven liberal arts were under threat at that time and needed preservation.31 There were seven liberal arts–and not nine–partly because of the biblical text, in the Book of Wisdom: ‘Wisdom hath builded herself an house, she hath hewn out seven pillars.’ But medicine and law were omitted by Martianus (and hence from the arts faculties of medieval universities, and some modern liberal arts colleges) because they were not ‘liberal’, but concerned with ‘earthly’ things.32 The action of The Marriage takes place on Mount Olympus and, to begin with, Mercury is the centre of attention. Having spent so much of his time acting as messenger for the gods, in their quarrels and in particular their love affairs, he has decided to seek a wife himself. He is introduced to Philology, the language arts, and the introduction is a great success. The other gods agree to confer divinity on Philology and after the couple have exchanged vows, Apollo announces his wedding gift–seven servants. ‘These servants turn out to be none other than the seven liberal arts.’ Each art now gives an account of herself, all being suitably attired. Grammar, for instance, is an old woman with grey hair, carrying a knife and a file, ‘with which she excises barbarisms and smoothes the rough edges off awkward phrases’. Rhetoric is taller, much younger, far more beautiful, ‘whose colourful dress displays the flowers of rhetoric…’33 The arguments brought to bear by Martianus rely on Greeks–Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy. Bizarre it may have been, but The Marriage of Philology and Mercury was very popular and helped keep alive at least the basics of Greek thought.
Boethius, the second of the transmitters, wrote his most famous work Consolation of Philosophy while he was in jail, awaiting execution. He had no reference library on which to fall back, just what was already inside his head. Before that, however, he had set himself the task of translating the entire works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin. His premature death meant that he did not complete his task, but his translation of Aristotle’s logic was the only text of the great philosopher available in the west in the early medieval years, ensuring that some Greek philosophy was preserved. At the same time, Boethius’ conviction that his translations were necessary reinforces the view that he was persuaded of the importance of Plato and Aristotle and that there was little instruction in these authors available at the time.
The book he wrote in jail, the Consolation, is designed as an elegant dialogue between Boethius himself and Lady Philosophy, and its subject–why a just man suffers–made it an immediate success. Lady Philosophy is an extraordinary figure: her head touches the clouds and the hem of her Greek-style dress is decorated with the words ‘practical’ and ‘theoretical’. She begins by chasing away all the other muses in which Boethius had sought earlier consolation.
Cassiodorus was a contemporary of Boethius and, like him, rose to a high position in the government of the Ostrogothic king, Theodoric. And, like Boethius, Cassiodorus was concerned about the decline of Greek studies in the west. (Unlike Boethius, however, he lived to a ripe old age.34) His first idea was to found a Christian university in Rome. He approached the pope but, given the political unrest of the era, he was turned down. Cassiodorus next turned to the growing monastic movement. Using his own money, he founded (at Vivarium, in southern Italy) the first monastery that became a centre of scholarship, a practice followed by many other monasteries as the centuries passed. He collected manuscripts, of both Christian and secular works, and served as head of the school for the rest of his life. Cassiodorus shared the basic assumptions of the time in which he lived, namely that the main aim of education was the study of theology, church history, and biblical exegesis, but he also believed that, first, a proper grounding in the liberal arts was needed. He therefore prepared a kind of ‘syllabus of universal knowledge’–this was his major work as a transmitter, the Institutes Concerning Divine and Human Readings, and appended to it a bibliography of classical writings that, he said, would aid monks’ understanding.35 Besides identifying titles that should be read, Cassiodorus outlined the history of each of the liberal arts, even including authors whose views were by then dated, but who had been important in their time. This set of ideas became the basis of the curriculum in many monastic
schools of the Middle Ages and in order to be able to read the classical texts more copies of these books were needed. Therefore, it was at Cassiodorus’ instigation that monasteries began to copy selected classical works, another reason why they became centres of scholarship. Cassiodorus also produced a book on spelling, which has generally been taken as proof that, in addition to the decline in Greek studies, there was at the same time a fall in Latin literacy as well.
We have already encountered Isidore, the early seventh-century bishop of Seville. His most important work in the transmission of ideas was the Etymologies, the title of which reflects his view, not uncommon at a time fascinated by symbolism and allegory, that the road to knowledge led through words and their origins. He made many mistakes (just because the origins of words are similar does not mean that the objects or ideas they represent are similarly related), but he had an extraordinary range–biology, botany, philology, astronomy, law, monsters, stones and metals, war, games, shipbuilding and architecture, in addition to Christian subjects. The gusto and relish which he brought to his task reveals, says Marcia Colish, his view ‘that if he did not save culture, armed with his own extensive knowledge and the weapons of scissors and paste, no one else would’. Despite its shortcoming, in the early Middle Ages Etymologies became a standard reference work. (As Charles Freeman has pointed out, ‘reference’ is the key word. ‘There is little evidence that until the twelfth or thirteenth centuries these texts had any inspirational role.’36)
The historian Norman Cantor argues that the transmitters were neither original thinkers, nor yet masters of language, but schoolteachers and textbook writers. Nonetheless, given the dangers of the time, and the attitude of many Christians to classical and pagan thought, perhaps it is just as well that the transmitters had the values they did. Thanks to them, the classical tradition (or a proportion of classical texts) was kept alive.
Despite the fact that the true dark ages, from the point of view of ideas, extend from the middle of the sixth century to the middle of the ninth, two important changes in the history of the book nonetheless took place. One was the arrival from the Orient of a new writing material–paper. This became an alternative to papyrus about the end of the eighth century, when the Arabs are believed to have learned the secret of the technique from some Chinese prisoners of war taken at the battle of Tales, in 751.37 Certain late papyri from Egypt show scraps of the new material but the oldest Greek book written entirely on paper is generally agreed to be the famous codex in the Vatican Library (Vat. Gr. 2200) usually dated to c. 800.38 Papyrus was still being used in western Europe in the eleventh century but even so the use of paper caught on quite quickly, possibly because the Arabs controlled the supply of papyrus leaving Egypt and because what was allowed out was of inferior quality. To begin with, the Byzantines imported paper from the Arabs, but by the thirteenth century there was a flourishing paper-making industry in Italy.
At much the same time, there was a second innovation which also reduced the amount of paper/papyrus needed for making books. This was a major change in the type of writing which was in common use. Traditionally, the uncial script, as it was known, consisting entirely of what we would call capital letters, had been fairly large. Though it was technically feasible for scribes to write uncial script in a small hand, in practice this does not seem to have happened very much, making it particularly expensive when used with parchment which, as N. G. Wilson reminds us, could only be produced from the slaughter of animals.39 To save on costs, parchment was often used more than once. A parchment with more than one text on it is known as a palimpsest, from the Greek palin psao, ‘I smooth over again’. Some authors, for example Sallust and certain writings of Cicero, are known only from the lower, half-rubbed-out scripts of palimpsests. Various experiments in what is now called the miniscule script were made around the turn of the ninth century but most were difficult to read. However, the first precisely dated book written in a clear and accomplished cursive miniscule script is the famous gospel book named after the archimandrite Porphyri Uspenskij, who picked it up on one of his visits to the monasteries of the Levant.40 It is dated to 835.
Besides the date of the new script being uncertain, the place of its invention is also unknown, though one plausible hypothesis is that it was developed at the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople (a leaf of the Uspenskij gospels records the obituaries of certain members of the community, some of whom are known to have been expert calligraphers). From 850 on, whenever a new copy of a literary text was needed, the chances were that it would be composed in the new script; and after 950 it invariably was (few books in capitals are now extant).41 The new script was extremely significant for the preservation of ancient texts–a greater number of words could be fitted on to a page, meaning costs were reduced. In addition, the ligatures that were developed between letters (beginning with e, f, r and t) meant that writing was quicker. Other improvements included accents and ‘breathings’, aids to the reader, the beginnings of what we call punctuation. These were not in regular use, nor were they standardised, but a beginning had been made.42 At much the same time–i.e., at the end of the ninth century–the scribes began to mark word division, and guidance in the use of accents and punctuation was made a regular part of book production, at least at the Stoudios monastery. Abbreviations were common: p’ (= post), (= con), lio (= libro). The question mark (?) evolved at this time, though Bernhard Bischoff found ten different forms; 300 might be written iiic and new letters were invented: and , for example.
In parallel with this, around 860, Bardas–the assistant emperor–revived the imperial university in Constantinople, which had disappeared in the preceding centuries. The school he founded was directed by Leo the Philosopher, together with Theodore the Geometrician, Theodegius the Astronomer and Cometas, a literary scholar. We now know that some ancient manuscripts had only survived in single copies and, to an extent, the school founded by Bardas became the official repository of these unique objects.43 These were old uncial scripts and their transliteration into the new miniscule was now undertaken by the scholars of the ninth century. As Reynolds and Wilson say, ‘It is largely owing to their activity that Greek literature can still be read, for the text of almost all authors depends ultimately on one or more books written in minuscule script at this date or shortly after, from which all later copies are derived.’44
It is also thanks to scholars in ninth-century Byzantium that we are aware, not just of what has been saved, but also what has been lost. A number of scholars, notably Photius (c. 810–c. 893), recorded the books they had read, or at least were aware of, and these listings contain many works we know about only from these sources. For example, before going on a long and dangerous journey, in 855, possibly to exchange prisoners of war with the Arabs, Photius wrote to his brother Tarasius a summary of books that he had read over a long period of time. Some accounts were two lines long, many much longer, but his Bibliotheca, as it is called, contained 280 sections, called codices, each related to a text in his possession. In this book Photius comments on a wide selection of pagan and Christian works.
He was born into a well-off, well-educated and well-connected family that was iconophile. During the persecution of iconophiles that took place in 832–833 (see below, this chapter), Photius’ family was sent into exile, where both his parents died. When the iconophiles regained influence in Constantinople, in the 840s, he was able to return and he and his brother rose to high rank in the government. (Among those who promoted him was Bardas.) Thereafter Photius had a stormy career but still managed to write. It is unclear when the Bibliotheca was completed–dates range from 838 to 875. The work seems always to have been intended as a compendium of what Photius had read, as is shown by the title he himself gave to it: Inventory and Enumeration of the Books That We Have Read, Of Which Our Beloved Brother Tarasius Requested a General Analysis.45 The Bibliotheca lists 280 books, all but one of which Photius claimed to have read, but he left out the books that a well-educated Byzant
ine (like his brother) would have been familiar with, such as Homer, Hesiod and the great Greek playwrights. Where the Bibliotheca is of interest, in this context, however, is for the titles he mentions that are now lost–forty-two works in all.
Among the lost works is a biography of Alexander, by one Amyntianus (a book dedicated to Marcus Aurelius); a Collection of Wonders, by Alexander of Myndus (this work, says Warren Treadgold, in his study of Photius, falls into the genre of ‘paradoxography’); a work entitled For Origen, by an anonymous fourth-century writer; Marvellous Animals, by Damascius of Damascus (roughly 458–533); On Difficult Words in Plato, by Boëthus (first/second century); a book on medicine by Dionysius of Aegeae (first/third century); an anonymous life of Pythagoras from the third/second century BC; and On St Paul, by John Chrysostom. Besides the forty-two works totally lost, there are a further eighty-one works known only through the Bibliotheca. Which means that, of 280 titles, fully 123 (44 per cent) are now effectively missing. This is a heart-breaking statistic.