Download PDF | Church & learning in the Byzantine Empire, 867-1185, By J. M Hussey (Author), Russell & Russell, 1963.
280 Pages
PREFACE
HURCH and learning in the Byzantine Empire are linked by more than mere chance. The whole outlook of the East Romans was rooted and grounded in religion, and any reconstruction of their life must recognize that behind the secular everyday education or the state-supported University was the Orthodox Church whose traditions and standards exerted an incalculable influence.
This is not to imply that the Church was responsible for the maintenance of a tradition of scholarship. On the contrary, the organization of education and learning in the Byzantine Empire was more independent of the Church than in western Europe. But religion mattered a great deal to the Byzantines: the popular reverence for saints, the place of ecclesiastical ceremonial in public life, the very relation of Church to state—all this helps to show the reality of their belief in their Christian experience as members of the Orthodox Church. As a natural corollary, the Byzantines used all their powers—their reasons as well as their faith—in the service of the Church. However interested a scholar might be in Homer or Aristotle or Proclus, he was equally fired with a passion for theological discussions, applying himself to exegesis of the Scriptures or Patristic works no less than to philology or philosophy.
He was, moreover, always conscious that, however wide his dialectical activities might range in private thought, he must guard against presenting them to the public if they were in any way antagonistic to the doctrines of the Orthodox Church; the bounds of orthodoxy were easy to cross, especially as he was free to read what he would, relying on his own common sense to sift the good from the bad, the orthodox from the heretical. One difficulty in writing of church and learning is the lack of available sources, which in some cases appear to be nonexistent, in others are still unedited. There is, for instance, little evidence concerning schools, and existing matter is almost entirely furnished by the lives of a few individuals. And the position of the Church in this period has to be illustrated largely from the actions of its Patriarchs, because there appears to be insufficient evidence concerning the ordinary life of the bishop or parish priest.
Monasteries were continually founded, and whenever possible they claimed independence of the secular ecclesiastical authorities. But again there is often little evidence other than bare statements of foundation or the record of some immunity granted by the Emperor. The great contribution to spiritual development in this period ts made by a monk, Symeon the Young, whose writings equal those of the greatest western mystics. An attempt to indicate in so short a space something of the interest of Byzantine religion and learning during three hundred years can only be inadequate. It is in any case most difficult to describe the work of Byzantine scholars; there are such manifold activities and interests that a short account tends to become a meaningless catalogue of names.
I have tried to some extent to avoid this by writing in more detail on the eleventhcentury revival of learning where Michael Psellus and his friends provide a natural focus for many of the activities of this period. This has meant that only a brief indication could be given of the scholarship of the tenth and twelfth centuries. In order to set a further limit to so wide a subject popular or folk literature has been omitted. With regard to the Church, issues outside the life of the ordinary individual have been as far as possible avoided. ‘Thus little is said about relations with the Roman Catholic Church as these were largely dominated by political motives.
There were, it is true, certain theological and disciplinary differences, but these were recognized and regarded by the Byzantines as unfortunate deviations from the older and original tradition of the Orthodox Church; the schism of 1054 was not even mentioned by contemporary Byzantine chroniclers. Both art and liturgy had an intimate place in the Church, but neither are discussed here, the first for lack of space, the second because I hope to write of it in connexion with the unedited Canons of John, the eleventh-century Archbishop of Euchaita.
I should like to thank Professor N. H. Baynes for the unfailing patience and encouragement which made it possible for this to be written. I wish also to thank Mr. W. D. Ross for his help with the Appendix and parts of Chapter IV, and Professor F. M. Powicke for innumerable kindnesses. I am particularly indebted to Miss G. Cowan for the assistance which she has given me in reading the proofs and making the index. My special thanks are due to St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, to Westfield College, London, and to Girton College, Cambridge, for financial help and countless other gifts without which I could neither have begun nor continued my work. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the Universities of London and Oxford, and to St. Hugh’s College, for the generous grants which they have made towards the cost of publishing this book.
J. M.H.
GIRTON COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE
. June, 1936.
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