The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks

by Edwin Pears

CHAPTER XIX

DISPERSION OF GREEK SCHOLARS, AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON REVIVAL OF LEARNING; GREEK A BOND OF UNION AMONG PEOPLES OF EMPIRE; DISAPPEARANCE OF BOOKS AFTER LATIN CONQUEST; DEPARTURE OF SCHOLARS TO ITALY BEGINS AFTER 1204; THEIR PRESENCE STIMULATES REVIVAL OF LEARNING; ENTHUSIASM AROUSED IN ITALY FOR STUDY OF GREEK; STUDENTS FROM CONSTANTINOPLE EVERYWHERE WELCOMED; INCREASED NUMBERS LEAVE AFTER MOSLEM CONQUEST; RENAISSANCE LARGELY AIDED BY GREEK STUDIES; MOVEMENT PASSES INTO NORTHERN EUROPE; MSS. TAKEN FROM CONSTANTINOPLE.

Against the manifold evils resulting from the destruction of the empire by the Turks must be set off the dispersion of Greek scholars throughout Italy and the consequent spread of a knowledge of Greek literature throughout Europe.

Influence of Hellenism upon empire.

The Greeks of Athens and others belonging to the Hellenic race continued during the whole period of the existence of the empire to exercise a powerful influence upon the thought of the empire, upon its government, and upon the Church. At all times there were two influences striving against each other for leadership, one Asiatic and the other Hellenic. Without entering upon the interesting question how far these different and often hostile tendencies left their trace upon the Church and government, it is sufficient for my present purpose to note that the Greek influence prevailed for centuries and, aided by the commercial spirit of the Greek race, which had given them the leading part in the trade of the empire and hellenised every port on the Aegean and the Marmora, succeeded in causing Greek speech to become the general language of the Church and empire.

The Greeks who were of Hellenic blood had never forgotten their own language or their classical writers. Others who had adopted their language came in time to consider themselves of Greek descent and gloried in the writings of ancient Greece, as if they were the works of their ancestors. Language and literature led to the belief in a common origin. Just as Shakespeare and the English Bible are a bond of union among English-speaking people, so the possession of Greek, a bond of union. the Greek classics, of the New Testament, and the Liturgies of the Church knit together the various Greek-speaking peoples under the empire. The common people learned to love the old Greek stories, to treasure the beautiful half religious, half mythical tales, the exploits recorded by Homer, no less than the simple mixture of inspiriting and patriotic historical narrative with the garrulous and ever pleasant stories of Herodotus. A long series of successive generations were nursed upon them, as they have indeed continued to be down to the present day.[539]

There thus arose a traditional, historic, and patriotic feeling which bound together all Greek-speaking peoples, whether actually descendants from the Hellenic race or not. It existed in all sections of the community and led to a pride of race which has rarely been equalled. One curious illustration of the affection which existed for their reputed ancestors is noted by Dean Stanley and other writers. In mediaeval pictures still remaining in the monasteries of Mount Athos and elsewhere, the originals of which were painted many centuries ago, Pericles and Leonidas and other great men of their race are introduced among the occupants of heaven.

The wealthier classes, the scholars, the nobles and their wives, down to the last period of the existence of the empire aimed at speaking and writing Greek with elegance and purity. They recognised that they were the heirs of literary treasures which were greater than those possessed by any other European people. They realised that in the long series of Greek authors from classical times down through nearly two thousand years to the period in which they were living they had an historical literature longer and more complete than any race known to them.

There had been indeed dark periods in the literary history of the empire as in that of other countries. In Constantinople during the four centuries which preceded the Turkish conquest, though to a less extent than in Western Europe, learning and literature had been largely neglected. After the time of the great scholar Photius (patriarch of Constantinople between 877 and 885) few works of importance had been produced. The students of Constantinople had come to take but small interest in any study which did not concern theology, law, or history. Possibly they ceased even to guard the treasures they possessed with the like care which their predecessors had Disappearance of books after 1204. shown. Many valuable manuscripts disappeared. The Latin conquerors are admittedly responsible for the destruction of a large number of books. In the Myriobiblion of Photius, an abridgment of two hundred and eighty authors which is rich in extracts from historians, he gives us all we possess of certain writers. But two thirds of the works he enumerates have been lost since the time of the Fourth Crusade and will probably never be recovered.[540] No writer quotes any of the lost authors after 1204.[541]

Service rendered by empire in preserving Greek language and literature.

But beneath the cloud of ignorance which had descended during the Middle Ages not only upon the empire but upon all Europe, there were always in Constantinople a considerable number of scholars and students. These men kept alive the love of Greek learning. While none of them produced any work which deserves to be classed as literature of a high order, they rendered immense service by preserving that which existed. The lawyers and clergy had greatly assisted in maintaining the vigour and clearness of Greek speech. The knowledge and practice of law in a form not materially different from that in which it had been left by the great jurists of the sixth and seventh centuries furnished a field for the exercise of the most acute intellects, and trained men in precision of thought and exactitude of expression. The legal maxims of the lawyers of the New Rome in their Latin form had given a set of principles of law for all Europe, and still claim the admiration of those who take pleasure in lucidity and epigram. The dissensions and heresies in the Church in like manner contributed to the use of Greek in a correct form. Exact definition in matters of dogma was a necessity, and incidentally helped to preserve Greek in its ancient form. The writings of theologians were judged by a well-educated caste which required that they should approximate to the language which to them was accepted as a model.

The Histories of Nicetas, of Anna Comnena, of George Acropolitas, of Pachymer, and of others down to Critobulus, which help to fill up the period between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, are all written in respectable Greek and show a feeling for literary effect which recalls, though it too often seeks to imitate, the writings of the Greek classical historians. The education of the higher clergy was in Greek philosophy and theology; and schools for the study of these subjects continued in existence down to the final conquest. The remark of Gibbon is probably true that ‘more books and more knowledge were included within the walls of Constantinople than could be found dispersed over the extensive countries of the West.’[542]

Departure of Greek scholars for Italy

While not losing sight of the fact that the Greek Church from the time of Justinian had exercised influence in Venice and Calabria, it may yet be stated that the departure of Greek scholars from Constantinople for the West began with the Latin conquest. Italy, on account of her commerce with the East and the intimate relations which had existed between Venice and other cities and the New Rome before the Latin occupation, was the country to which most of the fugitives turned their steps. Venice, owing to the part she took in the Latin conquest of the city, had become Queen of the Seas, and naturally received at first the largest contingent. But the supremacy of Venice was now shared by various rivals, and Greek students found their way to other cities.

Greek was still spoken in Calabria, where the liturgy was said in that language and where, indeed, the language is still spoken,[543] but with this exception nowhere else in Italy had any knowledge of Greek been preserved, Boccaccio asserts that even the Greek characters were unknown.[544] In the troubles which existed during the century and a half preceding the Moslem conquest the number of exiles increased. Many priests and monks were glad to escape from the disorders in their native land by seeking refuge in Italy.

aids revival of learning in Italy.

While these voluntary exiles contributed largely to awaken an interest in the study of Greek, it must be noted that their arrival in Italy was at an opportune period. Gibbon remarks that in ‘the resurrection of science Italy was the first that cast away her shroud.’ The study of the Latin classical authors had already been recommenced. There had been a gradual awakening from the stupor, the indifference, and, in spite of a few individual exceptions, the deep contented ignorance of the Middle Ages. Antiquity as represented by its architecture, its sculpture, and its literature, was now to furnish the ideal of the Renaissance. A great movement arose for the reproduction of classical architecture. But contemporary with it came the study of Latin classics. Virgil had never been altogether neglected and had, indeed, been regarded with a superstitious reverence. He was now glorified and imitated. Other Latin authors were diligently studied, and then the natural result followed. The students of Cicero and Virgil began to look for their models to the authors whom the Romans had admired and had imitated. The study of the great Latin classics inevitably called for a knowledge of those written in Greek. The leaders in the revival of the study of the Latin authors were those who led the way also in the study of Greek. Petrarch and Boccaccio shared with Dante not merely the honour of forming Italian as a modern language but that also of leading the way to the appreciation of Greek learning by the scholars of Western Europe. Greek scholars were welcomed. We have seen that Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, the short, eager, stammering controversialist, whose bitter tongue, learning, and subtilty made him the leader in the angry controversy in Constantinople regarding the Inner Light in the time of Cantacuzenus, was sent on an embassy to Italy by the emperor. Cantacuzenus, though favouring the other side, attests the learning and ability of Barlaam and his acquaintance with Plato and Aristotle. At Avignon, he was persuaded by Petrarch to act as instructor in Greek, and with him the poet[545] read the works of Plato. Petrarch, though his acquaintance with Greek did not enable him to read the manuscript of Homer with which he had been presented, yet speaks of the gift in terms which show his admiration of Greek literature to have been profound and enthusiastic. It is recorded of him that he was able to select the greatest of the Greek poets by listening to the reading of their works although he was unacquainted with their language.

A few years afterwards, in 1360, Boccaccio, for twenty years the friend of Petrarch, persuaded a certain Leontius of Salonica, a pupil of Barlaam, to give public lectures upon Homer at Florence. Leontius lodged in the house of Boccaccio, was paid by the republic of Florence, and was probably the first professor of Greek in Italy or any Western country. His appearance was against him, for he was ill clad, had an ugly face, with long unkempt hair and beard, and a sullen manner. But all was excused on account of his knowledge of the Greek language and his delight in its literature. His public reading of Homer pleased the Florentines, and Boccaccio obtained a prose translation of the Iliad and Odyssey made by his protégé. At the end of three years the lecturer resigned his post and went to Constantinople. Boccaccio himself not only learned Greek but became a lecturer throughout Italy upon its literature and helped to create an enthusiasm for its study.

Enthusiasm in Italy for study of Greek.

Manuel Chrysoloras, about 1366 or the following year, after he had failed in his mission from the Emperor Manuel to France and England to obtain aid against the Turks, returned to Florence, the centre of the new intellectual movement in Italy, to teach the Greek language and explain its literature. His lectures were followed with delight. Boys and old men were among his audience. The study of Greek became the fashion. One of his pupils, Leonard Aretinus, who subsequently became the secretary of four successive Popes, tells how his soul was inflamed with the love of letters and how on hearing Chrysoloras it was a hard struggle to decide whether he should continue the study of law or be introduced to Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, and those poets, philosophers, and orators who are celebrated by every age as the great masters of human science. He gave himself up to Chrysoloras, and so strong, he declares, was his passion for the new studies that the lessons he imbibed during the day were the constant subject of his nightly dreams.[546]

The school of Chrysoloras was transferred from Florence to Pavia, thence to Venice, and finally to Rome, and everywhere was well attended. Aroused by his teaching, some of his pupils went to Constantinople to increase their knowledge of Greek and to acquire books and manuscripts. In that city, between 1400 and 1453, the libraries and monasteries were freely opened to the Italian students. The libraries were still stocked with the treasures of Greek learning and literature, and every effort was made by Italian scholars to draw upon their stores. The trading agents of the Medici and other great Florentine houses were instructed to buy manuscripts without regard to cost and to send them to Florence. The best credentials that a young Greek could bring from Constantinople was a manuscript. The discovery of an unknown manuscript, says Tiraboschi, was regarded almost as the conquest of a kingdom. Aurispa, one of the pupils of Chrysoloras, returned to Venice in 1423, with two hundred and thirty-eight volumes.

The Florentines had led the way in the acquisition of Greek and the collection of manuscripts. The chiefs of the political factions were also the leaders of intellectual progress and vied with each other in the noble rivalry of encouraging the new studies as much as they did in building libraries. Cosimo, the head of the Medici, carried out a well-organised plan for encouraging the revived learning. The leaders of his school in Florence were Niccolo di Nicolo and Lionardo Bruni, the latter of whom died in 1443. The chief ecclesiastics were hardly less eager than other scholars. The popes themselves threw their influence into the new movement. In 1434 Eugenius the Fourth took up his residence in Florence when he was expelled from Rome. Amid his own serious troubles, with refractory Councils, a hostile capital, the Bogomil and Hussian heresies, and the ever vexed question of the reunion of the Churches, Eugenius found time to encourage the study of Greek and to give a welcome to all Greek priests and students who brought with them their precious manuscripts. He appreciated the profound learning of Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, who had come to take part in the council at Ferrara and afterwards, in 1438, at Florence, retained him, as we have seen, after the Council, and made him in the following year cardinal. His patronage of Bessarion is the more remarkable since the Greek was an adherent and exponent of the philosophy of Plato as opposed to that of Aristotle. The other Greek Church dignitaries who were present at the Council, and who were hardly less distinguished, were welcomed as scholars even by those who treated them with scant courtesy as priests of the Orthodox Church. George Gemistos, who adopted the name of Plethon, the founder of a school of Neoplatonism, was one of them, and was popular generally except with the priests. George Scholarius, whom we have seen as the leader of the anti-unionist party in Constantinople, and afterwards as patriarch, Theodore Gaza, Andronicus, Philelphus, and others of repute, were also present. Cosimo de’ Medici, through the influence of Gemistos, undertook the task of translating Plato. When Gemistos died, in 1450, in the Morea, his body was taken to Florence as a mark of respect for his services in teaching Greek. The patronage of Eugenius was continued by his successor Nicholas the Fifth, the first ‘humanist’ who was made pope and the founder of the Vatican library.

The succession of scholars was kept up by constant new arrivals from Constantinople. Philelphus (or, in its Italianised form, Filelfo), who had married a daughter of Chrysoloras, was for a while secretary to the Venetian bailey in Constantinople, and had gone thither in 1420 mainly in order to study Greek. He was sent as envoy to Murad. He states that, though when in Constantinople he found the Greek of the common people much corrupted, yet that the persons attached to the imperial court spoke the language of Aristophanes and Euripides and of the historians and philosophers of Athens, and that the style of their writing continued to be elaborate and correct. It is especially interesting to note that the most elegant and purest Greek was spoken by the noble matrons.[547] He gained, upon his return to Italy, by his knowledge of Greek and his great learning, a wide reputation and came to be regarded as the most universal scholar of the age. On his visit to Naples, in 1453, he was treated as an equal by princes.[548] Many other distinguished teachers also during the same period visited Constantinople in pursuit of learning or manuscripts.

But while I have mentioned some of the leading Greeks who contributed before the Moslem conquest to the revival of the study of Greek literature in Italy, it should be noted that there were a host of others less known to fame who sought refuge from the disorders of the empire and found profitable employment in their new homes. Between the death of Petrarch, in 1374, and the conquest of Constantinople, in 1453, Italy had recovered the Greek classics. The intellectual movement caused a great increase in the reproduction of manuscripts. Among the professional copyists, those who could write Greek were specially esteemed and received very large pay.[549] They did their work so admirably that the new invention of printing with moveable types which came in just about the time of the Moslem conquest of Constantinople was regarded as unsuitable for, or unworthy of, important books. The envoys of Cardinal Bessarion when they saw for the first time a printed book in the house of Constantine Lascaris laughed at the discovery ‘made among the barbarians in some German city,’ and Ferdinand of Urbino declared that he would have been ashamed to own a printed book.[550] Notwithstanding this prejudice, Greek books were soon printed in Italy—though, for several years, only in Italy.

Increased number of fugitives after 1453.

The impulse given to the study of Greek by exiles during the half-century, preceding the conquest of Constantinople and by the enthusiasm of a series of scholars from Petrarch and Boccaccio down to 1453, was greatly stimulated by the increase of fugitives consequent on the capture of the city. Among the scholars who made their way westward the best known are Lascaris, who rose to high distinction as a statesman, Callistos, Argyropulos, Gaza, and Chalcondylas. Between 1453 and the end of the century, Greek was studied with avidity. Youths learned to speak as well as to write it.

Renaissance in excelsis.

The arrival of numbers of scholars in Italy shortly before and shortly after 1453 is contemporaneous with the full springtime of the great revival of learning. A series of remarkable efforts had been made to restore ancient Roman and Greek glory as seen in literature and architecture. Learning was regarded as a new and improved evangel. The learning of the ancients was compared with the ignorance of the Churchmen. The new movement marked a great reaction and went to unjustifiable extremes. Some of the advocates for classical influence went to the extent of discarding Christian in favour of Pagan morality. A curious passionate enthusiasm for the classic and venerated past took possession of the most enlightened men in Italy. Paganism, because it was contemporaneous with the classical period, invaded the Church itself. All the architecture, art, and literature of Christianity was bad except in so far as it approximated to Pagan models. The late J. A. Symonds gives a striking illustration of the distance this enthusiasm carried men, in suggesting that Faust may be taken as the symbol of the desire during the Renaissance for classical learning. Faust is content to sell his soul to the devil, but in return he sees Homer and Alexander and obtains Helen as his bride and is satisfied.[551] The careful study of the Latin classics, the marvellous development of painting, architecture, and sculpture, but, above all, the keen interest felt in the newly developed study of Greek with its Platonic philosophy and its new vision of life, were all to produce wonderful fruit within a generation after 1453 and to culminate in Italy in an age of singular intellectual brilliancy.

Study of Greek taken up in Northern Europe.

The study of Greek, at first almost confined to Florence, gradually spread over the whole of the peninsula and finally passed north of the Alps into Germany, where it was taken up with great earnestness. Opposed by the ignorant monks everywhere, and by others who feared that the authority and repute of Latin authors would be terminated, it gradually won its way. In 1458 a Greek professor was appointed in Paris, and one in Rome. Similar professorships were established in most of the Italian universities, following in this respect the example of Florence. In the reign of Henry the Seventh, Oxford consented to receive Grocyn and Linacre as teachers of Greek.[552]

As the zeal for a knowledge of Greek died out in Italy it took deeper root in Germany. Chrysoloras and George of Trebizond were followed by a succession of students, until we meet with the names of Germans and Dutchmen who had gone to Italy to make themselves acquainted with the recovered language and literature. Among them that of Erasmus holds the foremost place.

The movement known as ‘The Revival of Learning’ was accomplished before the end of the fifteenth century, and all investigators are agreed that it had been very largely contributed to by Greek exiles during the half-century preceding and following the Moslem conquest.

Its paganisation of Christianity proved temporary. But the critical examination of the text of the Greek New Testament and of the Greek Fathers had more durable results. It called attention to the contents of a book which had hitherto been taken as outside controversy. When the study of Greek passed north of the Alps, the examination of the sacred writings was no longer in the hands of dilettanti who looked upon the text with the contempt of scholars disposed to accept paganism as the complement of a higher form of civilisation, and who had no patience with what they regarded as trivialities, but in those of religious and earnest German students, with results, in Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and others, the end of which is not yet visible.

MSS. destroyed or carried away.

The manuscripts which were taken to Italy were the seed destined to yield a rich literary harvest, and their removal from Constantinople was an advantage. It is otherwise with the manuscripts which perished. In 1204 the rude Venetians and Crusaders destroyed great numbers for the sake of their covers.[553] A manuscript which had cost many months of labour, which was written and perhaps illuminated with great skill, was worthy of a costly covering. Some of the bindings were enriched with jewels or with silver or gold clasps and other decorations. The covers rather than the interior were the objects then coveted. There is reason to believe that in the two subsequent centuries thousands of manuscripts disappeared, many possibly stolen or sold for their bindings. But as learning in Constantinople made little progress after the Latin occupation, it is probably to the ignorance of the monks that the disappearance of many of them ought to be attributed. Yet all the evidence which exists shows that an enormous number of manuscripts remained in Constantinople until 1453. We have seen that Ducas declares that during the days following the sack of the city ten volumes on theology and other studies, including Aristotle and Plato, were sold for a small silver coin, and that an incredible number of manuscripts of the Gospels after they had been stripped of their gold and silver bindings were either sold or given away.[554] Critobulus adds that while a very great number of books were burnt or ignominiously trampled to pieces, the larger number were sold at ridiculous sums, not for the sake of their price, but in contemptuous wantonness.[555] I am unaware what authority Hody has for stating[556] that after the capture of the city a hundred and twenty thousand books were destroyed, but that the destruction was great cannot reasonably be doubted.[557]

After the conquest the treasures guarded by the Greek monks rapidly began to disappear, and especially from the capital. The octagonal libraries, one of which formed usually an adjunct to every church, were taken from the Christians by the victorious Turk and applied to other uses,[558] and the contents were for the most part dispersed or destroyed. Successive travellers for two centuries found rich gleanings among them, and the number of manuscripts taken or sent away suggests that the original stores in Constantinople had been enormous. Janus Lascaris returned to Italy with two hundred books, eighty of which were as yet unknown in the libraries of Europe. Even as late as the time of Busbeck, who was ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor to Suliman in 1555, he was able to conclude the announcement of his return home by saying: ‘I have whole wagon-loads, if not ship-loads, of Greek manuscripts, and about two hundred and forty books which I sent by sea to Venice. I intend them for Caesar’s library. I rummaged every corner to provide such kind of merchandise as my final gleaning.’[559]

While it is beyond doubt that the dispersion of students from Constantinople aided the intellectual movement in Western Europe by introducing new ideals of poetry, of history, and of philosophy, as well as by modifying the conceptions of classical art and architecture,[560] there is no ground for the belief that, if the city had not been captured, Greek influence would not have made itself felt in the Renaissance. The dispersion hastened the development of a movement which had already begun, awakened a spirit of inquiry, and conducted scholars into new fields of thought earlier than they would have arrived if not thus aided. In this sense, and to this extent, it may be claimed as a beneficial result of the capture of Constantinople.

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