CHAPTER VI.
Constantinople.
WHEN Constantine, in the year 328, removed to Byzantium the capital of the Empire, he doubtless took with him from Rome, or was followed by, a large proportion of the leaders of the social and intellectual life of the city. It is said also that Greek scholars from Magna Græcia, and from other parts of the Empire, foreseeing the probable revival of interest in Greek learning, speedily gathered themselves at Constantinople, and through their presence hastened the replacing of the Latin tongue by their own vernacular.
For a century or more, however, after the establishment of Constantinople, literary production appears to have been slight and unimportant. There is some evidence of collections being made of copies of the great classics, collections which later, unfortunately, in large part perished at the hands first of Crusaders and afterwards of Turks, and it is probable that a certain number of scribes were kept employed in the production of such copies. Of new works or of new editions of importance there is no record, while there is also no evidence as to the existence of any bookselling machinery for keeping the public supplied with the old classics.
The first revival of literary productiveness appears to have come from the Court. About 440 A.D. the Empress Eudocia published a poetical paraphrase of the first eight books of the Old Testament and of the prophecies of Daniel and Zechariah. This was followed by a cento of the verses of Homer, applied to the life of Christ; by a version of the legend of St. Cyprian; and by a panegyric on the Persian victories of her husband Theodosius.
An imperial author needed, of course, no bookselling machinery to bring her writings to the attention of the public. The members of the Court circles doubtless made for their presentation copies a full return in the shape of loyal appreciation, while politic priests could be depended upon to interest themselves in the reproduction and distribution of books devoted to such sacred subjects, and emanating from so high an authority.
After this literary outburst from the Court, there is a long period during which there is no record of any original work of importance being produced in Constantinople. I must not omit, however, to make reference to the great undertaking carried out by Ulfilas (sixty years or more before the time of Eudocia’s labors) in the translation of the Bible into Gothic.
Ulfilas was a Goth by birth, but had been educated (as a hostage) in Constantinople. He was made Bishop of Gothia, and the work of his translation was probably completed in Dacia. For the preparation, however, of the transcripts of his text he was apparently obliged to resort to the scribes of the capital, and the “publication” of the work may, therefore, be credited to Constantinople. A magnificent manuscript of this Gothic version of the Gospels, a manuscript known, on account of its beautiful silver text, as the codex argenteus, and which dates from the sixth century, is now preserved in the library of the University of Upsala in Sweden, one of the earliest homes of the Gothic peoples. The wide circulation of these Gothic Scriptures had a great influence in bringing the Gothic tribes into the Christian fold, and exercised, therefore, an important effect on the history of Europe.
The greatest of the earlier authors of the Eastern Empire was the historian Procopius. His History of My Own Times, which was published about 560 A.D., during the reign of Justinian, is devoted more particularly to an account of the wars carried on by the Empire. Procopius had held various offices, and, during 562, was Prefect of Constantinople. After this post had been taken from him, he wrote a volume called Anecdota, or “secret history,” in which Justinian and his empress, Theodora, are very severely handled. A third and earlier production is a description of the edifices erected by Justinian throughout the Empire.
By the beginning of the seventh century, says Oman, the use of the Latin language in Constantinople had practically ceased. Oman speaks of the seventh and eighth centuries as being the “dark age in Byzantine literary history,” but, as far as we can judge from the records, the “luminous” or productive periods must have been very fitful and fragmentary.
After the extinction of the schools of Alexandria and Athens, “the studies of the Greeks” (says Gibbon) “retired to the monasteries, and above all to the royal college of Constantinople, which was burned in the reign of Leo the Isaurian, about 750 A.D.” The head of the foundation was named “the sun of science,” and the twelve professors, the twelve signs of the zodiac. The library comprised over 36,000 volumes. It included the famous Homeric manuscript, before referred to, written on a parchment roll 120 feet long.
Between 886 and 963 A.D. Constantinople was ruled by the group of so-called “literary emperors,” during whose reigns literature became the fashion of the Court. The chief achievements of Leo the Wise and of his son and successor Constantine Porphyrogenitus were their books. The writings of Leo consist of a manuscript on the Art of War, some theological treatises, and a book of prophecies. The former, says Oman, contains some exceedingly valuable information, while the prophecies have been the puzzle of commentators.[295] The works of Constantine comprise a treatise on the administration of the Themes or provincial districts, a biography of his grandfather, and a comprehensive manual of the etiquette and ceremonies of the Court. Towards the close of the eighth century or at the beginning of the ninth appeared the commonplace books of Stobæus, one series entitled An Anthology of Extracts, Sentences, and Precepts, one grouped together under the name of Physical, Dialectic, and Moral Selections, and a third entitled simply Discourses. The extracts are drawn from more than five hundred authors, whose works have in great measure perished. They include, says Heeren (who, in 1792, published an edition of Stobæus), passages from many of the ancient comic writers. The exact date of the life or of the work of Stobæus is not known. Photius says that his commonplace books were prepared as an educational guide for his son Septimius.
By the ninth century there are indications of the existence of a literary class, and there is evidence of the work of a few first-class writers such as the patriarch Photius, 857-69, whose library catalogue is the envy of modern scholars.[296] This catalogue, composed while its author was an exile in Bagdad, comprises a review or analysis of the works of two hundred and eight writers. Gibbon points out, in connection with this catalogue of Photius, that the students and writers of that period enjoyed the use of many works of Greek literature which have since perished in whole or in part. He cites, among other authors, Theopompus, Menander, Alcæus, Hyperides, and Sappho.
In 867, under the direction of Basil II., were written the Basilics, or code of laws. The Emperor himself was the author of a comprehensive history of Greece and Rome, of which but fragments have been preserved.
Early in the tenth century, the exact date is uncertain, Suidas compiled his famous lexicon. According to Gibbon, Suidas was also the author of some fifty plays, some of which were based upon Aristophanes. In the latter part of the eleventh century Eudocia (wife of Romanus and the second literary empress of the name), having been imprisoned in a convent by her son, wrote, while in confinement, a treatise on the genealogies of the gods and heroes.
During the first years of the twelfth century Anna Comnena, daughter of Alexius Comnenus I., wrote, in fifteen books, under the title of Alexias, a life of her father. Gibbon speaks of the style of the history as being turgid and inflated, but says that it contains some interesting accounts of the first Crusaders.
In the twelfth century, a name of distinction is that of Eustathius I., Archbishop of Thessalonica, who published, about 1150, commentaries on Homer and on Dionysius the Geographer. Gibbon says that in the former he refers to no less than four hundred authors. At about the same time appeared the Chiliads of Tsetzes.
Oman is of opinion that the most interesting development of Byzantine literature were the Epics or Romances of Chivalry, written at the close of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh centuries. He names as one of the best representatives of these romances, the epic of Diogenes Akritas, a mighty hunter, a slayer of dragons, and a persistent and successful lover.
I have referred to the work of but a few of the more representative of the Byzantine writers. It would be foreign to the purposes of this sketch to undertake to present any comprehensive bibliography of Byzantine literature, even if I had available the material for such a bibliography. Of many of the authors whose names have been preserved, very little except their names is known, while of the entire literature of the Byzantine period it may, I judge, fairly be said that it possesses but slight interest or value for later generations. The fact that literary undertakings of importance at the time and of interest for the readers of the day continued from generation to generation to be presented to the public, undertakings which in not a few cases must have involved the labor of many years, gives us the right to conclude that some means or machinery must have existed for reaching this public. As far, however, as my present information goes, there are absolutely no data concerning the existence in Constantinople of any publishing or bookselling trade, and we have no means of knowing by what means the books of Byzantium were manifolded and distributed.
It is to be noted that a very large number of the writers named belonged to the Court, or held high official station. The fact that so many books were the work of the emperors themselves and of the members of the imperial families, is exceptional both in the history of literature and in the history of royalty. It is probable that for the transcribing of these books and for the books of officials generally, the services of official scribes were utilized. Authors outside of official circles may have gone to the convent, or may also have employed private scribes. It is fair to assume, notwithstanding the absence of any specific mention of such establishments, that some organization of scribes, or of work-rooms for the manifolding of books, existed in the city.
In closing this chapter, I venture to recall to my readers the well-known summary by Gibbon of the literature of the Byzantine Empire.
“The Empire of the Cæsars undoubtedly checked the activity and the progress of the human mind. Its magnitude might indeed allow some scope for domestic competition; but when it was gradually reduced, at first to the East, and at last to Greece and Constantinople, the Byzantine subjects were degraded to an abject and languid temper, the natural effect of their solitary and insulated state. Alone in the universe, the self-satisfied pride of the Greeks was not disturbed by the comparison of foreign merit.... Their prose is soaring to the vicious affectation of poetry; their poetry is sinking below the flatness and insipidity of prose. The tragic, epic, and lyric muses were silent and inglorious. The bards of Constantinople seldom rose above a riddle or an epigram, a panegyric or a tale. They forgot even the rules of prosody, and with the melody of Homer still ringing in their ears, they confound all measures of feet and syllables in the impotent strains which have received the name of ‘political’ or city verses.”
The change first comes when there is a break in the insulation. Gibbon continues: “The nations of Europe and Asia were mingled by the expeditions to the Holy Land, and it is under the Comnenian dynasty that a faint emulation of knowledge and of military virtue was rekindled in the Byzantine Empire.”
The opinion of Lecky is still more emphatic. He says: “The universal verdict of history is that the Byzantine State constituted the most base and despicable form that civilization ever assumed, and there has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely destitute of all the forms of true greatness, none to which the epithet mean may so emphatically be applied.”[297] Is it surprising that in a State thus demoralized there is no record of the existence of a publisher?
It is only proper to add that the historian Oman, a much sounder authority on the subject than Mr. Lecky, and writing with information before him that was not available for Gibbon, contends that the talk about the exceptional demoralization of the Byzantines is largely rubbish, and points out that if the State were really as corrupt as it is painted by Gibbon and by Lecky, it would have fallen to pieces of its own rottenness within two or three generations, instead of enduring as the bulwark of Europe for over a thousand years.
The fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the introduction into Europe of the Turks, was unquestionably a great injury to Europe and to civilization, and the destruction of the collections of manuscripts existing in the capital itself and in monasteries and libraries in other cities of the Empire, was an irreparable loss for literature. For the educational interests and the literary development of Europe there were, however, considerations to offset this serious disaster. Great as was the destruction of manuscripts, a number were preserved by individual scholars and in the hidden recesses of certain convents and monasteries. Many of these were at once taken to Italy, Germany, and France by the scholars flying from the barbarous conquerors of their land, and the works were thus brought to the knowledge and made available for the use of European students. Other manuscripts were secured from their hiding-places years after the capture of the city, by Greek scholars sent back for the purpose on behalf of the publishers of Italy and France, or of the universities of Bologna, Padua, and Paris, while some few valuable parchments were hidden so safely that they have been forgotten for centuries and are only to-day being brought to light from the vaults and attics of old monasteries, so as again to be included in literature accessible for the world.
In addition to the service done to the literary development of Europe by the distribution westward of the texts of the almost forgotten classics of the great Greek writers, there was the further important gain for the scholarship of the continent in securing, for university chairs, for tutorial positions, and for editorial work, the services of hundreds of Greek scholars whose homes had been destroyed, or who were unwilling to live under the rule of the hated Turk. Men of the highest rank in scholarly accomplishments and possessing a thorough knowledge of the literature of their race, either on the ground of impecuniosity or in some instances apparently from an unselfish devotion to the cause of scholarship, found their way to chairs in Bologna, Padua, Paris, Oxford, and other educational centres, and to the Court circles of the more intellectual of the princes and nobles of Italy, and spread in hundreds of channels a knowledge of the Greek language and an enthusiasm for the Greek literature. Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constantinople, had therefore played a part by no means unimportant in furthering one phase at least of the Renaissance of the intellectual life of Europe.
It was fortunate for the continued vitality and progress of the movement that the Greek literature thus reintroduced into Europe found already perfected the new art of printing, by means of which the manuscripts that the refugees from the Bosphorus had brought with them could be made generally available for students. It was fortunate also that, within a few years after the teaching of Greek had been entered upon in the principal educational centres, public-spirited and scholarly publishers were found prepared to take upon themselves the very serious business risk involved in the casting of Greek fonts of type and in the printing of editions of the Greek texts.
The first and most important of these publishers, the man who, on the ground of high ideals and of great things accomplished, is properly to be honored as facile princeps in the long list of the great publishers of Europe, was Aldus Manutius of Venice, a worthy successor to Atticus, the friend of Cicero, who, 1550 years earlier, had done his part in introducing to Italy and to the Roman world the classics of Greece.
It is in Venice, with the record of the service rendered by Aldus and his successors in connection with the second introduction into Italy and the world beyond Italy of the treasures of Greek literature; in Bologna and Paris, with some account of the connection of the great universities with the earlier publishing undertakings of Europe; and in Mayence, Frankfort, and Nuremberg, with the story of Gutenberg and his printing-press, that the history of the relations of authors with their public must be continued.
It is my hope to be able in a later volume to trace the development of property in literature from the time of the invention of printing down to the present day. It was, of course, only after the general application of printing to the production of books that authors were placed in a position to enforce any property control over their productions, while for a long period this control was conceded for but brief terms and was restricted to but limited territories. More than four centuries of further development in national morality have been required before the civilization of the world has brought itself to the recognition of the rights of literary producers according to the standard of to-day, a standard which is expressed by the term International Copyright.
