[q] Greek characters are found in a charter of 943, published in Martenne, Thesaurus Anecdot. t. i. p. 74. The title of a treatise περὶ φύσεων μερίσμου, and the word θεοτόκος, occur in William of Malmsbury, and one or two others in Lanfranc's Constitutions. It is said that a Greek psalter was written in an abbey at Tournay about 1105. Hist. Litt. de la France, t. ix. p. 102. This was, I should think, a very rare instance of a Greek manuscript, sacred or profane, copied in the western parts of Europe before the fifteenth century. But a Greek psalter written in Latin characters at Milan in the 9th century was sold some years ago in London. John of Salisbury is said by Crevier to have known a little Greek, and he several times uses technical words in that language. Yet he could not have been much more learned than his neighbours; since, having found the word οὐσία in St. Ambrose, he was forced to ask the meaning of one John Sarasin, an Englishman, because, says he, none of our masters here (at Paris) understand Greek. Paris, indeed, Crevier thinks, could not furnish any Greek scholar in that age except Abelard and Heloise, and probably neither of them knew much. Hist. de l'Univers. de Paris, t. i. p. 259.
The ecclesiastical language, it may be observed, was full of Greek words Latinized. But this process had taken place before the fifth century; and most of them will be found in the Latin dictionaries. A Greek word was now and then borrowed, as more imposing than the correspondent Latin. Thus the English and other kings sometimes called themselves Basileus, instead of Rex.
It will not be supposed that I have professed to enumerate all the persons of whose acquaintance with the Greek tongue some evidence may be found; nor have I ever directed my attention to the subject with that view. Doubtless the list might be more than doubled. But, if ten times the number could be found, we should still be entitled to say, that the language was almost unknown, and that it could have had no influence on the condition of literature. [See Introduction to Hist. of Literature, chap. 2, § 7.]
[r] Nemo est qui Græcas literas nôrit; at ego in hoc Latinitati compatior, quæ sic omnino Græca abjecit studia, ut etiam non noscamus characteres literarum. Genealogiæ Deorum, apud Hodium de Græcis Illustribus, p. 3.
[] Mém. de Pétrarque, t. i. p. 407.
[t] Mém. de Pétrarque, t. i. p. 447; t. iii. p. 634. Hody de Græcis Illust. p. 2. Boccace speaks modestly of his own attainments in Greek: etsi non satis plené perceperim, percepi tamen quantum potui; nee dubium, si permansisset homo ille vagus diutius penes nos, quin plenius percepissem. id. p. 4.
[] Hody places the commencement of Chrysoloras's teaching as early as 1391. p. 3. But Tiraboschi, whose research was more precise, fixes it at the end of 1396 or beginning of 1397, t. vii. p. 126.
[x] Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 102; Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici, vol. i. p. 43.
[y] The authors most conversant with Byzantine learning agree in this. Nevertheless, there is one manifest difference between the Greek writers of the worst period, such as the eighth century, and those who correspond to them in the West. Syncellus, for example, is of great use in chronology, because he was acquainted with many ancient histories now no more. But Bede possessed nothing which we have lost; and his compilations are consequently altogether unprofitable. The eighth century, the Sæculum Iconoclasticum of Cave, low as it was in all polite literature, produced one man, John Damascenus, who has been deemed the founder of scholastic theology, and who at least set the example of that style of reasoning in the East. This person, and Michael Psellus, a philosopher of the eleventh century, are the only considerable men, as original writers, in the annals of Byzantine literature.
[z] The honour of restoring ancient or heathen literature is due to the Cæsar Bardas, uncle and minister of Michael II. Cedrenus speaks of it in the following terms: ἐπεμελήθη δὲ καὶ τῆς ἔξω σοφίας, (ἢν γὰρ ἐκ πόλλου χρόνου παραῤῥυεῖσα, καὶ πρὸς τῇ μηδὲν ὅλως χωρήσασα τῇ τῶν κρατοῦντων ἀργίᾳ καὶ αμαθίᾳ) διατρίβας ἑκάστῃ τῶν επιστήμων άφορισὰς, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ὅπῃ περ ἔτυχε, τῆς δ' ἐπὶ πασῶν ἐπόχου φιλοσοφίας κατ' ἀυτὰ τὰ βασίλεια ἐν τῇ Μαγναύρᾳ · καὶ οὕτω ἐξ ἐκέινου ἀνηβάσκειν αἱ ἐπιστημᾶι ἤρξαντο. κ. τ. λ. Hist. Byzant. Script. (Lutet.) t. x. p. 547. Bardas found out and promoted Photius, afterwards patriarch of Constantinople, and equally famous in the annals of the church and of learning. Gibbon passes perhaps too rapidly over the Byzantine literature, chap. 53. In this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and precision of his outline, which astonish those who have trodden parts of the same field, are apt to escape an uninformed reader.