There is a widespread belief among members of the general public that ancient Greek texts were mostly only preserved by the Arabs through Arabic translations. The Byzantine Empire is rarely mentioned in the context of the preservation of classical texts. When the Byzantines are mentioned in this context, it is usually by writers who see them as ignorant fundamentalist Christian obscurantists.
Contrary to what popular culture would lead you to believe, however, the Byzantine Empire did retain Greco-Roman knowledge. In fact, the vast majority of ancient Greek texts that have survived to the present day are primarily known from Greek manuscripts that were either copied in the Byzantine Empire or copied from texts that were copied in the Byzantine Empire.
The idea that the majority of ancient Greek texts have only been preserved because they were translated by Arabic scholars is largely a misconception. There are a few lesser-known classical Greek texts that have been preserved only through Arabic translations, but the vast majority of the really famous texts that people still study today have actually been preserved in the original Greek.
The widespread ignorance of the Byzantines’ role in the preservation of classical Greek and Roman texts is just one small part of a centuries-old, systematic effort by westerners to marginalize the Byzantine Empire and minimize its importance in European history.
The “Spaceship Earth” version
First, before I debunk anything, let’s review the misconception that I will be debunking. I think that the version of history that is probably most familiar to the most people in the United States is some version similar to the one that is told by the narrator on the ride “Spaceship Earth” at EPCOT in Walt Disney World. The narrator for the ride talks all about how the ancient Greeks and Romans invented wonderful things and built spectacular engineering marvels. Then the narrator says this:
“But then we hit a roadblock. Rome falls and the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt is burned. Much of our learning is destroyed forever—or so we think. It turns out there are copies of some of these books in the libraries of the Middle East being watched over by Arab and Jewish scholars. Call it the first backup system. The books are saved and, with them, our dreams of the future.”
This is a fabulous distortion of the real history. Indeed, it is really more of an alternative history than a real history. Nonetheless, this same basic narrative of classical texts being preserved almost exclusively by Arabic scholars through Arabic translations occurs throughout modern popular culture.
For instance, the 2007 History Channel documentary The Dark Ages is not quite as wildly inaccurate as Spaceship Earth. Nonetheless, it still leaves the viewer with a similar impression that Greek and Roman knowledge was completely (or at least almost completely) lost in Europe and that this knowledge was preserved solely by the Arabs. The documentary describes the western European Crusaders as bringing back all the lost knowledge of the Greeks and Romans from the Arabs after the Crusades.
The basic notion that most ancient Greek texts have only been preserved through Arabic translations is not just found in popular culture; it has even managed to worm its way into college textbooks written by specialist scholars. One of the most widely used textbooks for introductory undergraduate courses on ancient Greece in the United States is the book Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History by Pomeroy, Burstein, Donlan, Roberts, Tandy, and Tsouvala, published by Oxford University Press. For the most part, it is an excellent textbook, but, on page 533 of the fourth edition, it declares:
“Aristotle’s Poetics and Hippocrates’ medical texts, for example, were translated directly from Greek to Arabic, while Greek philosophy and science put its mark on Arab thinkers and astronomers during the Middle Ages in the schools and libraries of Baghdad. Although the monasteries of Byzantium and Western Europe were instrumental in the preservation of Greco-Roman thought, many Greek texts survived only in Arabic translations and through those were passed on to the Latin West.”
Most of what the passage says here explicitly is correct. Nonetheless, the way the passage is worded makes it sound as though the majority of ancient Greek texts are only known from Arabic translations and the Byzantines only played a role in preserving a handful of certain texts. The part where the textbook says “many Greek texts survived only in Arabic translations” should really say something more like “a few Greek texts survived only in Arabic translations.”
For even more examples of how the idea of Greek texts being preserved exclusively by the Arabs permeates modern culture, you can see this excellent article written by New Zealand classical scholar Peter Gainsford on his blog Kiwi Hellenist.
Now that we’ve reviewed the misconception, let’s move on to debunk it.
ABOVE: Front cover of the book Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. It is mostly a good textbook, but, due to poor choice of wording, it inadvertently perpetuates the widespread misconception that most classical Greek texts have only survived through Arabic translations.
Misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria related to this misconception
The Spaceship Earth ride talks about the Library of Alexandria in connection to the preservation of Greek texts. Therefore, it is worth addressing here a few of the major misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria that are relevant. I wrote a whole article debunking popular misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria back in July 2019. I highly recommend reading that article if you want to learn the details. Nonetheless, I will summarize the main points of that article here.
It is important to establish that, first of all, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is probably the one event in the history of the human race that occupies the single most absurdly disproportionately large position in popular culture relative to its actual importance. It is telling that even the narrator of the EPCOT ride realizes that this event was not nearly as catastrophic as it is often made out to be.
In historical reality, there really was no single event that “destroyed” the Library of Alexandria all at once. It actually suffered a long, gradual decline with many and various setbacks along the way. Ultimately, what really led to the Library of Alexandria coming to an end was mostly a lack of funding and patronage.
The event that most people are probably thinking of when they think of the “destruction of the Library of Alexandria” is the burning of a portion of the Library’s collection in 48 BC when the city of Alexandria was under siege by Julius Caesar. During the siege, Julius Caesar’s men accidentally set fire to the docks of Alexandria and the fire spread throughout the city, destroying a portion of the Library’s collection. What actually happened, though, probably differs quite a bit from the narrative most people are told.
ABOVE: Imaginative modern illustration showing how the artist imagined the fire of Alexandria in 48 BC might have looked
First of all, the Library itself probably was not completely destroyed. What was actually destroyed, according to some ancient writers such as the Greek historian Kassios Dion (lived c. 155 – c. 235 AD), was a warehouse the Library was using to keep scrolls. We know for certain that the Library either survived the fire in some form or at least quickly managed to reopen, since the Greek geographer Strabon of Amaseia (lived c. 64 BC – c. 24 AD) gives a description of a visit he made to the Mouseion, the larger institution of which the Library of Alexandria was a part, in around 20 BC—only around twenty-eight years after the famous fire.
The Library of Alexandria actually continued to exist for several centuries after Caesar’s fire. It never received the kind of funding and support that it had received under the rule of the early Ptolemies, though, and, over time, its collection and its importance gradually dwindled. We do not know exactly when the Library of Alexandria came to an end, but we can be sure that, if it still existed in 272 AD, it would have been destroyed in that year when the forces of the emperor Aurelian utterly leveled the entire Brouchion quarter of Alexandria in which the Library was located. By that time, though, the Library would have been barely even a shadow of its former glory.
Second of all, the Library of Alexandria was only one of dozens of libraries that existed throughout the Mediterranean. Almost every major city in the Mediterranean world had a library of some kind. Some of these libraries, such as the Library of Pergamon, actually rivalled the Library of Alexandria’s collection. The vast majority of all the texts that were held in the Library of Alexandria were held in dozens of other libraries as well and any texts that were only held in the Library of Alexandria were probably doomed to destruction anyways because they were not being copied.
The real reason why so many texts from ancient Greece have been lost is not because one library burned down, but rather because many texts simply were not copied. In the ancient world, you did not have to burn texts to destroy them forever; all you had to do was not copy them and, eventually, all the manuscripts of those texts would break down and they would be lost forever.
Third of all, there was probably no major scientific knowledge that was lost with the Library of Alexandria because the Library of Alexandria contained primarily Greek literary texts. The writings it contained were things like Greek comedies and tragedies, epic poems, lyric poems, scholarly commentaries on various works of literature, and so forth. Most scientific information at the time was not held in libraries, but rather by tradesmen, who normally did not write such information down.
It is also very strange that, in popular culture, including in Spaceship Earth, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is often associated with the fall of the Roman Empire, since the fire of Alexandria started by Julius Caesar’s men during the Siege of Alexandria in 48 BC actually took place in the time of the Roman Republic—before the Roman Empire was even established.
There is very little good reason why the fire of Alexandria in 48 BC that destroyed a portion of the Library of Alexandria’s collection and the collapse of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD should even be mentioned in the same sentence, since these events happened literally centuries apart.
ABOVE: Nineteenth-century fictional illustration by the German artist O. Van Corven depicting how he imagined the Library of Alexandria might have looked in its heyday
The continued copying of classical texts in Europe
It is often represented that Arab and Jewish scholars in the Middle East were primarily responsible for the preservation of ancient Greek texts after the collapse of the western Roman Empire. This is not accurate, however. For one thing, the Golden Age of Islamic scholarship actually began in around the eighth century AD.
That means the Islamic Golden Age actually came around eight centuries after the famous fire of Alexandria in 48 BC and around three centuries after the collapse of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD. Clearly, then, someone else was copying Greek and Roman texts during the time that passed between the collapse of the western Roman Empire and the rise of the Islamic Golden Age; otherwise we would no doubt have very few Greek and Roman texts.
The real reason why so many texts have survived despite the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is because those texts were preserved in other libraries throughout the entire Mediterranean world. Certainly, some of those libraries were in parts of the Mediterranean world that we today would consider part of the “Middle East,” but not all of them. (It is worth noting that, today, Egypt is more often than not considered part of the “Middle East.”)
Meanwhile, the reason why so many texts survived after the collapse of the western Roman Empire is because those texts continued to be copied in the lands where the languages they were written in were still spoken (or at least read). Thus, classical texts written in Latin were mainly preserved in western Europe and western North Africa, while classical texts written in Greek were mainly preserved in the realms of the predominately Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire.
Indeed, it is actually the Byzantine Empire that is most directly responsible for the vast bulk of surviving ancient Greek texts. Unfortunately, the Byzantine Empire is rarely even mentioned in discussion of the preservation of ancient Greek texts—most likely because the Byzantines have been wrongly stereotyped for centuries as backwards easterners who sat around making obscurantist theological arguments and had no interest in studying classical Greek texts.
This stereotype could not be any further from the truth. Yes, the Byzantines produced a lot of theological arguments that we today would probably consider rather silly, but there is no world in which you could accurately claim that they had no interest in preserving and studying classical Greek texts.
Likewise, it is important to emphasize that, although knowledge of the Greek language mostly disappeared in western Europe after the collapse of the western Roman Empire, knowledge of Latin remained. Latin texts continued to be copied and studied in western Europe throughout the Middle Ages and it is mainly thanks to medieval western European scribes that we still have ancient Roman texts written in Latin.
ABOVE: Mid-tenth century Byzantine manuscript illustration of Matthew the Apostle with Byzantine-era scribal equipment
Texts that really have only survived through Arabic translations
It is certainly true that a large number of ancient Greek texts were indeed translated into Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages during the Islamic Golden Age. It is also true that there are a few ancient Greek texts that have only survived through Arabic translations. These texts are mostly works that were less popular and less influential. Very few of them are considered to be especially important.
For instance, the last four books of Hypatia of Alexandria’s commentary on Diophantos’s Arithmetika have only survived through an Arabic translation and the rest of her commentary has been lost. This is not especially surprising, considering that, as I discuss in this article about Hypatia I wrote in August 2018, she is mostly famous today because the story of her death was heavily embellished and mythologized by later writers and not so much on account of the long-term impact of her scholarship.
Hypatia had a lot of influence during her lifetime over some very powerful and important people, including the Roman prefect of Egypt, and the sources contemporary to her life unanimously agree that she was extremely brilliant. As far as we can tell from the surviving texts, though, she does not really seem to have produced any especially groundbreaking original mathematical ideas. Her commentary on the Arithmetika was written to aid her students in learning about mathematics. Consequently, the mathematical teachings presented in it are extremely basic.
The vast majority of the texts we have today that are still widely studied have been primarily preserved in the original Greek through manuscripts that were either copied by the Byzantines themselves or copied from manuscripts that were copied by the Byzantines. All the major surviving works of classical Greek drama, classical Greek epic, and classical Greek philosophy have survived to the present day primarily through Greek manuscripts, especially manuscripts derived from the Byzantine scribal tradition.
ABOVE: Manuscript illustration from 1237 depicting scholars at an Abbasid library
Just “being watched over”?
It is also rather disturbing how the Arab scholars are usually portrayed as simply acting as custodians of classical Greek and Roman texts rather than actively studying them and writing about them. For instance, in Spaceship Earth, the narrator describes the Greek and Roman texts as “being watched over by Arab and Jewish scholars.”
This wording makes it sound almost as though the Arab and Jewish scholars were keeping these texts locked away in secret storehouses where no one was allowed to read them. It makes it sound as though they were merely preserving the books with express purpose so that superior Europeans would eventually be able to come along and read them.
In reality, they were not just temporarily “watching over” these texts as Spaceship Earth would have you believe; instead, they were actively studying them, analyzing them, engaging with them, making arguments based on them, and expanding on the ideas found in them. The portrayal of medieval Middle Eastern scholars as merely watchful custodians of classical texts is deeply rooted in Eurocentrism and old colonialist ideas.
In other words, the popular narrative that Greek texts have mostly only come down to us through Arabic translations is demeaning towards both the Byzantines and the Arabs; the Byzantines have been completely edited out of the narrative even though they arguably played the biggest role of all in the preservation of ancient Greek texts and the Arabs’ role has, ironically, been minimized in a different way—by portraying them as merely temporary custodians of the classical tradition rather than participants actively engaging with it.
ABOVE: Photograph of the “Arab and Jewish scholars” from Spaceship Earth
How the Byzantines have shaped the ancient Greek texts that have survived
The Byzantines have traditionally been portrayed by western historians as indifferent or even hostile to the classical tradition, but, as any scholar of the Byzantine Empire will tell you, this was far from the case. Byzantine intellectuals were, in fact, deeply engaged with classical Greek writings. The vast majority of ancient Greek texts that have survived to the present day have survived because they were preserved and studied by the Byzantines.
Because the Byzantines played such an utterly pivotal role in preserving ancient Greek writings, they have irreversibly helped shape the modern canon of classical Greek literature. In chapter three of his book Byzantium Unbound, published by ARC Humanities Press in 2019, the Byzantinist Anthony Kaldellis offers an impassioned defense of why classicists should study the Byzantines. One of the main points he presents is that nearly all the ancient Greek texts that have survived to the present have survived specifically because they appealed to Byzantine tastes and interests.
For instance, the reason why so many texts written in the Attic dialect by authors who lived in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BC have been preserved for us and so many texts written by authors from other parts of the ancient Greek world have not is because the Byzantines were deeply interested in classical Athens and they regarded the Attic dialect as the best and the most readable of all ancient Greek dialects.
Thus, the Byzantines chose to copy reams worth of Athenian tragedies, Athenian comedies, works by Athenian historians, speeches by Athenian orators, and so forth. Meanwhile, because works written in non-Attic dialects were generally seen as less readable or even less interesting, far fewer of them have survived. This is the reason why, for instance, we have the complete texts of Thoukydides’s Histories of the Peloponnesian War and Xenophon’s Hellenika, but only fragments of Hekataios of Miletos’s Genealogies.
ABOVE: Roman marble bust of the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes, whose speeches have been preserved in the original Ancient Greek mainly because the Byzantines were especially interested in Attic oratory
I have written about this phenomenon before, most notably in my article about Sappho from December 2019. Many authors have claimed that Sappho’s poems were deliberately destroyed in the Middle Ages by fundamentalist Christians who were disgusted by her frank treatment of sexuality, but this story is actually a canard that was made up by western European scholars during the Renaissance. For reasons I discuss in the article, it is highly unlikely that Sappho’s poems were deliberately destroyed out of prudishness.
In reality, the main reason why most of Sappho’s poems have been lost is probably because Sappho wrote in the Aeolic dialect, which Roman and Byzantine readers regarded as obscure, archaic, and hard to read. Many of the poems of Sappho that have survived have been preserved through quotation in works of philosophy and rhetoric that the Byzantines did choose to copy. For instance, Sappho’s only complete poem, the “Ode to Aphrodite” is preserved through quotation in the treatise On Composition, written by the Greek historian Dionysios of Halikarnassos (lived c. 60 – after c. 7 BC).
Works written in the Attic dialect weren’t the only works Byzantine scholars were interested in, though; they were also deeply fascinated with the Homeric poems, which are not written in the Attic dialect. Thus, largely because of the Byzantine’s intense interest in them, not only have the Iliad and the Odyssey been preserved for us in their entirety in the original Ancient Greek, but so have extensive commentaries on them, including commentaries written both by ancient Greek scholars and by Byzantine scholars.
The level of interest that Byzantine scholars had in the Homeric epic is demonstrated by the example of Eustathios of Thessaloniki (lived c. 1115 – c. 1195 AD), who was an archbishop of the city of Thessaloniki in northern Greece. Eustathios wrote exhaustive commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey, which draw extensively on the works of earlier commentators. His commentaries on the Homeric poems have survived to the present day in their entirety.
ABOVE: Detail of an icon of Eustathios of Thessaloniki dating to c. 1312 from the Vatopedi Monastery at Mount Athos. Eustathios wrote exhaustive commentaries on the Homeric poems, which have survived to the present day.
Byzantine scholars were also deeply interested in Platonic philosophy, which is the main reason why all the dialogues of Plato, a number of pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Plato, many of the writings of Aristotle (who was Plato’s student), and the writings of many later Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophers have been all preserved in the original Ancient Greek. These are writings that Byzantine scholars studied and often interpreted through a Christian lens.
Meanwhile, in western Europe, the only work by Plato that was preserved during the Middle Ages prior to the reintroduction of Plato from the Greek-speaking east was a portion of Calcidus’s Latin translation of Plato’s Timaios. In other words, we are almost totally indebted to the Byzantines for the fact that any of Plato’s dialogues have survived at all.
It may come as a surprise to some people that the Byzantines were also interested in medical, mathematical, and scientific writings. This is the reason why the sixty some treatises of the Hippocratic Corpus, most of the medical writings of the Greek doctors Galenos of Pergamon, Pedanios Dioskorides, and Soranos of Ephesos, and most of the mathematical writings of the Greek mathematicians Eukleides of Alexandria, Archimedes of Syracuse, Apollonios of Perga, and Klaudios Ptolemaios have been preserved to the present day in the original Ancient Greek.
Many New Atheist writers like to complain about how, in 1229 AD, the pages from a codex containing many writings of Archimedes—including two treatises that are otherwise only preserved in Arabic translations and one treatise that is only preserved through that particular codex—were unbound, incompletely erased, and used to make a Christian prayer book known as the “Archimedes Palimpsest.”
In this article from November 2019, however, I point out a fact that these writers often overlook, which is that the original codex that was used to make the Archimedes Palimpsest was copied by Byzantine Christian scribes in Constantinople in the middle of the tenth century AD, during the so-called “Makedonian Renaissance,” a period of Byzantine history during which the study of science and mathematics especially flourished. If it weren’t for the Byzantines, that codex would never have existed at all.
ABOVE: Photograph of a page from the Archimedes Palimpsest, showing Archimedes’s text written underneath the text of the prayer book
The Byzantines have also irreversibly shaped which sources we have available to us for the study of ancient Roman history as well as Greek history. The reason why we have so many ancient accounts of the history of the Roman Republic and the Roman Principate written in Greek is because the Byzantines saw themselves as Romans and Byzantine intellectuals were interested in studying accounts of the early history of their nation in their own language.
Thus, Byzantine scribes copied the writings of Greek authors such as Polybios of Megalopolis, Dionysios of Halikarnassos, Appianos of Alexandria, Ploutarchos of Chaironeia, Herodianos of Antioch, and Kassios Dion, who all wrote about the history of the Roman Empire in Greek. Many of the writings of these authors that were copied by the Byzantines are among our most important sources for ancient Roman history.
By now, I think I’ve made my point. The Byzantine selection of which classical Greek texts to copy has greatly impacted which texts we have available to us to study in the twenty-first century. For more information, you can read the chapter in Kaldellis’s book, which covers many of the same points I cover here, but also delves into some other issues.
ABOVE: The Greek historian Polybios of Megalopolis, shown here in a carving from the Stele of Kleitor, is one of our major sources for early Roman history. His writings were preserved mainly because the Byzantines wanted to read about their own early history in their own language.
The return of Greek texts to western Europe from the Byzantines
While a lot of emphasis in popular culture tends to be placed on the role of the study of Greeks texts returning to western Europe from the Arabic-speaking world, less emphasis seems to be placed on the more important role of Greek texts returning to western Europe from the Byzantine Empire.
Especially after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, there was an massive outpouring of Greek scholars who fled to western Europe, especially Italy, bringing Greek texts and knowledge of the Greek language with them. These scholars included people like Vasilios Vessarion (lived 1403 – 1472), Ioannis Argyropoulos (lived c. 1415 – 1487), and Dimitrios Chalkokondylis (lived 1423 – 1511).
It was partly as a result of the influx of Greek scholars from the east that the study of the Greek language returned to western Europe in the late fifteenth century. The Greek scholars introduced the Greek texts of works that had not been studied in the west in the original Greek in centuries. Greek scholars, then, actually played an incredibly vital role in the reintroduction of the study of classical Greek texts and the Greek language to western Europe.
Dimitrios Chalkokondylis published the first printed edition of the Iliad and the Odyssey in 1488 and the first printed edition of the speeches of the ancient Athenian orator Isokrates (lived 436 – 338 BC) in Greek in 1493. These publications of Greek texts paved the way for non-Greeks to start publishing printed editions of texts in Greek. The first printed edition of the Greek New Testament, the Textus Receptus, was published by the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus (lived 1466 – 1536) in 1516.
ABOVE: Portrait of the Greek scholar Dimitrios Chalkokondylis, who published the first printed editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the speeches of Isokrates in Greek and helped re-introduce the study of the Greek language to western Europe in the late fifteenth century
Conclusion
Ultimately, lots of different people were involved in the preservation of classical Greek texts, but the people who are mostly responsible for the survival of so many Greek texts in the original Greek are the Byzantines. Although there are a few ancient Greek texts that have survived only through Arabic translations, the vast majority have survived in Greek.
The reason why popular culture so vehemently maintains that Greek texts were preserved exclusively by the Arabs and not by the Byzantines is because, for centuries, westerners have tried to remove the Byzantines from European history. This effort began in 800 AD, when Pope Leo III declared the Frankish king Charlemagne emperor of the Holy Roman Empire with the excuse that the throne was vacant because the Byzantine Empire at that time was ruled by Empress Eirene Sarantapechaina and, according to Pope Leo III, no woman could ever be a legitimate ruler of the Roman Empire.
Ever since then, westerners have tried to portray themselves as the true inheritors of the Greco-Roman tradition and the Byzantines as backwards eastern pretenders. The last thing many westerners want to admit is that the Byzantines played a massive role in the preservation of ancient Greek texts, so, instead, they claim that these texts were solely preserved by the Arabs.
Once again, to be very clear, I am not saying that the Arabs did not play an important role in preserving some ancient Greek texts. Nonetheless, I am saying that the Byzantines are the ones who should be getting most of the credit here.
I love your posts because I learn something(s) every one. I am a bit bewildered that the Byzantines were disparged because of stereotyping (early in the post) but then you say “The Byzantines have traditionally been portrayed by western historians as indifferent or even hostile to the classical tradition, but, as any scholar of the Byzantine Empire will tell you, this was far from the case. Byzantine intellectuals were, in fact, deeply engaged with classical Greek writings.”
So the scholars knew what was what but the hoi polloi favored the Arabs. Why the Arabs over the Byzantines? Was this a matter of dueling stereotypes as I would consider the racist western viewpoint to place both groups in the same sack?
You may notice that I specifically said “any scholar of the Byzantine Empire.” When I used that phrase, I was referring specifically to specialists in Byzantine history, not to scholars in general. Many scholars who do not specialize in the Byzantines do tend to disparage the Byzantines. Nowadays they don’t do it nearly as much as they used to, but Byzantinophobia is still a thing, even among scholars.
It is certainly true that there are a lot of inaccurate racist stereotypes about the Arabs, just as there are about the Byzantines. Nonetheless, I think that there are probably two main reasons why people tend to give no credit to the Byzantines for preserving works of classical Greek literature and instead give disproportionate credit to the Arabs. The first reason is because, historically, western writers have specifically tried to distance the Byzantines from the classical tradition. This was a very specific agenda, motivated by the fact that the Byzantines were known for outright claiming that they were Romans (a claim for which, quite frankly, they had very good justification). Since the Arabs weren’t claiming to be Romans, it must have seemed safer for westerners to give them credit for preserving classical literature than the Byzantines.
The second reason is because there are a lot of anti-Christian individuals out there who try to portray all forms of Christianity as inherently evil, violent, and destructive. The idea of Christians as destroyers of the classical legacy is so ingrained in these people’s minds that, because the Byzantines were Christians, many people find it impossible to think that they could have preserved anything pagan.
In reality, history is much more complicated than those people like to believe. Sometimes some Christians can destroy good things, but other times they can be preserve and even produce good things. It is, unfortunately, much easier to promote a one-sided history in which there are clear “good guys” and “bad guys” than it is to promote an accurate, nuanced history because people tend to find nuance less exciting.
Is it fair to suggest a 3rd reason for the anti-Byzantine bias: that Catholics & Protestants consider the Orthodox Church some form of heresy, and they don’t want to acknowledge anything good can come from heretics?
Oh, I think that is absolutely a possible reason for the anti-Byzantine bias among western Catholics and Protestants. In fact, I’m certain that is a reason why Catholics and Protestants have historically begrudged the Byzantines. Obviously, that is more of a historical reason, though, because relations between western Christians and eastern Christians are much better these days than they were in the past. Contemporary Christianity tends to be very ecumenical.
Dear Alexander
You are writing really long, great and beautiful articles. I’m really glad that a young man like you is such a good connoisseur and adorer of ancient Greeks. However you write half the truth, but half the truth is a lie. So, my comments are just as long and perhaps objectionable. We have to respect our readers. Before we post something, we must first check it for validity and try to be as objective as possible. Βlurry and vague views, I think don’t help inform readers.
You try with thoughts and assumptions to describe the nature and content of the books in the Library of Alexandria. Nobody knows. The real reason why so many texts were saved in spite of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is that these texts are preserved in other libraries throughout the Mediterranean world where Christianity had not prevailed.
Byzantium (Ρωμανία the real name), the Eastern Roman Empire, was a multicultural empire of various peoples and languages, which over time – due to the power of the Greek language – became Greek-speaking (not all).
The identification of the Greek concept with the Ethnic religion is clear and began by Paul and continued until the 15th century. The truth is that in the post-Byzantine era, when the empire was shrinking to a few Greek-speaking segments, it was trying to find new ideological foundations. Then, perhaps the freer and fearless efforts were made to save what was left of the Greek literature. Greek scholars of this period rescued that they were left in the frenzy of prohibition and destruction Then the term Hellen (Έλλην) began to sound positive sometimes to indicate a continuation of a glorious past.
After Constantine the Great, the Spanish emperor of the Roman Empire, Theodosius I the Great, began persecution against Ethnics (Greeks) throughout the Empire, leading to the prevalence of Christianity. On February 27, 380 Christianity recognized as the official religion of the empire. Thus began the greater slaughter of the Greeks and the destruction of their civilization by the Christians. (maybe that’s why the Church calls them Great).
The recordings by the historians: Zosimos, Synesius, Eunapio, Sozomen, and by the youngest historian K. Paparrigopoulos, although he was the founding and ardent supporter of “Greek-Christianity”, clearly describe the great catastrophe. “The Goths, guided by numerous fanatical Christian monks, always overflowed between Thermopylae and Attica, Locrida, Fokida, Boeotian, plundering and destroying country and cities, and beheading men in groups. They did the same to children and women.”
If the victims of the Holy Inquisition of Catholics all over Western Europe reached about 35,000, the crimes of the Christians by the hand of Alarich alone against the Greeks, amount to many hundreds of thousands.
The reason for the great massacre was one to punish the Greeks for ignoring the order of Theodosius that the only religion of the Empire would be Christianity.
It was the beginning of one of the greatest crimes against science and humanity’s intellectual and technological progress. An immeasurable number of Greek books, philosophy, literature, mathematics, history, geography, poetry collections and mainly scientific books are on fire.
The “Hellenizein”(to speak Greek or to be like Greek) is outlawed. In 341 Constantius was the emperor who by his own order many Greeks were either executed or imprisoned. And by 346 we had already had severe persecutions, on a large scale, against the Ethnics, Greeks or non, in Constantinople.
By his decree Constantius in 353 in the name of Christ’s love forbids the Ethnics of the worship and offering of sacrifice by the death penalty.
And a year later, in 354 by a new decree, the powerful emperor banned the operation of the Ethnic and Greek sanctuaries and ordered their closure.
The sacred temples of the Greeks and other Ethnic cults are converted into prostitutes and taverns. Ethnic priests are executed.
A new imperial decree mandates “The destruction of Ethnic Temples and the slaughter of all Ethnics”. The first fires of libraries in many cities of the empire began.
Christian lime-producers make lime-furnaces next to Greek temples to exploit the marbles of the temples. Did you ever wonder why Greek statues in museums around the world have broken heads, hands or feet?
The Death Camps
In Syria’s (Dekapolis) Scythopolis in 359 the first Christian death camps were organized by Christians. The arrested Ethnics gathered from all parts of the empire.
The phrase “commit the disrespect of Hellenism” is impressive! The definition of hatred! This atrocious crime against humanity, which has always been systematically concealed and continues to be concealed to this day, is saved by the historian Ammian Marcellinus, in the 19th book of his work “Rerum Gestarum Libri XXXI”
335 Inauguration of the Church of “Holy Sepulcher”, which was built on the site of the Temple of the Goddess Aphrodite which Constantine destroyed in 326 – 327, and for its decoration almost all the Ethnic Sanctuaries of Palestine and Asia Minor are plundered. By a special imperial decree they are crucified … as the culprits of the bad harvest of that year (…) all the “magicians and sorcerers”, among them the neo-Platonic philosopher Sopatros of Abamia, a student of Iamblich.
355 In the “Apostolic Rules”, written at that time, we read creepily:
“Avoid all the books of the Ethnics. What do you need for foreign writings, laws, and false prophets that drive the insane away from faith? What do you find missing from God’s commandments and looking for it in the myths of the Ethnics?
If you want to read stories you have the book of Kings, if you have rhetorical and poetic prophets, you have Job, you have Proverbs, where you will find wisdom greater than any poetic and sophisticated, because these are the words of the Lord, the only wise.
If you want songs you have Psalms, if you want ancient genealogies you have Genesis, if you have legal books and dictates, you have the glorious Divine Law. That is why he has steadfastly avoided any national and diabolical books. ”
365 Judgment of November 17 prohibits Ethnic Officers from ordering Christian soldiers. Inexhaustible piles of books, all Greek literary, philosophical and scientific books – and not .. “magic textbooks”, as he wanted the perversions of the priests burn in the squares of the urban centers, and in the crowds of persecuted Greeks (“pagans” according to the Christians), there are almost all the remaining Julian officials who are either dismissed, such as the well-known Caesar Sallustius (author of the admirably polytheistic theological epitome “On the Gods and the World”, who had also urged Julian to establish absolute freedom of religion), either thrown into prison and the unfortunate of them burnt, or are strangled by horrific torture, of course, of … “practicing magic” (!), such as the physician Orivasius, the philosopher Simonides who burned him alive (in the first historically Christian burning, long before the infamous “auto da fe” of the popes), the head of the Ethnic Temples of Troy and the former Christian bishop, Pigasius.
373 Prohibition of divine practices and Astrology is repeated, and the obsolete term “pagani” (pagans, rural people) is used for the reduction of the Ethnics. From now on, the Ethnics will no longer refer to the emperors as “gentiles” or “ethnici”, but rather to the derogatory term “pagani” in which the boldness of Christians is trying to portray Ethnicism as a bunch of superstitious uneducated villains “gentiles quos vulgo paganos vocamus” (” Theodosian Codex “16. 3. 46).
380 On February 27, Emperor Flavius Theodosius bans all religions except Christianity. All non-Christians are hereinafter referred to as “nauseous, heretics, dulls, and blinds.” Bishop Mediolan Ambrosius is authorized to destroy all the Temples of the Ethnics and build churches on their foundations. The leaders of some Gothic tribes are baptized Christians.
Guided by the intolerant priesthood, the Christian mob attacks the Greek sanctuary of Eleusis, insults it and threatens to lynch priests Nestorio and Priscos. The 95-year-old Hierophant Nestorius, full of sadness and indignation, announces the definitive end of the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries and the beginning of the earthly reign of spiritual darkness. Emperor Theodosius calls in his decree “insane” all those who disagree with the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity and forbids any disagreement with the will of the Church.
389 Any non-Christian dating method is outlawed. Crowds of desert monks invade the cities of the Middle East, destroying statues, altars and shrines in madness, lynching Ethnics and burning Libraries. Patriarch of Alexandria Theophilos mobilizes the fanatical Christian mob to wage great persecution against the Ethnics. Turns into a church the Temple of God Dionysus, burns the Mithraeos and destroys the Temple of Zeus.
392 A New Great Persecution Against the Ethnics throughout the Empire. The Mysteries of Samothrace are wiped out after the killing of priests and all the religious by a “persecutor” extract that landed on the island.
Destruction of the Oracle of Ammon Zeus in Afitos of Halkidiki. In the courtrooms there are “streams of blood flowing”, as Lebanius characteristically writes. In Cyprus, the Jewish-born bishop (also “Saint”!) Epiphanius and the “Saint” Tychon massively Christianize and threaten thousands of Ethnics with the threat of Fasganon (double-edged sword) and fire and destroy all the sanctuaries of the island. The Cypriot Mysteries of Aphrodite are permanently ceased.
393 Emperor Eugenius arrives in Italy, where intellectual General Virios Nicomachos Flavianus restores the Victory Altar in the Senate and restores the worship of traditional Gods. In the East, Theodosius abolishes the Pythians, the Actians and the Olympics. Vandalism of Olympia and shattering of all its altars.
395 The Emperors Arkadios and Onorius even prohibit entry to the Ethnic Temples (“Theodosian Codex” 16. 10. 13), while declaring new persecutions against the Ethnics at the conventions of July 22 and August 7. In the same year, the eunuch prime minister of Emperor Arcadius Roufinos directed hordes of Christians, now ex-Goths, under Alaricus, to Greece. Followed by crowds of fanatical monks, the Goths of Alarich (who had fought with Theodosius against the Flavian Ethnics) assassinate countless Ethnic Greeks and destroy cities and sanctuaries in Dion, Thessaly, Beoetia, Delphi, Attica , Megara, Corinth, Feneos, Argos, Nemea, Lykosoura, Sparta, Messina, Figalia, Olympia.
In Eleusis, the ancient sanctuary is set ablaze, and Thespius Hierophant Hilarion and all the priests of the Mysteries
440 – 450 Destruction of all monuments, altars and temples still standing in Athens, Olympia and other Greek cities.
448 Theodosius orders that all “anti-Christian” books be delivered to the flames. Among them are destroyed the books of the Neo-Platonic Porphyry, which step by step unveiled the true nature of Christianity.
528 At the expense of Emperor Jutprada-Justinian, the exiles Olympics from Olympia in Antioch are abolished. He has already legislated to be killed by beast devouring, death by fire, crucifixion or scraping with iron rods all “made with magic, divination, charm and Greek religion (idolatry)” and forbidden to worship “the sacred mental illness of the Greeks” that is to say the Ethnics.
529 At the expense of Emperor Jutprada-Justinian, the Academy of Athens is closed and its property confiscated. The last seven teachers go to the king of Persia, Khosrow, who has their headquarters at the University of Jundishapur.
540 Greek Medicine has already been banned as “the knowledge of the Devil” and its writings have been lost forever to the fire of Christians. With the only therapeutic method, bleeding and reading exorcisms, begins the great Roman epidemic in the Eastern Roman Empire (Panati Charles, 1989) that killed 100 million people. The Church nevertheless wins out as it attributes the epidemic to the wrath of God for the survival of the “heresies” and of the Greek religion (“paganism” according to Christians).
These and many more, Greeks and others suffered in the name of the God of love. Nonetheless the Greeks love the Christ, but not his representatives.
There are many more. if you want I can go on. But I think it’s enough to show what the situation was.
As they had the Codex Theodosianus, the Codex Justinianus and the “anathema” of the church, who would have the courage to write and save the cursed writings?
The “Synodikon of Orthodoxy” is the decisions of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod (787-843 AD). There, along with the rest, philosophy and those who accepted the doctrines of the Greeks were anathematized and condemned. They continue to do so until today
(anathema= something that is strongly disliked or disapproved, or is completely wrong and offensive).
In 2002, the President of the Greek Republic, Mr. Kostis Stefanopoulos, said that: “Damnations (anathema), etc. against the Greeks, which are chanted every year in the Orthodox churches on Sunday of Orthodoxy,” must be omitted “. They continue to do so until today.
I would like to ask the author of the article, knowing all this, what period of Byzantium would he like to live in order to be able to copy and save more Greek books without fearing for his life?
I can’t say for sure if the Arabs or some very daring Greeks rescued them. Τhe Official State and the Church did other things. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of the knowledge and literature of ancient Greeks and others of that time has survived.
I don’t have time to respond to everything you have written here because I don’t have hours to spend debunking everything that one person claims in one comment under an article on my website. Almost everything you say here, though, is either wrong or misrepresented. In fact, you repeat a number of popular misconceptions that I specifically debunked in depth in this very article.
We actually have a very good impression of what sorts of works were held in the Library of Alexandria due to surviving fragments from the Pinakes, the library catalogue made by the poet Kallimachos of Kyrene (lived c. 310 – c. 240 BC). Based on these fragments, we know that it contained mostly Greek literary texts such as epics, tragedies, comedies, lyric poems, histories, and philosophical writings. Here is a link to an article from 1958 that talks about some of the fragments of the Pinakes that were available at that time.
As I explain in my article above and in multiple other articles, the Library of Alexandria was not destroyed by Christians; the whole story about Christians destroying the Library of Alexandria is fiction. Your claim that classical Greek texts have only survived because they were “preserved in other libraries throughout the Mediterranean world where Christianity had not prevailed” is likewise entirely false. By the late fifth century AD, Christianity was the dominant religion throughout the entire Mediterranean world; there were no parts of the Mediterranean world by that point where Christianity was not prevalent. The primary reason why most ancient Greek texts that have survived have survived is because Christians copied and preserved them.
The eastern part of the Roman Empire did not “become” Greek-speaking; it was always Greek-speaking. Most people in the eastern Empire spoke Greek from the very beginning, because Greek culture had spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 31 BC), which preceded the Roman conquest. The eastern Roman Empire remained continually predominately Greek in both language and in culture throughout its history.
There is no ancient historical evidence to support your assertion that “an immeasurable number of Greek books, philosophy, literature, mathematics, history, geography, poetry collections and mainly scientific books” were burned by early Christians. As I discuss in this article, we have evidence for Christians burning copies of esoteric texts, the sacred texts of certain Christian sects that were deemed heretical, and some anti-Christian treatises; we have virtually no evidence whatsoever of Christians burning literary, philosophical, historical, scientific, or mathematical texts and, in fact, we have a great deal of evidence by early Christian writers that such writings were widely read and admired by early Christians.
The verb Ἑλληνίζειν in this context certainly does not mean “to speak Greek or to be like Greek” as you define it, but rather “to adopt traditional ancient Greek religious practices.” The vast majority of people in the eastern Empire spoke Greek, the Christian gospels were written in Greek, and no one ever thought the Greek language was in any way inherently “pagan.”
Your interpretation that the Gothic attacks on the Roman Empire were primarily motivated by a desire to punish practitioners of traditional religion and force them to convert to Christianity is unsupported by historical evidence. Furthermore, we have fairly good documentation of the kinds of things the Goths really wanted.
Your claim that Ammianus Marcellinus describes the establishment of “death camps” for pagans is a wild distortion. In his Rerum Gestarum 19.12.3-18, Ammianus Marcellinus states that the emperor Constantius II was presented with information about what questions people had been asking the oracle at Besa. Upon reading some of the inquiries from some members of the Roman aristocracy, the emperor came to believe that some aristocrats were plotting against him.
Constantius II therefore dispatched the imperial notary Paulus Catena to apprehend and execute aristocrats who were believed to be plotting against him. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Paulus Catena established a kangaroo court at Skythopolis in Palestine and began torturing and executing those aristocrats whom he believed were plotting against the emperor. Ammianus Marcellinus is clearly describing a paranoid effort by an imperial notary to enforce loyalty to the emperor among members of the aristocracy, not a systematic genocide against practitioners of traditional polytheism. In fact, Ammianus Marcellinus doesn’t even say a word about the religious beliefs of Paulus Catena’s victims.
I cannot find the text of the “Apostolic Rules” you cite here, but it sounds like a set of rules for monks to follow. Ironically, if it really says what you claim it says, it actually demonstrates that many early Christians, including apparently monks, were reading works of ancient Greek literature. There would be no need for the rules to admonish monks to not read “pagan literature” unless it was common for monks at the time to read “pagan literature.” People rarely ever admonish other people not to do things unless people are actually doing those things that they seek to discourage.
The main reason why so many classical sculptures are missing limbs is not because Christians intentionally hacked pieces off of them for religious reasons, but rather because they are thousands of years old and, in many cases, they’ve suffered natural wear, fallen over, been buried by natural forces, and so forth. I have actually written an entire article on this subject. We can be reasonably sure that, in most cases, classical statues are damaged because of natural wear because they show exactly the same kinds of wear that other statues from other parts of the world where Christianity wasn’t dominant show. In most cases, classical sculptures also show exactly the kinds of damage we would expect from natural wear.
There are a few surviving examples of sculptures that have clearly been vandalized by Christians, such as a marble head of the goddess Aphrodite currently on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens that was found in the Athenian Agora with a cross chiseled into her forehead. These, however, are exceptions to the overall trend. It is worth noting that, as I discuss in this article from last month, Constantine I and his successors actually used a large number of ancient Greek sculptures to decorate the city of Constantinople. Many of those sculptures remained there until the city was sacked in 1204 AD by the western European Crusaders. This clearly shows a Byzantine appreciation for classical sculptures.
Your claim that early Christians destroyed “all monuments, altars and temples still standing in Athens, Olympia and other Greek cities” is obviously wrong to anyone who has ever visited any ruins in Athens. For instance, in Athens, the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and the Temple of Hephaistos are all still very much standing today and so are a whole host of other temples and monuments. Most ancient Greek temples were either converted into churches or simply abandoned; only a relatively small minority of them were actively destroyed.
I don’t have time to respond to all your inaccuracies. Most of the descriptions you give here are wildly distorted versions of real events. In many cases, you seem to conflate Christian opposition to traditional Greek religious practices with Christian opposition to Greek culture generally, even though these are not at all the same thing; Greek culture remained quite dominant throughout the eastern Roman Empire long after the Empire converted to Christianity.
I would really appreciate it if you would keep your comments shorter in the future so I will be able to more thoroughly respond to them.
By the way, why do you call Justinian I “Jutprada-Justinian”? I’ve never heard anyone call him “Jutprada” before. That definitely isn’t a name from Greek or Latin. Is that a name he is known by in some Indic language perhaps?
Dear Alexander. Αγαπητέ Αλέξανδρε
I never wrote that the library of Alexandria was destroyed by Christians. I wrote that the books were saved because there were other libraries in the Mediterranean where Christianity had not spread.
I have to write a lot because you put a lot of topics. So as not to annoy you and make you sad, I will not comment at all if you will. I’ll try to be brief.
You respond selectively where you think you are right. You express the views and excuses of the Church. It’s not as innocent as you think. History and religious history are different things. It’s not bad to be a good Christian, but when it comes to history, you have to separate them.
I’m Greek and I know very well what “Ελληνίζειν” means “to be like Greek” is not just language and religious practices. It is philosophy, science, knowledge, questioning, being a citizen (πολίτης) and not a subject ( υπήκοος), a completely different system of values.
The text of Ammianus Marcellinus in Latin which I suppose you can translate. Of course, there are also political persecutions, but it is against those who asked all sorts of questions in the oracle of Abydus and those who were wearing something “pagan” seemed, were, or accused them of being “pagan”. Of course they were not Christians.
3.oppidum est Abydum in Thebaidis parte situm extrema. Hic Besae dei localiter adpellati oraculum quondam futura pandebat, priscis circumiacentium regionum caerimoniis solitum coli.
4.et quoniam quidam praesentes, pars per alios desideriorum indice missa scriptura supplicationibus expresse conceptis consulta numinum scitabantur. statimque ad orientem ocius ire monuit Paulum potestate delata, ut instar ducis rerum experientia clari ad arbitrium suum audiri efficeret causas
5. Perrexit, ut praeceptum est, Paulus funesti furoris et anhelitus plenus dataque calumniae indulgentia plurimi ducebantur ab orbe prope terrarum iuxta nobiles et obscuri, quorum aliquos vinculorum adflixerant nexus, alios claustra poenalia consumpserunt.
8.et electa est spectatrix suppliciorum feralium civitas in Palaestina Scythopolis, gemina ratione visa magis omnibus oportuna,
13.criminibus vero serpentibus latius per inplicatos nexus sine fine distentos quidam corporibus laniatis extinguebantur, alii poenis ulterioribus damnati sunt bonis ereptis Paulo succentore fabularum crudelium quasi e promptuaria cella fallaciarum et nocendi species suggerente conplures, cuius ex nutu prope dixerim pendebat incedentium omnium salus.
14. nam siqui remedia quartanae vel doloris alterius collo gestaret, sive per monumentum transisse vesperum malivolorum argueretur indiciis, ut veneficus sepulchrorumque horrores et errantium ibidem animarum ludibria colligens vana pronuntiatus reus capitis interibat.
Of course, you didn’t answer the basic questions about the Codex Theodosianus and Codex Justinianus.
You didn’t respond to the “Synodikon” and “anathema”, which is still read on Sunday of Orthodoxy every Mart. If you don’t know them I can send them to you.
You didn’t answer at what time you would like to live without fear, to save more books.
We love our ancestors the ancients Greeks and the Byzans, but we also love history with all its faults or, if you like, its crimes. We do not round things up. We want them clean, white or black and not gray, not blendded.
Τhank you very much for your time.
* Justinianus was a poor child of a farm family from Illyria. Jutprada was his first name. He was adopted by Justin I and gave him the name Justinianus.
I have no problem with you commenting; it’s just that when you write such long comments, it’s hard for me to respond to everything because I can’t spend all my time responding to comments.
As I noted in my previous comment, it’s true that practicing traditional polytheistic religion was eventually banned in the Roman Empire, but there is a huge difference between banning people from worshipping the Greek deities and banning people from reading ancient Greek writings and literature. Ancient Greek literature was widely studied and admired throughout Byzantine history.
Justinian I was a native speaker of Latin. His original name before he adopted the name Iustinianus was Petrus Sabbatius. His full regnal name in Greek was Φλάβιος Πέτρος Σαββάτιος Ἰουστινιανός (Flávios Pétros Savvátios Ioustinianós). There is no record of him having borne the name “Jutprada” at any point in his life. My guess is that this is a modern name for him in some language, probably derived from his name Iustinianus. My first supposition was that it might be a name for Justinian in an Indic language, but I think now it may be Slavic.
All of the stuff that he told you are from the books of a greek neopagan leader called Rassias which as you just perfectly showed are myths and miss interpretations or literaly made up nonsense to garner sympathy for his cult thank you for giving him a reality check
Thanks. I did not have time to track down the exact sources for all of his claims, but I figured he was probably getting his claims from a book written by some Greek Neopagan leader, since the claims he was making sounded like the sorts of claims that a nationalistic, anti-Christian Greek Neopagan leader would make.
Also, I looked around on the internet and the only sources I could find that used the name “Jutprada” for Justinian I were ones written by nationalistic, anti-Christian Greek Neopagans. That sent off alarm bells in my head telling me that there must have been some Greek Neopagan leader who started it at some point.
Huge anti-semites too
Rassias is not a historian he is a propagandist
Fine article, Spencer. You comment towards the end about the migration of Greek scholars following the demise of the Empire in 1453. How then does this transmission of knowledge compare with what occurred following the 4the Crusade? It may be terribly difficult to pinpoint who and what came over when and how, but it all makes me curious as to how key figures of the earlier high middle ages in western Europe, like Dante and Aquinas (13th century Italians to be precise) would have obtained their ancient Greek & Roman sources. Could the strong links we know existed between Constantinople and Venice well before 1204 have passed texts?
Dear McDaniel in German schools is taught:
in the dark age the monasteries in Germany copied and thus preserved many Greek and Roman books.
But the contradictions is that every monastery at that time in Germany had only a few hundred books and 90% were of religious content. Even the library of the Vatikan in 1500 had only 400 books and 90 % of them contained religious stuff. In the west roman empire only 1 of every 1000 books survived.
German historians say:
When Christianity became state church in 378 a.d., the influence of the church got stronger and stronger: we must prepare for heaven, knowledge is not important, faith in god is.
The influence of the church led to the shut down of theatres, libraries, schools…
Before 378 a.d. about 30% in the Roman empire could read and write.
At around 600 a.d. only a few could read and write, most of them were clerics. For this reason most of the mayors in the former west roman empire at around 600 were bishops. The tax money was spent mostly spent for churches, monasteries,
no money for infrastructure and education. This created the Dark Age.
Even the emperor Charles the great could not read and write.
In Sicily there was no dark age because till
1098 a.d. all or parts belonged to Moslems and/or Byzanz.
Some German historians have found out:
The recuperation of old Greek and Roman books we owe to:
1. Arabic world, Damaskus for example bought books from Byzanz and translated
2. Sicily had preserved books.
3. Scholars with their books fled to western Europe shortly before and after the fall of Byzanz in 1452 a.d.
4. During the reconquista of Spain ten thousands of books fell in the hands of the Spanish people. The library of Toledo f.e. had over 10000 books.
This four sources led to the Renaissance.
A lot of what you say here is inaccurate. Your claim that the Christian church taught that “knowledge is not important” is not true in any way, nor is it in any way true that “the influence of the church” led to libraries and schools being shut down. On the contrary, Christians in late antiquity and the Middle Ages generally believed that knowledge was very important. Medieval Christians, both in the Byzantine Empire and in western Europe, generally believed that studying both ancient texts and the natural world was good. The High and Late Middle Ages saw the birth of many universities that still exist today, including the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. I’ve written a whole article debunking that idea that the Middle Ages were a “Dark Age,” which I highly recommend reading. Here is a link to it.
Dear Spencer, THANKS FOR THE STUDY !
Dear Alexander I really feel the deep need to congratulate you for you excellent knowledge and your courage to search the trurh and discover the real meanings that history learns us. 👏👏