Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

Byzantium and the Crusades

Education, learning, literature, and art 

Page 16

The Byzantine renaissance of the twelfth century is interesting and important not only by itself and for itself; it was an essential part of the general west European renaissance of the twelfth century which has been so well described and expounded by C. H. Haskins in The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. In the first two lines of his preface he said, The title of this book will appear to many to contain a flagrant contradiction. A renaissance in the twelfth century! There is no contradiction at all. In the twelfth century western Europe witnessed the revival of the Latin classics, of the Latin language, of Latin prose and of Latin verse, of jurisprudence and philosophy, of historical writings; it was the epoch of the translations from Greek and Arabic and of the beginning of the universities. And Haskins was absolutely right when he said, It is not always sufficiently realized that there was also a notable amount of direct contact with Greek sources, both in Italy and in the east, and that translations made directly from Greek originals were an important, as well as a more direct and faithful, vehicle for the transmission of ancient learning. In the twelfth century direct intercourse between Italy and Byzantium, especially Constantinople, was more frequent and extensive than might be expected at first sight. In connection with the religious plans of the Comneni to draw nearer to Rome, many disputations were held at Constantinople, very often before the emperors, with the participation of the learned members of the Catholic Church who had come to the Byzantine capital for the purpose of a reconciliation between the two churches. These discussions greatly contributed to the transmission of Greek learning to the West. Moreover the trade relations of the Italian commercial republics with Byzantium, and the Venetian and Pisan quarters at Constantinople brought into residence there a number of Italian scholars who learned Greek and transmitted a certain amount of Greek learning to the West. Especially under Manuel Comnenus was there a steady procession of missions to Constantinople, papal, imperial, French, Pisan, and others, and a scarcely less continuous succession of Greek embassies to the west, reminding us of the Greeks in Italy in the early fifteenth century.

Taking into consideration all this activity the conclusion is that the cultural movement of the epoch of the Comneni and Angeli is one of the brilliant pages in the history of Byzantium. In previous epochs Byzantium had had no such revival, and this revival of the twelfth century becomes of much greater importance when it is compared with the cultural revival at the same time in the West. The twelfth century may certainly be designated as the first Hellenic renaissance in the history of Byzantium

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