Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Learning, literature, science, and art

Page 7

Finally, Critobulus, unsuccessfully imitating Thucydides, composed a eulogistic history of Muhammed II, in the years from 1451 to 1467.

The epoch of the Palaeologi, represented by a number of historians, produced almost no chroniclers. In the fourteenth century there was only one, a certain Ephraim, who wrote a chronicle in verse (about 10,000 lines) embracing the time from Julius Caesar to the restoration of the Empire by Michael Palaeologus in 1261. It is quite useless from the historical point of view.

The problem of union, which became especially pressing in the epoch of the Palaeologi and led twice to the formal achievement of union, as well as the long and stormy Hesychast quarrel, evoked intense activity in dogmatic and polemic literature. The latter produced a number of writers among both partisans and opponents of the union and the Hesychasts; some of these writers have already been discussed.

Three writers and men of affairs may be mentioned among the most eminent partisans of the union: John Beccus who died at the end of the thirteenth century, Demetrius Cydones who lived in the fourteenth century, and the famous learned theologian of the fifteenth century, Bessarion of Nicaea.

John Beccus, a contemporary of Michael Palaeologus, was originally opposed to the reconciliation with Rome and resisted Michael's union policy. He therefore incurred the Emperor's anger and in spite of his high church office was put in prison. According to the sources, Beccus was a man of conspicuous intellect and education. According to a Greek historian, he was distinguished by scholarship, long experience, and eloquence which could put an end to schism. Another historian of the fourteenth century called him a clever man, master of eloquence and learning, endowed with such gifts of nature as no one of his contemporaries possessed... In sharpness of mind, fluency of speech, and knowledge of church dogmas, all others, compared with him, seemed children. The writings of Nicephorus Blemmydes, of the epoch of Nicaea, made him change his religious ideas and sympathies. He became a partisan of the union. Michael VIII elevated him to the patriarchal throne, which he occupied up to the beginning of the reign of Andronicus II. The latter broke the union, deposed Beccus, and confined him in prison, where he died. The longest work of Beccus is a treatise, On the Union and Peace Between the Churches of Old and New Rome, in which the author attempted to prove that the Greek Church Fathers already recognized the Latin dogma, but that the later Greek theologians, with Photius at their head, corrupted their doctrine. Beccus similarly treated the subject of the Procession of the Holy Ghost. He wrote some other theological essays of the same character. For the partisans of union who succeeded him, Beccus works were a rich source from which they were able to draw needed material.

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