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373 views11 pagesTreadgold, The Macedonian Renaissance
Treadgold, The Macedonian Renaissance
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Christopher BonuraCopyright
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/ 11
CHAPTER 4
The Macedonian Renaissance
WARREN TREADGOLD
with many terms for cultural movements, the term
“Macedonian renaissance” is an imperfeet one. The
“Macedonians” in it were Byzantine emperors of the ninth and
tenth centuries who were known as “Macedonians” only be
ccause the founder of the dynasty was bor in a part of Thrace
that the Byzantines, for some reason, called the province of
Macedonia. The dynasty’s name may have been attached to the
cultural revival of the ninth and tenth centuries partly because
of the literary accomplishments of two of its members. The
second Macedonian, Leo VI the Wise, was the nominal author
of several works, and Leo’s son, Constantine VII Porphyrogeni-
tus, wrote or commissioned scores of volumes. By and large,
however, “Macedonian” refers to the period when the revival
took place rather than to the people who brought the revival
about. The reigns of the first four Macedonian emperors (867—
1959) covered nearly a century during which Byzantine scholars
‘wrote, read, and copied an extraordinary amount of literature.
About chirty years ago, when the term “Macedonian renais
sance” was already in common use, most scholars considered
ita satisfactory name as far as the dates went, In art and archi
tecture, revival did seemingly set in at about the time the Mi
edonian dynasty took power, if only because figural religious
art was reappearing after the long period of Iconoclasm, when
such ait had been under an official ban.’ According to recent
scholarship, however, learning and literature began to revive as
early as eighty years before the first Macedonian clawed his
76 Warren Treadgold
way to the throne. Here I shall consider the revival of leaming
throughout this whole period of some 180 years, during only
the latter part of which Macedonian emperors reigned. In fact,
because the revival originated during the movement's non-
Macedonian half, I shall devote most of my attention to it.
AAs for the word “renaissance,” it has by now become impre-
cise enough to avoid the misleading connotations of the alter-
nate name given by Paul Lemerle in the title of his book The
First Byzantine Humanism. If “humanism” simply means
reading and understanding Greek literature of the classical pe-
riod, humanism had never died cut at Byzantium. On the other
hand, if “humanism” means a secular spirit that takes classical
literature on its own terms, no Byzantine of the period would
have admitted to such a thing, and only one or two can reason:
ably be accused of it
‘The Byzantine phrase for “secular learning” was “the out-
side leaming” (ré paler ueOiparal. Inside learning, which
the Byzantines considered their own, was of course Christian
learning. Anything else was foreign to them and of secondary
importance, Certainly, every Byzantine who prided himself on
his education wanted to know more than the minimum that
was basic and essential, and men of real leaming, as in every
society, particularly wanted to acquire specialized knowledge
of exotic and superfluous subjects, But this sort of attitude to-
ward the Classics is not what we usually call “humanistic.”
This being said, interest in earlier Greek literature did revive
strongly around the year 800, in a major change from the com-
paratively “dark” preceding period. This change does not ap-
pear to be primarily the result of any emperor's official policy.
Te was a gradual process that passed through several phases.
‘The Second Sophistic began some five hundred years of
steady and substantial production of literature in Greek. The
extent ofthis literature is easy to averlook because today much
of it is lost, much more of it is hardly ever read, and what is
occasionally read is read by people in different disciplines. But,
put together, the pages written in Greek between 4.D. 100 and,
600 would easily outnumber those written before them. ‘The Macedonian Renaissance 77
‘The great secular and Christian authors of these five centu-
ries are more or less familiar, at least as names: Lucian and Plu-
tarch, Plotinus and Origen, Libanius and John Chrysostom,
Proclus and Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, Procopius and
Romanus the Melode. They and other authors of their time ac-
count for nearly all the Greck Fathers, Neoplatonists, medical
writers, and novelists; they also produced many volumes of
history, oratory, poetry, and so on. But, even a little before 600,
the pace of literary production slackened; in the seventh cen-
tury it fell off drastically, and by the eighth century Greek lit
erature seemed almost to have ended. To judge from the manu-
seripts that survive today, between the years 600 and 800
people even stopped copying most earlier works.”
‘The blame for these “Byzantine Dark Ages” has often gone
to the Empire's military problems. These were the years in
which Persian, Avar, Arab, and Bulgarian invaders were raiding
and conquering all over the Empire, Certainly the Arabs’ con-
‘quest of Syria and Egypt, with their great cultural centers at
Antioch and Alexandria, was a blow to Greek literature. Stil,
before the invasions Constantinople had already become a cul-
tural center of more importance than any of those that were
lost. And the impoverishment and military preoccupations of
the remaining Byzantines cannot by themselves really explain
the cultural decline, After all, the far worse military problems
of Byzantium under the Palaeologan dynasty did not prevent
voluminous literary production. For that matter, neither did
disastrous defeat in the Peloponnesian War cut off Greek liter
ature at Athens. A society must be poor and preoccupied in-
deed to be unable to produce some writers.
But in the Byzantine Dark Ages there were other complica
tions, some of which were not related to military events. In the
first place, in the sixth century the imperial government,
nearly completing the process of extinguishing paganism, for-
bade pagan scholars to teach. Secular literature naturally suf-
fered with the disappearance of pagan teachers, who had valued
the Greek Classics on their own terms and for their own sake.
‘The disasters of the seventh century then compounded the
damage by convincing many Christians that the world was
78 Warren Treadgold
coming to an end, and consequently turning their attention to
spiritual matters.’ At the same time, the decline of secular edu-
cation and secular literature affected even Christian literature
adversely.
‘The most important cause of the decline in literary produc
tion, however, was probably the decline of the group of people
who produced and read literature. Though around its fringes
this group is hard to define, defining its center is easy: it was
the Empire's civil and religious officials. The continuing mili
tary crisis advanced the influence of generals and the army at
the expense of the bureaucracy and the church hierarchy. In ad-
dition, the years around 700 were a time of frequent revolu-
tions and changes in official church doctrine, during which the
bureaucracy and the Church were repeatedly purged, and the
army usually came out on top.
The final stage in the decline of the Empire's civil and reli
‘gious officialdom came with the introduction of Iconoclasm in
726. The emperors imposed Iconoclasm with military support
against the opposition of most of the old civil and religious,
governing class. Most of the men and women of this class
deeply resented what seemed to them to be arbitrary interfer-
ence in the forms of public worship that they considered un-
changeable and in the doctrines of a church that they and their
relatives administered. Some protested or rebelled, and were
exiled. Monks in particular led the theological opposition, and
were exiled, tortured, or even martyred as a result. Other civil
servants and clergy who were also disaffected prudently made
themselves inconspicuous. Religious literature suffered be
cause few writers cared to write in defense of Iconoclasm, but
even fewer cared to suffer the consequences of writing against
it, The one prominent Greek writer of the mid-eighth century,
John of Damascus, was able to write against Iconoclasm only
because he lived in Arab territory, safely outside the reach of
the Byzantine government.
The huck of the disgruntled civil servants and clergy finally
changed in 780, when the Empress Irene took power after the
death of her husband, Leo IV. Irene was herself opposed to Icon-
oclasm and acted on her opinion almost at once. She recalled
the exiled iconophiles and allied herself with the civil service The Macedonian Renaissance 79
and the monks, The contemporary chronicler Theophanes,
himself a monk from a family of civil servants, records under
the year 781: ‘’The pious began to express themselves freely,
and the word of God began to spread, ... and the monasteries
began to be restored, and every good thing began to show it-
self.” Such was the situation at about the time when, accord-
ing to recent scholarly opinion, the revival of learning began.
Before following the revival’s course, however, I would like to
survey briefly the state of the Empire's educated class about
780,
‘Most of the responsibility for maintaining education in the
Empire fell upon the members of the civil service, because
they, unlike monks and bishops, could marry and have chil-
dren. Indeed, the most prominent bishops and monks were
usually former civil servants or the sons of civil servants, The
importance of the civil service was further enhanced by its be-
ing heavily concentrated in Constantinople, where, along with
the leading clergy, it formed a cohesive elite. This elite was
never very large. About six hundred officials manned the cen-
tral bureaucracy, and pethaps three hundred more were at-
tached t0 the staff of the Imperial Palace. The staff of the
Church, under the Patriarch of Constantinople, might have
added another hundred; the important urban abbots and monks
might have made two hundred more. By including the chief
military officials and private lawyers, notaries, teachers, and
stewards, we might bring the total to two thousand or so, This
total, small as it seems, could have been nearly a tenth of the
adult males in Constantinople. These men had to be well edu-
cated in order to hold their positions in government and soc
ety. A few others, among the merchants, nuns, and wives and
daughters of civil servants, might also have had a fairly ad-
vanced education, but in 780 heir mmbers were probably very
‘The members of this elite group had studied in their youth
‘with private schoolmasters of the better sort. These taught
them to read and write Koine Greek, the language of the New
Testament and of many postelassical authors. By the eighth
century, spoken Greek differed markedly from what it had
been in classical or even New Testament times. It had evolved
80 Warren Treadgold
into something more like modem Greek, but the literary lan-
‘guage remained frozen in the first century A.D,, with an archaic
spelling, vocabulary, and above all grammar. Grammar was
therefore the most important subject in a first-class Byzantine
school, though some attention was also paid to rhetoric, which
in this context meant the art of using and appreciating an ar-
chaie style
Most students probably learned to read on the Septuagint
and the New Testament, but ideally they were then supposed
to read some of the Classics, works written in an even more
archaic language, usually Attic Greek. The Byzantines’ list of
“Classics” included some authors familiar to us, such as
Homer, Euripides, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Pindar, and
Theocritus. The list also included some less expected authors:
Theognis, Pscudo-Menander, Aclius Aristides, and St. Gregory
of Nazianzus.’ During the Byzantine Dark Ages, many stu-
dents probably did not get much beyond the Bible, and read
only a little of only a few of the Classics. But their education.
enabled them at least to understand and to draft state orders,
documents, and letters in literary Greek,
‘A very select few within the elite acquired more than the ba-
sic education I have outlined so far. But since ordinary school-
masters offered no more, the more serious student had either
to teach himself ot to seek the help of a particularly distin-
{guished scholar, who was probably not a teacher by profession.
‘At least one student of the time was fortunate enough to learn
not merely poetry but the principles of classical metrics from,
St. Tarasius, head of the imperial chancery.* But such advanced.
knowledge was rare before 780, and specialized knowledge of
‘mathematics and the natural sciences seems to have been pax-
ticularly unusual. The same skills that the educated used to
‘compose government orders, documents, and ordinary letters
could of course have been tumed to composing formal litera
‘ture. But apparently this happened very seldom before 780.
Naturally, even around 786, the educated elite of the capital
formed only a fraction of the literate people in the Empire, Not
only in Constantinople but throughout the provinces tens of
thousands of priests, monks, military officers, tax collectors,
Jandowners, traders, and others must have learned to read and The Macedonian Renaissance 81
write from the Psalms and the New Testament.’ Homer and
Aclius Aristides were probably too hard for them, but they
could read simple texts such as saints’ lives and keep simple
records and accounts. Besides these people, a few members of
the elite were scattered over the provinces as provincial offi
cials, bishops, or abbots. But the provinces were not a promis-
ing place to look for a revival of learning. Constantinople had
the Empire's only important concentrations of educated men,
schools, rewards for scholarship, and, above all, books.
‘Though little specific information is available about books
in Constantinople around 780, we know that the Emperor, the
Patriarch of Constantinople, and various churches and monas-
teries all maintained libraries there." Subsequent events were
to show that these libraries and others still held not only the
ancient Greek literature that has been directly transmitted to
tus, but about as much again that is lost today."" Some literature
hhad already been lost. The Quinisext Council of 692 had
sternly condemned those who destroyed or sold for packing
material copies of the Bible or the Fathers, unless these had al-
ready been damaged by bookworms or moisture." That such ¢
condemnation was necessary for religious books is adisturbing
sign, and nothing at all forbade someone from using a manu:
script of Aeschylus to light the stove or wrap up fish. In the
ninth century we hear complaints that the people of earlier
years had discarded many useful books 2s useless.” That some
books were discarded and virtually none copied certainly
shows that during the Byzantine Dark Ages many books were
left unread, Relatively few texts, however, seem to have per-
ished altogether at the time.
‘When the Empress Irene took power in 780 and recalled the
exiles, she was not setting out to begin a classical revival. But
she soon did begin to sponsor patristic research. Her aim was to
condemn Iconoclasm for good and all, and to that end she gath-
cred scholars to lay the theological groundwork for an Ecumen-
ical Council. In 784 she appointed as the new Patriarch of Con-
stantinople the most learned man she could find: St. Tarasius,
head of the imperial chancery, former teacher of classical met-
rics, and a staunch defender of icons." Tarasius directed his
staff to search the works of the Fathers for passages that could
Sa Warren 'reaagold
be used to defend icons and refute Iconoclasm. Though Tara-
sius’s assistants chiefly used the library of the Patriarchate,
they consulted other collections as well. At the Seventh Ecu-
menical Couneil of 787 they presented the results of their re-
search, and did s0 meticulously. Since they argued that the
iconoclasts had defended their heresy by citing patristic pas-
sages out of context, Tarasius and his librarian and notaries
took eare to read out their citations at length and to produce
the actual volumes for verification.
‘The research done for this council was the beginning of a
trend. At about the same time, monks and monasteries in and
around the capital embarked upon a program of manuscript
‘copying. Though the texts they copied were overwhelmingly
theological and the effort was undertaken largely to help de~
fend the icons, the manner in which the manuscripts were cop-
ied itself represented a scholarly advance. The scribes used the
minuscule hand, which unlike the former uncial indicated the
divisions between words and included accent marks and punc~
tuation. This hand not only made manuscripts easier to read
and understand, but because it was cursive, unlike the uncial,
it was also quicker to write." The new wave of copying was ev-
‘dently a sign that the reading public was expanding, certainly
‘among the monks, and apparently among others who had de-
veloped an enthusiasm either for religious literature or for the
high offices Irene might award to them if they knew religious
literature. And, finally, some new works began to be written
and copied. Among the first examples were some sermons and
letters of St. Tarasius and saints' lives of iconophiles whom the
iconoclasts had persecuted.”
‘At about the same time, two historical works were also writ-
ten, each of which was significant in its own way. Naturally,
both say unpleasant things about the iconoclasts, and to put
the deeds of the iconoclasts in a justly unfavorable light was no
doubt one of the purposes of their authors, But both histories
extend so far back before Iconoclasm that they must also repre-
sent something more: a desire to record properly the events
that had been recorded inadequately during the Dark Ages.
‘One of the two texts, begun as the Chronicle of the church
official George Syncelhis, is more a work of reference than of The Macedonian Renaissance 83
literature, George begins with the ereation of the world and
narrates biblical and secular history up to the reign of Diocle-
tian, With Diocletian, the chronicle, now bearing the name of
George's friend Theophanes, is organized into annual entries,
elaborately labeled according to various chronological systems
George's chronicle with Theophanes’ continuation fills two
good-sized volumes and extends up to the year 813, approx
mately the time of its completion. Its style is straightforward,
not very elegant, and somewhat more popular than that ofthe
New Testament. Noone counts it among the world’s great his-
tories; itis often looked down upon because ofits righdly annal:
istic form {which seems to be considered a weakness in mid-
dlebrow historians, though notin highbrow ones like Thucyé
ides or Tacitus). Yet today the chronicle of “Theophanes” is
‘much our most important source for the Byzantine Dark
‘Ages. It provides our only chronology for the period. More-
lover, every later Byzantine historian who goes back so far e:
ther paraphrases Theophanes or begins where Theophanes left
off. In view of is cautious attitude toward its disorderly and in-
adequate sources and its innovation in the absence of a true
‘mael, the chronicle of George Syncellus and Theophanes is
not entirely unworthy ofits position at the foundation of Mic
dle Byzantine historiography."
Probably a bit earlier in date is the historical work of Ni-
ccephorus, then an imperial secretary, and later Patriarch of
Constantinople. It is brief—about eighty pages—and covers
‘only the Dark Ages, supplying litele information that is not
also in Theophanes. Its claim to distinction is that itis, as far
as we can tell, the first explicitly lassicizing work written in
the Empire for almost two centuries. In fact, it is formally a
‘continuation of the last known classicizing history, that of
‘Theophylact Simocatta, and was probably intended to be cop-
ied ina single manuscript with Theophylact, as at an early date
it was.” A recent critic has called Nicephorus’s history a
‘rather feeble effort," and admittedly it reflects the spizit of
“Thucydides less successfully than it imitates his language.”
But the striking thing about Nicephorus's work is that in ithe
self-consciously revived history of the classical type at Byzan-
‘tium after a long lapse. Once again, Attic Greek was not only
84 Warren Treadgold
being read but written, Nicephorus plainly expected his exam-
ple to be followed, and it soon was."
Such was the very earliest stage of the Byzantine revival of
learning, which lasted from about 780 to 815. Its course sug-
gests the revival’s cause: the reaction of the Byzantine edu
cated elite against Iconoclasm. This is not to say that the icon-
‘clasts had caused the Dark Ages by persecuting the elite and
that when Iconoclasm departed enlightenment automatically
dawned—though that is more or less what Theophanes would
hhave us think, According to him, the first iconoclast Emperor,
Leo Ill, “punished many because of their piety, .. . especially
those distinguished in family and reputation, $0 that he also
‘extinguished the schools and the pious learning that had pre
vailed from [the Emperor] St. Constantine the Great up to that,
‘time, of [that learning], among many other good things, this
Leo was the destroyer.” It was only under Irene, says
‘Theophanes, that “every good thing” (presumably including
learning) "began to show itself” once again. In fact, the Dark
‘Ages had been pretty dark well before Iconoclasm. But accurate
‘or not, the idea that the iconoclasts had gone wrong by reject-
ing and distorting Christian learning served to impress icono-
philes with the importance of knowledge in general
It might seem therefore that when the Emperor Leo V
shocked the Empire's elite by reintroducing Iconoclasm in 815,
Byzantine leaming would have suffered. Yet if anything the op-
posite occurred. The iconoclasts had evidently been stung by
the charge that they had misinterpreted patristic literature,
and they were determined to prove the charge false. Leo V
found his own scholars—with the resources of an emperor it
‘was not too hard to do—and appointed them to a patristic re-
search commission of his own, The commission naturally ar-
rived at the conclusion that the iconophiles were the ones who
hhad misinterpreted the Fathers, and iconophilism was duly
condemned. For their part, the iconophiles did not take this de-
cision lying down and began an extensive underground icon-
chile literature. At the same time, the scholarship of both
iconophiles and iconoclasts was beginning to include secular
subjects a5 well as religious ones. I shall concentrate here on
this secular knowledge. The Macedonian Renaissance 85
‘The iconoclasts’ leading intellectual light was John the
‘Grammarian, to judge from his epithet a former schoolmaster,
‘who served as head of the iconoclast research commission in
814, When the historian St. Nicephorus was deposed as Patri
arch of Constantinople because of his defense of the icons, the
emperor wanted to appoint John the Grammarian to the office
bbut was dissuaded because of John’s relative youth and low
birth. John still went on to have a brilliant career, first as an
abbot, then as a high church official and tutor to the future Em-
peror Theophilus. Finally, after Theophilus became emperor,
John was appointed Patriarch in 838. Although the few frag:
‘ments of John’s writings that survive are iconoclast theology,
John scems also to have been famous for scientific knowledge,
which at the time was uncommon at Byzantium. What pre:
cisely he did as a scientist is unclear. The iconophiles charged
that John practiced divination and magic in an underground
laboratory, where beautiful nuns assisted him in a variety of
professional and unprofessional capacities. John. also super-
vised the planning and constuction of «palace for Theophi-
‘The leading scientific scholar of the day was John’s cousin,
Leo the Mathematician. Though at the start of his career he
‘was identified as an iconoclast, Leo appears to have been one of
the very few Byzantines of his time who did not care much
about icons one way or the other. He may even be an example
of that greater rarity, a Byzantine who was mainly interested in
secular learning for its own sake. Leo certainly began his career
as.a schoolmaster. The story goes that, despite the prominence
of his cousin John, Leo lived in poverty and obscurity until the
middle of the reign of Theophilus. But in 838 one of Leo's stu-
dents was captured by the Arabs and taken to the court of the
Caliph. The student displayed a knowledge of Euclidean geom-
‘etry that none of the Caliph’s court geometers could match,
and attributed his erudition to Leo the Mathematician. The
Caliph then wrote to Leo in Constantinople, inviting him to
‘come to the Arab court to teach, Leo shrewdly reported the Ca
liph’s job offer to the Emperor Theophilus, and Theophilus re-
sponded by founding a public school under Leo's direction in
the Magnaura Palace.
86 Warren Treadgold
‘The disappointed Caliph continued to write letters, asking at
least to have Leo sent to him for a short time. But Theophilus
refused, saying, ‘Tt would be senseless . . . to divulge to the
infidels the knowledge of the universe for the sake of which
the Roman race is marveled at and honored by all.’* Shortly
thereafter, as a special honor, Theophilus appointed Leo Met-
ropolitan of Thessalonica. The poor mathematician seems to
have been somewhat out of place in that role, to judge from a
surviving sermon in which he discusses the Pentecost in terms
of the properties of the numbers 1, 7, 8, 49, and 50.” Leo was
not apparently much disappointed when the iconophiles re-
‘turmed to power and deposed him.
‘The reign of Theophilus, patron of John the Grammarian and
Leo the Mathematician, marked a major advance for Byzantine
Teaming. From then on it was taken for granted, as it had been
before the Dark Ages, that the emperor would patronize re-
search on secular subjects. Once again, as belore the Dark
‘Ages, there was a public school under imperial sponsorship
that had a secular curriculum. Certainly, Theophilus did not
consider secular learning mainly an end in itself. The emperor
was a devout iconoclast, and could think of no better place for
John and Leo than at the head of the Empire's two greatest
bishoprics, Constantinople and Thessalonica. Theophilus may
even have allowed his school at the Magnaura to lapse during
the three years that Leo served as Metropolitan of Thessa-
Ionica. But Theophilus did set some value on secular knowl
edge, at least as a means of glorifying his reign. He spent large
sums to outfit his throne room with golden machines: me-
chanical lions that roared, mechanical birds that sang, and a
large organ. Perhaps he simply regarded Leo the Mathemati-
cian as another sort of court omament that did marvelous
things (though sometimes useful ones—Leo devised an optical
telegraph that linked Constantinople and the Arab frontier!
Still, by such means technology and knowledge can advance.”
1 shall pass over the theological works written by the mem-
bers of the iconophile underground, including the deposed
Patriarch Nicephorus. The most interesting member of this
‘group for our purposes was a young man who gained promi
nence only after the death of Theophilus and the second con- ‘The Macedonian Renaissance 87
