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 BYZANTINE

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BYZANTINE

the Anacreontics, from the bucolic poets, from Mu- sseus, from the epigrammatists of the Anthology, even from Heliodorus and Longus, and especially from Achilles Tatius". The tone of these romances is characterized by a combination of sickening affecta- tion of style and a crude coarseness of material. (Cf. Krumbacher, 313. 318, 319; Rohde, Der griechische Roman, Leipzig, 1876, 522 sqq. I

The epigram was thus the only form of secular poetry which had an independent revival in Byzan- tine literature, and this at the very time when eccle- siastical poetry also reached its highest perfection, in the sixth and seventh centuries. This age is there- fore the most flourishing period of Byzantine scholarly poetry; its decline in the twelfth century is con- temporary with the rise of popular poetry.

IV. Ecclesiastical and Theological Litera- ture. — While the most flourishing period of _ the secular literature of Byzantium runs from the ninth to the twelfth century, as already seen in the account of its three principal groups, its religious literature developed much earlier. Christianity entered the world as a new force, with all the vigour of youth, be- tween antiquity and the Byzantine Middle Ages; indeed, it first gave to those Middle Ages their dis- tinctive characteristic, that theological element which permeates all Byzantine culture. From the Eastern provinces, Asia Minor and Palestine, came the first great ecclesiastical writers of the fourth century: Athanasius from Alexandria, Eusebius from Pales- tine, Cyril from Jerusalem, Synesius from Gyrene, and above all, the three great Fathers from Cappa- docia, Basil and the two Gregories (of Nyssa and of Nazianzus). The contribution of these districts to Eastern Christianity was twofold: the rhetorical and speculative spirit of Hellenistic thought as it had developed in Alexandria and in Asia Minor, the old home of Greek culture; and the ascetic and dogmatic spirit peculiar to the Orient. The two blended in Byzantine Christianity into a new and peculiar unity which, however, was from the beginning strangely op- posed to the Christian ideal of the Western world, and which finally separated from the latter. Be- cause of the excessive emphasis it laid on asceticism the Eastern Church lost moral influence on practical life, and through its preference for the pagan ideal of ornate discourse, traditional indeed, but in forms no longer generally understood, that church estranged itself from the great masses of the people. " No Greek Father of the Church", says Krumbacher, "rose to the level of the golden sentence of Augustine: 'Let the grammarians find fault with us, if only the people understand us' ". Thus even the ecclesiastical litera- ture of Byzantium, precisely at the period of its first florescence, is Eellenistic in form and Oriental in spirit. This period falls in the fourth century' and is closely associated with the names (if the ecclesiasti- cal writers already mentioned. Their works, which cover the whole field of ecclesiastical prose literature, dogma, exegesis, and homiletics, became typical, even canonical, for the whole Byzantine period, which can therefore show no independent work in this field; on the contrary, scientific theology fell into decay as early as the sixth century; tin- last important work is the ecclesiastical history of Evagrius. Everything later consists, if »< except the controversial writ- ings against sectaries ami the Iconoclasts, of mechani- cal compilations and commentaries, in the form of the so-callr.l I'nlrmr: even the "fountain of Knowl- edge" of John of Damascus (eighth century), the fundamental manual of Greek theology, though syste- matically worked out by a learned and keen intellect,

is merely' a gigantic collection of materials. Even the homily clings to a pseudo-classical, rhetorical foundation, and tends more and more to mere ex- ternal breadth, not to inwardness and depth.

Only three kinds of ecclesiastical literature, which

were as yet undeveloped in the fourth century, ex- hibit later an independent growth. These were the ecclesiastical poetry of the sixth century, popular lives of the saints of the seventh, and the mystic writings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The history of Greek ecclesiastical poetry proves irre- futably how completely ancient poetry had exhausted itself in content and form, and how insufficient were its forms to express new and living thoughts. In ecclesiastical prose literature it was still possible to attempt to preserve ancient forms artificially, but even here we sometimes meet with foreign principles of literary art, which presuppose a new sense of poetry. It has been noticed that in several collections of early Christian correspondence it is not the rhyth- mic laws of Greek rhetorical style which govern the composition, but those of Semitic (Syriac) prose. This fact would be in perfect harmony with the other relations existing between late-Greek and Semitic cul- ture, and the hypothesis of Cardinal Pitra, that the rhythmical poetry of the Byzantines has its origin in the Jewish Psalms of the Septuagint, receives therefrom a new support. As this rhythmic princi- ple accords with the linguistic character of the later Greek, which had no musical, but only a stress, ac- cent, and as it had already been developed in Syriac poetry, we need not wonder that Romanos, the first great ecclesiastical poet of the Greeks to adopt this principle, was a Syrian Jew, who had become a Chris- tian at an early age.

About his life as little is known as about that of his contemporary and fellow-countryman, the chroni- cler Malalas, who also made a vigorous attempt to reform the language. What Malalas is to prose, Romanos is to the Christian poetry of the Greek Middle Ages. If he did not go so far as Malalas, yet he strongly modified the language of poetry and re- leased it from the fetters of the ancient metric laws; he brought it into harmony with the latest idea of poetical form prevailing in his native country as well as with the character of the Greek language. Ro- manos, in fact, did not remain in Syria, but soon went to Constantinople, where he became a deacon of the church of St. Sophia, and where he is said to have first developed his gift for hymn-writing.

Romanos borrowed not only the form of his poems, but also their material and many of their themes, partly from the Old and New Testaments, partly from the (metrical) homilies of the Syrian Father, Ephrem (fourth century). He wrote hymns on the Passion of the Lord, on the betrayal by Judas. Peter's denial, Mary before the Cross, the Ascension, the Ten Virgins, the Last Judgment, whilst among his Old Tes- tament themes mention may be made of the history of Joseph and that of the three young men in the fiery furnace. In giving poetical form to this matter he is said to have composed about a thousand hymns, of which, however, only eighty have come down to us, evidently because in the ninth century the hymns of Romanos were crowded out of the Greek Liturgy by the so-called canones, linguistically and metri- cally more artistic in form. Thenceforth his hymns held their own in only a few of the remoter monas- teries. Characteristic of the technical treatment of his material by Romanos is the great length of his hymns, which are regularly composed of from twenty to thirty stanzas of from twelve to twenty-one verses each, very finely wrought and varied in metrical BtrUCture, and in construction transparent and terse. To appreciate rightly the great length of the hymns we must compare them, not with the more concise Latin hymns, but with the modern oratorios. This resemblance is emphasized by their antiphonal render- ing by alternate choirs. This also explains the dramatic character of many hymns, with their inserted dialogues and choric songs, as in "Peter's Denial", a little drama of human toastfulness and weakness,