Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/104

 82 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. immense fortress simultaneously attacked and besieged from all sides. Her vast borders — ex- tending from the Apennines to Jerusalem, from the Syrtes to the mountainous regions of Ar- menia — had to be repeatedly defended against the enemies of half the world. Within, she had to fight heresy after heresy, but succeeded nevertheless in raising the edifice of the Church upon solid and enduring founda- tions, and at the same time, by preserving and completing the Roman legislation, she estab- lished principles of jurisprudence which are rec- ognized to-day throughout the civilized world. We have to lay great stress on the most ex- traordinary significance of the Byzantine Em- pire: from the end of the Roman reign, the Byzantines were the heirs and preservers of a highly developed civilization and of the treasures of antique culture. It is true that the Byzantine literature could not rival the productions of earlier ages, but it preserved none the less the traditions of the intellectual splendor of Greece. The time when the Turkish cannon made an opening into the gigantic walls of Constanti- nople corresponds to the period when the Wes- tern countries — thanks to the Byzantines, now strong and happy — developed the new culture