Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/457

 RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL 411 who looked upon the text with the contempt of scholars disposed to accept paganism as the complement of a higher form of civilisation, and who had no patience with what they regarded as trivialities, but in those of religious and earnest German students, with results, in Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and others, the end of which is not yet visible. The manuscripts which were taken to Italy were the mss. de- seed destined to yield a rich literary harvest, and their removal cS 01 from Constantinople was an advantage. It is otherwise with away - the manuscripts which perished. In 1204 the rude Venetians and Crusaders destroyed great numbers for the sake of their covers. 1 A manuscript which had cost many months of labour, which was written and perhaps illuminated with great skill, was worthy of a costly covering. Some of the bindings were enriched with jewels or with silver or gold clasps and other decorations. The covers rather than the interior were the objects then coveted. There is reason to believe that in the two subsequent centuries thousands of manuscripts disappeared, many possibly stolen or sold for their bindings. But as learning in Constantinople made little progress after the Latin occupation, it is probably to the ignorance of the monks that the disappearance of many of them ought to be attributed. Yet all the evidence which exists shows that an enormous number of manuscripts remained in Constantinople until 1453. We have seen that Ducas declares that during the days following the sack of the city ten volumes on theology and other studies, including Aristotle and Plato, were sold for a small silver coin, and that an in- credible number of manuscripts of the Gospels after they had been stripped of their gold and silver bindings were either sold or given away. 2 Critobulus adds that while a very great number of books were burnt or ignominiously trampled to pieces, the larger number were sold at ridiculous sums, not for the sake of their price, but in contemptuous wantonness. 3 1 Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae. 2 Ducas, xliii. 3 ai Tr€iovs Se alroov, ov irpbs air68o<riv jxaWov fj vfSpip &G. Crit. ch. lxii.