Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/98

 intrusive revolt, the army of the new monks was formed, a phenomenon as important for Byzantium as was for the West the substitution of the forces of Benedict by the powerful legions of the Dominicans and the wandering friars of St. Francis. The monk was no longer, as in early Christian times, a hermit, a lover of desert places, a yogi striving to suppress all that was human in himself. He was no longer to be an element of unrest in the towns, ready to foment or suppress a riot. His goal was to have his own stronghold, with a miltarymilitary [sic] organisation and discipline, prepared to fight and preach, ad libitum, against the enemies of the church. He dwells on inaccessible rocks, as on the Holy Mountain or on the peaks of the Thessalonian mountains.

In their retreat they were at the same time architects, sculptors, painters, theologians, historians, poets. All manner of combat was thus at their disposal. A whole epoch lay to their hands. A hermit, Athanasius, and an emperor, Nicephore Phocas, gave their patronage to the community.

But the Latin Empire intervened, causing Greek retreats in the valleys of Asia Minor, at Nicaea, at Trebizond, under the mountain of Epirus. By their return the Byzantines had no longer the old power to avert foreign influences. These came now from the West, a wholly changed West, which was over-populated, full of energy and of faith in its future, from the west of successful crusades, of prosperous Italian commerce, which had colonised the eastern shores of the Mediterranean with its occidental lords, kings of Jerusalem, Dukes of Antioch, Counts of Tripoli and Edessa. The wives of the emperors came from this Latin eastern world, from Italy, from lesser German principalities. The character of these eastern dynasts was, as for Manuel Comnene, that of a warrior knight, proud of personal risk and adventurous exploits. 94