Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/237

 THE CONDITION OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN IL'OO. 219 replied that neither they nor their conntrynien valued such things, but regarded them rather as suited to women ; that the emperor levied a duty called the German tax in order to buy off the enemy ; and that when the senate, the clergy, and the commons refused to help him, he robbed churches and tombs of their treasures in order to raise the amount necessary. In truth, the martial spirit had gone out of the race. The period with which we are immediately concerned, namely, the latter portion of the twelfth century, Period is one -. ,i, ,. Tir .^ of mental was QUO 01 mental stagnation. JMen were occujjied With matters ot such political and immediate in- terest that they had little time for literature or thought. The nation had to meet foreign enemies on every side, and the sol- dier rather than the man of letters was the man to be honored. It was a transition period between the time when scholars had poured out their floods of learning in the development and the definition of Christian theolog}', and the period of the liew movement which led to reformation in religion and to the revolution in politics. Men were resting on the labors of their predecessors, and during the twelfth century made few valuable contributions to human knowledge. There were in- deed signs of a better time, but the dawn was hardly yet at but also of hand. The appreciation of works of art was still meniafciiu-^ high, and was probably growing in strength. By- "'■®- zantine architecture was taking more and more the beautiful forms under which it was to become known to the world as Gothic. The internal decoration of churches, and probably also of private dwellings, had attained a high de- velopment. The mosaics and frescoes of the churches of Con- stantinople were already renowned in Italy, whither artists had gone, and had already prepared the way for the rapid progress in these forms of mural decoration which was made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Church was represented by a fairly educated and married priesthood, whose influence tended to the education of the whole people. The very frequent references to Homer, the constant classical allusions, the quotations from Scripture, show not merely com- paratively widespread reading on the part of the Greek writ-