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A.D. 640.

A.D. 717.

The quick succession of these revolutions, and the commotions at Constantinople at the close of the seventh century, amply account for the blank which appears during this era in the annals of literature; nor were the events of the succeeding age more favourable to intellectual advancement.

The eighth century is, in fact, the blackest in the history of the Eastern empire. During a brief portion of its commencement, the exhausted virulence of polemical disputation seemed verging towards extinction, when all at once a fresh crater burst into vigorous action in the celebrated ikonoclastic commotions, which rendered the literary history of nearly two centuries almost an absolute blank, "whilst a savage ignorance and contempt for letters disgraced the princes of the Heraclean and Isaurian dynasties." The

early injury, by introducing into Spain the manufacture of paper from cotton. About the beginning of the eighth century, they brought it from Great Bucharia, but it had been known for many centuries previous in Upper Asia. They established a manufactory at Ceuta, whence it was transported to Spain, together with the culture of cotton; and in the eleventh century, the invention or application of water-mills caused a material superiority in the Spanish paper above that of Bucharia, which, owing to the want of machinery, was rough and unfinished. From Spain it was introduced in Germany and the West of Europe, where it gradually attained its present degree of perfection.

717.

remnant of talent surviving to the nation was A.D. devoted exclusively to the furtherance of the all-absorbing contest; and "frigid homilies, insipid narrations of the exploits of pretended saints, vain and subtle disputes about unessential and trivial subjects, vehement and bombastic declamations for or against the worship and erection of images," composed the circle of literature in this degenerate and miserable age.❤ The fury of the disputants, equally levelled against art and learning, annihilated with an unsparing hand the monuments of both; and Leo the Isaurian has been accused of destroying, in his pious frenzy, the Royal College, or Octagon, of Constantinople, where the cultivators of letters had found a refuge on their expulsion from Syria and Egypt by the Saracens. The library attached to this institution had formerly suffered by conflagration in the short reign of Basiliscus,† when the celebrated manuscript of the Iliad and Odyssey, transcribed on the entrails of a serpent one hundred and twenty feet in length, was destroyed. At the period when it was assailed by the Ikonoclasts, it was still said to contain upwards of 20,000 volumes, which were under the guardianship of

* Hallam, Hist. Mid. Ages, vol. ii. c. ix. p. 618. Gibbon, c. liii. Mosheim, Cent. VIII. p. i. c. 2.

↑ A. D. 679.

717.

A.D. the president of the college and his twelve assistants. It was in vain that Leo, by entreaty and by threats, endeavoured to secure their cooperation in his plans of reformation; and at length, wearied with the profitless attempt, he ordered the Octagon to be surrounded with dried piles, and consumed in the flames the refractory professors together with their literary treasure.* The names of two individuals alone in this gloomy century have descended to posterity with any thing like distinction: George Syncellus, whose Chronicle from the creation of the world to the reign of Diocletian, is valuable for its arrangement, but evinces neither originality nor elegance; and John of Damascus, a theologian and philosopher, whose early erudition may in a great degree be attributed to his residence among the Saracens, who were then masters of the city of his birth, and were eagerly employed in transfusing into their own language the neglected learning of the Greeks.§

This charge against the Emperor has given rise to much discussion as to its authenticity; see Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxix. n. Berington, app. i. p. 545. Gibbon, c. liii. n.

+ Died about A. D. 800.

Fabricius, 1. v. c. iv. 38. Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxxv. Berington, app. i. p. 549. Harles, sec. v. p. 538.

§ Greek literature was in another direction a sufferer from the literary propensities of the Arabs, as during this period

754.

John was violently opposed to the proceed- 4.D. ings of the Ikonoclasts, and having condemned them in his writings, was denounced by Leo to the Kalif Abd'ul Melik I. in consequence of which he was forced to retire into Palestine, where he terminated his literary career about A. D. 754. His productions evince a shrewd and accurate judgment, and his style and mode of reasoning render him a phenomenon of learning, when compared with the theologians of the West.*

It is during the ninth century, and especially towards the close, that we begin to perceive the first symptoms of an incipient revival in the literature of the Greeks,† which may in some degree be attributed to a spirit of rivalry excited by the advancing intelligence of the Arabs. During the reign of the emperor Theophilus, 829. a Grecian soldier, who had been captured by the Kalif Al Mamoun, astonished the sages of Bagdad by the profundity of his astronomical and astrological knowledge; but their surprise

many of the works of the ancient Greeks were carried for translation into Arabia, and never returned; their contents alone surviving in the versions of Arabs.

• Schoell, 1. vi. c. xciv. Harles, sec. v. p. 541, chap. iv. p. 714.

+ Gibbon, c. liii. Mill's Theo. Ducas, vol. i. p. 21. Mosheim, Cent. IX. p. i. c. 2.

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A.D.

A.D. was unbounded when he informed them, that

829.

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he was merely the pupil of a master who
dwelt in obscurity and penury at Byzantium.
This philosopher was Leo, of Constantinople,
who supported himself by instructing a few
scholars in a hovel at the capital. He was
forthwith invited by the kalif to visit Bagdad,
but not daring to depart without the permis-
sion of the emperor, Al Mamoun applied to
Theophilus to obtain his consent. Deplor-
ing," he said, "the position in which it had
pleased providence to place him, which deprived
him of the power of visiting the dominions of
the
emperor; as a friend, rather, he would say,
as a pupil, he besought him to grant him an
opportunity of conversing, were it but for a
few days, with the prodigy of philosophy who
then graced his dominions; and trusted, that a
difference of religion would be no obstacle to
granting a favour, to which he hoped his rank
would sufficiently entitle him. You will not,"
continued the kalif, "in conferring on me this
honour, diminish in any degree your own; for
learning, like the beams of the sun, can be in-
finitely distributed without being diminished.
But I will, nevertheless, repay you for the con-
cession, and promise you in return two thou-
sand pounds of gold, and what is more es-
timable still, peace and an eternal alliance."

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