Byzantine Literature - The Legacy of Byzantine Literature

The Legacy of Byzantine Literature

The Roman supremacy in governmental life did not disappear, amplified as it was by its union with the Eastern despotic traditions of rulership. The subjection of the Church to the power of the State led to a governmental ecclesiasticism, causing friction with Roman Catholic Church, which had remained relatively independent.

Greek eventually overtook Latin as the official language of the government, the "Novellae" of Justinian I being the last Latin monument. As early as the 7th century Greek language had made great progress, and by the eleventh Greek was supreme, though it never supplanted the numerous other languages of the empire. While the Greek world preserved the form of its classical literature, the same cannot be said of the classical sense of poetry and imagination. The Byzantine culture broke completely with the classical aesthetic; in literature and in the plastic arts the Oriental aesthetic was victorious.

Some genres such as lyric verse and drama died out, while only in the minor departments of literature was any great degree of skill attained. The classical sense of proportion, beauty, and poetry disappear completely, replaced by a delight in the grotesque and the disproportioned on the one hand, and in ornamental trifles on the other.

Social conditions, more of the East than of classical Athenian/Roman culture, encouraged these aesthetic trends.

The loss of a body of free, educated citizens to Byzantine centralization and the consequent stagnation of municipal life directly affected its literature. No rivals were permitted to Constantinople. Literature concerned only the high official and priestly classes; it was aristocratic or theological rather than popular. Classical standards could be imitated because only the upper classes concerned themselves with literature, but, divorced from the life of the people, it lacked genuine spontaneity. Church hymnology for some time infused fresh life into literature, but even this was of Oriental origin, growing out of Syria. In Byzantium, ecclesiastical and Eastern influences coincided.

The Eastern Roman Empire divided European civilization into two parts: one Romance and Germanic, the other Greek and Slavic. These cultures differed ethnographically, linguistically, ecclesiastically, and historically. Imperial Russia, the Balkans, and Ottoman Empire were the direct heirs of Byzantine civilization; the first two particularly in ecclesiastical, political, and cultural respects (through the translation and adaptation of sacred, historical, and popular literature); the third in respect to civil government.

Indirectly, the Empire protected western Europe for centuries from war, fighting off various invaders and migratory populations. Byzantium was also a treasury of ancient Greek literature. During the Middle Ages, until the capture of the Constantinople, the West was acquainted only with Roman literature. Greek antiquity was first carried to Italy by the treasures brought by fugitive Greek humanists, many of whom were delegates at the Council of Florence from 1331 to 1346.

Byzantine culture had a direct influence upon southern and central Europe in church music and church poetry, though this was only in the very early period (until the 7th century).

Byzantine culture had a definite impact upon the Near East, especially upon the Armenians, the Persians, and the Arabs.