Christian Byzantium and Greek Civilisation

Not only did Christian Byzantium save Europe from the Mahometan Jihad, acting as the protective shield for the West, or the remaining rump of the former Roman empire, it also salvaged ancient Greek philosophy, science and literature.  The Byzantine ‘Renaissance’ from the 9^th to 11^th centuries, was similar to the Carolingian in Francia during the 9^th century, but deeper, broader and more extensively premised on ‘classical’ Greek history and sources.  Universities were developed in Constantinople during the 6^th century, predating ‘Western’ institutions by some 500 years.  Byzantine scholars had long studied the ancient Greeks and reconciled if not incorporated many of their ideas into Christian theology.

The Christian Byzantines or ‘Eastern Romans’ fully embraced their Hellenistic past and culture.  World history would be much different if they had not.  Greek culture and the Koine Greek language suffused and enthused Byzantian society and its development, transmitting ancient Greek ideas and influences to the world. 

Copies of ancients were transcribed and stored in massive libraries and archives.  The largest library in ancient history sat in the Christian Greek city of Alexandria – burned down by the Mahometans in 641 A.D.  Thousands of tonnes of priceless artefacts were destroyed by the Jihad.  Who knows what wisdom, science and philosophy were annihilated in this book burning.  Entirely new perspectives on Christian Byzantium and ancient Greek and Roman history were lost.

Byzantine literature represented a continuation of ancient Greek traditions, replicating the styles of Homer, Lucian and Herodotus.  Byzantine monks collected, translated and copied Greek language texts and classical literature safeguarding them for posterity.  These preserved works were the basis for the Western ‘Renaissance’ of the 15^th century, an event fuelled by Greek refugees fleeing the Mahometan Jihad, who ended up in Italy with their treasures and libraries.

John of Damascus in the 8^th century wrote the ‘Dialectica’, which commented on Aristotle’s ‘Prior Analytics’ and deductive reasoning.  He used this format in the great ‘iconoclasm’ debate of the 8^th century.  If certain principles are known to be factual we can make deductions from that premise.  In the 9^th century Plotinus the Patriarach of Constantinople wrote ‘Amphilocia’ which included a commentary on Aristotle’s ‘Categories’ and concepts of substances and predication.  The 11^th century monk Psellos reintroduced Plato with analysis and commentary, aligning Platonic thought with Christian theology. 

Medicine, much more advanced than the ancient Greek and the ideas of Galen, also flourished in Constantinople, eventually transferred to the West through merchants and the Crusades.  Architecture and new engineering practices abounded during the 1000 years of Byzantine existence.  The Haggia Sophia, built in the 6^th century, was the largest dome ever built and was only imitated and surpassed in Europe in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. 

Roman water works, aqueducts, baths, sewers and fountains providing fresh water dominated major Byzantine cities by 900 A.D.  Such public works did not exist in the West until the 19^th century.  Justinian’s legal codex compiled in the 6^th century, is the basis for Western canon and civil law and directly informs today legal corpus in Western states.  Sundry inventions from the knife and fork, to gunpowder, military inventions, advance art, chemistry, advanced mathematics and governmental organisation, flowed from Byzantium to the West.

The cultural impact of Byzantium on European history was enormous.  It is not an exaggeration to state that the West would not have existed without Christian Byzantium.