Byzantine literature. Byzantine literature

3. Old Russian literature and the Byzantine tradition about Muslim civilization It was not only that the Arabistic knowledge of the Greeks and Byzantines never stood high: they were usually limited to information about Islam, most often in a distorted form, and

BYZANTINE LITERATURE in the second half of the 9th–12th centuries

BYZANTINE LITERATURE in the second half of the 9th–12th centuries Period Byzantine history in three and a half centuries from the middle of the IX to early XIII V. historical science defines it as the period of the final formation and flourishing of feudalism. This period has sharply defined

BYZANTINE LITERATURE XIII-XV centuries.

BYZANTINE LITERATURE XIII-XV centuries.

However, in the same VI century. a completely different poetry is being formed, equivalent to such organic manifestations of the new aesthetics as the Hagia Sophia temple. Liturgical poetry after all the searches of the 4th-5th centuries. suddenly acquires full maturity in the work of Roman, nicknamed by the descendants of the "Sweet Singer" (born at the end of the 5th century, died after 555).

Already in its origin, Roman is in no way connected with the memories of ancient Greece: it is a native of Syria. Before settling in Constantinople, he served as a deacon in one of the Beirut churches.

In Syria, there was a spiritual tradition of liturgical poetry associated with the initiative of Ephraim (Afrem) the Syrian. Syrian poetic and musical skills, apparently, helped Roman the Melodist to abandon the dogmas of school prosody and switch to tonic, which alone could create a metrical organization of speech intelligible to the Byzantine ear.

He created the form of the so-called kontakion - a liturgical poem consisting of an introduction, which should emotionally prepare the listener, and at least 18 stanzas. Kontakion has much in common with Syriac metrically organized preaching; as in another genre of Syriac literature called sogita, kontakion often contains dialogic dramatization of the biblical narrative, exchange of remarks, and lively “acting in faces”.

Altogether Roman, according to legend, wrote about a thousand kontakia. Currently, about 85 of his works are known (the attribution of some is doubtful).

By abandoning retrospective metrical norms, Roman had to sharply increase the constructive role of such factors of verse as alliteration, assonance and rhyme. This whole set technical means has long existed in traditional Greek literature, but has always been the property of rhetorical prose: the Roman transferred it to poetry.

He owns the first in the history of Byzantine poetry (and indeed in the history of European poetic tradition) poems in which rhyme can become an almost obligatory factor artistic structure, as, for example, in the kontakion "About Judas the Betrayer":

How the lands bore away boldness,

How the waters endured the crime

How the sea held back its anger

As the sky did not fall to earth,

How did the structure of the world stand?

(Translated by S. Averintsev)

The next step on the way to regular verse rhyme was the paired lines (the so-called hayretisms) of the Akathist to the Theotokos, whose belonging to the same Roman or at least to his generation is by no means excluded (see below).

In the discovery of rhyme, Byzantine poetry has priority over Western, Latin. Later, however, Byzantine poetry did not know such a consistent use of rhyme until the era of the Fourth Crusade, when the fashion for rhyme came already from the West.

With a renewed wealth of forms, Roman combines warmth, integrity of emotion, naivete and sincerity of moral assessments. Not only that, however unexpected it may seem, but the purely religious in its subject matter, the poetry of Roman speaks much more about real life time than the too academic secular lyrics of the Justinian era.

In the kontakion “On the Dead”, images of the reality that agitated the plebeian listeners of the Sweet Singer naturally arise:

The rich man abuses the poor,

Devours the orphans and the weak;

Farmer's labor is the master's profit,

Sweat to one and luxury to another

And the poor work hard,

So that everything is taken away and dispelled! ..

(Translated by S. Averintsev)

We find in Roman the prototypes not only of many works of later Byzantine hymnography, but also the spirit of the most famous hymns of the Western Middle Ages.

Grassroots Byzantine reader receives in this era and his historiography. The works of Procopius or Agathias, with their intellectual and linguistic refinement, were incomprehensible to him; for him, a specifically medieval form of the monastic chronicle is created.

A very colorful monument of the latter is the "Chronography" by John Malalas (491-578), which sets out in eighteen books the history of all peoples from ancient times to 563 (it may be that the now lost conclusion reached 574).

Malala gets confused in Greek and especially Roman antiquities; it costs nothing for him to call Cicero and Sallust "the most skillful Roman poets", to make Herodotus the successor of Polybius and generously endow the mythical Cyclops instead of one with three eyes.

But a lively, colorful, lively presentation guaranteed success for his chronicle, especially among his descendants, when Byzantium had already moved far enough away from its ancient origins.

World history is transformed in the retelling of John Malala into a fairy tale, primitive and sometimes absurd, but not without amusement; like any storyteller, Malala's fantasy mainly operates with images of kings and queens, naturally not finding material for itself in the world of Greco-Roman antiquity - from the entire history of republican Rome, Malala is attracted only by the invasion of the Gauls.

The "Chronicle" of Malala was followed and imitated not only by the Greek and Syrian chroniclers (John of Ephesus, the anonymous author of the "Easter Chronicle", etc.), but also by Western historians (starting with the compiler of the Latin "Palatine Chronicle", VIII century); finally, from the X century. Slavic translations appear, from the 11th century. - Georgian translation, at about the same time Slavic translations were circulating in Rus'.

The successful Byzantine chronicler anticipated the general style of the medieval perception of history as a series of miraculous, entertaining and instructive episodes in which the will of a deity is revealed.

What the "Chronicle" of John Malala was for historiography, that is, the description of the world in time, the "Christian Topography" (first half of the 6th century) was for geography, that is, the description of the world in space. "Christian topography" came under the not entirely reliable name of Kosma Indikoplova ("Indikopleust", that is, "sailor to India").

The author is not a scientist, but an experienced person, a merchant and a traveler who has seen with his own eyes distant countries(Ethiopia, Arabia, etc.) and in his old age, for soul-saving purposes, writing about what he saw. His cosmology is barbaric: denying conquest ancient science, he describes the Earth as a plane closed by the vault of heaven, above which the upper tier of the universe is found - paradise.

His language is almost common speech. His entertaining stories, naive-wise reasoning and fabulous picture of the world had an exceptional charm for the medieval reader. Therefore, "Christian Topography" was translated into various languages ​​of the Christian world; it was also popular in ancient Rus'.

The ascetic edifying literature, which flourished in these centuries, also has a grassroots character. Perhaps its most important monument is the "Ladder" of the Sinai monk John (c. 525 - c. 600), nicknamed "The Ladder" ("Klimak") after his main work.

The "ladder", i.e. the ladder, is a symbol of a difficult spiritual ascent that runs through the entire book. Above all, John values ​​precisely the intense effort of struggle with himself; much less does he trust speculation and refined contemplation.

The harsh prescriptions of ascetic morality are set forth in The Ladder in a very simple and unconstrained language; they are interspersed with confidential accounts of personal experiences or what happened to John's brothers in monastic life.

Big role play maxims, proverbs and sayings of a folklore nature. The translation of The Ladder has been known in Rus' since the 11th century. and enjoyed great popularity.

History of world literature: in 9 volumes / Edited by I.S. Braginsky and others - M., 1983-1984

The scientific literature on Byzantium is immense. Twice a year, the most authoritative international Byzantine journal Byzantinische Zeitschrift (literally “Byzantine Journal”) compiles an annotated bibliography of new works on Byzantine studies, and usually a 300-400 page issue includes from 2500 to 3000 items. It is not easy to navigate in such a flurry of publications. Moreover, this is literature in different languages: Byzantine studies (as well as, for example, classical philology) never became an English-language discipline, and every Byzantine scholar is required to read at least German, French, Italian, Modern Greek and Latin (Latin for Byzantinists is not only a language sources, but also a working tool: in accordance with tradition, prefaces to critical publications are written on it to this day). At the beginning of the 20th century, this mandatory list Russian was also included, and now Turkish is gaining more and more strong positions.

That is why even important books are translated very rarely. Paradoxically, even Karl Krumbacher's programmatic book "Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur" ("History of Byzantine Literature"), which laid the foundation for late XIX century of the foundations of scientific Byzantine studies, has not been fully translated into any European language except New Greek. The situation with translations into Russian is even more deplorable - the fundamental works cannot be read in it.

The list below includes one popular monograph designed to explain what Byzantium is to the person who asked this question for the first time, and five "classical" books that had a great influence on the development of Byzantine studies. These are either works by Russian-speaking scientists or monographs by European researchers available in translation (however, the quality of translation is not always high, and it is always better to refer to the original if possible). The list does not include important books dedicated to individual figures of Byzantine culture. For example, Lyubarsky Ya. N. “Mikhail Psell. Personality and creativity. On the history of Byzantine pre-humanism” (M., 1978); Meyendorff I., Protopresv. "The Life and Works of St. Gregory Palamas: An Introduction to the Study" (2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1997)., or in-depth studies revealing some narrow layer of Byzantine culture Ousterhout R. "Byzantine builders" (M., Kyiv, 2005); Taft R. F. "Byzantine Church Rite" (St. Petersburg, 2000)., since it would be wrong to recommend this kind of private research for the first acquaintance with Byzantium.

Judith Herrin. "Byzantium: The Amazing Life of a Medieval Empire"

Professor Judith Herrin (b. 1942) wrote her popular monograph on Byzantium—assuming the preface is to be believed and not a literary game—after failing to answer a question from workers renovating her office at King's College London : "And what is Byzantium?" (They noticed this mysterious word on the door of her office.) From a book that is unlikely to reveal anything new to a specialist, but will be useful to anyone who asks the same question as the heroes of the preface, one should not expect a consistent presentation of Byzantine history - according to according to the author, this is just “assorted meze” (this was originally a Persian word for snacks throughout the Mediterranean), designed not to satiate, but only to whet the reader’s appetite. The book is built chronologically (from the founding of Constantinople to its fall), but its chapters are deliberately weighted - at first glance, the immense topics “Greek Orthodoxy” or “Byzantine Economy” and the very private “Basil II Bulgar-Slayer” can be on the same level. and Anna Komnena.

Herrin proposes to look at the history of Byzantium not as an endless series of emperors, generals and patriarchs with names unusual for the European ear, but as a history of people who created a civilization that in the 7th century protected Europe from the Arab threat,
and in the XIII-XV centuries it laid the foundations of the European Renaissance - and yet the average modern European is completely unfamiliar and comes down in his mind to stereotypes about deceit, obscurantism, flattery and pretense. Herrin masterfully cracks down on these stereotypes, inherited from Montesquieu and Edward Gibbon, both alienating and bringing Byzantium closer. She describes Byzantium with graceful paradoxes (“The cultural influence of Byzantium grew in inverse proportion to its political power”), but at the same time shows how this seemingly infinitely distant civilization breaks into the world around us, sharing childhood impressions of the mosaics of Ravenna or analyzing speech of Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, in which he referred (however, according to Herrin, not quite correctly) to the anti-Islamic statements of Emperor Manuel II Komnenos.

Herrin J. Byzantium: The Surprising. Life of a Medieval Empire. Princeton, N.J., 2008.
Alternative: Herrin J. Byzantium. amazing life medieval empire. M., 2015.

Alexander Kazhdan. "History of Byzantine Literature"

Unfinished project of Alexander Kazhdan (1922-1997), to which he went long years, gradually moving from the socio-economic issues that occupied him in his youth to the history of Byzantine literary aesthetics. Work on the volumes began in 1993, and by the time Kazhdan passed away, none of them were completely ready for publication. The books were published only nine years later, and in Greece, because of which they practically did not get into libraries and book networks.

The published volumes are only a small part of what was to be written. They cover the period of the Dark Ages (mid-VII - mid-VIII centuries), the era of the monastic revival (c. 775 - c. 850) and the time of Byzantine encyclopedism (850-1000). Kazhdan did not have time to write either about Michael Psellos or about Nikita Choniates, so beloved by him (however, here the collection of his articles “Nikita Choniates and His Time” (St. Petersburg, 2005) can serve as some compensation here).

The title of Kazhdan's books is unlikely to attract the attention of a reader unfamiliar with the circumstances. Meanwhile, behind the simplicity of the title, there is a controversy with the founder of Byzantinism, Karl Krumbacher, and his vast and meticulous German reference book “History of Byzantine Literature” (in drafts and personal correspondence, Kazhdan even abbreviated his book as GBL, as if he wrote it not in English, but German). The books that replaced the obsolete Krumbacher compendium in the middle of the 20th century (for example, the works of Herbert Hunger on high secular literature or Hans Georg Beck on church writing and vernacular literature) were also more of reference books - detailed, complexly structured, but devoid of any aesthetic assessments lists of texts with comprehensive source characteristics and complete bibliography.

Kazhdan's task was different - to return to the question of "the pleasure received when reading a Greek medieval literary text", to try to evaluate Byzantine literature "according to its own standards", to understand the issues literary style. That is why the form of the book is impressionistic - Kazhdan abandoned the attempt to cover the entire literary heritage of Byzantium and created a cycle of chronologically sequential literary sketches-essays, sometimes almost devoid of reference and bibliographic apparatus. In the center of each of them is the key figure of the writer for a particular era, and lesser authors, acting in the orbit of the protagonist or continuing the vector set by him, are mentioned only in passing.

Kazhdan's "History of Byzantine Literature" finally approved the rights of a literary, rather than source-based, approach to the monuments of Byzantine literature and caused an avalanche-like increase in the number of works on Byzantine literary aesthetics.

Kazdan A. A History of Byzantine Literature (650-850) (in collaboration with L. F. Sherry and Ch. Angelidi). Athens, 1999.Kazdan A. A History of Byzantine Literature (850-1000). Ed. Ch. Angelidi. Athens, 2006 Alexander Kazhdan wrote his last books in English language- since since 1979 he lived in the USA and worked in the Byzantine center of Dumbarton Oaks..
Alternative: Kazhdan A.P. History of Byzantine Literature (650-850). SPb., 2002.
Kazhdan A.P. History of Byzantine Literature (850-1000). The era of Byzantine encyclopedism. SPb., 2012.

Igor Medvedev. "Byzantine humanism of the XIV-XV centuries"

The first edition of the book of the current head of the St. Petersburg school of Byzantine studies, Igor Medvedev (b. 1935), took place in 1976; for the second edition in 1997, it was supplemented and revised. Medvedev's monograph raises the question of humanistic tendencies in the culture of Late Byzantium (XIV-XV centuries) and the typological similarity of these tendencies with the features of the Western European Renaissance.

The central figure of the book is the Neoplatonist philosopher Georgy Gemist Plifon, who, at the end of Byzantine history, proposed a program for a radical renewal of the empire based on the revival of pagan Olympic cults. Consigned to oblivion in Byzantium (his most scandalous book, "Laws", was destroyed by the Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadius Scholarius), Plethon, who was an unimaginable combination of Byzantine-intellectual and neo-pagan, invariably intrigued and intrigues researchers (for example, last year The prestigious English publishing house Ashgate published a new four-hundred-page book about Plytho, subtitled "Between Hellenism and Orthodoxy"). Added by Medvedev in the second edition of the book, the chapter "The Apotheosis of Plethon" bears the characteristic subtitle "New historiographical wave".

According to Medvedev, in the 14th-15th centuries, a special environment formed in the Byzantine elite, in which tendencies, somewhat akin to the ideas of Italian humanism, became widespread. The brightest representatives of this environment (Plithon and the writer Theodore Metochites) were ready to offer Byzantium a "Hellenistic" future based on the ideology of "secular humanism" and open recognition of the unity of Greek culture from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. However, the possibility of this alternative history never became a reality, because "the Byzantine Church," endorsing the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas…resolutely turned her back on the Renaissance According to Medvedev, hesychasm, justified by Grigory Palamas - a monastic and ascetic practice that allows a person to unite with God - was "obscurantism", and his victory left no space for free discussions about faith: a system of "political persecution on the model of the Catholic Inquisition" arose, and now for "the beginnings of a new vision of the world, a new worldview, born of the Renaissance, people had to shed their blood."“(quote from John Meyendorff John Meyendorff(1926-1992) - American church historian, researcher of hesychasm.), and in 1453 the Turkish blade finally interrupted the political existence of Byzantium. Today, when the ecclesiastical component of Byzantine culture overshadows all others in the mass consciousness, such a comparison of the “merits” of the Church of Constantinople and the Turks, as well as the whole anti-Hesychast pathos of the book, sounds especially relevant.

Medvedev I.P. Byzantine humanism XIV-XV centuries. 2nd edition, revised and enlarged. SPb., 1997.

Sergei Averintsev. "The Poetics of Early Byzantine Literature"

The book by Sergei Averintsev (1937-2004) is perhaps the most popular publication with the word "Byzantine" in the title ever published in Russia. It has been repeatedly reprinted and is included in the lists of literature for students not only of specialized Byzantine departments.

The book is both easy and difficult to read at the same time. It is almost devoid of a reference and bibliographic framework and deliberately confuses the reader with riddle headings of sections that are not formally structured in any way: “Being as perfection - beauty as being”, “Consent in disagreement”, “The world as a riddle and riddle”. The book is not a sequential presentation of the stages literary process in the Mediterranean region and not a guide to genres, but a collection written by bright, figurative language culturological essays in which the author tries to find the specifics of Byzantine culture through literary texts, formally not yet related to the Byzantine period (as a rule, Byzantine literature is spoken of in relation to monuments not earlier than the 6th or even the 7th century).

Averintsev proposed to abandon the endless dispute about where the border between Antiquity and Byzantium lies, recognizing that the texts he discusses (authored by Nonna Panopolitansky or Gregory the Theologian) can rightfully be attributed to both ancient and pre- (or early-) Byzantine literature. According to him, it is only a matter of focus - a look forward or backward: “We were looking in these texts, first of all, not for echoes of the old, but for features of the new; we were occupied not so much with the harmony of inertia worked out over the centuries, but with the fruitful disharmony of the shift ... The most fundamental literary principles we strove to take in their mobile, self-contradictory, transitional state.<…>No epoch can be completely "equal to itself" - otherwise the next epoch would not have a chance to ever come.

Another fundamental decision of Averintsev is the inclusion in the circle of sources of texts that are not literature in the modern European sense: theological treatises, sermons, liturgical poetry. These texts, familiar to many at least from church services, but thus torn from the Byzantine, and even more so from the ancient context that gave rise to them, are revealed precisely as works of literature and find their place in the history of literary aesthetics.

Averintsev S. Poetics of Early Byzantine Literature. M., 1997.

Dmitry Obolensky. "Byzantine Commonwealth of Nations"

The book by Dmitry Obolensky (1918-2001) proposed the concept of the "Byzantine Commonwealth of Nations" (by analogy with the British Commonwealth - British Commonwealth). Obolensky postulates the possibility of “assuming [Byzantium and the countries of Eastern Europe] a single international community”, “a supranational association of Christian states”, between the parts of which there are opposite lines of tension: centrifugal (the struggle of the peoples of Eastern Europe with Byzantium on the political, cultural, church and military level) and centripetal (gradual perception and recognition of the primacy of the Byzantine cultural tradition in Eastern Europe). The geographical boundaries of the world described on the pages of the book are mobile. The focus of the researcher's attention moves both along the time and geographical scale, since new peoples constantly fell into the orbit of influence of Byzantine culture: the "core" Byzantine world in the Balkans remained unchanged, but over time, some regions departed from Byzantium (Moravia, Croatia, Hungary) and others approached (Rus, Moldavia, Wallachia). The cycle of chronologically organized essays is replaced by arguments about the factors of cultural penetration of Byzantium.

According to Obolensky, the "Commonwealth", fully formed by the beginning of the 11th century, had exceptional stability and lasted until the fall of Byzantium. Insisting that it is "not an intellectual abstraction", Obolensky admits that the Byzantines themselves and their neighbors were not always fully aware of the nature of their relationship and were unable to conceptualize it themselves. However, the flexibility of the terminology that described these relations had its advantages, and modern attempts to "describe them in precise legal terms<…>oversimplify and distort their nature. The principal decision of the author was the refusal to see in the relations of Byzantium with the Eastern European countries and regions a simplified scheme of the struggle between Byzantine "imperialism" and "local national movements".

The idea of ​​the "Commonwealth" removed the contradiction between "the political independence of the medieval peoples of Eastern Europe" and "their recognition of the supreme power of the emperor" that seemed insoluble to Obolensky's predecessors. Its bonds were the confession of Eastern Christianity and the recognition of the supremacy of the Church of Constantinople, the norms of Roman-Byzantine law, the supreme political power of the Byzantine emperor over the entire Orthodox world, as well as the standards of Byzantine literary and artistic aesthetics.

Obolensky D. The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1453. London, 1971.
Alternative: Obolensky D. Byzantine Commonwealth of Nations. Six Byzantine portraits. M., 1998.

Paul Lemerle. "The First Byzantine Humanism"

The classic monograph by the French Byzantine scholar Paul Lemerle (1903-1989), which became available in Russian only forty years after its publication, is dedicated to the cultural transformation of Byzantium during the Macedonian Renaissance (IX-X centuries) - the time of the "first" humanism, which made it possible not to only the “second”, much more famous, humanism of the era of the Palaiologos, but also indirectly influenced the humanism of the Western European Renaissance. The baggage of knowledge about the ancient culture of the Byzantines who fled to Italy after 1453 was developed by scientists of the 14th-15th centuries, but they, in turn, relied on the intellectuals of the Macedonian era, who were the first to pull the works of Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus and Euripides out of oblivion of the dark ages.

The second half of the 9th - 10th centuries is the time of the Byzantines' new acquaintance with ancient culture and the accumulation and codification of knowledge in all spheres of life. Asking about the reasons for this cultural outburst, Lemerle refuses to see in it an external (Carolingian western or Syro-Arabic eastern) influence. In his interpretation, the possibility of such a revival was always inherent in Byzantine culture, which formally declared hatred for the pagan past, but in reality was careful about preserving its cultural heritage. Lemerle describes the relationship between Christianity and pagan antiquity in terms of "gap and continuity". Eastern Christianity condemned paganism, but was, paradoxically, also a connecting element between eras. It turned the ancient tradition of education "into one of the instruments of its victory", but (unlike the Western Church) did not follow the path of complete subordination of school education. According to Lemerle, "the first salvation of Hellenism" occurred already at the dawn of the Byzantine era, when a large-scale copying of ancient papyri began at Constantinople by order of Emperor Constantius II.

In the center of each of the chapters of the main part of the book is some important figure of the era - Leo the Mathematician, Patriarch Photius, Aretha of Caesarea, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Separate sections are devoted to the development of school education and the technical revolution that happened thanks to the invention of the minuscule - that is, writing in lowercase letters, which made it possible to significantly speed up the rewriting, and hence the distribution of texts. Without formally claiming to be anything more than “remarks and notes” (notes et remarques), Lemerle comes to important conclusions about the specifics of Byzantine civilization: “imperial” or “baroque” Hellenism is combined in it with the decision of the church to “assimilate [pagan culture] , and not to destroy it”, which gave rise to the typical Byzantine “duality or, if you like, ambiguity” of the entire Byzantine culture.

Lemerle P. Le premier humanisme byzantin: Notes et remarques sur enseignement et culture à Byzance des origines au X e siècle. Paris, 1971.
Alternative: Lemerle P. The first Byzantine humanism. Notes and notes on education and culture in Byzantium from the beginning to the tenth century. SPb., 2012.  

TO The picture of Byzantine life would be incomplete if, having considered the main problems facing the government of the empire, we did not determine the essence of Byzantine culture, the influence of which Byzantium sought to establish throughout the world. We have already shown the material side of this culture - the prosperity of Byzantine industry, the activity of its trade, the brilliance of Constantinople and the deep impression that this capital made on all who visited it. It remains to show what this culture was in the realm of ideas and art, and what its historical significance is.

I. Spiritual life of Byzantium

This is not the place to detail the history of Byzantine literature. Nevertheless, it is very important to show its origins and the character it has acquired.

The preservation of a close connection with Greek antiquity is a feature of Byzantine literature, in which it differs from all other literature of the Middle Ages. Greek was the national language of the Byzantine Empire. Therefore, the works of the great writers of Greece were accessible and understandable to everyone and aroused universal admiration. They were kept in large libraries of the capital in numerous lists; we (148) can get an idea of ​​the richness of these collections from the information that has come down to us about some private libraries. Thus, Patriarch Photius in his Myriobiblion analyzed 280 manuscripts of classical authors, which is only part of his library. In the library of Cardinal Vissarion, out of 500 manuscripts, there were at least 300 Greek ones. Monastic libraries, such as in the monastery of Patmos or in the Greek-Italian monastery of St. Nicholas in Casole, along with religious works, they also had works of classical Greece. To what extent all these writers were familiar to the Byzantines can be judged by the data that have come down to us about their popularity in Byzantine society. Svyda in the 10th century, Psellos in the 11th century, Tsetses in the 12th century, Theodore Metochites in the 14th century. they read all Greek literature, orators and poets, historians and philosophers, Homer and Pindar, tragedians and Aristophanes, Demosthenes and Isocrates, Thucydides and Polybius, Aristotle and Plato, Plutarch and Lucian, Apollonius of Rhodes and Lycophron. The women were no less educated. Anna Komnenos read all the great classical writers of Greece, she knew the history of Greece and mythology and was proud that she had penetrated "the very depths of Hellenism." Immediately upon arrival in Byzantium, the first concern of the wife of Manuel Komnenos, who came from Germany, was to ask Tzetzes to comment on the Iliad and the Odyssey for her; she earned the praise of that great grammarian, who called her "the woman in love with Homer." In Byzantine schools, along with the writings of the Church Fathers, the works of classical writers of Greece were placed as the basis of the education system. Homer was a reference book, a favorite reading of all students. It is enough to look at what Psellos read for twenty years to get an idea of ​​the spiritual interests of that (149) era. Finally, the University of Constantinople, founded by Theodosius II and restored in the 9th century. Caesar Varda, carefully guarded by Constantine Porphyrogenitus and flourishing even in the era of the Palaiologos, was a wonderful hotbed of ancient culture. The professors of this university, the "consuls of philosophers" and "heads of rhetoricians", as they were called, taught philosophy, especially Platonic, grammar, by which they understood everything that we now call philology, that is, not only grammar, metrics, lexicography, but also commentary, and often criticism of ancient texts. Some of these teachers left behind a glorious and lasting memory. In the XI century. Psellos, who bowed boundlessly to Athens, again raised the study of Plato's philosophy to a height and expounded the classical authors with great enthusiasm. In the XII century. Eustathius of Thessaloniki commented on Homer and Pindar, and teachers of the XIV and XV centuries. , great scholars, educated critics, great connoisseurs of Greek literature, were the true forerunners of the humanists of the Renaissance.

Therefore, naturally, Byzantine literature had to experience the powerful influence of antiquity. Byzantine writers often took classical authors as a model and sought to imitate them: Procopius imitated Herodotus and Thucydides, Agathius, who was more prone to rhetoric, imitated poets. The refined Theophylact is looking for his models in Alexandrian literature. Later, for Nicephorus Bryennius, Xenophon serves as a model, Anna Komnenos competes with Thucydides and Polybius. Back in the 15th century. in the writings of Chalkokondylos and Kritovulus, an affinity with Herodotus and Thucydides is manifested. In contact with the classics, they create a learned language, somewhat artificial, sometimes pretentious, very different from the everyday speech of that time; they were proud of the consciousness that they reproduced the strict grace of Atticism. Just as in their style they imitate the ancient form, so in their thinking they imitate classical ideas. They are influenced by Greek history and mythology; mentioning the barbarian peoples - Bulgarians, Russians, Hungarians - they call them ancient names. This almost superstitious devotion to the Greek classical tradition led to very important consequences for the development of literature.

On the other hand, Christianity has left a strong imprint on literature. It is known what a great place occupied religion in Byzantium, how solemn were church ceremonies, what influence the church had on the minds of the Byzantines. It is known what interest theological discussions aroused, what passion aroused dogmatic disputes, what respect the monks were surrounded by, how generously gifts were poured in favor of churches and monasteries. The writings of the Church Fathers - Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom (Chrysostom) aroused universal admiration. They were studied in Byzantine schools, and writers willingly took them as a model. Theology makes up half of everything that Byzantine literature produced, and there are few writers in Byzantium, even those of the Soviet Union, who in one way or another did not come into contact with theology. This respect for the Christian tradition and the authority of the Church Fathers were also important for literature.

Underneath it double influence and Byzantine literature developed, which gave it the character of diversity. The Byzantines have always been very fond of history, and from the 6th to the 15th centuries, from Procopius, Agathius and Menander to Franzi, Duka and Kritovul, the literature of Byzantium is rich in the names of prominent historians. In their mental development and often in their talent, they significantly surpassed their contemporary Western authors; some of them could take pride of place in any literature. For example, Psellos can be put on a par with the greatest historians in terms of his talent, observation, picturesque accuracy of the pictures of life he depicts, subtle psychology of portraits, wit and humor, and he is far from the only one who deserves such an assessment.

This taste for history also manifests itself in the historical chronicles of monastic or folk origin, which are less significant in their level, with the exception of such authors as, for example, Skylitsa or Zonara. These chronicles are often characterized by an insufficiently critical attitude to the material, but they also had a great influence on contemporaries. The love for the historical story in Byzantium was so great that many willingly compiled written narratives about the major events that they witnessed. So, Kameniat wrote about the capture of Thessalonica by the Arabs in 904, Eustathius - about the capture of the same city by the Normans in 1185. There is nothing more lively and attractive than the episodes with which Kekavmen filled his small colorful book of memoirs.

Along with history, the science that deeply interested Byzantine thought was theology. It is remarkable that until the XII century. Byzantine theological literature was far superior to anything produced in this area by the West. From Leonty the Byzantine, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite between the 6th and 8th centuries. to Palamas in the 14th century, George Scholaria and Vissarion in the ΧV century. the Orthodox religion and love for religious disputes inspired many authors. These (152) include extensive commentaries on sacred scripture, mystical literature created in monasteries, especially on Mount Athos, works of religious eloquence, hagiographic literature, the best examples of which were described in the 10th century. Simeon Metaphrastus in his extensive work.

But apart from history and theology, the development of Byzantine ideology was remarkable for its amazing diversity. Philosophy, especially Platonic, put forward to a place of honor by Psellos and his followers, occupies a significant place in Byzantine literature. A large role is also played by the most diverse forms of oratory, such as: laudatory and funeral speeches, solemn speeches delivered in holidays in the imperial palace and in the patriarchate, small passages devoted to the description of the landscape or works of art. Among the orators inspired by the ancient tradition, some, such as Photius, Eustathius, Michael Acominatus, occupy an important place in literature. There are also poets in Byzantium. We find here small works: "Philopatris" in the 10th century, "Timarion" in the 12th century, "Mazaris" in the 14th century, the last two being imitations of Lucian, the talented studies of Theodore Metochites and Manuel Palaiologos. But in Byzantine literature, two phenomena of an original, creative nature stand out especially. This is, above all, religious poetry, in which at the dawn of the VI century. Roman Sladkopevets, "the king of melodies", became famous. Religious hymns, with their passionate inspiration, sincere feeling, deep dramatic power, represent one of the most outstanding phenomena of Byzantine literature. Further, this is a Byzantine epic, reminiscent in many respects of French heroic poems (chansons de geste) and created in the 11th century. a great poem about the national (153) hero Digenis Akritas. In this epic, as in religious poetry, there are no traces of ancient influence. As rightly noted, they feel the flesh and blood of Christian Byzantium; this is precisely that part of Byzantine literature in which the depths of the national spirit found their expression.

But let us turn to other types of literature. In theology, after a period of creative activity, very early, already from the ninth century, all original creativity begins to disappear, and it lives only on the tradition and authority of the Church Fathers. Discussions are usually based on quotations, the positions put forward are based on well-known texts, and already John of Damascus wrote: "I will not say anything that would come from myself." Thus theology loses all originality; the same phenomenon, in a somewhat milder form, is observed in secular literature. The Byzantines have a boundless interest in the past. They jealously guard the legends and traditions of antiquity. The 10th century is the century of historical, military, agricultural, medical, hagiographic encyclopedias compiled by order of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. These encyclopedias collect everything from the past that could serve the purposes of teaching or practical tasks. The Byzantines are educated compilers and scholars; a typical example is Konstantin Porphyrogenitus; his Book of Ceremonies and his treatise On the Governance of an Empire are built on rich documentation and bear the stamp of indefatigable curiosity. Following the emperor, many writers compose treatises on a wide variety of subjects - on tactics, public law, diplomacy, agriculture, and education. In these treatises, the writers seek, by careful study of the old authors, to resolve many difficult questions. The practical, utilitarian character of many works that have come down to us is a characteristic (154) feature of Byzantine literature. Of course, in Byzantium there are also truly original thinkers, such as Photius, Psellus, and we have already seen that in its two sections, in religious and epic poetry, Byzantine literature is truly original and creative. But it must be said that, in general, Byzantine literature, no matter how interesting it was for the study and understanding of Byzantine social thought, no matter what outstanding writers it put forward, often lacked originality, novelty and freshness.

This literature also has other shortcomings. These include pretentiousness and mannerisms, love for a sonorous, empty phrase, the search for an intricate form that replaces the original thought and eliminates the need to think. But especially significant difficulties were created for literature by the language used by most Byzantine writers. This is a learned, artificial, conditional language, which many understood with difficulty, and therefore the works written in it were not read, so this literature was intended for a select circle of people of great culture. Along with this language, there was a colloquial, folk language, which was spoken but not written. Starting from the VI century. attempts were made, of course, to apply it in literature, but works in this language appear only in the 11th and 12th centuries. These are the poems of Glyka and Theodore Prodrom, of which the latter is distinguished by a somewhat vulgar, albeit amusing, wit, historical works, for example, the chronicle of the Morea and novels, especially the epic of Digenis Akrita, which has come down to us only in this language. Hence, in Byzantine literature, a harmful dualism arises, a gap between purely literary works and works written in the vernacular, which did not become the language of literature. The latter, however, are of great interest; they show (155) that the spiritual life of Byzantium was not alien to inspiration, freshness of thought and feeling.

Despite the above shortcomings, Byzantine literature had a great influence on the literature of other peoples. While Byzantium, together with religion, brought the principles of a new social organization to the peoples of Eastern Europe, its literature brought them elements of a new spiritual culture. Many works, especially historical chronicles and the works of the church fathers, were translated into Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, Georgian, Armenian: the chronicles of Malala, Georgy Amartol, Konstantin Manassia, Zonara. The fame of these chroniclers was so great that Theophanes was translated into Latin. In Bulgaria, Tsar Simeon, creating a court on the model of the imperial, ordered to translate into Bulgarian language the chronicle of Malala and the works of the church fathers - Basil, Athanasius, John of Damascus. He himself set an example by compiling a collection of extracts from John Chrysostom (Chrysostom), and court flatterers compared him to "an industrious bee that collects honey from flowers." In Russia, in the schools of Kyiv, a similar work was done; thus, throughout Eastern Europe, national literatures arose under the influence of Byzantium.

Byzantine literature in the second half of the 14th century. and throughout the fifteenth century. left its mark on the West. Gemist Plethon and Bessarion cultivated there a taste for Greek antiquity and resurrected the glory of Plato's philosophy. Following the example of the University of Constantinople, in Venice and Florence they taught ancient literature, and the humanists of the Renaissance got acquainted with the famous writers of Greece. Thus, Byzantine literature contributed to the spread of Byzantine influence throughout the world. (156)