1396 the Western Christians were defeated near Nicopolis by the Sultan Bayazid, and it was only the vigorous action of Maréchal Boucicaut, who had been sent by the French, that saved Constantinople from conquest by the Turks. The final catastrophe was temporarily averted by an almost fortuitous event, the victory of Timur-Leng over the Turks near Angora (1402). This storm quickly passed over; but soon Constantinople was again on the verge of capture (1422) The Emperor John VIII (1425–48) once more attempted to effect a union. At Florence (1439) it was consummated, so far. at least, as the Florentine formula of union later served as a basis for the union with the Orthodox Ruthenians. Rumanians, and others.
Close upon the union followed another attempt to succour Constantinople. After some preliminary victories, however, defeat ensued near Varna. 1444. The quarrels of various pretenders to the throne and the lack of unity among those in power within the city precipitated the final catastrophe. On 29 May, 1453, the Turks captured Constantinople. and seven years later (1460) the last remnant of the empire, the principalities on the Peloponnesus. Constantine XI. the last emperor, by his heroic death shed lustre on the last hours of the empire. Even the Western Christian may reflect with sadness on the downfall of this Christian empire, once so mighty. He will also trust in the 'ultimate victory of the Cross over the Crescent. But where is the strong hand capable of bringing so many nations and religions into ecclesiastical and political unity, which is the first requisite for cultural and industrial prosperity?
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Hirsch, Byzantinische Studien (Leipzig, 1876); Potthast, Biblotechia historica medii ævi (Berlin, 1895–97); Marc, Plan eines Corpus der griechischen Urkunden (Munich, 1903); Finlay ed. Tozer, A History of Greece from its Conquest by the romans to the Present Time (Oxford, 1877); Oman, The Byzantine Empire (London, 1892); Le Beau, ed. Saint-Martin, Histoire du Bas-Empire (Paris, 1824–36); Hopf. Gesch. Griechlands vom Beginn des Mittelalters bis auf unsure Zeit in Ersch and Gruber, Encyclopädie (Leipzig. 1867–68), Sec. I, Vols. LXXXV, LXXXVI; Hertzberg, Gesch. Griechenlands seit dem Absterben des antiken Lebens bis zur Gegnwart (Gotha, 1876–7);Iden, Gesch der Byzantiner und des osmanisehen Reiches bis gegen Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1883);
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Byzantine Literature.—To grasp correctly the essential characteristics of Byzantine literature, it is necessary first to analyze the elements of civilization that find expression in it, and the sources whence they spring. If Byzantine literature is the expression of the intellectual life of the Greek race of the Eastern Roman Empire during the Christian Middle Ages, it is evident that there is question here of an organism not simple but multiform; a combination of Greek and Christian civilization on the common foundation of the Roman political system, set in the intellectual and ethnograpnic atmosphere of the Near East, In Byzantine literature, therefore, four different cultural elements an to be reckoned with: the Greek, the Christian, the Roman, and the Oriental. Their reciprocal relations may be indicated by three intersecting circles all enclosed within a fourth and larger circle representing the Orient. Thus in each of the three smaller circles we shall have to determine the influence of the Orient.
The oldest of these three civilizations is the Greek. Its centre, however, is not Athens but Alexandria; the circle accordingly represents not the Attic but the Hellenistic civilization. Alexandria itself, however, in the history of civilization, is not a unit, but rather a double quantity; it is the centre at once of Atticizing scholarship and of Græaco-Judaic racial life. It looks towards Athens as well as towards Jerusalem. Herein lies the germ of the intellectual dualism which thoroughly permeates the Byzantine and partly also the modern Greek civilization, the dualism between the culture of scholars and that of the people. Even the literature of the Hellenistic age suffers from this dualism; we distinguish in it two tendencies, one rationalistic and scholarly, the other romantic and popular. The former originated in the schools of the Alexandrian sophists and culminated in the rhetorical romance, its chief representatives being Lucian, Achilles Tatius. Heliodorus, and Longus, the latter had its root in the idyllic tendency of Theocritus, and culminated in the idyllic novel of Callimachus, Musæseus, Quintus of Smyrna, and others. Both tendencies persisted in Byzantium, but the first, as the one officially recognized, retained predominance and was not driven from the field until the fall of the empire. The first tendency, strong as it was. received additional support from the reactionary linguistic movement known as Atticism. Represented at its height by rhetoricians like Dionysius of Halicamassus, and grammarians like Herodian and Phrynicus at Alexandria, this tendency prevailed from the second century B.C. onward, and with the force of an ecclesiastical dogma controlled all subsequent Creek culture, so that the living form of the Greek language, even then being transformed into modern Greek, was quite obscured and only occasionally found expression, chiefly in private documents, though also in popular literature.
While Alexandria, as an important central and conservative factor, was thus influential in confining, and. during the Byzantine period, directing, the literary and linguistic life of the later Greek world, a second conservative factor is found in the influence of the Roman culture-circle on the political and judicial life of the Eastern Empire. Alexandria, the centre of intellectual refinement, is balanced by Home, the centre of government. It is as a Roman Empire that the Byzantine State enters into history; its citizens are known as Romans ((Greek characters)) its capital city as New Rome. Its laws were Roman; so were its government, its army, and its official class, and at first also its language and its private and public life. In short, the whole organization of the State was that of the Roman imperial period, with its hierarchy and bureaucracy entire and destined yet to play an important part. To these two ancient forces, Hellenistic intellectual culture and Roman governmental organization, are now to be added as important expressions of the new environment, the emotional life of Christianity and the world of Oriental imagination, the last enveloping all the other
It was in Alexandria also that Græaco-Oriental Christianity had its birth. There the Septuagint translation hail been made; it was there that that fusion of Greek philosophy and Jewish religion took place which found in Philo its most important representative; there flourished the mystic speculative neo-Patonism associated with the names of Plotinus and Porphyry. At Alexandria the great Greek ecclesiastical writers pursued their studies with pagan rhetoricians and philosophers; in fact several of them were born here, e. g. Origin. Athanasius, and his opponent Arius. also Cyril and Synesius. Not indeed in the city of Alexandria, but yet upon Egyp-
