How Byzantine Monasteries Saved Ancient Greek Treasures

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One of the astir astonishing accomplishments of Byzantine monasteries is the miraculous preservation of ancient Greek cognition and literature, treasures of past contented without which our satellite would person been wholly antithetic today.

These acquisition and spiritual hubs of the mediate ages played a cardinal relation successful preserving a ample information of cognition that would yet animate the Renaissance and power Western civilisation successful ways unimaginable astatine the clip of their preservation.

Byzantine monasteries were not simply places of spiritual piety and spiritual uplift. They were thriving hubs of scholarship, wherever monks devoted their full lives to researching and conserving past literature. Some Byzantine monks were much similar academics arsenic good arsenic being Christian men devoted to God.

In the Middle Byzantine period, which lasted from 843 AD to 1204 AD, astatine the clip of the sack of Constantinople, much than fractional of the literate radical successful the Empire were monks. This shows however important their relation was successful preserving past Greek cognition for eternity.

This attraction of intelligent radical produced the perfect mounting for the preservation of these classical works, which was a Herculian task that was undertaken by radical who spent decades upon decades transcribing, translating and preserving centuries of past knowledge.

The monasteries that saved Greek treasures connected Mount Athos

Particular praise should beryllium fixed to the monasteries of Mount Athos (Agio Oros successful Greek) for their publication to the preservation of classical lit and past knowledge.

The libraries of the monasteries astatine Mount Athos kept important collections of past Greek lit successful summation to theological books. This was not thing to beryllium taken for granted, arsenic it came successful nonstop opposition to galore different monastic libraries that lone held spiritual texts, viewing their relation arsenic solely spiritual alternatively than much openly academic.

Innumerable classical manuscripts were preserved due to the fact that of this innovative strategy that employed thousands of Greek and non-Greek monks who spent their lives connected the Athonite peninsula.

Understandably, it took a large woody of committedness to sphere specified ample amounts of past literature.

Monastic scribes copied manuscripts meticulously for hours connected end. This humble but time-consuming task was immensely important not lone for the libraries of these monasteries but for the entirety of humankind.

However, the monks were not conscionable creating identical replicas. These omniscient radical often improved by modifying the writings, adding scholarly annotations (known successful Greek arsenic ”scholia”) and fixing thing they thought needed to beryllium fixed.

The past literatures and the countless Greek treasures these monasteries preserved granted to coming generations entree to well-preserved pieces of enactment that inspired galore scholars of the precocious mediate ages and the aboriginal modern era.

Monasteries crossed the Byzantine Empire became section hubs of cognition and bases of stableness and continuity passim periods of societal and governmental instability.

These spiritual establishments of the Christian Church became captious havens for Greek treasures erstwhile Constantinople was threatened oregon aft it fell to the superior powerfulness of the Ottomans successful 1453.

For example, galore Byzantine academics sought sanctuary successful monasteries crossed the erstwhile territories of the Empire, wherever they continued their studies and preservation of classical lit contempt the Ottomans toppling the Byzantine elite.

Throughout the erstwhile mighty Byzantine Empire, monasteries established immense networks for accusation speech that passed the spark of cognition from country to country and from procreation to generation.

The chances of these manuscripts surviving were greatly accrued by these links, which made it imaginable for them to beryllium copied, circulated and stored successful respective places crossed Europe, thing that saved them from oblivion.

When idiosyncratic monasteries were threatened by penetration oregon earthy disasters, the strategy proved precise helpful, arsenic monks from different areas would bash their champion to transportation and support these Greek treasures safe.

Obviously, the Byzantine Empire was not the lone spot wherever monastic preservation had an impact. The Byzantine authorities had collapsed wholly by 1453, meaning that manuscripts kept successful monasteries successful its erstwhile lands were taken by galore Byzantine scholars who fled to Western Europe aft Constantinople fell.

As Western academics recovered these classical works that had been meticulously preserved successful Byzantine monastic libraries, this cognition was gradually transferred to them and this proved to beryllium a large origin successful the emergence of the Renaissance.

Byzantine monasteries are the undoubted ”culprit” for the availability of past Greek philosophy, lit and subject today.

Most classical texts and different Greek treasures that person survived, specified arsenic important plays, epic poems and philosophical writings, person travel to america done manuscripts that were either copied by Byzantine monks successful their Monasteries oregon were adapted from their copies and past passed connected to scholars successful medieval Europe.

There were evident difficulties successful the preservation process, this was not an casual task that happened overnight.

Palimpsests, oregon manuscripts successful which earlier passages were scraped disconnected to marque country for caller ones, were occasionally the effect of the precocious outgo and constricted availability of penning supplies astatine a clip erstwhile penning was a privilege of the few.

Thankfully, historians are capable present to retrieve these underlying texts with the assistance of modern technology, uncovering galore much classical masterpieces that person been preserved precisely due to the fact that of this technique.

The contented of Byzantine monasteries salvaging Greek treasures of the past and preserving cognition for humanity inactive continues to person an interaction connected modern research.

For academics researching spiritual and classical texts, for example, large monasteries similar St. Catherine’s, which has a postulation of much than 2,300 Greek codices, proceed to beryllium indispensable probe hubs. These establishments amusement however important the Byzantine practice of acquisition and preservation was.

Examples of works saved by Byzantine monks

An illustration of the enactment that was preserved lies astatine the Monastery of Dionysiou connected Mount Athos.

There, a composite manuscript of Aeschylus preserved works specified arsenic Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebe and The Persians.

Other monasteries connected Mount Athos, specified arsenic Iviron and Megisti Lavra, are recorded arsenic lodging codices of large authors similar Aesop, Euripides, Sophocles, Thucydides and Hesiod.

The Monastery of St Catherine astatine Sinai contained galore Greek manuscripts arsenic well, including a azygous folio of Genesis and a singular palimpsest successful which biblical substance was reused to clasp Arabic ”Lives of Saints.”

Likewise, respective copies of Aristophanes’ comedies (Plutus, Clouds and Frogs)—often referred to arsenic the ”Byzantine triad”—survived successful monastic libraries, implicit with scholia by the Byzantine scholars Thomas Magistros and Demetrius Triclinius.

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