History of Art - vol. II by Elie Faure

Author:Elie Faure
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harper's & Brothers
Published: 2012-09-20T15:49:23+00:00

Chapter V. BYZANTIUM

I

BYZANTIUM carried along the world of antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. As it guarded the gates of the two continents and the two seas, as it was at the center of the eddies of the fallen civilization, it fed its violent and troubled life with the slow death struggles of the ancient peoples. For a thousand years it defended, against the human inundations from the north, the east, and the west, the spirit of law that was Rome, the habits of trade, of politics, and of speculation of the Greeks, and the cruel luxury of the monarchies of the Orient.

The cult of wisdom would doubtless not have felt itself very much at ease under the cupola of Saint Sophia; Athens would not have recognized, in the stiff idols that decorated that church, the freedom of her religious naturalism, nor her respect for the living form in the atrocious mutilations that Byzantine justice inflicted on the condemned. The uncompromising realism of Assyria would have found no savor in the images of the books of prayer, and the kings of Nineveh would not have comprehended the revolutions fomented in the hippodrome and the changes of government effected in the antechamber or the bedroom where the purple of the Empire was forever dyeing itself with fresh blood. The Rome of the Republic would not have recognized its legionaries in those fat soldiers cuirassed with gold; it would not have tolerated the continual retreating of law before imperial caprice or the intrigues of the eunuchs. However, under the fermentation of the vices, the orgy of the games, the cries of the massacres, and the convulsive autocracy that was obliged to obey the orders of the populace, the law of Rome was here, the opulence of Babylon, the curiosity of Athens—and the only focus of light in the dark night round about.

Christianity, which the Greeks of Rome were propagating in the night of the catacombs by means of the image, could not purify or extinguish the light that came from the roaring fire, which was burning away all that remained of the sap of the ancient world in the poisoned fruits. The crowds that had responded to the appeal of the apostles of Galilee had rendered possible, through the renunciation of their revolutionary instinct, the coming of a social régime harder than its predecessor; and the Byzantine autocrat, in order to assure to himself their support, adopted the letter of the new order and enjoined the priests to change the names of their gods. That was all. The Sophists had misled the philosophic spirit. The Byzantine concilia codified sophism.

The schism of 1054, which separated the Church of the Orient from the Pope, was the consecration of the political schism which had been separating the Orient from the Occident since the division of the Empire. Each half of the ancient world, thenceforward, took its course alone toward transformation and recasting. The mold of Rome is offered to the barbarians at the risk of being broken under the pressure of their desires.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.