Byzantine Work

       The traditions of classical art, which had begun to grow weaker in Byzantium even before the seventh century, had faded away when the Eastern Emperor lost all hold upon Italy. Not Athens, nor Rome, but Memphis, seemed to inspire the later gestheticism of Byzantine art; and the Greek emperors, from the ninth century onwards, appeared to be the successors rather of a line of Ptolemies than of Cassars. When we contrast the sculptures of ancient Greece, the designs upon Grseco-Roman coins, and the pictures in Pompeii, with the work of Byzantine illuminators, we are inevitably reminded that the word Greek is rarely appropriate in connexion with MSS. There is very little of true Greek in the artistic features of Thraco-Grgecian or .ZEgypto-GraBcian work; and it is not to real Greeks or to real Romans that we owe the handsome Roman and the handsome Hellenic type in which the texts of the ancient classics are now printed. In the minuscule writing of Greek, which is usually supposed to have come into use about the end of the eighth century, there never was the same calligraphical character as the uncials of an earlier time had exhibited, nor the same desire to attain symmetrical beauty as was shown over and over again in the manuscripts of Western Europe. The best writing of Greek minuscules belongs to the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, in which a sufficient amount of practice had been gained to ensure regularity of form. A specimen of such writing, executed towards the end of the tenth century, probably in Cyprus, will be found in Plate 6. From the eleventh century to the sixteenth all minuscule writing in Greek looks like a free cursive written without any calligraphical ambition, and it became more and more ungraceful as time went on. The value of Greek MSS., however, depends more upon their contents than upon their beauty, and frequently the roughest-looking piece of work may command an interest far greater than attaches to the splendid penmanship of the west.

       The recently discovered " Gospel of Peter" is in a curious primitive minuscule hand, which the editor of the facsimile, Oscar von Gebhardt, ascribes hesitatingly to the eighth or ninth century, as had already been done by H. Omont. It would not be surprising if other scholars were to assign it to the seventh century, and thereby throw back the age of Greek minuscule writing to a century or more behind the date usually fixed for it. The mingling in that curious Christian document of many uncial forms, with a set of minuscular letters that betray a want of familiarity with set minuscules, seems to prove that the book is older than the eighth century. This observation is made, not from any desire to be critical, but simply in order to show that the question of age, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, is a thing which is still not finally settled.

Plate 6. "A specimen of such writing, executed towards the end of the tenth century, probably in Cyprus."

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, You Are Reading Chapter 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 chapters

Plates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22