402 DESTEUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE Service rendered by empire in pre- serving Greek lan- guage and literature. But beneath the cloud of ignorance which had descended during the Middle Ages not only upon the empire but upon all Europe, there were always in Constantinople a consider- able number of scholars and students. These men kept alive the love of Greek learning. While none of them produced any work which deserves to be classed as literature of a high order, they rendered immense service by preserving that which existed. The lawyers and clergy had greatly assisted in maintaining the vigour and clearness of Greek speech. The knowledge and practice of law in a form not materially different from that in which it had been left by the great jurists of the sixth and seventh centuries furnished a field for the exercise of the most acute intellects, and trained men in precision of thought and exactitude of expression. The legal maxims of the lawyers of the New Kome in their Latin form had given a set of principles of law for all Europe, and still claim the admiration of those who take pleasure in lucidity and epigram. The dissensions and heresies in the Church in like manner contributed to the use of Greek in a correct form. Exact definition in matters of dogma was a necessity, and in- cidentally helped to preserve Greek in its ancient form. The writings of theologians were judged by a well-educated caste which required that they should approximate to the language which to them was accepted as a model. The Histories of Nicetas, of Anna Comnena, of George Acropolitas, of Pachymer, and of others down to Critobulus, which help to fill up the period between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, are all written in respectable Greek and show a feeling for literary effect which recalls, though it too often seeks to imitate, the writings of the Greek classical historians. The education of the higher clergy was in Greek philosophy and theology ; and schools for the study of these subjects continued in existence down to the final conquest. The remark of Gibbon is probably true that
- more books and more knowledge were included within the
Ages, ascribes the loss of all the authors missing from the library of Photius to the Latin capture. Probably the statement is too sweeping.
