and major part of the Church, the West, but also in the Eastern Churches; though unfortunately— less indeed from any fault of their own than from the exigencies of their stubborn and heroic struggle with the tyrants of Islam, a struggle now at last triumphantly concluded—they came to forget their central dedication to S. Sofia, and to take their stand upon unchanging conservatism.[1] Perhaps the time is coming when the East will dedicate itself again to the Holy Wisdom. But we must never forget that it was Constantinople which preserved all the learning of Europe during the Dark Ages, and was the storehouse from which art and knowledge filtered, principally through Arabic carriers (who have got the credit, and have it still in words like 'algebra' and 'alchemy'), though their science was Greek, their medicine Greek, and their philosophy Greek; through the Crusades also; and lastly through her fall, after a thousand years of struggle, in 1453, which finally distributed Greek learning throughout the world, and gave us a new science, a new philosophy, and a new theology.[2] We should
- ↑ It must be remembered that Russia herself, also owing her Christianity to S. Sofia, was for long under Tatar domination. Indeed at the time when Constantinople fell, every Eastern Church was under the heel of Islam, and this not for any fault, but because of the geographical position of Eastern Christianity.
- ↑ See for a fuller statement W. Cunningham, Western Civilization, Cambridge, 1902, Cap. IV.
