The great book-collectors / by Charles Isaac Elton ... & Mary Augusta Elton.

  • Charles Isaac Elton
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The great book-collectors / by Charles Isaac Elton ... & Mary Augusta Elton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    rest might be treated like those Genoese criminals who were commemorated on marble tablets as 'the worst of mankind.' For several generations after the establishment of the Eastern Empire, Constantinople was the literary capital of the world and the main repository of the arts and sciences. Mr. Middleton has lately shown us in his work upon Illuminated Manuscripts that Persia and Egypt, as well as the Western Countries, ' contributed elements both of design and technical skill which combined to create the new school of Byzantine art' Constantinople, he tells us, became for several centuries the main centre for the production of manuscripts. Outside the domain of art we find little among the Romans of the East that can in any sense be called original. They were excellent at an epitome or a lexicon, and were very successful as librarians. The treasures of antiquity, as Gibbon has said, were imparted in such extracts and abridgments ' as might amuse the curiosity without oppressing the indolence of the public' The Patriarch Photius stands out as a literary hero among the commentators and critics of the ninth century. That famous book- collector, in analysing the contents of his library for an absent brother, became the preserver of many of the most valuable classics. As Commander of the Guard he led the life of a peaceful student: as Patriarch of Byzantium his turbulence rent the fabric of Christendom, and he was ' alternately excom- municated and absolved by the synods of the East
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