As a fact, even the Dark Ages were not merely dark.
And even the Byzantine Empire was not merely Byzantine.
It seems a little unfair that we should take the very title
of decay from that Christian city, for surely it was yet
more stiff and sterile when it had become a Moslem city.
I am not so exacting as to ask any one to popularise such a word
as "Constantinopolitan." But it would surely be a better word for
stiffness and sterility to call it Stamboulish. But for the Moslems
and other men of the Near East what counted about Byzantium was
that it still inherited the huge weight of the name of Rome.
Rome had come east and reared against them this Roman city,
and though and priest or soldier who came out of it might be
speaking as a Greek, he was ruling as a Roman. Its critics in
these days of criticism may regard it as a corrupt civilisation.
But its enemies in the day of battle only regarded it as civilisation.
Saladin, the greatest of the Saracens, did not call Greek bishops
degenerate dreamers or dingy outcasts, he called them, with a
sounder historical instinct, "The monks of the imperial race."
The survival of the word merely means that even when the imperial
city fell behind them, they did not surrender their claim
to defy all Asia in the name of the Christian Emperor.
Pages:
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284