Human Sciences

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In Byzantium

Byzantine historians were inspired by Classical historians, like Thucydides (his account of the ‘plague of Athens’ inspired Procopius's account of the plague of Justinian, and that of Kantakouzenos on the Black Death). They all held the conviction that their empire was a Christianized universal empire (the Roman Empire), which was itself integrated into a worldview that encompassed the concept of the world's creation and its consummation: an apocalyptic view of history. On the basis of this concept, Byzantine historiography can be divided into several literary genres.

In addition to ecclesiastical history (based on the work of Eusebios of Caesarea), the following genres can be found:

- Universal chronicles, dating from the creation of the world (5508 BC), and divided into empires, reigns and years. Chroniclers included John Malalas (sixth century), Theophanes the Confessor, George Syncellus, George the Monk (eighth to ninth century), Symeon the New Theologian (tenth century), Joannes (John) Zonaras, and Michael Glykas (twelfth century);

- Chronicles, giving accounts of more recent events, divided into imperial reigns, and often biased: Procopius of Caesarea (sixth century), the collected chronicles under the title of Theophanes Continuatus (ninth to tenth century), Leo the Deacon (tenth century), Michael Psellus, Michael Attaliates, Anna Komnene and John Scylitzes  (eleventh century), Nicetas Choniates (twelfth century), Georgius Pachymeres (thirteenth to fourteenth century), Nicephorus Gregoras, and John Kantakouzenos (fourteenth century);

- Local chronicles, giving accounts of political, climatic, seismic, and family events: Chronicle of Monemvasia in the tenth century; Chronicle of the Morea during the Frankish occupation; and Short Chronicles, reconstituted from chronological annotations in the margins of manuscripts[1].

Historians who recounted the Fall of Constantinople deserve special mention. There's an account of the city's fall by a witness, Sphrantzes; a humanist historian, Laonicus (Laonikos) Chalcondyles; a pro-Latin historian, Doukas; and a historian from the Ottoman empire: Kritoboulos of Imbros.

Byzantine geographers were influenced by Classical geographers (Strabo, whose work was more descriptive, and Ptolemy, who produced a mathematical projection of the earth) and later descriptions like the Expositio totius mundi (which include the garden of Eden), and the Peregrinatio Etherii, an account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the fourth century.

In Alexandria, in the sixth century, there was a confrontation between a cosmology that was based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, which maintained that the earth was flat and beneath a vaulted heaven shaped like a tent (the Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes) and a different cosmology, which maintained that the Biblical account corresponds with Ptolemy's celestial sphere (On the Creation of the World, by John Philoponus)[2]. In the seventh century, the geographical dictionary entitled Ethnika (a collection of 60 books), by Stephanus Byzantinus, was based on Strabo.

After a period of disinterest, geography, like the other sciences, experienced a revival in the ninth century. The manuscripts of Strabo and Ptolemy were copied and enhanced with scholia; the imperial and ecclesiastical offices encouraged the creation of lists of towns and bishops; in the tenth century, the emperor Constantine VII produced a number of important works (the De administrando Imperio and the De thematibus) on the geography of the empire; and navigation charts, portolanos, and pilgrimage guides met various military, commercial, and religious needs.

The renaissance of the Palaiologos (thirteenth to fifteenth century) was particularly influenced by the work of Maximus Planudes, who edited Ptolemy's geographical work and replaced the missing maps, which had been lost. There was a renewal of interest in Strabo in the fifteenth century: Basilios Bessarion possessed several of his manuscripts, and Plethon introduced his work to learned italiens when he travelled to Italy (to serve as lay theologian with the Byzantine delegation to the 1438–45 general Council of Ferrara–Florence).

Most of the sciences in Byzantium shared certain characteristics—medicine, for instance, was associated with the exact sciences and the social sciences.

The first characteristic is the conservation, commentaries on and the transmission of the great Classical works, especially those of Hippocrates and Galen. These great works were both studied for their own sake, and divided and reconstituted into large encyclopedias, compiled in Late Antiquity (Oribasius, Aetios of Amida, and Paul of Aegina).

The second characteristic is the priority given to the practical uses of scholarship. In the field of medicine, we owe the invention of the modern hospital to the Byzantines (receiving the ill, who are given the best treatment, and the training of doctors). They also produced many therapeutic manuals—classified according to themes or anatomical parts—together with great theoretical treatises.

Also to be noted is that there was a willingness, as in other fields, to embrace other cultures (Arab, Persian, and Latin—there was a movement towards the translation of treatises like those of Avicenna (on types of urine), al-Razi (on smallpox), and Ibn al-Jazzar (‘The Pilgrim's Manual’, which became Ephodia in Greek), and the list of Persian remedies[3]. However, the predominant influence was Christian: hagiography shows that secular medicine existed alongside the work of thaumaturgical saints; the hospitals were dependent on the monasteries, especially those in Constantinople (e.g. the monasteries of the Pantocrator in the twelfth century, and Petra in the fifteenth century).

The desire to improve efficiency led doctors to consult any available sources (Greek or foreign remedies, medicine, prayers, and magic) and accomplish several technical feats: in the ninth-century life of a saint is recounted the extraction of kidney stones without making an incision (unknown in Classical medicine). In the tenth century, doctors succeeded in separating two Siamese twins, whose stomachs were joined, after one of them had died (the second survived ‘for a while’ after the operation)[4]. The lists of surgical instruments found in archaeological digs give us an insight into these accounts.

Faced with the evolutions of its Eastern and Western neighbours, Byzantine science, with its Classical heritage, was characterized by a pragmatism that is often underestimated by modern historians.

M.-H. C.