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c h a p t e r t h r e e No Icons, No Science The End of a Tradition? Natural philosophy may have flourished in the sixth century, especially at the famous school of Alexandria, but the tradition of cultivating Hellenic scientific knowledge quickly came to an end. Various factors, many not yet fully studied, led by the end of that century to this reversal. Thereafter, Christianity, the dominant ideology of the Eastern Roman Empire, would demonstrate almost total lack of interest in natural philosophy. Eastern schools quit teaching secular science and copying related manuscripts. Within a single generation, knowledgeable scholars virtually disappeared. Thus began the Middle Ages in the Roman Empire of the East, which historians would later call Byzantium. Despite a sometimes delicate relationship between Christianity and secular knowledge, Byzantine authorities had not hindered the teaching of the sciences before the start of the sixth century. The schools in Constantinople that had developed in the fourth century not only taught natural philosophy but hired pagan professors to do so. The best-known school was financed by Emperor Constantius II and directed by the pagan Themistius (317–c. 390), a distinguished philosopher . The same emperor in 357 financed a center for copying manuscripts, including ancient texts on the sciences. In such ways, imperial power sustained, both financially and institutionally, structures in which science was cultivated and transmitted with a view to training future civil servants of the empire. In the fourth century, the principal enemies of triumphant Christianity were no longer pagans outside the church but heretics inside it. Constantius himself had come under the influence of the Arians, and his primary concern was for peace within Christianity, not the persecution of pagans. Moreover, as we have seen, during the same period important men of the church such as Basil and Gregory of Nyssa gave their consent to Greek scientific knowledge. In the following century, in 425, Emperor Theodosius II (whose wife Athenaïs-Eudokia, daughter of an Athenian rhētor, was known for her love of science) promulgated No Icons, No Science 41 a decree organizing “the imperial university” of Constantinople, the auditorium, in which philosophy (even the philosophy of nature) was taught. Reports from around 475 claiming that the imperial library contained 120,000 books may have exaggerated the size of the collection, but even a smaller library shows the good intentions of imperial Christian power toward scholarship.1 The reversal of this favorable situation for the sciences began during the reign of Emperor Justinian, from 527 to 565. Justinian and his wife, Theodora, were of humble origin and surrounded themselves with men of the same class; they displayed little interest in secular knowledge and quarreled with the aristocrats who did. Unlike Constantius, Justinian was not an intellectual, and he had not pursued studies during his youth as was common among the sons of the aristocracy. Wanting to reform the empire, he promulgated the famous Codex Justinianus in 529, which stipulated that “those who do not follow the catholic and apostolic church and the orthodox faith,” meaning heretics, Jews, and pagans, were not authorized to become civil servants of the state. Consequently, they could no longer, under cover of any form of teaching whatsoever, induce good souls into error. Did this directive go so far as to forbid the teaching of pagan knowledge, hence of secular science? We saw in the preceding chapter that this was not at all the case in Alexandria, where Philoponus, a Christian, continued to teach Greek science. Some historians have maintained that Philoponus published his Against Proclus in 529 precisely in order to declare his adherence to Christianity and so continue to enjoy the favor of the imperial court.2 But things were different for the school of Athens: testimony speaks of the interdiction in 529 of the very teaching of philosophy.3 More generally, it appears that Justinian decided not to pay the salaries of science teachers, who had been formerly paid by the state to teach in the towns of the empire. Although the probable reason for this refusal to pay them was that Justinian needed revenue to finance his prestigious construction projects, such as the Church of Saint Sophia, the result was disastrous for the sciences. Without the prestige of education financed by the state, they were quickly dismissed by the dominant Christian ideology as useless pagan knowledge and abandoned in favor of endless theological discussions, which culminated in the debate over icons in the eighth century...

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