Interesting Factoid

I have been reading a heavy book lately called “The Age of Faith” by William Durant. It’s only one in a series of twelve tomes recording the history of the Western world from pretty much the dawn of time, and covers 300 A.D. to 1300 A.D. from the Moslem, Jewish and Christian perspectives. I picked it up for ten bucks at a used book store because I needed something thick and dry – I go through novels too quickly and am left always looking for the next thing to read. I figured this one would keep me busy for a while. It has.

For about a month now I have been reading this beast off and on (I took a break to read a Medieval themed bodice ripper last week and was the better for it) and have become completely hooked. Will Durant is a superb writer. Yes, the work is scholarly and maybe a little pedantic at times, but for someone who was born in the wrong century, it is fascinating. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of book you can take to the coffee house on the corner and read without some Patagonia-clad stranger coming up and asking if he can use the dictionary. It is five inches thick, so it doesn’t really travel well.

I learned something new yesterday. According to Durant, the Italian Renaissance is directly connected to the Russian Iconoclasm of the 8th century. Opposition to religious icons by the Byzantine emperor Leo III in 726 led to the Iconoclastic Controversy, which continued in the Eastern church for more than a century before icons were again accepted. Countless works of art were destroyed in the name of religion, but this is hardly surprising since most human evil in the last 2000 years (at least) can trace its roots directly to one religion or another. Because of extreme persecution – people, as well as paintings, were destroyed because of religious fanaticism – Russian monks fled south via the Black Sea, passing through the Bosporus, sailing around Greece and arriving at the Italian boot heel.

An interesting and pivotal effect of this exodus was the influx of educated men who brought with them not only rescued object d’art from the Byzantine world, but ancient Greek manuscripts that had been faithfully copied by the Byzantine clergy (though Byzantium produced no notable literature of its own, the modern world owes a great debt to their careful reproductions of classical manuscripts). Over time, southern Italy collected quite a group of intellectuals armed with the Classics and recent memories of bloody censorship. The impact of this migration sparked, over time, a humanistic movement that blossomed from the “progressive” schools of thought at Palermo, Pisa and Salerno into a full-fledged classical Renaissance.

I always wondered why Venice is home to one of the best remaining examples of Byzantine architecture today – St. Mark’s Cathedral. Now I know.