Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Iconoclastic epoch (717-867)

Literature, learning, and art 

Page 6

The two last reigns of this period were marked by the creative activity of the interesting figure of Kasia, the only gifted poetess of the Byzantine period. When Theophilus decided to choose a wife, a bride show was arranged in the capital, for which the most beautiful maidens of all provinces were gathered in Constantinople. Kasia was one of them. The Emperor had to walk along the rows of maidens with a golden apple, and hand it to the one he desired to choose as his wife. He was about to hand it to Kasia, who pleased him more than any of the maidens, but her rather bold answer to his question caused him to change his intention and choose Theodora, the future restorer of orthodoxy. Kasia later founded a monastery where she spent the rest of her life. Kasia's surviving church poems and epigrams are distinguished by original thought and vivid style. According to Krumbacher, who made a special study of her poems, she was also a wise but singular woman, who combined a fine sensitiveness and a deep religiousness with an energetic frankness and a slight tendency to feminine slander.

The persecution of image-worshipers, glorified in later times by the triumphant iconodules, provided rich material for numerous lives of saints and gave rise to the brilliant period of Byzantine hagiography.

In the time of the Amorian dynasty some progress was made in the field of higher education in the Byzantine Empire and some advance in various branches of knowledge. Under Michael III, his uncle, Caesar Bardas, organized a higher school in Constantinople. This higher school was located in the palace; its curriculum consisted of the seven main arts introduced in earlier pagan times and adopted later by Byzantine and western European schools. They are usually referred to as the seven liberal arts (septem artes liberales), divided into two groups: the trivium, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, and the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Philosophy and ancient classical writers were also studied in this school. Striving to make education accessible to everybody, Bardas proclaimed that the school would be free of charge; the professors were well paid from the government treasury. The famous scholar of this period, Photius, was one of the teachers in the higher school of Bardas.

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