The libraries and museums of Constantinople preserved
classical learning. In the flourishing schools of that city the wisest men of
the day taught philosophy, law, medicine, and science to thousands of students.
The professors figured among the important persons of the court: official
documents mention the "prince of the rhetoricians" and the
"consul of the philosophers." Many of the emperors showed a taste for
scholarship; one of them was said to have been so devoted to study that he
almost forgot to reign. When kings in western Europe were so ignorant that they
could with difficulty scrawl their names, eastern emperors wrote books and
composed poetry. It is true that Byzantine scholars were erudite rather than
original. Impressed by the great treasures of knowledge about them, they found
it difficult to strike out into new, unbeaten paths. Most students were content
to make huge collections of extracts and notes from the books which antiquity
had bequeathed to them. Even this task was useful, however, for their
encyclopedias preserved much information which otherwise would have been lost.
During the Middle Ages the East cherished the productions of classical
learning, until the time came when the West was ready to receive them and to
profit by them.
