ic languages, hence Russian and Slavic sources were taken into account by him. Naturally, Krumbacher's work was intended for specialists only; it was not meant for the ordinary reader. Yet Krumbacher himself elsewhere arranged in a more accessible booklet of 50 pages a history of Byzantine literature for a wider circle of readers under the title Greek Literature of the Middle Ages (Die Griechische Literatur des Mittelalters), Leipzig-Berlin, 1912, in the collection "Die Kultur der Gegenwart," edited by Hinneberg. This last work of Krumbacher was published after his death. Of some importance is Dieterich's book on the History of Byzantine and Modern Greek Literature (K. Dieterich, Geschichte der Byzantinischen und neugriechischen Literatur), Leipzig, 1902. Some valuable material may be found in the brief history of Byzantine literature written in Italian by G. Montelatici, Storia della letteratura bizantina (324-1453), published in the Manuali Hoepli, serie scientifica (Milan, 1916, Volume doppio, 95–96, pp. viii+292). This book is not a repetition of Krumbacher's work, but it came out nineteen years later and therefore gives a large quantity of new information. Consult, for instance, the detailed review of S. Mercati, which indicates many mistakes, in Roma e l'Oriente, VIII (1918), pp. 171-83. For the earlier period of Byzantine literature (from the fourth century A.D.) the book of W. Christ, Geschichte der Griechischen Litteratur (6th ed., Munich, 1924), Vol. II, is very useful. See N. Jorga, "La littérature byzantine, son sens, ses divisions, sa portée," Revue historique du sud-est européen, II (1925), 370-97.

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE STUDY OF BYZANTINE HISTORY IN RUSSIA

The German academicians; the Westerners and Slavophiles; V. G. Vasilievsky.-Russian scholars began to manifest active interest in Byzantine history in the second half of the nineteenth century. During the first half of the century some studies in the field of Byzantine history were made by the German scholars in Russia, who, after being elected members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, remained in Petrograd all their lives. These German scholars were especially interested in determining the importance of Byzantium and Byzantine sources in Russian history. Of these academicians

we might mention Ph. Krug (1764-1844) and A. Kunik (181499).

Among the eminent representatives of the Russian thinkers in the first half of the nineteenth century, Byzantine history very often served as a source of material for supporting this or the other social movement. Thus, for instance, some Slavophiles 33 drew from the history of the Byzantine Empire facts supporting and justifying their theories. The Westerners took from the same sources facts which were supposed to show the negative influence of Byzantine history and definitely point at the great danger should Russia decide to follow the traditions of the fallen Empire. In one of his works Herzen wrote:

Ancient Greece had ceased to exist when Roman domination came in and saved her, just as the lava and ashes saved Pompeii and Herculaneum. The Byzantine period had opened the lid of the coffin, but the dead body remained dead; like any other grave it was taken over by priests (popes) and monks and was fittingly handled by eunuchs, those true representatives of sterility. . . . . The Byzantine Empire could live, but her function was ended; and history in general is interested in nations only while they are on the stage, i.e., while they are doing something."

Another one of the Westerners, P. Y. Tchaadayev, wrote in his first philosophic letter: "Complying with our evil fate, we turned to the woeful, deeply hated Byzantine Empire for a moral code, which was to be the basis of our education.85 But we must remember that the statements of these unquestionably gifted and highly educated men have no historical value whatever, because they really were not students of Byzantine history.

A realization of the importance of Byzantine historical study was very apparent in the middle of the nineteenth century. One of

33 The Slavophiles were the admirers of the Russian Orthodox church and of the old Russian political and social institutions preceding the time of Peter the Great, whose reforms, as they believed, had led Russia astray. The Westerners, on the contrary, held that the Russians should live in a complete affiliation with the West of Europe and that Russia had become a civilized country only since the reforms of Peter the Great.

34 A. Herzen, The Past and Thoughts. Venezia la Bella (Genève, 1879), X, 53-54 (in Russian).

35 P. Y. Tchaadayev, Works and Letters, edited by Herschensohn (Moscow, 1914), II, 118; the French original (1913), I, 85. A still stronger expression is found in the different version of this letter, II, 13 (in Russian).

the very profound Slavophiles, A. S. Khomiakov, wrote in the fifties: "In our opinion, to speak of the Byzantine Empire with disdain means to disclose one's own ignorance." In 1850 the famous professor of the University of Moscow, T. N. Granovsky, wrote:

Do we need to speak of the importance of Byzantine history for us, Russians? We have taken over from Tsargrad" the best part of our national culture, namely, our religious beliefs and the beginnings of civilization. The Eastern Empire introduced Russia into the family of Christian nations. But besides these connections we are bound up with the fate of the Byzantine Empire by the mere fact that we are Slavs. This side of the question has not been, and could not be, fully appreciated by foreign scholars."

The proper solution of the main problems of Byzantine history, in the opinion of Granovsky, was possible in his time only for Russian or Slavic scholars: "It is our duty to study the phenomenon to which we are so much indebted."39

The real founder of a scientific study of Byzantine history on a great scale was V. G. Vasilievsky (1838-99), professor of the University of Petrograd and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He published a large number of distinguished works on special problems in Byzantine history, internal as well as external, and devoted much of his energy and fine analytical ability to the study of Russo-Byzantine relations. Some of Vasilievsky's works are of great importance in the field of general history. For instance, it is admitted by many distinguished European scholars that Vasilievsky's work on "Byzantium and the Patzinaks" is indispensable to any student of the history of the first crusade. The late Professor N. P. Kondakov (died 1925) and the academician Th. I. Uspensky are also distinguished scholars in their fields, the former in the field of Byzantine art, and the latter in the realm of Byzantine social history.

We shall not discuss nor evaluate here the work of these three distinguished representatives of Russian scholarship. The problem

36 A. S. Khomiakov, A note to the article on "The Voice of a Greek in Defense of Byzantium," Works (4th ed., Moscow, 1914), III, 366 (in Russian).

87 Russian name for Constantinople.

39 Granovsky, "The Latin Empire:

Review of Medovikov's Work," Complete Works of T. N. Granovsky (4th ed., Moscow, 1900), p. 378 (in Russian).

Ibid., p. 379.

of this survey is to indicate general works on Byzantine history, and V. G. Vasilievsky published works on special questions only; while N. P. Kondakov's works deal mainly with Byzantine art. Uspensky is somewhat of an exception in this case, for he published in 1914 the first volume, and in 1927 the first part of the second volume, of his general history of the Byzantine Empire, about which more will be said later.

On the whole, it may be said that until the beginning of the twentieth century the chief merit of the Russian scholars was to make detailed investigations and throw much light on special, and at times extremely important, questions.

Ertov.-Back in 1837 Ertov published in Russian his two-volume History of the Eastern Roman or Constantinopolitan Empire, Selected from the General History. The last words of the title were to indicate that this two-volume work was nothing but an extract from the larger fifteen-volume General History and Continuation of the General History of the Migration of Nations and the Establishment of New States in Europe, Asia, and Africa, from the Time of the Formation of the Russian State until the Destruction of the Eastern Roman Empire, by the same author, published during the period 1830-34. Ertov was the son of a merchant and a self-taught man. In writing this history of the Byzantine Empire he was guided by the idea that "The Russian reader needs, above all, a narrative history." He stated that he used as sources "besides many excerpts from numerous books and periodicals [in French], the history of Royou, Lebeau's abridged history of the Eastern Roman Empire, and Adam's abridged French translation of Gibbon's history."40 Naturally, Ertov's compilation embracing events until the fall of Constantinople has no scientific value whatever, but I am only mentioning it here as a curious attempt for his time.

J. A. Kulakovsky.-The first attempt to write a serious general history of the Byzantine Empire was made by the late J. A. Kulakovsky, professor at the University of Kiev. His special field was Roman literature, but he taught Roman history at the university and did much work in the field of Roman antiquities and the

40 I. Ertov, History of the Eastern Roman or Constantinopolitan Empire (St. Petersburg, 1837), Introduction (in Russian).

history of Roman institutions of the imperial epoch. During the period following 1890 he spent part of his time in studying Christian archeology and Byzantine history. In the early part of the present century (1906-8) he translated the work of the well-known pagan Roman historian of the fourth century A.D., Ammianus Marcellinus, and this translation served as a kind of introduction to his later Byzantine studies. In 1910 he published the first volume of his History of the Byzantine Empire, covering the period from 395 to 518 A.D. In 1912 came out the second volume, and in 1915 the third. These embrace the history of the Empire from 518 to 717, i.e., up to the Iconoclast period. A revised edition of the first volume appeared as early as 1913. With unusual industry and untiring energy the author studied Byzantine sources, Greek, Latin, and Oriental (in translation), and on the basis of all these and a wide acquaintance with the literature of the period he wrote his detailed history of the Byzantine Empire until 717. In his work professor Kulakovsky deals with some phases of internal life, but they are at times lost in the mass of details concerning external political life. The third volume is of particularly great interest and value. According to his own statement in the preface to the first volume, Kulakovsky attempted, through a vivid account of reality, to make it possible for the reader to sense the spirit of those ancient times. "Our Russian past," says Kulakovsky, "is bound up with the Byzantine Empire by unbreakable ties; and on the basis of this union our Russian national consciousness has defined itself." He bitterly regrets the abolition of the study of Greek in our secondary schools, and says, "perhaps some day we Russians will understand, as they do in Western Europe, that not the last word of the Modern, but the first word of the Hellene, contains the creative beginnings of European culture." In the preface to the third volume the author once more defines the plan of his Byzantine history in these words: "My aim was to present a consecutive, chronologically exact, and, as far as possible, complete picture of the life of the Empire, based on a direct study of sources and a modern investigation of materials as they appear in monographs referring to this period and in numerous studies of individual questions given in various periodicals devoted to Byzantine problems." The work of Professor Kulakovsky may