Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 678

654

§ 103.

PREMATURELY CLAIMED TRIUMPH

Church was mistress

[Div.

in

domain of life. The opposition of ancient Rome's classical development had been silenced by the decline of the culture of the times. Germanic development was still too much in its infancy to renew the old strife, and thus of itself the struggle for principles came the more because the ever-restless spirit of the to an end Greek came under the pressure of Islam, which prevented it from exerting an influence upon the Church of the West. The Dark Ages, which soon appeared, were but the natural consequence of what went before. The wind blew no longer from any quarter. It was a dead calm. On every hand nothing but stagnant waters were seen. And thus, for want of an animating impulse, the life of study waned. It was very different, however, in the second part of this long period. In 1096 the first crusade was undertaken. This was an expression of Christian, chivalrous heroism, which not only aroused the peoples from their sleep of death, but also restored to the Church her sense of unity with the Church of the East, and exerted no less mighty an influence upon theology. Here we must retrace our steps to Emperor Justinian I., who closed by a decree the pagan school of Athens, and thereby obliged its scholars to flee to Persia. There in

the entire

;

these

and

men

tried to establish their classical school in safety,

but however much they weie was nevertheless under Persian, and

to prosecute their studies

disappointed in

this, it

;

more especially under Syrian influences, that in the eighth century, under the high protectorate of the Abbasides, the classical studies came to Bagdad, in order there, and presently in Spain, to call into being a scientific life which far surpassed the civilization of Christian Europe at that time. By contact with this rich Mohammedan life the old classics were introduced again in Europe and when, in competition with Islam, the classical studies were resumed in Byzantium, under Bardas and Photius, the old Greek-Roman world of thought entered Christian Europe simultaneously from these two sides, to recall it from its practical, mystical and ecclesiastically traditional life to a higher development of its self -consciousness. The new theological activity which was thus called into ;

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