can still profoundly affect us because therein can be felt a deeply
sincere ardour, a passion for justice, charity, and love. A bellicose
moralist, he was, like Bourdaloue, a realist and therefore an exact and
cruel delineator of the customs of his time, which were not good; and he
teaches us better than anyone else what was the sad state of Eastern
morality in his day. His widely varied genius, passing from the most
spiritually familiar of tones to the height of moving and imposing
eloquence, was one of the grandest of all antiquity.

EUSEBIUS.--Allusion should be made to that good historian Eusebius, who
narrated Christian history from its origins until the year 323.

THE BYZANTINE PERIOD.--What is termed the Byzantine period extended from
the close of the reign of Justinian to the definite fall of the Eastern
Empire (565-1453). This long epoch, practically corresponding to the
Middle Ages of the West, is very weak from the literary point of view,
but yet possessed a number of interesting and valuable historians (Joseph
of Byzantium, Comnenus, etc.) and skilled and learned grammarians, that
is professors of language and literature (Eustathius, Cephalon, Planudes,
Lascaris). It was the later of these grammarians, among them Lascaris,
who after the fall of Constantinople being welcomed in France and Italy,
brought the Greek writers to the West, commentated on them, made them
known, and thence came the Renaissance of Literature.




CHAPTER IV