Greek Culture in Palestine after the Arab Conquest

Abstract

The interruption of the educational tradition and the consequent decline of literary culture at Constantinople for the greater part of the 8th century is a fact noted by contemporaries: the Patriarch Nicephorus, more objective than Theophanes, attributes it not to Iconoclasm, but to the anarchy that set in after the downfall of Justinian II. A consideration of literary production leads us in the same direction: practically nothing was written at Constantinople down to the 780's, not even hagiography. It does not require great perspicacity to discover that the most active centre of Greek culture in the 8th century lay in Palestine, notably in Jerusalem and the neighbouring monasteries. There is a considerable body of hagiography produced in Palestine at that time, which, though it is not in Attic Greek, is written in very correct language.

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