Intellectual life in the modern West traces its origins to the ancient Greeks and Romans. However, by the launch of the First Crusade, Latin Christendom had lost touch with large parts of the classical tradition. During the crusading period, Western Christian nations came into increased contact with the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world. Through these connections, elements of the classical tradition were reintroduced. This reacquaintance paved the way for the creation of an academic tradition that persists until the present day.
Cultural Exchange and the Crusades
Pope Urban gave a speech in 1098 which launched the First Crusade. He spoke of persecuted Christians living under Islamic rule, imploring the knights of Europe to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the “heathen.” His claims were exaggerated, Christians living in Muslim lands had generally been treated with tolerance and respect. Nonetheless, Pope Urban’s speech was well-received and greeted with cries of “Deus Volt!” (God wills it!) (Erdmann, 1977).
The legacy of this key moment in history has reverberated through time. Latin Christendom was united around a common cause, and a precedent was set for the Church’s preeminence in worldly affairs. Simultaneously, the Crusades sharpened the divide between East and West — with lasting consequences. However, there was also another consequence of Pope Urban’s speech. It was one which had little to do with his intentions but changed the world irrevocably: the reintroduction of classical knowledge to Western Europe.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the lands to the west of Byzantium had lost touch with the classical tradition. If Europe did not enter a “Dark Age” as was once thought, it certainly entered a less enlightened one. However, the inquisitive instinct was not dead, it was simply awaiting the right spark for its rekindling. The Crusades provided that spark.
The journeys to the East were not only an opportunity for killing and conquest, but also for cultural exchange. Exotic flavors were brought back from distant lands — oranges, cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper gave breadth to the European palette. More important than the introduction of these tantalizing tastes was the reintroduction of classical learning. A whole world of ancient Greek knowledge had been forgotten in the West; a world which was still an integral part of Byzantine and Islamic intellectual life.
Ancient Greek Philosophy in the Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was effectively founded by Emperor Constantine I in 330 CE, as the eastern branch of the Roman Empire. It survived a great deal longer than its western counterpart, not falling until 1453 CE. Due to its eastern location and the culture of its subjects, Byzantium underwent a process of Hellenization.
By the time of Emperor Heraclius (610-641 CE), Greek was its official language. Indeed, Heraclius and the emperors who followed him were known not by the Latin title of imperator, but by the Greek name, basileus. This title had existed in the Hellenic world at least as far back as Alexander the Great. As a Greek-speaking state and the last representative of an unbroken classical lineage, it is only natural that Byzantium had a close relationship to ancient Hellenic knowledge.
From the 4th to the 15th century, the Byzantines maintained a close relationship with ancient Greek texts. These texts were seen as an important part of their cultural identity and intellectual heritage. Byzantine scholars often reflected on pagan classical texts, drawing lessons from them which were then adapted to their Christian way of life. For example, Theodore Metochites (1270-1332 CE) studied Ptolemy’s Almagest, a 2nd-century Greek text on astronomy and mathematics. Influenced by Ptolemy’s ideas, Metochites believed that the only things which we can know with certainty are mathematical truths. This led him to conclude that the Christian God could not be “the object of knowledge, but only of faith” (Bydén, 2017).
Byzantine scholars did not study ancient Greek texts as though they were dead artifacts from a bygone era. Instead, they engaged with them as living tools, which allowed them to reflect on the most profound aspects of their lived experience.
Islam and Aristotle
There was another great civilization in the East with a close relationship to ancient Greek philosophy — the Islamic world. Many ancient manuscripts were translated into Arabic, inspiring discussion and contemplation. In particular, the great scholars of the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 CE) had huge respect for the works of Aristotle. Plato’s most famous student was found in the curricula of schools throughout the Islamic world.
The importance of ancient Greek thought at the time is perhaps best exemplified by Ibn Al-Haytham’s (965-1040 CE) Doubts on Ptolemy. In this work, the medieval Islamic author challenged Ptolemy’s astronomy, proposing a viable system of planetary motion that was built on the ideas of Aristotle (Pines, 1986). Al-Haytham was engaging with ancient Greek scholars as though they were his contemporaries, entering into debate with them and using their ideas as a foundation for his own. Classical philosophy was at least as alive in the medieval Islamic world as it was in Byzantium.
Islamic scholars’ approaches to ancient Greek ideas were similar to that of their medieval Christian counterparts. They engaged with the ideas and sought to adapt them in a way that fitted in with their religion. Debates about the origins of the universe proved to be a point of contention between Islamic teachings and Aristotelian philosophy.
Whereas Islam teaches that God created the world ex-nihilo (out of nothing), Aristotle argued that we live in an eternal universe, without beginning or end. Ibn Sina (980-1037) sought to integrate Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics with the Islamic notion of God’s creative power and governance over the universe. He argued that Aristotle’s concept of an “unmoved mover” was akin to the notion of God. Like the Byzantines, Islamic scholars preserved ancient Greek ideas and engaged with them, using them as an aid to reflect on their own religious beliefs.
The West Reawakens: Crusader States and Classical Philosophy
At the end of the First Crusade (1096-1099 CE), the West established four crusader states in the Levant: the County of Edessa (1098-1150 CE), the Principality of Antioch (1098-1287 CE), the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1291 CE), and the County of Tripoli (1102-1289 CE). The creation of these states greatly increased the opportunities for connection between scholars from East and West. In the 12th century, translations of ancient Greek texts from Arabic to Latin were much more common than translations directly from the Greek.
This may seem surprising, particularly when copies of the original Greek texts were still in existence. However, in this period the crusader states were surrounded by Muslim lands and isolated from Byzantium (Mavroudi, 2015). Eugenius of Palermo, for example, is credited with translating Ptolemy’s Optics from Arabic. Similarly, Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle were translated into Latin in the 12th century. He was so respected as a transmitter of Greek ideas to the West that he was included next to Plato and Pythagoras in Raphael’s famous mural, The School of Athens.
In 1204, a number of Byzantine territories were refashioned to become crusader states. From then on, direct translation into Latin from Greek became much more common. For the first time since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, European scholars had access to copies of original ancient Greek manuscripts.
William of Moerbeke (1215-1286) was a key figure in this second phase of translation. First at the Norman court in Sicily, and later in the crusader kingdoms, he made Latin versions of works like Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics. These ancient treatises became foundational texts in the canon of European philosophy. Previously reacquainted through Arabic intermediaries, by the 13th century, Latin Christendom had begun to work directly with copies of original Greek manuscripts. The Crusades had brought ancient Greek philosophy to medieval Europe and the consequences of this influx of ideas were staggering.
The Impact of Ancient Greek Ideas on Europe
The transmission of ancient Greek ideas from East to West catalyzed a transformation within Europe. Medieval scholars began to slowly turn their heads away from blind faith and toward the light of investigation and discovery. Like Byzantine and Islamic scholars before them, Europeans began to integrate ancient Greek philosophy into their religious worldview.
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) was inspired by Aristotle’s emphasis on observation and argued that Christians could learn about God through his creation. Both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas remain an important part of the Western intellectual tradition. The original Greek ideas and the medieval European philosophies that they inspired are a staple of Western curricula.
The Greek ideas transmitted to the West in this period were not limited to philosophy. Scientific and medical texts were also translated and had a significant impact on society. Galen and Hippocrates’s theories on sickness and healing became the foundation of medical education and practice in the West. A renewed interest in classical art was soon to follow, setting in motion the transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance.
In general, the introduction of ancient Greek ideas opened up the previously closed world of medieval Europe, which had been dominated by dogmatic Christian thought. In the early Middle Ages, Europe had been a relatively stagnant, superstitious place. With the new ideas that flooded its intellectual life in the crusading period, it became a more inquisitive, open-minded, progressive society. This paved the way for the development of Humanism, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, changing the course of history forever.
Bibliography
Bydén, B. (2003). Theodore Metochites’ Stoicheiosis Astronomike and the Study of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in Early Palaiologan Byzantium. G’oteberg.
Erdmann, C. (1935). The Origin of the Idea of Crusade. Princeton.
Pines, S. (1986). “Ibn Al-Haytham’s Critique of Ptolemy”. In Studies in Arabic versions of Greek texts and in Mediaeval Science. Jerusalem.
Mavroudi, M. (2015). “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition”. In Speculum. Chicago.
