One must emphasize that in Byzantium not everything was politics, luxury, war and conspiracies. Beyond doubt, there was one great difference between the West and Byzantium during the Middle Ages:  the existence of an administration. And, there was another closely related difference: the availability throughout all of the Empire’s long existence of a programmed and systematic education.

Ever since the Classical Era there were numerous schools in Greece, and during the Hellenistic period (from Alexander the Great until Cleopatra) the foundation was laid for an educational system that, with necessary changes in each era, remained in existence until 1453.

Education was available at three levels: Elementary, Grammar and Rhetorical.

Elementary Education

In Byzantium there were elementary schools where children were educated, and where the teacher was a simple, ordinary citizen who basically taught reading, writing and some rudiments of arithmetic.  Students were taught the alphabet, syllables, words, a few short phrases, nouns, verbs, and some short prose texts such as. Aesop’s Fables, which were presented both for grammatical reasons and for the moral of the stories.

There were no textbooks, and learning was basically rote memorization, reinforced by corporal punishment.

Elementary education seems not to have undergone great changes over the history of Byzantium, and remained limited to preparing young people to enter the second level of education, where they were introduced to grammar.

These elementary school teachers, who, as I noted, were men of common upbringing, belonged to a class of people without important social relations, and thus did not leave a major impression on the history of Byzantium.  As educators they led anonymous lives.

However, when one looks at teachers of grammar or rhetoric the situation is quite different.  These were members of a cultural elite, well placed in terms of social class although not very numerous, often writing books that are still extant today.

Grammar

The grammar teacher, or “grammaticus,” taught students at the secondary level how to read classical Greek literature, and would explain the text and critically evaluate it.  He would go into much more depth with grammar, taking into account the various dialects that were used in each era and that distinguished common Greek from the classical language. Of course, as everyday spoken Greek moved further and further from its classical roots, grammar teachers encountered ever-increasing difficulties in teaching the ancient language.  However, in spite of this problem they did not abandon the method, but rather affirmed it even more strongly.

Textbooks that were used included, for example, Dionisius of Thrace’s “Art of Grammar,” along with many associated texts and commentaries which, over time, the teachers themselves composed to explain the text.

The “Canons” of Theodosius of Alexandria (c. 6^th Century), a treatise consisting of short grammar and verb conjugation rules, was also used along with a veritable arsenal of commentaries on this work which were written over the years.

There was an immense amount of reading, preferably of classic poems, essentially meaning Homer (The Odyssey and the Iliad) as the grammar teacher’s fundamental teaching tool.

It is logical to assume that the Byzantine mind did not immediately understand the mythological characters of classical Greece, and for this reason the grammar teacher spent hours explaining each of these characters and his or her implications, as well as having to explain the considerable grammatical differences between the text, ordinary spoken Greek, and its various dialects.

Books were something special and rare in this age (as in all the eras of Byzantium), and due to this, teaching was basically oral and students had to learn verses by rote. Obviously, students would not be able to memorize the more than 15,000 verses of the Iliad overnight, which leads us to believe that teaching was slow but sure.

The Third Level: Rhetoric

Given that there was neither a specific timetable nor any laws that required one, students could be somewhere between 13 and 15 years old, depending on individual aptitude, when they arrived at this level. The textbook par excellence was a collection of exercises which covered the different genres of composition. These were known as the “progymnasmata,” written by Aphthonius of Antioch, a rhetorician of late 4^th century Athens. As we can see, this was an ancient work that remained in use virtually until 1453.  Each “progymnasma” (exercise) would begin with a brief description of the genre, and then give a text.

The genres were presented in a fixed sequence that remained unchanged for centuries, and traditionally included the following:

·        Fable

·        Narration

·        Chreia (A tale offering an example of a universally-accepted axiom)

·        Moral Maxim

·        Refutation

·        Confirmation (support)

·        Commonplace

·        Praise (Encomium)

·        Insult (denunciation)

·        Comparison

·        Prosopopeia (description of a person or character)

·        Description

·        Question of general character

·        Proposal (of a law)

In one of his works, Scottish Byzantinst Robert Browning offers us the following example of how refutation was addressed:

“Refutatio is the act of putting down or disproving something. One may refute that which is neither completely obvious nor totally impossible, but rather that which occupies an intermediate position. In order to refute, one must first of all discredit the individual making the assertion, and then attack the way in which he has addressed the question, using the following epigraphs of argumentation: First, that it is confusing and improbable, then, that it is impossible or contradicts its own premises; or that it is unfitting; finally, one must add that it is unprofitable. This preliminary exercise contains in itself all the power of the art of rhetoric.” [retranslated into English]

After this explanation he gives an example of a refutation of the story of Daphne, the nymph who was pursued by Apollo and transformed into a laurel.  In the following exercise, “confirmation,” after explaining the genre he gives all the arguments in favor of this story.

There exists another book containing a different collection of progymnasmata, written by Nicholas of Myra, a professor of rhetoric in 5^th century Constantinople, but it was not as popular.

We can determine the popularity of the Athenian rhetorician Aphthonius by the number of commentaries that professors added to his work, vastly more than those of Professor Nicholas of the capital, even though, according to Browning’s judgment, the majority of these commentaries lacked imagination and were rather tedious.

Professors had another resource that they used during all periods: the four treatises of Hermogenes of Tarsus (2nd - 3rd century, AD), including:

• On legal issues

• On the invention of arguments

• On types of style, and

• On the method of speaking effectively.

These works discuss modes of discourse and the results that can be expected.

Even though there were other Byzantine professors who composed similar manuals, none could compare to Hermogenes’ works, and professors wrote an endless number of commentaries on his works, testifying to his great popularity and the frequency with which his texts were employed in the classroom.

Books and Professors of Rhetoric

In order to understand the customs of the time, it is necessary to offer a clarification: being that books were scarce and one assumes that only the teacher had a copy of each one (or perhaps knew the contents by memory), the importance of the spoken word in that society was enormously greater than it is in the present day.  Given that reading was something very rare, the person who spoke with elegance and style and was able to attract an audience was highly regarded, which explains the importance of this type of learning.

Ever since the first centuries of our era, professors of rhetoric were sought out by society to deliver speeches whenever necessary. Weddings, funerals, festivals and religious observances were where these individuals showed their skills, and where they made the Greek language into a science.

Another important fact is that during the early years of Constantinople and of other Roman cities the rhetorician would often serve as an intermediary between his fellow citizens and the authorities. He might even speak to the emperor in person, seeking to convince him in the name of an entire city to solve this or that problem or to serve as arbiter in some dispute.

As years passed and power became more centralized it became more difficult to reach government officials (the government became a cold and remote entity).  Rhetoricians no longer functioned as the link they once were between the city or neighborhood and the central government. Nonetheless, they continued their role in public observances, and their speeches were sought out by all the citizenry, even up to the eve of the Empire’s final fall.

It remained very important to show off one’s eloquence and to be able to convince listeners of what one was saying, because a professor’s future reputation depended on this, as well as his future recognition by the citizenry as a good educator. His success in this task could bring him into contact with the top levels of Byzantine society.

There were two fundamental characteristics of every professor of rhetoric: first, they taught the sons of the nobility, the rich and the powerful, and second (as a consequence of the above), they moved in the most important circles of power, perhaps even rubbing elbows with the most powerful elite of Byzantium.

For these reasons, rhetoricians were “odd men out” in Byzantine society. They had neither riches nor power nor influence by and for themselves, but they were in close contact with those who were the greatest sources of power, riches and influence in the whole Empire.

Rhetoricians were admired for the speeches they delivered, but this does not mean (above all in the later centuries) that they had the opportunity to actually participate in any kind of power or influence.  This was in spite of the fact that their success earned them, in many cases, a degree of renown, and among themselves they considered their profession to be the most important one for the State.

There is something that we will never be able to know: how they taught and how the students responded to their teachers.  However, Browning gives us an approximate idea of this: given that books were in very short supply in medieval Byzantium, the professor had to read the definition of the genre out loud, and after offering whatever clarifications were needed, would then proceed to read the example, as noted above, all orally, this being an eminently oral society.

Evidently, the professors of rhetoric achieved some success in their efforts, since in Byzantium intellectual discussions were an everyday thing. Ordinary people could debate the widest possible range of subjects for centuries on end (e.g., iconoclasm), or could debate for the mere pleasure of debating, just to see who would win.

Education Reform

Niceforos Basilaces.

There are those who say that Byzantium was ultraconservative, that its institutions, like its customs, remained unchanged over the centuries, and they allege that this was the cause of its slow and inexorable decline.

There is no question that the Empire was structured in a very solid way, and that the attitude of its people was generally conservative, even in the field of education. One can see how instructional texts remained unchanged over the centuries, but not everything was this way. In spite of the resistance that innovators might have encountered, occasionally they succeeded in bringing about important changes in social attitudes.

This was the case of Niceforos Basileaces, a 12^th century professor of rhetoric at the Patriarchal School of Constantinople, who is considered an innovator in the realm of textbooks.

He was the author of many famous speeches in his day, but his most famous work was a new collection of progymnasmata, which at first provoked much resistance but which finally gained acceptance.

He did not change the overall format, keeping the traditional order of the genres.  However, he did change the authors of the texts, using the writings of Calistratus and Procopius of Gaza, both famous for their rich style of Greek and their use of varied and imaginative words and phrases. 

However, beyond daring to include these authors, Basilaces’ great innovation was the use of Christian phrases and writings.  Up to that time (odd as it may seem) these had not made any appearance in manuals of rhetoric.

After this, we find many biblical references that students were required to study if their professor chose this author.

Today, it seems almost foolish to call this professor an innovator, but if we place ourselves in the era and take into account the mindset of the average Byzantine, we can affirm that Niceforos Basilaces was, in his era, a true educational revolutionary, one who himself defined his work as a “New Rhetoric.”

Educational Reform II

Schedography

If we wish to speak of innovations, another important one was the “schedograph” (from the word “schedia,” –drawing, outline or illustration), an exercise in which a professor would teach spelling and syntax rules, generally by employing plays on words and other hints.

Consider what was happening in the field of grammar. Greek was a language that had a fixed spelling, but a changing phonetic system, and as a result many phrases which sounded similar but had different meanings.  Thus, schedography was a method of exercises (completed by dictation) designed to teach homonyms, allowing students to recognize what was being said to them.  The student who copied the words correctly according to the meaning of a “trick” phrase was the sharpest in interpretation of the language.

To explain in other words, schedography consisted of dictation exercises with words and grammatical constructions that sounded similar but had different meanings, and thus were written or spelled differently. The purpose was to perfect the student’s grammar, and to overcome the growing differences between written and spoken Greek.

Schedography was introduced, not without opposition from traditionalists, at the end of the 11^th century or beginning of the 12^th.  Many of these exercises, whose authors were well known professors, are still extant although their most famous author was Manuel Moscopoulos, a professor who lived at the beginning of the 14^th century.

Conclusion

It is very important for anyone who wishes to understand the reasons for the survival of the Empire to take  into account that an education system that formed important men, trained officials and lifted spirits was one of the pillars on which the Empire rested for over a millennium. Education was so important that it even survived the Empire itself as many teachers and professors fled the Turkish tide to Italy, Hungary and other destinations, carrying with them all their knowledge. These educators played a significant role in the European Renaissance, and even though historians still do not agree on Byzantine scholars’ actual degree of influence, further research on the subject is very much needed. 

Rolando Castillo

Translated by Santiago de Luxán Hernández 

Edited by Owen Williamson

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