Monday, June 29, 2026
Home «While civilization flickered dimly in the remote Irish monasteries of the west,...

    «While civilization flickered dimly in the remote Irish monasteries of the west, it blazed in Constantinople, sometimes waxing, sometimes waning, but always alive. Byzantium’s greatest emperor, Justinian, gave us Roman law — the basis of most European legal systems even today — its artisans gave us the brilliant mosaics of Ravenna and the supreme triumph of Hagia Sophia, and its scholars gave us the dazzling Greek and Latin classics that the Dark Ages nearly extinguished in the West.»

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    Previous article«The Byzantines are the nation most skilled in painting…Their artists paint human beings without omitting a single detail, for the Byzantine painter is not satisfied with a painting until he has transformed the figure into a youth, a mature man, or a dotard; he next makes his subject handsome and charming and then mirthful or lachrymose. In his painting the artist even manages to distinguish between a sarcastic smile and a shy one and between gaiety and the laughter of the delirious.»
    Next article«Western civilization […] owes an incalculable debt to the second city on Bosporos (Constantinople). For more than a millennium, its capital stood, the great bastion of the East protecting a nascent, chaotic Europe…Without Byzantium, the surging armies of Islam would surely have swept into Europe in the 7th century…»
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