'
The great Imperial library which stood by St. Sophia had been destroyed
in the reign of Leo the Iconoclast in the preceding age, and in an
earlier conflagration more than half a million books are said to have
been lost from the basilica. The losses by fire were continual, but were
constantly repaired. Leo the Philosopher, who was educated under the care
of Photius, and his son and successor Constantine, were renowned as the
restorers of learning, and the great writers of antiquity were collected
again by their zeal in the square hall near the Public Treasury.
The boundaries of the realm of learning extended far beyond the limits of
the Empire, and the Arabian science was equally famous among the Moors
of Spain and in the further parts of Asia. We are told of a doctor
refusing the invitation of the Sultan of Bokhara, 'because the carriage
of his books would have required four hundred camels.' We know that the
Ommiad dynasty formed the gigantic library at Cordova, and that there
were at least seventy others in the colleges that were scattered through
the kingdom of Granada. The prospect was very dark in other parts of
Western Europe throughout the whole period of barbarian settlement. We
shall not endeavour to trace the slight influences that preserved some
knowledge of religious books at the Court of the Merovingian kings, or
among the Visigoths and Ostrogoths and Burgundians. We prefer to pause at
a moment preceding the final onslaught.
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