ChapterXI The Schoolsfrom to ConstantinePorphyrogennetos

After those great figures of learning, Photios and Arethas, who, paradoxically, have not enlightened us about their own training or the educational institutions of their day, we must come back to these institutions and try other ways of penetrating their secrets. Doubt• less it is no accident that our evidence, as we shall see, relates particularly to the time of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. However, in the process it sheds light indirectly on the preceding half century and, to make our starting-point clear, it is a help if we go back briefly. Let us recall then that , born probably in the last decade of the eighth century, could receive a "secondary" education, that is, in grammar and poetry, in Constantinople, but did not find any teacher there who was capable of taking him further. A self-taught man and a traveller, he returned to the capital to give private lessons for many years, and then, on the initiative of , to give public instruction paid for by the State, in the period prior to his nomination to the metropolitan see of Thessalonica ( 840) • Finally, at a date not known, but close to 855, 1 Bardas set him at the head of the "Philosophy School" which he was founding at the Magnaura with the four chairs of philosophy, grammar, geometry and astronomy. Some thirty years later the career of Constantine the Philosopher showed significant similarities and differences. Born in 827 in Thessalonica, Constantine was not able to obtain any education there beyond that provided by the elementary teacher, the gzea,,,nati.s• tss. But in Constantinople, where he was summoned by Theoktistos, he was taught "all the Hellenic arts". Where? The School of the Magnaura did not yet exist. Was it with Leo the Mathematician, who after he was deposed (843) again took up the teaching he had been doing before he was a bishop? Was Constantine also a member of Photios' private circle? The reference to these two names, which the Slavonic Life makes at this point, is not clear. We are also in the realm of hypothesis when it comes to the teaching "of philosophy" entrusted to Constantine while Theoktistos was still alive. But this invites comparison with the public teaching for which Leo the Mathema• tician was responsible in similar circumstances, where we also see the

1. The date of the assassination of Theoktistos, and Bardas 's accession to high affairs of State.

281 BYZANTINEHUMANISM involved. Then Constantine, together with Methodios, undertook their famous missions, while Leo became head of the new School of the Magnaura. And soon we are again lacking evidence. We have no reason to think that the Magnaura did not survive Leo. Indeed, on the contrary, evidence like that of Genesios in the middle of the tenth century confirms, as we have seen, both the novelty and the exceptional importance attached to the creation of the Bardas, 2 and its survival down to the very time when Genesios was writing. We should try to find out what happened between these two limits, not only as regards the training which this School of higher education provided, which was certainly to only a very small number, but also as regards all types and levels of education. We shall do this, keeping as closely as possible to the texts. 3 Let us consider first the Life of this Nikephoros The Life of who was a monk on Mt Latmos and bishop of Miletus, St Nikephoros of written, not long after the saint's death, by an La.tmos educated man who had known him well, and who re- ported what he had witnessed personally or had learned from direct evidence. 4 Nikephoros was born into a reasonably well-to-do family, at Basil eion in Galatia, which was not a big town nor yet a village, since it was the seat of a bishop and was even a metropolitan see for a time. The Life claims that his parents destined him for the Church, and at an early age had him made a . 5 But they were ambitious that he should have a fine career, and wanted him to be given a sound education. Therefore when Nikephoros had turned seven and reached school age, they sent him to Constantinople. This is further proof that it was only in the capital at that time that such an education was available. Now the chronology of the Life of Nikephoros is not precise, but the author informs us that it was under Romanos Lekapenos, that is between 920 and 944, that his hero arrived

2. It should be noted that this forces us to reduce to their true proportions the public courses entrusted earlier to Leo and Constantine, as individuals, and not as members of any institution. 3. I have presented the general information which can be drawn from the Lives of Nikephoros of Latmos and Athanasios of the Lavra and the correspondence of the anonymous teacher in a lecture given to the Acad~mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: Elhes et professeurs a Constantinople au x.f! si~cle, Comptes 1'6ndus des slanoes de l'annle 1989, pp. 576-587. 4. BHa3, no. 1338; (H. DELEHAYE),Vita sancti Nicephori episcopi Milesii saeculo X, Anal. Boll., 14, 1895, pp. 129-166; reprinted in: Th. WIEGAND,Ni.let, III, 1, Der La.tmos, Berlin, 1913, pp. 102 and 157- 171 (with the exception of the appendix "de domo -routJtooe>..>..oo" in the Anal.Boll., in which the conclusions, as we shall see, are erroneous). 5. This mutilation prepared one better for careers besides those in the Church, as we well know, and Nikephoros' precocious ecclesias• tical vocation was possibly only a hagiographical topos.

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