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영어

The byzantine teaching is not well known and deficient in study. Because it lacks primary sources. Nevertheless the byzantine teaching is important in the byzantine civilization. Vasiliev gave the word of “Renaissance” to the byzantine civilization in the 12-13th centuries and Paul Lemerle gave the word of “humanism” to the byzantine civilization in the 9-10th and 12-13th centuries. But the byzantine civilization in the 11th century was not given the word of “Renaissance” or "humanism" by the two scholars mentioned above. Why wasn't it mentioned in their opinions? Why can not we find a tendency to humanism in the byzantine civilization in the 11th century? This article aim at a response to the question.
The byzantine teaching in the 11th century had seven national schools, one private school, and one half-national school in higher education. These were the numbers excluding monastic schools. According to Paul Lemerle, the 11th century had more schools than the 10th century. The byzantine teaching in the early 11th century was encyclopaedic. The encyclopaedic teaching was a humanistic teaching. It was developed in the reigns of Romanus III Argyrus and Michael IV. But during the reigns of Michael IV and Zoe, political circumstances changed in Italy and the expansion of the Turks threatened byzantine empire. Therefore Constantine IX promptly reorganized politics and practised practical teaching. This practical teaching was the teaching of the law school. Then it was needed to reorganize political systems, and it weakened encyclopaedic teaching-systems. This was not a qualitative but a quantitative change. We do not nearly find the differences in qualitative terms in this situation. Because all the teachers in schools excepting the law school were encyclopaedic teachers. Moreover Michael Psellos and John Italos were encyclopaedic teachers who knew well Plato and Aristotle, and influenced enormously byzantine teaching in 12-13th century.
I thus would like to argue that the 11th century was not the period of humanism but the period of half-humanism.