[gorthunet]

Hello everybody!

I'd like to know if a book exists about how the rich literary and scientific production of the Ancient Time passed through the Middle-Ages. Whiches authors were known and read in the monasteries, which were known but not studied (I know this was the case of Herodotus), and why, whiches were lost to Western Europe but not to Byzantines, and whiches were definitely lost during this period and why, as far at can be said.

Short from a book, do you know any other resources (articles, website?) on the subject?

Thanks

[noemon]

Harris, William Vernon (1989). Ancient Literacy. Harvard University Press
Norwich, John Julius (1997). A Short History of Byzantium. Vintage Books
Thomas, Carol G.; Burstein, Stanley M. (1988). Paths from ancient Greece.
Harris, Michael H. (1995). History of Libraries in the Western World.

According to Harris, 3/4 of ancient Greek and Roman literary corpus available today is so due to Byzantio.
Bessarion(in my avatar) is the one whose private library of ancient manuscripts in Venice formed the nucleus of St Marks library after his death and subsequent donation of it to the Republic of Venice.

[Aekos]

According to Harris, 3/4 of ancient Greek and Roman literary corpus available today is so due to Byzantio.

While many Greeks brought manuscripts to Italy from Constantinople after the barbarian conquest, weren't most of the works of Aristotle et al. transmitted to the West through Islamic scholarship?

[noemon]

Aristotle in particular, yes, he was very popular with Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides but also the Catholic church herself.

Aristotle's metaphysics were popularized in the west through Islamic scholarship, not exactly introduced, the same way Plato was introduced by the Byzantines, for example Plato(as well as a vast majority of others) was completely non-existent before the Byzantines, Aristotle had remained existent in both christian and muslim scholarship, its just that the Muslims expanded on him during the western european dark ages and this expansion became very popular later in the west reinvigorating western interest on the classics alltogether.

That does not deny the fact that more than 3/4 of total Classical anthology present today is present because of Byzantine Libraries, which is the case according to Harris.