7x6 RENAISSANCES

ture of Modern and Ancient Greek—whose hero was Digenis (Dhiye"nis)
Akritas1 was included in this earliest batch.2 As for the secular works
subsequently translated from the Greek, these amounted to no more
than a tiny fraction of the total bulk of the literature that had been trans-
lated by the sixteenth century; and this batch consisted of one Late
Hellenic chronicle, one Early Byzantine chronicle, and some fragments
of works on grammar and logic. Here again, there is not one pagan
Greek classic in the list.

How are we to account for this signal failure of the classical Hellenic
literature to strike root in a Russia whose reception of Orthodox Chris-
tianity had exposed the Slavonic-speaking converts to the influence of
their Greek-speaking co-religionists ? In this case, as we have seen, no
political obstacle loomed up across the path of cultural intercourse; and
by the date of Russia's conversion the literary renaissance of Hellenism
in Greek Orthodox Christendom was already in full swing. Why should
a Medieval Greek renaissance of Hellenism have failed to capture Rus-
sia as a Medieval Italian renaissance of Hellenism eventually captured
Hungary, Poland, and Scandinavia ? The key to an explanation of this
puzzle is perhaps to be found in the practice of translating Greek into
Slavonic, instead of studying works of Greek literature in the original;
for, notwithstanding the power and prestige enjoyed by the Greek
Metropolitans of Kiev,

'the knowledge of Greek seems to have been not much extended among
Russians. In the Chronicles or in the Lives of Saints we never find them
speaking Greek, nor is there any mention of the Greek language being
taught in schools. What is still more significant, there have been preserved
no Greek manuscripts written in Russia, no Greek quotations or even
single words in Greek letters in Russian manuscripts. It appears that
Greek was for the Russians a language of practical intercourse with
foreigners and not an instrument of culture. Studying the theological and
scientific fund of the most learned Russian authors, one cannot discover
among their sources direct Greek originals. . . . Everything in their
writings can be explained on the ground of the existent literature of
translations.*3

The formidable intellectual enterprise of mastering Greek had thus
been made superfluous for the Russians thanks to the linguistic liberality
of the Orthodox Church and the philological ability of Saint Cyril, the
Greek Apostle to the Slavs. Yet this exemption from an intellectual
labour was a doubtful blessing, since, in being let off a task, these Slavo-
nic-speaking Christians were at the same time being denied an opportu-
nity. If they had been compelled to take Orthodox Christianity in its
original Greek dress, a mastery of the Attic Greek KOW^ in its ecclesi-
astical use would have provided them with the necessary stepping-
stone for mounting to the higher attainment of cultivating the pagan
Hellenic literature written in an earlier form of the same Attic Greek
dialect, and passing on thence to an Ionic Greek Herodotean prose and
an Epic Greek Homeric poetry, A Greek Orthodox Christian who had

1 See V. v. 253-9. a See Fedoto\j op. cit,, p. 50.

s Ibid., pp. 58-39.