The Byzantine cultural legacy to the early European educational system
The Byzantine cultural legacy to the early European educational system

Summary/Abstract: The Byzantine Empire always displayed a cultural dimension that manifested itself to the full extent under extremely varied forms. In the late ancient world, the Byzantine school was dominated by the return to Greek culture. Any good professor of higher education taught the Greek classics. The basic curriculum included Homer, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Demosthenes; more advanced students also read Herodotus and Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle. Set between the collapse of classical Antiquity and the Renaissance age that announced the dawn of modernity, Byzantium was unquestionably the upholder of medieval culture in Europe, even during the centuries when the rest of the continent was dominated by the so-called cultural “darkness”. Byzantine philosophers, jurists and theologians were the first teachers Italy ever had and it was through the Italian Renaissance that the Byzantine culture became an integral part of European culture.

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