Library of Constantinople
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Library of Constantinople, in the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, was the last of the great libraries of the ancient world. Long after the destruction of the library of Alexandria and the other ancient libraries, it preserved the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans for almost 1,000 years, until it was mostly destroyed during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
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[edit] History
Most of the text and literature of Ancient Greece was written on papyrus and as the material making up the text began to deteriorate there was a movement to transfer the text to parchment. Around the Fourth Century Constantine the Great first started the movement to transfer text (inspecific Holy Scripture) from papyrus to parchment. Constantine's heir to the throne Constantius II continued this movement. It was his work that culminated into the First Imperial library of Constantinople. The library is estimated to have contained some 100,000 volumes of ancient text. The movement was headed by one Themistios who commanded a group of calligraphers and librarians.
[edit] Contents of the library
A great deal of time and attention was dedicated by those working on the transition of the ancient papyrus text to parchment to what warranted being actually preserved. Older works like Homer and the Hellenistic history where given priority over Latin works for example.
Also not prioritized were older works that were no longer spoken like the works of the Attic period for example. Works like Sophocles and other authors whose works focused on grammar and text were chosen over least used or contemporary works. Due to this form of selective preservation many works which were to have been known to Themistios and that he mentions like the triad of Stoic philosophers are now lost. Some fragments of these lost works have been found at Herculaneum for example.
For the papyrus that was not translatable the group attempted to preserve them from decay by encasing them in parchment.
[edit] The Destruction of the library
As is widely known the greatest destroyer of ancient libraries is not time but rather fire. Over the centuries several fires in the library of Constantinople destroyed much of the collection. However the attempts of Themistios and Constantius were not without great benefit as some of their works were recorded and recopied and circulated through other text. Making it so that contemporary knowledge of Classical Greek literature is more widely known then would be the case if not for their efforts.
In 1204 the library became a target of the knights of the Fourth Crusade. The library itself was destroyed and its content burned or sold. The great part of the library that was saved later became absorbed into the Ottoman library when the Muslims forces of Metmet captured Constantinople at the conclusion of the siege of 1453.
