Note y — Chapter IX · [a] (continued 4)

The authors most conversant with Byzantine learning agree in this. Nevertheless, there is one manifest difference between the Greek writers of the worst period, such as the eighth century, and those who correspond to them in the West. Syncellus, for example, is of great use in chronology, because he was acquainted with many ancient histories now no more. But Bede possessed nothing which we have lost; and his compilations are consequently altogether unprofitable. The eighth century, the Sæculum Iconoclasticum of Cave, low as it was in all polite literature, produced one man, John Damascenus, who has been deemed the founder of scholastic theology, and who at least set the example of that style of reasoning in the East. This person, and Michael Psellus, a philosopher of the eleventh century, are the only considerable men, as original writers, in the annals of Byzantine literature.