If New Atheists know anything about ancient Greek and Roman learning, they know that Christians destroyed it. They will grudgingly admit that at least some ancient works of wisdom, science and rationalism were preserved in the “Dark Ages”, but generally this is quickly followed by laments that these represent only a fraction of the storied wealth of ancient learning and thundering condemnations of the Christian destruction, suppression and neglect that led to this learning’s ultimate loss. But is this accurate?

(Alleged) Bonfires of Books

In The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell famously observes “To lose one parent …. may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” To New Atheists, much the same could be said about the loss of the bulk of Classical texts between the late Roman Era and the invention of printing. Estimates as to the extent of the loss vary, but the usual guess is that we have about ten percent of what once existed. To the shrill Lady Bracknells of New Atheism, the idea that a culture could simply “lose” a whole 90 percent of its literary corpus has to go beyond even carelessness – only wilful destruction and suppression could explain such a cataclysmic loss. Christopher Hitchens’ acerbic observations are typical, as he writes of:

“[T]he lost works of Aristotle and other Greeks … ‘lost’ because the Christian authorities had burned some, suppressed others, and closed the schools of philosophy, on the grounds that there could have been no useful reflections on morality before the preaching of Jesus.”(God is Not Great, p. 29)

At the other end of the intelligence scale of New Atheist polemics is the sprawling chaos of jesusneverexisted.com which, as the name would suggest, is mainly a tangle of web pages devoted to Jesus Mythicism maintained by someone called Kenneth Humphreys. This jumbled mess of a site does not limit itself to the usual arguments against a historical Jesus, but veers off in all directions condemning Christianity for a multitude of sins, both real and imagined. To to the perpetually hysterical Humphreys, the loss of ancient learning was due purely to a campaign of destruction by his cartoon villains:

“‘Pious monks in remote fastnesses copying the Classics’? Do not believe a word of it! Remote they may have been, pious perhaps. Illiterate and indolent for the most part, they re-used (and thus ‘preserved’) ancient parchments because of the scarcity of new parchment. Washing off ancient wisdom, and copying without understanding their biblical fables, they excelled at adding pictures and calligraphy based on pre-Christian tribal motifs. Actually, it was the neglected archives of Byzantium and the schools of Islam that preserved much of classic learning, which trickled into western Europe, particularly after the 13th century.” (Humphreys, “The Closing Mind – The Insanity Begins”)

Of course, all of the Classical works that we can be sure Humphreys has never actually read were preserved for him by those “indolent monks”. There is no evidence that such works were typically or even regularly recycled as palimpsests and the example of the Archimedes Palimpsest, which he seems to be leaning on here, actually shows that those Byzantine archives were far from “neglected” and in fact represented a vigorous living tradition of preserving ancient works. Like most of his ilk, Humphreys also seems under the impression that the texts from those “schools of Islam” must have fallen from the heavens, rather than being provided to those Islamic scholars by still more of those pesky monks’ manuscripts in Greek and Syriac.

The idea that the loss of ancient works came as a result of active suppression by “Christian authorities” coupled with ignorant neglect is the persistent element in these laments. In her recent debut book The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, British popular history writer Catherine Nixey harps on this theme. “Works by censured philosophers were forbidden,” she solemnly assures her readers, “and bonfires blazed across the empire as outlawed books went up in flames.” (p. xxxii) I imagine this kind of stuff sells popular books, but if we actually turn to the evidence and the relevant scholarship, we find very little to support these ideas.  The Christian emperors of the fourth and fifth centuries were not shy about forbidding and periodically burning books, but examination of the collected Imperial edicts of the Theodosian Code reveals a total lack of any censuring of philosophers or outlawing of their books and no injunctions against Classical texts generally.

In the key scholarly monograph on the transmission of Classical works, L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson’s Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, the authors do note that “many influential clergy” disliked pagans and their literature and learning equally, but they go on to observe that “if this attitude had been adopted by all the clergy it would in due course, as the new religion became universal by the fifth century, have imposed an effective censorship on classical literature.” (p. 48) The key point is that there was actually no blanket disapproval of “pagan” literature and scholarship, let alone the “outlawing” of it or the Nazi-style bonfires of Nixey’s fervid imagining. Reynolds and Wilson note, correctly, that the decline in interest in this non-Christian literature did indeed have an impact on the number of copies in circulation and therefore the ultimate chances of their survival. But they also note that the fact we have any such works at all is due to a relatively benign attitude toward this material. They go on to say that despite a short period when the pagan emperor Julian’s renewed restrictions on Christianity inflamed things, “the persecution soon ended and pagan and Christian continued to use the same [Classical authors] without serious polemic or controversy.” (p. 50)  Interestingly, Nixey cites Reynolds and Wilson several times on other points, but neglects to mention these and similar observations that substantially undercut the lurid tale she tells.

As Reynolds and Wilson also note, any “bonfires” of books in this period tended to be of the works of “heretics” from non-conformist variants of Christianity rather than works of pagan scholarship. Apart from these variant Christian texts, the books that the Christian emperors were most keen on rooting out were works of divination, augury and prophecy, since all later Roman emperors, pagan and Christian, saw the private consulting of auspices or the consultation of prophetic books about their rule as a potential act of sedition. Nixey tries to claim this was merely a “pretext” for the destruction of hated Classical learning, though does so with little evidence.

What people like Nixey neglect to mention is the fact while some prominent clergy argued that the Bible and the works of the Church fathers were sufficient for a Christian’s education, others argued that all knowledge came ultimately from God and so “pagan” learning was a gift to be used. And the key point here is that these were the Christian authorities who won the debate over the use of non-Christian learning. It was not hardliners like Tertullian, Tatian or John Chrysostom who ended up setting the intellectual agenda for Christianity for the next 1000 years, it was the more liberal and open Justin Martyr, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Basil of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus. John of Damascus encouraged his readers to study “the best contributions of the philosophers of the Greeks” arguing that “whatever there is of good has been given to men from above by God, since ‘every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights'”(Philosophical Chapters, 1958,5). Similarly, Clement argued that philosophy was worth study because “[t]he way of truth is therefore one. But into it, as into a perennial river, streams flow from all sides.”(Stromata, I.5). Modern polemicists may sneer that these Patristic writers still saw philosophy as ancillary to or “the handmaiden” of theology, but that is essentially just condemning ancient people for not holding modern priorities. The fact remains that these were the authorities whose view prevailed, not the hardliners who the polemicists always highlight.  Edward Grant makes the key point here:

“The handmaiden concept of Greek learning was widely adopted and became the standard Christian attitude toward secular learning. …. With the total triumph of Christianity at the end of the fourth century, the Church might have reacted against pagan learning in general, and Greek philosophy in particular, finding much in the latter that was unacceptable or perhaps even offensive. They might have launched a major effort to suppress pagan learning as a danger to the Church and its doctrines. But they did not.”(The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts, p. 4, my emphasis)

Stupid Neglect?

So the basis for any systematic or orchestrated suppression or destruction of these works is flimsy, but polemicists like Hitchens, Humphreys and Nixey can fall back on the lesser charge of criminal neglect.  Here is Nixey again:

Other ancient texts were lost through ignorance.  Despised and ignored, over the years, they simply crumbled into dust, food for bookworms but not for thought. The work of Democritus, one of the greatest Greek philosophers and the father of atomic theory, was entirely lost. …. One can achieve a great deal by the blunt weapons of indifference and sheer stupidity.” (p. xxxii)

Again, this is the kind of sneering Presentism that mars most of this sort of prejudiced polemics. To begin with, while the works of these Christian scholars may not be to many modern reader’s taste, to pretend that thinkers of the sophistication of Augustine or writers of the elegance of Gregory of Nazianzus were simply “stupid” is pure ignorance, blind bigotry or both. Whatever it is, it certainly is not sober, objective historical analysis. And while we may be far more interested in reading any of the works of Democritus or Suetonius’ lost and intriguing Famous Courtesans over say, Eusebius of Thessalonica’s Against the Aphthartodocetae, blaming people in the past for preserving the works that interested them rather than the ones that interest us is simply childish. This also applies to non-Christian ancients. Like most such polemicists, Nixey seems to assume that if a work did not survive to us, it must be because of Christian neglect. It does not seem to occur to her that many of these works could have been lost or on their way to oblivion long before Christianity came to the fore. As interesting as the work of the “father of atomic theory” may be to us, Democritus and his school were not held in as high regard by rival philosophers, with the Aristotelians and Platonists being vehemently opposed to their ideas. Diogenes Laërtius reports that “Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect” (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, IX.7.40) – prejudices and trends in thought, with their impact on the survival of works, went on long before Christians appeared on the scene. While ancient Epicurean or Stoic philosophy can be, with the right pretty packaging, made appealing to modern readers, these lesser schools were already losing the race before Constantine’s fateful conversion.

But how much of the loss of that estimated 90 percent of ancient works be attributed to these changes in intellectual fashion and how much is simply due to the fact that keeping any work alive in a pre-printing world was a battle against probability? As I have pointed out here before, many modern readers – used to books that are so plentiful they are disposable objects or not even objects at all – fail to grasp how few copies of any work existed at any given time. Manuscripts were fragile, fell apart from use and, in a world where any artificial light meant open flames, prone to burning. The maintenance of even modest collections of books therefore required some level of patronage, which was not always constant or reliable, and such collections usually resided in major urban centres as a result. And major urban centres in the ancient world tended to be sacked and burned eventually. Even in the most peaceful times and in the cases of books which were revered and loved, the odds were stacked against any book’s survival in the long run. Given all this, was it really that a combination of Christian malice and Christian neglect was responsible for the loss of most of the learning of the ancient world, or were Christian books just as likely to be lost as “pagan” ones?

Photios’ Bibliotheca

One work which may give us something like an answer is the Bibliotheca of Photios of Constantinople (c. 810- c. 893). Photios was an interesting man who lived in interesting (and therefore tumultuous) times. A well-educated aristocrat, he took advantage of his family connections to the court of the Empress-Regent Theodora to rise in secular ranks, serving as captain of the Imperial Guard, then chief Imperial Secretary and he also undertook an embassy to the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. A change in Imperial administration saw his career suddenly switch to the Church and when the Patriarch of Constantinople, Ignatios, was deposed in 858 AD, he was fast-tracked into the job and so was successively ordained lector, sub-deacon, deacon, priest and finally bishop and Patriarch over five very long days of back to back liturgies. Photios’ unconventional elevation caused a scandal and set off a complex (and, literally, Byzantine) series of ecclesiastical repercussions, with several Church councils, depositions and reinstatements and a schism with the western Church and the Roman Papacy following in consequence.

Through all this and during his several exiles, Photios maintained a reputation as a scholar and prolific writer. He seems to have been friends with the polymath Leo the Mathematician and, as Patriarch, had access to the extensive collections in the Imperial Library. His most famous work is the Bibliotheca, also called the Myriobiblos or “the Ten Thousand Books”. The latter title is an exaggeration, but his work is a summary of 280 volumes of various works he claims to have read. It is part book review, part bragging and part synopsis of works he found interesting. Two things make it interesting for us: (i) he read both Christian and non-Christian books and (ii) most of the books he describes no longer survive – for dozens of them, Photios’ epitomes are all we know of these lost texts.

I have been drawing attention to Photios’ book for some years, noting that his snapshot of what an educated eastern Christian was reading in the ninth century not only shows a range of non-Christian texts by Classical writers, but also shows that all texts were in danger of not surviving the centuries. The majority of the books he mentions, both Christian or otherwise, are no longer extant. But while reading the infuriatingly polemical book by Catherine Nixey mentioned above, I wondered exactly what proportion of Photios’ Christian works were no longer extant and how this compared with the “pagan” and Jewish works on his list. If Hitchens, Humphreys and Nixey’s screeds are correct, surely a far higher proportion of his Christian books should still be in existence. So I sat down with a translation of the Bibliotheca and a spreadsheet and began to map each work mentioned.

This turned out to be a lengthy process, as Photios’s 280 volumes contained, according to his account, no less than 297 separate works. Most of these were identifiable and therefore able to be sorted into “Christian” (CH), “pagan” (P) or “Jewish” (J) – the only exceptions were three anonymous lexicons which I left out of my calculations as a result. I then sorted each group into two categories – “Extant” and “Lost”. Several works survive in incomplete form and others only as  fragments. The former I sorted into the “Extant” category if more than 60% of the work survived and the latter went into the “Lost” category. Here are the final results:

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Photios’ Bibliotheca – Analysis

Total – 294 books

Christian Total – 185 books

Pagan/Jewish Total – 109 books

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Extant Total – 107 books

Lost Total – 187 books

Extant % – 36.39%

Lost % – 63.60%

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Christian Extant – 66 books

Christian Lost – 119 books

Christian Extant % – 35.67%

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Pagan/Jewish Extant – 41 books

Pagan/Jewish Lost – 68 books

Pagan/Jewish Extant % – 37.61%

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Far from being less likely to still be extant, the non-Christian works in Photios’ list are actually very slightly more likely to survive (37.61%) than the Christian works he mentions (35.67%). This is despite the fact that most of the “pagan” and Jewish works he mentions are much older than most of the Christian works. Of course, Photios only tells us about the books he has read so his list is a snapshot, not a fully representative sample. The Christian books he mentions are heavily skewed toward theological disputations, sermons and scriptural commentaries and the non-Christian works are mainly historical works, speeches and lexicons rather than philosophy or the natural sciences. But probably the other key finding here is exactly how much of the Christian material is no longer extant: a full 64.33% of the works he mentions. If it were mainly “indifference” that accounted for the loss of ancient works, this percentage would be much lower for the works that Christians cared more about. The fact it is so high indicates that while some indifference probably played a part, keeping any work in circulation in this period was a battle against the historical odds.

For those who are interested, here are the data I worked from:

Author	Tile	Ch	Non-Ch	Extant	Lost
Theodore the Presbyter	On the Genuineness of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite	Ch			X
Hadrian the monk	Instroduction to the Scriptures	Ch		X
Nonnosus	History	Ch			X
Theodore of Mopsuestia	For Basil Against Eunomius	Ch			X
Gregory of Nyssa	For Basil Against Eunomius 1	Ch		X
Gregory of Nyssa	For Basil Against Eunomius 2	Ch			X
Origen	De Principiis	Ch		X
Eusebius	Praeparatio Evangelica	Ch		X
Eusebius	Demonstratio Evangelica	Ch		X
Eusebius	Praeparatio Ecclesiastica	Ch			X
Eusebius	Demonstratio Ecclesiastica	Ch			X
Eusebius	Refutation and defence	Ch			X
Apollinarius	Against the Heathen	Ch			X
Apollinarius	On Piety	Ch			X
Apollinarius	On Truth	Ch			X
Gelasius of Cyzicus	Acts of the First Council – Nicaea	Ch		X
Various	Acts of the Third Council – Ephesus	Ch			X
Various	Acts of the Fourth Council – Chalcedon	Ch			X
Various	Acts of the Fifth Council – Constantinople	Ch			X
Various	Acts of the Sixth Council – Constantinople II	Ch			X
Various	Acts of the Seventh Council – Nicaea II	Ch			X
John Philoponus	On the Resurrection	Ch			X
Theodosius the Monk	Refutation of John Philoponus	Ch			X
Conon	Refutation of John Philoponus	Ch			X
Eugenius	Refutation of John Philoponus	Ch			X
Themistius	Refutation of John Philoponus	Ch			X
Anonymous	Acts of a disputation between Tritheites and Hesitators	Ch			X
John Chrysostom	Notes on Death	Ch			X
John Chrysostom	Homilies on the Ascension	Ch		X
John Chrysostom	Homilies on Pentecost	Ch		X
Synesius of Cyrene	On Providence	Ch		X
Synesius of Cyrene	On the Kingdom	Ch			X
Eusebius	Ecclesiastical History	Ch		X
Socrates	Ecclesiastical History	Ch		X
Evagrius Scholasticus	Ecclesiastical History	Ch		X
Sozomen	Ecclesiastical History	Ch		X
Theodoret	Ecclesiastical History	Ch		X
Athanasius	Letters	Ch		X
Justus of Tiberias	Chronicle of the Kings of the Jews		J		X
Julius Africanus	Chronography	Ch			X
Philip of Side	Christian History	Ch			X
Cosmas Indicopleustes	Christian Topography	Ch		X
Anonymous	On Government	Ch			X
Theodore of Mopsuestia	Commentary on Genesis	Ch			X
Eusebius	Against Hierocles	Ch		X
Philostorgius	Ecclesiastical History	Ch			X
John of Aegae	Ecclesiastical History	Ch			X
Basil the Cicilian	Ecclesiastical History	Ch			X
John Philoponus	On the Hexaemeron	Ch		X
Philostratus	Life of Apollonius of Tyana		P	X
Andronicianus	Against the Eunomians	Ch			X
Theodoret	Against Heresies	Ch			X
Theodoret	Eranistes				X
Theodoret	Polymorphos	Ch			X
Flavius Josephus	Jewish War		J	X
Hippolytus	On the Universe	Ch			X
Cyril of Alexandria	Against Nestorius	Ch		X
Nicias the Monk	Against the Seven Chapters of Philoponus	Ch			X
Hesychius	On the Brazen Serpent	Ch			X
Anonymous	Acts of the synod of Side, 383, against the Messalians	Ch			X
Anonymous	Acts of the synod of Carthage, 412 or 411, against the Pelagians	Ch			X
Various	Copy of the Proceedings taken against the Doctrines of Nestorius	Ch			X
John Philoponus	Against the Fourth Council	Ch			X
Theodoret of Cyrrhus	Against Heresies	Ch		X
Appian	Roman History		P	X
Arrian	Parthica		P		X
Various	Acts of the Synod of the Oak, 403	Ch			X
Herodotus	History		P	X
Aeschines	Against Timarchus		P	X
Aeschines	On the False Embassy		P	X
Aeschines	Against Ctesiphon		P	X
Praxagoras of Athens	History of Constantine the Great		P		X
Praxagoras of Athens	The Kings of Athens		P		X
Praxagoras of Athens	Alexander King of Macedon		P		X
Procopius	History	Ch			X
Theophanes of Byzantium	History	Ch			X
Theophylact Simocatta	Histories	Ch		X
Nicephorus	Historical Epitome	Ch			X
Sergius the Confessor	History	Ch			X
Cephalion	Historical Epitome		P		X
Hesychius Illustrius	History	Ch			X
Hesychius Illustrius	On Justin	Ch			X
Diodorus Siculus	Historical Library		P	X
Cassius Dio	History		P	X
Ctesias	Persica		P		X
Ctesias	History of India		P		X
Heliodorus	Aethiopica		P	X
Themistius	Political Orations		P		X
Lesbonax	Speeches		P		X
John Philoponus	On the Trinity against John Scholasticus	Ch		X
Josephus	Antiquities of the Jews		J	X
Eunapius	Chronicle		P	X
Malchus	Byzantine History		P		X
Candidus	History	Ch		X
Olympiodorus	Histories		P		X
Theodore of Mopsuestia	On Persian Magic	CH			X
Dexippus	History		P		X
Dexippus	Historical Epitome		P		X
Dexippus	Scythia		P		X
Dionysius of Halicarnassus	Histories		P	X
Dionysius of Halicarnassus	Synopsis		P		X
Heraclian	Against the Manichaeans	Ch			X
John Chrysostom	Letters	Ch		X
Achilles Tatius	Adventures of Clitophon and Leucippe		P	X
Gelasius of Cyzicus	Proceedings of the Synod of Nicaea	Ch		X
Gelasius of Caesarea	Continuation of the History of Eusebius Pamphili	Ch			X
Libanius	Various works		P	X
Arrian	History of the Reign of Alexander		P	X
Arrian	Continuation		P		X
Arrian	Bithynica		P		X
Iamblichus	Dramaticon		P		X
John Scythopolita	Against Schismatics	Ch			X
John Scythopolita	Against Eutyches and Dioscorus	Ch			X
George of Alexandria	Life of St. Chrysostom	Ch		X
Phlegon of Tralles	Collection of Chronicles and List of Olympian Victors		P		X
Zosimus	New History		P	X
Herodian	History		P	X
The Emperor Hadrian	Declamations		P	X
Victorinus	Panegyrics on the Emperor Zeno	Ch			X
Gelasius of Caesarea	Against the Anomoeans	Ch			X
Philo Judaeus	Allegories of the Sacred Laws		J		X
Philo Judaeus	On the Civil Life		J		X
Philo Judaeus	Against Flaccus		J	X
Philo Judaeus	Against Gaius		J	X
Philo Judaeus	On the Essenes and Therapeutae		J	X
Theognostus of Alexandria	Outlines	Ch			X
Basil of Cicilia	Against John Scythopolita	Ch			X
Theodore of Alexandria	Against Themistius	Ch			X
Clement of Alexandria	Outlines	Ch			X
Clement of Alexandria	The Tutor	Ch		X
Clement of Alexandria	The Miscellanies	Ch		X
Clement of Rome	Apostolic Constitutions and Recognitions	Ch		X
Lucius of Charinus	Circuits of the Apostles	Ch			X
Anonymous	Against the Quartodecimans	Ch			X
Metrodorus	On the date of Easter	Ch			X
Anonymous	A Third Volume on the Holy Easter Feast	Ch			X
Anonymous	In Defense of Origen	Ch			X
Pamphilus & Eusebius	Defense of Origen	Ch		X
Pierius	Homilies	Ch			X
Irenaeus	Adversus Haereses	Ch		X
Hippolytus	Against Heresies	Ch		X
Epiphanius	Panarion	Ch		X
Epiphanius	Ancoratus	Ch		X
Epiphanius	On Weights and Measures	Ch		X
Justin Martyr	Apology	Ch		X
Clement of Rome	Letters to the Corinthians	Ch		X
Polycarp	Letter to the Philippians	Ch		X
Eusebius	Life of Constantine	Ch		X
Lucian	Dialogues		P	X
Lucius of Patrae	Metamorphoses		P		X
Damascius	Incredible Stories		P		X
Amyntianus	On Alexander		P		X
Palladius et.al.	Declamations		P		X
Cyril of Alexandria	Thesauri	Ch		X
Eunomius of Cyzicus	Apology	Ch			X
Eunomius of Cyzicus	Against Basil	Ch			X
Eunomius of Cyzicus	Letters	Ch			X
Athanasius	Commentary on Ecclesiastes	Ch			X
Athanasius	Commentary on the Song of Songs	Ch			X