The present work is a successor to The Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (CHLGEMP) which appeared in 1967 under the editorship of A. H. Armstrong. Since the publication of that work, an enormous amount of fundamental philological and historical scholarship pertaining to the philosophical works of late antiquity has appeared. New critical editions, commentaries and translations of important philosophical texts have made this vast complex of material more accessible to historians, who in turn have made considerable advances in the understanding of the last phase of ancient philosophy. Although this more than forty years of labour seems justification enough for a new survey of the period, it should not be supposed that all or even most of the assessments made in the earlier work have been summarily invalidated. Hence, the sense in which the present work is a ‘successor’ to the earlier work does not indicate that it is a replacement. Students of this period will no doubt continue to profit from consulting the earlier work, which deserves to be recognized as groundbreaking.

It will be useful to point out how The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity (CHPLA) differs in some obvious ways from its worthy predecessor. First, the reader will notice that the subtle change in title presumes that much of what was once labelled – no doubt with a certain amount of diffidence – ‘early medieval’ is now more properly brought within the ambit of ancient philosophy. The reasons for this will be discussed below in this introduction and in various places throughout the volume. Here, it may simply be noted that the new title indicates a vigorous recognition of the extension of the canon of ancient philosophy far beyond the all-too-narrow confines of the fourth century bce.

THE HEIRS OF THEODOSIUS I: CONSTANTINOPLE VERSUS RAVENNA

In the fall of 394, as his entourage – victorious after fighting along Istria’s Frigidus River – moved steadily toward Milan, the southwestern imperial capital, Theodosius I (378–95) could have been excused for thinking that heaven had amply rewarded his piety. His sons had outlived the heirs of Valentinian I (364–75), so his family alone held claim to the throne. He had successfully put down not one but two usurpers, Magnus Maximus in the 380s and most recently Eugenius at the Frigidus River. And the emperor’s recent edicts nourishing the now officially orthodox Nicene form of Christianity aimed to stifle, if not extinguish, all other forms of religious expression save Judaism, which was still tolerated, despite events in Callinicum (CTh. 16.1.2; 16.10.10–12). Certainly, Augustine saw the entire history of the Christian message as culminating triumphantly in this period (Comm. in Psal. 6.10–12). Nevertheless, in the time he took to travel between the battleground and the capital city, Theodosius, now in his late forties, became gravely ill. He sent for his son Honorius, residing in Constantinople with his older brother, Arcadius, ruling as eastern Augustus in his late teens under the watchful eye of his praetorian prefect. The nine-year-old arrived, and Theodosius appointed as his guardian Stilicho, his magister utriusque militiae (Zos. 4.59). By 17 January 395 the emperor was dead.

In this concluding section, an overview is provided of the three streams of philosophical thought flowing out from late antiquity. The aim here is to show how ancient Greek philosophy and its Christianized versions were received. Philosophy in early Byzantium seems to have been completely subordinated to theological and ecclesiastical ends. Nevertheless, that explicit constraint did not prevent the further exploration of the ontological and epistemological issues that constitute the permanent inheritance of the ancient Greek philosophical tradition. When the political and theological controversies between Latin West and Greek East later erupt, it will become evident that philosophical disputes, for example, regarding the interpretation of Aristotle’s account of the activity of divinity, are much to the fore. With the fall of Byzantium in 1453, the exodus of Greek scholars to the West will provide the groundwork for another encounter of Greek philosophy with Christianity, this time with Scholasticism. It is now increasingly a commonplace that the primary transmitters of ancient Greek philosophy to the West were the Arabic Muslim scholars of Alexandria and Baghdad and elsewhere who translated and thereby preserved a significant number of basic texts. It is not infrequently the case that these Arabic translations can fill in lacunae owing to the disappearance or defective condition of Greek originals. But it is in the construction of an Islamic philosophical theology that a fruitful and challenging encounter of one religious tradition with ancient Greek philosophy can be found.

PRELIMINARY ISSUES

The study of early Byzantine philosophy raises certain preliminary issues that one needs to bear in mind from the start, for they concern the very definition of this field of scholarly research. It is only sixty years ago, when Basil Tatakis’ La philosophie byzantine (1949) appeared as a supplement in Emile Bréhier’s Histoire de la philosophie, that Byzantine philosophy emerged as a subject matter worth investigating in the history of philosophy. There is no doubt that the attitude towards Byzantine philosophy and its different periods has in the meantime changed considerably, but it is still helpful to first investigate its credentials as a legitimate part of the history of philosophy, and thus to justify the inclusion of its early period at the end of a narrative on the philosophy of late antiquity. Let us, therefore, begin by commenting on the nature and status of our subject matter.

Is there Byzantine philosophy?

The question regarding the very existence of something that can be called ‘Byzantine philosophy’ is raised even in recent contributions, although not in the same terms as in Tatakis’ book. Sixty years ago the discussion was primarily focused on the possibility of and the conditions for the existence of a Christian philosophy, a more general issue that during the 1930s occupied principally the French historians of philosophy. The outcome of this discussion was to establish the study of a western medieval Christian philosophy, which had originated from the writings of the Christian Fathers and centred on the works of Thomas Aquinas.