ABSTRACT
The cleavage between Byzantium and the Arabs, to retain the conveniently inadequate terms, in philosophy and literature is due essentially to the different principles of selection applied to the classical heritage. French classicism coincided with an upsurge of French power, Greek tragedy ebbed with the waning of Athenian might, but philosophy survived the corrosion of the city. The focusing of piety on Muhammad is paralleled by the focusing of piety on Jesus and the dominance gained in Islam by hope and love over fear in man's relation to God recurs in Latin Christendom as does the channeling of the religious life into lay orders of various kinds. The piety of the East would have been meaningless to the apostles of the incipient modem age even had they been able to comprehend it—not least because of the gifts which the exiles from Constantinople turned Turkish had brought to the enthusiastic adventurers of the Quattrocento.
