ABSTRACT
Similarly, I cannot offer any bibliography, since I have tried to incorporate it into my report.
Anyway, since 1971 scholars have tended to rely on Paul Lemerle’s Premier Humanisme2 though Lemerle actually does not attempt to give an historical explanation of the Byzantine renaissance. One can happily ignore most of the literature, because the authors of this put themselves out of the subject area of discussion.3 At least scholars have recently agreed that the renaissance had already begun in the last decades of the eighth century, even if they rarely give specific reasons.4
