Uprooting Byzantium. Ninth-Century Byzantine Books and the Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement

his study examines the available historiographic approaches to the transition in Byzantine history that occurred in the period running from the middle of the seventh century to the early ninth century. This is the transition from the so-called—and poorly documented—“dark age” to the better-documented “Macedonian Renaissance” or (after Paul Lemerle) “premier humanisme Byzantin”.1 This period is characterised by two sharply polar phenomena: the massive adoption of a minuscule script in library production, which replaced the majuscule script,2 and the second phase of the Iconoclast Controversy. A major outcome of the period has been the production of earliest secular manuscripts written in minuscule script.