The people liked to see their Old Testament stories and the stories
from the Life of Christ painted over and over again. They had become
fond of the versions of the tales which they had known and seen painted
when they were young, and did not wish them changed, so that the range
of subjects was not large. The same were repeated, and because of the
painter's fear of making mistakes it was natural that the same figures
should be repeated too. Thus, whatever the subject pictured, a
tradition was formed in each locality for the grouping and general
arrangement of the figures, and the most authoritative tradition for
such typical groupings was preserved in Constantinople or Byzantium,
from which city the 'Byzantine' school of painting takes its name.
Before 1200, Byzantium had been a centre of residence and the
civilizing influence of trade for eighteen centuries. It had been the
capital of the Roman Empire, and less civilized peoples from the north
had never conquered the town, destroying the Greek and Roman traditions,
as happened elsewhere in Europe. You have read how the Romans had to
withdraw their armies from England to defend Rome against the attacks
of the Goths from the north, and then how Britain was settled by Angles,
Saxons, Jutes, and Danes, who destroyed most of the Roman civilization.
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