“
In Greek, the most significant area to which these curricula were reduced was
the rudiments of Aristotelian logic. It is possible, for instance, to discern a major
structural change in the medical curriculum in Alexandria toward the end of the
sixth century, perhaps as a reaction to the decline of philosophical instruction
in that last remaining center of Greek philosophical studies. ...The theological applications of philosophy in Greek patristic literature, by
contrast, were many and longevous, though clearly harnessed to their theological,
apologetic, and polemical goals rather than free philosophical discourse.
In Syriac Christianity, as in Greek, there is a similar development of a logical
curriculum, except that it was rather shorter:
The Sasanian rulers actively endorsed a translation culture that viewed the
transferral of Greek texts and ideas into Middle Persian as the “restitution” of
an Iranian heritage that was allegedly pilfered by the Greeks after the campaigns
of Alexander the Great.17 It was this cultural context, and the atmosphere
of open debate fostered most energetically by Chosroes I Anushirwan (ruled
531–78), that must have prompted the Greek philosophers to seek refuge in his
court after Justinian’s 529 edict prohibited them from teaching.
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