SOURCE: "An Unpublished Funeral Oration on Anna Comnena," in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological, Vol. 188, No. 8, 1962, pp. 1-12.

In the following excerpt, Browning examines a document from the middle of the twelfth century which lends insight into Anna's quest for a philosophical system.

The Byzantinist has one advantage over the student of classical antiquity—unless the latter happens to be a papyrologist. With a little diligence and a minimum of good luck he can easily unearth unpublished texts and find himself producing an editio princeps. And however often one has turned over the leaves of a manuscript and laboriously read words which have remained unread for perhaps five centuries or more, it never loses its thrill. Yet one must admit that the advantage is less than it seems. The classical scholar's texts are usually worth reading from some point of view, while what the Byzantinist finds is so...