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Cassiodorus must have possessed very exceptional adaptability of character, not to say elasticity of conscience, to be able, during a period extending over nearly half a century, to retain the favour of so many of the successive rulers of Italy and apparently to make his services necessary to each one of them. It is certain, however, that Italy benefited largely by the fact that through the various contests and changes of monarchs, it had been possible to preserve a certain continuity of executive policy and of administrative methods. The further fact that the "perpetual" or at least the continuing minister was at once a Greek and a Roman, and not only a statesman but a scholar, and that he had succeeded in preserving through all the devastations of civil wars and of foreign invasions a great collection of classic books and a persistent interest in classic literature, exercised an enormous influence upon the culture of Europe for centuries to come. The career of Cassiodorus had, as we have seen, been varied and honourable. It was, however, his exceptional fortune to be able to render the most important and the most distinctive service of his life after his life's work had apparently been completed.

After his retirement to Bruttii, Cassiodorus founded a second monastery, known as Mons Castellius, the work of which was planned for a more austere class of hermits than those who had associated themselves together at Vivaria. Of both monasteries he retained the practical control, and, according to Trithemius of Vivaria he became abbot. Hodgkin, while himself citing the extract from Trithemius, thinks it possible that Cassiodorus never formally became abbot, but says that the direction and supervision of the work of the two monasteries rested in any case in his hands.

His treatise on the Nature of the Soul was probably completed just before he began his monastic life, and was itself an evidence of the change in the direction of his thoughts and of his ideals. Cassiodorus had now done with politics. As Hodgkin points out, the dream of his life had been to build up an independent Italian State, strong with the strength of the Goths, and wise with the wisdom of the Romans. It is evident that he also felt himself charged with a special responsibility in preserving for later generations the literature and the learning of the classic world. With the destruction of the Gothic kingdom, that dream had been scattered to the winds. The only institutions which retained a continuity of organisation were those belonging to the Church, and it was through the Church that must be preserved for later generations the thought and the scholarship of antiquity. It was with a full understanding of this change in the nature of his responsibilities, that Cassiodorus decided to consecrate his old age to religious labours and to a work even more important than any of his political achievements: the preservation, by the pens of monastic copyists, of the Christian Scriptures, of the writings of the early Fathers, and of the great works of classical antiquity.

Some years before his retirement from Ravenna, Cassiodorus had endeavoured to induce Pope Agapetus to found a school of theology and Christian literature at Rome, modelled on the plan of the schools of Alexandria and Nisibis. The confusion consequent on the invasion of Italy by Belisarius had prevented the fulfilment of this scheme. The aged statesman was now, however, planning to accomplish, by means of his two monasteries, a similar educational work.

Hodgkin summarises the aims of earlier monasticism, as follows: In the earlier days of monasticism, men like the hermits of the Theba?d had thought of little else but mortifying the flesh by vigils and fastings, and withdrew from all human voices in order to enjoy an ecstatic communion with their Maker. The life in common of monks like those of Nitria and Lerinum had chastened some of the extravagances of these lonely enthusiasts, while still keeping in view their main purpose. S. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, had shown what great results might be obtained for the Church of all ages from the patient literary toil of one religious recluse. And finally, S. Benedict, in that Rule of his, which was for centuries to be the code of monastic Christendom, had sanctified work as one of the most effectual preservatives of the bodily and spiritual health of the ascetic.

"It was the glory of Cassiodorus," says Hodgkin, "that he first and pre-eminently insisted on the expediency of including intellectual labour in the sphere of monastic duties.... This thought in the mind of Cassiodorus was one of infinite importance to the human race. Here, on the one hand, were the vast armies of monks, whom both the unsettled state of the times and the religious ideas of the age were driving irresistibly into the cloister; and who, when immured there with only theology to occupy their minds, became, as the great cities of the East knew only too well, preachers of discord and mad fanaticism. Here, on the other hand, were the accumulated stores of two thousand years of literature, sacred and profane, the writings of Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophers, Latin rhetoricians, perishing for want of men with leisure to transcribe them. The luxurious Roman noble with his slave amanuenses multiplying copies of his favourite authors for his own and his friends' libraries, was an almost extinct existence. With every movement of barbarian troops over Italy, whether those barbarians called themselves the men of Witigis or of Justinian, some towns were being sacked, some precious manuscripts were perishing from the world. Cassiodorus perceived that the boundless, the often wearisome leisure of the convent might be profitably spent in arresting this work of denudation, in preserving for future ages the intellectual treasure which must otherwise inevitably have perished. That this was one of the great services rendered by the monasteries to the human race, the most superficial student has learned, but not all who have learned it know that the monks' first decided impulse in this direction was derived from Cassiodorus."

The German biographer of Cassiodorus, Franz, uses similar language:

The devotion and application of the monks produced in the course of years a class of scribes whose work in the transcribing and illuminating of manuscripts far surpassed in perfection and beauty the productions of the copyists of classic Rome. In the monasteries north of the Alps the work of the scribes was, for the earlier centuries, devoted principally to the production of copies of missals and other books of devotion and of portions of the Scriptures. In Italy, however, where classical culture never entirely disappeared, attention continued to be given to the transcription of the Latin texts of which any manuscripts had been preserved, and it was these transcripts of the monks of Cassiodorus and S. Benedict that gave the "copy" for the first editions of Cicero, Virgil, and the other classic writers, produced by the earliest printers of Germany and Italy.

The death of Cassiodorus occurred in 575, in the ninety-sixth year of his age. An inheritor of the traditions of imperial Rome, Cassiodorus had been able, in a career extending over nearly a century, to be of signal service to his country under a series of foreign rulers. He had succeeded, through his personal influence with these rulers, in maintaining for Italy an organisation based on Roman precedents, and in preserving for the society of the capital an interest in the preservation and cultivation of classic literature. When the political institutions of Italy had been shattered and the very existence of civilisation was imperilled, he had transferred his services to the Church, recognising, with the adaptability which was the special characteristic of the man, that with the Church now rested the hopes of any continuity of organised society, of intellectual interest, of civilisation itself. He brought to the Church the advantage of exceptional executive ability and of long official experience, and he also brought a large measure of scholarship and an earnest zeal for literary and educational interests. It is not too much to say that the continuity of the thought and civilisation of the ancient world with that of the Middle Ages was due, more than to any other one man, to the life and labours of Cassiodorus.

This simple regulation, uttered by one the power and extent of whose far-reaching influence have rarely been equalled among men, gave an impulse to study that grew with the growth of the Order, and that secured a continuity of intellectual light and life through the dark ages, the results of which have endured to modern times. "Wherever a Benedictine house arose, or a monastery of any one of the Orders, which were but offshoots from the Benedictine tree, books were multiplied and a library came into existence, small indeed at first, but increasing year by year, till the wealthier houses had gathered together collections of books that would do credit to a modern university."

While the two monasteries of Cassiodorus in Calabria and the Benedictine foundation of Monte Cassino near Naples, were entitled to first reference on the ground of the exceptional influence exercised by them upon the literary development of the monks, they were by no means the earliest of the western monastic foundations. This honour belongs, according to Denk, to the monastery of Ligug?, near Poitiers , founded in 360 A.D. by Bishop Martin of Tours. The second in point of date, that of Marmoutier, near Tours, was instituted by the same bishop a year or two later. Gaul proved to be favourable ground for the spread of monastic tenets and influence, and by the year 400 its foundations included over two thousand monks.

In 405, S. Honoratus, later Bishop of Arles, founded a monastery on the island of Lerin, on the south coast of France, which became a most important centre of learning and the mother of many monasteries. In the educational work carried on at Lerin, full consideration was given to classic authors, such as Cicero, Virgil, and Xenophon, as well as to the writings of the Fathers, and the scribes were kept busied in the production of copies.

The earliest known example of the work of a European monk dates from the year 517. The manuscript is in the Capitular library in Verona, and has been reproduced in fac-simile by Ottley. The script is that known as half uncial. At the time this manuscript was being written, Theodoric the Goth was ruling in Italy, with Cassiodorus as his minister, and the monastery at Viviers was still to be founded.

S. Gregory the Great, who became Pope in 590, exercised an important influence over the intellectual interests of his age. Gregory had been charged with having destroyed the ancient monuments of Rome, with having burned the Palatine library, including the writings of Cicero and Livy, with having expelled the mathematicians from Rome, and with having reprimanded Bishop Didier of Vienna for teaching grammar to children. Montalembert contends that these charges are all slanders and that the Pope was not only an unequalled scholar, but that he fully appreciated the importance for the intellectual development of the Church, of a knowledge of the classics. Gregory is quoted as saying, in substance: "The devils know well that the knowledge of profane literature helps us to understand sacred literature. In dissuading us from this study, they act as the Philistines did when they interdicted the Israelites from making swords and lances, and obliged that nation to come to them for the sharpening of their axes and plough-shares." Gregory was himself the author of a considerable series of writings, and, while his Latin was not that of Cicero, he contributed as much as did S. Augustine to form the new Latin, what might be called the Christian Latin, which was destined to become the language of the pulpit and the school, and which forms the more immediate foundation of an important group of the languages of modern Europe.

Isidore is the first Christian who arranged and edited for Christians the literature of antiquity. He died in 636, but the incentive that he had given to learning and to literature survived him in a numerous group of disciples. Among Isidore's pupils was King Sisebut, whose interest in scholarship caused him to endow liberally a number of the Spanish monasteries.

As long as any portions of the Roman Empire held together and the classic culture still preserved its influence, a considerable class of men secured their support through work as scribes. In Italy this class seems never entirely to have disappeared. Some small circles of the people retained, even after the land had been many times overrun by invaders, some interest in the classics, and were prepared to pay for more or less trustworthy manuscript copies of these. In Italy also there appears to have been a much larger use of writing in connection with trade and commerce than obtained throughout the rest of Europe until a much later time. While in Germany and France such scholarship as remained was restricted almost entirely to the ecclesiastics and to the monastery centres, in Italy the Church, during the earlier period, took a smaller interest in scholarship. There came into existence, however, a group of literary laymen, who were in a measure a continuation of or a succession to the old Latin grammarians, and who maintained some of their interest in classic culture and preserved, however imperfectly, some remnants of classic knowledge.

In France, after the time of Charlemagne, it was the case, as we have seen, that those who had any educational or literary ambitions were almost necessarily obliged to become ecclesiastics, as it was only in monasteries and in the training schools attached to the monasteries, that the necessary education could be secured. As one result of this, the number of ecclesiastics increased much more rapidly than the number of places in which they could be occupied or of foundations upon which they could be supported. Priests for whom no priestly work was found became, therefore, what might be called lay-clerics, and were employed in connection with the work of the courts, or of magistrates, or as scribes and secretaries.

In this manner there came into the hands of these lay-clerics, not only the management of correspondence, personal, official, and diplomatic, but a very large proportion of the direction of the affairs with which such correspondence had to do. As far, therefore, as the clerical personality represented ecclesiastical purposes and aims, the influence of ecclesiasticism must have been very much greater during the age in which the art of writing was confined to the Church than at any earlier or any later period of the world's history. Such influence was, however, probably less in fact than in appearance, as it seems to have been the case that a very large proportion of such clerics were priests in name only, and that their interests, purposes, and ambitions were outside of the Church, and were not necessarily even in sympathy with the development of the control of the Church over the affairs of the world.

In the twelfth century, the monks of Tegernsee, under the Abbot Rupert, were working on the production of the books for the library of some noble lady. The Brother Liaupold, in Mallerstorf, spoke of having "earned much money through his pen." This happened in the last quarter of the twelfth century. The lines quoted by Wattenbach were found upon a manuscript bearing Liaupold's name.

For the libraries of their own monasteries, the monks worked without direct pay, and it was only later, as the ambition of the librarians increased or as the business of distributing copies of manuscripts became more important, that the monasteries found it worth while to employ, either in place of or in addition to their own monks, scribes from outside. In Salzburg, Pastor Peter Grillinger paid, in 1435, to the scribes of the neighbouring monasteries three hundred gulden for the production of a Bible , and presented this to the library of the Cathedral.

In 1470, the same Burer gave to the monastery, in exchange for a benefice, his entire library. The record does not specify how many volumes the library comprised. In 1350, a certain Constantine was arrested in Erfurt as a heretic. Special efforts were made to save him from death or banishment on the ground that he was a skilled scribe. The record does not appear to show whether or not this plea was successful.

The examples named indicate what was, in any case, probably the only class of scribe work done outside of the monasteries and outside of the universities or before the university period, by the few laymen who were able to write. Their labour was devoted exclusively to the production of books in the tongue of the people; if work in Latin were required, it was still necessary to apply to the monasteries. With the development of literature in Italy, during the following century, there came many complaints concerning the lack of educated scribes competent to manifold the works. These complaints, as well as to the lack of writers as concerning the ignorance and carelessness shown in their work, continued as late as the time of the Humanists, and are repeated by Petrarch and Boccaccio.

The texts have been preserved of a number of songs ascribed to Columba, and, whether or not these verses were really the work of the monk, the tradition that he was the first of the Irish poets doubtless has foundation. In the time of Columba, the Irish monasteries already possessed texts in greater quantity than could be found in the monasteries of Scotland or England, but even in Ireland manuscripts were rare and costly, and were preserved with jealous care in the monastic libraries. Not only was very great value put upon these volumes, but they were even supposed to possess the emotions and the passions of living beings. Columba was himself a collector of manuscripts, and his biography by O'Donnell attributes to him the laborious feat of having transcribed with his own hand three hundred copies of the Psalter. According to one of the stories, Columba journeyed to Ossory in the south-west to visit a holy and very learned recluse, a doctor of laws and philosophy, named Longarad. Columba asked leave to examine the doctor's books, and when the old man refused, the monk burst out in an imprecation: "May thy books no longer do thee any good, neither to them who come after thee, since thou takest occasion by them to show thine inhospitality." The curse was heard, and after Longarad died, his books became unintelligible. An author of the ninth century says that the books still existed, but that no man could read them.

Another story speaks of Columba's undertaking, while visiting his ancient master Finnian, to make a clandestine and hurried copy of the abbot's Psalter. He shut himself up at night in the church where the Psalter was deposited, and the light needed for his nocturnal work radiated from his left hand while he wrote with the right. A curious wanderer, passing the church, was attracted by the singular light, and looked in through the keyhole, and while his face was pressed against the door his eye was suddenly torn out by a crane which was roosting in the church. The wanderer went with his story to the abbot, and Finnian, indignant at what he considered to be a theft, claimed from Columba the copy which the monk had prepared, contending that a copy made without permission ought to belong to the owner of the original, on the ground that the transcript is the offspring of the original work. As far as I have been able to ascertain, this is the first instance which occurs in the history of European literature of a contention for copyright. Columba refused to give up his manuscript, and the question was referred to King Diarmid, or Dermott, in the palace at Tara. The King's judgment was given in a rustic phrase which has passed into a proverb in Ireland: "To every cow her calf , and consequently to every book its copy."

Columba protested loudly, and threatened the King with vengeance. He retired to his own province chanting the song of trust, the text of which has been preserved and which is sacred as one of the most authentic relics of the ancient Irish tongue. He succeeded in arousing against the King the great and powerful clans of his relatives and friends, and after a fierce struggle the King was overcome and was obliged to take refuge at Tara.

After the successful issue of his contest with Finnian, S. Columba journeyed through the land, making a kind of expiatory pilgrimage for the purpose of atoning for the bloodshed of which he had been the cause. He went for counsel to his soul-friend or confessor, S. Laisren. The saint bade him as a penance leave Ireland and go and win souls for Christ, as many as the lives that had been lost in the battle of Culdreimhne, and never again look upon his native land. He finally took up his abode in the desolate little island of Iona, on the coast of Scotland. Other refugees were attracted to the island by the fame of the saint, and there finally came into existence on the barren rocks a great monastery which for centuries exercised throughout Britain and North Europe a wide-spread influence in behalf of higher Christianity and of intellectual life.

From Iona and its associated monasteries of Ireland and Scotland came scholarly teachers to France and Germany whose influence was important in giving a new direction to the work of later generations of monks. Among the Continental monasteries in which was developed through such influence a higher range of scholarly activity, were Luxeuil , Corbie , Bobbio , and St. Gall . Wattenbach says that, notwithstanding their scholarly knowledge, these Scotch monks were wild and careless in their orthography. As an example of the barbarity of style and of form, he quotes a manuscript of the date of 750 .

A number of years later, when, through the monks of Iona and under the general direction of S. Columba, a number of monasteries had been founded throughout Scotland, Columba had occasion to plead before the Parliament of Drumceitt in behalf of the Bards, who might be called the authors of their time, and with whom the poet monk had a keen personal sympathy. The Bards of Ireland and Britain were at once the poets, the genealogists, the historians, and the musicians of their countries, and their position and their influence constituted a very characteristic feature of Celtic life in the centuries between 500 and 800.

The great influence and power enjoyed by the Bards had naturally produced not a few abuses, and at the time of the Parliament of Drumceitt their popularity had suffered and a violent opposition had been raised against them. They were charged with insolence and with greed, and they were particularly censured for having made a traffic and a trade of their poetry, a charge which recalls some of the criticisms of classic times.

The enmities raised against them had gathered so much force that King Aedh found himself compelled to propose to the Assembly of Drumceitt the abolition of the Order and the abandonment, or, as one authority suggests, the massacre of the Bards. It would appear as if Ireland had been suffering from an excess of poetic utterances and felt that some revolutionary methods were required in order to restore to the land quiet and peace. Montalembert is of opinion that the clergy did not take any part in the prosecution of a class which they might, not unnaturally, have regarded as their rivals. The Bards had, however, for the most part kept in friendly relations with the bishops, monks, and saints, and each monastery, like each prince and lord, possessed a Bard whose chief office it was to sing the glory and record the history of the community.

Nevertheless, the Bards were certainly, as a body, a residuum of the paganism that had been so recently supplanted, and it is probable that the Church, if not joining in the onslaught upon their body, was not prepared to take any active part in their defence. It seems as if the decision of the Assembly, under the influence of King Aedh, would certainly have been adverse to the poets. It was Columba, the poet monk, who saved them. He, who was born a poet and who, to the last day of his life, remained a poet, interceded for the Bards with such eloquence and earnestness that his plea had to be listened to. He claimed that the general exile of the poets would be the death of a venerated antiquity and of a literature which was a part of the country's life. "The bright corn must not be burned," he said, "because of the weeds that mingled with it." Influenced by his impassioned plea, the Assembly yielded at length, under the condition that the number of Bards should be henceforth limited and that the Order should be placed under certain rules to be framed by Columba himself. Thus poetry was to continue to exist, but it was not to be allowed to oppress the community with its redundance.

It is doubtless the case that one reason for the exceptional fame of Columba and the large amount of legendary detail that has been preserved of his achievements, was this great service that he had rendered to the poets of his time. They showed their gratitude by exalting his glory in numberless songs and recitals, and it is chiefly from these that has been made up the narrative of the saint's life. Another result of this intervention on the part of the monk for the protection of the poets was a still closer association between the Church and the literary spirit of the age. All antagonism between the religious ideal and the influence of the poetry of the Bards seems from this time to have disappeared. The songs of the Bards were no longer in any measure devoted to the cause of paganism, but music and poetry became closely identified with the ideals of the Church and with the work of the monasteries. The Church had preserved the poets, and poetry became the faithful handmaid of the Church.

While the educational work in the convent schools was for the most part not carried on beyond what might be called elementary classes, there were not a few examples of abbesses whose scholastic attainments would rival those of the abbots. Montalembert speaks of convents founded, under the auspices of S. Jerome, by S. Paula and her daughter, and is not prepared to admit that in any essential detail the history of S. Paula is legendary. He reminds us that Hebrew and Greek were the daily study of these two admirable women, who advised S. Jerome in all his difficulties and cheered him under all discouragements. Montalembert is probably on firmer ground when he speaks of the scholarly attainments of S. Aura, the friend of S. Eloi, and of the nun Bertile, whose learned lectures on Holy Scripture drew to Chelles in the sixth century a large concourse of auditors of both sexes. S. Radegonde, known by her profound studies of the three Fathers, S. Gregory, S. Basle, and S. Athanasius, is commemorated by Fortunatus, as is also Gertrude, Abbess of Nivelle, who sent messengers to Rome and to Ireland to buy books. I do not find a record of the date of these book-buying expeditions of the abbess.

In Germany, the list of the learned nuns includes S. Lioba, who was said to be so eager for knowledge that she never left her books except for divine service. She was a pupil of S. Boniface, and to her was due the framing of the system of instruction instituted after the mission of S. Boniface in North Germany. Hroswitha, the illustrious nun of Gandersheim , has been referred to more than once. Hroswitha's dramatic poetry has been preserved for nearly eight centuries, and has had the honour of being reprinted as late as 1857. Her writings included a history in verse of Otho the Great, and the lives of several saints. Her most important works, however, were sacred dramas composed by her to be acted by the nuns of the convent. M. Magin points out that these dramas show an intimate acquaintance with the authors of classic antiquity. Curiously enough, there was, nearly a century earlier, another Hroswitha in Gandersheim, who was the daughter of the Duke of Saxony, and who became the fourth abbess of the convent. She composed a much esteemed treatise on logic.

The principal and most constant occupation of the learned Benedictine nuns was the transcription of manuscripts. It is difficult to estimate too highly the extent of the services rendered by these feminine hands to learning and to history throughout the Middle Ages. They brought to the work a dexterity, an elegance of attainment, and an assiduity which the monks themselves could not attain, and some of the most beautiful specimens of caligraphy which have been preserved from the Middle Ages are the work of the nuns. The devotion of nuns as scribes began indeed with the early ages of Christian times. Eusebius speaks of young maidens whom the learned men of his time employed as copyists. In the fifth century, S. Melania the younger distinguished herself by the beauty and exactness of her transcripts. In the sixth century, the nuns of the convent at Arles, incited by the example of the Abbess of St. C?saire, acquired a no less brilliant reputation. In the seventh century, S. Gertrude, who was learned in the Holy Scriptures, sent to Rome to ask not only for works of the highest Christian poetry, but also for teachers capable of instructing her nuns to comprehend certain allegories. In the eighth century, S. Boniface begged the abbess to write out for him in golden letters the Epistle of S. Peter. Caesarius of Arles gave instructions that in the convents which had been founded by him and the supervision of which rested with his sister, the "Virgins of Christ" should give their time between their prayers and psalms to the reading and to the writing of holy works. In the eighth century the nuns of Maseyk, in Holland, busied themselves in a similar fashion, not only in writing, but particularly in illuminating , in which they became proficients.

Without the monks, says Marsham , we should have been as ignorant of our history as children. England, converted by her monks, has special reason to be proud of the historians furnished by her abbeys. One chronicler, Gildas, has painted with fiery touches the miseries of Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. To another, the Venerable Bede, author of the ecclesiastical history of Britain, we owe the detailed account of the Catholic Renaissance under the Saxons. Bede's chronicle extends to the year 731. Its author died four years later. Among later monkish chroniclers may be mentioned Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland, whose history extends to 1091; Vitalis, a monk of Shrewsbury, whose chronicle reached to 1141, and many others. The chronicle of Vitalis gives an animated picture of the struggle between the Saxons and the Normans, and of the vicissitudes during this period of the Church of England. Later monastic historians were: William of Malmesbury , Geoffrey of Monmouth , Henry of Huntingdon , Roger of Wendover , Matthew Paris , and Ralph Higden . Further reference to the work of these English chroniclers is made in the chapter on Books in England during the Manuscript Period. This series of monkish chronicles presents, says Montalembert, an inexhaustible amount of information as to the manners, laws, and ideas of the times, and unites with the important information of history the personal attractiveness of biography.

The mediaeval history of Italy is in like manner dependent almost entirely upon the records of the literary monks. The great collection of Muratori is based upon the monkish chronicles, especially of those of Volturna, Novalese, Farfa, Casa Aurio, and of Monte Cassino. From the latter abbey, there sprang a series of distinguished historians: Johannes Diaconus, the biographer of S. Gregory the Great, who wrote during the reign of Charlemagne; Paulus Diaconus, the friend of Charlemagne; Leo, Bishop of Ostia, first author of the famous chronicle of Monte Cassino, and Peter Diaconus, who continued its chronicle. Another monk of Monte Cassino recounts the wonderful story of the conquest gained by the Norman chivalry in the two Sicilies, a story reproduced and completed by the Sicilian monk Malaterra.

The persistent labour given by these monkish chroniclers to works, the interest and importance of which were largely outside the routine of their home monasteries and had in many cases no direct connection with religious observances, indicates that they were looking to a larger circle of readers than could be secured within the walls of their own homes. While the evidences concerning the arrangements for the circulation of these chronicles are at best but scanty, the inference is fairly to be drawn that through the interchange of books between the libraries of the monasteries, by means of the services of travelling monks, and in connection with the educational work of the majority of the monasteries, there came to be, as early as the ninth century, a very general circulation of the long series of chronicles among the scholarly readers of Europe. Even the literary style in which the majority of the chronicles were written gives evidence that the writers were addressing themselves, not to one locality or to restricted circles of readers, but to the world as they knew it, and that they also had an assured confidence in the preservation of their work for the service and information of future generations. The historian Stenzel points out that these monkish historians wrote under certain exceptional advantages which secured for their work a larger amount of impartiality and of accuracy of statement than could safely be depended upon with, for instance, what might be called Court chronicles, that is to say, histories which were the work of writers attached to the Courts. The monks, said Stenzel, in daring to speak the truth of those in power, had neither family nor property to endanger, and their writings, prepared under the eye of their monastic superiors and under the sovereign protection of the Church, escaped at once the coercion or the influence of contemporary rulers and the dangers of flattery for immediate popular appreciation. In the same strain, Montalembert contends that the literary monks worked neither for gain nor for fame, but simply for the glory of God. They wrote amidst the peace and freedom of the cloister in all the candour and sincerity of their minds. Their only ambition was to be faithful interpreters of the teaching which God gives to men in history by reminding them of the ruin of the proud, the exaltation of the humble, and the terrible certainty of eternal judgment. He goes on to say that if princes and nobles never wearied of founding, endowing, and enriching monasteries, neither did the monks grow weary of chronicling the services and the exploits of their benefactors, in order to transmit these to posterity. Thus did they pay to the Catholic chivalry a just debt of gratitude.

This pious opinion of Montalembert is a little na?ve in its expression when taken in connection with his previous conclusion that the records of the monks could be trusted implicitly for candour, sincerity, and impartiality. It is difficult to avoid the impression that in recording the deeds of the noble leaders of their time, the monks would naturally have given at least a full measure of attention and praise to those nobles who had been the greatest benefactors to their Order or to the particular monastery of the writer. The converse may also not unnaturally be assumed. If a monarch, prince, or noble leader should be neglectful of the claims of the monastery within his realm, if there might be ground to suspect the soundness of his faith to the Catholic Church, or doubt in regard to the adequacy of his liberality to his ecclesiastical subjects, it is probable that his exploits in war or in other directions were minimised or unrecorded. It is safe to assume also that after the Reformation, the Protestant side of the long series of complicated contests could hardly have been presented by the monkish chroniclers with perfect impartiality. Bearing in mind, however, how many personal influences may have operated to impair the accuracy and the impartiality of these chroniclers, they are certainly entitled to a full measure of appreciation for the inestimable service rendered by them in the long ages in which, outside of the monasteries, there were no historians. It seems also to have been the case that with many of the monks who devoted the larger portion of their lives to literary work, their ambition and ideals as authors overshadowed any petty monkish zeal for their Order or their monastery, and that it was their aim to present the events of their times simply as faithful historians.

An example of this high standard of work is presented by Ordericus Vitalis, who, as an English monk in a Norman abbey, was able to say: "I will describe the revolutions of England and of Normandie without flattery to any, for I expect my reward neither from the victors nor the vanquished."

Dietrich or Theodoric, the first Abbot of St. Evroul , who was himself a skilled scribe , and who desired to incite his monks to earnest work as writers, related to them the story of a worldly and sinful Brother, who, notwithstanding his frivolities, was a zealous scribe, and who had, in industrious moments, written out an enormous folio volume containing religious instruction. When he died, the devil claimed his soul. The angels, however, brought before the throne of judgment the great book, and for each letter therein written, pardon was given for one sin, and behold, when the count was completed, there was one letter over; and, says Dietrich na?vely, it was a very big book. Thereupon, judgment was given that the soul of the monk should be permitted again to enter his body, in order that he might go through a period of penance on earth.

In the monastery of Wedinghausen, near Arnsberg in Westphalia, there was a skilled and zealous scribe named Richard, an Englishman, who spent many years in adding to the library of the institution. Twenty years after his death, when the rest of his body had crumbled into dust, the right hand, with which this holy work had been accomplished, was found intact, and has since been preserved under the altar as a holy relic.

The scribes were absolved from certain of the routine of the monastery work. They were called into the fields or gardens only at the time of harvest, or in case of special need. They had also the privilege of visiting the kitchen, in order to polish their writing tablets, to melt their wax, and to dry their parchment.

The belief that the transcribing of good books was in itself a protection against the wiles of the evil one, naturally added to the feeling of regard in which the writer held his work, a feeling under the influence of which it became not unusual to add at the close of the manuscript an anathema against any person who should destroy or deface it. A manuscript of St. Gall contains the following:

Auferat hunc librum nullus hinc omne per aevum Cum Gallo partem quisquis habere cupit.

In a Sacramentary of the ninth century given to St. B?no?t-sur-Loire, the donor, having sent the volume as a present from across seas, devotes to destruction like to that which came upon Judas, Ananias, and Caiaphas any person who should remove the book from the monastery. In a manuscript of S. Augustine, now in the Bodleian Library is written: "This book belongs to S. Mary of Robert's Bridge; whosoever shall steal it or sell it, or in any way alienate it from this house, or mutilate it, let him be anathema maranatha. Amen." A later owner had found himself sufficiently troubled by this imprecation to write beneath: "I, John, Bishop of Exeter, know not where the aforesaid house is, nor did I steal this book, but acquired it in a lawful way."

In an exhortation to his monks, delivered in 1486, by John of Trittenheim , Abbot of Sponheim, the abbot, after rebuking the monks for their sloth and negligence, goes on to say: "I have diminished your labours out of the monastery, lest by working badly you should only add to your sins; and have enjoined on you the manual labour of writing and binding books.... There is, in my opinion, no labour more becoming a monk than the writing of ecclesiastical books, and preparing what is needful for others who write them, for this holy labour will generally admit of being interrupted by prayer and of watching for the food of the soul no less than of the body. Need also urges us to labour diligently in writing books if we desire to have at hand the means of usefully employing ourselves in spiritual studies. For you will recall that all the library of this monastery, which formerly was so fine and complete, had been dissipated, sold, and made away with by the disorderly monks before us, so that when I came here, I found but fourteen volumes. It is true that the industry of the printing art, lately, in our own day, discovered at Mentz, produces many volumes every day; but depressed as we are by poverty, it is impossible for us to buy them all."

It was certainly the case that, after the invention of printing, there was a time during which manuscripts came to be undervalued, neglected, and even destroyed by wholesale, but Maitland is of opinion that this time had been prepared for by a long period of gradually increasing laxity of discipline and morals in many monastic institutions. This view is borne out by the history of the Reformation, the popular feeling in regard to which was undoubtedly very much furthered by the demoralisation of the monasteries, a demoralisation which naturally carried with it a breaking down of literary interests and pursuits. There had, for some time, been less multiplication, less care, and less use of books, and many a fine collection had mouldered away. According to Martene and Mabillon, the destruction due to the heedlessness of the monks themselves was largely a matter of the later times, that is, of the fifteenth century and the last half of the fourteenth century.

I think, with Maitland, that, according to the evidence on record, for books such as those given above as typical examples, the written production during the century selected would probably have exceeded the number of copies of the same books turned out by the printing-presses during the eighteenth century. We must recall to ourselves that for a term of six or seven centuries, writing was a business, and was also a religious duty; an occupation taken up by choice and pursued with a degree of zeal, persistence, and enthusiasm for which in the present day there is no parallel.

These are the volumes written with her own hand by the aforesaid handmaid of God, Diemudis, to the praise of God and of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the patrons of the monastery."

The same writer says that Diemudis carried on a correspondence by very sweet letters with Herluca, who was for thirty-six years a nun at Eppach, and that the letters were in his time , that is four and a half centuries later, extant in the monastery of Bernried.

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