602 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
that the study of letters had nearly perished from Gaul, and that 110 man could be found who was able to commit to writing the events of the times.1
"Middle Ages" and "Dark Ages" have become synonymous terms. The tenth century is emphatically called the iron age, or the sceculum obscurum.2 The seventh and eighth were no bet ter.3 Corruption of morals went hand in hand with ignorance. It is reported that when the papacy had sunk to the lowest depth of degradation, there was scarcely a person in Rome who knew the first elements of letters. We hear complaints of priests who did not know even the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. If we judge by the number of works, the seventh, eighth and tenth centuries were the least productive; the ninth was the most productive; there was a slight increase of pro ductiveness in the eleventh over the tenth, a much greater one in the twelfth, but again a decline in the thirteenth century.4
J In Migne's ed., Tom. LXXIX. 159.
a According to the terminology of Cave and others, the 7th century is called Sceculum Monotheleticum ; the eighth, S. Eiconoclasticum ; the ninth, S. Photiar num; the eleventh, S. Hildebrandinum ; the twelfth, S. Waldense; the thir teenth, S. Scholasticum ; the fourteenth, S. Wieklevianum ; the fifteenth, S. Synodale; the sixteenth, S. Eeformationis. All one-sided or wrong except the last. Historical periods do not run parallel with centuries.
* Hallam (Lit. of Europe, etc., ch. 1, § 10) puts the seventh and eighth cen turies far beneath the tenth as to illumination in France, and quotes Meinera who makes the same assertion in regard to Germany. Guizot dates French civilization from the tenth century ; but it began rather with Charlemagne in the eighth.
4 In Migne's Patrologia Latina the number of volumes which contain the works of Latin writers, is as follows:
Writers of the seventh century, Tom. 80-88 8 vols.
" " " eighth " ' " 89-96 7 "
" " " ninth " " 97-130 33 "
" " tenth " " 131-138 7 "
" " " eleventh " " 139-151 12 "
" " " twelfth " " 152-191 39 "
" " " thirteenth " " 192-217 25 "
None of these centuries comes up to the Nicene and post-Nicene ages. Migne gives to Augustine alone 12, and to Jerome 11 volumes, and both of
\ 138. IGNORANCE IN THE WESTERN CHURCH. 603
But we must not be misled by isolated facts into sweeping generalities. For England and Germany the tenth century was in advance of the ninth. In France the eighth and ninth cen turies produced the seeds of a new culture which were indeed covered by winter frosts, but not destroyed, and which bore abundant fruit in the eleventh and twelfth.
Secular and sacred learning was confined to the clergy and the monks. The great mass of the laity, including the nobility, could neither read nor write, and most contracts were signed with the mark of the cross. Even the Emperor Charlemagne wrote only with difficulty. The people depended for their limited knowledge on the teaching of a poorly educated priest hood. But several emperors and kings, especially Charlemagne and Alfred, were liberal patrons of learning and even contribu tors to literature.
SCARCITY OF LIBRARIES.
One of the chief causes of the prevailing ignorance was the scarcity of books. The old libraries were destroyed by ruthless barbarians and the ravages of war. After the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens, the cultivation and exportation of Egyptian papyrus ceased, and parchment or vellum, which took its place, was so expensive that complete copies of the Bible cost as much as a palace or a farm. King Alfred paid eight acres of land for one volume of a cosmography. Hence the custom of chaining valuable books, which continued even to the sixteenth century. Hence also the custom of erasing the original text of manuscripts of classical works, to give place to worthless monkish legends and ascetic homilies. Even the Bible was sometimes submitted to this process, and thus "the word of God was made void l^y the traditions of men."1
these were no compilers, but original writers. The contrast between the liter ary poverty of the middle ages and the exuberant riches of the sixteenth or nineteenth century is Ptill greater; but of course the invention of the art of printing and all the modern facilities of education must be taken into account. 1 One of the most important uncial manuscripts of the Scriptures, the Codex