604 FOURTH PEKIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
The libraries of conventual and cathedral schools were often limited to half a dozen or a dozen volumes, such as a Latin Bible or portions of it, the liturgical books, some works of St. Augustin and St. Gregory, Cassiodorus and Boethius, the gram mars of Donatus and Priscianus, the poems of Virgil and Horace. Most of the books had to be imported from Italy, especially from Rome.
The introduction of cotton paper in the tenth or eleventh century, and of linen paper in the twelfth, facilitated the mul tiplication of books.1
§ 139. Educational Efforts of the Church.
The medieval church is often unjustly charged with hostility to secular learning. Pope Gregory I. is made responsible for the destruction of the Bibliotheca Palatina and the classical statues in Rome. But this rests on an unreliable tradition of very late date.2 Gregory was himself, next to Isidore of Seville (on whom he conferred the pall, in 599), the best scholar and most popular writer of his age, and is lauded by his biographers and Gregory of Tours as a patron of learning. If he made some disparaging remarks about Latin grammar and syntax, in two letters addressed to bishops, they must be understood as a protest against an over-estimate of these lower studies and of
Ephraem (C), is a palimpsest (codex rescriptus), but the original text can with difficulty be deciphered, and has been published by Tischendorf (Lipsiae, 1843). See SchafFs Companion to the Greek Testament, p. 120 sq., and Gre gory's Prolegomena to TischendorPs eighth critical ed. of the Gr. Test. (Leip zig, 1884), I. 366 sq.
1 The oldest manuscript on cotton paper in the British Museum is dated 1049; the oldest in the National Library of Paris, 1050. The oldest dated specimen of linen paper is said to be a treaty of peace between the kings of Aragon and Castile of 1177.
3 The testimony of John of Salisbury itt the twelfth century (c. 1172) is more than neutralized by opposite contemporary testimonies, and is justly rejected by Bayle (Diction.), Heeren (I. 66), Gregorovius, Neander (III. 150 sq.), Baur (Dogmengesch. II. 4), and Ebert (I. 525). Gieseler (I. 490 sq.) speaks of "the monkish contempt of Gregory for the liberal sciences;" but he adds that "the later traditions of his hostility to all literature are not to be fully believed."
2 139. EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS OF THE CHURCH. 605
heathen writers, as compared with higher episcopal duties, and with that allegorical interpretation of the Bible which he car ried to arbitrary excess in his own exposition of Job.1 In the Commentary on Kings ascribed to him, he commends the study of the liberal arts as a useful and necessary means for the proper understanding of the Scriptures, and refers in sup port to the examples of Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul.2 We may say then that he was an advocate of learning and art, but in subordination and subserviency to the interests of the Ca tholic church. This has been the attitude of the papal chair ever since.3
The preservation and study of ancient literature during the entire medieval period are due chiefly to the clergy and monks, and a few secular rulers. The convents were the nurseries of manuscripts.
The connection with classical antiquity was never entirely broken. BOETHIUS (beheaded at Pavia, c. 525), and CASSIO- DORUS (who retired to the monastery of Viviers, and died there about 570), both statesmen under Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, form the connecting links between ancient and mediaeval learning. They were the last of the old Romans ; they dipped the pen of Cicero and Seneca in barbaric ink,4 and stimulated the rising energies of the Romanic and Germanic nations: Boethius by his " Consolation of Philosophy" (written
1 Ep. ad Leandrum, prefixed to his Expos, of Job, and Ep. ad Desiderium, XI. 54 (Opera, ed. Mi«?ne, III. 1171).
1 The author of this commentary represents it as a device of the evil spirit to dissuade Christians from liberal studies, uut et secularia nesciant et ad sublimitatem spiritualium non pertingant."
3 The Vatican library, which can be traced back to Pope Nicolas V., is per haps the most valuable in the world for manuscripts (e. g. the Cod. B. of the Greek Bible) and important ecclesiastical documents, but also one of the most inaccessible to outsiders. The present Pope Leo XIII. has liberalized the management, but under the exclusive direction of cardinals and in the inte rest of the Roman church (1883).
* " Boetius barbara verba miscuit Latinis." Opera, ed. Migne, II. 578.