met with in the
rest of Europe. The guess, however, would not be quite correct. There
was one great Spanish scholar in the seventh century, Isidore of Seville
(636), and his encyclopaedia (The _Etymologies_ or _Origins_), which fed
many later centuries with learning, made its way all over educated
Europe very quickly. Not only so, but we find English scholars (Aldhelm
and Bede) quoting Spanish writers on grammar and Spanish poets who were
almost their own contemporaries.

_Eighth Century._--This sees the last part of Bede's career (d.
734)--the zenith of English scholarship, the mission of St. Boniface (d.
758) to Germany, the meeting of Alcuin with Charlemagne (781), and the
beginning of the Carolingian Renaissance. But, on the other hand, Spain
is overrun by the Moors, Italy is inert, England begins to be harried
by the Northmen. On the whole, if there really was a Dark Age, the
middle of the eighth century seems to answer the description best. But,
of course, there were points of light. The great centres of Northern
France, such as Corbie and Laon, particularly Corbie, were beginning
their activities of collecting and copying books. Ireland was capable of
producing such a work as the Book of Kells--whether it actually falls
within the century or not I will not be positive, but work of the same
amazing beauty was carried out before 800. Nor was the export of
treasures from Italy to England quite stopped, in spite of difficulties.
At the Plantin Museum at Antwerp is a copy of the writings of the
Christian poet Sedulius, which has pictures of the old Italian sort,
such as we find in the frescoes of the Roman catacombs. In it is a note
connecting it with a Bishop of the name of Cuthwin, who held the East
Anglian see and died about 754. Another MS., at Paris, has a note
describing an elaborately illustrated life of St. Paul, which, it says,
the same Bishop Cuthwin brought with him from Rome.

_Ninth Century._--There is immense activity, literary and artistic,
afoot at the Court of Charlemagne (d. 814) and of his successors. The
German abbeys--_e.g._, Lorsch, Fulda--and cathedral schools (Mainz,
Bamberg, etc.) are full of scribes and teachers. Irishmen who know
Greek flock to the Continent, driven from home by Danish invasion: such
are Johannes Scottus Eriugena and Sedulius Scottus. They haunt Liege,
Laon, Aix-la-Chapelle, and penetrate to Italy. Not less prolific are the
French houses: at Tours the handwriting called the