Carolingian
minuscule, the parent of our modern "Roman" printing, is developed,
though not at Tours alone. At Corbie, Fleury on the Loire, (now called
St. Benoit sur Loire), St. Riquier by Abbeville, Rheims, and many
another centre in Northern and Eastern France, libraries are accumulated
and ancient books copied. Of St. Gall and Reichenau the same may be
said. In Italy, Verona is conspicuous. The archdeacon Pacificus (d. 846)
gave over 200 books to the cathedral, where many of them still are; and
at Monte Cassino, the head house of the Benedictine Order, books were
written in the difficult "Beneventane" hand (which used to be called
Lombardic, and was never popular outside Italy). Spain has its own
special script at this time, the Visigothic, as troublesome to read as
the Beneventane; its _a_'s are like _u_'s and its _t_'s like _a_'s.
England is still overrun by the Danes, and does nothing before the very
end of the century, when King Alfred exerts himself to revive education,
and starts a vernacular literature.

An enormous proportion of the earliest copies we have of classical Latin
authors come from this century, when old copies of them were actively
sought out and transcribed. Often great liberties in the way of revision
and even abridgment of the text were taken by the scholars of the time,
and, once transcribed, the old archetypes were neglected or even
destroyed.

Books of very great beauty--Bibles, Gospels, Psalters--were produced for
the Emperors and the great nobles and prelates. In these there is a
marked effort to imitate and continue the traditions of classical art.

_Tenth Century._--The tradition of study and scholarship lives on, but
the impulse from Britain and Ireland has worked itself out, and few
geniuses are born on the Continent. There is a period of splendour and
vigour in England under the Kings Athelstan and Edgar and the
Archbishops Odo and Dunstan. The calligraphic school of Winchester
achieves magnificent results. At the end of the century the great
teacher and scholar Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II.) is a prominent figure
at the Imperial Court. The Ottos emulate Charlemagne in their zeal for
literature and for fine works of art, but their attainment is slighter.

_Eleventh Century._--Men still live on the traditions of the Carolingian
Revival in the early part: there is later an awakening, principally,
perhaps, in France and Italy. Great names like those of Anselm, Abelard,
Bernard, come f