igion would exceedingly aggravate the crime.

If any particular persons among the monks could be convicted of having
attempted to palm any false writing or lie on the world, the obligations
of their profession would render their crime the more odious and
enormous. But to make this a charge upon that venerable order of men in
any age, is a most unjust and a notorious slander. Melchior Cano, who
complains of interpolations which have crept into some parts of sacred
biography, justifies the monks from the infamous imputation which some,
through ignorance or malice, affect to cast upon them;[19] and Mabillon
has vindicated them more at large.[20] On their diligence and
scrupulosity in general, in correctly copying the manuscripts, see Dom.
Coutant,[21] and the authors of the new {054} French Diplomatique.[22]
In the Penitentia of St. Theodore the Studite, a penance is prescribed
for a monk who had made any mistake in copying a manuscript. In 1196, in
the general chapter of the Cistercians, it was ordered that the church
of Lyons and the monastery of Cluni should be consulted about the true
reading of a passage in a book to be copied. Anciently, books were
chiefly copied and preserved in monasteries, which for several ages were
the depositories of learning. Mr. Gurdon[23] and Bishop Tanner[24] take
notice, that in England the great abbeys were even the repositories of
the laws, edicts of kings, and acts of parliament. The history of Wales
was compiled and kept through every age, by public authority, in the
monastery of Ystratflur for South Wales, where the princes and noblemen
of that country were interred; and in the abbey of Conwey for North
Wales, which was the burying-place of the princes of that part.
Conringius,[25] a German Protestant, writes, "In the sixth, seventh, and
eighth centuries there is scarce to be found, in the whole Western
church, the name of a person who had written a book, but what dwelt, or
at least was educated in a monastery." Before universities were erected,
monasteries, and often the palaces of bishops, were the seminaries of
the clergy, the nurseries for the education of young noblemen, and the
great schools of all the sciences. To the libraries and industry of the
monks we are principally indebted for the works of the ancients which we
possess. Grateful for this benefit, we ought not to condemn them
because, by a fatality incident to human things, some works are come
down to us interpolated or i