been preserved, except a few
jejune chronicles, the vilest legends of saints, or verses equally
destitute of spirit and metre. In almost every council the ignorance of
the clergy forms a subject for reproach. It is asserted by one held in
992 that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who
knew the first elements of letters.[510] Not one priest of a thousand in
Spain, about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of
salutation to another.[511] In England, Alfred declares that he could
not recollect a single priest south of the Thames (the most civilized
part of England), at the time of his accession, who understood the
ordinary prayers, or could translate Latin into his mother tongue.[512]
Nor was this better in the time of Dunstan, when, it is said, none of
the clergy knew how to write or translate a Latin letter.[513] The
homilies which they preached were compiled for their use by some
bishops, from former works of the same kind, or the writings of the
fathers.

[Sidenote: Scarcity of books.]

This universal ignorance was rendered unavoidable, among other causes,
by the scarcity of books, which could only be procured at an immense
price. From the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens at the beginning
of the seventh century, when the Egyptian papyrus almost ceased to be
imported into Europe, to the close of the eleventh, about which time the
art of making paper from cotton rags seems to have been introduced,
there were no materials for writing except parchment, a substance too
expensive to be readily spared for mere purposes of literature.[514]
Hence an unfortunate practice gained ground, of erasing a manuscript in
order to substitute another on the same skin. This occasioned the loss
of many ancient authors, who have made way for the legends of saints, or
other ecclesiastical rubbish.

[Sidenote: Want of eminent men in literature.]

If we would listen to some literary historians, we should believe that
the darkest ages contained many individuals, not only distinguished
among their contemporaries, but positively eminent for abilities and
knowledge. A proneness to extol every monk of whose production a few
letters or a devotional treatise survives, every bishop of whom it is
related that he composed homilies, runs through the laborious work of
the Benedictines of St. Maur, the Literary History of France, and, in a
less degree, is observable even in Tiraboschi, and in most books of thi