[2] The story which has come down to us of the German warrior who, on being shown into an anteroom, saw some ducks swimming in the floor and dashed his battle-axe at them to see if they were real, thus ruining the beautiful mosaic, is typical of the time.
[3] During the period of Rome's greatness the publishing business became an important one. Manuscripts were copied in numbers by trained writers, and books were officially published. Both public and private libraries became common, men of wealth often having large libraries. These were found in the provincial towns as well as in the large Italian cities, and in country villas as well as in town houses.
By the beginning of the eighth century books had become so scarce that monasteries guarded their treasures with great care (R. 65), and books were borrowed from long distances that copies might be made.
[4] Charlemagne (King of Frankland, 768-814), for example, found it necessary to order that priests and monks must show themselves capable of changing the wording of the masses for the living and the dead, as circumstances required, from singular to plural, or from masculine to feminine.
[5] Longfellow's poem Monte Cassino is interesting reading here. Of Benedict he says:
"He founded here his Convent and his Rule
Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer;
The pen became a clarion, and his school
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air."
[6] Sometimes as early as eleven to twelve years of age. The novitiate course was two years, but as the vows could not be taken before eighteen, the course of instruction often covered six to eight years.
[7] To teach a novice to copy accurately a manuscript book was quite a different thing from the teaching of writing to-day, It was more nearly comparable to present-day instruction in lettering in a college engineering course, as it called for a degree of workmanship and accuracy not required in ordinary writing.
[8] The Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Bible made by Saint Jerome, at the close of the fourth century. The Old Testament he translated mostly from the Hebrew and Chaldaic, and the New Testament he revised from the older Latin versions. This is the only version of the Scriptures which the Roman Catholic Church admits as authentic.
[9] Letters from one monastery to another, and from one country to another, begging the loan of some ancient book, have been preserved in numbers. Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières in France, for example, wrote to Rome in 855, and addressing himself to the Pope in person, requested a complete copy of Cicero's De Oratore, which he desired.