Theodoric built at Ravenna some churches which still exist. Here we see mosaics exhibiting the life of Jesus in a very simple way, but with that unmistakable touch of awe which is so characteristic of German piety. How different are the pictures which were added after Ravenna had become Byzantine! They are highly ceremonial, representing, among others, the emperor Justinian and the empress Theodora with all their suite.
Plate VIII—GOTHIC BIBLE
Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala. Sixth century, written on purple parchment in silver and (some words) in gold. The figures at the bottom give Eusebius's harmony of the Gospels: this particular scheme is found in Syrian manuscripts and in the Old Latin Codex Rehdigerianus at Breslau.
From "Deutsche Kulturgeschichte," by O. Henne am Rhyn. Grote, Berlin, Germany.
These were the first centuries of German invasion. The ancient civilisation, championed by the Roman church, was still strong enough to impose itself upon these invaders. Time went on and civilisation more and more lost its energy. Especially in Gaul, in the kingdom of the Merovingians, intellectual darkness spread all over the country. There was no layman who could read, hardly any member of the clergy. We hear of great monasteries, which were rich royal foundations, where no complete Bible was to be found. We see the troubles of a missionary like Boniface. In order to procure the necessary books, he has to apply to his English lady friends, who send him copies of the books he wants, finely written by their own delicate hands. It was a time when a book, a Bible, was a treasure, and to own one was a fact to be recorded by a biographer. This enables us to trace the history of more than one famous manuscript. We are surprised to find what journeys they made. One was sent from Naples to England, and then a century later again removed to the German shore and finally treasured among the rarities of the Fulda library. Another manuscript, now at Florence, came originally from the monastery of Cassiodorus in the extreme south of Italy and found its way to the monastery of Mount Amiata, near Florence, only by a roundabout route through the famous English monasteries, where it was copied. The few scholars of that period had to go a long way before they could get a copy of the Bible worth their attention, and they had to go a long way to find a monastery with hands able to copy manuscripts.
A new epoch begins with Charlemagne, who has a real right to the name of the Great. If one wants to know a great man, one has only to see what attention he pays to minor things. It is simply wonderful how this German king, who restored the old notion of the Roman empire, whose dominion contained France, Germany, Spain, Italy, was taking care of the schoolboys and fixing his eyes on the way in which the Bible was being copied in the monasteries of his vast realm. In one of his ordinances he complains that they use unskilled boys for copying the most sacred book. It needs, he says, grammar—nay, good grammar—to understand what you are copying. It is no religion to pray to God in ungrammatical language and to have his holy Scriptures in a grammatically incorrect text. From the fact that the monasteries in their letters of application used a bad style he infers that Bible reading here was being neglected. Therefore, Charlemagne tried, in the first place, to bring the schools of his kingdom to a higher standard. Each monastery had to have a well-conducted school for the monks and for the young people who were sent there for education (as they are now sent to public schools). At his own court he had the Schola palatina and the great emperor himself went there often and took lessons together with the boys. But he did not stop here. His intention was to secure a really good, trustworthy text of the Bible. He therefore invited scholars from everywhere; even some Orientals are said to have shared in the work. The leading man, the chairman of the Committee for the revision of the Bible, as we should say at present, was Alcuin, a monk from England, who by his great learning had won the confidence of Charlemagne and was appointed by him abbot of the famous monastery of Tours. Here, at the school of Tours, most of the work of revision was done (Plate IX); through Alcuin's influence the revision was mainly based on the text current in England. That this was the best text available at that time is now generally acknowledged by all competent scholars. This was not so in Charlemagne's time; other scholars, Frankish bishops, disapproved of Alcuin's work. They thought the revision would have come out much better if conducted according to the text prevailing in Spain. So Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, issued a version of his own (Plate X). It is always instructive to see how men were the same in former times as they are now: scholars seldom agree one with another. The result was that henceforth two forms of the Latin Bible were used through the next centuries—in the North, Alcuin's revision, in the South, the revision made by Theodulf.
Plate IX—ALCUIN'S BIBLE
(Brit. Mus. add. 10546)