[] Id., p. 71.
[k] Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xiv. p. 265. Another edition of the Bible is supposed to have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg in 1459.
[m] Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 140.
[n] Sanuto mentions an order of the senate in 1469, that John of Spira should print the epistles of Tully and Pliny for five years, and that no one else should do so. Script. Rerum Italic. t. xxii. p. 1189.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IX.
A rapid decline of learning began in the sixth century, of which Gregory of Tours is both a witness and an example. It is, therefore, properly one of the dark ages, more so by much than the eleventh, which concludes them; since very few were left in the church who possessed any acquaintance with classical authors, or who wrote with any command of the Latin language. Their studies, whenever they studied at all, were almost exclusively theological; and this must be understood as to the subsequent centuries. By theological is meant the vulgate Scriptures and some of the Latin fathers; not, however, by reasoning upon them, or doing much more than introducing them as authority in their own words. In the seventh century, and still more at the beginning of the eighth, very little even of this remained in France, where we find hardly a name deserving of remembrance in a literary sense; but Isidore, and our own Bede, do honour to Spain and Britain.
It may certainly be said for France and Germany, notwithstanding a partial interruption in the latter part of the ninth and beginning of the tenth century, that they were gradually progressive from the time of Charlemagne. But then this progress was so very slow, and the men in front of it so little capable of bearing comparison with those of later times, considering their writings positively and without indulgence, that it is by no means unjust to call the centuries dark which elapsed between Charlemagne and the manifest revival of literary pursuits towards the end of the eleventh century. Alcuin, for example, has left us a good deal of poetry. This is superior to what we find in some other writers of the obscure period, and indicates both a correct ear and a familiarity with the Latin poets, especially Ovid. Still his verses are not as good as those which schoolboys of fourteen now produce, either in poetical power or in accuracy of language and metre. The errors indeed are innumerable. Aldhelm, an earlier Anglo-Saxon poet, with more imaginative spirit, is further removed from classical poetry. Lupus, abbot of Ferrières, early in the ninth century, in some of his epistles writes tolerable Latin, though this is far from being always the case; he is smitten with a love of classical literature, quotes several poets and prose writers, and is almost as curious about little points of philology as an Italian scholar of the fifteenth century. He was continually borrowing books in order to transcribe them—a proof, however, of their scarcity and of the low condition of general learning, which is the chief point we have to regard.[a] But his more celebrated correspondent, Eginhard, went beyond him. Both his Annals and the Life of Charlemagne are very well written, in a classical spirit, unlike the church Latin; though a few words and phrases may not be of the best age, I should place Eginhard above Alcuin and Lupus, or, as far as I know, any other of the Caroline period.
The tenth century has in all times borne the worst name. Baronius calls it, in one page, plumbeum, obscurum, infelix (Annales, A.D. 900). And Cave, who dubs all his centuries by some epithet, assigns ferreum to the tenth. Nevertheless, there was considerably less ignorance in France and Germany during the latter part of this age than before the reign of Charlemagne, or even in it; more glimmerings of acquaintance with the Latin classics appear; and the schools, cathedral and conventual, had acquired a more regular and uninterrupted scheme of instruction. The degraded condition of papal Rome has led many to treat this century rather worse than it deserves; and indeed Italy was sunk very low in ignorance. As to the eleventh century, the upward progress was extremely perceptible. It is commonly reckoned among the dark ages till near its close; but these phrases are of course used comparatively, and because the difference between that and the twelfth was more sensible than we find in any two that are consecutive since the sixth.