The Seventh Century produced fewer writers than perhaps any other period that can be named within the compass of literary history. Yet there are more than enough to serve our present purpose: such are—Theophylact of Simocatta, who has left a history of the reign of the emperor Maurice, not very highly esteemed indeed, but abounding in allusions to the literature of the times.
Isidore, bishop of Seville, a complete collection of whose works fills seven quarto volumes, is a writer very proper to be mentioned in relation to our present purpose. Confessedly the age of Mahomet was a dull time: few indeed are the writers whose mere names have come down to us;—and yet, even in such a time, a voluminous writer, who treats of all kinds of subjects—religion, Church history, grammar, poetry, astronomy, physical science, and treats some of these systematically, might not only employ himself in labours of this kind, but also find among his contemporaries, and the men of the next age, numerous readers, and admirers, and copyists too, who found their account in transcribing so vast a product of literary industry. The times of this bishop, therefore, dark as they might be, were nevertheless times of book-knowledge: throughout the dim period there was a class of the learned, numerous and intelligent enough, to keep watch upon the intellectual treasures of brighter times, to conserve the rich inheritance of mind, and to do their office in transmitting it down, unimpaired, to after ages. This fact is all which just now we need think of.
What we have thus said of the seventh century—of its darkness and its light, might be affirmed with little difference, as to the next. Our countryman, the “Venerable Bede,” flourished in the seventh, but lived far on into the eighth century. The writings of Bede—and we should remember that he passed his life in the seclusion of a remote monastery—St. Peter and St. Paul, on the Tyne, in the diocese of Durham—afford ample proof of a wide diffusion of books, in that age. Bede displays extensive, if not profound learning, the whole of which he had acquired from sources that were ordinarily within the reach of monastic students. Bede “was a man of universal learning, not less skilled in the Greek than in the Latin tongue: a poet, a rhetorician, an historian, an astronomer, an arithmetician, a master of chronology and geography, a philosopher, and theologian. So much was he admired in his own times that it became a proverbial saying among the learned—“A man born in the farthest corner of the earth has compassed the earth with the line of his genius.” “He was,” says Bale, “versed in the profane authors beyond any man of that age. Physics and general learning he derived, not from turbid streams, but from the pure fountains; that is, from the chief Greek and Latin authors. Indeed, there is hardly anything of value in the compass of ancient literature, that is not to be met with in Bede, although he never travelled beyond the limits of his native land.”
The conservative function was taken up by several of Bede’s disciples; among them we may name Alcuin, who did much, by his learning and his influence at the court of Charlemagne, to aid the endeavours of that enlightened prince for the restoration of literature. He was skilled in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages; gave lectures in all the sciences, and founded many public schools. His works, historical and theological, are in part extant, and they justify the reputation he enjoyed. In his letters he familiarly quotes the classic writers.
Charlemagne, himself tolerably well acquainted with Latin and Greek authors, zealously laboured to restore learning in the Church, and out of it. He invited learned men to his court, employed them in making Latin translations of the Greek classics and of the fathers, founded public schools, and introduced regulations tending to make some degree of education indispensable to all who held office in the Church. Of the professors invited by Charlemagne to his court, as many came from the British Isles as from Italy. We must not forget, says Muratori, the praise of Britain, Scotland, and Ireland, which, in the study of the liberal arts, surpassed all other nations of the West in those times; nor omit to record the diligence of the monks of those countries, who roused and maintained the glory of letters which everywhere else was languishing or fallen.
Raban Maurus, a disciple of Alcuin, created archbishop of Mentz, in 847, had, before his elevation, taught theology, philosophy, poetry, and rhetoric at Paris, in the school established there by the Anglo-Saxon monks. “A man well versed in the Holy Scriptures, and thoroughly learned in profane literature, as his writings abundantly testify.” He enriched the monastery of Fulda, on the Rhine, where he received his early education, with a large collection of books; and there he founded a school. Two hundred and seventy monks belonged to the establishment, who were trained by him in every branch of learning. Disciples flocked to him from all countries, and he reared for the Church a great number of ministers well furnished for its service. He died, 856.
One of the first professors in the University of Oxford founded (or restored) by King Alfred, was John Scot; he afterwards went into France, where he was honourably entertained at the court of Charles the Bald, at whose request he translated some Greek authors into Latin: but these versions, in which a literal adherence to the original was observed, were scarcely intelligible to those for whose use they were intended. His writings display, however, much various learning; they were condemned as heretical by the Church on account of his opinions relative to the Eucharist. Being driven from France by the order of the pope, he took refuge in an English monastery; but there, at the instigation of the monks, he, it is said, like Cassianus, was killed by his scholars, with their iron styles.
Before the Danish incursions, the English monasteries and churches abounded with men of learning; but these establishments being broken up and the monks dispersed by the rude invaders, literature and the arts became almost extinct in the country. Alfred, himself a man of learning, and a various writer, effected, as is known, much towards their restoration, by the re-establishment of the ruined monasteries—the erection of many new ones—the endowment of schools—the foundation of lectureships at Oxford, and by the diffusion of his own writings, which, even if he had not been a king, would have perpetuated his name.
Contemporary with the last-named writer was Photius, with whom no author of that, or of several succeeding ages, can be compared: his works hold up a mirror of the literature that was extant in his times. Photius, educated for secular employments, and for some time engaged in the service of Michael III., was by that emperor forcibly invested with the dignity of patriarch of Constantinople (858) in the room of Ignatius. That he might pass regularly to this elevation, he was made monk, reader, sub-deacon, deacon, priest, and patriarch, in the course of six days. From the office thus violently assumed, he was, with little ceremony, expelled by Basilius, the successor of Michael. Once again, at the head of a band of soldiers, he possessed himself of the patriarchate, of which, by similar means, he was at length finally deprived; after which he retired to a monastery, where he ended his days. Before his elevation, he had composed the most useful and the most celebrated of his works, the Myriobiblon, which contains, in the form of criticisms, analyses, and extracts, an account of upwards of 270 works. This treasury of learning preserves many valuable fragments from authors whose works have perished, and affords important aid in ascertaining the genuineness of many of the remains of ancient literature.
Eutychius, an Egyptian physician, and afterwards (933) patriarch of Alexandria, wrote a universal history, which is still extant, and which, though it contains numerous fables, exhibits the various learning of the author, and of his times. Though so large a number of existing manuscripts as appear to have been executed in the tenth century, prove that a great degree of activity in the reproduction of books prevailed in that age, it presents the names of few authors whose works have descended to modern times.