and Boëthius, was still speaking in reply when the emperor gave the signal for the conclusion of the debate. Gerbert's fame never appeared more illustrious, and he returned to France loaded with magnificent presents.

His after career was full of troubles; but in 990 the influence of his imperial pupil, Otho III., obtained his election to the see of Ravenna, and nine years later to the Apostolic chair. Is was a great day in the annals of learning when the philosopher, Gerbert, became Pope Sylvester II., and one which brought no small satisfaction to the hearts of his pupils. Half the prelates and princes of Europe gloried in having called him master, and most of them did him credit.

ATHELHARD OF BATH AND ODERICUS VITALIS.

Arabic Spain was just then regarded as the fountain-head of science. The Moorish sovereigns of Cordova had collected an immense library in their capi tal, and are reported to have had seventy others in different parts of their dominions. Thither, then, wandered many an English student, attracted rather than repelled by the tales of glamor associated with a Moslem land. One of these scholar adventurers was Athelhard of Bath,,the greatest man of science who appeared in England before the time of Roger Bacon. In the reign of the Red King he had left his own country to study at Tours and Laon, in which latter place he opened a school. Thence he proceeded to Salerno, Greece, Asia Minor, and Spain, increasing his stock of learning, and returned at last, after a long absence, in the reign of Henry I. After this he opened a school in Normandy, where he taught the Arabic sciences, in spite of the prejudices which many felt against learning acquired from so suspicious a source. Among those who so objected was Athelhard's own nephew; and in defense of his favorite studies the English master wrote a book, in which he reminds his nephew of an agreement formerly made between them, that one should gather all the learning taught by the Arabs, while the other should in like manner study the wisdom of the Franks. This book is written in the form of a colloquy, in which the nephew is made to appear as the champion of the old system of edu cation, and the uncle of the new.

man.

In spite of these eccentricities, however, Athelhard was a really learned He translated Euclid and other mathematical works out of the Arabic, and is styled by Vincent of Beauvais, 'the Philosopher of England.' A few years later we find another Englishman, named Robert de Retines, studying at Evora in company with a certain Hermann of Dalmatia, who is called a most acute and erudite scholar. Robert had traveled in search of learning through France, Italy, Dalmatia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and finally made his way into Spain, where Peter of Cluny found the two friends studying astrology at Evora. Peter's journey into Spain was undertaken with the view of obtaining more exact information as to the Mohammedan doctrines and writings, and he induced the two scholars to give up their unprofitable pursuits, and employ their knowledge of Arabic in translating the Koran. This they did in 1143. Robert afterwards became archdeacon of Pampeluna; he did not, however, entirely forsake his own country, but returning thither, wrote a translation of the Saxon Chronicle, which is preserved in the Bodleian library, and which is dedicated to Peter of Cluny. His friend Hermann, who is styled, 'a most acute and profound scholastic,' produced a translation of Ptolemy's 'Planisphere,' which he addressed to his old Spanish preceptor Theodoricus, and from the preface to

this book we find that the school at which they studied was not Arabic, but Christian, a fact of some importance, as it is very generally stated that the Spanish academies resorted to at this time by European students were those of the Arabic masters, who are represented as alone possessing any knowledge of the mathematical sciences. It is clear, however, that now, as in the time of Gerbert, there existed Christian schools in Spain, no less efficient than those of the Moors, and that it was to these that many of the French and English scholars resorted for the purposes of study.

To the names of these learned Englishmen I must add that of Odericus Vitalis, the course of whose education is best given in his own words in that short summary of his life with which he concludes his history. 'I was baptized,' he says, 'at Attingham, a village in England, which stands on the bank of the great river Severn. There, by the ministry of Odericus the priest, Thou didst regenerate me with water and the Holy Ghost. When I was five years old I was sent to school at Shrewsbury, and offered Thee my services in the lowest order of the clergy in the church of SS. Peter and Paul. While there, Siward, a priest of great eminence, instructed me for five years in the letters of Carmenta Nicostrata,* and taught me psalms and hymns, with other necessary learning. I was ten years old when I crossed the British sea, and arrived in Normandy, an exile, unknown to all, and knowing no one. But supported by Thy goodness, I found the utmost kindness and attention from these foreigners. I was professed a monk in the monastery of St. Evroult, by the venerable abbot Mainier, in the eleventh year of my age, and he gave me the name of Vitalis, in place of that which I received in England, and which seemed barbarous to the ears of the Normans. In this monastery, through Thy goodness, I have lived fifty-six years, loved and honored by my brethren far more than I have deserved. Bearing the heat and burden of the day in a strange land, I have labored among Thy servants, and as Thou art faithful, I fear not but I shall receive the penny which thou hast promised.' . . .

The history of Odericus leaves us in no doubt as to the extent of his literary attainments. He quotes most of the ancient classical writers, and many of the Fathers of the Church, and the intelligence of his mind is displayed by the way in which he collected the materials of his work. Nothing escaped his notice, and from the lips of some wandering crusader or passing pilgrim he gathered up the tales and episodes with which he enlivened his pages, giving them in many parts the lively coloring of a romance. One day, a monk of Winchester, who stopped at the abbey for a few hours, chanced to show him a life of St. William, copies of which were then rare in Normandy. Odericus, in raptures at the sight of the treasure, longed to copy it, but the traveler was in haste, and the fingers of Odericus were benumbed with cold, for it was the depth of winter. However, the opportunity was not to be lost, and seizing his tablets he with great difficulty took such notes from the manuscript as enabled him afterwards, at his leisure, to compose a life of the founder of St. Gellone. His Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy, which occupied twenty years in its compilation, is the only work he has left to posterity.

* M. Delisle, in his notice on the life and writings of Odericus, explains this expression to mean the Latin alphabet; Carmenta Nicostrata, the mother of the Arcadian Evander, being held by some to have first invented letters. He could not, however, have been five years learning his alphabet, so we may probably understand him to mean the ordinary elementary instruction in Latin.

LEANDER AND ISIDORE.

Under the Roman dominion numerous schools existed in Spain which established a high order of intellectual culture, of which Quintilian, Martial, Lucan, the two Senecas, Columella, and Florus are the exponents in the remains of Latin literature.

The Iberian peninsula, from the time of the great invasion by the Germanic races, had been shared among the Suevres, Alans, and Vandals, and finally (about 585) fell under the control of the Visigoths, and the Suevres, who occupied the entire northwestern section. Into this region the monastic institution had been introduced as early as 381 from Africa, and the rule of St. Benedict was recognized by St. Martin (born in Hungary) of Dumes, not later than 580, and even earlier, according to some authorities, by St. Victorian, who founded, about 506, the monastery of Asane, near Huesca, in Aragon. To Leander, the monk bishop of Seville, is accorded the glory of having founded, about 579, at the Visigoths' capital, and in connection with his See, the first christian school which attained any considerable reputation for the study of all the arts and sciences. He was the son of a duke, of Gallo-Roman race, whose eldest daughter had married Leuvigild, the king of the Visigoths, who transferred the capital of his kingdom from Seville to Toledo. Leander was himself a monk, and became metropolitan bishop in 579. In the bitter ecclesiastical controversy which raged at this time, he was exiled by order of the king, who was the special champion of Arianism, but he presided at the third council of Toledo in 589, when the successor of Leuvigild proclaimed the abjuration of that heresy by the united nations of the Goths and Suevres. From this time monastic establishments were multiplied, and members of the royal family became their founders. Fulgentius, a brother of Leander, became a monk, and afterwards, bishop; his sister, Florentine, was the superior of forty convents and a thousand nuns, for which Leander drew up the regulations; and another brother, Isidore, who was educated at the school of Seville, was his successor in that metropolitan see. During the forty years of his episcopate, Isidore extended his educational work to all the cathedral churches in Spain, prescribing everywhere the study of Greek and Hebrew for the clergy. He is the reputed author, according to Ozanam, of an encyclopediac treatise on The Origin of Things, in which was preserved a summary of the best knowledge of his time of the seven liberal arts, medicine, law, natural history, geography, and mechanics. He died in 636, leaving in his scholars and disciples able champions in Church and State of the institutions which he had planted. His Chronicles, or Compendium of Universal History, and collection of the old canons of the Church for the use of Spain, arc documents of the highest authority. The monastic, convent, and cathedral schools established by this family, perpetuated christian teaching even after the possession of the country by the Moors.

In the year 1039 the little house of Bec had been founded by a pious Nor man knight named Herluin, who himself became the first abbot. Nothing could be ruder or simpler than the commencements of this famous abbey. Herluin was poor and unlettered; he and his monks had to live hardly by the labor of their hands, their ordinary food was bread made with bran, and vege tables, with muddy water brought from a well two miles off. At the very mo ment when Lanfranc presented himself, the abbot was superintending the con. struction of an oven, and was kneading the bread with somewhat dirty hands, for he had come fresh from the labor of the field. At another time the sight would have disgusted the refined and fastidious Lombard, but at that moment his heart felt an appetite for abasement, and he promptly offered himself, and was received as one of the little community, of which he became prior in 1044. He was subjected to a severe noviciate. For three years, it is said, he kept a rigorous silence, and was tested by every kind of humiliation. Once, when reading aloud in the refectory, the prior corrected his Latin accent, and desired him to pronounce the e in docere short. This was probably a hard trial to the humility of the Bolognese professor, who must have regarded his Norman companions as little better than barbarians; but Lanfranc complied without hesi tation, judging, says his biographer, that an act of disobedience' was a greater evil than a false quantity in Latin. After he had passed through his probation, the abbot, who had learnt to value both his learning and his sincere humility, finding him unfit for manual labor, desired him to begin to teach, and thus were founded the famous schools of Bec. Their renown soon eclipsed that of every other existing academy. 'Before that time,' says Odericus, in the reigns of six dukes of Normandy, scarce any Norman applied himself to regular studies, nor had any doctor risen among them till, by the Providence of God, Lanfranc appeared in their province.' But now a new era was inaugu rated. Priests and monks came to Bec in multitudes, in order to place themselves under a master who was pronounced the best Latinist, the best theolo gian, and the best dialectician of his time; there were never fewer than a hundred pupils; the Norman nobles, and even the Dukes themselves, sent their sons thither for education, and made enormous grants of land to the favored abbey...

Meanwhile the schools of Bec grew and prospered, and the convent was soon found too small to contain its scholars. There were gathered together students of all ranks and conditions, 'profound sophists,' as Oderic Vitalis calls them, and a long list of ecclesiastics destined to become the shining lights of the Church. Among these were Ivo of Chartres, Fulk of Beauvais, Gundulph, afterwards bishop of Rochester, Anselm de Bagio, afterwards Pope Alexander

Lanfrane, who was born in Pavia, about the year 1018, studied at Bologna, taught jurisprudence in his native city, crossed the Alps into France, where he held a public disputation with Berangarius at Tours, opened a school at Avranches, when meeting with an accident and foul play on his way to Rouen, he was taken by his request to the nearest monastery, which proved to be that of Bec-then in its early foundation. His scholarship and executive ability led to his elec tion as prior on the death of Herluin, its founder, in 1044. His controversies with Berangarius, on the doctrine of the Real Presence, gave him a reputation which secured him the appointment of abbot by William of Normandy to the new monastery of St. Stephen, at Caen, and subsequently, to the See of Canterbury, when William became, by conquest, king, etc.

II., and a great number of the Anglo-Norman abbots. Alexander II., in after years, gave a memorable sign of the respect with which he regarded his old preceptor. When Lanfranc visited Rome as Archbishop of Canterbury, and was introduced into the presence of the Pontiff, the latter, contrary to the usual custom, rose, and advanced to meet him. 'I show this mark of respect,' he said, turning to the surrounding prelates, 'not to the archbishop, but to the. man at whose feet I sat as a disciple in the schools of Bec.' Besides these there was Guitmond, the courageous monk, who, entreated by the Conqueror to accept high ecclesiastical promotion in England, not only refused the offer, but accompanied his refusal with a letter of reproof which probably spoke plainer truths to William of Normandy than he had ever before had an oppor tunity of hearing. Oderic calls him devout and deeply learned, and in his book on the Sacrament of the Altar, the good monk recalls with affection the teaching he had received at Bec, which he styles that great and famous school of literature.' But by far the greatest disciple of this school was a countryman of Lanfranc's, destined to surpass him in renown both as a saint and a doctor.

ANSELM.

Anselm, a native of Aosta, in Lombardy, abandoning his native land, had after three years of study in Burgundy, established himself at Avranches, where he seems to have taught for some time in the school formerly directed by Lanfranc. But in 1059, being then but twenty-five years of age, he found his way to Bec, and soon distinguished himself as the first of all the noble crowd of scholars. For a while he continued there, studying and teaching by turns, but ere long the desire of religious perfection mastered that of intellectual progress. He resolved to take the monastic habit, but was unable to determine whether it should be at Cluny or at Bec. At Cluny, indeed, his vast acquirements would be of small profit; at Bec the superiority of Lanfranc would, he believed, almost equally eclipse him. But what of that? it was eclipse and nothingness that he was in search of, rather than fame and distinction. He opened his heart to his master, who, reluctant to decide a point in which his own feelings would naturally color his advice, referred him to Maurillus, archbishop of Rouen, and the result was that Anselm remained at Bec. His profession took place in 1060, and three years later Lanfranc, being appointed by Duke William abbot of his newly-founded monastery of St. Stephen at Caen, Anselm succeeded him in the office of prior. Some of the monks murmured at this appointment, but he overcame their ill-will by the sweetness of his charity. One young monk, named Osbern, who had shown the greatest opposition to the new prior, became at last his favorite disciple, won over by the patient long-suffering of a master who showed him a mother's tenderness, mingled with a father's care.

Lanfranc had commenced the formation of the library, and his work was carried on by his successor with unwearied zeal. The Bec library was afterwards enlarged by the donations of Philip of Harcourt, bishop of Bayeux, and be sides a rich collection of the Fathers and the Latin classics, contained the Institutes of Quintilian and the Hortensius of Cicero, of which latter work no copy is now known to exist. The great destruction of books which had taken place during the barbaric invasions, rendered them now both rare and costly. Superiors of the different religious houses were therefore glad to establish