INTRODUCTION. 9 
might afterwards degenerate, it was founded upon 
rational and enlightened principles. Besides their 
religious duties, the monks were enjoined to apply 
themselves to science and general literature, and to 
engage the services of the most learned men by 
liberal salaries, These injunctions were executed 
with diligence and spirit. In the eleventh century 
progre 
learning. The philosophy of Aristotle, the scholastic 
theology, profane and sacred learning were culti- 
vated ; and treatises upon music, logic, astronomy, 
and other sciences, were written by the monks. 
Many of the classics, as Tacitus, Homer, Cicero de 
Natura Deorum, Terence, Horace, the Fasti of 
id, Seneca, Virgil, and Theocritus, Josephus, 
Jornandes, and Gregory of Tours, were transcribed 
by order of the abbot Desiderius!®, and the service 
of the church was performed both in Greek and 
8 Jubebantur ut literarum studiis operam darent, et in omni- 
bus preclaris disciplinis, ad statum monasticum pertinentibus, 
derent, Ugonius, De dignitate ac prestantia reipublice Casi- 
nensis, in Geers et Burman, Thesaur. vol. ix. pars 1. p 
a. b, 
1 Giannone, lib. x. cap. ii, sect. 2.; vol. ii. p. 112, 118, from 
the Chron, Cass, lib, iii. cap. Ixiii. p. 473. 
