HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 



had effaced nearly all the remains of Greek and Roman civilization, 

 was sinking into increasing intellectual darkness. The professors of 

 Christianity had generally despised the classic literature, and altogether 

 rejected science and philosophy. Even the great Pope Gregory could 

 ignore the rules of grammar in his writings, and, it is said, boasted of 

 doing so. Yet to the Latin language the whole learning and it was 

 but little of the Middle Ages was confined, while the archives of 

 science remained sealed books, for they existed only in Greek and, as 

 we have seen, in Arabic translations, after the Arabs had become a 



FIG. 23. A COURT IN THE ALHAMBRA. 



learned nation. Hence when in the eleventh century GERBERT, a 

 monk of the Low Countries, desired to acquaint himself with mathe- 

 matics, all Christendom could riot furnish an instructor, and the future 

 Sylvester II. had, as we have before intimated, to resort to the 

 Moorish universities of Spain. In the next century the example set by 

 Gerbert was followed by ADHELARD, an English monk, who for this 

 ^purpose made himself master of the Arabic language, and turned his 

 acquisition into account by translating the Arabic version of Euclid's 

 " Elements " into Latin, his work being the first Latin version of the 

 immortal treatise of the Alexandrian geometer. The translation also 



