UNIVERSAL ERUDITION. 



he had the holy fcriptures tranflated into the Ger- 

 man tongue, &c. It is true that this age favour- 

 ed ibmewhat of the barbarous ignorance of the 

 times that immediately preceded, and of the 

 wars by which the reign of Charlemagne was 

 continually agitated : but without the affiflance 

 of that great prince, literature had been totally 

 loft : he faved it, collected its mattered remains, 

 did all that it was poifible to do at that epoch, 

 and what perhaps no other man would have done 

 in his fituation. 



X. The ffth age was that which is called by 

 the name of Pope Leo X. a period when a 

 private family, that of the Medicis, made pro- 

 digious efforts in the re-eflablifhment of the arts 

 and fciences, and which in return concurred in 

 the elevation, in the grandeur and glory of that 

 houfe. So many learned authors, fo many great 

 men have faid and wrote that the arts and fci- 

 ences came from the eaft, from Greece and Con- 

 ftantinople, to feek an afylum among the weftcrn 

 nations, after the taking of that city by the 

 Turks, that it is not without timidity we pre- 

 fume to combat that error. Never was there feen, 

 however, more fanaticifm, bigotry, ignorance 

 and ftupidity, among any people, than in the 

 eaftern empire at the time of the taking of 

 Conflantinople. M. Montelquieu fays* : 



* Caufcs of the grandeur and decline of the Romans. 



" A grofs 



