Irish Influence.—The Irish exercised further influence on the Continent through their pupils, such as Heiric of Auxerre (841-876), who had a knowledge of classical writers lost elsewhere and in the monastery of St. Gall, when Notker Balbulus (84o 912) wrote the Gesta Karoli, anecdotes of the life of Charlemagne, and brought into existence a new form of sacred poetry, the se quence: first a kind of vers libre, then taking metrical form, im portant both for itself and for the influence it afterwards had on secular poetry. At St. Gall also was Ekkehard I. (d. 973), whose iValtharius, a poem of heroism and love, is one of the best ro mances of the middle ages. Luitprand, bishop of Cremona (c. 920-972), Lombard, and historian of the Lombards, is the best historian of the time, and gives lively pictures of the Eastern em pire, having twice gone on embassy to Constantinople. The nun Hrosvitha (c. 96o), wrote a series of plays, modelled on Terence with subjects drawn from hagiographical sources, in which the dialogue is lively and sometimes even humorous. To the latter part of the loth century also belong a few anonymous but beauti ful lyrics, such as Jam dulcis arnica venito and Levis exurgit zephyrus, preserved to us by happy chance in a collection called the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, which foreshadows the Carmina Burana of more than 'co years later. The inspiration of those early love lyrics is the Song of Songs; later, the love poems of Ovid exercise more and more influence.
The next century is, from a purely literary aspect, a period of decline. At the beginning of it the great figure is Gerbert (d. as Pope Sylvester II., 1003), so learned in the ancients and in natu ral science that he was suspected of being a magician ; then Fulbert of Chartres (d. 1029), a great theological teacher, whose influ ence lasted throughout France for more than one generation, and came through Lanfranc (d. 1089) and Anselm (d. 1109) to Eng land. Much of the intellectual life of this century is connected with the controversies aroused by Fulbert's pupil, Berengarius of Tours (d. 1088), who refused to be bound by the traditional authority of Priscian, Donatus, and Boethius; but the interest of this and of his attack on transubstantiation is philosophical rather than literary, as are the early contests between realists (such as Anselm) and nominalists (such as Roscellinus, d. 1106). In poetry mention may be made of the Burgundian Wipo, who flourished in the middle of the century, best known to us by the Eastern sequence Victimae paschali, and Peter Damian (d. 1072), author of two or three hymns of deep religious feeling.
bishop of Tours; dramatic, such as the mystery plays of the Eng lishman Hilarius (c. 113o), though he lived mostly in France; and purely secular, such as the famous Phyllis and Flora, a lively discussion between two girls on the topic whether a soldier or a clerk made the better lover. The second half is no less rich : there is the Rosy Sequence, ordinarily attributed to St. Bernard but more probably English, and the works of Adam of St. Victor (113o-8o), one of the great hymn-writers of the world. To this period also we may ascribe many of the tender lyrics (most of French, a few of German origin) of the Carmina Burana, and the "Goliardic" poems, sung in praise of love and wine, and in satire of the great in Church and State by the "Wandering Scholars." A few stanzas from one of these, beginning Meum est propositum in taberna mori has lasted as a drinking song to this day, and is the best-known mediaeval secular poem. Its author, a mysterious figure known as the "Archipoeta," was a man of genius.
It will be difficult even to enumerate the more serious writers of this age, but mention must be made of John of Salisbury (1 I io-80) friend of St. Thomas of Canterbury and perhaps the ripest scholar of his time, whose Polycraticus expounds an im portant theory of government, supported by use of the Latin classics; of Giraldus Cambrensis, the lively Welsh bishop, his torian and reformer (c. 1147-1220); and of Walter Map (c. 1200), Archdeacon of Oxford and chronicler of the folklore of the Welsh Marches. On the borderline between this century and the next one must place the two authors of Artes Poeticae, Mat thew of VenclOrne and Geoffrey de Vinsauf (an Englishman) whose works were carefully studied and followed for the rest of the mediaeval period.
The Schoolmen.—The 13th century is the age of the recovery of the forgotten works of Aristotle and the perfecting of the work of the schoolmen rather than of pure literature : but mention may be made of the learned figures of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), bishop of Lincoln, and the encyclopaedist Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1264), a tutor of French princes, who digested into his Specula all the learning of his time, and of the Dominican Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), who first systematized the use of the whole of Aristotle in the scholastic philosophy. His great pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas of noble south Italian birth (d. 1274, less than 5o years old) is remembered as much by his noble Eucharistic hymns, Pange lingua, Verbum Supernum, and the se quence Lauda Sion as by his vast prose philosophical works. The grandest Latin poem of the middle ages, the Dies irae is probably the work of Thomas of Celano (d. shortly after 1250), the friend and biographer of St. Francis of Assisi. Two archbishops of Can terbury, Stephen Langton (d. 1228) and John Pecham (d. 1292) wrote hymns of some beauty : a greater hymn-writer than either was Philip de Greve (d. 1236), chancellor of the University of Paris. Late in this century we find the scientific and sceptical spirit of Roger Bacon (1214-94), and the beginning of Dante (1265-1321), whose Latin writings must not be forgotten because of his greater Italian works.