Dating from the ninth century, there were many to be found among the ecclesiastics and the upper classes who spoke both languages, Romance and Teutonic, equally well. In the monasteries Flemish and Walloon monks lived together, and in the Abbey of St. Amand, in Southern Belgium, there has been found, written by the same hand, the oldest poem of French literature, the _Cantilène de Ste. Eulalie_, and also one of the oldest products of Teutonic literature, the _Ludwigslied_. The bishops and abbots knew both languages; the abbots of Lobbes, a Walloon monastery in the tenth century, spoke both Flemish and French. In the diocese of Térouanne (later Saint-Omer) the bishops were obliged to know “barbarian,” i.e., the Teutonic language. During the eleventh century, many preachers were able to address the people of the Walloon and Flemish sections, and abbots who knew both languages were preferred. The lay princes were obliged at least to understand Walloon and Flemish, for Flanders, Brabant, and Limburg included people of both races. When the army of the crusaders started for the Holy Land, the Lotharingian prince Godfrid of Bouillon was appointed as their leader, because, according to the chronicle of Otto von Freising, “brought up on the frontier of the Romance and the Teutonic people, he knew both languages equally well.” During the twelfth century, the knowledge of French was regarded as a necessary element of perfect culture. On the common people, however, French civilization had no influence at all; they knew and spoke only Flemish. The French influence was especially strong from a linguistic point of view; the German influence was overwhelming in the literary domain, especially in Lotharingia. The bishops were, generally speaking, the sole possessors of literary and scientific culture, and in Lotharingia most of them were strongly Germanized. The center of literary life in Lotharingia was the school of Liège, founded by the Saxon bishop Everachar. It became a center of study, where not only Germans, but also French, English, and Slav students were to be found. The curriculum of the school, known as the school of St. Lambert, included grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, and theology. This institution was the means by which many new ideas were circulated through France and Germany, as its teachers were in close touch with all the scientific tendencies of the time. In Western and Southern Belgium we find the influence of the school of Cambrai as paramount. Although a Romance region, Cambrai belonged to the German Empire, and was therefore a center of German influence. The dominating _genre_ in literature is history, and that is an especially Belgian _genre_; history has always been much cultivated in Belgium. The historical work of a monk, Sigebert of Gembloux, is recognized as the center of that activity.