"If the three great divisions of the regular ecclesiastics seem to have had each a distinct vocation, there was at least one vocation common to all. The Benedictine monks instituted schools of learning; the Augustines built noble cathedrals; the Mendicant orders founded hospitals: _all_ became patrons of the fine arts, on such a scale of munificence that the protection of the most renowned princes has been mean and insignificant in comparison. Yet, in their relation to art, this splendid patronage was the least of their merits. The earliest artists of the middle ages were the monks of the Benedictine orders. In their convents were preserved, from age to age, the traditional treatment of sacred subjects, and that pure unworldly sentiment which in later times was ill exchanged for the learning of schools and the competition of academies; and as they were the only depositories of chemical and medical knowledge, and the only compounders of drugs, we owe to them also the discovery and preparation of some of the finest colours, and the invention or the improvement of the implements used in painting: for the monks not only prepared their own colours, but when they employed secular painters in decorating their convents, the materials furnished from their own laboratories were consequently of the best and most durable kind. As architects, as glass-painters, as mosaic workers, as carvers in wood and metal, they were the precursors of all that has since been achieved in Christian art; and if so few of these admirable and gifted men are known to us individually and by name, it is because they worked for the honour of God and their community--not for profit, nor for reputation."