During the two centuries preceding the invention of printing, it was the case that more books (in the form of manuscripts) were available for the use of students and readers in Italy than in any other country, but even in Italy manuscripts were scarce and costly. Even the collections in the so-called “libraries” of the cathedrals and colleges were very meagre. These manuscripts were nearly entirely the production of the cloisters, and as parchment continued to be very dear, many of the works sent out by the monks were in the form of palimpsests, that is, were transcribed upon scrolls which contained earlier writing. The fact that the original writing was in many cases but imperfectly erased, has caused to be preserved fragments of a number of classics which might otherwise have disappeared entirely. The service rendered by the monks in this way may be considered as at least a partial offset to the injury done by them to the cause of literature in the destruction of so many ancient writings. This matter has been referred to more fully in the chapter on Monasteries and Manuscripts. One of the Italian scholars of the fifteenth century who interested himself particularly in the collection of manuscripts of the classics was Poggio Bracciolini. In 1414, while he was, in his official capacity as Apostolic Secretary, in attendance at the Council of Constance, he ransacked the libraries of St. Gall and of other monasteries of Switzerland and Suabia, and secured a complete _Quintilian_, copies of _Lucretius_, _Frontinus_, _Probus_, _Vitruvius_, nine of Cicero’s _Orations_, and manuscripts of a number of other valuable texts. Many of the libraries had been sadly neglected, and the greater part of the manuscripts were in dirty and tattered condition, but literature owes much to the monks through whom these literary treasures had been kept in existence at all. Poggio is to be noted as a free-thinker who managed to keep in good relations with the Church. So long as free-thinkers confined their audacity to such matters as form the topic of Poggio’s _Facetiæ_, Beccadelli’s _Hermaphroditus_, or La Casa’s _Capitolo del Forno_, the Roman Curia looked on and smiled approvingly. The most obscene books to be found in any literature escaped the Papal censure, and a man like Aretino, notorious for his ribaldry, could aspire with fair prospects of success to the scarlet of a Cardinal.[418]