=The Ecclesiastical Schools and the Clerics as Scribes.=--The so-called secular clergy were, during the earlier Middle Ages, employed very largely in connection with the business of the government, being in fact in many regions the only class of the population possessing the education necessary for the preparation of documents and the preservation of records. In Italy, towards the close of the thirteenth century, there came into existence the class of _notaries_ who took charge of a good many business details which in Germany and France were cared for by the clergy. Under the Merovingian kings, there were government officials and judiciary officials who were laymen. During the rule of the Carlovingians, however, the writing work of the chapel and of the government offices was consolidated, falling into the hands of the clerics, or secular clergy. For a number of centuries, outside of Italy, it was very exceptional for any documents or for any correspondence to be written by other than the clergy. Every citizen of importance was obliged to have his special _clericus_, _clerc_, or _pfaff_, who took care of his correspondence and accounts. A post of this kind was in fact the surest means for an ambitious priest to secure in the first place, a footing in the world, and later, ecclesiastical positions and income. The secretary or chancellor of the king, was almost always, as a matter of routine, sooner or later rewarded with a bishopric. Charlemagne took from among the poor boys in the court school, one, who was described as _optimus dictator et scriptor_, and having trained him as chaplain and secretary, provided for him later a bishopric.[30] The use of the word _dictator_ is to be noted as indicating the mediæval employment of the term in connection with writing. _Dictare_ seems, from an early date, to have been used in the first place to indicate instruction in the art of writing, while later it is employed constantly to specify the direct work of the writer or composer, in the sense in which one would say to-day that he had indited a letter. With the same general sense, the term _dictamen_ is used for the thing indited or for a composition. Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim (whose poems later had the honour of forming the material for one of the first books printed in South Germany), used the term _dictare_ continually for activity in authorship. Wattenbach quotes from the _Legenda Aurea_ of S. Ambrose the words _libros quos dictabat propria manu scribebat_ (he wrote out with his own hand the books that he composed).