It is not easy to convey any notion of the enthusiasm excited by Gerbert’s lectures, or the tide of scholars that flocked to him not only from every part of France, but from Germany, Italy, and the British Islands. Brucker is careful to repeat the old calumny, which represents the dull heads of his contemporaries as attributing his superior science to the effect of magic. “The knowledge of nature which Gerbert possessed,” he says, “so far surpassed that of his contemporaries, that they thought him possessed of magical powers; _and Benno, a cardinal who owed him a grudge for his opposition to the See of Rome_, invented a tale of his holding converse with the devil.” Alas for the accurate historian! this round assertion must go to keep company with that other from the same pen touching the trial of Polydore Vergil before the Inquisition. It was, doubtless, a temptation to represent the person who charged a man of genius with being a magician as one of the dull orthodox, moved to the malicious act by his zeal on behalf of the See of Rome, but the facts are exactly the contrary. Benno, the zealous cardinal who owed Gerbert a grudge for his opposition to the Pope, happened himself to be a schismatic and a partisan of the anti-pope; and instead of being a contemporary of Gerbert’s, he lived a century later, in the time of St. Gregory VII., and introduced this precious story in a writing, the express purpose of which was to defame the character of the Roman pontiffs.[143] In justice to Gerbert it must be added, that not only was he innocent of sorcery, but that he was altogether above all petty jealousy and self-seeking, and desired nothing so ardently as to communicate his discoveries to as many as wished to receive them. Not content with instructing his own scholars, he corresponded with the scholastics of Tours, Sens, Fleury, and Aurillac, and spared no pains or expense in the collection of his library. In this work he was generously assisted by his friends, scattered over the length and breadth of Europe. It is in his “Epistles” that we catch a glimpse of that prodigious activity of mind which took cognisance of all subjects, and never rested till it had sounded all to the depth. In one letter, we find him begging the loan of a Cæsar from his archbishop, and offering in exchange eight volumes of Boëthius and some excellent geometrical figures. In another, he solicits the monks of Aurillac to furnish him with a Spanish treatise on the arts of multiplication and division, and directs them in the work of correcting a manuscript of Pliny. Then, again, we find him writing on the medical science, to which he and his disciples directed a good deal of attention, and in which they followed the Greek masters. In fact, it was the diversified character of his acquirements that made Gerbert the wonder of the world in the eyes of his contemporaries. He knew all things, they said, and all things equally well. If this were