In addition to this Palatine academy, if I should not rather say in connection with it, St. Gregory founded a school destined to have a more world-wide influence and more lasting fame. The extraordinary diligence bestowed by the holy pontiff on the reformation of the ecclesiastical chant gave rise in after times to a graceful legend, which represented him as visited in his sleep by a tenth Muse, who appeared to him with her mantle covered with the mystic notes and neumas, and inspired him with that skill in science of sacred melody, which he ever afterwards possessed. The legend, like most legends, only embalms and beautifies a fact. The Church was the real Muse who inspired her pontiff to give to her order of sacred chant the same perfection he had already bestowed upon her Liturgy. Other popes and prelates had laboured before him at the same work, and indeed the very name of _Centon_, which is given to his Antiphonary, shows that it was a compilation of those ancient melodies which passed from the Temple to the Church, and which may be traced through St. Mark at Alexandria, and through St. Ignatius at Antioch, up to St. Peter himself.[48] In process of time the Eastern churches introduced a more pompous and florid style, but in Africa, thanks to the exertions of St. Athanasius, the ancient severity was preserved, and made matter of reproach against the Catholics by the Donatist heretics, who attributed it to the natural heaviness and stupidity of the African character. Baronius observes that, according to the most ancient monuments, the Roman Church appears to have taken the middle course, between the extreme simplicity of the Africans and the florid ornamentation of the Orientals, and thus united gravity with sweetness.