The intelligent protection and encouragement and hospitality afforded to men of letters by Charlemagne was a great contrast to the bigotry of Leo the Byzantine. Interesting himself warmly in all questions relating to instruction, he took a special interest in the copying and transcription of manuscripts, inviting to his kingdom the Irish and Anglo-Saxon monks, who from the sixth century had made a special study of calligraphy, and were celebrated all over Europe for their miniatures and historiation. In consequence of the patronage of Charlemagne and of Charles the Bald, son of Louis the Débonnaire, artists of all nationalities, but more particularly Germans and Italians, who had come from Oriental schools, received a warm welcome. At first in the sixth century the initial letter was of the same size as the others, only distinguished by the difference of colour, being in minium or cinnabar. A hundred years later, under the Byzantine influence, the letter grows larger, until it occupies the whole page, at the same time being painted with the most vivid colours according to the fancy and caprice of the artist. Little by little the Byzantine style first introduced became modified, and assumed by degrees a national character. The decoration of the initials took the form of interlaced chequer-work or of historiated arabesques, resembling the mosaics of enamelled specimens of Gallo-Frank jewellery. Then come figures of animals, in which the imagination of the artist runs riot, as in the alphabet of which Montfaucon has given a specimen in his _Origins of the French Monarchy_. To quote the opinion of a contemporary writer, there was nothing under heaven or earth that had not served as a model for designers of ornamental letters. Towards the fourteenth century this exuberance of decoration quiets down. Fancy is by no means excluded, but it becomes more regulated and more sure, to the advantage of art itself, which speaks through the skill of the painters, whose names, however, with but few exceptions, unfortunately remain unknown to us. Paris was renowned at an early period for the excellence of its manuscripts, and the talents of its copyists and illuminators. Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham and Chancellor of England, speaks in his _Philobiblion_ of the five libraries he had seen in that town, and the magnificent books that he had been able to buy. In England, illumination had flourished from before the twelfth to the fourteenth century, but by the middle of the fifteenth art was dead, and when handsome miniatures or other decorations were required for books, it was to French artists that it was necessary to apply. In Italy, the influence, as regards book ornamentation, of French art may be judged from the passage of Dante, who, speaking to a miniaturist of his profession, is obliged to use a periphrase to design it: ‘. . . di quell’ arte Ch’ alluminare è chiamata in Parisi.’