When we pass to the question of what was taught in the monasteries, we find that the scholars were trained to read the scriptures in Latin and to be familiar with the services of the monastery, and that writing and singing were also subjects of instruction. Two of Bede's works are probably school-books: his "Librum de orthographia, alfabeti ordine distinctum" and his "Librum de metrica arte, et huic adjectum alium de schematibus sine tropis libellum, hoc est de figuris modisque locutionum, quibus scriptura sancta contexta est." Though it may not be just to regard Bede as the typical product of the English monasteries of the time, yet it may fairly be pointed out that the whole of Bede's education was received in these monasteries. Even if we regard him as the best-educated of the English monks, his example will still serve to show the extent of learning which could be acquired in the monasteries of this period. Sandys writes, "His skill in Latin verse is shown in his elegiacs on Queen Ethelfrida and in his hexameters on the shrine of St. Cuthbert.... His Greek learning is indicated in his treatises and in the references to a Greek MS. of the Acts which are to be found in his _Liber Retractionum_. The Latin authors most frequently quoted by him are Cicero, Virgil and Horace and (doubtless at second hand) Lucilius and Varro."[26] Apart from the education, in the technical sense of the word, given by the monks, they were also responsible for reforms which, in the wider sense of the term, were also educational. Thus, the higher ideals of life prevalent in the monastery were introduced into the country as a whole. The age was a turbulent and disordered one, in which neither moral nor ethical obligations prevailed and in which might alone was right.[27] The monks established, in the country of their adoption, a number of communities, in which the ruling principles were those of Charity, Chastity, and Obedience. The ideals prevailing in these monasteries reacted upon the social customs of their neighbourhood. The strong individualism of the Teutons was modified by the attitude of obedience to recognised authority characteristic of the monk; the qualities of savagery tended to yield to the examples of self-denial, self-control, and care for others.