Instances of the high prices given for books in the middle ages have been often quoted. Mabillon relates that the countess of Anjou paid to the bishop of Halberstadt, for a copy of the Homilies of Haimon, two hundred sheep, a modius of wheat, and the same of rye and millet, beside four pounds in money, and some marten skins.[8] It would be very unreasonable to take an instance like this as a sample of the value of mere manuscripts at that time. Volumes were often most splendidly illuminated and adorned, and this was probably one of the most costly kind. For instance, in the catalogue of books in the library of Centule, already referred to, we find mention made of an illuminated volume of the Gospels, bound in plates of gold and silver, and richly adorned with precious stones.[9] Facts, of the order just cited, are not to be deemed so much proofs of the scarcity of books, as of the extreme value of certain volumes, arising from the precious materials of which they were composed, and the labour bestowed upon illuminating and adorning them. Still, books plainly written, and without ornament, must have been far from numerous, and therefore very valuable; as is evident from the catalogues of monastic libraries, which were almost the only collections having any pretension to that name. It will not be uninteresting to the reader to be informed what were the kinds of books which these libraries contained. In the abbey of Centule, we find Homer, Cicero, Josephus, Pliny, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Philo, Eusebius, Origen, Augustin, Jerome, Gregory, Isidore, Hilary, Chrysostom, Cassiodorus, Fulgentius, Bede, beside several authors of lesser note, together with a number of service books. After enumerating these works, the writer of the chronicle speaks of them as the aliment of celestial life, feeding the soul with sweetness, so that, in Centule, the saying was fulfilled, "Love the study of books, and you will not love the practice of vice."[10] Few of the classical writers are found in these catalogues; for, in general, during the former part of the middle ages, no attention was paid to the study of them, even by those who made pretensions to literary taste and acquirements, though a few writers may be found, even at that period, who discover some acquaintance with them; but, at a subsequent era, a taste for classical studies revived, and, after the eleventh century, a large number of transcripts from classic authors were made by the monks of the Benedictine order. Yet, as we are indebted to the western monasteries for the preservation of the Latin classics, it is quite plain that there must have been throughout the middle ages, in some or other of them, enough of value set upon these works to induce the monks to copy them.