The influence and art work of the Irish scribes and missal decorators in England and on the Continent has been much greater than was formerly believed. Missionaries were sent to England, Scotland, and to the Continent, from the great monastic establishments in Ireland during the period from the seventh to the eleventh centuries, and carried with them “Gospels,” “Psalters,” and other missals, besides making many other religious books for the use of the monasteries they had founded in foreign countries. These Irish scribes also taught their art of book illumination to the monks who lived at such places where they set up their missions, or where they had become recluses in the foreign monasteries already established. This accounts for the number of Irish manuscripts that have been found in such monastic houses as that of St. Gall in Switzerland, Bobio in Piedmont, at Mentz (Mayence), at Ratisbon in Bavaria, at Honau on the Rhine, and at many other places on the Continent. The style of art in all the manuscripts found at these places, though introduced at the inception of Christianity into Ireland from Italy through Gaul, had died out in the latter countries during the fourth and fifth centuries, and was re-introduced, as we have seen, under a modified phase into the Continent by the Irish missionary scribes. [Illustration: Fig. 311.—From the Epistle of Jerome; “Book of Durrow.” (S.)] The majority of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, if not written by Irish scribes in England, were either decorated or copied closely from the work of the latter. This is supported by some written testimony, but the ornamentation of the pages themselves are distinctly of Irish design. A common feature in the illuminated pages of the books of the Middle Ages was the dividing of the pages into four compartments with ornamental borders, and each compartment holding the figure of a saint or symbols of the Evangelists, or having a miniature on the top half of the page and two small columns of text below. Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, with classical treatment of the figure designs, may be seen in the King’s Library at the British Museum. The figures have the attenuated Byzantine character, with the linear treatment of the draperies, and with the long lobe-like forms which strongly mark the intended position of the limbs under the drapery; while others show the influence of the early Christian paintings of the catacombs at Rome and Naples. The “Charter” of the foundation of Newminster at Winchester (966) and several “Gospels” in Latin of the eleventh century in the British Museum, are examples of the best kind of Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts.