After Rome had ceased to be the seat of government, Constantinople became the chief centre for the production of illuminated manuscripts[29], but nevertheless the older classical style of drawing to some extent did survive in Italy, though in a very debased form, down to the thirteenth century, when Cimabue and his pupil Giotto inaugurated the brilliant Renaissance of Italian painting. _Classical survival._ The _Gospels_, for example, which St Augustine is said to have brought with him to Britain in 597 A.D., have paintings, enthroned figures of the Evangelists, which in design and colour are purely of late Roman style, unchanged by the then wide-spread influence of Byzantine art. CHAPTER IV. BYZANTINE MANUSCRIPTS. _Byzantine style._ The history of the origin, development and decay of the Byzantine style in manuscripts, as in other branches of art, is a long and strange one[30]. The origin of the Byzantine style dates from the time when Christianity had become the State religion, and when Constantine transferred the Capital of the World from Rome to Byzantium. In Russia and other eastern portions of Europe the Byzantine style still exists, though in a sad state of decay, not as an antiquarian revival, but as the latest link in a chain of unbroken tradition, going back without interruption to the age of Constantine, the early part of the fourth century after Christ. _Many strains of influence._ During the early years of the Eastern Empire, Constantinople, or "New Rome" as it was commonly called, became the chief world's centre for the practice of all kinds of arts and handicrafts. Owing to its central position, midway between the East and the West, the styles and technique of both met and were fused into a new stylistic development of the most remarkable kind. Western Europe, Asia Minor, Persia and Egypt all contributed elements both of design and of technical skill, which combined to create the new and for a while vigorously flourishing school of Byzantine art. The dull lifeless forms of Roman art in its extreme degradation were again quickened into new life and beauty in the hands of these Byzantine craftsmen, who became as it were the heirs and inheritors of the art and the technique of all the chief countries of antiquity. _Technical skill._ In architecture, in mosaic work, in metal work of all kinds, in textile weaving, the craftsmen of New Rome reached the highest level of technical skill and decorative beauty. So also a new and brilliant school of manuscript illumination was soon formed, and Constantinople became for several centuries the chief centre for the production of manuscripts of all kinds. The Oriental element in Byzantine art shows itself in a love of extreme splendour, the most copious use of gold and silver and of the brightest colours. _Murex purple._