It was specially with the aid of a famous English scholar and manuscript writer, Alcuin of York[47], that Charles the Great brought about so remarkable a revival both of letters and of the illuminator's art, and created what may be called the Anglo-Carolingian school of manuscripts. From 796 till his death in 804 Alcuin was Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St Martin at Tours; and there he carried out various literary works for Charles the Great, and superintended the production of a large number of richly illuminated manuscripts. Alcuin's most important literary work was the revision of the Latin text of the Bible, the _Vulgate_, which since Saint Jerome's time had become seriously corrupted. The British Museum possesses (_Add. Manuscripts_, No. 10546) a magnificently illuminated copy of the _Vulgate_ as revised by Alcuin, which, there is every reason to believe, is the actual manuscript which was prepared for Charles the Great either by Alcuin himself or under his immediate supervision. This splendid manuscript is a large folio in delicate and beautifully formed _minuscule_ characters, with the beginnings of chapters in fine _uncials_; it is written in two columns on the purest vellum. The miniature paintings in this manuscript show the united influence of various schools of manuscript art. The figure subjects are mainly classical in style, with fine architectural backgrounds of Roman style, drawn with unusual elaboration and accuracy, and even with fairly correct perspective. The initial letters and all the conventional ornaments show the Northern artistic strain which Alcuin himself introduced from York. Delicate and complicated interlaced patterns, such as were first used in the wonderful sixth and seventh century manuscripts of the Celtic monks, are freely introduced into the borders and large capitals. [Illustration: Fig. 11. An initial B. of the Celtic-Carolingian type.] _Celtic influence._ In Alcuin's time Northumbria and especially York was one of the chief centres in the world, for the production of manuscripts, and the Dean of York naturally introduced into France the style and influence of his native school, which had grown out of a combination of two very different styles, that of Rome, as introduced by St Augustine, and the Celtic style which the monks of Ireland and Lindisfarne had brought to such marvellous perfection in the seventh century. Fig. 10 shows an initial of the Celtic-Carolingian type, with a goldsmith's pattern on the shaft of the _P_, and a bird of Oriental type forming the loop; and fig. 11 gives a large initial _B_ in which the Oriental element is very strong, cf. fig. 13, page 68. _Henry VIII's Gospels._