the general impression, derived from reading the account of bishops and their elections in Sidonius, is that they would have said with Horace, in exactly the same pagan spirit (though they might have resented being connected with a pagan name), ‘Odi profanum vulgus et arceo’. They go in for charities,[1013] but these are often only a form of patronage. Thus, in attempting to provide for plebeian education, Christianity had to contend with many difficulties. The first appearance of organized Christian education is represented by the catechumen schools which sprang up everywhere after the establishment of Christianity. The most prominent one was that of Alexandria,[1014] dating at least from the second century. The bishop, or, more frequently, a subordinate church official, following the Apostolic example,[1015] would go to some lecture-hall after the sermon and expound the doctrine of the Church to all who cared to come, or would gather his disciples round him in some private house. The school was therefore intended for adults. It had no formal organization nor was it of a permanent character. It was a kind of missionary movement that spread to all parts of the Empire. Among the first attempts in the direction of Christian elementary education, apparently, was the school at Edessa, where Lucian, a presbyter of the third century, who became famous as a teacher at Antioch,[1016] was educated.[1017] It was a place worthy of being a cradle of Christian education; its church was martyred in the second century, its teachers Protogenes and Eulogius were driven into banishment in the fourth, and in the fifth it became famous for its active share in the Nestorian controversy. But in the West it was that ‘invasion from the South’, which Montalembert referred to, that was the instrument of Christian education. Tradition said that Athanasius introduced the idea of monasticism into Gaul (where it spread more rapidly than anywhere else in the West[1018]) during his exile at Trèves (336-7). This influence issued in action with Martin of Tours (the most popular saint of the Gallic Church), when he founded the monastery of Ligugé near Poitiers, and a second and larger one, Marmoutier (‘maius monasterium’) near Tours, about the middle of the fourth century. When he died, at the end of that century, there were numerous monasteries not only in the province of Tours but in Rouen and what afterwards became Normandy and Picardy.