We have seen the passage in which Walafrid Strabo speaks of the inscription at the beginning of the Antiphoner, ascribing its origin to Gregory I., and again that in which Agobard of Lyons tells us that the inscription contained the words "Gregorius Præsul." There are five forms extant of the prologue in hexameter verse. The shortest, and therefore the one probably composed by Adrian I., is as follows:-- "Gregorius Præsul meritis et nomine dignus Unde genus ducit, summum ascendit honorem. Renovavit monumenta patrum priorum: tunc Composuit hunc libellum musicæ artis Scholæ cantorum anni circuli: Ad te levavi." All the five forms begin with the same two first lines. Eckhart got over the difficulty caused to his theory by these lines by supposing that "Gregorius Præsul" meant not Gregory the Great, but Gregory II. But he does not explain how "Unde genus ducit," &c., can refer to the latter. But it fits Gregory I. in this way: Pope Felix was his great-great-grandfather; so that, on succeeding to the papacy, he as it were entered on a family inheritance. This prologue proves that the Antiphoner was ascribed by tradition to St. Gregory in the latter half of the eighth century. IX.--Egbert, Archbishop of York (732-766), is a still more important witness. Born about 678, he was ordained deacon at Rome, and received the archiepiscopal pallium from Gregory III. in 735. He was the disciple and friend of Bede, the confidant and benefactor of St. Boniface, and the teacher of Alcuin. Shortly after he became archbishop he composed a work addressed to his brother bishops, and called _De Institutione Catholica_. The following extracts from it refer to the Ember-day Fasts. "As for us in the Church of England, we always observe the Fast of the First Month in the first week of Lent, relying on the authority of our teacher, St. Gregory, who has thus regulated it in the model which he has handed down to us in his Antiphoner and his Missal through the medium of our pedagogue the Blessed Augustine." (_Patr. Lat._ lxxxix., 441.) "As for the Fast of the Fourth Month, the same St. Gregory, by the same envoy, has prescribed in his Antiphoner and his Missal the week which follows Pentecost as that in which the Church of England ought to celebrate it. And this is attested not only by our own Antiphoners, but also by those which we have inspected with their corresponding missals in the Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul." (_Ibid._) Egbert brings us back to the seventh century, but during that century (the beginning of which saw the death of Gregory) we have no direct evidence. There are some considerations, however, which may account for this.