The greater number of rich manuscripts, even when they contained the text of some ancient secular author, were destined to be presented to the treasuries of churches and abbeys, and these offerings were not made without great display: the book, whatever its contents might be, was placed on the altar, and a solemn mass was celebrated on the occasion; moreover, an inscription at the end of the work mentioned the homage which had been paid for it to God and to the saints in paradise. We must not forget that in this time of almost universal ignorance, the Church was the only depository of literature and science; she sought after those heathen authors who could instruct her in eloquence that might be employed in advancing the faith, almost as much as she sought for sacred books; it was not rare even to see Christian zeal exalting itself so far as to find prophets of the Messiah in writers very anterior to the doctrines of Christ. Thus the best Greek and Latin manuscripts of profane authors are the work of monks, as were the Bibles and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. The rules of the most ancient brotherhoods recommended the monks who could write and who wished to please God to re-copy the manuscripts, and those who were illiterate to learn to bind them. “The work of the copyist,” said the learned Alcuin to his contemporaries, “is a meritorious work, which is profitable to the soul, while the work of the ploughman is profitable only to the belly.” At all periods of history we find mention made of certain celebrated manuscripts. We will not go so far back as the Greek traditions relating to the works of Homer, of which some copies were ornamented with a richness that has, probably, never been surpassed. In the fifth century St. Jerome possessed twenty-five parts of the works of Origen, which Pamphilus the Martyr had copied with his own hand. St. Ambrose, St. Fulgentius, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, men as learned as they were pious, applied themselves to reproducing with their own hands the best ancient texts. A copyist by profession was called _scriba_, _scriptor_; the place in which they generally worked was called _scriptorium_. The capitularies against bad copyists were frequently renewed. “We ordain that no scribe write incorrectly,” we find in the collection of Baluze. We read in the same collection, in 789, “There shall be good Catholic texts in all monasteries, so that prayers shall not be made to God in faulty language.” In 805, “If the Gospels, the Psalter, or the Missal are to be copied, only careful middle-aged men are to be employed; verbal errors may otherwise be introduced into the faith.” There were, moreover, _correctors_ who rectified the work of the copyists, and attested the work, on the volumes, by the words _contuli_, _emendavi_ (“I have collated, I have revised”). A copy of Origen’s works has been mentioned, corrected by the hand of Charlemagne himself, to whom is also