Among the fine specimens of this epoch which have been preserved, we may mention, in the Imperial Library of Paris, a Book of the Gospels, called Cardinal Mazarin’s, and the Commentaries of Gregory Nazianzus; at the Laurentinean Library, Florence, are a Plutarch and a Book of the Gospels, written with gold ink in large and massive minuscule cursive characters; and lastly, a book of ecclesiastical offices, belonging also to the Imperial Library in Paris, and which bears this superscription in Greek:--“Pray for Euthymus, a poor monk, priest of the monastery of St. Lazare. This volume was finished in the month of May, Convocation S, in the year 6515,” a date which, according to the computation of the Greek Church, corresponds to the month of May of the year 1007 of the Christian era. To the twelfth century is assigned the beautiful Greek manuscript which was afterwards given to Louis XIV. by Chrysanthes Noras, Patriarch of Jerusalem; to the thirteenth century belongs another manuscript, in very small cursive letters, ornamented with portraits, presented by the Emperor Palæologos to St. Louis. It was only in the fourteenth century that manuscripts half Latin and half Greek, appeared. Lastly came Ange Végèce, of Corfu, who, towards the middle of the fifteenth century, made for himself, as a Greek caligrapher, such a reputation that he gave, it is said, rise to the proverb, “_Écrire comme un ange_.” The Greek alphabet, when it penetrated into the countries of the north with the Christian religion and civilisation, underwent important modifications. On the right bank of the Danube, in ancient Mœsia, Ulphilas, the descendant of a Cappadocian family formerly taken prisoner by the Goths, invented, in the fourth century, the alphabet bearing, on that account, the name of _Mœso-Gothic_, and which is of Greek origin, with a mixture of Latin characters and other peculiar signs. This writing is heavy, without being elegant; differing, as if by an instinct of nationality, from the types which it imitates. The Mœso-Gothic manuscripts are, however, very rare; only two or three being known.