Books abounded in Ireland when the Danes made their appearance there about the end of the eighth century; hence the pride with which the old writers referred to “the hosts of the books of Erin.” But with the first Danish incursions began an era of burning and pillaging the monasteries and consequently a woeful destruction of MSS., the records of the ancient learning. The special fury of the invaders appears to have been directed against books, monasteries, and monuments of religion. All the books they could lay hands upon they either burned or “drowned” by throwing them into the nearest river, or lake. For two centuries this wanton destruction continued, and ceased only when the Danes were finally crushed at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 A.D.[305] During the Danish period missionaries and scholars who went abroad carried with them great numbers of MSS. As a result of the exportation as well as of the destruction of MSS. we can merely conjecture as to the extent and value of the books in a library attached to a great Irish monastic school during the period covered by our investigation. Fortunately, however, we are able to describe the contents of the libraries of the Irish establishment of St. Gall in Switzerland, and Bobbio in Italy, and this may serve to give us some idea of the wealth of material the Irish libraries once possessed, but most of it is now irreparably lost. A catalogue of the Bobbio library was made between the years 967–972 A.D. It is attributed to the Abbot Gerbert who afterwards became Pope Silvester II.[306] At this time the library contained about 700 volumes,[307] of which 479 had been acquired gradually from various unstated sources, and over 220 had been presented by scholars who are named with the list of books they had given,[308] 43 having been a donation from the famous Irish monk Dungal who presided over the school of Pavia.[309] This catalogue itself is strong objective evidence for the claim we are making that the classical authors were read. The list of MSS. shows that both Greek and Latin classics, were well represented. Among others we find works by the following authors: Terence, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucian, Martial, Juvenal, Claudian, Cicero, Seneca, and the Elder Pliny;[310] also Persius, Flaccus, Horace, Demosthenes, and Aristotle.[311]