Important though the collections of Rébais, Würzburg and Reichau undoubtedly were they are overshadowed by the greater fame of Bobbio. Indeed there is only one library that could compare with Bobbio either for the extent or the value of its MSS., and that was the library of St. Gall or Sangallen in Switzerland. This great monastery was founded by St. Gall (in Irish Cellach), the pupil and companion of St. Columbanus, about the year of 612 A.D. In the ninth century the library of St. Gall possessed 533 volumes, nine of them being palimpsests.[318] This library was famous during the Middle Ages. The Fathers who attended the Council of Constance depended mainly for reference on the valuable MSS. in this library to which they had free access; and, sad to relate, when the Council broke up in 1418 A.D. many of these holy men neglected to return these valuable old theological works in Latin and Greek.[319] This same library came to another loss two years earlier, in 1416, when Poggio, the Florentine scholar, with two learned friends who had been engaged at the Council visited St. Gall. Having a season of leisure they made a search for some missing volumes of Cicero, Livy, and other classical writers. Nor were they disappointed. Among other precious tomes they discovered the well-known _Argonauticon_ of Flaccus, copies of eight of Cicero’s orations with valuable commentaries by Asconius Pedianus, the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius, also the works of Priscian, of Quintilian, of Lucretius, and of other great scholars.[320] In many libraries of Europe there are MSS. written, or copied, by Irish monks during the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. These MSS. are bound together into Codices which are named either after the principal work included therein, or after the monastery where they were written, or sometimes from the library where they are at present deposited. These Codices contain copies of the classics, treatises on grammar, the Psalms, the Epistles of St Paul, and other portions of the Scriptures, Lives of the Saints, Hymns, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, &c. Scribes when studying these often added glosses and scholia either on the margin or between the lines to explain the Latin and Greek words of the text. Sometimes as in the case of the Psalms and of Priscian’s grammatical tract these glosses were copious and show that the scribe had availed himself freely of the work of earlier commentators. These glosses have been a rich mine to students of philology and have been extensively used for linguistic purposes containing as they do many of the most archaic forms of the Irish language. The meaning of these Old Irish words can now be obtained from the Greek and Latin words which were originally explained by the Irish words. Some of these MSS. were written by Irishmen on the Continent, while others were written in Ireland and carried to the Continent by other monks who deposited them in the libraries of their monasteries.