Culture of the creative kind is still in abeyance in Italy; there are still no writers of significance; there is little art except as practised in the illumination of manuscripts, and as foreshadowed in the beginnings of architecture. Nevertheless, there is a germative culture. Here and there a knight brings back a book from the East--for this is the age of the Crusades. Here and there a monk pores over a classic manuscript. Virgil was read and copied all through the dark age, as we know from the incontestable evidence of extant manuscripts. There is no manuscript of Horace in the uncial writing of the early centuries, yet he too must have been read in the West, along with all the other Latin classics that have come down to us, else these works would scarcely have been preserved; for the Greek authors alone found favour in the East. Still it is to be feared that the chief interest felt by many of the monks in the old-time manuscripts was directed towards the material on which they were written rather than towards the text itself. Hagiology often took the place of history and many an ancient manuscript has been partially preserved in palympsest, merely because a monk who wished to write the life of a saint was too careless to complete the erasure of the earlier writing. Contemplating the monastic life, through which it is often asserted the germs of learning were preserved in the western world in this dark age, one receives an impression of racial stasis which does not really accord with the facts. If the monks were the preservers of the feeble torch of learning, it was the wandering and warring hosts of the outside world who were preparing their generation to receive the new light when it should again burst forth. The Scandinavian and German hosts from the north invaded Italy _en masse_, from time to time, as we have seen, and successive bands of crusaders made Italy their highway when journeying to and from the East. Many of these invaders found the southern clime congenial and took up their permanent abode there. Thus the Normans established a kingdom in Italy, and if the other hosts settled as individuals rather than as nations, their influence must have been none the less potent in bringing about that mixture of racial elements which makes for racial progress. Equally important must have been the influence of the commercial spirit. The conquest of the Normans took from the Greek cities of southern Italy, Amalfi, Naples, and Gaeta, the commercial supremacy they had previously enjoyed. They were now superseded by Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. These cities kept fleets on the sea in constant contact with the East. As might have been expected, they led other Italian cities in power and influence, and were the first to show intimations of that quickening of life which presaged the new birth. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY