The monasteries became the preservers of learning. Another need developed the copying of pagan books, and incidentally the preservation of some of the best of Roman literature. The language of the Church very naturally was Latin, as it was a direct descendant of Roman life, governmental organization, citizenship, and education. The writings of the Fathers of the Western Church had all been in Latin, and in the fourth century the Bible had been translated from the Greek into the Latin. This edition, known as the _Vulgate_ [8] _Bible_, became the standard for western Europe for ten centuries to come. The German tribes which had invaded the Empire had no written languages of their own, and their spoken dialects differed much from the Latin speech of those whom they had conquered. Latin was thus the language of all those of education, and naturally continued as the language of the Church and the monastery for both speech and writing. All books were, of course, written in Latin. Under the rude influences and the general ignorance of the period, though, the language was easily and rapidly corrupted, and it became necessary for the monasteries and the churches to have good models of Latin prose and verse to refer to. These were best found in the old Latin literary authors--particularly Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil. To have these, due to the great destruction of old books which had taken place during the intervening centuries, it was necessary to copy these authors, [9] as well as the Psalter, the Missal, [10] the sacred books, and the writings of the Fathers of the Church (Rs. 55, 56). It thus happened that the monasteries unintentionally began to preserve and use the ancient Roman books, and from using them at first as models for style, an interest in their contents was later awakened. While many of the monasteries remained as farming, charitable, and ascetic institutions almost exclusively, and were never noted for their educational work, a small but increasing number gradually accumulated libraries and became celebrated for their literary activity and for the character of their instruction. The monasteries thus in time became the storehouses of learning, the publishing houses of the Middle Ages (Rs. 54, 55, 56), teaching institutions of first importance, and centers of literary activity and religious thought, as well as centers for agricultural development, work in the arts and crafts, and Christian hospitality. Many developed into large and important institutions (R. 69).