"As for the Germano-Christian school, it may be compared to a vigorous shoot severed from a dying trunk, to revive and flourish in a better soil." [58] The "Menologion" of the Vatican, a magnificent volume, containing no less than 430 miniatures of remarkable interest and excellence, is the standing illustration of this assertion. The work was engraved and published at Urbino, in three folio volumes, in 1727, under the auspices of three pontiffs, Clement XI., Innocent XIII., and Benedict XIII. [59] It would be difficult to find in the production of the best Roman age anything nobler than several of the compositions in the Paris "Psalter," with commentaries (Imperial Library, Gr. No. 139), a Greek manuscript of the 10th century. One of the finest of the figures contained in it, that of "Night," I caused to be enlarged, and painted on the exterior of the Byzantine Court at Sydenham, as giving a more favourable impression of Greek art than any other pictorial representation I could meet with. A replica of this subject occurs in the Vatican "Prophecies of Isaiah." The two may be compared from the works of D'Agincourt and Seré. Most noteworthy also among the best of this class of Byzantine manuscripts, are the Paris "Commentaries of Gregory Nazianzen," the British Museum Psalter (Egerton, No. 1.139) of early 12th century work, and the Bodleian "Codex Ebnerianus." [60] Of this ornamental style the most remarkable specimens are the Vatican "Acts of the Apostles," and a beautiful volume in the library of the Duke of Hamilton. From the former, I have given some facsimiles in "The Geometrical Mosaics of the Middle Ages" (plate 20), in order to show the similarity of design between the gold ground mosaics of the Greeks and early Italians, and the embellishments of the illuminated manuscripts of the former. [61] Ingulphus was at that very time indebted directly to the Conqueror, his early patron, for his abbacy. [62] See Martene Const. Canon. Reg. in "de Ant. Eccl. Ritibus," tom. iii., for full details. [63] This indulgence was, after all, not very luxurious, for, as Mr. Maitland remarks ("Dark Ages," 2nd edition, p. 406), "Many a scribe has, I dare say, felt what Lewis, a monk of Wessobrun, in Bavaria, records as his own experience during his sedentary and protracted labours. In an inscription appended to a copy of Jerome's Commentary on Daniel, among other grounds on which he claims the sympathy and the prayers of the readers, he says,-- "'Dum scripsit friguit, et quod cum lumine solis Scribere non potuit, perfecit lumine noctis.'" For whilst he wrote he froze, and that which by daylight he could not bring to perfection, he worked at again by the aid of the moonlight.