Besides this convent for high-born women, and such monasteries as Fulda and St. Gall, an interesting centre of introduced learning was Hildesheim, fortunate in its bishops, who made it an oasis of culture in the north. Otwin, bishop in 954, supplied its school with books from Italy. Some years after him came that great hearty man, Bernward, of princely birth, who began his clerical career at an early age, and was made bishop in 992. For thirty years he ruled his see with admirable piety, energy, and judgment; qualities which he likewise showed in affairs of State. He was a diligent student of Latin letters, one “who conned not only the books in the monastery, but others in divers places, from which he formed a goodly library of codices of the divines and also the philosophers.”[394] His was a master’s faculty and a master-hand, itself skilfully fashioning; for not only did he build the beautiful cloister church of St. Michael at Hildesheim, and cause it to be sumptuously adorned, but he himself carved and painted, and set gems. Some of the excellent works of his hand remain to-day. His biographer tells of that munificence and untiring zeal which rendered Hildesheim beautiful, as one still may see. Yet, throughout, Bernward appears as consciously studying and gathering and bringing to his beloved church an art from afar and a learning which was not of his own people. The bronze work on the Bernward column in Hildesheim is thought to suggest an influence of Trajan’s column, while the doors of Bernward’s church unquestionably follow those of St. Sabina on the Aventine. This shows how Bernward noticed and learned and copied during his stay at Rome in the year 1001, when Otto III. was imperator and Gerbert was pope. Bernward’s successor, Godehard, continued the good work. One of his letters closes with a quick appeal for books: “Mittite nobis librum Horatii et epistolas Tullii.”[395] Belonging to the same generation was Froumundus (fl. cir. 1040), a monk of Tegernsee, where Godehard had been abbot before becoming bishop of Hildesheim. He was a sturdy German lover of the classics--very German. At one time he writes for a copy of Horace, apparently to complete his own, and at another for a copy of Statius; other letters refer to Juvenal and Persius.[396] His ardour for study is as apparent as the fact that he is learning a literature to which he was not born. His turgid hexameters sweat with effort to master the foreign language and metre. People would have made a priest of him; not he: “Cogere me certant, fatear, quod sim sapiens vir,” and a good grin seems to escape him: “Discere decrevi libros, aliosque docere: from such work no difficulty shall repel me; be it my reward to be co-operator (_synergus_) with what almighty God grants to flourish in this time of Christ, or in the time of yore.”[397]