At this period hymnology in the Greek-speaking world was at its height. Yet proof is sought in vain that Greek hymns were used in the west, either in the Greek language or in translation. The hymnal of the Western Church received from Greek sources its recorded tunes, not its words. Although the earliest liturgical manuscript with musical notation dates from the ninth century, the Greeks had already given their neumes to the west. As for the hymn melodies which are crystallized in these manuscripts when they do appear, theories of origin abound. A definite system of notation was in existence from the seventh century but hymns had been sung from the fourth century. In modern times through the consecrated efforts of Benedictine students of the chant, working chiefly at Solesmes, a collation of the existing musical manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages, has been made. Their object has been to determine the authentic melodies of the Benedictine cycle throughout its long history. Today the results of their scholarship are available to the public and the great hymns which they have fostered may be heard as well as read in their medieval form. The assimilation by the Franks, of alien cultures whether through conquest or peaceful interchange, may have been to a certain extent inevitable and involuntary. Such phenomena occur in every period of history. It is the conscious appropriation by the Carolingian leaders of a cultural heritage and its organization through existing institutions which reveals their true genius. This same process had taken place when Roman genius secured and conserved the achievement of the Greeks. In the field of religious culture with which this volume is concerned, an unbroken continuity had been maintained from the days of the primitive church. Even in the minor category of Christian hymnology, the hymnal as such, created in the fourth century, was to flourish all the way into our own times and might have done so without any special intervention. Historically speaking, in the ninth century and under Frankish auspices, a transformation took place which must be attributed to the conscious effort of Frankish churchmen who, receiving the old hymnology, restored it to formal worship with a much larger content and a greatly diversified form. Herein lies the fundamental contribution of Germanic genius to the _Later Hymnal_. Individual hymn writers of the Carolingian age have been named above as far as they are known, of whom Theodulphus of Orleans, Rabanus Maurus and Walafrid Strabo are perhaps the most notable.