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LITERATURE
In this century a dreadful fire happened at Constantinople, which destroyed the whole city, together with the library, containing 20,000 voJs. Zenoras relates, that the Illiad and Odystey of Homer, written upon the int^tines of a serpent, in characters of gold, and forming a roll 100 feet in length, were consumed in this fire.
485. During the reign of the emperor Zeno the remains of St. Barnabas are said to have been found near Salamis, with a copy of the gospel of St. Matthew, in Hebrew, laid upon his breast, written with his hand, upon leaves of thyine- wood ; a kind of wood particularly odoriferous.
524. About this period Boethius had his head cut ofi'by order of Theodoric the Goth. Boethius was descended from two of the noblest families in Rome. He was consul in 487 and again in 510. Theodoric having murdered Odoacer, be- came King of Italy, and made Boethius his minister. His great abilities excited the envy and malice of the worthless and the wicked ; the consequence was, he was denounced as an enemy to the state, and the senate, without giving him a hearing, condemned him to death. The king chang^ the sentence into banishment. He was accordingly exiled to Pavia, and there imprisoned ; and in about six months after it pleased this barbarous king to cut off his head. It was during his imprisonment that he wrote his cele- brated book. The Consolation of Philosophy, which has been highly esteemed in all ages. With the death of Boethius the purity of the Latin tongue may be said to have ceased in the western world. Alfred the Great translated his treatise into Saxon, and Queen Elizabeth, during the time she was confined by her sister Mary, is said to have translated it into very elegant English. The two sons of Boethius were chosen consuls in their non-age, in testimony of the public virtues of that distinguished senator, who was crowned King of Eloquence in 521.
527. Died the Emperor Justin I. It is re- corded of him that he could not write, in con- sequence, a similar expedient to the printing of cards was resorted to; namely, a smooth piece of board with holes cut through it, in the form of the letters of hLs name ; and when he had occa- sion to sign anything, this was laid on the paper, and he marked the letters with a pen, or stylus dipped with red ink, and directed through the holes.
The method adopted by the Grand Sultan, in the signing of the edicts, appears analogous to the taking impressions from seals : when he had occasion to sanction one of these instruments, he dipped his whole hand in the ink, and then made an impression with it.
533. Dec. 16, Tribonian began upon this day the Digest or P.indects, that astonishinar la- bour which condensed within fifty books a body jf three milUon sentences from dead civilians, and which he finished, by the aid of seventeen associates, in exactly three years, 16th Dec. 536.
The destructire inroads of the barbarian na- tions; the fault of seldom transcribing the best works of antiquity ; and the deamess, owing to taxes, of the most general and almost indispen-
sable materials, namely, the Egyptian papvrus, and other circumstances, were highly pngumcial to the collecting of books in this century.
604, JWorcA 12. Died Gregory I. sumamed the Great, who had been called to the papal chair in the year 590, in defiance of his wishes and most determined opposition. On his elevation he adopted the title of Servant of the Servants of Jesus Christ ; and in him the Christian church witnessed the rare instance of a Roman pontiff sedulously endeavouring to promote an acquaint- ance with the sacred scriptures among all ranks of persons under his influence. R was this great and good man, who, zealous for the conversion of the inhabitants of Britain, sent over the monk Augustine or Austin, with forty companions on a mission to the Anglo-Saxons. That the mis- sionaries might perform the public duties of religion with decency and propnety, Gregory sent over a number of vestments, sacr^ utensils, and relics, accompanied by a valuable present of books ; a present peculiarly wanted, from the impossibility of procuring books in Britain ; it being doubuul whether the pagan conquerors had not utterly destroyed every thing of the sort, and by the time of the arrival of Austin, not left one book in the whole island.
Gregory's decided opposition to persecution was scarcely less remarkable than his love of the scriptures. It was a maxim with him, that men should be won over to the Christian religion by gentleness, kindness, and diligent instruction, and not by menaces and terror. Happy had it been for mankind, if the successors of Gregory had possessed the same attachment to the scrip- tures, and adopted the same views of persecution.
Austin and the other missionaries were favour- ably received by Ethelbert, King of Kent, who had married Birtha, a Christian princess of great virtue and merit, ste was niece toChilperic King of Paris, and had, together with Lindhard, a bishop, it is said, of piety and learning, who attended her from France, prepared the way for this great event, by converting several persons, and by producing a favourable disposition in the mind of her husband. But the grand work was carried on by Austin and his companions; an audience was granted them in the open air; and afterwards, permission given them to use their best endeavours to convert the people from the worship of idols, and turn them to the true and Uving God.
6.36. Died Isidorus. He is the first author who uses the word penna for a writing-pen, tn- strumenta scriba calamins et penna. In the latter part of this century a Latin sonnet for a pen was written by an Anglo-Saxon author. There is, indeed, in the Medicean library, a manuscript of Virgil, written in the beginning of the flftn century, evidently from the graduu and regular fineness of the hair-strokes, by some instrument as elastic as a quill ; but there is no proof that it was really written with a quill.
640. The capture of Alexandria from the Greeks under Amri the Saracen. *' I have taken," he addressed the Caliph Omar, " the great city of the west. It is impossible for me
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