On the left Marcus, whose head is indescribable; and on the right
Matthew, with human head, the rest of the figures being as before. The
eye in all the figures is a most remarkable feature. Both in the
pictures and the initials of this MS. the outline has been drawn in
black ink, and the colours yellow, red, brown, and green applied
afterwards.
As the new masters of the West were not so much interested in the
artistic remains of the mangled civilisation they were endeavouring to
destroy as in mastery and military success, it was left for the
monasteries and the church to see to the welfare of books and monuments.
In the seventh century it was the monasteries that saved almost all we
know of the preceding centuries. During the turmoil of the period from
the fifth to the eighth century we find certain quiet corners where
learning and the arts still breathed, grew, and dwelt in security.
L?rins, founded by St. Honoratus of Aries; Luxeuil by Columbanus, Bobbio
his last retreat; and, above all, Monte Cassino, the great pattern of
monasticism, the Rule of whose founder was destined to become the basis
of all later Orders, were each of them steadily labouring to rescue the
civilisation daily threatened by the ravage of war, and to preserve it
for the benefit of the ignorant hordes who, because of their ignorance,
now only aimed at its entire destruction.
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