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 354 Reviews of Books classique de Columban et la culture philosophique de Scot Erigene " (p. 207). The method of the author seems sound. The attention of scholars has frequently been attracted to the brilliant performance of certain men of the ninth century, who probably were Irish (Erigena, Sedulius Scotus, and others) but lived chiefly on the continent. It is manifestly hazardous to draw, from the character of their work, inferences as to the state of learning in Ireland two or three centuries before. For the sixth and seventh centuries, M. Roger finds that certain groups of Irish monks devoted themselves to the study of Scripture and the works of the Latin Fathers. The efficient prosecution of their sacred studies was the motive impelling them to acquire a knowledge of Latin letters. From this they were led on to a study of rhetoric and the classic writers. The author in part ascribes the readiness with which Irish students passed from sacred to profane studies to the circumstance that Irishmen had inherited no aversion to the profane character of these writings, since the heathen Irish past, from which the race had been converted, had no connection with classic paganism (pp. 236-237). We cannot follow M. Roger further, for instance through his con- sideration and incidental minimizing of the work of the Irish for the diffusion of letters on the continent in the sixth and seventh centuries (p. 403 et seqq.) ; but will close with the remark that whatever credit he takes from the Irish, he carries to the account — and quite properly as we think — of the great Anglo-Saxons who learned and labored at Jarrow and York. They indeed had drawn from Irish teachers, but had profited quite as much from the learning brought to England by the African Hadrian and Theodore of Tarsus, whom Pope Vitalian sent in 669 to take charge of the See of Canterbury. Henry Osborn Taylor. BOOKS OF MEDIEVAL AND MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY Codex Diplomaticus Hloenofraiicofiirtanits. Urkiindenbiicli der Reichsstadt Frankfurt. Herausgegeben von Johann Friedrich BoEHMER. Neubearbeitung auf Veranlassung und aus den Mitteln der Administration des Dr. Johann Friedrich Boeh- mer'schen Nachlasses. Erster Band, 794-1314; zweiter Band, 1314-1340. Bearbeitet von Friedrich Lau. (Frankfurt am Main: Joseph Baer and Company. 1901, 1905. Pp. xii, 562; vii, 645.) The edition of documents relating to Frankfort which Boehmer an- nounced in 1826 and finished ten years later seemed so worthy in pur- pose and so well done that it was widely imitated. It became the fore- runner and in great part the model of many collections of sources upon German towns. It had, however, along with the opportunity of pioneer