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286 watching the external course of Church history—its angry debates, greedy ambitions, and bitter antipathies. These ugly phenomena make up too much of the history of the Church; they are scarcely at all indicative of the history of Christianity, the history of spiritual religion. For understanding this we are better helped by the stories of obscure lives and the breathing of simple souls. The hymn-writing continued through the tenth century and on into the middle of the eleventh, when it sank into silence. It was no time for song when the Turks were pouring over the larger part of Eastern Christendom, and the very existence of Church and empire were at stake; nor again when the West came to their relief in the dubious garb of Crusaders commissioned by the pope of Rome, with whom they would have nothing to do.

During all this time, both in the West and in the East, monasticism was cherished as the ideal of the religious life and the true monk was regarded as the typical saint. Two great monastic centres are now especially conspicuous. One of these is the monastery at Studium, made famous as the scene of the work of Theodore. Here a very active common life was maintained. We have seen how it was a centre of opposition to the iconoclastic movement. It was the home of a succession of writers of devout hymns of the Greek Church. It was also the place where the reproduction of literature in the form of beautifully written manuscripts was carried on with the greatest assiduity guided by the best taste, so that this monastery may be regarded as taking the place of a modern university press and school of technology in one of the finest and most characteristic arts of the Middle Ages.

The other great monastic establishment was the collection of convents and cells, the many laura, of Mount Athos. This mountain, rising to a peak of white marble 6,350 feet above the sea, is a conspicuous landmark visible from the plain of Troy and the slopes of Olympus. It gives its name to the peninsular in the Ægean Sea of which it is the southernmost point; but it is known in the