Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/331

CHAP. XIII which gave so many excellent abbots to that cloister. He died in 1022. Like Bede, Rabanus, and many other Teutonic scholars, he was an encyclopaedia of the knowledge afforded by his time. He was the head of a school of German translators. His own translations covered part of Boëthius's De consolatione, Virgil's Bucolics; Terence's Andria, Martianus Capella's De nuptiis, Aristotle's Categories and De interpretatione, an arithmetic, a rhetoric, Job, and the Psalms. He was a teacher all his life, and a German always, loving his mother tongue, and occupying himself with its grammar and word forms. His method of translation was to give the Latin sentence, with a close German rendering, accompanied by an occasional explanation of the matter, also in German. All the while, this foreign learning was being mastered gallantly in the leading cloisters, Fulda, St. Gall, Reichenau, Hersfeld, and others. Within their walls this Latin culture was studied and mastered, as one with resolve and perseverance masters that to which he is not born.

Besides those who laboured as translators, other earnest fosterers of learning in Germany appear as introducers of the same. Bruno, youngest brother of Otto I., is distinguished in this rôle. He promoted letters in his archiepiscopal diocese of Cologne. From many lands learned men came to him, Liutprand and Ratherius among others. Otto himself loved learning, and drew foreign scholars to his Court, one of whom was that conceited Gunzo, already spoken of.