LITERARY TREASURES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

LITERARY TREASURES.

SAVED BY BENEDICTINES. WORLD'S MOST WONDERFUL BOOKS Delegates to the World Congress, of Librarians at Rome saw some of the world's most wonderful books when they visited the monastery founded' by St. Benedict, just.l4oo years ago at Montecassino. ■■..'■■ During the Middle Ages when barbarians were sacking libraries, the Benedictine monks of Montecassino' patiently copied immortal works and. thus . preserved priceless books that would "otherwise have been lost forever. '•'-, '■■' % Among them are "The Golden Ass" and the "Metamorpliose.s" of. Apuleius; the History and Annals Of Tacitus; Cicero's oration "Pro, Cluentio" and his essays, "Republica" and "About the Laws," "The Nature of the Gods," and Ovid's "Fasti."

The oldest grammar in history was also preserved intact by This was Varrone's "Latin Language." Montecassino kept unharmed the only original? copy. Upon this all grammars, down to the English grammar taught in schools, in part been based.

The work of the Benedictine monks in preserving books of the Church has been even more remarkable. Original works of St. Jerome, St. Augustine, Ct. Cyprian and St. Ambrose; the most ancient Papal decree, that of John VIII.; the oldest text of a decree by Gratian, famous codifier of laws, have* all been saved, from the depredations of time and of men by the Benedictines.