WONDERFUL BOOKS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 120, 16 November 1929, Page 20

WONDERFUL BOOKS

MONKS' FAMOUS LIBRARY

Delegates to the recent world congress of librarians at Home, including many of the leading librarians of the United States,/saw- some'of'the most wonderful books on earth when they visited, at Montecassino .- the monastery founded by St. Benedict 1400' years ago (says'an English jpurnal.) : During the dark Middle Ages when ■barbarians were sacking libraries and internal /eufls were intent on burning them, the Benedictine monks of Monteeassirio patiently copied ' immortal works and thus preserved for to-day priceless books that would otherwise have been lost forever. Among them are "The Golden Ass," and the "Metamorphoses" of Apuleius; the and Annals of ;Taeitus; Cicero's ovation, "Pro Cluentia" and his essays, "Eopublica" and "About the Laws " "The' Nature of the Gods,'' ;and Ovid 's "Fasti." - . . The . oldest, grammar, in history was also preserved intact by the Benedictines. This was Van-one's "Mtin Language." Montecassino kept "unharmed the only original copy. Upon this all grammars, dowji to the English grammar taught ...in ' America^n schools, have: in: part :been based. i The work of the Benedictine monks in preserving priceless, books, of. the church has been ..even intfre remarkable. Original works :of Sti Jerome,' St. Augustine, St; 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 ' of time by the Benedic-" tine brethren.