tormenta =a=dhuc =i=llius par_antur_."[8]

His national characteristics were impressed on the great School of Bobbio,
which he created, in which he died, and whence his influence long radiated
over Italy and the North.

Entering the old Cathedral of Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, you will be
shown the great marble chair in which, cold as the marble, Charlemagne sat
enthroned, sceptre in hand, robed in imperial purple, and with diadem on
brow, dead. So he sate when, a century and a half later, Otho and his
riotous courtiers broke open the vault and stood sobered and appalled
before the majesty of death. On that same chair he sate, in similar
apparel, but with the light of life in his eyes, the new Augustus of a new
Empire, when two Irish wanderers were brought before him. In the streets
of the city in which he hoped to revive the glory of Athens and the
greatness of Rome, they had been heard to cry out: "Whoso wants wisdom,
let him come to us and receive it, for we have it for sale." Their terms
were not onerous--food and raiment. Their claims stood the test. One,
Albinus, was sped to Pavia in Italy; the other, Clement, had the high
honour of superseding the learned Anglo-Saxon Alcuin in the Palatine
school of the Imperial city. Here, he taught the _trivium_ and
_quadrivium_--grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and arithmetic, music,
geometry, and astronomy--the seven arts. In his school sate Charlemagne
under the school-name of David, the members of his family each under an
academic name, and with these the members of the cortege, the Palatins or
Paladins, destined to power and feats of fame. The teaching of the Irish
professors here must have had considerable influence on the literature
(_e.g._, the _Chansons de Geste_) which afterwards took its heroes from
their scholars. Their authority was enhanced by the fact that Charlemagne
himself worked with his Irish professors at a revision of the Gospels on
the Greek and on the Syriac text.[9]

In the crash and chaos which followed soon after his death, when feudal
vassals, strong as their nominal suzerain, lived an isolated war-like life
and forgot letters, in the confusion caused by the shifting about of
nations from the east and north--partly a rebound from imperial
coercion--certain Irish names shine with especial splendour. The first is
that of Johannes Scotus Erigena. Of unquestioned learning, versed in
Greek, he was the founder of Scholastic Philosophy. This affects us still,