[Sidenote: 911-1024.]

Dialectic was in great favour: it was called philosophy; no work was
more read than "the Book of Categories," erroneously ascribed to St.
Augustine; and a work, upon the same subject, imputed to Porphyry.

[Sidenote: II. 2. State of Literature during the Saxon Dynasty.]

The schools of the cathedrals and principal monasteries contributed
essentially to the increase and diffusion of literature. Among the
monasteries, those of Fulda, St. Gall, Corbie and Kershaw, were
particularly renowned. Bishops and abbots exerted themselves to procure
books, and to have copies of them made and circulated: they were often
splendidly illuminated. Henry I. caused a painting to be made, of a
battle which he had gained over the Hungarians. Bernard, bishop of
Hildersheim, in imitation of what he had seen in Italy, ornamented the
churches of his diocese with mosaic paintings; he also introduced, among
his countrymen, the art of fusing and working metals; he caused precious
and highly ornamented vases to be made in imitation of the antients.
Large and small bells were cast; chalices, patines, incensories, images,
and even altars of gold and silver, or ornamented with them, were
fabricated. Aventin relates, that at Mauverkirchen, in Bavaria, figures
in plaster, hardened by fire, had, in 948, been made of a duke of
Bavaria and his general.

[Sidenote: 911-1024.]

The establishment of schools, and the protection given to the arts and
sciences, invited the whole body of the nation to the acquisition of