attentions to Horace there was the constant nucleus of instruction in
the school. That he was used for this purpose first in the Carolingian
cloister-schools, and later in the secular schools which grew to
independent existence as a result of the vigorous spread of educational
spirit, cannot be doubtful. Gerbert, dying at the beginning of the
eleventh century as Pope Sylvester II, is known to have interpreted
Horace in his school. This is the oldest direct evidence of the
scholastic use of Horace, but other proofs are to be seen in the
commentaries of the medieval period, all of which are of a kind suitable
for school use, and in the marginal annotations, often in the native
tongue.

The decline of humane studies in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
meant also the decline of interest in Horace, who had always been above
all the poet of the cultivated few. At the beginning of the thirteenth
century in Italy, nowhere but at Bologna and Rome was Latin taught
except as the elementary instruction necessary to the study of civil and
canonical law. Gaufried of Vinesaux, coming from England to Italy, and
composing an _Ars Dictaminis_ and a _Poietria Nova_ containing Horatian
reminiscences, is one of two or three significant examples of Latin
teachers who concerned themselves with literature as well as language.
Coluccio Salutati, wanting to buy a copy of Horace in 1370, is
apparently unable to find it. The decline of interest in Horace will be
arrested only by the Rebirth of Learning.

The intellectual movement back to the classical authors and the
classical civilizations is well called the Rebirth. The brilliance of
the new era as compared with the thousand years that lead to it from the
most high and palmiest days of Rome is such as to dim almost to darkness
the brightest days of medieval culture. The new life into which Horace