In order to traverse this long interval intelligently, I will sketch certain great movements, tracing the currents of Greek thought, setting forth in their works the lives of certain great leaders, until we greet the dawn of our own day.
After flowing for more than a thousand years through the broad plain of Greek civilization, the stream of scientific medicine which we have been following is apparently lost in the morass of the Middle Ages; but, checked and blocked like the White Nile in the Soudan, three channels may be followed through the weeds of theological and philosophical speculation.
SOUTH ITALIAN SCHOOL A WIDE stream is in Italy, where the "antique education never stopped, antique reminiscence and tradition never passed away, and the literary matter of the pagan past never faded from the consciousness of the more educated among the laity and clergy."(3) Greek was the language of South Italy and was spoken in some of its eastern towns until the thirteenth century.

The cathedral and monastic schools served to keep alive the ancient learning.

Monte Casino stands pre-eminent as a great hive of students, and to the famous Regula of St.Benedict( 4) we are indebted for the preservation of many precious manuscripts.
(3) H.O.

Taylor: The Mediaeval Mind, Vol.

I, p.