THE SWAY OF THE CROSS 279

teen thousand writers including among them men of great
distinction. In the safe retreats of their monasteries they
unostentatiously carried on very useful work but for which
many of the most valuable treasures of the ancient world
might have been irretrievably lost to us. According to one
writer, " the monasteries were the schools, the libraries, the
publishing houses, the literary centres, the hospitals, and the
workshops of medieval times." They were also the inns and
asylums to the weary travellers and the forsaken or care-
worn people.

Not the least important work done by the monastic orders
was the spreading of the message of Jesus Christ. Gregory
the Great had himself been a monk before he became Pope.
Then he had been struck by the appearance of a few Angle
lads brought to the slave market in Rome. When he became
Pope one of the first things he did was to send a mission
to England under Augustine, which resulted in the conver-
sion of the English to the Christian faith. Another great
example of the missionary work done by the monks is
that of St. Boniface, in 718. He was an Englishman and
he undertook at great personal risk to convert some of the
remotest German tribes. He lived- to be the Archbishop of
Mainz in 732.

Still another type of monasticism was represented by the
Franciscans and Dominicans. The former order was found-
ed by the Italian St Francis of Assisi, and the latter by the
Spanish St. Dominic. The Franciscans laboured to serve
' the poorest, and lowliest, and lost'; while the Dominicans
concentrated on fighting heresies. Both produced distin-
guished scholars like Thomas Aquinas (a Dominican) and
Roger Bacon (a Franciscan), and both received official
recognition under Innocent III (1198—1216), the Pope who
excommunicated and deposed King John of England. The