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Horace, the great Virgil, Sallust, and Statius, are highly esteemed. The monks amuse themselves with poetry, books and music. Several are incessantly employed in transcribing and painting." A German translation of the Psalms, by Notker, a monk of the abbey of St. Gall, shews that some attention was paid to the language of the country.
His great "Consolations of Philosophy" was probably the most read book in the early Middle Ages. It was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred, into old German by Notker Teutonicus, the German monk of St. Gall, and its influence may be traced in Beowulf, in Chaucer, in High German poetry, in Anglo-Norman and Provençal popular poetry, and also in early Italian verse.
The Greek was cultivated; the writers of the times mention several persons skilled in it. Notker, in a letter to one of his correspondents, informs him, that "his Greek brothers salute him." Poetry was a favourite study: the celebrated Gerbert, afterwards Pope Silvester II, and Waldram, bishop of Strasburgh, were the best poets of their times.
It is worth noticing in this connexion that a German translation was projected by no less a person than Notker, and since they are coupled by him with the Andria, we may reasonably infer that in this case at least the writer's concern, if not distinctively literary, was at any rate educational. There is an error here.
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