These two men afford considerable information regarding the manners and customs of the churches and monasteries of Egypt in their day, and show how full of intellectual life they were. For instance, in his account of a monk whom he calls "Cosmas the Student," John Moschus says, "We shall write nothing from hearsay—only what we have seen with our own eyes. He was a simple-minded man, abstemious and clean living: he was easy tempered and sociable, given to hospitality, a friend of the poor. He rendered us the very greatest service, not only by his speculation and his teaching, but because he possessed the finest private library in Alexandria, and freely lent his books to all readers. He was very poor, and the whole of his house, which was full of books, contained no furniture but a bed and a table. His library was open to all comers. Every reader could ask for the book lie wanted and there read it. Day by day I visited Cosmas, and it is a mere fact that I never once entered his house without finding him engaged either in reading or in writing against the Jews. He was very reluctant to leave his library, so that he often sent me out to argue with some of the Jews from the manuscript he had written." Cosmos told John that he had lived there for thirty-three years. When asked what he had learnt during all this long time of study, he answered that the three principal things were "not to laugh, not to swear, and not to lie."[1]
The monks were diligent students and copyists of books. Coptic illuminated manuscripts, some of which are dated as early as this period, are reckoned as among the treasures of art on their own account, and also because their decorative work set an example for the mediæval monks. The church architecture of the Copts had attained to real splendour, and was developing germs of an originality that was destined to have a remarkable effect on Saracenic and Gothic building. Instead of the uniform classic capital, a new foliation now appeared. Mosaic work in brilliant coloured glass, which we think of as
- ↑ John Moschus, quoted by Butler, Arab Conquest of Egypt, pp. 99, 100.
