[2] Not until mid-thirteenth
century was the ban wholly removed.
[1] Gasquet 3, 143-44; see other instances, Camb. Med. Hist.,
i. 588.
[2] Jourdain, Recherches . . . traductions Latines d'A., 187;
Gasquet 3, 148.
For a time, owing to the capture of Constantinople by
the Crusaders, intercourse between East and West had
become far freer than it had been for centuries (1203-61).
Certain Greek philosophers of learned mien came to
England about 1202, but did not stay; and some
Armenians, among them a bishop, visited St. Albans.
Whether they or Nicholas the Greek, clerk to the abbot
of that monastery, brought books with them we do not
know; Nicholas, at any rate, seems to have assisted
Grosseteste in his Greek studies.[1] John of Basingstoke,
Grosseteste's archdeacon, carried Greek manuscripts--many
valuable manuscripts, we are told--from Athens, whither
Grosseteste had sent him. The bishop himself imported
books to this country, probably from Sicily and South
Italy.[2] He had a copy of Suidas' Lexicon, possibly the
earliest copy brought to the West. The Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs was also in Grosseteste's possession: the
manuscript was brought home by John of Basingstoke, and
still exists in the Cambridge University Library.
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