in the monastery of Centula, in Picardie, but all traces of this
have been lost, for the convent was burnt in 1131. The eighth was
not an active century for the arts, for in 726 Leo's edict was sent
forth, prohibiting all forms of image worship, and at a Council
at Constantinople in 754 it was decided that all iconographic
representation and all use of symbols (except in the Sacrament) were
blasphemous. Idolatrous monuments were destroyed, and the iconoclasts
continued their devastations until the death of Theophilus in 842.
Fortunately this wave of zeal was checked before the destruction of
the mosaics in Ravenna and Rome, but very few specimens survived
in France.

In the ninth century a great many important monuments were added,
and a majority of the mosaics which may still be seen, date from
that time: they are not first in quality, however, although they
are more numerous. After this, there was a period of inanition,
in this art as in all others, while the pseudo-prophets awaited
the ending of the world. After the year 1000 had passed, and the
astonished people found that they were still alive, and that the
world appeared as stable as formerly, interest began to revive,
and the new birth of art produced some significant examples in the
field of mosaic. There was some activity in Germany, for a time,
the versatile Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim adding this craft to
his numerous accomplishments, although it is probable that his
works resembled the graffiti and inlaid work rather than the
mosaics composed of cubes of smalt.

At the Monastery of Monte Cassino in the eleventh century was an
interesting personality,--the Abbé Didier, its Superior. About
1066 he brought workers from Constantinople, who decorated the apse