‘To no student of the Middle Ages,’ says Beeson, ‘can Tours and its scriptoria fail to appeal.’ The historian, for example, desires to know the part Alcuin played in the reform of writing, the relationship between the scriptoria and the Court and Church, the exact dates at which certain monks lived and wrote. The scholar interested in Classical and mediaeval literature turns to manuscripts of Cicero, Virgil, and Livy, or Augustine, Bede, and Isidore. The philologist looks for ‘Irish’ or ‘Spanish’ symptoms in the Latinity of certain codices.