ABSTRACT
At the end of the sixth and in the seventh century, the aristocracy of officials, which was also the land-owning class, showed a coarseness and corruption which pass all bounds. At the same time a great lowering took place in its intellectual level and education. Fortunatus kept up a modest literary correspondence not only with ecclesiastics, but also with some laymen of high rank, such as Gogo and Lupus, Mayors of the Palace of Sigebert, Magnulfus brother of Lupus, Jovinus the Patrician of Provence, Mummolenus, perhaps the Mayor of the Palace of Chilperic, the domesticus Conda, the Referendary Boso, etc. But it should be noticed that even if these import ant men were able to take pleasure in the laborious futilities of the Latin poetaster, or to pretend to do so, they were unable to reply to him.
