The Emperor Justinian's edict in the year 529 prohibited the teaching of philosophy in Athens. The tree was felled which was planted by Plato nine hundred years ago, the Athenian Academy. However it was a tree almost dried up and of little vitality. Plato's teaching did not suffer a great deal by its felling, as it had grown in the mean time by itself from the seeds, seedlings and grafts contained in Plato's writings and adopted by all the higher culture of those days. Plato's further life was firmly secured, when St. Augustine, a spirit close to Plato, founded the Christian philosophy. This life, however, was mostly concealed, for the Platonic ideas, which nurtured that philosophy were absorbed and assimilated in it. But apart from this, the outward and visible life also continued, maintained by the scholarly interest in Plato's literary work, by copying it — in this respect the East in the first centuries of the Middle Ages deserves immense credit — studying it and commenting upon it.