"Those who wrote unusually well--in fine, clear handwriting that the other monks could easily read and with painstaking accuracy in the transcription--came to be valued. In the "wergild" codes that in Germanic lands and in Ireland specified the payment of reparations for murder--200 shillings for killing a churl, 300 for a low-ranking cleric, 400 if the cleric was saying mass when he was attacked, and so forth--the loss of a scribe by violence was ranked equal to the loss of a bishop or an abbot."