Old English libraries
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Title: Old English libraries
the making, collection, and use of books during the Middle Ages
Author: Ernest Albert Savage
Contributor: James Hutt
Release date: January 1, 1999 [eBook #1615]
Most recently updated: December 28, 2014
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD ENGLISH LIBRARIES ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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THE ANTIQUARY’S BOOKS
GENERAL EDITOR: J. CHARLES COX, LL.D., F.S.A.
OLD ENGLISH LIBRARIES
[Illustration: ABBOT WHETHAMSTEDE]
OLD ENGLISH
LIBRARIES
THE MAKING, COLLECTION, AND USE OF BOOKS
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES
BY
ERNEST A. SAVAGE
WITH FIFTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1911_
PREFACE
With the arrangement and equipment of libraries this essay has little to
do: the ground being already covered adequately by Dr. Clark in his
admirable monograph on _The Care of Books_. Herein is described the
making, use, and circulation of books considered as a means of literary
culture. It seemed possible to throw a useful sidelight on literary
history, and to introduce some human interest into the study of
bibliography, if the place held by books in the life of the Middle Ages
could be indicated. Such, at all events, was my aim, but I am far from
sure of my success in carrying it out; and I offer this book merely as a
discursive and popular treatment of a subject which seems to me of great
interest.
The book has suffered from one unhappy circumstance. It was planned in
collaboration with my friend Mr. James Hutt, M.A., but unfortunately,
owing to a breakdown of health, Mr. Hutt was only able to help me in the
composition of the chapter on the Libraries of Oxford, which is chiefly
his work. Had it been possible for Mr. Hutt to share all the labour with
me, this book would have been put before the public with more
confidence.
More footnote references appear in this volume than in most of the
series of “Antiquary’s Books.” One consideration specially urged me to
take this course. The subject has been treated briefly, and it seemed
essential to cite as many authorities as possible, so that readers who
were in the mood might obtain further information by following them up.
In a book covering a long period and touching national and local history
at many points, I cannot hope to have escaped errors; and I shall be
grateful if readers will bring them to my notice.
I need hardly say I am especially indebted to the splendid work
accomplished by Dr. Montague Rhodes James, the Provost of King’s
College, in editing _The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover_, and
in compiling the great series of descriptive catalogues of manuscripts
in Cambridge and other colleges. I have long marvelled at Dr. James’
patient research; at his steady perseverance in an aim which, even when
attained--as it now has been--could only win him the admiration and
esteem of a few scholars and lovers of old books.
I have to thank Mr. Hutt for much general help, and for reading all the
proof slips. To Canon C. M. Church, M.A., of Wells, I am indebted for
his kindness in answering inquiries, for lending me the illustration of
the exterior of Wells Cathedral Library, and for permitting me to
reproduce a plan from his book entitled _Chapters in the Early History
of the Church of Wells_. The Historic Society of Lancashire and
Cheshire have kindly allowed me to reproduce a part of their plan of
Birkenhead Priory. Illustrations were also kindly lent by the Clarendon
Press, the Cambridge University Press, Mr. John Murray, Mr. Fisher
Unwin, the Editor of _The Connoisseur_, and Mr. G. Coffey, of the Royal
Irish Academy. A small portion of the first chapter has appeared in _The
Library_, and is reprinted by kind permission of the editors. Mr. C. W.
Sutton, M.A., City Librarian of Manchester, has been in every way kind
and patient in helping me. So too has Mr. Strickland Gibson, M.A., of
the Bodleian Library, especially in connexion with the chapter on Oxford
Libraries. Thanks are due also to the Deans of Hereford, Lincoln, and
Durham, to Mr. Tapley-Soper, City Librarian of Exeter, and to Mr. W. T.
Carter, Public Librarian of Warwick; also to my brother, V. M. Savage,
for his drawings. The general editor of this series, the Rev. J. Charles
Cox, LL.D., F.S.A., gave me much help by reading the manuscript and
proofs; and I am grateful to him for many courtesies and suggestions.
ERNEST A. SAVAGE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE USE OF BOOKS IN EARLY IRISH MONASTERIES 1
II. THE ENGLISH MONKS AND THEIR BOOKS 23
III. LIBRARIES OF THE GREAT ABBEYS--BOOK-LOVERS AMONG
THE MENDICANTS--DISPERSAL OF MONKISH LIBRARIES 45
IV. BOOK MAKING AND COLLECTING IN THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES 73
V. CATHEDRAL AND CHURCH LIBRARIES 109
VI. ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: OXFORD 133
VII. ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: CAMBRIDGE 155
VIII. ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: THEIR ECONOMY 165
IX. THE USE OF BOOKS TOWARDS THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT PERIOD 173
X. THE BOOK TRADE 199
XI. THE CHARACTER OF THE MEDIEVAL LIBRARY, AND
THE EXTENT OF CIRCULATION OF BOOKS 209
APPENDIX A. PRICES OF BOOKS AND MATERIALS FOR BOOK-MAKING 243
APPENDIX B. LIST OF CERTAIN CLASSIC AUTHORS FOUND IN
MEDIEVAL CATALOGUES 258
APPENDIX C. LIST OF MEDIEVAL COLLECTIONS OF BOOKS 263
APPENDIX D. LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL REFERENCE WORKS 286
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
PAGE
WRITING IN THE BOOK OF KELLS 14
From THOMPSON’S _Greek and Latin Palæography_
WRITING IN BOOK OF ARMAGH 15
From THOMPSON’S _Greek and Latin Palæography_
WRITING IN GRÆCO-LATIN ACTS, PROBABLY USED BY BEDE 27
From MS. Bodl. Laud. Gr. 35, f. 63
WRITING IN BENEDICTIONAL OF ST. ETHELWOLD 43
From _Archæologia_, xxiv.
PLAN OF SCRIPTORIUM, BIRKENHEAD PRIORY 74
Redrawn from _Trans. of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic
Society_
ANCIENT STALL, OR CARRELL, IN BISHOP’S CANNINGS CHURCH,
WILTS 77
From COX AND HARVEY’S _English Church Furniture_
TABLET CASE AND WAXED TABLET 84
From COFFEY’S _Celtic Antiquities in the Museum of the R.I.A._
PLAN SHOWING DISPOSITION OF BOOKS IN CISTERCIAN
HOUSES 93
Redrawn from GASQUET’S _English Monastic Life_
PLAN SHOWING PROBABLE SITUATION OF LIBRARY OF WELLS
CATHEDRAL IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 122
Redrawn from Canon CHURCH’S _Chapters in the History of
Wells Cathedral_
BEREBLOCK VIEW OF DUKE HUMFREY’S LIBRARY 140
From MS. Bodl. 13
AUTOGRAPH OF DUKE HUMFREY OF GLOUCESTER 191
From MS. Harl. 1705. f. 96_a_
RECORD OF SALE OF BOOK CAPTURED AT POITIERS 234
From MS. Reg. 19, D ii. opposite f. 1
LIST OF PLATES
ABBOT WHETHAMSTEDE _Frontispiece_
From MS. Cott. Nero, D vii. f. 27_a_
PLATE FACING PAGE
I. (_a_) ANCIENT SATCHEL OF IRISH MISSAL, CORPUS CHRISTI
COLLEGE, OXFORD 12
By permission of the Governing Body
(_b_) COVER OF STOWE MISSAL 12
Museum of Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (A.D. 1023-1052)
II. ILLUMINATED PAGE OF BOOK OF KELLS 14
From WESTWOOD’S _Facsimiles_
III. THE SHRINE OF THE CATHACH PSALTER, ELEVENTH
CENTURY 16
From _The Connoisseur_, by permission of the Editor
IV. CUMDACH OF ST. MOLAISE’S GOSPELS: FRONT AND
BOTTOM 20
From COFFEY’S _Celtic Antiquities in Museum of Royal Irish
Academy_, by permission of the Council
V. BENEDICTIONAL OF ST. ETHELWOLD: NATIVITY OF
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST 42
From _Archæologia_, xxiv.
VI. BENEDICTIONAL OF ST. ETHELWOLD: THE ASCENSION 44
From _Archæologia_, xxiv.
VII. (_a_) ABBOT ROGER DE NORTHONE WITH HIS BOOKS 48
From MS. Cott. Nero, D vii. f. 18_b_
(_b_) ABBOT GARIN WITH HIS BOOKS 48
From MS. Cott. Claud., E iv. pt. i., f. 125_a_
VIII. ABBOT SIMON OF ST. ALBANS AT HIS BOOK-CHEST 50
From MS. Cott. Claud., E iv. pt. i. f. 124
IX. GREY FRIARS, LONDON (CHRIST’S HOSPITAL): OLD
HALL AND WHITTINGTON’S LIBRARY 54
From Trollope’s _History of Christ’s Hospital_
X. GREY FRIARS CATALOGUE OF CONVENTUAL LIBRARIES 58
From MS. Bodl. Tanner, 165, f. 119
XI. TWELFTH CENTURY ILLUMINATION FROM BURY ST.
EDMUND’S ABBEY 64
From MS. 2, f. 281_b_, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
by permission of the Master and Fellows
XII. WESTMINSTER ILLUMINATION, THIRTEENTH CENTURY 68
From MS. Reg. 2 A xii. f. 14, Brit. Mus.
XIII. THE CLOISTERS, GLOUCESTER, SHOWING CARRELLS 76
From MURRAY’S _Cathedrals_
XIV. A SCRIBE AND HIS TOOLS, FROM A VERY ANCIENT MS. 82
From MS. Harl. 2820, f. 120
XV. FURNESS ABBEY: CLOISTERS AND CHAPTER HOUSE 94
XVI. FACSIMILE OF LIBRARY CATALOGUE OF SYON MONASTERY 104
From BATESON’S _Catalogue of Syon Monastery_
XVII. MEDIEVAL BINDING: MR. YATES THOMPSON’S HEGESIPPUS 108
From BATESON’S _Mediæval England_
XVIII. ANCIENT BOOK-BOX IN EXETER CATHEDRAL 110
Photo by HEATH & BRADNEE, Exeter
XIX. CHAINED BOOKS, HEREFORD CATHEDRAL LIBRARY 116
By permission of the Dean of Hereford
XX. OLD LIBRARY, LINCOLN CATHEDRAL 118
Photo by G. HADLEIGH, Lincoln. By permission of the
Dean of Lincoln
XXI. WELLS CATHEDRAL: LIBRARY OVER CLOISTER 122
Photo by T. W. PHILLIPS, Wells
XXII. ST. MARY’S CHURCH, OXFORD: FIRST HOME OF
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 132
Photo by H. W. TAUNT, Oxford
XXIII. (_a_) ILLUMINATOR OF ST. ALBANS 134
From MS. Cott. Nero, D iii. f. 105
(_b_) DOCUMENT BEARING THE NAMES OF MEMBERS
OF THE BOOK-TRADE, _c._ 1180 134
From BARNARD’S _Companion to English History_
XXIV. (_a_) DUKE HUMFREY AND ELEANOR OF GLOUCESTER
JOINING THE CONFRATERNITY OF ST. ALBANS 138
From MS. Cott. Nero, D vii. f. 154_a_
(_b_) ANCIENT ROOF OF DUKE HUMFREY’S LIBRARY 138
Photo by JAS. HUTT, M.A.
XXV. DUKE HUMFREY’S LIBRARY, OXFORD 142
Photo by H. W. TAUNT
XXVI. LIBRARY OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD 144
Photo by H. W. TAUNT
XXVII. MERTON COLLEGE LIBRARY, OXFORD 152
Photo by H. W. TAUNT
XXVIII. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY,
CAMBRIDGE 156
From LOGGAN’S _Cantab. Illus._
XXIX. LIBRARY OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD,
FROM MASTER’S GARDEN 170
Photo by H. W. TAUNT
XXX. CARMELITE IN HIS STUDY 184
From MS. Reg. 14 E i. f. 3, Brit. Mus.
XXXI. A SCRIBE (ST. MARK WRITING HIS GOSPEL), FROM
THE BEDFORD HOURS 196
From Add. MS. 18850, f. 24, Brit. Mus.
XXXII. A SCRIBE AT WORK, FROM EADWINE’S PSALTER,
_c._ 1150 202
From BATESON’S _Mediæval England_
XXXIII. ENGLISH ILLUMINATED WORK UNDER FRENCH INFLUENCE,
FROM TENISON PSALTER 214
From MS. Add. 24686, f. 12, Brit. Mus.
XXXIV. FRESCO OF THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS, BY T. GADDI,
CHURCH OF S. M. NOVELLA, FLORENCE 222
Photo by ALINARI
XXXV. ANCIENT VELLUM BOOK-MARKER 230
From MS. 49, Corpus Christi College, Camb., by permission
of the Master and Fellows
OLD ENGLISH LIBRARIES
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY--THE USE OF BOOKS IN EARLY IRISH MONASTERIES
“What tyme þat abbeies were first ordeyned
and monkis were first gadered to gydre.”
--Inscribed in MS. of _Life of Barlaam and Josaphat_,
Peterhouse, Camb.
§ I
To people of modern times early monachism must seem an unbeautiful and
even offensive life. True piety was exceptional, fanaticism the rule.
Ideals which were surely false impelled men to lead a life of idleness
and savage austerity,--to sink very near the level of beasts, as did the
Nitrian hermits when they murdered Hypatia in Alexandria. But this view
does not give the whole truth. To shut out a wicked and sensual world,
with its manifold temptations, seemed the only possible way to live
purely. To get far beyond the influence of a barbaric society, utterly
antagonistic to peaceful religious observance, was clearly the surest
means of achieving personal holiness. Monachism was a system designed
for these ends. Throughout the Middle Ages it was the refuge--the only
refuge--for the man who desired to flee from sin. Such, at any rate, was
the truly religious man’s view. And if monkish retreats sheltered some
ignorant fanatics, they also attracted many representatives of the
culture and learning of the time. This was bound to be so. At all times
solitude has been pleasant to the student and thinker, or to the moody
lover of books.
By great good fortune, then, the studious occupations which did so much
to soften monkish austerities in the Middle Ages, were recognised early
as needful to the system. Even the ascetics by the Red Sea and in Nitria
did not deprive themselves of all literary solace, although the more
fanatical would abjure it, and many would be too poor to have it. The
Rule of Pachomius, founder of the settlements of Tabenna, required the
brethren’s books to be kept in a cupboard and regulated lending them.
These libraries are referred to in Benedict’s own Rule. We hear of St.
Pachomius destroying a copy of Origen, because the teaching in it was
obnoxious; of Abba Bischoi writing an ascetic work, a copy of which is
extant; of anchorites under St. Macarius of Alexandria transcribing
books; and of St. Jerome collecting a library _summo studio et labore_,
copying manuscripts and studying Hebrew at his hermitage even after a
formal renunciation of the classics, and then again, at the end of his
life, bringing together another library at Bethlehem monastery, and
instructing boys in grammar and in classic authors. Basil the Great,
when founding eremitical settlements on the river Iris in Pontus, spent
some time in making selections from Origen. St. Melania the younger
wrote books which were noted for their beauty and accuracy. And when
Athanasius introduced Eastern monachism into Italy, and St. Martin of
Tours and John Cassian carried it farther afield into Gaul, the same
work went on. In the cells and caves of Martin’s community at Marmoutier
the younger monks occupied their time in writing and sacred study, and
the older monks in prayer.[1] Sulpicius Severus (_c._ 353-425), the
ecclesiastical historian, preferred retirement, literary study, and the
friendship and teaching of St. Martin to worldly pursuits. At the famous
island community of Lérins, in South Gaul, were instructed some of the
most celebrated scholars of the West, among them St. Hilary. “Such were
their piety and learning that all the cities round about strove
emulously to have monks from Lérins for their bishops.”[2] Another
centre of studious occupation was the monastery of Germanus of Auxerre;
while near Vienne was a community where St. Avitus (_c._ 525) could earn
the high reputation for holiness and learning which won him a
metropolitan see. Many other facts and incidents prove the literary
pursuits of the Gallic ascetics; as, for example, the reputation the
nuns of Arles in the sixth century won for their writing; and the
curious story of Apollinaris Sidonius driving after a monk who was
carrying a manuscript to Britain, stopping him, and there and then
dictating to secretaries a copy of the precious book which had so nearly
escaped him.[3]
§ II
Monachism of this Eastern type came from Gaul to Ireland.[4] St. Patrick
received his sacred education at Marmoutier; under Germanus at Auxerre;
and possibly at Lérins. His companions on his mission to Ireland, and
the missionaries who followed him, nearly all came from the same
centres. Naturally, therefore, the same practices would be observed, not
only in regard to religious discipline and organisation, but in regard
to instruction and study. Even the mysterious Palladius, Patrick’s
forerunner, is said to have left books in Ireland.[5] But the earliest
important references to that use of books which distinguishes the
educated missionary from the mere fanatical recluse are in connexion
with Patrick. Pope Sixtus is said to have given him books in plenty to
take with him to Ireland. Later he is supposed to have visited Rome,
whence he brought books home to Armagh.[6] He gave copies of parts of
the Scriptures to Irish chieftains. To one Fiacc he gave a case
containing a bell, a crosier, tablets, and a meinister, which, according
to Dr. Lanigan, may have been a cumdach enclosing the Gospels and the
vessels for the sacred ministry, or, according to Dr. Whitley Stokes,
simply a credence-table.[7] He sometimes gave a missal (_lebar nuird_).
He had books at Tara. On one occasion his books were dropped into the
water and were “drowned.” Presumably the books he distributed came from
the Gallic schools, although his followers no doubt began transcribing
as opportunity offered and as material came to hand. Patrick himself
wrote alphabets, sometimes called the “elements”; most likely the
elements or the A B C of the Christian doctrine, corresponding with the
“primer.”[8]
This was the dawn of letters for Ireland. By disseminating the
Scriptures and these primers, Patrick and his followers, and the train
of missionaries who came afterwards,[9] secured the knowledge and use of
the Roman alphabet. The way was clear for the free introduction of
schools and books and learning. “St. Patrick did not do for the Scots
what Wulfilas did for the Goths, and the Slavonic apostles for the
Slavs; he did not translate the sacred books of his religion into Irish
and found a national church literature.... What Patrick, on the other
hand, and his fellow-workers did was to diffuse a knowledge of Latin in
Ireland. To the circumstance that he adopted this line of policy, and
did not attempt to create a national ecclesiastical language, must be
ascribed the rise of the schools of learning which distinguished Ireland
in the sixth and seventh centuries.”[10]
Mainly owing to the labours of Dr. John Healy, we now know a good deal
about the somewhat slow growth of the Irish schools to fame; but for our
purpose it will do to learn something of them in their heyday, when at
last we hear certainly of that free use of books which must have been
common for some time. From the sixth to the eighth century Ireland
enjoyed an eminent place in the world of learning; and the lives and
works of her scholars imply book-culture of good character. St. Columba
was famed for his studious occupations. Educated first by Finnian of
Moville, then by another tutor of the same name at the famous school of
Clonard, he journeyed to other centres for further instruction after his
ordination. From youth he loved books and studies. He is represented as
reading out of doors at the moment when the murderer of a young girl is
struck dead. In later life he realized the importance of monastic
records. He had annals compiled, and bards preserved and arranged them
in the monastic chests. At Iona the brethren of his settlement passed
their time in reading and transcribing, as well as in manual labour.
Very careful were they to copy correctly. Baithen, a monk on Iona, got
one of his fellows to look over a Psalter which he had just finished
writing, but only a single error was discovered.[11] Columba himself
became proficient in copying and illuminating. He could not spend an
hour without study, or prayer, or writing, or some other holy
occupation.[12] He transcribed, we are told, over three hundred copies
of the Gospels or the Psalter--a magnification of a saint’s powers by a
devout biographer, but significant as it testifies to Columba’s love of
studious labours, and shows how highly these ascetics thought of work of
this kind. On two occasions, being a man as well as a saint, he broke
into violence when crossed in his love of books. One story tells how he
visited a holy and learned recluse named Longarad, whose much-prized
books he wished to see. Being denied, he became wroth and cursed
Longarad. “May the books be of no use to you,” he cried, “nor to any one
after you, since you withhold them.” So far the tale is not improbable,
but a little embroidery completes a legend. The books became
unintelligible, so the story continues, the moment Longarad died. At the
same instant the satchels in all the Irish schools and in Columba’s cell
slipped off their hooks on to the ground.
A quarrel about a book, we are told, changed his career. He borrowed a
Psalter from Finnian of Moville, and made a copy of it, working secretly
at night. Finnian heard of the piracy, and, as owner of the original,
claimed the copy. Columba refused to let him have it. Then Diarmid, King
of Meath, was asked to arbitrate. Arguing that as every calf belonged to
its cow, so every copy of a book belonged to the owner of the original,
he decided in Finnian’s favour. Columba thought the award unjust, and
said so. A little later, after another dispute with Diarmid on a
question of monastic immunity, he called together his tribesmen and
partisans, and offered battle. Diarmid was defeated. For some reason,
not quite clear, these quarrels led to Columba’s voluntary exile (_c._
563). He sailed from Ireland, and landed upon the silver strand of
Iona, and to the end of his days his work lay almost entirely amid the
heather-covered uplands and plains of this little island home.[13] Iona
became a renowned centre of missionary work, quite over-shadowing in
importance the earlier “Scottish” settlement of Whitherne or Candida
Casa. Pilgrims went thither from Ireland and England to receive
instruction, and returned to carry on pioneer work in their own
homeland. Thence went forth missionaries to carry the Christian message
throughout Scotland and northern England. Perhaps, too, here was planned
the expedition to far-off Iceland. “Before Iceland was peopled by the
Northmen there were in the country those men whom the Northmen called
Papar. They were Christian men, and the people believed that they came
from the West, because Irish books and bells and crosiers were found
after them, and still more things by which one might know that they were
west-men, _i.e._ Irish.”[14]
Not only to the far north, but to the Continent, did the Irish press
their energetic way. In Gaul their chief missionary was Columban (_c._
543-615), who had been educated at Bangor, then famous for the learning
of its brethren. His works display an extensive acquaintance with
Christian and Latin literature. Both the Greek and Hebrew languages may
have been known to him, though this seems improbable and
inconceivable.[15] In his Rule he provides for teaching in schools,
copying manuscripts, and for daily reading.[16]
The monasteries of Luxeuil, Bobio, and St. Gall, founded by him and his
companions on their mission in Gaul and Italy, became the homes of the
most famous conventual libraries in the world--a result surely traceable
to the example set by the Irish ascetics, and to the tradition they
established.[17]
Other Irish monks are better known for their literary attainments than
for missionary enterprise. St. Cummian, in a letter written about 634,
displays much knowledge of theological literature, and a good deal of
knowledge of a general kind.[18] Another monk named Augustine (_c._ 650)
quotes from Eusebius and Jerome in a work affording many other evidences
of learning.[19] Aileran (_c._ 660), abbot of Clonard, wrote a religious
work which proves his acquaintance with Jerome, Philo, Cassian, Origen,
and Augustine.[20]
An Englishman supplies valuable evidence of the state of Irish learning.
Aldhelm’s (_c._ 656-709) works prove him to have had access in England
to a good library; while in one learned letter he compares English
schools favourably with the Irish, and declares Theodore and Hadrian
would put Irish scholars in the shade. Yet he is on his mettle when
communicating with Irish friends or pupils; he clearly reserves for them
the flowers of his eloquence.[21] The Irish schools were indeed
successful rivals of the English schools, and Irish scholars could use
libraries as good, or nearly as good, as that at Aldhelm’s disposal. At
this time the attraction which Ireland and Iona had for English students
was extraordinary. English crowded the Irish schools, although the
Canterbury school was not full.[22] The city of Armagh was divided into
three sections, one being called Trian-Saxon, the Saxon’s third, from
the great number of Saxon students living there.[23]
In 664 many English, both high and low in rank, left their native land
for Ireland, where they sought instruction in sacred studies, or an
opportunity to lead a more ascetic life. Some devoted themselves
faithfully to a monkish career. Others applied themselves to study only,
and for that purpose journeyed from one master’s cell to another. The
Irish welcomed all comers. All received without charge daily food:
barley or oaten bread and water, or sometimes milk--_cibus sit vilis et
vespertinus_--a plain meal, once a day, in the afternoon. Books were
supplied, or what is more likely, waxed tablets folded in book form.
Teaching was as free as the open air in which it was carried on.[24]
Among the English at one time or another taking advantage of Irish
hospitality were Gildas (_c._ 540), first native historian of
England;[25] Ecgberht, presbyter, a Northumbrian of noble birth;
Ethelhun, brother of Ethelwin, bishop of Lindsay; Oswald, king of
Northumbria; Aldfrith, another Northumbrian king, who was educated
either in Ireland or Iona; Alcuin, who received instruction at
Clonmacnoise;[26] one named Wictberht, “notable ... for his learning and
knowledge, for he had lived many years as a stranger and pilgrim in
Ireland”; and St. Willibrord, who at the age of twenty journeyed to
Ireland for purposes of study, because he had heard that learning
flourished in that country.[27]
§ III
Most of the references we have made above belong to the sixth and
seventh centuries, usually regarded as the best age of Irish monachism.
But the Irish enjoyed their reputation unimpaired for a long time. Just
before and after the Northmen descended on their land in 795, we find
them making their mark abroad, not so much as missionaries but as
scholars and teachers.[28]
A few instances will suffice. “_The Acts of Charles_, written by a monk
of St. Gallen late in the ninth century, tells us of ‘two Scots from
Ireland,’ who ‘lighted with the British merchants on the coast of Gaul,’
and cried to the crowd, ‘If any man desireth wisdom, let him come unto
us and receive it, for we have it for sale.’ They were soon invited to
the court of Charles. One of them, Clement, partly filled the place of
Alcuin as head of the palace school.”[29] His reputation soon became
widespread, and the abbot of Fulda sent several of his most capable
monks to him to learn grammar.[30] His companion, Dungal, went on to
Italy. He enjoyed a full share of the learning of his time; was a
student of Cicero and Macrobius; knew Virgil well; and had some
Greek.[31] A few fine books were bequeathed by him to the Irish
monastery of Bobio, where copies were written and distributed through
Italy. According to the learned Muratori, in one of these manuscripts is
an inscription proving Dungal’s ownership.[32] One of the books so
bequeathed was the famous Antiphonary of Bangor, now in the Ambrosian
library at Milan.
Clement and Dungal were not the only Irishmen of note on the Continent.
One, Dicuil, was an exponent of geography. He founded his treatise (_c._
825) on Cæsar, Pliny, and Solinus; he quotes and names many other
writers, including fourteen Greek; and generally impresses us with his
earnest studentship. An Irish monk named Donatus wandered to Italy and
became bishop of Fiesole (_c._ 829); he, too, was a scholar acquainted
with Virgil, a teacher of grammar and prosody, and a lecturer on the
saints.[33] Sedulius, the commentator, an Irish monk of Liége, copied
Greek psalters, wrote Latin verses, knew Cicero’s letters, the works of
Valerius Maximus, Vegetius, Origen, and Jerome; was well acquainted with
mythology and history, and perhaps had some Hebrew.[34] Another
Irishman, John the Scot (Joannes Scotus Erigena), became the most
eminent scholar of his time: he alone, among all the learned men Charles
the Bald had about him, was able to translate from Greek (_c._ 858-860).
Well might Eric of Auxerre, writing to Charles, express his astonishment
at this train of philosophers from Ireland, that barbarous land on the
confines of the world.[35] All these wanderers, and many more, must have
been responsible for the dissemination of the books produced by Irish
hands; and, in fact, many manuscripts of Celtic origin and early in
date, are still on the Continent, or have been found there and brought
to Ireland.[36]
In some respects the evidence of book-culture in Ireland in these early
centuries is inconsistent. The jealous guard Longarad kept over his
books, the quarrel over Columba’s Psalter, and the great esteem in which
scribes were held,[37] suggest a scarcity of books. The practice of
enshrining them in cumdachs, or book-covers, points to a like
conclusion. On the other hand, Bede tells us the Irish could lend
foreign students books, so plentiful were they. His statement is
corroborated by the number of scribes whose deaths have been recorded by
the annalists; the _Four Masters_, for example, note sixty-one eminent
scribes before the year 900, forty of whom belong to the eighth
century.[38] In some of the monasteries a special room for books was
provided. The _Annals of Tigernach_ refer to the house of
manuscripts.[39] An apartment of this kind is particularly mentioned as
being saved from the flames when Armagh monastery was burned (1020).
Another fact suggesting an abundance of books was the appointment of a
librarian, which sometimes took place.[40] Although a special book-room
and officer are only to be met with much later than the best age of
Irish monachism, yet we may reasonably assume them to be the natural
culmination of an old and established practice of making and using
books.
Such statements, however, are not necessarily contradictory. Manuscripts
over which the cleverest scribes and illuminators had spent much time
and pains would be jealously preserved in cases or shrines; still, when
we remember how many precious fruits of the past must have
[Illustration: _PLATE I_
ANCIENT SATCHEL OF IRISH MISSAL
COVER OF THE STOWE MISSAL]
perished, the number of beautiful Irish manuscripts extant goes to prove
that books even of this character could not have been extraordinarily
rare. “Workaday” copies of books would be made as well, in comparatively
large numbers, and would no doubt be used very freely. Besides books
properly so called, the religious used waxed tablets of wood, which were
sometimes called books. St. Ciaran, for example, wrote on staves, which
are called in one place his tablets, and in two other places the whole
collection of his staves is called a book.[41] Such tablets were indeed
books in which the fugitive pieces of the time were written.[42]
Considering all things, Bede was without doubt quite correct in saying
the Irish had enough books to lend to foreign students.
§ IV
Our account of the work accomplished by the Irish monks would be
incomplete without reference to their writing, illuminating, and
book-economy, the relics of which are so finely rare.
The old Irish runes gave place slowly to the Roman alphabet, which came
into use, as we have already observed, after St. Patrick’s mission. This
new writing was in two forms--round and pointed--but both were derived
from the Roman half-uncial style. The clear and beautifully-shaped
Irish round hand is closely akin to the half-uncial character of fifth
and sixth century Latin writings found on the Continent. The Book of
Kells, written probably at the end of the seventh century, is the finest
example of the ornamental Irish round hand. St. Chad’s Gospels, now at
Lichfield, written about the same time, is a manuscript of like
character, but not so good. A later manuscript, the Gospels of MacRegol,
which dates from the beginning of the ninth century, shows marked
deterioration in the writing.
[Illustration: BOOK OF KELLS, SEVENTH CENTURY]
The Irish pointed style, used for quicker writing, is but a modified,
pointed variety of the round hand, the letters being laterally
compressed. This hand appears in some pages of the Book of Kells, but
the best example is in the Book of Armagh.[43]
Although the Roman alphabet was introduced by Augustine at the
Canterbury school, it wholly failed to have any effect on the native
hand from that source. On the other hand, when, in the seventh century,
Northumbria
[Illustration: _PLATE II_
ILLUMINATED PAGE OF THE BOOK OF KELLS]
was converted by Irish missionaries, the new Christians copied the Irish
writing, so well, indeed, that the earliest specimens extant can hardly
be distinguished from the beautiful penmanship of the Irish. The Book of
Durham, generally called the Lindisfarne Gospels, of about 700, is an
exquisite Northumbrian example of the Irish round hand, in the
characteristic broad, heavy-stroke letters. Another good specimen of
this style is the eighth century manuscript of Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History, in Cambridge University Library.
[Illustration: BOOK OF ARMAGH, BEFORE A.D. 844]
Irish illumination is as characteristic as the writing. Pictures and
drawings of the human figure are not so common as in the work of other
schools, and when they do appear are not often good. Still, some of
them, as the scenes from the life of Christ in the Book of Kells, are
quite unlike the illuminations of any other school; while the portraits
of the Evangelists in the same book, in the Book of MacRegol, and in the
Lindisfarne Gospels, are singularly interesting. Floral work is also
rare. But in geometrical ornament, beautifully symmetrical--diagonal
patterns, zigzags, waves, lozenges, divergent spirals, intertwisted and
interwoven ribbon and cord work--and in grotesque zoological
forms,--lizards, snakes, hounds, birds, and dragons’ heads,--the Irish
school attained their highest artistic development. Their art is
striking, not for originality, not for its beauty, which is nevertheless
great, but for painstaking. Knowing but one style of making a book
beautiful, they lavished much time and loving care to achieve their end.
The detail is extraordinarily minute and complicated. “I have counted,”
writes Professor Westwood, “[with a magnifying glass] in a small space
scarcely three-quarters of an inch in length by less than half an inch
in width, in the Book of Armagh, no less than 158 interlacements of a
slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines edged with black ones.”
But, this intricacy notwithstanding, the designs as a whole are usually
bold and effective. In the best kind of Irish illumination gold and
silver are not used, but the colours are varied and brilliant, and are
employed with taste and discretion; while the occasional staining of a
leaf of vellum with a fine purple sometimes adds beauty and much
distinction to an excellent design.
Of intricate geometrical ornament and grotesque figures, the
illumination representing the symbols of the Four Evangelists (fo. 290)
of the Book of Kells is perhaps the best example. Of divergent spirals
and interlaced ribbon work the frontispiece of St. Jerome’s Epistle in
the Book of Durrow affords notable examples. Two of the peculiar
features of Irish decoration--the rows of red dots round a design and
the dragon’s head--appear in the earliest, or nearly the earliest, Irish
manuscript extant, namely, the Cathach Psalter, now in the Museum of the
Royal Irish Academy. Whether the essential and peculiar features of this
ornamentation are purely indigenous, as Professor Westwood contends, or
whether they are of Gallo-Roman origin, as Fleury argues, is a moot
point, calling for complicated discussion which would be out of place
here.
The amount of illumination in the existing manuscripts varies, but the
pages chosen for illuminating are nearly always the same. In the Book of
Kells the illuminations consist of three portraits of the Evangelists,
three scenes from the life of Christ, three combined symbols of the four
Evangelists, eight pages of the Eusebian canons, and many
[Illustration: _PLATE III_
THE SHRINE OF THE CATHACH PSALTER
ELEVENTH CENTURY]
initials. The Book of Durham contains four portraits of the Evangelists,
six initial pages, one ornamental page before each Gospel, and before
St. Jerome’s Epistle, and eight pages of the Eusebian canons. The Book
of Durrow has sixteen illuminated pages: four of the symbols of the
Evangelists, six pages of initials, one ornamental page at the
frontispiece, one before the letter of St. Jerome, and one before each
Gospel.
The oldest Irish manuscript in existence is probably the Domnach
Airgrid, or manuscript of the Silver Shrine, also called St. Patrick’s
Gospels. Dr. Petrie believed the Domnach to be the identical reliquary
given by St. Patrick to St. Mac Cairthinn, when the latter was put in
charge of the see of Clogher, in the fifth century. “As a manuscript
copy of the Gospels apparently of that early age is found with it, there
is every reason to believe it to be that identical one for which the box
was originally made.”[44] But both case and manuscript are now held to
be somewhat later in date. Another very early manuscript is the sixth
century fragment of fifty-eight leaves of a Latin Psalter, styled the
Cathach or “Battler.” For centuries this fragment has been preserved in
a beautiful case as a relic of Columba; as, indeed, the actual cause of
the dispute between Columba and Finnian of Moville.
§ V
Two features of book-economy, although not peculiar to Ireland, are
rarely met with outside that country. The religious used satchels or
wallets to carry their books about with them. We are told Patrick once
met a party of clerics and gillies with books in their girdles; and he
gave them the hide he had sat and slept on for twenty years to make a
wallet.[45] Columba is said to have made satchels, and to have blessed
them. When these satchels were not carried they were hung upon pegs set
in the wall of the cell or the church or the tower where they were
preserved.[46] We have already noted the legend which tells how all the
satchels in Ireland slipped off their pegs when Longarad died. A modern
writer visiting the Abyssinian convent of Souriani has seen a room
which, when we remember the connection between Egyptian and Celtic
monachism, we cannot help thinking must closely resemble an ancient
Irish cell.[47] In the room the disposition of the manuscripts was very
original. “A wooden shelf was carried in the Egyptian style round the
walls, at the height of the top of the door.... Underneath the shelf
various long wooden pegs projected from the wall; they were each about a
foot and a half long, and on them hung the Abyssinian manuscripts, of
which this curious library was entirely composed. The books of Abyssinia
are ... enclosed in a case tied up with leathern thongs; to this case is
attached a strap for the convenience of carrying the volume over the
shoulders, and by these straps the books were hung to the wooden pegs,
three or four on a peg, or more if the books were small; their usual
size was that of a small, very thick quarto. The appearance of the room,
fitted up in this style, together with the presence of long staves, such
as the monks of all the Oriental churches lean upon at the time of
prayer, resembled less a library than a barrack or guardroom, where the
soldiers had hung their knapsacks and cartridge boxes against the wall.”
The few old Irish satchels remaining are black with age, and the
characteristic decoration of diagonal lines and interlaced markings is
nearly worn away. Two of them are preserved in England and Ireland:
those of the Book of Armagh, in Trinity College, Dublin, and of the
Irish Missal in Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The wallet at Oxford
looks much like a modern schoolboy’s satchel; leather straps are fixed
to it, by which it was slung round the neck. The Armagh wallet is made
of one piece of leather, folded to form a case a foot long, a little
more than a foot broad, and two and a half inches thick. The Book of
Armagh does not fit it properly. Interlaced work and zoömorphs decorate
the leather. Remains of rough straps are still attached to the sides.
The second special feature of Irish book-economy was the preservation of
manuscripts in cumdachs or rectangular boxes, made just large enough for
the books they were intended to enshrine. As in the case of the wallet,
the cumdach was not peculiar to Ireland, although the finest examples
which have come down to us were made in that country.[48] They are
referred to several times in early Irish annals. Bishop Assicus is said
to have made quadrangular book-covers in honour of Patrick.[49] In the
_Annals of the Four Masters_ is recorded, under the year 937, a
reference to the cumdach of the Book of Armagh, or the Canon of Patrick.
“Canoin Phadraig was covered by Donchadh, son of Flann, king of
Ireland.” In 1006 the _Annals_ note that the Book of Kells--“the Great
Gospel of Columb Cille was stolen at night from the western erdomh of
the Great Church of Ceannanus. This was the principal relic of the
western world, on account of its singular cover; and it was found after
twenty nights and two months, its gold having been stolen off it, and a
sod over it.”[50] These cumdachs are now lost; so also is the jewelled
case of the Gospels of St. Arnoul at Metz, and that belonging to the
Book of Durrow.
By good hap, several cumdachs of the greatest interest are still
preserved for our inspection. One of them, the Silver Shrine of the
so-called St. Patrick’s Gospels, is a very peculiar case. It consists of
three covers. The first, or inner, is of yew, and was perhaps made in
the sixth or seventh century. The second, of copper, silver-plated, is
of later make. The third, or outermost, is of silver, and was probably
made in the fourteenth century. The cumdach of the Stowe Missal (1023)
is a much more beautiful example. It is of oak, covered with plates of
silver. The lower or more ancient side bears a cross within a
rectangular frame. In the centre of the cross is a crystal set in an
oval mount. The decoration of the four panels consists of metal plates,
the ornament being a chequer-work of squares and triangles. The lid has
a similar cross and frame, but the cross is set with pearls and
[Illustration: _PLATE IV_
CUMDACH OF ST. MOLAISE’S GOSPELS: BOTTOM
CUMDACH OF ST. MOLAISE’S GOSPELS: FRONT]
metal bosses, a crystal in the centre, and a large jewel at the end of
each arm. The panels consist of silver-gilt plates embellished with
figures of saints. The sides, which are decorated with enamelled bosses
and open-work designs, are imperfect. On the box are inscriptions in
Irish, such as the following: “Pray for Dunchad, descendant of Taccan,
of the family of Cluain, who made this”; “A blessing of God on every
soul according to its merit”; “Pray for Donchadh, son of Brian, for the
king of Ireland”; “And for Macc Raith, descendant of Donnchad, for the
king of Cashel.”[51] Other cumdachs are those in the Royal Irish Academy
for Molaise’s Gospels (_c._ 1001-25), for Columba’s Psalter (1084), and
those in Trinity College, Dublin, for Dimma’s book (1150) and for the
Book of St. Moling. There are also the cumdachs for Cairnech’s Calendar
and that of Caillen; both of late date. The library of St. Gall
possesses still another silver cumdach, which is probably Irish.
These are the earliest relics we have of what was undoubtedly an old and
established method of enshrining books, going back as far as Patrick’s
time, if it be correct that Bishop Assicus made them, or if the first
case of the Silver Shrine is as old as it is believed to be. The
beautiful lower cover of the Gospels of Lindau, now in Mr. Pierpont
Morgan’s treasure-house, proves that at least as early as the seventh
century the Irish lavished as much art on the outside of their
manuscripts as upon the inside.[52] It is natural to make a beautiful
covering for a book which is both beautiful and sacred. All the volumes
upon which the Irish artist exercised his talent were invested with
sacred attributes. Chroniclers would have us believe they were sometimes
miraculously produced. In the life of Cronan[53] is a story telling how
an expert scribe named Dimma copied the four Gospels. Dimma could only
devote a day to the task, whereupon Cronan bade him begin at once and
continue until sunset. But the sun did not set for forty days, and by
that time the copy was finished. The manuscript written for Cronan is
possibly the book of Dimma, which bears the inscription: “It is
finished. A prayer for Dimma, who wrote it for God, and a blessing.”[54]
It was believed such books could not be injured. St. Ciaran’s copy of
the Gospels fell into a lake, but was uninjured. St. Cronan’s copy fell
into Loch Cre, and remained under water forty days without injury. Even
fire could not harm St. Cainnech’s case of books.[55] Nor is it
surprising they should be looked upon as sacred. The scribes and
illuminators who took such loving care to make their work perfect, and
the craftsmen who wrought beautiful shrines for the books so made, were
animated with the feeling and spirit which impels men to erect beautiful
churches to testify to the glory of their Creator. As Dimma says, they
“wrote them for God.”
CHAPTER II
THE ENGLISH MONKS AND THEIR BOOKS
“There are delightful libraries, more aromatic than stores of
spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes; there
are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are
lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus;
and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts
and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent
in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world;
there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the
nodes of the planets by figures and numbers....”
Richard De Bury, _Philobiblon_, Thomas’ ed. 200
§ I
The Benedictine order established monastic study on a regular plan.
Benedict’s forty-eighth rule is clear in its directions. “Idleness is
hurtful to the soul. At certain times, therefore, the brethren must work
with their hands, and at others give themselves up to holy reading.”
From Easter to the first of October the monks were required to work at
manual labour from prime until the fourth hour. From the fourth hour
until nearly the sixth hour they were to read. After their meal at the
sixth hour they were to lie on their beds, and those who cared to do so
might read, but not aloud. After nones work must be resumed until
evening. From October the first until the beginning of Lent they were to
read until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour they were to take their
meal and then read spiritual works or the Psalms. Throughout Lent they
were required to read until the third hour, then work until the tenth.
Every monk was to have a book from the library, and to read it through
during Lent. On Sundays reading was their duty throughout the day,
except in the case of those having special tasks. During reading hours
two senior brethren were expected to go the rounds to see that the monks
were actually reading, and not lounging nor gossiping. But the brethren
were not allowed to have a book or tablets or a pen of their own.
Benedict’s inclusion of these directions was of capital importance in
the advance of monkish learning. Being milder and more flexible,
communal instead of eremitical, and so altogether more humane and
attractive, his Rule gradually took the place of existing orders. And as
the change came about, ill-regulated theological study gave way to
superior methods of learning, solely due to the better organisation and
greater liberality of the Benedictine order.
Benedictinism came to England with Augustine (597). The Rule, however,
does not seem to have been strictly or consistently observed for a long
time. But the studious labours of the monks remained just as important a
part of their lives as they would have been had the monasteries closely
followed Benedict’s directions. Especially would this be the case in the
seventh century, and afterwards, during the time continental monachism
was in rivalry with the Celtic missionaries.
§ II
From the first we hear of books in connexion with Canterbury. Gregory
the Great gave to Augustine, either just before his English mission, or
sent to him soon afterward, nine volumes, which were put in St.
Augustine’s monastery--the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, beyond the
walls. Being for church purposes, the books were very beautiful and
valuable. There was the Gregorian Bible in two volumes, with some of its
leaves coloured rose and purple, which gave a wonderful reflection when
held to the light; the Psalter of Augustine; a copy of the Gospels
called the Text of St. Mildred, upon which a countryman in Thanet swore
falsely and, it is said, lost his sight; as well as another copy of the
Gospels; a Psalter, with plain silver images of Christ and the four
Evangelists on the cover; two martyrologies, one adorned with a silver
figure of Christ, the other enriched with silver-gilt and precious
stones; and an Exposition of the Gospels and Epistles, also enriched
with gems.[56] Some of these books were kept above the altar. Bede also
records the gift by Gregory to Augustine of “many manuscripts,” and his
authority is unimpeachable, as he derived his knowledge of Canterbury
affairs from written records and information supplied by Albinus, first
English abbot of Augustine’s house.[57] This monastery “was thus the
mother-school, the mother-university of England, ... at a time when
Cambridge was a desolate fen, and Oxford a tangled forest in a wide
waste of waters. They remind us that English power and English religion
have, as from the very first, so ever since, gone along with knowledge,
with learning, and especially with that learning and that knowledge
which those old manuscripts give--the knowledge and learning of the
Gospel.”[58] Few books would be treasured more carefully and treated
with greater reverence by English churchmen and book lovers than these
“first books of the English church,” if any of them could be found. They
are referred to as existing when William Thorne wrote his chronicle
(_c._ 1397),[59] and Leland tells us he saw and admired them; but after
his time nearly all trace of them is lost.[60]
No further hint of books occurs until Theodore became Archbishop more
than seventy years later. Theodore, who had been educated both at Tarsus
and Athens, where he became a good Greek and Latin scholar, well versed
in secular and divine literature, began a school at Canterbury for the
study of Greek, and provided it with some Greek books. None of these
books has been traced with certainty. Some may have existed in
Archbishop Parker’s time. “The Rev. Father Matthew,” says Lambarde, in
his _Perambulation of Kent_, ... “showed me, not long since, the Psalter
of David, and sundry homilies in Greek, Homer also, and some other Greek
authors, beautifully written on thick paper with the name of this
Theodore prefixed in the front, to whose library he reasonably thought
(being led thereto by show of great antiquity) that they sometime
belonged.” The manuscript of Homer, now in Corpus Christi Library,
Cambridge, did not belong to Theodore, but to Prior Selling, of whom we
shall hear later. But possibly the famous Graeco-Latin copy of the Acts,
now in the Bodleian Library, belonged either to Theodore or to his
companion, Hadrian.[61]
[Illustration: FROM THE GRÆCO-LATIN COPY OF THE ACTS, PROBABLY USED BY
BEDE]
Theodore, with Hadrian’s help, not only started the Canterbury School,
but encouraged similar foundations in other English monasteries. In
southern England, however, Canterbury remained the centre of learning,
and many ecclesiastics were attracted to it in consequence. Bede amply
proves its efficiency as a school. And forasmuch as both Theodore and
Hadrian were “fully instructed both in sacred and in secular letters,
they gathered a crowd of disciples, and rivers of wholesome knowledge
daily flowed from them to water the hearts of their hearers; and,
together with the books of Holy Scripture, they also taught them the
metrical art, astronomy, and ecclesiastical arithmetic. A testimony
whereof is, that there are still living at this day some of their
scholars, who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as in
their own, in which they were born.”[62] Elsewhere he mentions some of
these scholars by name. Albinus, already referred to as the first
English abbot of St. Augustine’s, “was so well instructed in literary
studies, that he had no small knowledge of the Greek tongue, and knew
the Latin as well as the English, which was his native language.”[63] “A
most learned man” was another disciple, Tobias, bishop of Rochester,
who, besides having a great knowledge of letters, both ecclesiastical
and general, learned the Greek and Latin tongues “to such perfection,
that they were as well known and familiar to him as his native
language.”[64]
Canterbury’s most notable scholar was Aldhelm, the first bishop of
Sherborne. In him were united the learning of the Canterbury and the
Irish monks, for he studied first under Maildulf, the Irish monk and
scholar who founded and gave his name to Malmesbury, and then under
Hadrian. When he went to be consecrated an incident befell him which at
once shows his zeal for learning, and casts a welcome ray of light on
the importation of books. While at Canterbury he heard of the arrival of
ships at Dover, and thither he journeyed to see whether they had brought
anything in his way. He found on board plenty of books, among them one
containing the complete Testaments. He offered to buy it, but his price
was too low; although, afterwards, when it was believed his prayers had
delivered the owner from a storm, he secured it on his own terms.[65]
Aldhelm at length became abbot of Malmesbury (_c._ 675), and under him
it grew to much greater eminence, and attracted a large number of
students. Here, in the solitude of the forest tract, he passed his time
in singing merry ballads to win the ear of the people for his more
serious words, playing the harp, in teaching, and in reading the
considerable library he had at hand. Bede describes him as a man “of
marvellous learning both in liberal and ecclesiastical studies.” Judging
by his writings he was in these respects in the forefront of his
contemporaries, although his learning was heavy and pretentious. From
them also it is perfectly evident he could make use not only of the
Bible, but of lives of the saints, of Isidore, of the _Recognitions of
Clement_, of the _Acts of Sylvester_, of writings by Sulpicius Severus,
Athanasius, Gregory, Eusebius, and Jerome, as well as of Terence,
Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and Prosper, and some other
authors.[66]
§ III
Meanwhile Northumbria had become one of the leading centres of learning
in Europe, almost entirely through the labours and influence of Irish
missionaries. St. Aidan, an ascetic of Iona who journeyed to Northumbria
at King Oswald’s request, founded Lindisfarne, which became the monastic
and episcopal capital of that kingdom. Aidan required all his pupils,
whether religious or laymen, to read the Scriptures, or to learn the
Psalms. The education of boys was a part of his system. Wherever a
monastery was founded it became a school wherein taught the monks who
had followed him from Scotland. Cedd, the founder and abbot of
Lastingham, was Aidan’s pupil, so was his brother, the great bishop
Ceadda (Chad), who succeeded him in his abbacy. At Lindisfarne was
wrought by Eadfrith (_d._ 721) the beautiful manuscript of the Gospels
now preserved in the British Museum, and a little later the fine cover
for it. Lastingham, founded on the desolate moorland of North Yorkshire,
“among steep and distant mountains, which looked more like
lurking-places for robbers and dens of wild beasts, than dwellings of
men,” upheld the traditions of the Columban houses for piety,
asceticism, and studious occupations. Thither repaired one Owini, not to
live idle, but to labour, and as he was less capable of studying, he
applied himself earnestly to manual work, the while better-instructed
monks were indoors reading.
In many directions do we observe traces of Aidan’s good work. Hild, the
foundress of Whitby Abbey, was for a short time his pupil. Her monastery
was famous for having educated five bishops, among them John of
Beverley, and for giving birth, in Caedmon, to the father of English
poetry. “Religious poetry, sung to the harp as it passed from hand to
hand, must have flourished in the monastery of the abbess Hild, and the
kernel of Bede’s story concerning the birth of our earliest poet must be
that the brethren and sisters on that bleak northern shore spoke ‘to
each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.’”[67] Of Melrose, an
offshoot of Aidan’s foundation, the sainted Cuthbert was an inmate. At
Lindisfarne, where “he speedily learned the Psalms and some other
books,” the great Wilfrid was a novice. Of his studies, indeed, we know
little: he seems to have sought prelatical power rather than learning.
But he and his followers were responsible for the conversion of the
Northumbrian church from Columban to Roman usages, and the introduction
of Benedictinism into the monasteries; and consequently for bringing the
studies of the monks into line with the rules of Benedict’s order.
Such progress would have been impossible had not the rulers of
Northumbria from Oswald to Aldfrith been friendly to Christianity.
Aldfrith had been educated at Iona, and was a man of studious
disposition. His predecessor had advanced Northumbria’s reputation
enormously by giving Benedict Biscop (629-90) sites for his monasteries
of Wearmouth and Jarrow.[68] We know enough of this Benedict to wish we
knew very much more. He suggests to us enthusiasm for his cause, and
energy and foresight in labouring for it. Naturally, Aldhelm’s writings
have gained him far more attention in literary histories than the
Northumbrian has received. But the influence of Benedict, a man of much
learning, wide-travelled, was at least as great and as far-reaching.
Lérins, the great centre of monachism in Gaul, and Canterbury under
Theodore, had been his schools. On six occasions he flitted back and
forth to Rome, and to go to Rome, in those days, was a liberal
education, both in worldly and spiritual affairs. Not a little of his
influence was the direct outcome of his book-collecting. From all his
journeys to Rome he is said to have returned laden with books. He
certainly came back from his fourth journey with a great number of books
of all kinds.[69] He also obtained books at Vienne. His sixth and last
journey to Rome was wholly devoted to collecting books, classical as
well as theological. When he died he left instructions for the
preservation of the most noble and rich library he had gathered
together.[70] “If we consider how difficult, fatiguing, ... even
dangerous a journey between the British Islands and Italy must have been
in those days of anarchy and barbarism, we can appreciate the intensity
of Benedict’s passion for beautiful and costly volumes.”[71] The library
he formed was worthy of the labour, we cannot doubt: possibly was the
best then in Britain. It served as the model for the still more famous
collection at York. The scholarship of Bede, who used it in writing his
works, proclaims its value for literary purposes.[72] Bede tells us he
always applied himself to Scriptural study, and in the intervals of
observing monastic discipline and singing daily in the church, he took
pleasure in learning, or teaching, or writing.[73] The picture of Bede
in his solitary monastery, leading a placid life among Benedict’s
books, poring over the beautifully-wrought pages with the scholar’s
tense calm to find the material in the Fathers and the historians, and
to seek the apt quotation from the classics, must always flash to the
mind at the mere mention of his name.[74] Every fact in connexion with
his work testifies to the excellent equipment of his monastery for
writing ecclesiastical history, and to the cordial way in which the
religious co-operated for the advancement of learning and research.
§ IV
Canterbury, Malmesbury, Lindisfarne, Wearmouth and Jarrow, and York were
like mountain-peaks tipped with gold by the first rays of the rising
sun, while all below remains dark. Yet while not indicative of
widespread means of instruction, the existence of these centres, and the
character of the work done in them, suggests that at other places the
same sort of work, on a smaller and less influential scale, soon began.
At Lichfield, on the moorland at Ripon, in “the dwelling-place in the
meadows” at Peterborough, in the desolate fenland at Crowland and at
Ely, on the banks of the Thames at Abingdon, and of the Avon at Evesham,
in the nunneries of Barking and Wimborne, at Chertsey, Glastonbury,
Gloucester, in the far north at Melrose, and even perhaps at Coldingham,
Christianity was speeding its message, and learning--such as it was,
primitive and pretentious--caught pale reflections from more famous
places. Now and again definite facts are met with hinting at a spreading
enlightenment. Acca, abbot and bishop of Hexham, for example “gave all
diligence, as he does to this day,” wrote Bede, “to procure relics of
the blessed Apostles and martyrs of Christ.... Besides which, he
industriously gathered the histories of their martyrdom, together with
other ecclesiastical writings, and erected there a large and noble
library.” Of this library, unfortunately, there is not a wrack left
behind. A tiny school was carried on at a monastery near Exeter, where
Boniface was first instructed. At the monastery of Nursling he was
taught grammar, history, poetry, rhetoric, and the Scriptures; there
also manuscripts were copied. Books were produced under Abbess Eadburh
of Minster, a learned woman who corresponded with Boniface and taught
the metric art. Boniface’s letters throw interesting light on our
subject. Eadburh sent him books, money, and other gifts. He also wrote
home asking his old friend Bishop Daniel of Winchester for a fine
manuscript of the six major prophets, which had been written in a large
and clear hand by Winbert: no such book, he explains, can be had abroad,
and his eyes are no longer strong enough to read with ease the small
character of ordinary manuscripts. In another letter written to Ecgberht
of York is recorded an exchange of books, and a request for a copy of
the commentaries of Bede.
A decree of the Council held at Cloveshoe in 747, pointing out the want
of instruction among the religious, and ordering all bishops, abbots,
and abbesses to promote and encourage learning, whether it means that
monkish education was on the wane or that it was not making such quick
progress as was desired, at any rate does not mean that England was in a
bad way in this respect, or that she lagged behind the Continent. On the
contrary, England and Ireland were renowned homes of learning in Western
Europe. Perhaps a few centres on the mainland could show libraries as
good as those here; but certainly no country had such scholars.
England’s pre-eminence was recognized by Charles the Great when he
invited Alcuin to his court (781).
Alcuin was brought up at York from childhood. In company with Albert,
who taught the arts and grammar at this northern school, Alcuin visited
Gaul and Rome to scrape together a few more books. On returning later he
was entrusted with the care of the library: a task for which he was well
fitted, if enthusiasm, breaking into rime, be a qualification:--
“Small is the space which contains the gifts of heavenly Wisdom
Which you, reader, rejoice piously here to receive;
Better than richest gifts of the Kings, this treasure of Wisdom,
Light, for the seeker of this, shines on the road to the Day.”[75]
York could not retain Alcuin long. Fortunately, just when dissensions
among the English kings, and the Danish raids began to harass England,
and to threaten the coming decline of her learning, he was invited to
take charge of a school established by Charles the Great. Charles had
undertaken the task of reviving literary study, well-nigh extinguished
through the neglect of his ancestors; and he bade all his subjects to
cultivate the arts. As far as he could he accomplished the task,
principally owing to the aid of the English scholar and of willing
helpers from Ireland.
Alcuin was soon at the head of St. Martin’s of Tours where he was
responsible for the great activity of the scribes in his day. He
persuaded Charles to send a number of copyists to York. “I, your
Flavius,” he writes, “according to your exhortation and wise desire,
have been busy under the roof of St. Martin, in dispensing to some the
honey of the Holy Scriptures. Others I strive to inebriate with the old
wine of ancient studies; these I nourish with the fruit of grammatical
knowledge; in the eyes of these again I seek to make bright the courses
of the stars.... But I have need of the most excellent books of
scholastic learning, which I had procured in my own country, either by
the devoted care of my master, or by my own labours. I therefore beseech
your majesty ... to permit me to send certain of our household to bring
over into France the flowers of Britain, that the garden of Paradise may
not be confined to York, but may send some of its scions to Tours.” What
the “flowers of Britain” were at this time Alcuin has told us in Latin
verse. At York, “where he sowed the seeds of knowledge in the morning of
his life,” thou shall find, he rimes:--
“The volumes that contain
All the ancient fathers who remain;
There all the Latin writers make their home
With those that glorious Greece transferred to Rome,--
The Hebrews draw from their celestial stream,
And Africa is bright with learning’s beam.”
Then, after including in his metrical catalogue the names of forty
writers, he proceeds:--
“There shalt thou find, O reader, many more
Famed for their style, the masters of old lore,
Whose many volumes singly to rehearse
Were far too tedious for our present verse.”[76]
A goodly store indeed in such an age.
§ V
Sunlight and shadow follow one another rapidly across England’s early
history. The migration of York’s renowned scholar took place six years
before the Viking irruptions began, and about twelve years before a
heavy blow was struck at Northumbrian learning by the ravaging and
destruction of the monasteries of Lindisfarne, and Wearmouth and Jarrow.
After this there was but little peace for England. Kent was often
attacked. In 838 the marauders fell upon East Anglia. Between 837 and
845 they made various fierce attacks upon Wessex. In 851 the pillage of
Canterbury and London was a severe blow to the English. About fifteen
years later, at the hands of the Danes, Melrose, Tynemouth, Whitby, and
Lastingham shared Wearmouth’s fate. Of York and its library we hear no
more. Peterborough and its large collection of sacred books perished at
the hands of the same raiders as those who burnt Crowland (870). So bad
grew affairs that Alfred the Great, writing to Bishop Werfrith, bewailed
the small number of people south of the Humber who understood the
English of their service, or could translate from Latin into English.
Even beyond the Humber there were not many; not one could he remember
south of the Thames when he began to reign. And he bethought himself of
the wise men, both church and lay folk, formerly living in England, and
how zealous they were in teaching and learning, and how men came from
abroad in search of wisdom and instruction. Apparently some decline from
this standard had been noticeable before ruin completely overtook the
monasteries. He remembered how, before the land had been ravaged and
burnt, “its churches stood filled with treasures and books, and with a
multitude of His servants, but they had very little knowledge of the
books, and could not understand them, for they were not written in their
own language.... When I remembered all this, I much marvelled that the
good and wise men who were formerly all over England, and had perfectly
learnt all these books, did not wish to translate them into their own
tongues.” By way of remedying this omission, he translated _Cura
Pastoralis_ into English. “I will send a copy to every bishopric in my
kingdom; and on each there is a clasp worth 50 mancus. And I command in
God’s name that no man take the clasp from the book or the book from the
minster; it is uncertain how long there may be such learned bishops as
now are, thanks be to God, nearly everywhere.”[77]
This letter, written in 890, marks the revival of interest in letters
under Alfred. In adding to his own knowledge, and in promoting education
among his people, he was assiduous and determined. During the leisure of
one period of eight months, Asser seems to have read to him all the
congenial books at hand, Alfred’s custom being to read aloud or to
listen to others reading. Asser was a Welsh bishop, brought to Wessex to
help the king in his work. For the same purpose Archbishop Plegmund[78]
and Bishop Werfrith were brought from Mercia. Other scholars came from
abroad. One named Grimbald, a monk from St. Bertin, came to take charge
of the abbey of Hyde, Winchester, which Alfred had planned. John, of
Old-Saxony, a learned monk of the flourishing Westphalian Abbey of
Corvey--where a library existed in this century,[79]--was made by Alfred
abbot of Athelney monastery and school. Perhaps John, called the Scot or
Erigena, also came, but we do not know certainly. Alfred also introduced
teachers, both English and foreign, into his monasteries, his aim being
to provide the means of educating every freeborn and well-to-do youth.
During the whole of the latter part of his reign the copying of
manuscripts went on, though with only moderate activity.
That Alfred, amid the cares of a troublesome kingship, could find time
to devote to this work, and realised the importance of vernacular
literature, is one of the chief signs of his greatness. What he did had
a lasting influence upon our literature. He tapped the wellspring of
English prose. Mainly owing to his initiative, from his day till the
Conquest all the literature of importance was in the vernacular, and the
impulse so given to the language as a literary vehicle was strong enough
to preserve it from extinction during the Norman domination, when it was
superseded as the court and official language. But, so far as the making
and circulation of books is concerned, the “revival” under Alfred did
not prosper. The necessary machinery was almost entirely wanting. The
monastic schools, the great--the only--means of disseminating the
learning of the time, were few in number and not very influential. For
Athelney, a small monastery, Alfred had difficulty in finding monks at
all: he had to get them from abroad; while the rule in this house does
not seem to have been wholly satisfactory. At the time of his death
(_c._ 901) monachism was in a bad way. Fifty years later its plight
would seem to have been worse. Only two houses, Abingdon and
Glastonbury, could be really called monastic. “In the middle of the
tenth century the Rule of St. Benedict, the standard of monasticism in
Western Christendom, was, according to virtually contemporary authority,
completely unknown in England. This will not appear strange if we
consider that it was never very generally or strictly carried out here,
that the Danish invasions had broken the continuity of monastic life,
and that not many years earlier the very existence of the Rule had been
forgotten in not a few continental monasteries.”[80] Although England
always responded to the slightest effort to affect her culture, as the
long deer grass waves an answer to every breath of the wind, yet the
surprising eminence of some of the churchmen in the latter half of the
century and the excellence of their work cannot be accounted for if the
influence of Alfred’s reign had utterly died out. But it had not. Only
the machinery was defective. The driving power remained, latent but
ready for action. One indication of a surviving interest in these
matters at this time is the gift of some nine books to St. Augustine’s
Abbey by King Athelstan--an interesting little collection including
Isidore _de Natura Rerum_, Persius, Donatus, Alcuin, Sedulius, and
possibly a work by Bede. The machinery, however, was soon to be
improved. Dunstan, Oswald, Edgar, and Ethelwold set matters right by
reforming and extending the monastic system, and by making it the means
of encouraging education and learning.
The leaders were Dunstan and Ethelwold. In youth the former was renowned
for his eagerness in studying, and for the wealth and knowledge he
acquired. He was a “lover of ballads and music,” “a hard student, an
indefatigable worker, busy at books”; spending his leisure in reading
sacred authors, and in correcting manuscripts, sometimes at daybreak. He
was also very skilful at working in metal and at drawing and
illuminating. Maybe the picture of him kneeling before the Saviour which
is preserved in the Bodleian Library is by his own hand; this, however,
is not certain.[81] But some relics of his literary work were preserved
at Glastonbury until the Reformation--passages transcribed from Frank
and Roman law books, a pamphlet on grammar, a mass of Biblical
quotations, a collection of canons drawn from Dunstan’s Irish teachers,
a book on the Apocalypse, and other works.[82] He entirely reformed
Glastonbury and made it a flourishing school, where the Scriptures,
ecclesiastical writings, and grammar were taught.
Ethelwold was a Glastonbury scholar and assistant to Dunstan.
Glastonbury, and Abingdon, where he became Abbot, and Winchester, to
which see he was consecrated, were the centres whence, during the sixty
years succeeding Edgar’s accession, some forty monasteries were founded
or restored. Winchester became pre-eminent. Ethelwold himself was a
teacher of grammar. It was his delight to teach boys and young men, and
to help them in their translations; hence it came to pass that many of
his pupils became abbots and bishops.[83] A curious story is told in
illustration of his studious disposition. One night, when reading after
prolonged watching, sleep overcame him, and as he slept the candle fell
on the page and remained burning there until a brother came along and
snatched it up, when the book by a miracle was found to be
uninjured.[84] A vignette of pure and true medievalism: the long and
solitary watching, the saintly pursuit of divine wisdom, the wide-open
book, with the bold and beautiful text, and the quaint decoration,
wrought by loving hands, and the inevitable miracle,--the suggestion of
a Divine Providence watching over and protecting all that is sacred.
Some beautiful examples of work of this period have been preserved.
“Winchester” work is a familiar and expressive term in illumination, and
nobody will ask why this is so if they have seen a manuscript executed
there towards the end of the tenth century. The Benedictional and Missal
of Archbishop Robert, which is certainly English, and most likely an
example of New Minster work, is illuminated with miniatures, foliated
and architectural borders, and capitals and letters of gold, in virile
workmanship. A still finer example--the finest example of Old Minster
craft--is the Benedictional of Ethelwold, now in the Duke of
Devonshire’s library. The versified dedication, inscribed in letters of
gold, tells us, in substance--“The Great Æthelwold ... illustrious,
venerable and mild ... commanded a certain monk subject to him to write
the present book: he ordered also to be made in it many arches elegantly
decorated and filled up with various ornamented pictures expressed in
divers beautiful colours, and gold.”[85] Godeman, abbot of Thorney, was
the scribe, but the illuminator is unknown. Each full page has nineteen
lines of writing, with letters nearly a quarter of an inch long.
Alternate lines in gold, red, and black occur once or twice in the same
page. There are thirty miniatures and thirteen fully illuminated pages,
some of these having framed borders, foliated, others columns and
arches. The figures are remarkably well drawn, the drapery being
especially good. The whole is in a fine state of preservation,
especially the gold ornaments; the gold used was leaf upon size,
afterwards well burnished. Of the rival craftsmanship at New Minster we
have a splendid example in the Golden Book of Edgar, so called
[Illustration: _PLATE V_
NATIVITY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST, BENEDICTIONAL OF ETHELWOLD]
[Illustration: WRITING IN THE BENEDICTIONAL OF ETHELWOLD]
on account of its raised gold text.[86] Work of this grand character is
the best testimony to the noble spirit of monachism in the days of
Ethelwold.
One of Ethelwold’s pupils was Ælfric, who became Archbishop of
Canterbury in 995. He was responsible for the canon requiring every
priest, before ordination, to have the Psalter, the Epistles, the
Gospels, a Missal, the Book of Hymns, the Manual, the Calendar, the
Passional, the Penitential, and the Lectionary. On his death he
bequeathed all his books to St. Albans.[87]
Another pupil of the same name is still more famous. This scholar’s
grammar, with its translated passages, his glossary--the oldest
Latin-English dictionary--and his conversation-manual of questions and
answers, with interlinear translations, suggest that he must have done
much to make the study of Latin easier and more congenial; while his
homilies display his art in making knowledge popular, and prove him to
be the greatest master of English prose before the Conquest.
Several other interesting and suggestive facts belonging to this period
have been preserved for us. Abbot Ælfward, for example, gave to his
abbey of Evesham many sacred books and books on grammar (_c._ 1035):
here, at any rate, progress was real.[88] At a manor of the abbey of
Bury St. Edmunds were thirty volumes, exclusive of church books
(1044-65).[89] Bishop Leofric also obtained over sixty books for Exeter
Cathedral about sixteen years before the Conquest, a collection to which
we must refer later.
[Illustration: _PLATE VI_
MINIATURE OF THE ASCENSION IN THE BENEDICTIONAL OF ETHELWOLD]
CHAPTER III
LIBRARIES OF THE GREAT ABBEYS--BOOK-LOVERS AMONG THE
MENDICANTS--DISPERSAL OF MONKISH LIBRARIES
§ I
The Conquest wrought both good and evil to literature--evil because the
Normans thought books written in the vernacular unworthy of
preservation;[90] good because the change brought to the country settled
government, and to the church an opportunity for reformation. Lanfranc
was the moving spirit of reform, both in church administration and in
the learning of its members. While still in Normandy he had built up a
reputation for the monastic school at Bec, and probably had a share in
collecting the excellent library that we know the monastery possessed in
the twelfth century.[91] When he was appointed to the see of Canterbury
he continued to work for the same ends, although his primacy can have
left him little leisure. A fresh beginning had to be made in Canterbury.
In 1067 a fire destroyed the city, including the cathedral and almost
the whole of the monastic buildings; and in this disaster many “sacred
and profane books” were burned. It was Lanfranc’s task to repair this
loss. He brought books with him,[92] and introduced some changes and
more method in the making and use of them. In the customary of the
Benedictine order which he drew up to correspond with the best monastic
practice, he included minute instructions about lending and reading
books. He was also responsible in the main for the substitution of the
continental Roman handwriting for the beautiful Hiberno-Saxon hand. In
another respect his influence was more beneficial. Both at Bec and in
England he aimed to turn out accurate texts of patristic books, and the
better to achieve this end he himself corrected manuscripts. In the
abbey of St. Martin de Sécz at one time there was a copy of the first
ten _Conferences_ of Cassian with his corrections; and in the library of
Mans is a St. Ambrose which was overlooked by him.[93] Happily he was in
a position to lend texts to monks for transcribing, and his help in this
direction was sought by Abbot Paul of St. Albans. Recent research by Dr.
Montagu James suggests that Lanfranc’s work for the Canterbury library
was a good deal more practical and influential than has been usually
believed. Among the survivors of the Canterbury collections at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and elsewhere, “are some scores of volumes
undoubtedly from Christ Church, all of one epoch,” the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, and all written in hands modelled on an Italian
style. “Another distinguishing mark,” writes Dr. James, “in these
volumes is the employment of a peculiar purple in the decorative
initials and headings.... The nearest approaches I find to it in England
are in certain manuscripts which were once at St. Augustine’s Abbey, and
in others which belonged to Rochester. It can be shown that books did
occasionally pass from Christ Church to St. Augustine’s, and it can also
be shown that certain of the Rochester books were written at Christ
Church.” All these books, therefore, Dr. James believes, were given by
Lanfranc or produced under his direction.[94]
Lanfranc also encouraged original composition, for Osbern, monk of
Canterbury, compiled his lives of St. Dunstan, St. Alphege, and St. Odo
under his eye.
In this work of bookmaking and collecting Lanfranc was supported or his
example was followed by other monks from Normandy: by Abbot Walter of
Evesham, who made many books;[95] by Ernulf of Rochester, who compiled
the _Textus Roffensis_; and by many others. At this time grew up the
practice of using English houses to supply books for Norman abbeys; this
partly explains the number of manuscripts of English workmanship now
abroad. A manuscript preserved in Paris contains a note by a canon of
Ste-Barbe-en-Auge referring to Beckford in Gloucestershire, an English
cell of his house, whence books were sent to Normandy.[96]
From Lanfranc to the close of the thirteenth century, was the
summer-time of the English religious houses. The Cluniac or reformed
Benedictines settled here about 1077. In 1105 the Austin Canons first
planted a house in this country. The White Monks, another reformed
Benedictine order, entered England in 1128, and in the course of four
and twenty years founded fifty houses. Soon after, in 1139, the English
Gilbertines were established, then came the White Canons, and in 1180
the Carthusian monks. The land was peppered with houses. In less than a
century and a half, from the Conquest to about 1200, it is estimated
that no fewer than 430 houses were founded, making, with 130 founded
before the Conquest, 560 in all.[97] Many were wealthy: some were
powerful, because they owned much property, and popular because, like
Malmesbury, they were “distinguished for their ‘delightful hospitality’
to guests who, arriving every hour, consume more than the inmates
themselves.”[98] The Cluniacs could almost be called a fashionable
order.
During this prosperous age some of the great houses did their best work
in writing and study. Thus to pick out one or two facts from a string of
them. In 1104 Abbot Peter of Gloucester gave many books to the abbey
library. In 1180 the refounded abbey of Whitby owned a fair library of
theological, historical, and classical books.[99] About the same time
Abbot Benedict ordered the transcription of sixty volumes, containing
one hundred titles, for his library at Peterborough.[100] By 1244, in
spite of losses in the fire of 1184, Glastonbury had a library of some
four hundred volumes, historical books consorting with romances, Bibles
and patristical works almost crowding out some forlorn classics.[101]
Nearly half a century later
[Illustration: _PLATE VII_
ABBOT ROGER DE NORTHONE WITH HIS BOOKS
ABBOT GARIN WITH HIS BOOKS]
Abbot John of Taunton added to Glastonbury forty volumes, a notable gift
in those days of costly books, while Adam of Domerham tells us he also
made a fine, handsome, and spacious library.[102] In 1277 a general
chapter of the Benedictines ordered the monks, according to their
capabilities, to study, write, correct, illuminate, and bind books,
rather than to labour in the field.[103]
To such facts as these should be added the record of the Canterbury,
Dover, and Bury libraries, the histories of which have been so admirably
written by Dr. M. R. James.[104] Of the library of St. Albans Abbey we
have not such a fine series of catalogues. Yet no abbey could have a
nobler record. From Paul (1077) to Whethamstede (_d._ 1465) nearly all
its abbots were book-lovers.[105] Paul built a writing-room, and put in
the aumbries twenty-eight fine books (_volumina notabilia_), and eight
Psalters, a Collectarium, books of the Epistles and Gospels for the
year, two copies of the Gospels adorned with gold and silver and
precious stones, without speaking of ordinals, customaries, missals,
troparies, collectaria, and other books. Here, as everywhere, the
library began with church books: later, easier circumstances made the
stream of knowledge broader, if shallower. The next abbot also added
some books. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbot, was the author of a miracle
play, an industrious scribe, and the donor of some books finely
illuminated and bound. His successor, at one time the conventual
archivist, loved books equally well, and got together a fair collection.
Great Abbot Robert had many books written--“too many to be
mentioned.”[106] Simon, the next abbot (1167), a learned and good-living
man who encouraged others to learn, was especially fond of books, and
had many fine manuscripts written for the painted aumbry in the church.
He repaired and improved the scriptorium. He also made a provision
whereby each succeeding abbot should have at work one special scribe,
called the historiographer, an innovation to which we owe the matchless
series of chronicles of Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris, William
Rishanger, and John of Trokelowe. In a Cottonian manuscript is a
portrait of Abbot Simon at his book-trunk, a picture interesting because
it illustrates his predominant taste for books, as well as one
method--then the usual method--of storing them.
John, worthy follower of Simon, was a man of learning, who added many
noble and useful books to St. Albans’ store. William of Trompington
(1214) distinguished himself by giving to the abbey books he had taken
from his prior. Abbot Roger was a better man, and gave many books and
pieces; but John III and IV and Hugh are barren rocks in our fertile
valley, for apparently they did nothing for the library. Richard of
Wallingford did worse than nothing. He bribed Richard de Bury with four
volumes, and sold to him thirty-two books for fifty pounds of silver,
retaining one-half of this sum for himself, and devoting the other
moiety to Epicurus--“a deed,” cries the chronicler, “infamous to all who
agreed to it, so to make the only nourishment of the soul serve the
belly, and upon any account to apply spiritual dainties to the demands
of the flesh.”[107] Abbot Michael de Mentmore, who had been educated at
Oxford, and became schoolmaster at St. Albans, encouraged the
educational work of the abbey by making
[Illustration: _PLATE VIII_
ABBOT SIMON OF ST. ALBANS AT HIS BOOK CHEST]
studies for the scholars. As he also ordered the morning mass to be
celebrated directly after prime, or six o’clock, instead of at tierce,
or about nine, to allow the students more time, it is safe to assume he
was more zealous than popular. He also gave books which cost him more
than £100. His successor, Thomas, enlarged his own study, and bought
many books for it; and, with the assistance of Thomas of Walsingham,
then precentor and master of the scriptorium, he built a writing-room at
his own expense.
But Whethamstede was St. Albans’ greatest book-loving abbot. An ardent
book-lover, especially fond of finely-illuminated volumes, he indulged
his passion for manuscripts, and for conventual buildings, vestments,
and property, until he got the abbey into debt, and was led to resign.
After the death of his successor, Whethamstede was re-elected. In his
time no fewer than eighty-seven volumes were transcribed.[108] In
1452-53 he built a new library at a cost of more than £150. Another
library was erected for the College of the Black Monks at Oxford, for
£60.[109] It was described as a “new erection of a library joyning on
the south-side of the chapel, containing on each side five or more
divisions, as it may be partly seen to this day by the windows thereof,
to which he gave good quantity of his own study, and especially those of
his own composition, which were not a few, and to deter plagiaries and
others from abusing of them, prefixt these verses in the front of every
one of the same books, as he did also to those that he gave to the
publick library of the University:
“Fratribus Oxoniae datur in munus liber iste
Per patrem pecorum prothomartyris Angligenarum;
Quem, si quis rapiat raptim, titulumve retractet,
Vel Judae laqueum, vel furcas sentiat; Amen
“In other books which he gave to the said library these:
“Discior ut docti fieret nova regia plebi
Culta magisque Deae datur hic liber ara Minervae,
His qui Diis dictis libant holocausta ministris
Et circa bibulam sitiunt prae nectare limpham
Estque librique loci, idem dator, actor et unus.”[110]
This, in brief, is the story of St. Albans’ tribute to learning. In most
monasteries the same kind of work went on, in a more circumscribed
fashion, and without the same distinction of finish, which could
probably only be attained at the big places where expert scribes and
illuminators could be well trained.[111]
§ II
Fortunately, just when the great houses had attained the summit of their
prosperity, and were beginning the slow decline to dissolution, learning
and book-culture were freshly encouraged by the coming of the Friars.
The Black Friars settled at Canterbury and in London, near the Old
Temple in Holborn, in 1221. The Grey Friars were at London, Oxford, and
Cambridge in 1224, and by 1256 they were in forty-nine different
localities.[112] It is strange how the latter order, founded by a man
who forbade a novice to own a Psalter, came to be as earnest in buying
books as the Benedictines were in copying them. St. Francis’ ideal,
however, was impossible. The peripatetic nature of their calling, and
their duty of tending the sick, compelled many friars to learn foreign
languages, and to acquire some medical knowledge. Books were,
therefore, useful to them, if not essential; as indeed St. Francis
ultimately recognized. However, they could not own books themselves, but
only in common with other members of the convent. If a friar was
promoted to a bishopric, he had to renounce the use of the books he had
had as a friar; and Clement IV forbade the consecration of a bishop
until he had returned the books to his friary. When a book was given to
a friar--and this often happened--he was in duty bound to hand it to his
Superior. But if the friar was a man of parts the gift was devoted to
acquiring books for his studies, or to giving him other necessary
assistance; the duty, it was held, which the Superior owed him.[113] But
these principles do not seem to have been strictly observed. In little
more than thirty years after St. Francis’ death it was found necessary
to draw up rules forbidding the brethren to own books except by leave
from the chief officer of the order, or to keep any books which were not
regarded as the property of the whole order, or to write books, or have
them written for sale.[114]
By the end of the thirteenth century the Mendicants of Oxford were
fairly well provided with books. Michael Scot came to Oxford, at the
time of the greatest literary activity of the brethren, and introduced
to them the physical and metaphysical works of Aristotle (1230).[115]
Adam de Marisco seems to have been responsible for the first
considerable additions to the collection. From his brother, Bishop
Richard, he had already received a library; possibly this, with his own
books, came into possession of the convent. Then out of love for him,
Grosseteste left his writings or his library--it is not clear which--to
the Grey Friars.[116] This gift may have formed part--it is not
certain--of the two valuable hoards existing in the fifteenth century in
the same friary, one the convent library, open only to graduates, the
other the Schools library, for seculars living among the brethren for
the sake of the teaching they could get. In these collections were many
Hebrew books, which had been bought upon the banishment of the Jews from
England (1290).[117] Such books were not often found in the abbeys,
although some got to Ramsey, where Grosseteste’s influence may be
suspected.
The White Friars also had a library at Oxford, wherein they garnered the
works of every famous writer of their order. They are praised for taking
more care of their books than the brethren of other colours.[118] In
later times, at any rate, some cause for the complaint against the Grey
Friars existed. They appear to have sold many manuscripts to Dr. Thomas
Gascoigne (_c._ 1433). He ultimately gave them to the libraries of
Lincoln, Durham, Balliol, and Oriel Colleges. As the friars’ mode of
life grew easier and the love of learning less keen, they got rid of
many more books. In Leland’s time the library had melted away. After
much difficulty he was allowed to see the book-room, but he found in it
nothing but dust and dirt, cobwebs and moths, and some books not worth a
threepenny piece.[119]
Roger de Thoris, afterwards Dean of Exeter, presented a library to the
Grey Friars of his city in 1266.[120] What became of it we do not know.
About the same time, in 1253 to be exact, the will of Richard de Wyche,
Bishop of Chichester, is notable for its bequests to the friars; thus he
left books to various friaries of the Grey Brethren--at
[Illustration: _PLATE IX_
GREY FRIARS, LONDON: THE OLD HALL AND WHITTINGTON’S LIBRARY]
Chichester his glossed Psalter, at Lewes the Gospels of St. Luke and St.
John, at Winchelsea the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, at
Canterbury Isaiah glossed, at London the Epistles of St. Paul glossed,
and at Winchester the twelve Prophets glossed; as well as some volumes
to the Black Friars--at Arundel the _Book of Sentences_, at Canterbury
Hosea glossed, at London the Books of Job, the Acts, the Apocalypse,
with the canonical epistles, and at Winchester the _Summa_ of William of
Auxerre.[121] Such friendliness for the Mendicants was far from common
among the secular clergy. Besides the southern places mentioned in this
bequest, friaries in the east, at Norwich and Ipswich, and in the west,
at Hereford and Bristol, had goodly libraries.
The friary collections in London seem to have been important, especially
that given to the Grey Friars in 1225,[122] just when they had settled
near Newgate. The Austin Friars may have owned a library before 1364,
when two of their number left the London house, taking with them books
and other goods.[123] Early in the fifteenth century a library was built
and a large addition was made to the books of this house by Prior Lowe,
a friar afterwards occupying the sees of St. Asaph and of
Rochester.[124] At this time the friars of London were specially
fortunate. The White Friars enjoyed a good library, to which Thomas
Walden, a learned brother of the order, presented many foreign
manuscripts of some age and rarity.[125] The Grey Friars’ library was
founded or refounded by Dick Whittington (1421).[126] The room “was in
length one hundred twentie nine foote, and in breadth thirtie one: all
seeled with Wainscot, having twentie eight desks, and eight double
setles of Wainscot. Which in the next yeare following was altogither
finished in building, and within three yeares after, furnished with
Bookes, to the charges of” over £556, “whereof Richard Whittington bare
foure hundred pound, the rest was borne by Doctor Thomas Winchelsey, a
Frier there.”[127] On this occasion one hundred marks were paid for
transcribing the works of Nicholas de Lyra, a Grey Friar highly esteemed
for his knowledge of Hebrew, and “the greatest exponent of the literal
sense of Scripture whom the medieval world can show.”[128]
Of few of the friary libraries have we definite knowledge of their size
and character. But in the case of the Austin Friars of York, a catalogue
of their library is extant. The collection was a notable one. The
inventory was made in 1372, and the items in it, forming the bulk of the
whole, with some later additions, amounted to 646. One member of the
society named John Erghome was a remarkable man. He was a doctor of
Oxford, where he had studied logic, natural philosophy, and theology.
More than 220 books were his contribution to this splendid library, and
he it was who added the Psalter and Canticles in Greek and a Hebrew
book,--rarities indeed at that date. Classical literature is fairly well
represented in the collection as a whole, but theology, and especially
logic and philosophy, make up the bulk.[129]
In Scotland, too, the Grey Friars were busy library-making. We find the
convent at Stirling buying five dozen parchments (1502). Fifty pounds
were paid for books sent to them this year by the Cistercians of
Culross, and to the Austin Canons of Cambuskenneth in the following
year about half as much was paid; and similar records appear in the
accounts.[130]
Other interesting testimony to the bookcraft and collecting habits of
the friars is not wanting. Adam de Marisco writes to the Friar Warden of
Cambridge asking for vellum for scribes.[131] Or he expresses the hope
that Richard of Cornwall may be prevailed upon to stay in England, but
if he goes he will be supplied with books and everything necessary for
his departure.[132] From this letter, it was evidently usual for friars
to seek and obtain permission to carry away books with them when going
abroad, or going from one custody to another.[133] Then again Adam
writes asking Grosseteste to send Aristotle’s _Ethics_ to the Grey
Friars’ convent in London.[134] In getting books the friars were
sometimes unscrupulous. A royal writ was issued commanding the Warden of
the Grey Friars at Oxford and another friar, Walter de Chatton, to
return two books worth forty shillings which they were keeping from the
rightful owner (1330).[135] More striking testimony to the
book-collecting habits of the friars is the complaint to the Pope of
their buying so many books that the monks and clergy had difficulty in
obtaining them. In every convent, it was urged, was a grand and noble
library, and every friar of eminence in the University had a fine
collection of books.[136] Archbishop Fitzralph, who made this statement,
detested the friars, and was besides prone to exaggerate; but he was not
wholly wrong in this instance, as De Bury tells a similar tale.
“Whenever it happened,” he says, “that we turned aside to the cities and
places where the mendicants ... had their convents, we did not disdain
to visit their libraries ...; there we found heaped up amid the utmost
poverty the utmost riches of wisdom. These men are as ants.... They have
added more in this brief [eleventh] hour to the stock of the sacred
books than all the other vine-dressers.”[137] Instead of declaiming
against the hawks, De Bury trained them to prey for him, and was well
rewarded for his pains. Nor is it beyond the bounds of probability that
he enriched his own collection at the expense of the Grey Friars’
library at Oxford.[138]
The friars were not merely collectors. The scholarship of Bacon and
other brethren does not concern us. But their correction of the texts of
Scripture, and their bibliographical work, are germane to our subject.
In mid-thirteenth century some Black Friars of Paris laboured to correct
the text of the Latin Bible; and to enable copyists to restore the true
text when transcribing, they drew up manuals, called _Correctoria_. One
such manual, now known as the _Correctorium Vaticanum_, was prepared by
William de la Mare, a Grey brother of Oxford, in the course of forty
years’ labour; and it is “a work which before all others laid down sound
principles of true scientific criticism upon which to base a correction
of the Vulgate text.”[139]
Another special work of the Grey brethren, the _Registrum Librorum
Angliae_[140] was less important, although it more clearly illustrates
their high regard for books. Some time in the fourteenth century, by
seeking information from about one hundred and sixty monasteries, some
friars drew
[Illustration: _PLATE X_
THE GREY FRIARS’ CATALOGUE OF CONVENTUAL LIBRARIES
BODL. MS. TANNER 165, F. 119]
up a list of libraries under the heads of the seven custodies or
wardenships of their order in England, and catalogued the writings of
some eighty-five authors represented in these collections. In this way
was formed a combined bibliography and co-operative catalogue. Of this
catalogue we are able to reproduce a page on which are indexed five
authors, with numerical references to the libraries containing each
work. Early in the fifteenth century a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, John
Boston by name--possibly the librarian of that house--expanded the
register by increasing to nearly seven hundred the number of authors,
and by adding a score of names to the list of libraries. He also
provided a short biographical sketch of each author “drawn from the best
sources at his disposal; so that the book in its completed form might
claim to be called a dictionary of literature.”[141]
§ III
We would fain fill in the outline we have given, for the friars and
their book-loving ways are interesting. But enough has been written to
show the origin and growth of libraries among the religious both of the
abbeys and the friaries. Of the later days of monachism it is not so
pleasant to write. The story has been well told many times, but no two
writers, even in a broad and general way, let alone in detail, have read
the facts alike. On the one hand it is urged that monachism became
degenerate, both in reverence for spiritual affairs and in love of
learning. Many monks, we are told, came to find more enjoyment in easy
living than in ascetic and religious observances. Apart from the savage
onslaughts in _Piers Plowman_, and the yarns of Layton and Legh, now
quite discredited, we have the most credible evidence in Chaucer’s
gentle satire:--
“A monk ther was, a fair for the maistrye,
An out-rydere, that lovede venerye; [hunting]
A manly man, to been an abbot able,
Ful many a deyntee hors hadde he in stable:
* * * * *
He was a lord ful fat and in good point [well-equipped]
His eyen stepe, and rollinge in his heed.” [eyes bright]
The friars, too, were sometimes “merye and wantoun,” and
“knew the tavernes wel in every toun,
And everich hostiler or gay tappestere.”
And an indictment of some force might be based on the fact that the
general chapter of the Benedictine order at Coventry in 1516 found it
necessary to make regulations against immoderate and illicit eating and
drinking, and against hunting and hawking.[142]
No doubt also many a monk would argue with himself:--
“What sholde he studie, and make him-selven wood [mad]
Upon a book in cloistre alwey to poure
Or swinken with his handes, and laboure [toil]
As Austin bit?” [As St. Augustine bids]
De Bury declaimed against the monks’ neglect of books. “Now slothful
Thersites,” he cries, “handles the arms of Achilles and the choice
trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy asses, winking owls lord it
in the eagle’s nest, and the cowardly kite sits upon the perch of the
hawk.
“Liber Bacchus is ever loved,
And is into their bellies shoved,
By day and by night.
Liber Codex is neglected,
And with scornful hand rejected
Far out of their sight.”
“And as if the simple monastic folk of modern times were deceived by a
confusion of names, while Liber Pater is preferred to Liber Patrum, the
study of the monks nowadays is in the emptying of cups and not the
emending of books; to which they do not hesitate to add the wanton music
of Timotheus, jealous of chastity, and thus the song of the merrymaker
and not the chant of the mourner is become the office of the monks.
Flocks and fleeces, crops and granaries, leeks and potherbs, drink and
goblets, are nowadays the reading and study of the monks, except a few
elect ones, in whom lingers not the image but some slight vestige of the
fathers that preceded them.”[143] Specific instances of neglect and
worse are recorded. We have already mentioned the giving and selling of
books by the monks of St. Albans to Richard de Bury. From the account
books of Bolton Abbey it would appear that three books only were bought
during forty years of the fourteenth century.[144] At St. Werburgh’s,
Chester, discipline was very lax. Two monks robbed the abbot of a book
valued at £20, and of property valued at £100 or more, and stole from
two of their brethren books and money (1409). About four years later one
of the thieves was elected abbot, and his respect for learning may be
gauged from the fact that in 1422 he was charged with not having
maintained a scholar at Oxford or Cambridge for twelve years, although
it was his duty to do so by the rules of his order.[145]
At Bury books were going astray in the first half of the fifteenth
century. Abbot William Curteys (1429-45) issued an ordinance in which he
declares books given out by the precentor to the brethren for purposes
of study had been lent, pledged, and even stolen by them. Some of them
he had recovered, and he hoped to secure more, but the process of
recovery had been expensive and troublesome, both to himself and the
people he found in possession of the books. He therefore sternly forbade
the brethren to alienate books, and decrees certain punishments if his
order was disobeyed. Brethren studying at the University seem to have
been not immune from such faults.[146] The prior of Michelham sold
books, papers, horses, and timber for his own personal profit (1478). A
visitation of Wigmore showed that books were not “studied in the
cloister because the seats were uncomfortable.”[147] Bishop Goldwell’s
visitation of his diocese of Norwich in 1492 showed that at Norwich
Priory no scholars were sent to study at Oxford, and at Wymondham Abbey
the monks “refused to apply themselves to their books.” At Battle Abbey,
in 1530, the one time fine library was in a sad state of neglect; no
doubt books had been parted with. And as the last years of the
monasteries coincided with a renewed interest among seculars in learning
and with a revival of book-collecting, the monks of all houses must have
been sorely tempted to sell books which laymen coveted, as the monks of
Mount Athos have been bartering away their libraries ever since the
seventeenth century.
But among so many houses some were bound to be ill-conducted. And it is
important to remember that irregularities would be recorded oftener than
more favourable facts. What had been usual would go unnoted; what was
strange, and a departure from the highest standard of monachism, would
be observed with regret by friends and dwelt on with spite by enemies.
Although human memory is apt to register evil acts with more assiduity
and fidelity than good, yet a contrary view of the last state of
monachism may be argued with as much reason and with the support of
equally reliable evidence. The great majority of the houses were not
under lax control. The general organisation was not defective; nor was
every monk a “lorel, a loller, and a ‘spille-tyme.’” Setting aside the
question of general conduct, with which we have little to do, plenty of
evidence may be collected to show that the work of the earlier periods
was not only continued in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but
that some of the monks enjoyed special distinction among their
contemporaries. Writing was encouraged by directions of chapters in
1343, 1388, and 1444.[148] The early part of the fifteenth century was
an age of library building, in the monasteries, as at the Universities.
Special rooms for books were put up at Gloucester, Christ Church
(Canterbury), Durham, Bury St. Edmunds, and other houses. Large and
growing monastic libraries were in existence--at St. Albans and
Peterborough, two at Canterbury of nearly two thousand volumes each, two
thousand volumes at Bury, a thousand and more at Durham, six hundred at
Ramsey, three hundred and fifty at Meaux. When John Leland crossed the
threshold of the library at Glastonbury he stood stock still for a
moment, awestruck and bewildered at the sight of books of the greatest
antiquity. In 1482, the abbess of Syon monastery, Isleworth, entered
into a regular contract for writing and binding books.[149] Some forty
years later this abbey had at least fourteen hundred and twenty-one
printed and manuscript volumes in its library.[150] More facts of
similar character will be noted in the next chapter. Here we will
content ourselves with noting a few of the most conspicuous instances of
monkish scholarship in these later days. At Glastonbury, Abbot John
Selwood was familiar with John Free’s work; indeed, presents a monk with
one of that scholar’s translations from the Greek.[151] His successor,
Bere, was a pilgrim to Italy, and was in correspondence with Erasmus,
who desired him to examine his translation of the New Testament from the
Greek. A monk of Westminster, who became abbot of his house in 1465, was
a diligent student, noted for his knowledge of Greek.[152] At Christ
Church, Canterbury, Prior Selling was particularly zealous on behalf of
the library, and was one of the first to import Greek books into England
in any considerable quantity.[153] Two manuscripts now in the library of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and one in New College, were transcribed
by a Greek living at Reading Abbey (1497-1500).[154] These few
references to the study of Greek are especially significant, as the
revival of Greek studies had only just begun.
§ IV
The whole truth about the later days of the monasteries will never be
known. Many of the original sources of our knowledge are tainted with
partisanship and religious rancour and flagrant dishonesty. What does
seem to be true is that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
monastic influence grew slowly weaker, although the system may not have
been degenerate in itself. The cause is to be found in the very
prosperity of monachism, which brought to the religious houses wealth
and all its responsibilities. Wealth always imposes fetters, as every
rich man, from Seneca downwards, has declared with unctuous lamentation.
But
[Illustration: _PLATE XI_
TWELFTH CENTURY ILLUMINATION FROM BURY ST. EDMUNDS ABBEY
THE MINIATURE IS ON SPECIAL VELLUM STUCK ON TO THE LEAF. MS. 2 FO. 281
B. C.C. COLL. CAMB.]
what first strikes the student who compares early English monachism with
the later is, that whereas the monks of the first period were most
concerned with their monastic duties, their religious observances, and
their scribing and illuminating, the monks of the later period, and
especially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were immersed
in business, in the management of their wealth, the control of large
estates. The possession of wealth led in one direction to excessive
display, and to purchasing land and building beyond their means; a
course which monks might easily persuade themselves was progressive and
exemplary of true religious fervour, but which attracted to them envious
eyes. Heavy subsidies to the Crown and the Pope oppressed them. Then
again, many houses indulged in unwise and excessive almsgiving, which
the monks might well believe to be right, but which brought them only
the interested friendship of the needy. And in the management of their
estates much litigation obstinately pursued caused internal dissension,
was costly, and gained them only bitter enemies. Had the monasteries
been allowed to exist, probably these evils would have cured themselves.
But, owing to these evils,--to the decline of monastic influence of
which they were the cause,--the Dissolution, once decided upon, could be
carried out with terrible swiftness and completeness; no influence nor
power which the religious could wield was able to delay or avert the
blow struck by the king. Within a few years over one thousand houses
were closed and their lands and property confiscated.
In the hastiness of the overthrow some conventual books were destroyed,
or stolen, or sold off at low prices. In a few places damage was done
even before the actual dissolution. At Christ Church, Canterbury, for
example, the drunken servants of a royal commission carelessly brought
about a fire, almost entirely destroying the library of Prior
Selling,[155] which he probably designed to add to the collection of his
monastery. But when the houses were suppressed, we are told, “whole
libraries were destroyed, or made waste paper of, or consumed for the
vilest uses. The splendid and magnificent Abbey of Malmesbury, which
possessed some of the finest manuscripts in the kingdom, was ransacked,
and its treasures either sold or burnt to serve the commonest purposes
of life. An antiquary who travelled through that town, many years after
the Dissolution, relates that he saw broken windows patched up with
remnants of the most valuable manuscripts on vellum, and that the bakers
had not even then consumed the stores they had accumulated, in heating
their ovens.”[156] John Bale tells us the loss of the libraries had not
mattered so much, “beynge so many in nombre, and in so desolate places
for the more parte, yf the chiefe monumentes and most notable workes of
our excellent wryters had been reserved. If there had been in every
shyre of Englande but one solempne lybrary to the preservacyon of those
noble workes, and preferrement of good lernynges in oure posteryte, it
had bene yet sumwhat. But to destroye all without consyderacyon, is and
wyll be unto Englande for ever, a most horryble infamy amonge the grave
senyours of other nacyons. A great nombre of them whych purchased these
superstycyouse mansyons reserved of those lybrary bokes, some to serve
theyr jakes, some to scoure theyr candlestycks, and some to rubbe theyr
bootes. Some they sold to the grossers and sopesellers, and some they
sent over see to the bokebynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes
whole shyppes full, to the wonderynge of the foren nacyons. Yea, the
unyversytees of this realme are not all clere in this detestable
fact.... I know a merchant man which shall at thys tyme be namelesse,
that boughte the contentes of two noble lybraryes for xl shyllynges
pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. Thys stuffe hath he occupyed in the
stede of graye paper by the space of more than these x years, and yet he
hath store ynough for many yeares to come.”[157] To some extent Bale’s
account of the contemptuous treatment of books is confirmed by records
of sales: as, for example, the following:--
Item, sold to Robert Doryngton, old boke, and a cofer in the library ijs.
Item, old bokes in the vestry, sold to the same Robert viiid.
Item, sold to Robert Whytgreve, a missale viijd.
Fyrst, sold to Mr. Whytgreve, a masse boke xijd.
Item, old bokes in the quyer vjd.
Item, a fryers masse boke, solde to Marke Wyrley iiijd.[158]
Bale’s statement is sadly borne out by the fate of the library of the
Austin Friars of York. At one time this friary owned between six and
seven hundred books. Now but five are known to remain.[159] “It is
hardly open to doubt,” writes Dr. James, “that nine-tenths of the books
have ceased to exist. To be sure, it is no news to us that thousands,
perhaps hundreds of thousands, of manuscripts were destroyed in the
first half of the sixteenth century; but the truth comes heavily home
when we are confronted with the actual figures of the loss sustained in
one small corner of the field. We may fairly reckon that what happened
in the case of the Austin Friars at York happened to many another house
situated like it, in a populous centre, and thus enjoying good
opportunities for acquiring books.”[160]
But the loss may be--and has been--exaggerated. In some instances a good
part of a library was preserved. The Prior of Lanthony, a house in the
outskirts of Gloucester, saved the books of his little community. From
him they passed into the hands of one Theyer; later, possibly through
Archbishop Bancroft, they found an ultimate resting-place in Lambeth
Palace. During this interval many of them were perhaps lost or sold, but
to-day some one hundred and thirty are known certainly to have come from
Lanthony, or may be credited to that place on reasonably safe
evidence.[161]
Then again Henry’s myrmidons--to use the classic word--would be unlikely
to carry their vandalism too far. To do so, in view of the great value
of books, would bring them no profit. Knowing their character, may we
not reasonably assume that they sold as many books as they could to make
illicit gains?[162] Sometimes they fell in love with their finds, as was
natural. “Please it you to understand,” writes Thomas Bedyll, one of
Henry VIII’s commissioners, “that in the reding of the muniments and
charters of the house of Ramesey, I found a charter of King Edgar,
writen in a very antiq Romane hand, hard to be red at the first sight,
and light inowghe after that a man found out vj or vij words and after
compar letter to letter. I am suer ye wold delight to see the same for
the straingnes and antiquite thereof.... I have seen also there a
chartor of King Edward writen affor the Conquest.”[163]
[Illustration: _PLATE XII_
“WESTMINSTER” ILLUMINATION
THIRTEENTH CENTURY]
John Leland was one of those who saved books. Already he had been
commissioned to examine the libraries of cathedrals, abbeys, priories,
colleges, and other places wherein the records of antiquity were kept,
when, observing with dismay the threatened loss of monastic treasures,
he asked Cromwell to extend the commission to collecting books for the
king’s library. The Germans, he says, perceiving our “desidiousness” and
negligence, were daily sending young scholars hither, who spoiled the
books, and cut them out of libraries, and returned home and put them
abroad as monuments of their own country.[164]
His request was granted in part, and he tells us he sent to London for
the royal library the choicest volumes in St. Augustine’s Abbey; but
very few of these books now remain.[165] He had, he said, “conservid
many good autors, the which otherwise had beene like to have perischid
to no smaul incommodite of good letters, of the whiche parte remayne yn
the moste magnificent libraries of yowr royal Palacis. Parte also
remayne yn my custodye. Wherby I truste right shortely so to describe
your most noble reaulme, and to publische the Majeste and the excellent
actes of yowr progenitors.”[166]
Robert Talbot, rector of Haversham, Berkshire (_d._ 1558), collected
monastic manuscripts: the choicest of them he left to New College. A
portreeve of Ipswich, named William Smart, came into possession of some
hundred volumes from Bury Abbey library. In 1599 he gave them to
Pembroke College, where they are now.[167] John Twyne, (_d._ 1581),
schoolmaster and mayor of Canterbury, certainly once owned the
fifteenth-century catalogue of the St. Augustine’s Abbey library, and
seems to have possessed many manuscripts. Both catalogue and manuscripts
were transferred to Dr. John Dee, the famous alchemist. The catalogue,
with some other books belonging to the doctor, got to the library of
Trinity College, Dublin. But the manuscripts passed into the hands of
Brian Twyne, John’s grandson, who bequeathed them to Corpus Christi
College, Oxford; they are still there.[168] John Stow, whose gatherings
form part of the Harleian collection, saved some books which once
reposed in claustral aumbries, mainly owing to the protection and help
of Archbishop Parker.
Archbishop Parker himself was assiduous in garnering books. “I have
within my house, in wages,” he writes to Lord Burleigh, in 1573,
“drawers and cutters, painters, limners, writers and bookbinders.”
Again, “I toy out my time, partly with copying of books.” He made a
strenuous endeavour to recover as many of the monks’ books as possible,
using money and influence to this end; and accumulated an unusually
large library, quite priceless in character.[169] Most of his choice
books were presented to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and
twenty-five of them to Cambridge University Library (1574). Dr. Montagu
James, the leading authority on the provenance of Western manuscripts,
has discovered or made suggestions as to the origin of nearly two
hundred out of about three hundred and eighty.[170] Forty-seven are
traced to Christ Church, Canterbury; twenty-six to St. Augustine’s
Abbey. Later Dr. James extended his work to identifying the manuscripts
which were once in the Canterbury abbeys and in the priory of St. Martin
at Dover. From the fragmentary Christ Church catalogue of 1170, Dr.
James has identified two, and possibly six, manuscripts; from Henry
Eastry’s catalogue (14 cent.) of Christ Church books, he has identified
either certainly or with much probability about one hundred and eighty;
from the catalogue of St. Augustine’s Abbey library (_c._ 1497) over one
hundred and seventy-five; as well as twenty from the Dover catalogue
(1389). In addition, Dr. James has identified about one hundred and
fifty manuscripts still extant which are certainly or probably
attributable to Christ Church monastic library, but which are not in the
catalogues handed down to us; and over sixty which are likewise
attributable to St. Augustine’s monastery.[171] There are therefore
about five hundred and seventy Canterbury manuscripts now remaining to
us.
By making a similarly thorough investigation Dr. James has traced about
three hundred and twenty-two manuscripts from Bury St. Edmunds.[172] Of
the Westminster Abbey manuscripts it is difficult to say how many are
extant, as the common medieval press marks are absent from the books of
this house. But the presence of eleven manuscripts in the British
Museum; two in Lambeth Palace; one at Sion College; three at the
Bodleian, and five more in Oxford colleges; two at the Cambridge
University Library, and two more in the colleges there; one at the
Chetham Library, Manchester; and two at Trinity College, Dublin, well
illustrate how the monastic books have been scattered since the
Dissolution.[173] To these special examinations Dr. James has gradually
added vastly to our knowledge of the provenance of manuscripts by his
masterly series of catalogues of the ancient treasures of the Cambridge
colleges, and he has proved to us that a considerable number of monastic
books still survive.[174] Much more work of the same kind remains to be
done; other labourers are needed; but the men of parts who are able and
content to labour at a task without remuneration and with small thanks
are few and far between; while fewer still are the publishers who can be
persuaded to produce the results of these researches.
CHAPTER IV
BOOK-MAKING AND COLLECTING IN THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES
“For if hevene be on this erthe . and ese to any soule,
It is in cloistere or in scole . be many skilles I fynde;
For in cloistre cometh no man . to chide ne to fighte,
But alle is buxomnesse there and bokes . to rede and to lerne.”
_Piers Plowman_, B. x. 300
§ I
Before leaving the subject of monastic libraries, it is desirable to say
something about their economy.
They were built up partly by importing books, partly by bequests from
wealthy ecclesiastics, but largely--and in some cases wholly--by the
labours of scribes. The scene of the scribe’s craft was the scriptorium
or writing-room, which was usually a screened-off portion of the
cloister, or a room beside the church and below the library, as at St.
Gall, or a chamber over the chapter-house, as at St. Albans under Abbot
Paul, at Cockersand Abbey and Birkenhead Priory. As a rule the monk was
not allowed to write outside the scriptorium, although in some houses he
could read elsewhere--as at Durham, where a desk to support books was
fitted in the window of each dormitory cubicle. But brothers whose work
was highly valued were allowed a small writing-room or scriptoriolum.
Nicholas, Bernard’s secretary, had a room on the right of the cloister
with its
[Illustration: PLAN OF SCRIPTORIUM, BIRKENHEAD PRIORY]5
door opening
into the novices’ room--a cell, he says, “not to be despised; for it is
... pleasant to look upon, and comfortable for retirement. It is filled
with most choice and divine books ... is assigned to me for reading, and
writing, and composing, and meditating, and praying, and adoring the
Lord of Majesty.”[175] Perhaps Nicholas’s room was like that shown in
one manuscript, where we see a monk seated on a stool before a
reading-stand of odd shape. The table, which is the top of a hexagonal
receptacle for parchment and writing materials, or books, can be moved
up and down on the screw. Above the screw is a bookrest; at the foot a
pedestal, with the ink-bottle upon it. Apparently the room also contains
cupboards for storing books. Nicholas, however, was favoured, for in the
same passage he refers to the older monks reading the “books of divine
eloquence in the cloister.” In Cistercian monasteries certain monks were
so favoured, although they were not allowed to use their studies during
the time the monks were supposed to be in the cloister.[176] At Oxford,
after mid-fourteenth century, every student friar had set apart for him
a place fitted with a combined desk and bookcase, or studium, of the
kind commonly depicted in medieval illuminations. Grants of timber for
making these studia are recorded: to the Black Friars of Oxford, for
example, of seven oaks to repair their studies.[177]
The arrangements in the cloister are carefully described in the Durham
Rites. At Durham “in the north syde of the cloister, from the corner
over against the church dour to the corner over againste the Dortor
dour, was all fynely glased, from the hight to the sole within a litle
of the grownd into the cloister garth. And in every wyndowe iij pewes or
carrells, where every one of the old Monks had his carrell, severall by
himselfe, that, when they had dyned, they dyd resorte to that place of
Cloister and there studyed upon there books, every one in his carrell,
all the after nonne, unto evensong time. This was there exercise every
daie. All there pewes or carrells was all fynely wainscotted and verie
close, all but the forepart, which had carved wourke that gave light in
at ther carrell doures of wainscott. And in every carrell was a deske to
lye there books on. And the carrells was no greater then from one
stanchell of the wyndowe to another.”[178] There were carrells at
Evesham in the fourteenth century.[179] In 1485 Prior Selling
constructed in the south walk at Christ Church, Canterbury, “the new
framed contrivances called carrells” for the comfort of the monks at
study.[180] Such recesses are to be found at Worcester and Gloucester;
remains of some exist at the south end of the west walk of the cloisters
at Chester, and others were in the destroyed south walk.[181] At
Gloucester Cathedral, which was formerly the Benedictine Abbey of St.
Peter, are twenty beautiful carrells in the south cloister. They project
below the ten main windows, two in each, and are arched, with
battlemented tops or cornices. Except for the small double window which
lights them, they look like recesses for statuary.
The Carthusian Rule records that few monks of the order could not
write.[182] But this was by no means invariably the case. In early
monastic times writing was usually the occupation of the weaker
brethren: for example,
[Illustration: _PLATE XIII_
THE CLOISTERS, GLOUCESTER, SHEWING CARRELLS]
[Illustration: ANCIENT STALL, OR CARRELL, IN BISHOPS CANNINGS CHURCH,
WILTS]
Ferreolus, in his rules (_c_. 550), deems reading and copying fit
occupations for monks too weak for severer work.[183] Later, in some
monasteries, less labour in the field and more writing was done. At
Tours, Alcuin took the monks away from field labour, telling them study
and writing were far nobler pursuits.[184] But it was not commonly the
case to find in monasteries “ech man a scriveyn able.”
When books were not otherwise obtainable, or not obtainable quickly
enough, it was the practice to hire scribes from outside the house.
Abbot Gerbert, in a letter to the abbot of Tours, mentions that he had
been paying scribes in Rome and various parts of Italy, in Belgium, and
Germany, to make copies of books for his library “at great
expense.”[185] At Abingdon hired scribes were sometimes employed, and
the rule was for the abbot to find the food, and the armarius, or
librarian, to pay for the labour.[186] This was commonly done when
libraries were first formed. When Abbot Paul began to collect a library
at St. Albans none of his brethren could write well enough to suit him,
and he was obliged to fill his writing-room with hired scribes. He
supplied them with daily rations out of the brethren’s and cellarer’s
alms-food; such provision was always handy, and the scribes were not
retarded by leaving their work.[187] Sometimes scribes were employed
merely to save the monks trouble. At Corbie, in the fourteenth century,
the religious neglected to work in the writing-room themselves, but
allowed benefactors to engage professional scribes in Paris to swell the
number of books. The Gilbertine order forbade hired scribes altogether,
perhaps wisely.
The scribe’s method of work was simple. First he took a metal stylus or
a pencil and drew perpendicular lines in the side margins of his
parchment, and horizontal lines at equal distances from top to bottom of
the page. Then the task of copying was straightforward. If the book was
to be embellished he left spaces for the illuminator to fill in. When
the illuminator took the book over, he carefully sketched in his designs
for the capitals and miniatures, and then worked over them in colour,
applying one colour to a number of sketches at a time. Anybody who is
curious as to medieval methods of illuminating should read a little
fifteenth-century treatise which describes “the crafte of lymnynge of
bokys.” “Who so kane wyesly considere the nature of his colours, and
kyndely make his commixtions with naturalle proporcions, and mentalle
indagacions connectynge fro dyvers recepcions by resone of theyre
naturys, he schalle make curius colourys.” Thereafter follow recipes to
“temper vermelone to wryte therewith”; “to temper asure, roset, ceruse,
rede lede,” and other pigments; “to make asure to schyne bryȝt,” “to
make letterys of gold,” “blewe lethyre,” and “whyte lethyre”; with other
curious information.[188]
In monasteries where the rule was strict the scribe wrought at his task
for six hours daily.[189] All work was done by daylight, artificial
light not being allowed. Lewis, a monk of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, in a
copy of Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel, speaks of writing when he was
stiff with cold, and of finishing by the light of night what he could
not copy by day.[190] Such diligence was not usual.
In summer-time work in the cloister may well have been pleasant; in
winter quite the contrary, even when the cloister and carrells were
screened, as at Durham and Christ Church, Canterbury. Imagine the poor
scribe rubbing his hands to restore the sluggish circulation, and being
at last compelled to forgo his labour because they were too numbed to
write. Cuthbert, the eighth-century abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow,
writes to a correspondent telling him he had not been able to send all
Bede’s works which were required, because the cold weather of the
preceding winter had paralysed the scribes’ hands.[191] Again, Ordericus
Vitalis winds up the fourth book of his ecclesiastical history by
saying--_nunc hyemali frigore rigens_--he must break his narrative here,
and take up other occupations for the winter.[192] Jacob, abbot of
Brabant (1276), built scriptoria, or possibly carrells, round the
calefactory, or warming-room, where the common fire was kept burning,
and the lot of the scribe was made somewhat easier to bear.
A scribe could only write what the abbot or precentor set him. When his
portion had been given out he could not change it for another.[193] If
he were set to copy Virgil or Ovid or some lives of the saints the task
would conceivably be pleasant. But such was seldom the scribe’s fortune.
The continual transcription of Psalters and Missals and other service
books must have been infinitely wearisome, at any rate, to the less
devout members of the community. In some large and enterprising houses a
scribe copied only a fragment of a book. Several brethren worked upon
the same book at once, each beginning upon a skin at the point where
another scribe was to leave off.[194] Or the book to be transcribed was
dictated to the scribes, as at Tours under Alcuin. Both methods had the
advantage of “publishing” a book quickly, but the work was as
mechanical as is that of the compositor to-day. Under Abbot Trithemius
of Sponheim, subdivision of labour was carried to its extreme limit. One
monk cut the parchment, another polished it, the third ruled the lines
to guide the scribe. After the scribe had finished his copying, another
monk corrected, still another punctuated. In decorating, one artist
rubricated, another painted the miniatures. Then the bookbinder collated
the leaves and bound them in wooden covers. Even in the case of waxed
tablets, one monk prepared the boards, another spread the wax. The whole
process was designed to expedite production.
When a manuscript was fully written the scribe wrote his colophon or
“explicit,” a short form of the phrase “explicitus est liber.” Sometimes
the scribe plays upon words, thus: “Explicit iste liber; sit scriptor
crimine liber”; or he exultantly praises: “Deo gratias. Ego, in Dei
nomine, Warembertus scripsi. Deo gratias”; or he is modest: “Nomen
scriptoris non pono, quia ipsum laudare nolo”;[195] or he feels
querulous: “Be careful with your fingers; don’t put them on my writing.
You do not know what it is to write. It is excessive drudgery: it crooks
your back, dims your sight, twists your stomach and sides. Pray then, my
brother, you who read this book, pray for poor Raoul, God’s servant, who
has copied it entirely with his own hand in the cloister of St. Aignan.”
Another inscription, in a manuscript at Worcester Cathedral, suggests
that books were not read: why, argues this monk, write them?--nobody is
profited; books are for the edification of readers, not of scribes. Note
also the following:--
Finito libro sit laus et gloria Christo
Vinum scriptori debetur de meliori
Hic liber est scriptus qui scripsit sit benedictus. Amen.[196]
And this:--
Here endþ þe firste boke of all maner sores þe
whyche fallen moste commune and withe þe grace of gode I
will writte þe ij Boke þe whyche ys cleped the Antitodarie
Explicit quod scripcit Thomas Rosse.[197]
To a poor Raoul of mechanical ability the rule of silence must have been
very irksome; the student would be grateful for it. Alcuin forbade
gossip to prevent mistakes in copying. Among the Cluniacs the rule was
strictly enforced in the church, refectory, cloister, and dormitory. A
chapter of the Cistercian order (1134) enjoined silence in all rooms
where the brethren were in the habit of writing.[198] The better to
maintain silence nobody was permitted to enter the scriptorium save the
abbot, the prior and sub-prior, and the precentor. When necessary it was
permissible to speak in a low voice in the ear. But among the Cluniacs
whispering was avoided as far as possible. Watch the monks communicating
with the librarian. One wants a Missal, and he pretends, as the children
say, to turn over leaves, thereby making the general sign for a book;
then he makes the sign of the Cross to indicate that he wants a Missal
book. Another wants the Gospels, and he makes the sign of the Cross on
the forehead. This brother wants a pagan book, and, after making the
general sign, he scratches his ear with his finger as an itching dog
would with his feet; infidel writers were not unfairly compared with
such creatures.[199] If such sign-language were really maintained, it
must have been extensively supplemented as the library grew in size, for
although striking the thumb and little
[Illustration: _PLATE XIV_
A SCRIBE AND HIS TOOLS]
finger together would describe an Antiphonary, or making the sign of the
Cross and kissing the finger would indicate a Gradual, yet some
additions to the signs for a pagan book and a tract were necessary to
signify what particular tract or book was wanted. But probably if this
rule was observed at all--and we do not think it likely--the signs were
used only for church books, and most often in church. In nearly every
monastery the rule of silence was made. In the Brigittine house of Syon
“silence after some convenience is to be kepte in the lybrary, whyls any
suster is there alone in recordyng of her redynge.”[200] But it was at
all times difficult to enforce, as the monks, in experience and habits,
were but children.
For notes, exercises, brief letters, bills, first drafts, daily services
of the church, the names of officiating brethren,--for all temporary
purposes waxed tablets were used. They were in common use from classic
times: some Greek and many Latin tablets are still preserved;[201] they
were much used in ancient Ireland, as we have seen; and they continued
to be of service until the late Middle Ages. Anselm habitually wrote his
first drafts upon them. At St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, the monks
were supplied with tablets, for a novice’s outfit included, after
profession, a stylus, tablets, and a knife.[202] The writing was
scratched on the wax with a stylus, a sharp instrument of bone or metal.
The other end of it was usually flattened for pressing out an incorrect
letter; among the Romans the term “vetere stylum” became common in the
sense of correcting a work.
[Illustration: TABLET CASE AND WAXED TABLET]
For all permanent purposes “bōc-fel,” or book-skin, was used; either
vellum or “parchëmyn smothe, whyte and scribable.” Vellum and parchment
were interchangeable terms in medieval times; but parchment was commonly
used. In early monastic days it was prepared by the monks themselves,
being rubbed smooth with pumice-stone; later it was bought from
manufacturers ready-made. It was not so expensive as vellum: the average
price being two shillings per dozen skins as compared with eight
shillings per dozen skins of vellum. For a Bible presented to Bury St.
Edmunds Abbey, finest Irish (or Scottish) vellum was procured (_c._
1121-48). This special material was used for the paintings, which seem
to have been pasted down on the leaves of inferior vellum. This
manuscript is now in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.[203]
The pens used for writing were either made of reeds (_calami_) or of
quills (_pennae_). The quill was introduced after the reed, and largely,
though not entirely, superseded it. Other implements of the expert
scribe were a pencil, compasses, scissors, an awl, a knife for erasures,
a ruler, and a weight to keep down the vellum.
Numerous passages might be dug out of old records warning scribes
against errors in transcribing. Ælfric, in the preface to his homilies,
adjures the copyist, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by His glorious
coming, to transcribe correctly. Chaucer, in a well-known verse,
expresses his wish that Adam the scrivener shall copy _Boëthius_ and
_Troilus_ “trewe” and not write it “newe.”[204] In copying, however,
especially when it is mechanically done, it is almost as difficult to
write “trewe” as it is to write “newe”: the imp of the perverse makes
his home at the elbow of the scribe, ever ready to profit by drowsiness
or trifling inattention. But, as a rule, monkish scribes were
exceedingly careful, and their work was invariably corrected by another
hand. More than this: they endeavoured to get accurate texts to copy.
Lanfranc’s care in this respect, and the Grey Friars’ work in compiling
_correctoria_, have already been noted. Reculfus expected his clergy to
have books corrected and pointed by those in the “holy mother church”;
Adam de Marisco sent a manuscript to be corrected in Paris, begging to
have it back as soon as done;[205] and Servatus Lupus, the great abbot
of Ferrières, frequently borrowed from his friends books which he might
collate with his own copies, and rectify errors and insert
omissions.[206]
Before work could be started in the writing-room, books for copying had
to be obtained. Usually a few books were bought or borrowed; then
several copies were made of each, the superfluous volumes being sold or
exchanged for fresh manuscripts to transcribe. Benedict Biscop, as we
have seen, obtained his books from Rome and Vienne. Cuthwin, bishop of
the East Angles (_c._ 750) was of those who went to Rome, and brought
back with him a life of St. Paul, “full of pictures.” Herbert “Losinga,”
abbot of Ramsey and afterwards bishop of Norwich, was a zealous
book-collector;--asks for a Josephus on loan from a brother abbot, a
request not granted because the binding needed repair; and sends abroad
for a copy of Suetonius. Robert Grosseteste got a rare book, Basil’s
_Hexaemeron_, from Bury St. Edmunds in exchange for a MS. of
_Postillae_.[207] At Ely, in the fourteenth century, when the scribes
there were very active, the precentor was always on the look-out for
“copy.” On one occasion he was paid 6s. 7d. for going to Balsham to
inquire for books (1329).[208] Abbot Henry of Hyde Abbey exchanged a
volume containing Terence, Boëthius, Suetonius, and Claudian for four
Missals, the _Legend of St. Christopher_, and Gregory’s _Pastoral
Care_.[209] On one occasion Adam de Marisco tries to get from a brother
of Nottingham the _Moralia_ of St. Gregory, and Rabanus Maurus. He sends
from Oxford to an abbot at Vercelli an exposition of the Angelic
Salutation, and begs for the abbot’s writings in exchange.[210] Adam had
studied at Vercelli,[211]--a new Italian centre with a close English
connexion. About 1217 Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, afterwards bishop of
Vercelli, was granted the church of Chesterton, near Cambridge, and
when he died ten years later he left all his estate, including the
church, and a number of books which had been collected at Chesterton or
in England, to Vercelli Abbey. Among the gifts were two service books in
English, and the famous Codex Vercellensis, which is only less valuable
than the Exeter Book as a first source of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The
Vercelli Book is in Italy to this day.[212]
In some abbeys the purchase of books, and the copying of them for sale,
became just as much a business as the manufacture of Chartreuse. In 1446
Exeter College, Oxford, paid ten shillings and a penny for twelve quires
and two skins of parchment bought at Abingdon to send to the monastery
of Plympton in Devonshire, where a book was being written for the
College.[213] A part--and by no means a negligible part--of the income
of Carthusian houses came from copying books. Two continental abbots,
Abbot Gerbert of Bobio and Servatus Lupus of Ferrières, were book-makers
and sellers on a commercial scale. Lupus, in particular, betrays the
commercial spirit by refusing to give more than he was obliged in return
for what he received. He will not send a book to a monk at Sens because
his messenger must go afoot and the way was perilous: let us hope he
thought more of the messenger than of the manuscript. On another
occasion he refuses to lend a book because it is too large to be hidden
in the vest or wallet, and, besides, its beauty might tempt robbers to
steal it. These were good excuses to cover his general unwillingness to
lend. For the loan of one manuscript he was so bothered that he thought
of putting it away in a secure place, lest he should lose it
altogether.[214]
As a rule the expenses of the writing-room formed a part of the general
expenses of the house, but sometimes particular portions of the monastic
income and endowments were available to meet them. To St. Albans certain
tithes were assigned by a Norman leader for making books (_c._
1080).[215] The precentor of Abingdon obtained tithes worth thirty
shillings for buying parchment.[216] St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury,
got three marks from the rentals of Milton Church for making books
(1144).[217] The monks of Ely (1160), of Westminster (_c._ 1159), of the
cathedral convent of St. Swithin’s, Winchester (1171), of Bury St.
Edmunds, and of Whitby, received tithes and rents for a like
purpose.[218] The prior of Evesham received the tithes of Bengworth to
pay for parchment and for the maintenance of scribes; while the
precentor was to receive five shillings annually from the manor of
Hampton, and ten shillings and eightpence from the tithes of Stoke and
Alcester for buying ink, colours for illuminating, and what was
necessary for binding books and the necessaries for the organ.[219]
In some houses a rate was levied for the support of the scriptorium, but
we have not met with any instance of this practice in English
monasteries. At the great Benedictine Abbey of Fleury a rate was levied
in 1103 on the officers and dependent priories for the support of the
library; forty-three years later it was extended, and it remained in
force until 1562.[220] Besides this impost every student in the abbey
was bound to give two books to the library. At Corbie, in Picardy, a
rate was levied to pay the salary of the librarian, and to cover part of
the cost of bookbinding. Here also each novice, on the day of his
profession, had to present a book to the library; at Corvey, in Northern
Germany, the same rule was observed at the end of the eleventh century.
As all the monasteries of an order were conducted much on the same
lines, it is difficult to believe that similar rates were not levied by
some of the larger houses in England.
The libraries were also augmented by gifts and bequests, as well as by
purchase and by transcription in the scriptorium. In most abbeys it was
customary for the brethren to give or bequeath their books to their
house. A long list of such benefactors to Ramsey Abbey is extant, and
one of the brothers, Walter de Lilleford, prior of St. Ives, gave what
was in those days a considerable library in itself.[221] Much longer
still are the lists of presents given to Christ Church and St.
Augustine’s, Canterbury. Dr. James has indexed nearly two hundred donors
to Christ Church alone. In most cases the gifts are of one or a few
books, but occasionally collections of respectable size were received,
as when T. Sturey, senior, enriched the library with nearly sixty books,
when Thomas à Becket left over seventy, and when Prior Henry Eastry left
eighty volumes at his death. As many or more donors to St. Augustine’s
are indexed. Here also some of the donations were fairly large: for
example, Henry Belham and Henry Cokeryng gave nineteen books each, a
prior twenty-seven, a certain John of London eighty-two, J. Mankael
thirty-nine, Abbot Nicholaus sixteen, Michael de Northgate twenty-four,
Abbot Poucyn sixteen, J. Preston twenty-three, a certain Abbot Thomas
over a hundred, and T. Wyvelesberghe thirty-one. Some sixty persons are
also indexed as donors to St. Martin’s Priory, Dover.[222]
William de Carilef, bishop of Durham, endowed his church with books and
bequeathed some more at his death (1095). John, bishop of Bath,
bequeathed to the abbey church his whole library and his decorated
copies of the Gospels (1160). Another bishop of Durham, Hugh Pudsey,
bequeathed many books to his church (1195). Thomas de Marleberge (_d._
1236), when he became prior of Evesham, gave a large collection of books
in law, medicine, philosophy, poetry, theology, and grammar.[223] Simon
Langham bequeathed seven chests of books to Westminster Abbey
(1376).[224] William Slade (_d._ 1384) left to the Abbey of Buckfast, of
which he was abbot, thirteen books of his own writing.[225] Cardinal
Adam Easton (_d._ 1397) sent from Rome “six barrells of books” to his
convent of Norwich, where he had been a monk.[226] One of these books, a
fourteenth-century manuscript in an Italian hand, is now preserved in
the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: the inscription
attesting this reads--“Liber ecclesie norwycen per magistrum Adam de
Eston monachum dicti loci.” Nor did the poor priest forget to add his
mite to the general hoard: “I beqweth to the monastery of Seynt Edmund
forseid,” willed a priest named Place, “my book of the dowtes of Holy
Scryptur, to ly and remayn in the cloister of the seid monastery as long
as yt wyll ther indure.”[227] Such gifts were always highly valued, and
in Lent the librarian was expected to remind the brethren of those who
had given books, and to request that a mass should be said for
them.[228]
§ II
Some miniatures in early manuscripts give us a good idea of the way
books were stored in the Middle Ages. They are shown lying flat on
sloping shelves which extend part-way round the room. Curtains are
occasionally shown hanging in front of the shelves to protect the books
from dust. Or a sloping shelf was fitted to serve as a readingdesk, and
a second flat shelf ran beneath it to take books lying on their sides
one above the other. In several miniatures lecterns of very curious
design are often depicted; some of them stood on a cupboard or cupboards
wherein books were stowed away.
In the monasteries books were stored in various places,--in chests,
cupboards, or recesses in the wall. When the collection was small, a
chest served; a receptacle of this kind is illustrated at p. 50.
Cassiodorus had the books of his monastery stored in presses, or
armaria. The manuscripts of Abbot Simon of St. Albans were preserved in
“the painted aumbry in the church.” An aumbry was a recess in the wall
well lined inside with wood so that the damp of the masonry should not
spoil the books. It was divided vertically and horizontally by shelves
in such a way that it was possible to arrange the books separately one
from another, and so to avoid injury from close packing, and delay in
consulting them.[229] The same term was applied to a detached closet or
cupboard. At Durham the monks distributed their books--keeping some in
the spendimentum or cancellary, some near the refectory, and the bulk
in the cloister. Two classes of books were in the cancellary: one stored
in a large closet with folding doors, called an armariolum, and used by
all the monks; the other kept in an inner room, and apparently reserved
for special uses. The books assigned to the reader in the refectory were
stored by the doorway leading to the infirmary, and not in the refectory
itself, as we should expect: maybe this arrangement was exceptional, and
was adopted for special reasons of convenience. Probably two places were
reserved for books in the cloister. One case or chest contained the
books of the novices, whose place of study was in that part of the
cloister facing the treasury. The main store was on the north side of
the cloister. “And over against the carrells against the church wall did
stande sertaine great almeries of waynscott all full of bookes, wherein
dyd lye as well the old auncyent written Doctors of the church as other
prophane authors, with dyverse other holie mens wourks, so that every
one dyd studye what Doctor pleased them best, havinge the librarie at
all tymes to goe studie in besydes there carrells.”[230] Dr. J. W.
Clark, the leading authority on early library fittings, has tried to
show, from evidences of a similar arrangement at Westminster, that this
part of the cloister formed a long room, with glazed windows and
carrells on the one hand, bookcases on the other, and screens at each
end shutting off the library and writing-place from the rest of the
cloister.[231]
Along the south wall of the cloister at Chester is a series of recesses
which are believed to have been used for bookcases. Two recesses for
aumbries are still to be seen in the cloister at Worcester: it is
recorded that one book, the _Speculum Spiritualium_, was to be
delivered “to ye cloyster awmery.” At Beaulieu the arched recesses in
the south wall of the church may have been put to a similar use. These
recesses are shown on the plan here reproduced; so also is the common
aumbry in the wall of the south transept.
[Illustration: PLAN SHOWING DISPOSITION OF BOOKS IN CISTERCIAN HOUSES]
In large continental houses a bookroom was sometimes needed very early.
One of the monasteries of Cassiodorus included a special room for the
library, with at least nine presses in it.[232] At St. Gall, a special
bookroom was planned, if not actually built, as early as the ninth
century. According to the old drawing still preserved at St. Gall, this
room was to be on the north side of the presbytery, symmetrically with
the sacristy on the south side. It was in two stories. The ground floor
was to be arranged as a writing-room,--_infra sedes scribentium_,--the
furniture being a large table in the centre, and seven writing-desks
against the walls. The upper story was the library.[233] In England we
hear of bookrooms oftenest in the fifteenth century, They were a usual
feature in later Cistercian houses. The plan just given shows the
position of this room between the church and the chapter-house, and not
far from the common claustral aumbry. At Whalley Abbey, also a
Cistercian house, there was evidently a separate library room, because
an inventory of the house’s goods taken in 1537 refers to the “litle
Revestry next unto the lebrary.”[234] Kirkstall and Furness also had
bookrooms. On each side of the massive arch of the Chapter House at
Furness Abbey is a similar arch leading to a small square room, most
likely used for books. The illustrations facing this show the position
of these rooms on either side of the Chapter House doorway. An extant
catalogue of another Cistercian house, that of Meaux in Yorkshire,
clearly indicates the whereabouts of the conventual books. Some church
books were before the great altar, others were in the choir, a few in
the infirmary chapel, and in the common press and other presses of the
church. The bulk of them was in the common aumbry, not apparently in the
open cloister, but in a room off the cloister. Over the door, on a shelf
or in a cupboard, were four Psalters; thirty-six books were on
[Illustration: _PLATE XV_
FURNESS ABBEY: CLOISTERS
FURNESS ABBEY: CHAPTER-HOUSE. INTERIOR]
the top shelf on the other side of the room; the remainder, to the
number of about 270, were on other shelves marked by letters of the
alphabet.[235]
At the Premonstratensian Abbey of Titchfield the books were stored in a
small room, in four cases, each having eight shelves. We do not
positively know that a separate room existed at the Benedictine house of
Christ Church, Canterbury, before the fifteenth century, “yet,” as Dr.
James says, “the form of Prior Eastry’s catalogue, with its division
into Demonstrations and Distinctions, irresistibly suggests that the
collection must in his time [1284-1331] have occupied a special room, of
which the two Demonstrations represent the two sides. The Distinctions
would be narrow vertical divisions of these, and each of them would have
its numerous subdivisions into Gradus. As the best English equivalent of
_Demonstratio_ I would suggest the word ‘Display,’ which fairly gives
the idea of a wall-surface covered with books; and I figure the building
to myself as an enlarged example of those Cistercian bookrooms with
which Dr. J. W. Clark’s researches have familiarized us. It would thus
be no place for study, such as the later libraries were, but merely a
storeroom whence books were fetched to be read at leisure in the
cloister.”[236] Between 1414 and 1443 a library was built over the
Prior’s Chapel by Archbishop Chichele: it was about sixty-two feet long
on the north side, fifty-four on the south side, and twenty-two feet
broad. This was the room which Prior Selling fitted up with wainscot,
and put books in for the benefit of the studious.[237] At St.
Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, there was a bookroom in 1340, for the
manuscript of the _Ayenbite of Inwyt_ contains a note that it belongs to
the “bochouse.”[238] The form of the catalogue of _c._ 1497 also
suggests that a bookroom was then in use.
At Gloucester a special room was built, probably in the fourteenth
century. Durham apparently did without a room until early in the
fifteenth century. “There ys a lybrarie in the south angle of the
lantren, whiche is nowe above the clocke, standinge betwixt the
Chapter-House and the Te Deum wyndowe, being well replenished with ould
written Docters and other histories and ecclesiasticall writers.”[239]
To this room the books were transferred gradually from the cloister and
chancellary: the words “in libraria,” or “Ponitur in libraria,” being
written in the margin of the catalogue opposite to the book upon its
removal.
The Benedictine houses of Winchester, Worcester, Bury St. Edmunds,[240]
and St. Albans also had special bookrooms.
For the safe keeping of the conventual books the precentor was
responsible.[241] As he had charge of the armarium or press for storing
books, he was also sometimes styled “armarius.” He was required to keep
clean all the boys’ and novices’ presses and other receptacles for
books; when necessary he was to have these fittings repaired. To provide
coverings for the books; to see that they were marked with their proper
titles; to arrange them on the shelves in suitable order, so that they
might be quickly found, were all duties within his province.[242] He had
to keep them in repair: in some houses he was expected to examine all
of them carefully several times a year, and to check, if possible, the
ravages of bookworms and damp. If necessary, he could call in skilled
labour to keep his library and books in order; but usually several
brethren were trained in the necessary arts, as at Sponheim. The
Abingdon regulations, which are in the usual form, forbade him to sell,
give away, or pledge books. All the materials for the use of the scribes
and the manuscripts for copying were to be provided by him.[243] He made
the ink, and could dole it out not only to the brethren but to lay folk
if they asked for it civilly.[244] He also controlled the work in the
scriptorium: setting the scribes their tasks, preventing them from
idling or talking; walking round the cloister when the bell sounded to
collect the books which had been forgotten by careless monks.
As a rule the monks so highly prized their books--saving them first, for
example, in time of danger, as when the Lombards attacked Monte Cassino
and the Huns St. Gall--that rules for the care of them would seem almost
superfluous. Still, such rules were made. When reading, the monks of
some houses were required to wrap handkerchiefs round the books, or to
hold them with the sleeve of their robe. Coverings, perhaps washable,
were put upon books much in use.[245] The Carthusian brethren were
exhorted in their statutes to take all possible care to keep the books
they were reading clean and free from dust.[246] Elsewhere we have
referred to an “explicit” urging readers to have a care for the scribe’s
writing: in another manuscript once belonging to Corbie, the kind reader
is bidden to keep his fingers off the pages lest he should mar the
writing on them--a man who knows nothing of the scribe’s business cannot
realize how heavy it is, for though only three fingers hold the pen, the
whole body toils.[247]
§ III
One of the precentor’s chief duties was to regulate lending books. At
Abingdon he could only lend to outsiders upon a pledge of equal or
greater value than the book required, and even so could only lend to
churches near by and to persons of good standing. It was deemed
preferable to confiscate the pledge than to proceed against a defaulting
borrower. In some houses more than a pledge was demanded if the book
were lent for transcription, the borrower being required to send a copy
when he returned the manuscript. “Make haste to copy these quickly,”
wrote St. Bernard’s secretary, “and send them to me; and, according to
my bargain, cause a copy to be made for me. And both these which I have
sent you, and the copies, as I have said, return them to me, and take
care that I do not lose a single tittle.”[248] The extra copy was
demanded, not so much for purposes of gain as to put a check upon
borrowing, a practice which many abbots did not encourage, on account of
the danger of loss. Books, like gloves, are soon lost. We can well
understand how uncommonly easy it was to forget to return a coveted
manuscript. To help borrowers to overcome the insidious temptation, the
scribe sometimes wrote upon the manuscript the name of the monastery it
belonged to, and threatened a defaulter with anathema. In some of the
St. Albans’ books is the following note in Latin: “This book is St.
Alban’s book: he who takes it from him or destroys the title be
anathema.”[249] The prior and convent of Rochester threatened to
pronounce sentence of damnation on anyone who stole or hid the Latin
translation of Aristotle’s _Physics_, or even obliterated the
title.[250] Apparently no fate was too bad for the thief who took the
Vulgate Bible: let him die the death; let him be frizzled in a pan; the
falling sickness and fever should rage in him; he should be broken on
the wheel and hanged; Amen.[251] Two curious notes are to be found in a
manuscript of the works of Augustine and Ambrose in the Bodleian
Library. “This book belongs to St. Mary of Robert’s Bridge: whoever
steals it, or sells it, or takes it away from this house in any way, or
injures it, let him be anathema-maranatha.” Underneath, another hand has
written: “I, John, bishop of Exeter, do not know where the said house
is: I did not steal this book, but got it lawfully.”[252] In a beautiful
manuscript of Chaucer’s _Troilus_, not perhaps a conventual book, occurs
the following:--
“he that thys Boke rentt or stelle
God send hym sekenysse swart (?) of helle.”[253]
All the same, losses were common. About 1290 William of Pershore, once a
Benedictine monk, and at the time a Grey Friar, returned to his old
order at Westminster, and took with him some books. A big dispute arose
over this apostate, and one of the items of the subsequent settlement
was that the Westminster monks should return the books.[254]
A similar thing took place in Scotland (1331). A friar of Roxburgh
forsook his grey habit for the Cistercian white by entering Kelso Abbey.
He made his new associates envious with an account of the goods of the
friaries at Roxburgh and Berwick. They persuaded him and two other
apostate friars to rob these convents of the “Bibles, chalices, and
other sacred books,” and, with the aid of night, the enterprise met with
more success than they deserved.[255]
The prior and convent of Ely traced some of their books to Paris. They
wrote to Edward III (1332): “Because a robber has taken out of our
church four books of great value, viz.--The Decretum, Decretals, the
Bible and Concordance, of which the first three are now at Paris,
arrested and detained under sequestration by the officer of the Bishop
of Paris, whom our proctor has often prayed in form of law to deliver
them, but he behaves so strangely that we shall find in him neither
right, grace, nor favour:--We ask you to write to the Bishop of Paris to
intermeddle favourably and tell his official to do right, so that we may
get our things back.”[256] In 1396-7 William, prior of Newstead, and a
brother canon, proceeded against John Ravensfield for the return of a
book by Richard of Hampole, entitled _Pricke of Conscience_, “and now
the parties aforesaid are agreed by the licence of the court, and the
said John is in ‘misericordia’; he paid the amercement in the
hall.”[257] Another record tells us of two monks of Christ Church,
Canterbury, being sent into Cambridgeshire to recover a book.
The risk of loss owing to the practice of lending books was great--how
great may be judged from the fact that of the equal portions of the
Peterhouse College library of 1418, 199 volumes of the chained portion
remain, but only ten of all those assigned to the Fellows are left.[258]
In spite of the risk, lending was extensively carried on. In one year
(1343), for example, the unimportant priory of Hinton lent no fewer than
twenty books to another monastery.[259] Then again, it was thought to be
only common charity to lend books to poor students, and in 1212 a
council at Paris actually forbade monks to refuse to lend books to the
poor, and requested them to divide their libraries into two
divisions--one for the use of the brothers, the other for lending.[260]
Whether this ever became a practice in England is more than doubtful.
But seculars of position or influence appear to have been able to borrow
monastic books. For example, in 1320, the prior and convent of Ely
acknowledge receiving ten books from the executors of a rector of
Balsham, who had borrowed them.[261] Some years later, at an audit of
books of Christ Church, Canterbury, seventeen manuscripts--thirteen of
them on law--were noted as in the hands of seculars, among whom was
Edward II.[262]
Lending books to brethren in the monastery was conducted according to
strict rules, of which those of Lanfranc, based on the Cluniac
observances, afford a good example. Before the brethren went into
chapter on the Monday after the first Sunday in Lent, the librarian laid
out on a carpet in the chapter-house all the books which were not on
loan. After the assembly of the brethren, the librarian read his
register of the books lent to the monks. Each brother, on hearing his
name, returned the book which had been entrusted to him. If he had not
made good use of the book, he was expected to prostrate himself, confess
his neglect, and beg forgiveness. When all books were returned, others
were issued, and a new record made. In some monasteries the abbot would
question the monks on the books they had read, to test their knowledge
of them, and whenever the answers were unsatisfactory would lend the
same books again instead of fresh ones. As a rule only one book was
issued at a time, so that the monk had plenty of time to digest its
contents. In Carthusian houses two books were lent at a time. Sick
brethren were freely permitted to borrow books for their solace, but
such books were returned to the library nightly, at lighting-up time.
Among the Cluniacs it was the custom to take stock of the books given
out to the monks once a year; while the Franciscans kept a register of
their books, and every year it was read and corrected before the convent
in assembly.[263]
An excellent example of a stocktaking record made at Christ Church,
Canterbury, has been preserved. The inspection took place in 1337. First
are recorded the books missing from the two “demonstrations,” as
recorded “in magnis tabulis,” _e.g._,
Primo: deficit liber Transfiguratus in Crucifixum, ad quem est in
nota Frater W. de Coventre.
Nineteen books were missing from the two “demonstrations,” or displays.
Nineteen service books were missing “in parvis tabulis.” No less than
thirty-eight books, twenty-eight of them for service, either of the
large or the small tables, were wanting: for these deceased brethren had
been responsible.[264]
The “large tables” are believed to be boards whereon the borrowers of
books had their names and borrowings noted. “I find,” writes Dr. James,
“in a St. Augustine’s manuscript a note written on the fly-leaf by a
monk, of the books ‘pro quibus scribor in tabula’--‘for which I am down
on the board.’”[265] Large tables were in use at Pembroke College,
Cambridge; probably they were of a similar kind. “And let the said
keeper,”--so the statute runs--“have ready large pieces of board
(_tabulas magnas_), covered with wax and parchment, that the titles of
the books may be written on the parchment, and the names of the Fellows
who hold them on the wax beside it.”[266] Monastic catalogues were
sometimes written on such boards. At Cluni, Mabillon and Martène found
the catalogue inscribed on parchment-covered boards three feet and a
half long and a foot and a half wide--great tablets which closed
together like a book.
Besides the example of an audit at Canterbury we have one belonging to
Durham, a little later in date (1416). The list of books assigned to the
Spendement was evidently read over, and a tick or point was put against
every volume found in its place. On a second check certain books were
accounted for, and notes of their whereabouts were added to the
inventory. Some were found in the cloister, others were in the library;
the prior of Finchale had a number; many had been sent to Oxford. In one
case a book is noted as given to Bishop Kempe of London.[267]
The catalogue was usually a simple inventory. Sometimes the entries were
classified, as in the case of a catalogue of the York library of the
Friars Eremites of the Augustinian order. The fifteenth-century
catalogue of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, is classified under sixteen
headings, but it is probably incomplete.[268] As a rule the entries were
only just sufficient to identify the books: all the treatises in a
volume were not often recorded, but only the title of the first. This is
an entry from a Durham catalogue:--
F. Legenda Sanctorum, sive Passionarum pro mensibus
Februaria et Marcii. II. fo., non surrexerunt.
The letter F was employed as a distinctive mark. The note “II. fo., non
surrexerunt” signifies that the second folio began with these words, and
was used as the most convenient method of distinguishing two copies of
the same book, for it would rarely happen that one scribe would begin
the second sheet with the same word as another. In some houses the
practice was extended to printed books in the sixteenth century; and
consequently no fewer that nearly four hundred editions have been named
in the catalogue of Syon monastery.[269] In some other catalogues the
information given was fuller. The catalogue of Syon notes first the
press-mark in a bold hand; then on the left side the donor’s name, and
on the opposite side the words of the second folio; and beneath the
description of the book.
GRAUNTE P 1^{m} indutu_m_ est
Biblia perpulcra et completa cum interpretacionibus.
¶ Tabula sentencialis super eandem per totum. ¶ Item
alia tabula expositoria vocabulorum difficilium eiusdem
Biblie.
WOODE P 2 osce 2º
Concordancie cum textu expresso.
The catalogue of St. Augustine’s, already referred to, recorded the
general title of the volume, or of the first treatise in it; the name of
the donor; the other contents of the volume; the first words of the
second leaf, and the press-mark. Where necessary, cross-references were
supplied. The press-marks used for monastic books are generally of two
kinds: press-marks properly so called, or class-marks. At St.
Augustine’s, Canterbury, the distinctions or tiers were numbered, as D
3; and the gradus or shelves of each distinction were numbered, as
[Illustration: _PLATE XVI_
FACSIMILE OF THE LIBRARY CATALOGUE OF SYON MONASTERY]
G 4. A similar method seems to have been adopted for St. Albans; in one
book from that abbey is this mark: “de armariolo 4/A et quarto gradu
liber quartus.”[270] But such a mark assigned a book to one particular
place and fixed its relation to other books. Consequently, if any large
accession were made to the library, the classification of the books in
broad subject-divisions could only be maintained by the alteration of
many press-marks, both on the books and in the catalogue. At Titchfield
each class was marked with a letter of the alphabet, and the shelves
bearing it were numbered: thus a book might be assigned to G 2, or class
G, shelf 2.[271] This method of marking was more flexible. But at Syon
Monastery the books were arranged quite independently of the presses and
shelves; each volume receiving a different number, as well as a
class-letter.
The most elaborate example of monkish cataloguing comes from Dover
Priory, a cell belonging to Canterbury. One John Whytefield compiled it
in 1389. The note preceding the catalogue tells of unbounded enthusiasm
for the library and a meticulous regard for order. No better proof of
the care taken of books by most monks could be found. The catalogue is
in three parts. First there is a brief inventory of the books as they
are arranged on the shelves. This is a shelf-list designed for the use
of the precentor; just the sort of record modern librarians regard as
indispensable in the administration of their libraries. Secondly, our
industrious monk has provided a catalogue,--a repetition of the
shelf-list, but with all the contents of each volume set out. His chief
aim in making this compilation is to show up fully the resources of his
collection, and to lead studious brethren to read zealously and
frequently. Lastly, an analytical index to the catalogue is supplied:
it is in alphabetical order, and is intended to point out to the user
the whereabouts in a volume of any individual treatise. A similar index,
by the way, is appended to the catalogue of Syon monastery.[272] The
library seems to have been spread over nine tiers (distinctions) of
book-casing, each marked with a letter of the alphabet. A tier had seven
shelves (_gradus_) marked by Roman numeral figures, the numbers
beginning from the bottom of the tier. Each book bore a small Arabic
figure which fixed its order on the shelf. The full press-mark of a book
was therefore A. V. 4. Such marks were written inside the books and on
their bindings. On the second, third, or fourth leaf of a book, or
thereabouts, the title was written on the bottom margin, with the
press-mark and the first words of that leaf. All these marks were copied
in the inventory or shelf-list: first the tier letter, then the shelf
number, afterwards the book number; followed by the title, the number of
the leaf whence the identifying words were taken, then the identifying
words, with the number of leaves in the volume, and finally the number
of tracts it contains. Here are some entries:--
A. v.
+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+----------+------------+
| Ordo | Nomina | Loca | Dicciones |Summa | Numerus |
|locacionis.|voluminum. |probacionum.|probatorie. |ffoliorum.|contentorum.|
+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+----------+------------+
| 1 |Psalterium | 6 |apprehendite| 105 | 1 |
| | vetus | | disci | | |
| | glosatum | | | | |
| 2 |Prima pars | 4 |cument que | 195 | 2 |
| | psalterii| | il lait | | |
| | glosata | | | | |
| | gallice | | | | |
| 3 |Glose super| |nullas | 104 | 2 |
| | spalterio| 6 | habebunt | | |
| | | | veri | | |
+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+----------+------------+
In the second part, or catalogue following the shelf-list, are set out
the tier letter, shelf number, book number, short title; then the number
of the folio on which each tract in a volume begins, and finally the
first words of the tract itself.[273]
Most books were bound by the monks themselves. The commonest materials
used for ordinary manuscripts were wooden boards, covered with deerskin
and calfskin, either coloured red or used in its natural tint, and
parchment usually stained or painted red or purple. Charles the Great
authorised the Abbot of St. Bertin to enjoy hunting rights so that the
monks could get skins for binding. In mid-ninth century, Geoffroi
Martel, Count of Anjou, commanded that the tithe of the roeskins
captured in the island of Oléron should be used to bind the books in an
abbey of his foundation. Few monastic bindings have been preserved,
because many great collectors have had their manuscripts rebound.
Several examples of Winchester work remain. Mr. Yates Thompson has a
mid-twelfth century manuscript bound in the monastic style, the leather
being stamped with cold irons of many curious rectangular shapes. The
manuscript of the Winton Domesday has a binding with stamps exactly like
those on Mr. Thompson’s book. “At Durham in the last half of the twelfth
century there was an equally important school of binding, with some one
hundred and fourteen different stamps. The binding for Hugh Pudsey’s
Bible has nearly five hundred impressions.”[274] In Pembroke College
library an excellent specimen of twelfth century stamped binding remains
on MS. 147. Such stamps were small, and frequently of geometrical or
floral design, always rudimentary; but animals of the quaintest
form--grotesque birds and dragons--were also introduced. A hammer or
mallet was employed to obtain an impression from the stamp. Sometimes
the oak boards were not covered with skin but were painted.
If a book was specially prized the binding was often rich. The covers of
the Gospels of Lindau, a superb example of Carolingian art, bear nearly
five hundred gems encrusted in gold.[275] Abbot Paul of St. Albans gave
to his church two books adorned with gold and silver and gems. Abbot
Godfrey of Malmesbury, partly to meet a heavy tax imposed by William
Rufus, stripped twelve Gospels of their decorations. “Books are clothed
with precious stones,” cried St. Jerome, “whilst Christ’s poor die in
nakedness at the door.”[276] In spite of the many references to jewelled
monastic bindings in medieval records, very few are extant.
[Illustration: _PLATE XVII_
MEDIEVAL BINDING: MR. YATES THOMPSON’S HEGESIPPUS]
CHAPTER V
CATHEDRAL AND CHURCH LIBRARIES
§ I
To the books of the monastery some human interest clings: we can at once
conjure up a picture of the cloister and the scribe at his work; the
handling of an old manuscript, the turning over of finely-written and
quaintly-illuminated yellow pages, throws the mind flashing back
centuries to the silent writer in his carrell. But the church library is
not rich in associations. It was a small “working” collection: one part
for the use of the clergy, the other part--consisting of a few chained
books--for the use of the people. These chained books, which now suggest
a scarcely conceivable restriction upon the circulation of
literature--even theological literature--were, in fact, the sign of a
glimmer of liberal thought in the church. During the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, not only were monastic books issued to lay people
more freely, but many more books were chained in places of worship than
in the sixteenth century, when the proclamation for the “setting-up” of
Bibles in churches was granted unwillingly.
Some collections which later were distinctively church libraries were at
first claustral. For convenience’ sake we shall treat all of them as
church libraries. The amount of information on medieval church libraries
is surprisingly extensive, albeit a great deal more must remain hidden
still, for all our cathedral libraries have not been subjects of such
loving scholarship as Canon Church has bestowed upon the ancient
treasure-house at Wells. Still the material is extensive, and our
difficulty in making a selection for such a compendious book as the
present is complicated, because we often do not find it possible to say
whether the books referred to in the available records are merely
service books, or books of an ordinary character. To evade this
difficulty we must ignore all material relating to unnamed books, which
we cannot reasonably suppose to have been the nucleus of a more general
collection, or an addition to it.
Exeter Cathedral Library was a monastic hoard. It originated with Bishop
Leofric, who got together over sixty books about sixteen years before
the Conquest. His books were a curious collection: among copies of the
classics and ecclesiastical works were books of night songs, summer and
winter reading books, a precious book of blessings, and a “Mycel Englisc
boc”--a large English book, on all sorts of things, wrought in verse.
The last is the famous Exeter book, still preserved in the library. A
small folio of 130 leaves of vellum, it is remarkable to the student of
manuscripts for its bold, clear, and graceful calligraphy, and priceless
to the student of literature as the only source of much of our small
store of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Some other Leofrican books remain. In the
library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is an eleventh century
copy of Bede’s history in Anglo-Saxon, which was given to Exeter by
Leofric, although it is not mentioned in the list of his gifts in the
Bodleian manuscript. The inscription in it reads: _Hunc librum dat
leofricus episcopus ecclesie sancti petri apostoli in exonia ubi sedes
episcopalis est ad utilitatem successorum suorum. Si quis illum
abstulerit inde, subiaceat maledictioni. Fiat. Fiat. Fiat._[277] A
manuscript of Bede on
[Illustration: _PLATE XVIII_
ANCIENT BOOK-BOX IN EXETER CATHEDRAL]
the Apocalypse, now at Lambeth Palace, seems almost certainly to have
come from St. Mary’s Church, Crediton, and it bears the
inscription:--“A: in nomine domini. Amen. Leofric_us_ Pater.”[278]
Another book given by Leofric, a missal dating from 969, is preserved in
the Bodleian Library.[279]
Although the age of these books suggests that the collection has existed
continuously since the eleventh century, after Leofric’s time no
important reference to the library occurs until 1327, when an inventory
of the books was drawn up. Then about 230 volumes (excluding service
books) were in the possession of the Chapter.[280] In this same year a
breviary and a missal were chained up in the choir for the use of the
people.[281] Twelve months later John Grandisson arrived at Exeter to
take charge of his diocese. A book-loving bishop, he was a benefactor to
the library, maybe to a very praiseworthy extent; but a few words will
record what is definitely known about this part of his work. In 1366 he
gave two folio volumes, still extant. One contains Lessons from the
Bible, and the homilies appointed to be read, and the other is the
Legends of the Saints.[282] In his will he gave two other books, perhaps
Pontificals of his own compilation, to his successors.[283] He himself
owned an extensive library, which he divided principally between his
chapter and the collegiate churches of Ottery, Crediton, and Boseham,
and Exeter College, Oxford.[284] All St. Thomas Aquinas’ works he
bequeathed to the Black Friars’ convent at Exeter. To Simon Islip,
Archbishop of Canterbury, he gave a fine copy of St. Anselm’s letters,
now by good fortune in the British Museum. A Hebrew Pentateuch once
belonging to him is in the capitular library of Westminster: is it
possible that the bishop was a Hebrew scholar?[285] Among the books of
Windsor College was a volume, _De Legendis et Missis de B. V. Mariâ_,
which had been given by him.
A library room was built over the east cloister in 1412-13.[286]
Probably the building was found necessary on account of a considerable
accession of books, and we hazard a guess that Grandisson’s bequest,
received in 1370, formed the bulk of the accretion. At all events, among
the accounts for the building are charges for 191 chains for books not
secured before. No fewer than 67 books were also sewed or bound on this
same occasion, the master binder being paid £6 and his man 36s. 8d. Thus
at the beginning of the fifteenth century--the age of library
building--the capitular hoard at Exeter was furbished up, newly housed,
and arranged. But the interest in the collection seems to have waned.
Another chain was bought for sixteenpence in 1430-31 for a copy of
_Rationale Divinorum_, which was given by one Rolder; but such gifts
were few and far between. In 1506 the Chapter owned 363 volumes, but
133 more than in 1327,[287] so that few additions besides Grandisson’s
were made in nearly two centuries, or many books were lost.[288]
According to this second inventory the books were arranged in eleven
desks; eight books were chained opposite the west door; twenty-eight
were not chained; seven were chained behind the treasurer’s stall (a
Bible in three volumes, Lyra also in three, and a Concordance); and
fourteen volumes of canon and civil law behind the succentor’s
stall.[289] The Dean and Chapter were in a strangely generous mood at
the end of this century. In 1566 they gave one of Leofric’s books to
Archbishop Parker: it is now in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The
collection was despoiled of eighty-one of its finest books to enrich
Bodley’s foundation at Oxford, 1602.[290] Although the book-lover does
not like to see treasures torn from their associations, yet in this
instance the alienation was fortunate. By 1752 only twenty volumes noted
in the inventory of 1506 were left at Exeter.[291]
Besides the Exeter Book, one other very ancient and valuable manuscript
is preserved in the Cathedral: this is the part of the Domesday Book
referring to Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset, which is probably not much
later in date than the Exchequer record. Two ancient book-boxes are also
to be found there. These are fixed in a sloping position by means of
iron supports embedded in the pillars. The late Dr. J. W. Clark was led
to believe them to be intended for books by finding a wooden bookboard
nailed to the inside bottom of one of the boxes. For the protection of
the book each box has a cover, which does not seem ever to have been
fastened: a reader would raise the lid when he wanted to use the
manuscript, and close it before he went away.[292] Erasmus seems to have
seen similar boxes fixed to the pillars in the nave at Canterbury.[293]
§ II
When gifts or bequests were received by a church or monastery, it was a
beautiful custom to lay them, or something to represent them, upon the
altar: “a book, or turf, or, in fact, almost any portable object, was
offered for property such as land; or a bough or twig of a tree, if the
gift were a forest.” King Offa’s gift of churches to Worcester monastery
in 780 was accompanied by a great book with golden clasps, with every
probability a Bible.[294] A gift was made under similar circumstances in
_c._ 1057, about the time Bishop Leofric was founding the library at
Exeter, when Lady Godiva, the wife of another Leofric, restored some
manors to Worcester, and with them gave a Bible in two parts. Before
this, Bishop Werfrith, to whom we have referred before as a helper of
King Alfred, had sent to Worcester the Anglo-Saxon version of Gregory’s
_Cura Pastoralis_; the very copy of it is now in the Bodleian Library.
Such were perhaps the beginnings of the library of Worcester Cathedral.
We cannot but think that a collection of books was formed slowly and
steadily here, as in other foundations of the same kind, although
actual records are scanty and meagre. In over forty of the manuscripts
now at Worcester are inscriptions on fly-leaves stating where they were
procured: sometimes the price is given. The dates of these inscriptions
run from about 1283 to 1462, or later.[295] “In 1464,” writes the Rev.
J. K. Floyer, in his article entitled _A Thousand Years of a Cathedral
Library_, “we first hear of a regular endowment for the acquisition of
books. Bishop Carpenter made a library in the charnel house chantry, and
endowed it with £10 for a librarian. The charnel house was near the
north porch of the Cathedral, and stood on or near the site of the
present Precentor’s house. It was a separate institution from the
monastery, and had its own endowments and priests. Bishop Carpenter’s
foundation was probably entirely separate from the collection of books
kept for the use of the monks in the cloister.”[296] At the same time,
the bishop made regulations for the use of the library. The keeper was
to be a graduate in theology, and a good preacher. He was to live in the
chantry, where a dwelling had been erected for him at the end of the
library. Among other duties he had to take care of the books. The
library was to be open to the public every week day for two hours before
Nones (or nine), and for two hours after Nones. This alone was a most
liberal regulation, for making which Bishop Carpenter deserves all
honour. But he went still further. When asked to do so the keeper was to
explain difficult passages of Scripture, and once a week was to deliver
a public lecture in the library. The Bishop’s idea of a library is
precisely that embodied in the modern town library: a collection of good
books, for the free use of the public, with some personal help to the
proper use of them when necessary. Three lists of the books were to be
drawn up, one to be kept by the Bishop, the second by the sacrist, and
the third by the keeper. Once a year stock was taken, and if a book were
missing through the keeper’s neglect, he was to forfeit its value within
a month, or in default was to pay forty-shillings more than the value of
it, one half of the sum to go to the Bishop, the other half to the
sacrist. Unfortunately these and other regulations were not observed
with care, and within forty years the Bishop’s work was completely
neglected and forgotten.
At the Dissolution the Priory was deprived of much of its church plate,
service books and vestments, and probably of many of its books. But the
library there suffered a good deal less than those of other houses, and
the Cathedral now has in its possession some respectable remains of its
ancient collection of books.[297]
§ III
The history of an old library can only be traced intermittently, the
facts playing hide and seek like a distant lantern carried over broken
ground. Little is known of the early history of Hereford’s cathedral
library. An ancient copy of the Gospels, said to have been bequeathed by
the last Saxon bishop, Athelstan (1012), is one of the earliest gifts.
In 1186 Bishop Robert Folliott gave “multa bona in terris et libris.”
Bishop Hugh Folliott also left ornaments and books. Another bishop, R.
de Maidstone, although “vir magnae literaturae, et in theologia
nominatissimus,” only seems to have given the church two antiphonaries,
some psalters, and a _Legenda_. Bishop Charleton (1369) left a Bible, a
concordance, a glossary, Nicholas de Lyra, and five Books of Moses, all
to be chained in the cathedral. Very shortly
[Illustration: _PLATE XIX_
HEREFORD CATHEDRAL LIBRARY: CHAINED BOOKS]
afterwards we hear of fittings, for in 1395 Walter of Ramsbury gave £10
for making the desks. Probably a book-room, which was over the west
cloister, was then put up. A long interval elapsed, during which little
seems to have been done for the library. But between _c._ 1516-35 Bishop
Booth and Dean Frowcester left many fine volumes. In 1589 the book-room
was abandoned and the contents shifted to the Lady Chapel.
A new library was built in 1897. Herein are to be seen what are almost
certainly the original bookcases, albeit they have been taken to pieces
and somewhat altered before being fitted together again. One of the
bookcases still has all the old chains and fittings for the books, and
it presents a very curious appearance. Every chain is from three to four
feet long, with a ring at each end, and a swivel in the middle. One ring
is strung on to an iron rod, which is secured at one end of the bookcase
by metal work, with lock and key. For convenience in using the book on
the reading slope which was attached to the case, the ring at the other
end of the chain was fixed to the fore edge of the book-cover instead of
to the back; when standing on the shelves the books therefore present
their fore edges to the reader. The cases are roughly finished, but very
solid in make.[298]
§ IV
At Old Sarum Church, Bishop Osmund (1078-99) collected, wrote, and bound
books.[299] In his time, too, the chancellor used to superintend the
schools and correct books: either books used in the school or service
books.[300] The income from a virgate of land was assigned to
correcting books towards the end of the twelfth century (1175-80).[301]
The new Salisbury Cathedral was erected in the thirteenth century; but
apparently a special library room was not used until shortly after 1444,
when it was put up to cover the whole eastern cloister. This room was
altered and reduced in size in 1758. About the time the room was
completed one of the canons gave some books, on the inside covers of two
of which is a note in a fifteenth century hand bidding they should be
chained in the new library.[302] Nearly two hundred manuscripts, of
various date from the ninth to the fourteenth century, are now in the
library. Among them several notable volumes are to be found: a Psalter
with curious illuminations; another Psalter, with the Gallican and
Hebrew of Jerome’s translation in parallel columns, also illuminated;
Chaucer’s translation of Boëthius; Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _History of
the Kings of Britain_ of the twelfth century; a thirteenth century
Lectionary, with golden and coloured initials; a Tonale according to
Sarum use, bound with a fourteenth century Ordinal; and a fifteenth
century Processional containing some notes on local customs.
§ V
Books were given to Lincoln Cathedral about 1150 by Hugh of Leicester;
one of them bears the inscription, _Ex dono Hugonis Archidiaconi
Leycestriae_. They may still be seen at Lincoln. Forty-two volumes and a
map came into the charge of Hamo when he became chancellor in 1150.[303]
During his chancellorship thirty-one volumes were added by gift, so
making the total seventy-three volumes: Bishops Alexander and Chesney
were among the benefactors. But here, as at
[Illustration: _PLATE XX_
THE OLD LIBRARY, LINCOLN CATHEDRAL]
Salisbury, not until the fifteenth century was a separate library room
built. Two gifts “to the new library” by Bishop Repyngton--who also
befriended Oxford University Library--and Chancellor Duffield in 1419
and 1426, fix the date. It was put up over the north half of the eastern
cloisters, relatively the same position as at Salisbury and Wells.
Originally it had five bays, but in 1789 the two southernmost bays were
pulled down: In this room the fine fifteenth century oaken roof, with
its carved ornaments, has been preserved, but at Salisbury the roof is
modern, with a plaster ceiling. Lincoln’s new library, designed by Wren
and erected in 1674, is next to this old room. According to a 1450
catalogue now preserved at Lincoln the library contained one hundred and
seven works, more than seventy of which now remain. Among the most
important manuscripts are a mid-fifteenth century copy of old English
romances of great literary value, collected by Robert de Thornton,
archdeacon of Bedford (_c._ 1430); and a contemporary copy of Magna
Carta.
§ VI
In an inventory of St. Paul’s Cathedral, taken in 1245, mention is made
of thirty-five volumes.[304] Before this, in Ralph of Diceto’s time, a
binder of books was an officer of the church. As at Salisbury, the
chancellor’s duties included taking charge of the school
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