CHAPTER VI
[1] From the sixth to the twelfth centuries.
[2] The story which has come down to us of the German warrior who, on being shown into an anteroom, saw some ducks swimming in the floor and dashed his battle-axe at them to see if they were real, thus ruining the beautiful mosaic, is typical of the time.
[3] During the period of Rome's greatness the publishing business became an important one. Manuscripts were copied in numbers by trained writers, and books were officially published. Both public and private libraries became common, men of wealth often having large libraries. These were found in the provincial towns as well as in the large Italian cities, and in country villas as well as in town houses.
By the beginning of the eighth century books had become so scarce that monasteries guarded their treasures with great care (R. 65), and books were borrowed from long distances that copies might be made.
[4] Charlemagne (King of Frankland, 768-814), for example, found it necessary to order that priests and monks must show themselves capable of changing the wording of the masses for the living and the dead, as circumstances required, from singular to plural, or from masculine to feminine.
[5] Longfellow's poem Monte Cassino is interesting reading here. Of Benedict he says:
"He founded here his Convent and his Rule
Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer;
The pen became a clarion, and his school
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air."
[6] Sometimes as early as eleven to twelve years of age. The novitiate course was two years, but as the vows could not be taken before eighteen, the course of instruction often covered six to eight years.
[7] To teach a novice to copy accurately a manuscript book was quite a different thing from the teaching of writing to-day, It was more nearly comparable to present-day instruction in lettering in a college engineering course, as it called for a degree of workmanship and accuracy not required in ordinary writing.
[8] The Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Bible made by Saint Jerome, at the close of the fourth century. The Old Testament he translated mostly from the Hebrew and Chaldaic, and the New Testament he revised from the older Latin versions. This is the only version of the Scriptures which the Roman Catholic Church admits as authentic.
[9] Letters from one monastery to another, and from one country to another, begging the loan of some ancient book, have been preserved in numbers. Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières in France, for example, wrote to Rome in 855, and addressing himself to the Pope in person, requested a complete copy of Cicero's De Oratore, which he desired.
[10] The Missal is a book containing the service of the mass for the entire year. The Psalter the book of Psalms.
[11] From manu scriptum, meaning written by hand.
[12] So expensive of time and effort was the production of books by this method that many of the manuscripts now extant were written crosswise on sheets from which the previous writing had been largely erased by chemical or mechanical means. How many valuable ancient manuscripts were lost in this manner no one knows. Fortunately the practice was not common until after the thirteenth century, when the rise of the universities and the spread of learning made new demands for skins for writing purposes.
[13] That the printing was not always carefully done is shown by the constant need, throughout the Middle Ages, of correct copies for comparison. The following injunction of the Abbot Alcuin to the monks at Tours, given at the beginning of the ninth century, is illustrative of the need for care in copying:
"Here let the scribes sit who copy out the words of the Divine Law, and likewise the hallowed sayings of Holy Fathers. Let them beware of interspersing their own frivolities in the words they copy, nor let a trifler's hand make mistakes through haste. Let them earnestly seek out for themselves correctly written books to transcribe, that the flying pen may speed along the right path. Let them distinguish the proper sense by colons and commas, and set the points, each one in its due place, and let not him who reads the words to them either read falsely or pause suddenly. It is a noble work to write out holy books, nor shall the scribe fail of his due reward. Writing books is better than planting vines, for he who plants a vine serves his belly, but he who writes a book serves his soul."
[14] West, A. F., Alcuin, pp. 72-73.
[15] The largest monastic library on the Continent was Fulda, which specialized in the copying of manuscripts. In 1561 it had 774 volumes. In England the largest collections were at Canterbury, which in the fourteenth century possessed 698 volumes, and at Peterborough, which had 344 volumes at about the same time. The library of Croyland, also in England, burned in 1091, at that time contained approximately 700 volumes. These represented the largest collections in Europe.
[16] The Hortus Delicarum of the Abbess Herrard, of the convent of Hohenburg, in Alsace, was a famous illustration of artistic workmanship. This was an attempt to embody, in encyclopaedic form, the knowledge of her time. The manuscript was embellished with hundreds of beautiful pictures, and was long preserved as a wonderful exhibition of mediaeval skill. It was lost to civilization, along with many other treasures, when the Prussians bombarded Strassburg, in 1870.
[17] He there "enjoyed advantages which could not perhaps have been found anywhere else in Europe at the time—perfect access to all the existing sources of learning in the West. Nowhere else could he acquire at once the Irish, the Roman, the Gallician, and the Canterbury learning; the accumulated stores of books which Benedict (founder and abbot) had bought at Rome and at Vienne; or the disciplinary instruction drawn from the monasteries on the Continent, as well as from Irish missionaries." (Bishop Stubbs, Dictionary of Christian Biography, article on Bede.)
[18] West, A. F., Alcuin, pp. 45-47.
[19] Annals of Xanten, 846 A.D.
[20] Ibid., 851 A.D.
[21] Annals of Saint Vaast, 884 A.D.
[22] It is related that ignorant court officials, fearing the king's displeasure, sought to learn from their children.
[23] Through Alfred's efforts, the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was begun, that the people of England might be able to read the history of their country in their own language.