Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

Public Libraries.

—Of the libraries of antiquity, only a single one, and that the latest in foundation, the Imperial Library of Constantinople, continued in existence as late as the Middle Ages. This library, founded in 354 by the Emperor Constantius, was largely added to by Julian the Philosopher. Under the Emperor Basiliscus, the original library, which at that time was said to have contained no less than 120,000 volumes, was destroyed by fire. It was afterwards reinstituted by the Emperor Zeno, the prefect of the city, Julian, having given to the work his personal supervision. References are made to this library in 1276, and again early in the fourteenth century, when John Palæologus was able to present from it certain manuscripts (probably duplicates) to the well known manuscript dealer Aurispa of Venice. It is probable that the manuscripts of the imperial collection had been to some extent scattered before the fall of the city in 1453. Such manuscripts as had escaped destruction during the confusion of the siege of the city were hidden away by the scholars interested, in various monasteries and in out-of-the-way corners, from which they were brought out by degrees during the following two or three centuries.

Large quantities of these manuscripts found their way, however, very promptly to Italy, chiefly through Venice, and, as is described in another chapter, not a few of the Greek scholars who were driven from the Byzantine territories, or who refused to live under the rule of the Turk, brought with them into Italy, as their sole valuable possessions, collections of manuscripts, more or less important, which they used either as texts for their lectures or for transcribing for sale.

The collections in the monasteries of the West, brought together in the first place simply for the requirements of the monks and restricted (at least in theory) to devotional or doctrinal books, were, in large measure at least, placed at the disposal of scholars and readers outside of the monasteries, as the interest in literature came to extend beyond the class of ecclesiastics. With this extension of the use of the libraries, there came a natural development in the range of the books collected.

Long after the monks or ecclesiastics had ceased to exercise any control over the books or to be themselves the only readers interested in their preservation and use, the most convenient space for the collection was to be found in the church buildings. Many of the collections came, in fact, to be known as cathedral libraries.

In certain cases, books or money for the purchase of books was bequeathed in trust to ecclesiastical authorities with the direct purpose of providing a library for the use of the general public. The cathedral Prior of Vercelli (in Piedmont), Jacob Carnarius, who died in 1234, left his books to the Dominicans of S. Paul. He made it, however, a condition of the bequest that under proper security of deposit or pledge, the books should be placed at the disposal of any scholars desiring their use, and particularly of instructors in the Theological Faculty of the University of Vercelli.

Petrarch’s library was bequeathed in 1362 to the Church of S. Mark in Venice, with the condition that the collection was to be for the use of the general public. The books were neglected, and for some time disappeared altogether, and it was only in 1635 that a portion of them were recovered. The famous library of S. Mark dates from 1468, when Cardinal Bessarion presented to the city eight hundred manuscripts, assigning as his reason for the gift the generous hospitality extended by Venice to the refugees from Constantinople. These books were to be for the use of any qualified citizens of the city, a pledge of double the value being deposited for any manuscript borrowed. The library of Boccaccio, who died in 1375, was bequeathed to the monks of the Holy Ghost in Florence. This library was afterwards added to by the collection of the famous theologian, Luigi Marsigli, and that of Niccolo Niccoli.[243]

To Florence, which stood at the front of the intellectual development of Italy, belongs the credit of instituting the largest and most important of the earlier public libraries of Italy. Niccolo Niccoli, one of the most energetic of the scholarly book collectors, specified in his will, made in 1430, that his manuscripts should be placed in the Camal-dulensian monastery of S. Maria, where his friend Traversari was prior, and that these manuscripts were to be available for public use. In 1437, however, the day before his death, he added a codicil to his will, under which the decision as to the abiding-place for his manuscripts was left to sixteen trustees.

He died in debt, however, and the books would have been seized by his creditors if they had not been redeemed by Cosimo de’ Medici. Cosimo placed them in the Dominican monastery of S. Mark, the collection in which, in 1444, comprised four hundred Latin and Greek manuscripts. Cosimo gave much care to the further development of this collection. As has already been mentioned, he used for the purpose the services of the great manuscript dealer, Vespasiano. After the earthquake of 1453, he caused the library building to be restored with greater magnificence than before. The care of the library was continued, after the death of Cosimo, by his son Pietro, and the collection finally became the foundation of the famous Laurentian library, which is in existence to-day.

Pietro took pains to send the Greek grammarian, Laskaris, twice to the Orient to collect further manuscripts. From his first journey, Laskaris brought back no less than two hundred works, of which eighty had not heretofore been known in Italy. On his second journey, Laskaris died.

The library suffered much during the invasion of Charles VIII., but a large proportion of the books were redeemed from the French invaders by the Dominican monks, who paid for them three thousand gulden.

Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici (later Pope Leo X.) took the collection from the monastery with him to Rome, but it was afterwards returned to Florence by Pope Clemens VII.

Clemens gave to Michel Angelo the commission to build a hall for the library, but both Pope and architect died before the work was completed, and the building took shape only finally in 1571, the plan of Michel Angelo having been carried out in substance.

The library of the Vatican passed through various vicissitudes according to the interest or the lack of interest of the successive popes, but under Pope Nicholas V. (1447-1455) it became one of the most important collections in the world for the use of scholars. In 1471, Sixtus IV. completed the library building and the rooms for the archives and added many works, and it was under this Pope that the use of the books was thrown open (under certain conditions) to the general public.

Frederick, Duke of Urbino, is reported to have spent as much as 40,000 ducats on the ducal collection in Urbino, and Vespasiano rendered important services in the selection and development of this library. The books were, in 1657, under the papacy of Alexander VII., transferred to the Vatican.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there was very considerable interest in literary work in Hungary and some noteworthy collections of manuscripts were there brought together. The collectors in Italy found in fact some of their richest treasures, particularly in manuscripts in Greek, in the monasteries of Hungary and of Transylvania. The cause of literature was much furthered by King Matthias Corvinus, who brought together a very valuable collection in Ofen. He kept four scribes in Florence preparing works for the Ofen library, and thirty were continually at work in Ofen itself. His wife, Beatrix, who was a daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples, and a grand-daughter of Alfonso the Good, is said to have exercised no little influence upon the literary culture of the Hungarian Court. At her instance, many Italian scholars were brought to Hungary, and their aid utilised in completing the library. The codices Budences came to be well known in the scholarly world, and secured fame both for the beauty of their script and the richness of their adornment. Wattenbach says of these, however, that their text is very largely inaccurate, giving the impression that the transcripts had been prepared hurriedly and to order. After the death of King Matthias, a number of his books came into the possession of Emperor Maximilian, who used them for the foundation of the Court Library of Vienna. This was the only portion of the original Hungarian collection which escaped destruction at the hands of the Turks.

Among the public libraries in France is to be noted that of Louis IX., which was open for the use of scholars, but which, being limited almost entirely to devotional books, could not have been of any great scholarly service. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard de Furnival, chancellor of the Cathedral of Amiens, instituted a public library, and himself wrote, as a guide for the same, a work entitled Biblionomia.

The libraries of S. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg have already been referred to.[244]

According to Savigny, there were before the time of printing no university libraries in Italy. The stationarii provided both instructors and students with such books as were prescribed in the courses, and the demand for others appears not to have been great. In Paris, on the other hand, a collection of books for the use of the students was instituted as early as 1270, the first benefactor being Stephen, Archdeacon of Canterbury. Stephen gave his books to the church of Notre Dame to be loaned to poor students of theology. In 1297, Peter of Joigny, in continuation of the same work, gave a collection of books in trust to the university directly for the use of these poor students of theology. The famous College of the Sorbonne probably dates from 1253. The librarium of the college was instituted in 1289, and it was specified that the books were for the common use of the instructors and students. The catalogue of this collection, prepared in the following year, is still in existence and contains 1017 titles.[245]

Each socius of the college had a key to the library rooms and was permitted to take guests in with him. The books were all fastened to the wall or to the reading-desks by chains, so that the risk of abstraction was not a serious one. The statutes of 1321 prescribed that of every work issued, one copy in the best form must be preserved for the Sorbonne collection. This is probably the first statute of the kind having in view the preservation, in a public collection, of copies of all works produced. It is to be borne in mind, however, in the first place, that it could have had reference only to books produced under the direct supervision of the college, and secondly, that there was here no question of original literary production, but merely of copies of the older works accepted as possessing doctrinal authority. The books in this library (and probably in other similar libraries) which were not protected by chains were called libri vagantes, and these could, under certain restrictions, be loaned out. Wattenbach is of opinion, however, that no books other than duplicates were placed in this class.

Another library of importance was contained in the College of Narbonne, which had been founded in 1316, and which was itself a continuation of an earlier foundation instituted in 1238 by the Archbishop Peter, at the time he was about to take part in the Crusade. The books were to be open for the use of students as well in Paris as of Narbonne.[246]

In the College of Plessis, the statutes of 1455 described that all books, with the exception of the Missals, must be chained, and that no unchaining should be permitted except with the authorisation of the master of all the bursars. In the College of the Scots, the loaning of books outside of the building was absolutely forbidden.

To the College of the Sorbonne belongs the credit of taking the initiative step in inviting the first printers to Paris. In 1469, the prior and the librarian made themselves responsible for finding work and support for two printers, called to Paris from Mayence. The fact that the Prior Johann Heynlin was himself a German was doubtless of influence in bringing to the college early information concerning the importance of the new art.[247] The first book which was printed in Paris was the letters of Gasparin of Bergamo, which appeared in 1470 (twenty years after the perfecting of the Gutenberg press), and bore the imprint in ædibus Sorbonnæ.

In England, the foundation of the Franciscans in Oxford took, early in the thirteenth century, active part in furthering library facilities for the clerics and the students. They appear to have had two collections, one called libraria conventus, doubtless restricted to theological and religious books, and one described as libraria scholarium or studentium, which contained a number of examples of the classics. It was to the Franciscans that Bishop Grosseteste, who died in 1253, bequeathed all his books.

The interest in literature of Richard de Bury, the friend of Petrarch, has already been referred to. He was the instructor of King Edward III., and exercised later, important official responsibilities. He served as a foreign representative more than once, and was for a time chancellor of the kingdom. At the time of his death in 1345, he was Bishop of Durham. He had a passion for the collecting of books, and with the exceptional advantages of wealth, official station, and knowledge of distant countries, he had advantages in this pursuit possessed by no other Englishman of the time. It is said that the other rooms in his house having already been crowded with books, these were massed in his bedroom also in such quantities that he could get to his bed only by stepping upon them. His library was bequeathed to Durham College in Oxford, which had been founded by himself. The college was discontinued by Henry VIII., and the books were scattered, not even the catalogue, which Bury had himself prepared, having been preserved. In confiding his books to Oxford for the use of the students, Richard gives various earnest injunctions as to the proper respect in which they should be held and the care with which they should be handled. A reader who should handle the books with dirty hands or while eating or drinking, could, in Bury’s opinion, be fitly punished with nothing less than banishment. The collection of Durham College was to be open not only to the use of the members of the college itself, but of all masters and students in Oxford, but no books of which there were no duplicates were to be taken out of the building.

The earliest university library of Germany was that of the College Carolinum in Prague, instituted by Charles IV. The next in date appears to have been that of Heidelberg, where as early as 1386 the Faculty of Arts had a library for itself in addition to the general collection belonging to the university. As before stated, there was also a collection in the Castle which was open for the use of all readers, students, citizens, or strangers. The university library in Vienna dates from 1415, and that in Erfurt from 1433. The town library in Leipzig had for its origin a collection possessed by the Augustinian monks in the monastery of S. Thomas, which collection was thrown open for the use of the public in 1445. Additions to the library were to be made only under the inspection and supervision of the monastery authorities.

The most noteworthy library which had no connection with any university was instituted at Alzei (in Hesse Cassel) in 1409. Its founders were Johannes of Kirchdorf, Prebendary of the Cathedral of Worms and chaplain of King Rupert.

The books were given in order that the clerics and other scholarly people who belonged to the city of Alzei “could use the same for entertainment and instruction, and could spread among the community at large the learning contained therein.”[248]

In Hamburg there was, as early as 1469, a collection comprising forty volumes of medical books, for the use more particularly of the city physician and his assistant, and also for general reference. In 1480 the burgermeister Neuermeister left a considerable legacy for the foundation of a city library. In Frankfort, the library of the Carmelite monastery was taken over in 1477 for the use of the city, in order that the “books could be made of service for the enlightenment of the community to the greater glory of God and of the Mother of God.”