Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

The Earlier Monkish Scribes.

—The literary work begun under the direction of Cassiodorus in the scriptorium of Viviers, and enjoined by S. Benedict upon his monks at Monte Cassino, was, as said, carried on by successive generations of monastic scribes during a number of centuries. In fact, until the organisation of the older universities, in the latter part of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, the production and the reproduction of literature was practically confined to the monasteries. “The monasteries,” says Maitland, in his erudite and vivacious work, The Dark Ages, “were, in those days of misrule and turbulence, beyond all price not only as places where (it may be imperfectly, but better than elsewhere) God was worshipped, ... but as central points whence agriculture was to spread over bleak hills and barren downs and marshy plains, and deal its bread to millions perishing with hunger and its pestilential train; as repositories of the learning which then was, and as well-springs for the learning which was to be; as nurseries of art and science, giving to invention the stimulus, the means, and the reward; and attracting to themselves every head that could devise and every hand that could execute; as the nucleus of the city which in after days of pride should crown its palaces and bulwarks with the towering cross of its cathedral.”[23] It was fortunate for the literary future of Europe that the Benedictine Order, which had charged itself with literary responsibilities, should have secured almost from the outset so considerable a development and should for centuries have remained the greatest and most influential of all the monastic orders. At the beginning of the ninth century, Charlemagne ordered an inquiry to be made (as into a matter requiring careful research) as to whether there were any monks who professed any other rule than the Rule of S. Benedict; from which it would appear that such monks were considered as rare and noteworthy exceptions.

While the two monasteries of Cassiodorus in Calabria and the Benedictine foundation of Monte Cassino near Naples, were entitled to first reference on the ground of the exceptional influence exercised by them upon the literary development of the monks, they were by no means the earliest of the western monastic foundations. This honour belongs, according to Denk,[24] to the monastery of Ligugé, near Poitiers (Monasterium Locociagense), founded in 360 A.D. by Bishop Martin of Tours. The second in point of date, that of Marmoutier, near Tours, was instituted by the same bishop a year or two later. Gaul proved to be favourable ground for the spread of monastic tenets and influence, and by the year 400 its foundations included over two thousand monks.

In 405, S. Honoratus, later Bishop of Arles, founded a monastery on the island of Lerin, on the south coast of France, which became a most important centre of learning and the mother of many monasteries.[25] In the educational work carried on at Lerin, full consideration was given to classic authors, such as Cicero, Virgil, and Xenophon, as well as to the writings of the Fathers, and the scribes were kept busied in the production of copies.

There must have been a certain amount of literary activity also in the monasteries of the East and of Africa some time before any of the monastic foundations in Europe had come into existence. The numerous writings of the Fathers secured a wide circulation among the faithful, a circulation which could have been possible only through the existence of efficient staffs of skilled scribes and in connection with some system of distribution between widely separated churches. Teachers like Origen in Cæsarea, in the third century, and S. Jerome in Bethlehem and S. Augustine in Hippo, in the fifth century, put forth long series of writings, religious, philosophical, and polemical, with apparently an assured confidence that these would reach wide circles of contemporary readers, and that they would be preserved also for generations to come. The sacking of Rome by Alaric (in 410) is used by S. Augustine as a text or occasion for the publication of his beautiful conception of “The City of God” in much the same manner as a preacher of later times might have based a homily on the burning of Moscow or the fall of Paris. The preacher of Hippo speaks as if he were addressing, not the small circle of his African diocese, but mankind at large. And he was, of course, justified in his faith, for the De Civitate Dei was the book which, next to the Scriptures, was most surely to be found in every monastery in Europe, while when the work of the scriptorium was replaced by the printing-press, it became one of the most frequently printed books in Europe. It appears from a reference by S. Augustine, that nuns as well as monks were included among the African scribes. In speaking of a nun named Melania, who, early in the fifth century, founded a convent at Tagaste, near Carthage, he says that she had “gained her living by transcribing manuscripts,” and mentions that she wrote swiftly, beautifully, and correctly,—scribebat et celeriter et pulchre, citra errorem.[26]

The scribe-work in the monasteries of Africa and of the East was, therefore, sufficiently effective to preserve large portions of the writings of the Fathers and of other early Christian teachers, and it is, in fact, to the libraries of these Eastern monasteries that is chiefly due the preservation of the long series of Greek texts which found their way into Europe after the Renaissance. I have, however, been able to find no record of the system pursued in the scriptoria and armaria of the Greek monasteries, and the narrative in the present chapter is, therefore, confined to a sketch of the literary undertakings of the monks of the West.

The earliest known example of the work of a European monk dates from the year 517. The manuscript is in the Capitular library in Verona, and has been reproduced in fac-simile by Ottley. The script is that known as half uncial.[27] At the time this manuscript was being written, Theodoric the Goth was ruling in Italy, with Cassiodorus as his minister, and the monastery at Viviers was still to be founded.

S. Gregory the Great, who became Pope in 590, exercised an important influence over the intellectual interests of his age. Gregory had been charged with having destroyed the ancient monuments of Rome, with having burned the Palatine library, including the writings of Cicero and Livy, with having expelled the mathematicians from Rome, and with having reprimanded Bishop Didier of Vienna (in Gaul) for teaching grammar to children. Montalembert contends that these charges are all slanders and that the Pope was not only an unequalled scholar, but that he fully appreciated the importance for the intellectual development of the Church, of a knowledge of the classics. Gregory is quoted as saying, in substance: “The devils know well that the knowledge of profane literature helps us to understand sacred literature. In dissuading us from this study, they act as the Philistines did when they interdicted the Israelites from making swords and lances, and obliged that nation to come to them for the sharpening of their axes and plough-shares.”[28] Gregory was himself the author of a considerable series of writings, and, while his Latin was not that of Cicero, he contributed (according to Ozanam) as much as did S. Augustine to form the new Latin, what might be called the Christian Latin, which was destined to become the language of the pulpit and the school, and which forms the more immediate foundation of an important group of the languages of modern Europe.

His works include the Sacramentary, which determined the language and the form of the Liturgy, a series of Dialogues, and a Pastoral, in which were collected a series of discourses planned to regulate the vocation, life, and doctrines of the pastors. Of this book, Ozanam says that it gave form and life to the entire hierarchical body. Then came a series of commentaries on the Scriptures, followed by no less than thirty-five books called Moralia, which were commentaries on the Book of Job. His last important production was a series of Epistles, comprised in thirteen volumes. He may possibly have been the most voluminous author since classic times, and his books had the special advantage of reaching circles of readers who were waiting for them, and of being distributed through the already extended machinery of the Church.

Another important ecclesiastical author of the same generation was Isidore, Bishop of Seville. The Spanish Liturgy compiled by him and known as the Mozarabic, survived the ruin of the Visigothic Church and was thought by the great Cardinal Ximenes worthy of resuscitation. Isidore also wrote a history of the Goths and a translation of the philosophy of Aristotle. He may be considered as the first scholar to introduce to Europe of the Middle Ages the teachings of Greek philosophy. His greatest undertaking was, however, in the form of an encyclopædia, treating, under the heading of the Seven Liberal Arts, of all the learning that was within his reach. It was entitled Twenty Books of Etymologies, or The Origin of Things, and included in its volumes a number of classical fragments which, without the care of its editor, would probably have perished forever.

Isidore is the first Christian who arranged and edited for Christians the literature of antiquity. He died in 636, but the incentive that he had given to learning and to literature survived him in a numerous group of disciples.[29] Among Isidore’s pupils was King Sisebut, whose interest in scholarship caused him to endow liberally a number of the Spanish monasteries.