LIBRARIES:

An important feature of every monastic school was the library, or tech screptra, as it is styled in the older Irish MSS. When we recall the fame of these schools, the needs of the students, and the number of scribes whose business it was to cater to these needs we might reasonably infer that these libraries were provided with text-books and with books for general reading. These libraries differed widely from our modern libraries. There were no shelves for rows of books, but there was another arrangement which was more suitable for the type of book then in use. The books were kept in satchels hung on pegs or racks round the room. Each satchel containing one or more volumes was labelled on the outside. The satchels were of embossed leather beautifully adorned with designs of interlaced ornament so common in Irish art. Many specimens of these satchels are on view in the National Museum, Dublin, and there is one in Corpus Christi College, Oxford.[302] These satchels were also used when carrying a book from place to place.

The book itself was of parchment. Manuscripts which were greatly valued were usually kept in elaborately embossed leather covers of which two are still preserved, namely, the cover of the Book of Armagh,[303] and that of the Shrine of St. Maidoc.[304]

Books abounded in Ireland when the Danes made their appearance there about the end of the eighth century; hence the pride with which the old writers referred to “the hosts of the books of Erin.” But with the first Danish incursions began an era of burning and pillaging the monasteries and consequently a woeful destruction of MSS., the records of the ancient learning. The special fury of the invaders appears to have been directed against books, monasteries, and monuments of religion. All the books they could lay hands upon they either burned or “drowned” by throwing them into the nearest river, or lake. For two centuries this wanton destruction continued, and ceased only when the Danes were finally crushed at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 A.D.[305]

During the Danish period missionaries and scholars who went abroad carried with them great numbers of MSS. As a result of the exportation as well as of the destruction of MSS. we can merely conjecture as to the extent and value of the books in a library attached to a great Irish monastic school during the period covered by our investigation. Fortunately, however, we are able to describe the contents of the libraries of the Irish establishment of St. Gall in Switzerland, and Bobbio in Italy, and this may serve to give us some idea of the wealth of material the Irish libraries once possessed, but most of it is now irreparably lost.

A catalogue of the Bobbio library was made between the years 967–972 A.D. It is attributed to the Abbot Gerbert who afterwards became Pope Silvester II.[306] At this time the library contained about 700 volumes,[307] of which 479 had been acquired gradually from various unstated sources, and over 220 had been presented by scholars who are named with the list of books they had given,[308] 43 having been a donation from the famous Irish monk Dungal who presided over the school of Pavia.[309] This catalogue itself is strong objective evidence for the claim we are making that the classical authors were read. The list of MSS. shows that both Greek and Latin classics, were well represented. Among others we find works by the following authors: Terence, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucian, Martial, Juvenal, Claudian, Cicero, Seneca, and the Elder Pliny;[310] also Persius, Flaccus, Horace, Demosthenes, and Aristotle.[311]

The greater part of the Bobbio collection has been dispersed through the libraries of Rome, Milan, Naples, and Vienna.[312] It is practically certain that the Ambrosian palimpsest of Plautus and those of several of Cicero’s orations and of the letters of Fronto discovered in the Ambrosian Library (Milan) early in the ninth century all came from the monastery founded by the Irish monk of Bobbio.[313] Among other MSS. which once belonged to Bobbio may be mentioned fragments of Symmachus (in Milan) and the Theodosian Code (formerly in Turin), Scholia on Cicero (v. century) MSS. of St. Luke (v.–vi. cent.), St. Severinus (vi. cent.), Josephus (vi.–vii.), Gregory’s Dialogue (c. 750) and St. Isadore’s (before 840). Last but not least we must mention the “Muratori Fragment” (viii. cent., or earlier), the earliest extant list of Books of the New Testament.[314]

St. Agilius (St. Aile), a pupil of St. Columbanus the founder of Bobbio, was first abbot of the monastery founded at Resbacus (Rébais, east of Paris) in 634 A.D.[315] The MSS. copied there included the works of Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Donatus, Priscian and Boethius.[316]

The libraries of the Irish monasteries of Würzburg and Reichau seem to have been large and important. Many existing Irish MSS. come from these two monasteries. Unfortunately, no old catalogue of the Würzburg collection seems to have come down to us. In the case of Reichau (Augia Major) on Lake Constance a catalogue was made while Erlebald was abbot between 822 and 838 A.D. The number of MSS. given in this catalogue is 415 of which 30 were written in Erlebald’s time.[317]

Important though the collections of Rébais, Würzburg and Reichau undoubtedly were they are overshadowed by the greater fame of Bobbio. Indeed there is only one library that could compare with Bobbio either for the extent or the value of its MSS., and that was the library of St. Gall or Sangallen in Switzerland. This great monastery was founded by St. Gall (in Irish Cellach), the pupil and companion of St. Columbanus, about the year of 612 A.D. In the ninth century the library of St. Gall possessed 533 volumes, nine of them being palimpsests.[318] This library was famous during the Middle Ages. The Fathers who attended the Council of Constance depended mainly for reference on the valuable MSS. in this library to which they had free access; and, sad to relate, when the Council broke up in 1418 A.D. many of these holy men neglected to return these valuable old theological works in Latin and Greek.[319] This same library came to another loss two years earlier, in 1416, when Poggio, the Florentine scholar, with two learned friends who had been engaged at the Council visited St. Gall. Having a season of leisure they made a search for some missing volumes of Cicero, Livy, and other classical writers. Nor were they disappointed. Among other precious tomes they discovered the well-known Argonauticon of Flaccus, copies of eight of Cicero’s orations with valuable commentaries by Asconius Pedianus, the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius, also the works of Priscian, of Quintilian, of Lucretius, and of other great scholars.[320]

In many libraries of Europe there are MSS. written, or copied, by Irish monks during the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. These MSS. are bound together into Codices which are named either after the principal work included therein, or after the monastery where they were written, or sometimes from the library where they are at present deposited. These Codices contain copies of the classics, treatises on grammar, the Psalms, the Epistles of St Paul, and other portions of the Scriptures, Lives of the Saints, Hymns, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, &c. Scribes when studying these often added glosses and scholia either on the margin or between the lines to explain the Latin and Greek words of the text. Sometimes as in the case of the Psalms and of Priscian’s grammatical tract these glosses were copious and show that the scribe had availed himself freely of the work of earlier commentators. These glosses have been a rich mine to students of philology and have been extensively used for linguistic purposes containing as they do many of the most archaic forms of the Irish language. The meaning of these Old Irish words can now be obtained from the Greek and Latin words which were originally explained by the Irish words. Some of these MSS. were written by Irishmen on the Continent, while others were written in Ireland and carried to the Continent by other monks who deposited them in the libraries of their monasteries.

LIST[321] OF LIBRARIES CONTAINING MSS. WITH IRISH GLOSSES THEREON NOT LATER THAN END OF NINTH OR BEGINNING OF TENTH CENTURY:

  1. Trinity College Library, Dublin.
  2. Library of the Franciscan Monastery, Dublin.
  3. Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.
  4. British Museum, London.
  5. Lambert Library, South London.
  6. University Library, Cambridge, England.
  7. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
  8. St. John’s College, Cambridge.
  9. Bodleian Library, Oxford, England.
  10. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
  11. Library of Nancy.
  12. Library of Cambray.
  13. University Library, Leyden.
  14. University Library, Würzburg.
  15. Hof-und Landesbibliothek, Carlsruhe.
  16. Royal Library, Munich.
  17. Library of the Monastery of Engelberg.
  18. Library of St. Paul’s Kloster in Carinthia.
  19. Royal Library, Dresden.
  20. Stadtbibliothek, Schaffhausen.
  21. Royal Library, Vienna.
  22. Stifsbibliothek, St. Gall.
  23. Stadtbibliothek, Berne.
  24. Ambrosian Library, Milan.
  25. Vatican Library, Rome.
  26. University Library, Turin.
  27. Biblioteca Nazionale, Turin.
  28. Laurentian Library, Florence.

These numerous and valuable MSS. that have come down to us are in themselves the most convincing evidence of the zeal of the Irish monks for the promotion and transmission of classical learning. There can be little doubt that these Irish scholars under the most adverse circumstances fostered learning during the dark ages that preceded the Renaissance and, as we have seen, when the great awakening came one of the sources from which the treasures of classical antiquity emerged were the monastic libraries that contained the MSS. copied, or preserved, with loving care by Irish scribes and scholars.

In this chapter we have endeavoured to show how the zeal for learning which inspired the teacher in the class-room was carried into the scriptorium; how the scribes with patient industry copied, and so transmitted, the relics of classical antiquity; and how these relics were preserved to the afterworld in the great monastic libraries. The direct contribution made by the Irish monks of the Early Middle Ages to contemporary education will be studied in the next chapter. Here we would emphasise the fact that the full significance of the Irish monastic schools as an educational factor cannot be understood unless we realize the importance of the combined, as well as the separate, contribution of these three great centres of intellectual activity, the school, the scriptorium and the library.