Wanderings of Latin MSS.: the Continent
We are now to concern ourselves with the later destinies of the books which we have seen in the making. Here generalities will be less in place; nevertheless, I must begin with some.
There are two main classes of persons interested in MSS.: those who care for their literary contents, and those who prize them for their artistic beauty. Roughly speaking—very roughly—the precious literary things of ancient times were preserved in monastic and cathedral libraries, and the beautiful things in palaces and castles and church treasuries. I do not forget that poetry and romance in the vernacular were chiefly in the hands of the laity, nor do I depreciate their value as literature.
The ancient books, pagan and Christian, are perhaps to be regarded as the backbone of the subject, and therefore the first part of my enquiry shall be devoted to the ecclesiastical libraries, and considerations of space shall rule me on the other head.
The monastic and cathedral libraries can be best treated by countries. France, Germany, and England will serve as specimens. Of Italy perhaps enough has been said incidentally to attract attention to the most important centres, such as Bobbio, Monte Cassino, and Verona, and upon the whole I do not think that in Italy this class of library played so great a part in the later Middle Ages as it did in the rest of Europe.
France is full of Latin MSS. Every considerable town, besides many that are inconsiderable, has its public library, into which at the Revolution were collected the remains of the libraries of the religious houses of the district. France's Dissolution came at a time when many eyes were open to the possible value of ancient books, and strings could be pulled and influence exercised to stem the unreasoning fury that said:
We'll pull all arts and learning down,
And hey, then, up go we!
It is easier, also, to rescue books than buildings. The Revolutionists tore down a cathedral, and it is gone; but books are portable and, moreover, do not burn or tear or drown easily, especially vellum MSS.; and when the first hurricane of idiocy had blown over they were very likely found, rather dustier than before, still on their shelves.
Nowadays our methods are more effective, of course; but I have said as much about that as I can bear.
If, then, one took a map of France and marked down the principal abbeys, one would have a fair prima-facie indication where to look for their MSS. From Corbie, you would say, they went to Amiens, from Cîteaux to Dijon, from Bec and Mont St. Michel to Avranches, and so on. This would be right, but there are exceptions. Corbie, a specially important library, is one.
When in 1636 the French under Louis XIII. regained that territory from the Spaniards, the precarious situation of its treasures was recognized, and 400 select MSS. were taken to Paris. The Reformed Benedictines of the Congregation of St. Maur had done much at Corbie for the preservation of the books, and they now petitioned that the Corbie MSS. might not be alienated from the Order, "n' ayant personne qui soit si jaloux de conserver l'héritage de leurs pères que les propres enfants." The petition was successful, and the MSS. were placed in the Abbey of St. Germain des Près at Paris. This was in 1638. In 1791, during the Revolutionary troubles, there was a fire at the abbey, and in the confusion a batch of early books was stolen. These came into the hands of a Russian envoy, Dubrowsky, and most of them, if not all, are (or were until a more recent Revolution) in the Imperial Library at Petrograd. The rest, still a great collection, were drafted out of St. Germain into the National Library in 1795-96. Meanwhile a large number (including some very important books) had remained at Corbie, and these did go to Amiens in or about 1791.
But before 1636 Corbie MSS. had begun to stray from home. One fairly clear case seems to be that of the Harley MS. 3,063, which was once in the library founded late in the fifteenth century at Cues, on the Moselle, by Cardinal Nicholas of Cues (Cusanus). It is one of two copies of the Latin version of Theodore of Mopsuestia's Commentary on the Pauline Epistles. The other is a Corbie book at Amiens. Both show the same gaps and blanks in the text, but the one is not believed to be a direct copy of the other. Both go back to a common original.
Other Corbie books are at Montpellier. They had a long roundabout journey to get there. Part of a magnificent collection formed by successive Bouhiers (seven of whom were Presidents of the Parlement de Bourgogne, and lived at Dijon), they were bought in 1781 from the heir of the last Bouhier by the last Abbot but one of Clairvaux. Then, when Clairvaux was suppressed at the Revolution, its library went to Troyes. Government commissioners were sent round to look through the departmental libraries and note the most valuable MSS. and printed books. One of those who visited Troyes was a Montpellier professor, Dr. Prunelle. The 300 and odd MSS. which he put aside would, if precedent had been followed, have gone to Paris, but they did in fact go to the famous old school of medicine at Montpellier, and there they are at this day.
One at least of the remarkable collection given by Archbishop Parker to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge (193), is a Corbie book—a product evidently of the Corbie scriptorium, though it bears on its first leaf the traces of an inscription of ownership which, illegible as it is, does seem to be that of another monastery. Parker's is, on the whole, so English a collection that the presence of this early French book arrests attention. It does not, however, stand quite alone; there is a rather similar one (334) which Professor Lindsay tells me is a Laon book of about the same (eighth-century) date.
Corbie has occupied a considerable space, but it is entitled to do so on several accounts. The number of early MSS. traceable to it is very large, their intrinsic interest is high, and for a third reason I may again quote Professor Lindsay as having decided, from a minute study of the abbreviations used by Corbie scribes, that Anglo-Saxon influences were at work in the formation of its peculiar hand.
Corbie was, as I have hinted before, but one of many venerable centres of learning in the northern half of France. I shall not attempt a list of them, but go on to note one salient fact, that the southern half of the country is noticeably the poorer in MSS.
At Autun and Lyons, both of them magnificent cities in Roman times, some very ancient books did linger, and here is room for a digression. Lyons had a Pentateuch in Latin which was a great rarity, for not only was it in uncials of the fifth century, but it was of the Old Latin version, that made from the Greek before St. Jerome made his version from the Hebrew, which we call the Vulgate.
Rather before the middle of the nineteenth century an Italian adventurer of some learning and little virtue, the Chevalier Guglielmo (etc.) Libri, obtained employment under the French Government in the Department of Public Instruction, and was sent on a tour of inspection among provincial libraries. He made this the occasion for increasing a collection of MSS. which he had already begun for his private uses. Where he found that the town librarian was a good easy man, he removed (silently) from his keeping a selection of the most precious volumes, or, if it seemed unsafe to take the whole of a MS., he detached some few quires. Now and then he left a less valuable book in the place of the other. His best hunting-grounds were Tours, Orléans, and Lyons. At Lyons he conveyed away the Book of Leviticus and part of Numbers out of the Pentateuch. He had skilled workmen in his pay at Paris, who wrote names of other (generally Italian) monasteries and former owners on the first page of the stolen books, and otherwise disguised them; when he had made up a selection of a suitable bulk and attractiveness, he looked about for a wealthy purchaser, and found one in the Earl of Ashburnham, who bought en bloc, and whose manuscripts were not readily made accessible to the public. So the Lyons Leviticus and an illustrated sixth-century Pentateuch from Tours and many other precious things from Fleury (near Orléans) and elsewhere reposed in England until the early eighties, when M. Leopold Delisle made public the result of a most patient and most subtle investigation of the whole fraud, and a selection of the best of the plunder was got back for France. Sad to say, the municipalities which had been most negligent in keeping their MSS. refused to contribute to the recovery of them. They are still at Paris, to the advantage of students, but to the discredit of the provinces.
Meanwhile Libri's reputation had been thoroughly blown upon, and he retired from France, and was dead in Italy or elsewhere before his crimes had been atoned for. A great mass of his accumulations was bought from the Ashburnhams by the Italians and is now at Florence. Madame Libri survived, like Madame Fosco, to defend his memory.
To return. In spite of the long history and great wealth of Bordeaux, Marseilles, Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, you will not trace many famous books to those places. The city which, on the whole, has preserved its early manuscripts best is Albi, but it was never a great centre of learning, and its library, though extremely interesting, is not large.
However, we need not be surprised at the poverty of a region which has had to undergo Albigensian crusades, English occupation, wars of religion, and a revolution.
Some of the great early libraries of Germany were mentioned in our historical survey. Fulda and Lorsch were as remarkable as any. At the present day Fulda retains only the few Bonifacian MSS. which rank as relics of the saint—the blood-stained volume of Ambrose which was on Boniface when the pagans killed him, his pocket copy of the Gospels, the MS. written for Victor of Capua. The bulk of its abbey library, which remained together until the close of the sixteenth century, is dispersed and gone, no one knows where. Some books are at Cassel in the ducal library. Lorsch has nothing in situ, but a good deal in the Vatican. Both houses were instrumental in preserving the classics; we owe to them Suetonius, Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus, and part of Livy.
The Thirty Years' War was responsible for a good deal of dispersion. Cargoes of books made their way to England, and Archbishop Laud bought and gave to the Bodleian many from Würzburg and Erfürt; in the Arundel collection at the British Museum the German contingent is large. Sweden also profited at this time, and got its lovely Codex Aureus (once at Canterbury), its Codex Argenteus (the Gothic Gospels at Upsala), and its Gigas, or Devil's Bible, which came from Prague.
In the Revolutionary period there was extensive secularization of abbeys, and whole libraries passed into central depots, as at Munich, which has the MSS. of St. Emmeram of Ratisbon and of Tegernsee, Benedictbeuern, Schäftlarn, and many other houses. Those of the old and rich foundation of Reichenau passed to Carlsruhe. Precious books, like the gold-covered Gospels of Lindau, were exported. This particular gem was bought by Lord Ashburnham, and in recent years has gone to America. Fine Gospels and other service-books from Weingarten are at Holkham; they appeal to the Englishman, for they contain pictures of our sainted King Oswald, of whom Weingarten owned a relic.
North Germany's contribution is far inferior to that of Bavaria and the Rhine provinces. The inhabitants of large regions were pagans till a late date (some might say they were so still), and have never, we conceive, been really civilized. Few books were made there before the fourteenth century, and I know of no good libraries that existed there in the medieval period. A good part of the contents of one at Elbing, near Dantzic, came somehow to Cambridge (Corpus Christi) in the seventeenth century; it is a dreary collection, mostly on paper, of scholastic theology, sermons, meditations, and a little medicine.
In Austria the abbeys were let alone till 1918. Such houses as Melk on the Danube, St. Florian, St. Paul in Carinthia, Admont in Styria, still owned their estates, their revenues, and their libraries. That of Melk is noticeable, and at St. Paul is, oddly enough, one of the very earliest Irish vernacular MSS. I believe it came thither in fairly recent times from St. Blasien in the Black Forest. But, on the whole, these places were too remote from the main stream to accumulate many treasures of the very first quality.
