Cassiodorus item, Chrysostomus atque Johannes
Quidquid et Athelmus docuit, quid Beda magister.”
Beda and Aldhelm are the only English writers represented; and the catalogue—if we call it such—could be written on a half-page of note paper—Metaphors and Geography and Theology and decorative epithets included.
Thus in these times a book was a book: some of them cost large sums; the mere transcription into plain black-letter or Old English was toilsome and involved weeks and months of labor; and when it came to illuminated borders, or initials and title-pages with decorative paintings, the labor involved was enormous. There were collectors in those days as now—who took royal freaks for gorgeous missals; and monkish lives were spent in gratifying the whims of such collectors. In the year 1237 (Henry III.) there is entry in the Revenue Roll of the costs of silver clasps and studs for the King’s great book of Romances. Upon the continent, in Italy, where an art atmosphere prevailed that was more enkindling than under the fogs of this savage England, such work became thoroughly artistic; and even now beautiful motifs for decoration on the walls of New York houses are sought from old French or Latin manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
And where was this work of making books done? There were no book-shops or publishers’ houses, but in place of them abbeys or monasteries—each having its scriptorium or writing-room, where, under the vaulted Norman arches and by the dim light of their loop-holes of windows, the work of transcription went on month after mouth and year after year. Thus it is recorded that in that old monastery of St. Albans (of which we just now spoke) eighty distinct works were transcribed during the reign of Henry VI.; it is mentioned as swift work; and as Henry reigned thirty-nine years, it counts up about two complete MSS. a year. And the atmosphere of St. Albans was a learned one; this locality not being overmuch given to the roisterings that belonged to Bolton Priory—of which you will remember the hint in a pleasant picture of Landseer’s.
Religious Houses.
If you or I had journeyed thither in that day—coming from what land we might—I think we should have been earnest among the first things, to see those great monasteries that lay scattered over the surface of England and of Southern Scotland;—not perched on hills or other defensible positions like the Norman castles of the robber Barons—not buried in cities like London Tower, or the great halls which belonged to guilds of merchants—but planted in the greenest and loveliest of valleys, where rivers full of fish rippled within hearing, and woods full of game clothed every headland that looked upon the valley; where the fields were the richest—where the water was purest—where the sun smote warmest; there these religious houses grew up, stone by stone, cloister by cloister, chapel by chapel, manor by manor, until there was almost a township, with outlying cottages—and some great dominating abbey church—rich in all the choicest architecture of the later Norman days—lifting its spire from among the clustered buildings scarce less lovely than itself.
Not only had learning and book-making been kept alive in these great religious houses, but the art of Agriculture. Within their walled courts were grown all manner of fruits and vegetables known to their climate; these monks knew and followed the best rulings of Cato, and Crescenzius (who just now has written on this subject in Northern Italy, and is heard of by way of Padua). They make sour wine out of grapes grown against sunny walls: they have abundant flocks too—driven out each morning from their sheltering courts, and returned each night; and they have great breadth of ground under carefullest tillage.
Of such character was Tintern Abbey—in the valley of the Wye—now perhaps the most charming of all English ruins. Such another was Netley Abbey, on Southampton water, and Bolton Priory, close by that famous stream, the Wharfe, which you will remember in Wordsworth’s story of the “White Doe of Rylstone.” Fountain’s Abbey, in Yorkshire, was yet another, from whose ruin we can study better perhaps than from any other in England, the extent and disposition of these old religious houses. Melrose was another; and so was Dryburgh, where Scott’s body lies, and Abingdon, close upon Oxford—where was attached that Manor of Cumnor, which Scott assigns for a prison to the sad-fated Amy Robsart, in the tale of “Kenilworth.” Glastonbury was another: this too (once encircled by the arms of the river Brue), was the “Isle of Avalon” in Arthurian romance;
“Where falls not hail, or rain or any snow,