You will find our Catholic literature saturated with sacred lore and knowledge of Holy Scripture. Before printing was invented people could not multiply copies of the Sacred Books as they can now, but they knew them probably much better than many of those who can easily now buy them for a few pence. We have translations of various parts of the Bible in these early times. You will remember how in St Bede's last days he finished his translation of part of St John's Gospel. We have lovely manuscripts, such as that of the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in fine clear writing, which can be seen at the British Museum; and facsimiles of parts of them can be had for a small sum. It is simply an uneducated error to suppose that the heretical editing, as I may call it, of Holy Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, made by Tyndale and Coverdale, was the first attempt to put the Bible into English. We should have had plenty of printed copies of Holy Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, had these versions never been made and circulated to attack and injure Holy Church, without whom the originals could never have existed.
CHAPTER XIV
Scattering of our old MSS. in Sixteenth Century. Same now in public libraries. Collections. Exeter Book and Vercelli Book.
Where are all our old manuscripts, our treasures from days of yore, the work of the cunning scribe, the pages whereon so many of our religious spent hour after hour, in patient and loving toil? They were scattered abroad in the sixteenth century by wholesale. Many of them found their way into private collections, and the collectors often generously gave them to college libraries. Matthew Parker, the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, was a great book-collector, and gave a good many volumes to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge. Among these is the oldest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. John Bale, once a friar, afterwards, alas! a Protestant Bishop, says that some of the books from the monasteries were used to scour candlesticks or to rub boots; some were sold to grocers and soap-vendors; and whole ships-full went abroad.
SAXON SHIP
As used by our Forefathers in the time of King Alfred
Robert Bruce Cotton was another great book-collector. His library was sold to the nation about seventy years after his death. Many books and MSS. belonging to it were destroyed or injured by a fire that broke out where it had been placed; among those injured was the only copy of the old poem of Béowulf, which I have not talked about because it is apparently outside our Catholic Heritage in literature. The reduced library is now at the British Museum. It includes the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels, or Durham Book, which once belonged to Durham Cathedral.
There is another collection which was bought for the British Museum, made by Harley, Earl of Oxford.