Of few of the friary libraries have we definite knowledge of their size and character. But in the case of the Austin Friars of York, a catalogue of their library is extant. The collection was a notable one. The inventory was made in 1372, and the items in it, forming the bulk of the whole, with some later additions, amounted to 646. One member of the society named John Erghome was a remarkable man. He was a doctor of Oxford, where he had studied logic, natural philosophy, and theology. More than 220 books were his contribution to this splendid library, and he it was who added the Psalter and Canticles in Greek and a Hebrew book,—rarities indeed at that date. Classical literature is fairly well represented in the collection as a whole, but theology, and especially logic and philosophy, make up the bulk.[129]
In Scotland, too, the Grey Friars were busy library-making. We find the convent at Stirling buying five dozen parchments (1502). Fifty pounds were paid for books sent to them this year by the Cistercians of Culross, and to the Austin Canons of Cambuskenneth in the following year about half as much was paid; and similar records appear in the accounts.[130]
Other interesting testimony to the bookcraft and collecting habits of the friars is not wanting. Adam de Marisco writes to the Friar Warden of Cambridge asking for vellum for scribes.[131] Or he expresses the hope that Richard of Cornwall may be prevailed upon to stay in England, but if he goes he will be supplied with books and everything necessary for his departure.[132] From this letter, it was evidently usual for friars to seek and obtain permission to carry away books with them when going abroad, or going from one custody to another.[133] Then again Adam writes asking Grosseteste to send Aristotle’s Ethics to the Grey Friars’ convent in London.[134] In getting books the friars were sometimes unscrupulous. A royal writ was issued commanding the Warden of the Grey Friars at Oxford and another friar, Walter de Chatton, to return two books worth forty shillings which they were keeping from the rightful owner (1330).[135] More striking testimony to the book-collecting habits of the friars is the complaint to the Pope of their buying so many books that the monks and clergy had difficulty in obtaining them. In every convent, it was urged, was a grand and noble library, and every friar of eminence in the University had a fine collection of books.[136] Archbishop Fitzralph, who made this statement, detested the friars, and was besides prone to exaggerate; but he was not wholly wrong in this instance, as De Bury tells a similar tale. “Whenever it happened,” he says, “that we turned aside to the cities and places where the mendicants ... had their convents, we did not disdain to visit their libraries ...; there we found heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom. These men are as ants.... They have added more in this brief [eleventh] hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the other vine-dressers.”[137] Instead of declaiming against the hawks, De Bury trained them to prey for him, and was well rewarded for his pains. Nor is it beyond the bounds of probability that he enriched his own collection at the expense of the Grey Friars’ library at Oxford.[138]
The friars were not merely collectors. The scholarship of Bacon and other brethren does not concern us. But their correction of the texts of Scripture, and their bibliographical work, are germane to our subject. In mid-thirteenth century some Black Friars of Paris laboured to correct the text of the Latin Bible; and to enable copyists to restore the true text when transcribing, they drew up manuals, called Correctoria. One such manual, now known as the Correctorium Vaticanum, was prepared by William de la Mare, a Grey brother of Oxford, in the course of forty years’ labour; and it is “a work which before all others laid down sound principles of true scientific criticism upon which to base a correction of the Vulgate text.”[139]
Another special work of the Grey brethren, the Registrum Librorum Angliae[140] was less important, although it more clearly illustrates their high regard for books. Some time in the fourteenth century, by seeking information from about one hundred and sixty monasteries, some friars drew
