up a list of libraries under the heads of the seven custodies or wardenships of their order in England, and catalogued the writings of some eighty-five authors represented in these collections. In this way was formed a combined bibliography and co-operative catalogue. Of this catalogue we are able to reproduce a page on which are indexed five authors, with numerical references to the libraries containing each work. Early in the fifteenth century a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, John Boston by name—possibly the librarian of that house—expanded the register by increasing to nearly seven hundred the number of authors, and by adding a score of names to the list of libraries. He also provided a short biographical sketch of each author “drawn from the best sources at his disposal; so that the book in its completed form might claim to be called a dictionary of literature.”[141]
§ III
We would fain fill in the outline we have given, for the friars and their book-loving ways are interesting. But enough has been written to show the origin and growth of libraries among the religious both of the abbeys and the friaries. Of the later days of monachism it is not so pleasant to write. The story has been well told many times, but no two writers, even in a broad and general way, let alone in detail, have read the facts alike. On the one hand it is urged that monachism became degenerate, both in reverence for spiritual affairs and in love of learning. Many monks, we are told, came to find more enjoyment in easy living than in ascetic and religious observances. Apart from the savage onslaughts in Piers Plowman, and the yarns of Layton and Legh, now quite discredited, we have the most credible evidence in Chaucer’s gentle satire:—
“A monk ther was, a fair for the maistrye,
An out-rydere, that lovede venerye; [hunting]
A manly man, to been an abbot able,
Ful many a deyntee hors hadde he in stable:
. . . . . . . . . .
He was a lord ful fat and in good point [well-equipped]
His eyen stepe, and rollinge in his heed.” [eyes bright]
The friars, too, were sometimes “merye and wantoun,” and
“knew the tavernes wel in every toun,
And everich hostiler or gay tappestere.”
And an indictment of some force might be based on the fact that the general chapter of the Benedictine order at Coventry in 1516 found it necessary to make regulations against immoderate and illicit eating and drinking, and against hunting and hawking.[142]
No doubt also many a monk would argue with himself:—
“What sholde he studie, and make him-selven wood [mad]
Upon a book in cloistre alwey to poure
Or swinken with his handes, and laboure [toil]
As Austin bit?” [As St. Augustine bids]
De Bury declaimed against the monks’ neglect of books. “Now slothful Thersites,” he cries, “handles the arms of Achilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy asses, winking owls lord it in the eagle’s nest, and the cowardly kite sits upon the perch of the hawk.