Old English libraries

by Ernest Albert Savage

In some abbeys the purchase of books, and the copying of them for sale, became just as much a business as the manufacture of Chartreuse. In 1446 Exeter College, Oxford, paid ten shillings and a penny for twelve quires and two skins of parchment bought at Abingdon to send to the monastery of Plympton in Devonshire, where a book was being written for the College.[213] A part—and by no means a negligible part—of the income of Carthusian houses came from copying books. Two continental abbots, Abbot Gerbert of Bobio and Servatus Lupus of Ferrières, were book-makers and sellers on a commercial scale. Lupus, in particular, betrays the commercial spirit by refusing to give more than he was obliged in return for what he received. He will not send a book to a monk at Sens because his messenger must go afoot and the way was perilous: let us hope he thought more of the messenger than of the manuscript. On another occasion he refuses to lend a book because it is too large to be hidden in the vest or wallet, and, besides, its beauty might tempt robbers to steal it. These were good excuses to cover his general unwillingness to lend. For the loan of one manuscript he was so bothered that he thought of putting it away in a secure place, lest he should lose it altogether.[214]

As a rule the expenses of the writing-room formed a part of the general expenses of the house, but sometimes particular portions of the monastic income and endowments were available to meet them. To St. Albans certain tithes were assigned by a Norman leader for making books (c. 1080).[215] The precentor of Abingdon obtained tithes worth thirty shillings for buying parchment.[216] St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, got three marks from the rentals of Milton Church for making books (1144).[217] The monks of Ely (1160), of Westminster (c. 1159), of the cathedral convent of St. Swithin’s, Winchester (1171), of Bury St. Edmunds, and of Whitby, received tithes and rents for a like purpose.[218] The prior of Evesham received the tithes of Bengworth to pay for parchment and for the maintenance of scribes; while the precentor was to receive five shillings annually from the manor of Hampton, and ten shillings and eightpence from the tithes of Stoke and Alcester for buying ink, colours for illuminating, and what was necessary for binding books and the necessaries for the organ.[219]

In some houses a rate was levied for the support of the scriptorium, but we have not met with any instance of this practice in English monasteries. At the great Benedictine Abbey of Fleury a rate was levied in 1103 on the officers and dependent priories for the support of the library; forty-three years later it was extended, and it remained in force until 1562.[220] Besides this impost every student in the abbey was bound to give two books to the library. At Corbie, in Picardy, a rate was levied to pay the salary of the librarian, and to cover part of the cost of bookbinding. Here also each novice, on the day of his profession, had to present a book to the library; at Corvey, in Northern Germany, the same rule was observed at the end of the eleventh century. As all the monasteries of an order were conducted much on the same lines, it is difficult to believe that similar rates were not levied by some of the larger houses in England.

The libraries were also augmented by gifts and bequests, as well as by purchase and by transcription in the scriptorium. In most abbeys it was customary for the brethren to give or bequeath their books to their house. A long list of such benefactors to Ramsey Abbey is extant, and one of the brothers, Walter de Lilleford, prior of St. Ives, gave what was in those days a considerable library in itself.[221] Much longer still are the lists of presents given to Christ Church and St. Augustine’s, Canterbury. Dr. James has indexed nearly two hundred donors to Christ Church alone. In most cases the gifts are of one or a few books, but occasionally collections of respectable size were received, as when T. Sturey, senior, enriched the library with nearly sixty books, when Thomas à Becket left over seventy, and when Prior Henry Eastry left eighty volumes at his death. As many or more donors to St. Augustine’s are indexed. Here also some of the donations were fairly large: for example, Henry Belham and Henry Cokeryng gave nineteen books each, a prior twenty-seven, a certain John of London eighty-two, J. Mankael thirty-nine, Abbot Nicholaus sixteen, Michael de Northgate twenty-four, Abbot Poucyn sixteen, J. Preston twenty-three, a certain Abbot Thomas over a hundred, and T. Wyvelesberghe thirty-one. Some sixty persons are also indexed as donors to St. Martin’s Priory, Dover.[222]

William de Carilef, bishop of Durham, endowed his church with books and bequeathed some more at his death (1095). John, bishop of Bath, bequeathed to the abbey church his whole library and his decorated copies of the Gospels (1160). Another bishop of Durham, Hugh Pudsey, bequeathed many books to his church (1195). Thomas de Marleberge (d. 1236), when he became prior of Evesham, gave a large collection of books in law, medicine, philosophy, poetry, theology, and grammar.[223] Simon Langham bequeathed seven chests of books to Westminster Abbey (1376).[224] William Slade (d. 1384) left to the Abbey of Buckfast, of which he was abbot, thirteen books of his own writing.[225] Cardinal Adam Easton (d. 1397) sent from Rome “six barrells of books” to his convent of Norwich, where he had been a monk.[226] One of these books, a fourteenth-century manuscript in an Italian hand, is now preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: the inscription attesting this reads—“Liber ecclesie norwycen per magistrum Adam de Eston monachum dicti loci.” Nor did the poor priest forget to add his mite to the general hoard: “I beqweth to the monastery of Seynt Edmund forseid,” willed a priest named Place, “my book of the dowtes of Holy Scryptur, to ly and remayn in the cloister of the seid monastery as long as yt wyll ther indure.”[227] Such gifts were always highly valued, and in Lent the librarian was expected to remind the brethren of those who had given books, and to request that a mass should be said for them.[228]

§ II

Some miniatures in early manuscripts give us a good idea of the way books were stored in the Middle Ages. They are shown lying flat on sloping shelves which extend part-way round the room. Curtains are occasionally shown hanging in front of the shelves to protect the books from dust. Or a sloping shelf was fitted to serve as a readingdesk, and a second flat shelf ran beneath it to take books lying on their sides one above the other. In several miniatures lecterns of very curious design are often depicted; some of them stood on a cupboard or cupboards wherein books were stowed away.

In the monasteries books were stored in various places,—in chests, cupboards, or recesses in the wall. When the collection was small, a chest served; a receptacle of this kind is illustrated at p. 50. Cassiodorus had the books of his monastery stored in presses, or armaria. The manuscripts of Abbot Simon of St. Albans were preserved in “the painted aumbry in the church.” An aumbry was a recess in the wall well lined inside with wood so that the damp of the masonry should not spoil the books. It was divided vertically and horizontally by shelves in such a way that it was possible to arrange the books separately one from another, and so to avoid injury from close packing, and delay in consulting them.[229] The same term was applied to a detached closet or cupboard. At Durham the monks distributed their books—keeping some in the spendimentum or cancellary, some near the refectory, and the bulk in the cloister. Two classes of books were in the cancellary: one stored in a large closet with folding doors, called an armariolum, and used by all the monks; the other kept in an inner room, and apparently reserved for special uses. The books assigned to the reader in the refectory were stored by the doorway leading to the infirmary, and not in the refectory itself, as we should expect: maybe this arrangement was exceptional, and was adopted for special reasons of convenience. Probably two places were reserved for books in the cloister. One case or chest contained the books of the novices, whose place of study was in that part of the cloister facing the treasury. The main store was on the north side of the cloister. “And over against the carrells against the church wall did stande sertaine great almeries of waynscott all full of bookes, wherein dyd lye as well the old auncyent written Doctors of the church as other prophane authors, with dyverse other holie mens wourks, so that every one dyd studye what Doctor pleased them best, havinge the librarie at all tymes to goe studie in besydes there carrells.”[230] Dr. J. W. Clark, the leading authority on early library fittings, has tried to show, from evidences of a similar arrangement at Westminster, that this part of the cloister formed a long room, with glazed windows and carrells on the one hand, bookcases on the other, and screens at each end shutting off the library and writing-place from the rest of the cloister.[231]

Along the south wall of the cloister at Chester is a series of recesses which are believed to have been used for bookcases. Two recesses for aumbries are still to be seen in the cloister at Worcester: it is recorded that one book, the Speculum Spiritualium, was to be delivered “to ye cloyster awmery.” At Beaulieu the arched recesses in the south wall of the church may have been put to a similar use. These recesses are shown on the plan here reproduced; so also is the common aumbry in the wall of the south transept.