CHAPTER VI
ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: OXFORD
“Ingenia hominum rem publicam fecerunt.”
§I
PROBABLY a few scribes plied their craft in Oxford in early days long before the students began to make a settlement, for the town had been a flourishing borough, one of the largest in England. But until the end of the twelfth century we hear nothing about books and their makers or users in Oxford. Then we find illuminators, bookbinders, parchmenters, and a scribe referred to in a document relating to the sale of land in Cat Street. This record is very significant, as it suggests the active employment of book-makers in the centre of Oxford’s student life. St. Mary’s Church was the hub. Cat Street, School Street running parallel with it from High Street to the north boundary, and Schydyard Street, the continuation of School Street on the southern side of High Street, alleys of the usual medieval narrowness and mean appearance, the buildings on either hand almost touching one another, and the way dark—were the haunts of masters and scholars and all those depending on them. Students, old and young, of high station and low, are crowded in lodging-houses, many of which are shabby, dirty, and disreputable. Hence they come forth to play their games or carry on their feuds. Some haunt taverns and worse places. Others eke out their means by begging at street corners. All get their teaching by gathering round masters whose rostrum is the church doorstep or the threshold of the lodging-house. Amid the manifold distractions of this queerly-ordered life the maker and seller of books earns what living he can; his chief patrons being indigent masters, who often must starve themselves to get books, and students so poor that pawning becomes a custom regulated by the University itself.
Not till the University became firmly established as a corporate body could a common library be formed. The beginning was simple. The first books reserved for common use had their home in St. Mary’s Church: some lay in chests, and were lent in exchange for a suitable pledge; others were chained to desks so that students could readily refer to them. These books were almost certainly theological in character, and all were no doubt given by benefactors, now unknown. Such a gift was received early in the thirteenth century from Roger de L’Isle, Dean of York, who gave a Bible, divided into four parts for the convenience of copyists, and the Book of Exodus, glossed, but old and of little value.[338] Possibly some books remained in the church even after an independent library was founded, for as late as 1414 a copy of Nicholas de Lyra was chained in the chancel for public use, where it was inspected by the Chancellor and proctors every year.[339]