[86] A MS. containing five books of Tacitus which had been deemed lost was found in Germany during the pontificate of Leo X., and deposited in the Laurentian library at Florence.—Mehi Præf. p. xlvii. See Shepard's Life of Poggio, p. 104, to whom I am much indebted for these curious facts.
[87] Shepard's Life of Poggio, p. 101.
CHAPTER IV
Canterbury Monastery.—Theodore of Tarsus.—Tatwine.—Nothelm.—St. Dunstan.—Ælfric.—Lanfranc.—Anselm.—St. Augustine's books.—Henry de Estria and his Catalogue.—Chiclely.—Sellinge.—Rochester.—Gundulph, a Bible Student.—Radulphus.—Ascelin of Dover.—Glanvill, etc.
n the foregoing chapters I have endeavored to give the reader an insight into the means by which the monks multiplied their books, the opportunities they had of obtaining them, the rules of their libraries and scriptoria, and the duties of a monkish librarian. I now proceed to notice some of the English monastic libraries of the middle ages, and by early records and old manuscripts inquire into their extent, and revel for a time among the bibliomaniacs of the cloisters. On the spot where Christianity—more than twelve hundred years ago—first obtained a permanent footing in Britain, stands the proud metropolitan cathedral of Canterbury—a venerable and lasting monument of ancient piety and monkish zeal. St. Augustine, who brought over the glad tidings of the Christian faith in the year 596, founded that noble structure on the remains of a church which Roman Christians in remote times had built there. To write the literary history of its old monastery would spread over more pages than this volume contains, so many learned and bookish abbots are mentioned in its monkish annals. Such, however, is beyond the scope of my present design, and I have only to turn over those ancient chronicles to find how the love of books flourished in monkish days; so that, whilst I may here and there pass unnoticed some ingenious author, or only casually remark upon his talents, all that relate to libraries or book-collecting, to bibliophiles or scribes, I shall carefully record; and, I think, from the notes now lying before me, and which I am about to arrange in something like order, the reader will form a very different idea of monkish libraries than he previously entertained.
