Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

The fact that the entrance to the Ulpian Library is aglow with the bronze of my statue, can add nothing to the laurels of other poets.)

In the opinion of Hodgkin, the books in these two collections in the Bibliotheca Ulpia may very well have been of more importance to later generations than those of the library of Alexandria. The books from Trajan’s libraries were, according to Vopiscus, transported in all or in part to the Baths of Diocletian. Hodgkin understands that, between 300 and 450, they were restored to their original home.[7]

In the year 537 A.D., the rule of the Goths in Italy, which had been established by Theodoric in 493, was practically brought to a close by the victories of Belisarius, the general of the Eastern Empire, and, thirty years later, the destruction of the Gothic State was completed by the invasion of the Lombards. With the Lombards in possession of Northern Italy, and the Vandals, in a series of campaigns against the armies from Constantinople, overrunning the southern portions of the peninsula, the social organisation of the country must have been almost destroyed, and the civilisation which had survived from the old Empire, while never entirely disappearing, was doubtless in large part submerged. A certain continuity of Roman rule and of Roman intellectual influence was, however, preserved through the growing power of the Church, which was already claiming the inheritance of the Empire, and which, as early as 590, under the lead of Pope Gregory the Great, succeeded in making good its claims to ecclesiastical supremacy throughout the larger part of Europe. In its control of the consciences of rulers, the Church frequently, in fact, secured a domination that was by no means limited to things spiritual.

The history of books in manuscript and of the production and distribution of literature in Europe from the beginning of the work of S. Benedict to the time when the printing-press of Gutenberg revolutionised the methods of book-making, a period covering about nine centuries, may be divided into three stages. During the first, the responsibility for the preservation of the old-time literature and for keeping alive some continuity of intellectual life, rested solely with the monasteries, and the work of multiplying and of distributing such books as had survived was carried on by the monks, and by them only. During the second stage, the older universities, the organisation of which had gradually been developed from schools (themselves chiefly of monastic origin), became centres of intellectual activity and shared with the monasteries the work of producing books. The books emanating from the university scribes were, however, for the most part restricted to a few special classes, classes which had, as a rule, not been produced in the monasteries, and, as will be noted in a later chapter, the university booksellers (stationarii or librarii) were in the earlier periods not permitted to engage in any general distribution of books. With the third stage of manuscript literature, book-producing and bookselling machinery came into existence in the towns, and the knowledge of reading being no longer confined to the cleric or the magister, books were prepared for the use of the larger circles of the community, and to meet the requirements of such circles were, to an extent increasing with each generation, written in the tongue of the people.

The first period begins with the foundation by S. Benedict, in 529, of the monastery of Monte Cassino, and by Cassiodorus, in 531, of that of Vivaria or Viviers, and continues until the last decade of the twelfth century, when we find the earliest record of an organised book-business in the universities of Bologna and Paris. The beginning of literary work in the universities, to which I refer as indicating a second stage, did not, however, bring to an end, and, in fact, for a time hardly lessened, the production of books in the monasteries.

The third stage of book-production in Europe may be said to begin with the first years of the fifteenth century, when the manuscript trade of Venice and Florence became important, when the book-men or publishers of Paris, outside of the university, had developed a business in the collecting, manifolding, and selling of manuscripts, and when manuscripts first find place in the schedules of the goods sold at the fairs of Frankfort and Nordlingen. The costliness of the skilled labour required for the production of manuscripts, and the many obstacles and difficulties in the way of their distribution, caused the development of the book-trade to proceed but slowly. It was the case, nevertheless, and particularly in Germany, that a very considerable demand for literature of certain classes had been developed among the people before the close of the manuscript period, a demand which was being met with texts produced in constantly increasing quantities and at steadily lessening cost. When the printing-press arrived it found, therefore, already in existence a wide-spread literary interest and a popular demand for books, a demand which, with the immediate cheapening of books, was, of course, enormously increased. The production of books in manuscript came to a close, not with the invention of the printing-press in 1450, but with the time when printing had become generally introduced, about twenty-five years later.

It was in the monasteries that were preserved such fragments of the classic literature as had escaped the general devastation of Italy; and it was to the labours of the monks of the West, and particularly to the labours of the monks of S. Benedict, that was due the preservation for the Middle Ages and for succeeding generations of the remembrance and the influence of the literature of classic times. For a period of more than six centuries, the safety of the literary heritage of Europe, one may say of the world, depended upon the scribes of a few dozen scattered monasteries.

The Order of S. Benedict was instituted in 529, and the monastery of Monte Cassino, near Naples, founded by him in the same year, exercised for centuries an influence of distinctive importance upon the literary interests of the Church, of Italy, and of the world. This monastery (which still exists) is not far from Subiaco, the spot chosen by S. Benedict for his first retreat. It was in the monastery of Subiaco (founded many years afterwards) that was done, nearly a thousand years later, the first printing in Italy. The Rule of S. Benedict, comprising the regulations for the government of his Order, contained a specific instruction that a certain number of hours in each day were to be devoted to labour in the scriptorium. The monks who were not yet competent to work as scribes were to be instructed by the others. Scribe work was to be accepted in place of an equal number of hours given to manual labour out-of-doors, while the skilled scribes, whose work was of special importance as instructors or in the scriptorium, were to be freed from a certain portion of their devotional exercises or observances. The monasteries of the Benedictines were for centuries more numerous, more wealthy, and more influential than those of any other Order, and this provision of a Rule which directed the actions, controlled the daily lives, and inspired the purposes of thousands of earnest workers among the monks of successive generations, must have exercised a most noteworthy influence on the history of literary production in Europe. It is not too much to say that it was S. Benedict who provided the “copy” which a thousand years later was to supply the presses of Gutenberg, Aldus, Froben, and Stephanus.

I have not been able to find in the narratives of the life of S. Benedict any record showing the origin of his interest in literature, an interest which was certainly exceptional for an ecclesiastic of the sixth century. It seems very probable, however, that Benedict’s association with Cassiodorus had not a little to do with the literary impetus given to the work of the Benedictines. Cassiodorus, who, as Chancellor of King Theodoric, had taken an active part in the government of the Gothic kingdom, passed the last thirty years of his life first as a monk and later as abbot in the monastery of Vivaria, or Viviers, in Calabria, which he had himself founded in 531. Cassiodorus is generally classed by the Church chronicles as a Benedictine, and his monastery is referred to by Montalembert as the second of the Benedictine foundations. Hodgkin points out, however, that the Rule adopted by the monks of Viviers, or prescribed for them by its founder, was not that of S. Benedict, but was drawn from the writings of Cassian, the founder of western monachism, who had died a century before.[8] The two Rules were, however, fully in accord with each other in spirit, while for the idea of using the convent as a place of literary toil and theological training, Benedict was indebted to Cassiodorus. “At a very early date in the history of their Order,” says Hodgkin, “the Benedictines, influenced probably by the example of the monastery of Vivaria, commenced that long series of services to the cause of literature which they have never wholly intermitted. Instead of accepting the ... formula from which some scholars have contended that Cassiodorus was a Benedictine, we should perhaps be rather justified in maintaining that Benedict, or at least his immediate followers, were Cassiodorians.”[9]

It was the fortune of Cassiodorus to serve as a connecting link between the world of classic Rome and that of the Middle Ages. He saw the direction and control of the community pass from the monarchs and the leaders of armies to the Church and to the monasteries, and he was himself an active agent in helping to bring about such transfer. Born in 479, only three years after the overthrow of the last of the Emperors of the West, he grew up under the rule of Odovacar, the Herulian. While still a youth, he had seen the Herulian kingdom destroyed by Theodoric, and he had lived to mourn over the ruins of the realm founded by the Goth, which he had himself helped to govern. He saw his beloved Italy taken possession of by the armies of Narses and Belisarius from the east, and a little later overrun by the undisciplined hordes of the Lombards from the north. The first great schism between the Eastern and the Western Churches began during his boyhood and terminated before, as Abbot of Vivaria, it became necessary for him to take a decided part on the one side or the other. A Greek by ancestry, a Roman by training, the experience of Cassiodorus included work and achievements as statesman, orator, scholar, author, and ecclesiastic. He had witnessed the extinction of the Roman Senate, of which both his father and himself had been members; the practical abolition of the Consulate, an honour to which he had also attained; and the close of the schools of philosophy in Athens, with the doctrines of which he, almost alone in his generation of Italians, was familiar. He had done much to maintain in the Court and throughout the kingdom of Theodoric, such standard of scholarly interests and of literary appreciation as was practicable with the resources available; and, in like manner, he brought with him to his monastery a scholarly enthusiasm for classic literature, of which literature he may not unnaturally have felt himself to be almost the sole surviving representative. It is difficult to over-estimate the extent of the service rendered by Cassiodorus to literature and to later generations in initiating the training of monks as scribes, and in putting into their hands for their first work in the scriptorium the masterpieces of classic literature. He belonged both to the world of ancient Rome, which he had outlived, and to that of the Middle Ages, the thought and work of which he helped to shape. With the close of the official career of Cassiodorus as Secretary of State for the Gothic kingdom of Italy, the history of ancient Europe may, for the purpose of my narrative, be considered to end. With the consecration of Cassiodorus, as Abbot of the monastery of Vivaria, (which took place about 550, when he was seventy years of age), and the instituting by him of the first European scriptorium, I may begin the record of the production of books during the Middle Ages.