Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

The earliest known example of the work of a European monk dates from the year 517. The manuscript is in the Capitular library in Verona, and has been reproduced in fac-simile by Ottley. The script is that known as half uncial.[27] At the time this manuscript was being written, Theodoric the Goth was ruling in Italy, with Cassiodorus as his minister, and the monastery at Viviers was still to be founded.

S. Gregory the Great, who became Pope in 590, exercised an important influence over the intellectual interests of his age. Gregory had been charged with having destroyed the ancient monuments of Rome, with having burned the Palatine library, including the writings of Cicero and Livy, with having expelled the mathematicians from Rome, and with having reprimanded Bishop Didier of Vienna (in Gaul) for teaching grammar to children. Montalembert contends that these charges are all slanders and that the Pope was not only an unequalled scholar, but that he fully appreciated the importance for the intellectual development of the Church, of a knowledge of the classics. Gregory is quoted as saying, in substance: “The devils know well that the knowledge of profane literature helps us to understand sacred literature. In dissuading us from this study, they act as the Philistines did when they interdicted the Israelites from making swords and lances, and obliged that nation to come to them for the sharpening of their axes and plough-shares.”[28] Gregory was himself the author of a considerable series of writings, and, while his Latin was not that of Cicero, he contributed (according to Ozanam) as much as did S. Augustine to form the new Latin, what might be called the Christian Latin, which was destined to become the language of the pulpit and the school, and which forms the more immediate foundation of an important group of the languages of modern Europe.

His works include the Sacramentary, which determined the language and the form of the Liturgy, a series of Dialogues, and a Pastoral, in which were collected a series of discourses planned to regulate the vocation, life, and doctrines of the pastors. Of this book, Ozanam says that it gave form and life to the entire hierarchical body. Then came a series of commentaries on the Scriptures, followed by no less than thirty-five books called Moralia, which were commentaries on the Book of Job. His last important production was a series of Epistles, comprised in thirteen volumes. He may possibly have been the most voluminous author since classic times, and his books had the special advantage of reaching circles of readers who were waiting for them, and of being distributed through the already extended machinery of the Church.

Another important ecclesiastical author of the same generation was Isidore, Bishop of Seville. The Spanish Liturgy compiled by him and known as the Mozarabic, survived the ruin of the Visigothic Church and was thought by the great Cardinal Ximenes worthy of resuscitation. Isidore also wrote a history of the Goths and a translation of the philosophy of Aristotle. He may be considered as the first scholar to introduce to Europe of the Middle Ages the teachings of Greek philosophy. His greatest undertaking was, however, in the form of an encyclopædia, treating, under the heading of the Seven Liberal Arts, of all the learning that was within his reach. It was entitled Twenty Books of Etymologies, or The Origin of Things, and included in its volumes a number of classical fragments which, without the care of its editor, would probably have perished forever.

Isidore is the first Christian who arranged and edited for Christians the literature of antiquity. He died in 636, but the incentive that he had given to learning and to literature survived him in a numerous group of disciples.[29] Among Isidore’s pupils was King Sisebut, whose interest in scholarship caused him to endow liberally a number of the Spanish monasteries.

The Ecclesiastical Schools and the Clerics as Scribes.

—The so-called secular clergy were, during the earlier Middle Ages, employed very largely in connection with the business of the government, being in fact in many regions the only class of the population possessing the education necessary for the preparation of documents and the preservation of records. In Italy, towards the close of the thirteenth century, there came into existence the class of notaries who took charge of a good many business details which in Germany and France were cared for by the clergy. Under the Merovingian kings, there were government officials and judiciary officials who were laymen. During the rule of the Carlovingians, however, the writing work of the chapel and of the government offices was consolidated, falling into the hands of the clerics, or secular clergy. For a number of centuries, outside of Italy, it was very exceptional for any documents or for any correspondence to be written by other than the clergy. Every citizen of importance was obliged to have his special clericus, clerc, or pfaff, who took care of his correspondence and accounts. A post of this kind was in fact the surest means for an ambitious priest to secure in the first place, a footing in the world, and later, ecclesiastical positions and income. The secretary or chancellor of the king, was almost always, as a matter of routine, sooner or later rewarded with a bishopric.

Charlemagne took from among the poor boys in the court school, one, who was described as optimus dictator et scriptor, and having trained him as chaplain and secretary, provided for him later a bishopric.[30]

The use of the word dictator is to be noted as indicating the mediæval employment of the term in connection with writing. Dictare seems, from an early date, to have been used in the first place to indicate instruction in the art of writing, while later it is employed constantly to specify the direct work of the writer or composer, in the sense in which one would say to-day that he had indited a letter. With the same general sense, the term dictamen is used for the thing indited or for a composition. Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim (whose poems later had the honour of forming the material for one of the first books printed in South Germany), used the term dictare continually for activity in authorship. Wattenbach quotes from the Legenda Aurea of S. Ambrose the words libros quos dictabat propria manu scribebat (he wrote out with his own hand the books that he composed).

As long as any portions of the Roman Empire held together and the classic culture still preserved its influence, a considerable class of men secured their support through work as scribes. In Italy this class seems never entirely to have disappeared. Some small circles of the people retained, even after the land had been many times overrun by invaders, some interest in the classics, and were prepared to pay for more or less trustworthy manuscript copies of these. In Italy also there appears to have been a much larger use of writing in connection with trade and commerce than obtained throughout the rest of Europe until a much later time. While in Germany and France such scholarship as remained was restricted almost entirely to the ecclesiastics and to the monastery centres, in Italy the Church, during the earlier period, took a smaller interest in scholarship. There came into existence, however, a group of literary laymen, who were in a measure a continuation of or a succession to the old Latin grammarians, and who maintained some of their interest in classic culture and preserved, however imperfectly, some remnants of classic knowledge.