Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

While the educational work in the convent schools was for the most part not carried on beyond what might be called elementary classes, there were not a few examples of abbesses whose scholastic attainments would rival those of the abbots. Montalembert speaks of convents founded, under the auspices of S. Jerome, by S. Paula and her daughter, and is not prepared to admit that in any essential detail the history of S. Paula is legendary. He reminds us that Hebrew and Greek were the daily study of these two admirable women, who advised S. Jerome in all his difficulties and cheered him under all discouragements.[57] Montalembert is probably on firmer ground when he speaks of the scholarly attainments of S. Aura, the friend of S. Eloi, and of the nun Bertile, whose learned lectures on Holy Scripture drew to Chelles in the sixth century a large concourse of auditors of both sexes. S. Radegonde, known by her profound studies of the three Fathers, S. Gregory, S. Basle, and S. Athanasius, is commemorated by Fortunatus, as is also Gertrude, Abbess of Nivelle, who sent messengers to Rome and to Ireland to buy books.[58] I do not find a record of the date of these book-buying expeditions of the abbess.

In Germany, the list of the learned nuns includes S. Lioba, who was said to be so eager for knowledge that she never left her books except for divine service. She was a pupil of S. Boniface, and to her was due the framing of the system of instruction instituted after the mission of S. Boniface in North Germany. Hroswitha, the illustrious nun of Gandersheim (who died in 997), has been referred to more than once. Hroswitha’s dramatic poetry has been preserved for nearly eight centuries, and has had the honour of being reprinted as late as 1857. Her writings included a history in verse of Otho the Great, and the lives of several saints. Her most important works, however, were sacred dramas composed by her to be acted by the nuns of the convent. M. Magin points out that these dramas show an intimate acquaintance with the authors of classic antiquity.[59] Curiously enough, there was, nearly a century earlier, another Hroswitha in Gandersheim, who was the daughter of the Duke of Saxony, and who became the fourth abbess of the convent. She composed a much esteemed treatise on logic.[60]

Cecilia, daughter of William the Conqueror, who was Abbess of Kucaen, won fame for her school in grammar, philosophy, and in poetry. Herrad of Landsberg, who governed forty-six noble nuns at Mont St. Odile in Alsace, composed, under the name of Hortus Delictarum, a sort of cosmology, which is recorded as the first attempt at a scientific encyclopædia, and which is noted for the breadth of its ideas on painting, philosophy, mythology, and history. This was issued shortly after the death of William the Conqueror.[61] To the Abbess of Eichstadt, who died about 1120, Germany is indebted for the preservation of the Heldenbuch, a treasury of heroic stories.[62]

The principal and most constant occupation of the learned Benedictine nuns was the transcription of manuscripts. It is difficult to estimate too highly the extent of the services rendered by these feminine hands to learning and to history throughout the Middle Ages. They brought to the work a dexterity, an elegance of attainment, and an assiduity which the monks themselves could not attain, and some of the most beautiful specimens of caligraphy which have been preserved from the Middle Ages are the work of the nuns. The devotion of nuns as scribes began indeed with the early ages of Christian times. Eusebius speaks of young maidens whom the learned men of his time employed as copyists.[63] In the fifth century, S. Melania the younger distinguished herself by the beauty and exactness of her transcripts.[64] In the sixth century, the nuns of the convent at Arles, incited by the example of the Abbess of St. Césaire, acquired a no less brilliant reputation. In the seventh century, S. Gertrude, who was learned in the Holy Scriptures, sent to Rome to ask not only for works of the highest Christian poetry, but also for teachers capable of instructing her nuns to comprehend certain allegories.[65] In the eighth century, S. Boniface begged the abbess to write out for him in golden letters the Epistle of S. Peter. Cæsarius of Arles gave instructions that in the convents which had been founded by him and the supervision of which rested with his sister, the “Virgins of Christ” should give their time between their prayers and psalms to the reading and to the writing of holy works.[66] In the eighth century the nuns of Maseyk, in Holland, busied themselves in a similar fashion, not only in writing, but particularly in illuminating (etiam scribendo atque pingendo), in which they became proficients.[67]

In the ninth century, the Benedictine nuns of Eck on the Meuse, and especially the two abbesses Harlinde and Renilde, attained great celebrity by their caligraphic work and by the beauty of the illuminated designs used in their manuscripts.[68] In the time of S. Gregory VII., a nun at Wessobrunn, in Bavaria, named Diemude, undertook to transcribe a series of important works, the mere enumeration of which would startle modern readers. These works formed, as we read in the saint’s epitaph, a whole library, which she offered as a tribute to S. Peter. The production of this library still left time for Diemude to carry on with Herluca, a nun of the neighbouring convent of Eppach, a correspondence remarkable as well for its grace of expression as for its spiritual insight.[69] A list of her transcripts is given in the section on the scriptorium.

Among other convent scribes is recorded the name of the nun Gita, in Schwarzenthau, who made transcripts, about 1175, of the writings of her abbot, Irimbert. In Mallesdorf, at about the same time, a nun of Scottish parents, named Leukardis, who understood Greek, Latin, and German, was active in the scriptorium, and her work excited so much admiration that the monk Laiupold, himself a famous scribe, instituted in her memory an anniversarium.[70]

Brother Idung sent his dialogues concerning the monks of Clugni and the Cistercians to the nuns of Niedermünster, near Regensburg, ut legibiliter scribatur et diligenter emendetur ab aliquibus sororibus.[71] In the same century (the twelfth) the names of Gertrude, Sibilia, and other nuns appear on the transcript of the codex written for the Domini Monasterienses, which codex came into the library of Arnstein in exchange for a copy of the Pastorals of Gregory. Johann Gerson, writing in 1423, refers with cordial approbation to some beautiful copies prepared by the nuns, of the works of Origen.[72] In St. Gall, where the literary activity of the monks has already been referred to, the nuns in the convent of S. Catharine were, in the thirteenth and in the first half of the fourteenth centuries, also engaged in preparing transcripts of holy books.

Monkish Chroniclers.

In addition to the services rendered by the monks in the preservation of classic literature, and in addition also to the great amount of work required of them in the routine of their monastery for the preparation of books of devotion and instruction, a most valuable task was performed by many of the monastic scribes in the production of the records or annals of their times. The work of the literary monks included the functions not only of scribes, but of librarians, collectors, teachers, and historians. The records that have come down to us of several centuries of mediæval European history are due almost exclusively to the labours of the monastic chroniclers. Even those who did not compose books which can properly be described as historical, have left in their cartularies documents by the help of which the archæologists can to-day solve the most important problems relating to the social, civil, domestic, and agricultural life of their ancestors. The cartularies, says M. C. Giraud, were the most curious monuments of the history of the time.[73]

Without the monks, says Marsham (a Protestant writer), we should have been as ignorant of our history as children.[74] England, converted by her monks, has special reason to be proud of the historians furnished by her abbeys.[75] One chronicler, Gildas, has painted with fiery touches the miseries of Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. To another, the Venerable Bede, author of the ecclesiastical history of Britain, we owe the detailed account of the Catholic Renaissance under the Saxons. Bede’s chronicle extends to the year 731. Its author died four years later. Among later monkish chroniclers may be mentioned Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland, whose history extends to 1091; Vitalis, a monk of Shrewsbury, whose chronicle reached to 1141, and many others. The chronicle of Vitalis gives an animated picture of the struggle between the Saxons and the Normans, and of the vicissitudes during this period of the Church of England. Later monastic historians were: William of Malmesbury (circa 1095-1143), Geoffrey of Monmouth (circa 1090-1154), Henry of Huntingdon (circa 1120-1180), Roger of Wendover (circa 1169-1237), Matthew Paris (circa 1185-1259), and Ralph Higden (circa 1280-1370). Further reference to the work of these English chroniclers is made in the chapter on Books in England during the Manuscript Period. This series of monkish chronicles presents, says Montalembert, an inexhaustible amount of information as to the manners, laws, and ideas of the times, and unites with the important information of history the personal attractiveness of biography.[76]