Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

The Influence of the Scriptorium.

—Hildebrand, who, under the name Gregory VII., became Pope in 1073, appears to have made large use of the literary facilities of the monasteries to bring effectively before the public the doctrinal teachings which seemed to him essential for the wholesome development of the strength of the Church in its great contest with the imperial power and for the proper rule of the world. The histories of the time speak of monks travelling throughout the Empire circulating writings in favour of the Church, by means of which writings schism could be withstood and the zeal of good Catholics aroused.[123]

Certain of the monasteries, in connection with their literary activity in behalf of the Pope, came into special disfavour with the Emperor. Among them was Hirschau, the importance of whose literary work has been previously referred to. This monastery fell under the displeasure of the Emperor Frederick IV., but the monks, says their own annalist, sustained by their prayers, braved the sword of the tyrant and despised the menaces of offended princes.[124] Abbot William of Hirschau had for twenty-two years been the soul of monastic regeneration in Germany. He was one of the great scholars of his time and had done not a little to further the literary pre-eminence of his monastery, and he became one of the most valiant defenders of the popes during this contest. Among other ecclesiastical writers whose pens were active in the defence of the papal decrees and in assailing the utterances of the schismatics, and whose work, by means of the distributing machinery which had already been organised between the monasteries, secured for the time a large circulation, were Bernard, at one time master of the schools of Constance, but later a monk at Hirschau; Bernold, a monk of St. Blaise; Adelbert, a monk of Constance; and Gebhard, another monk of Hirschau.[125]

Gregory was possibly the first pope who made effective and extended use of the writings of devout authors for the purpose of influencing public opinion. If we may judge by the results of his long series of contests with the imperial power in Germany, the selection of these literary weapons was one proof of his sagacity. In this contest, the scriptoria of the monasteries proved more powerful than the armies of the emperors; as, five hundred years later, the printing-presses of the Protestants proved more effective than the Bulls of the Papacy.

The most important, in connection with its influence and consequences, of the discoveries made by scholars concerning the fraudulent character of historic documents, occurred as late as the beginning of the fifteenth century. It was about 1440 when Laurentius Valla, at that time acting as secretary for King Alphonso of Naples, wrote his report upon the famous Donation of Constantine, the document upon which the Roman Church had for nearly a thousand years based its claims to be the direct representative in Western Europe of the old imperial authority. Valla brought down upon his head much ecclesiastical denunciation. The evidences produced by him of the fact that the document had been fabricated a century or more after the death of Constantine could not be gotten rid of, and, although for a number of years the Church continued to maintain the sacred character of the Donation, and has, in fact, never formally admitted that it was fraudulent, it was impossible, after the beginning of the sixteenth century, even for the ecclesiastics themselves to base any further claims for the authority of the Church upon this discredited parchment.

Of almost equal importance was the discovery of the fabrication of the pseudo Isidoric Decretals. The Decretals had been concocted early in the ninth century by certain priests in the West Frankish Church, and had been eagerly accepted by Pope Nicholas I., who retained in the archives of the Vatican the so-called originals. The conclusion that the Decretals had been fraudulently imposed upon the Church was not finally accepted until the beginning of the fourteenth century. It was with the humanistic movement of the Renaissance that historical criticism had its birth, and a very important portion of the work of such criticism consisted in the analysis of the lack of foundation of a large number of fabulous legends upon which many of the claims of the Church had been based.

There were evidently waves of literary interest and activity in the different monasteries, between which waves the art of writing fell more or less into disuse and the libraries were neglected. In the monastery at Murbach, for instance, in which, in the beginning of the century, important work had been done, it is recorded that in 1291 no monks were found who were able to write, and the same was said in 1297 of the more famous monastery of St. Gall.[126] On the other hand, the newly organised Orders of travelling or mendicant monks took an active interest in preparing and in distributing manuscript copies of works of doctrine at about the time when, in the older and richer Orders, literary earnestness was succumbing to laziness and luxury. With these mendicant monks, began also to come into circulation a larger proportion of original writings, transcribed and corrected, and probably to some extent sold by the authors themselves. Richard de Bury makes bitter references in his Philobiblon (chapters v. and vi.) to the general antagonism of the Church towards literature, but speaks with appreciation of the educational services rendered by the mendicant monks. Writing was done also by the monks of the Minorite Order, but their rules and their methods of life called for such close economy that the manuscripts left by them are distinguished by the meagreness and inadequacy of the material and the closely crowded script, which, in order further to save space, contains many abbreviations.

Roger Bacon is said to have come into perplexity because, when he wished to send his treatises to Pope Clement IV., he could find no one among the Brothers of his Order who was able to assist him in transcribing the same, while scribes outside of the Order to whom he attempted to entrust the work gave him untrustworthy and slovenly copies.[127]

With the beginning of the fourteenth century, it is possible to note a scholarly influence exercised upon certain of the monasteries by the universities. The most enterprising of the monks made opportunities for themselves to pass some years of their novitiate in one or more of the universities, or later secured leave of absence from the monasteries for the purpose of visiting the universities. It also happened that from the monasteries where literary work had already been successfully carried on, monks were occasionally called to the universities in order to further the literary undertakings of the theological faculties. Finally, the abbots, and other high officials of the monasteries, were, after the beginning of the fourteenth century, more frequently appointed from among the ecclesiastics who had had a university training.

The library in Heidelberg, the university of which dates from 1386, received from the monastery at Salem a large number of beautiful manuscripts, and finally, an illuminated breviary was completed in 1494 by the Cistercian Amandus, who, after the destruction of his monastery in Strasburg, had found refuge in Salem, where in 1529 he became abbot. There is evidence that, at this time, both in Salem and in other monasteries in which the business of manifolding and of selling or exchanging manuscripts became important, a large proportion of the work of illustrating or illuminating was done by paid artists.