Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

Wattenbach says that the Brothers in the Home at Hildesheim were called upon for an exceptional amount of labour in preparing books of the Mass and other devotional works in connection with the reform movement in the monasteries of lower Saxony, which was active in the middle of the fifteenth century. In the year 1450 (the year in which Gutenberg perfected his printing-press) it is recorded that the Hildesheim Brothers earned from the sale of their manuscripts no less than a thousand gulden.[132] In connection with their interest in the production and distribution of cheap literature, the Brothers did not fail to make very prompt and intelligent utilisation of the new invention of printing, and among the earlier printing-offices established in Germany and in the Low Countries were those organised by the Brothers at Deventer, Zwoll, Gouda, Bois-le-duc, Brussels, Louvain, Marienthal, Rostock, etc.

The Literary Monks of England.

In accepting the influence of literary ideals, the Anglo-Saxon monks were much slower and less imaginative than the quicker and more idealistic Celts. The quickening of the intellectual development of the monasteries in England was finally brought about through the influence of Celtic missionaries coming directly from Ireland or from the Irish monasteries of the Scottish region, such as Iona and its associates.

Before the literary work of the English monasteries began, there was already in existence a considerable body of literature, which was the expression of the pre-christian conceptions and ideals of the Anglo-Saxons and their Scandinavian kinsmen. Certain of the most famous of the literary creations of the Anglo-Saxons were probably produced subsequent to the time of the acceptance by the people of Christianity, but these productions continued to represent the imagination and the methods of thought of the pagan ancestry, and to utilise as their themes the old-time legends. These Saxon compositions were almost exclusively in the form of poems, epics, and ballads devoted to accounts of the achievements of heroes (more or less legendary) in their wars with each other, and in their adventures with the gods and with the powers of magic and evil. In these early epics, devoted chiefly to strife, women bear but a small part, and the element of love enters hardly at all.

While it is doubtless the case that the Saxon epics, like the Greek poems of the Homeric period and the compositions of the Celtic bards, were preserved for a number of generations in the memories of the reciters, there are references indicating that the writing of the texts on the parchment began at a comparatively early date after the occupation of England. This would imply the existence of some trained scribes before work was begun in the scriptoria of the Saxon monasteries. Such lay scribes must, however, have been very few indeed, and the task of handing down for posterity the old legendary ballads must have depended chiefly upon the scops, which was the name given to the poets or bards attached to the court of a prince or chieftain. It is, however, not until the acceptance of Christianity by the Saxons that there comes to be any abiding interest in letters. As Jusserand puts it: “These same Anglo-Saxons, whose literature at the time of their invasion consisted of the songs mentioned by Tacitus, carmina antiqua, which they trusted to memory alone, who compiled no books, and who for written monuments had Runic inscriptions graven on utensils or on commemorative stones, now have in their turn monks who compose chronicles and kings who know Latin. Libraries are formed in the monasteries; schools are attached to them; manuscripts are thus copied and illuminated in beautiful caligraphy and in splendid colours. The volutes and knots with which the worshippers of Woden ornamented their fibulæ, their arms, the prows of their ships, are reproduced in purple and azure, the initials of the Gospels. The use made of them is different, the taste remains the same.”

It is undoubtedly the case that the preservation of such fragments of Anglo-Saxon literature as have come down to us, and probably of most of the Scandinavian compositions which were transmitted through the Saxons, was due to the monastery scribes whose copies were in part transcribed from the earlier parchments and in part were taken down from the recitals made in the monasteries by the bards or minstrels. The service was in fact similar to that previously rendered by the Irish monks to Celtic literature, and by the scribes of Gaul and Italy to the writings of classic times.

The identity or kinship of much of the heroic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons with that of the Scandinavians is pointed out by Grein in his Anglo-Saxon Library, and by Vigfusson and York-Powell in their Corpus Poeticum Boreale. The greatest of the old English epics, Beowulf, sometimes called “the Iliad of the Saxons,” was put into written form some time in the eighth century and, like all similar epics, was doubtless the result of the weaving together of a series of ballads of varied dates and origins. The text of the poem has been preserved almost complete in a manuscript, now placed in the Cottonian collection in the British Museum, which dates from the latter part of the tenth century.

It will be understood that, as a matter of convenience in a brief reference of this kind, I am using the term Saxon and Anglo-Saxon in no strict ethnological sense, but simply to designate the Teutonic element of the people of England, an element whose influence is usually considered to have begun with the landing of Hengist and Horsa in 451.

The first of the Anglo-Saxon monks to be ranked as a poet appears to have been the cowherd Cædmon, a vassal of the Abbess Hilda and a monk of Whitby. Caædmon’s songs were sung about 670. He is reported to have put into verse the whole of Genesis and Exodus, and, later, the life of Christ and the Acts of the Apostles, but his work was not limited to the paraphrasing of the Scriptures. A thousand years before the time of Paradise Lost, the Northumbrian monk sang before the Abbess Hilda the Revolt of Satan. Fragments of this poem, discovered by Archbishop Usher, and printed for the first time in 1655, have been preserved, and have since that date been frequently published.[133] Cædmon died in 680, and Milton in 1674. The Abbess Hilda, who was herself a princess of royal family, appears to have had a large interest in furthering the study of literature, not only in the nunnery founded by her, but in a neighbouring monastery which came largely under her influence. In both nunnery and monastery, schools for the children of the district were instituted, which schools were probably the earliest of their class in that portion of Britain.

The Northumbrian poet Cynewulf, whose work was done between the years 760 and 800, may be referred to as a connecting link between the group of national or popular bards and the literary workers of the Church. His earlier years were passed as a wandering minstrel, but later in life he passed through some religious experience and entered a monastery, devoting himself thereafter to religious poetry. His conversion was doubtless the means of preserving (through the scriptorium of his monastery) such of his compositions as have remained, and thus of making a place for his name among the authors of England.