Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

It is also under the instructions of Alfred that the old national chronicles, written in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, are copied, corrected, and continued. Of these chronicles, seven, more or less complete and differing from each other to some extent, have been preserved. The history of the world presents possibly no other instance of a monarch who devoted himself so steadfastly, with his own personal labour, to the educational and spiritual development of his people.

In the latter portion of the tenth century, S. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury under King Edgar, takes up the task of instructing the clergy and people. Under his influence, new monasteries are endowed, a further series of monastery schools is instituted, and special attention is given in the scriptoria and in the writing-rooms of the schools to the production of copies of translations of pious works. The special literary feature of the work done in Dunstan’s school was the attention given to the production of collections of sermons in the vulgar tongue. A number of these collections has been preserved, an example of which, known as the Blickling Homilies (from Blickling Hall, Norfolk, where the MS. was found) was compiled before 971. The series also included homilies by Ælfric, who was Abbot of Eynsham in 1005, and sermons of Wulfstan, who was Bishop of York in 1002.

The canons of Ælfric were written between the years 950 and 1000. The authorities do not appear to be clear whether these canons were the work of the Archbishop or of a grammarian of the same name, while, according to one theory, the Archbishop and the grammarian were the same person. The canons were addressed to Wulfin, Bishop of Sherborn, and they were written in such a form that the Bishop might communicate them to his clergy as a kind of episcopal charge. The twenty-first canon orders: “Every priest also, before he is ordained, must have the arms belonging to his spiritual work; that is, the holy books, namely, the Psalter, the Book of Epistles, the Book of Gospels, the Missal, the Book of Hymns, the Manual, the Calendar (Computus), the Passional, the Penitential, the Lectionary. These books a priest requires and cannot do without, if he would properly fulfil his office and desires to teach the law to the people belonging to him. And let him carefully see that they are well written.”[142]

The library of the English monastery or priory was under the care of the chantor, who could neither sell, pawn, nor lend books without an equivalent pledge; he might, however, with respect to neighbouring churches or to persons of consideration, relax somewhat the strictness of this rule. In the case of a new foundation, the King sometimes sent letters-patent to the different abbeys requesting them to give copies of theological and religious books in their own collections. In certain instances, the King himself provided such transcripts for the new foundation. In the catalogue of the abbatial libraries of England, prepared by Leland, record is found of only the following classics: Cicero and Aristotle (these two appear in nearly all the catalogues), Terence, Euclid, Quintus Curtius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Julius Frontinus, Apuleius, and Seneca.[143] It is difficult from such a list to arrive at the basis or standard of selection.

Thomas Duffus Hardy gives some interesting information concerning the later literary and historical work done in the monasteries of Britain,[144] and for a portion of the following notes concerning this work I am chiefly indebted to him. The Abbey of St. Albans was founded towards the close of the eighth century, but it was not until the latter part of the eleventh century, or nearly three hundred years later, that the scriptorium was instituted. The organisation of the scriptorium was due to Paul, the fourteenth abbot, who presided over the monastery from 1077 to 1093, and who had the assistance in this work of the Bishop Lanfranc. Paul was by birth a Norman, and was esteemed a man of learning as well as of piety. After the scriptorium had been opened, the abbot placed in it eight Psalters, a Book of Collects, a Book of Epistles, a book containing the Gospels for the year, two Gospels bound in gold and silver and ornamented with gems, and twenty-eight other notable volumes. In addition to these, there was a number of ordinals, costumals, missals, troparies, collectories, and other books for the use of the monks in their devotions. This summary of the first contents of the library is taken by Hardy from the Gesta Abbatum, a chronicle of St. Albans.

The literary interests of Paul were, it appears, continued by a large proportion at least of his successors, and many of these made important contributions to the library. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbot, gave to the scriptorium a missal bound in gold, and another missal in two volumes, both incomparably illuminated in gold and written in an open and legible script. He also gave a precious illuminated psalter, a book containing the benediction and sacraments, a book of exorcism, and a collectory. (The description is taken from the Gesta.)

Ralph, the seventeenth abbot, was said to have become a lover of books after having heard Wodo of Italy expound the Scriptures. He collected with diligence a large number of valuable manuscripts. Robert de Gorham, who was called the reformer of the liberty of the Church of St. Albans, after becoming prior, gave many books to the scriptorium, more than could be mentioned by the author of the Gesta. Simon, who became abbot in 1166, caused to be created the office of historiographer. Simon had been educated in the abbey, and did not a little to add to its fame as a centre of literature. He repaired and enlarged the scriptorium, and he kept two or three scribes constantly employed in it. The previous literary abbots had for the most part brought from without the books added to the collection, but it was under Simon that the abbey became a place of literary production as well as of literary reproduction. He had an ordinance enacted to the effect that every abbot must support out of his personal funds one adequate scribe. Simon presented to the abbey a considerable group of books that he had himself been collecting before his appointment as abbot, together with a very beautiful copy of the Old and New Testaments.

The next literary abbot was John de Cell, who had been educated in the schools of Paris, and who was profoundly learned in grammar, poetry, and physics. On being elected abbot, he gave over the management of the temporal affairs of the abbey to his prior, Reymond, and devoted himself to religious duties and to study. Reymond himself was a zealous collector, and it was through him that was secured for the library, among many other books, a copy of the Historica Scholastica cum Allegoriis, of Peter Comester. The exertions of these scholarly abbots and priors won for St. Albans a special distinction among the monasteries of Britain, and naturally led to the compilation of the historic annals which gave to the abbey a continued literary fame. Hardy is of opinion that these historic annals date from the administration of Simon, between the years 1166 and 1183.

Richard of Wendover, who succeeded Walter as historiographer, compiled, between the years 1230 and 1236, the Flores Historiarum, one of the most important of the earlier chronicles of England. Hardy points out that it could have been possible to complete so great a work within the term of six years, only on the assumption that Richard found available much material collected by Walter, and it is also probable that other compilations were utilised by Richard for the work bearing his name. It is to be borne in mind that the monastic chronicles were but seldom the production of a single hand, as was the case with the chronicles of Malmesbury and of Beda. The greater number of such chronicles grew up from period to period, fresh material being added in succeeding generations, while in every monastic house in which there were transcribers, fresh local information was interpolated until the tributary streams had grown more important than the original current. In this manner, the monastic annals were at one time a transcript, at another time an abridgment, and at another an original work. “With the chronicler, plagiarism was no crime and no degradation. He epitomised or curtailed or adapted the words of his predecessors in the same path with or without alteration (and usually without acknowledgment), whichever best suited his purpose or that of his monastery. He did not work for himself but at the command of others, and thus it was that a monastery chronicle grew, like a monastery house, at different times, and by the labour of different hands.”

Of the heads that planned such chronicles or of the hands that executed them, or of the exact proportion contributed by the several writers, no satisfactory record has been preserved. The individual is lost in the community.