Serious ravages were also made in Central Europe in the tenth century by the Hungarians. Martene says that after the battle on the river Brenta, the pagans advanced to Novantula, killed many of the monks, and burned the monastery with a number of books, codices multos concremavere.[191] The monasteries in Italy suffered primarily from the Saracens, and those in Spain from the Moors. The losses caused by the religious wars of the later centuries were, however, according to Mabillon, much more serious than those brought about by the pagans. The Calvinists are held responsible for the destruction, among others, of St. Theodore, near Vienna, of St. Jean, Grimberg, Dilighen, of Jouaire, and, most important of all, of Fleury.[192] The ravages caused by fire were possibly greater than those produced by war, many of the collections having been kept in wooden buildings. Among the noted monasteries which suffered in this way were Gembloux, Liége, Lucelle, Loroy, St. Gall, Fulda, Lorsch, Croyland, and Teano near Monte Cassino. In the burning of the latter perished, as Mabillon was informed, the original manuscript of the famous Rule of S. Benedict. Martene speaks of the Church of Romans in Dauphiny as having been ruined six times: by the Moors, by the Archbishop Sebon, twice by fire, by Guigne Dauphin in the twelfth century, and finally by the Calvinists. The library at the time of his visit still contained a few manuscripts.
In view of these various classes of perils, it may well be a matter of wonder, not that the monastic collections have so largely perished, but that so considerable a number of manuscripts has been preserved. The fact that so many mediæval manuscripts have escaped destruction by fire and flood, and have been saved from the ravages of invading pagans or of contending Christians, seems indeed to be good presumptive evidence of the enormous activity of literary production in the monastery scriptoria during the centuries between 529 and 1450, the date of the founding of Monte Cassino, and that of the invention of printing.
The Libraries of the Monasteries and Their Arrangements for the Exchange of Books.
—Geoffrey, sub-prior of S. Barbe, in Normandy, is the author of a phrase which has since been frequently quoted. In a letter written in 1170 to Peter Mangot, a monk of Baugercy, in the diocese of Tours, he says: “A monastery (claustrum) without a library (sine armario) is like a castle (castrum) without an armory (sine armamentario). Our library is our armory. Thence it is that we bring forth the sentences of the Divine Law like sharp arrows to attack the enemy. Thence we take the armour of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God.”[193]
Among the monasteries whose collections of books were noteworthy and whose literary exchanges were not infrequently sufficiently important to be described as a publishing or bookselling trade, may be mentioned the following: Wearmouth and Yarrow, already referred to, the book production in which was active as early as the seventh century; St. Josse-sur-Mer, where, in the ninth century, the Abbot Loup of Ferrières is reported to have kept a depot of books, from which he carried on an active trade with England[194]; Bobbio in Lombardy, the literary treasures in which have been largely preserved in the Ambrosian library; the monastery of Pomposa near Ravenna, whose library, collected by Abbot Jerome in 1093, was said to be finer than any other of the time in Italy; La Chiusa, whose collection rivalled that of Pomposa; Novalese, whose library, at the time of the destruction of the abbey by the Saracens in 905, is reported to have contained no less than 6500 volumes[195]; and Monte Cassino, which under the Abbot Didia, a friend of Gregory VII., possessed a very rich collection. This collection was the result of the researches in Italy of the African Constantine, who, after having passed forty years in the East studying the scientific treatises of Egypt, Persia, Chaldea, and India, had been driven from Carthage by envious rivals. He came to the tomb of S. Benedict, where he assumed the monastic habit, and he endowed his new dwelling with the rich treasures collected in his wanderings.[196] There are also to be mentioned Fulda, whose library at one time surpassed all others in Germany, excepting perhaps that of St. Gall; Croyland, whose library in the eleventh century numbered 3000 volumes; and many others.
The work of Ziegelbauer gives in detail the old catalogue of the library of Fulda and those of a number of other abbeys. The estimates of the relative importance of these collections are in the main based upon Ziegelbauer’s statistics. There seems to be no question that these monastery libraries carried on with each other an active correspondence and exchange of books, and that this exchange business developed in not a few cases, as in that of St. Josse-sur-Mer, into what was practically a book-trade. It is the conclusion of Mabillon, as of Montalembert, that during the time in which Christian Europe was covered with active monasteries and convents in which thousands of monks and nuns were engaged in constant transcription, books could hardly have been really rare, at least as compared with the extent of the circle of scholars and readers who required them.
Cahier points out that in addition to these great monastery collections, there were libraries of greater or less importance in nearly all the cathedrals, in many of the collegiate churches, and in not a few of the castles. Mabillon is of opinion that the prices of books during the Middle Ages have been very much overestimated, and that the impression as to such prices has been largely based upon isolated and misunderstood instances.[197] Robertson speaks of the collection of Homilies bought in 1056 by Grecia, Countess of Arizon, for two hundred sheep, a measure of wheat, one of millet, one of rye, several marten skins, and four pounds of silver, but Robertson omits to mention that the volumes so purchased were exceptionally beautiful specimens of caligraphy, of painting, and of carving. Maitland points out that it would be as reasonable to quote as examples of prices in the nineteenth century the exorbitant sums paid at special sales by the bibliomaniacs of to-day. “May not some literary historian of the future,” he goes on to say, “at a time when the march of intellect has got past the age of cumbersome and expansive penny magazines and is revelling in farthing cyclopædias, record as an evidence of the scarcity and costliness of books in the nineteenth century, that in the year 1812 an English nobleman gave £2260 and another £1060 for a single volume, and that the next year a Johnson’s Dictionary was sold by public auction for £200. A few such facts would quite set up some future Robertson, whose readers would never dream that we could get better reading, and plenty of it, very much cheaper at that very time.”[198]
It is, of course, the case that there has been such a thing as bibliomania since there have been books in the world, no less in the manuscript period than after the age of printing. “The art of printing,” says Morier, “is unknown in Persia, and beautiful writing is, therefore, considered a high accomplishment. It is carefully taught in the schools, and those who excel in it are almost classed with literary men. They are employed to copy books, and some have attained to such eminence in this art, that a few lines written by one of these celebrated penmen are often sold for a considerable sum. I have known seven pounds given for four lines written by Dervish Musjeed, a celebrated penman, who has been dead for some time, and whose beautiful specimens of writing are now scarce.”[199]
Robertson quotes in support of his general contention a statement of Naudé to the following effect: “In 1471, when Louis XI. borrowed from the Faculty of Medicine in Paris the works of Rasis, the Arabian physician, he not only deposited as a pledge a considerable quantity of plate, but was obliged to procure a nobleman to join with him as surety in a deed, binding himself, under a great forfeiture, to restore the volumes.”[200] In the eighteenth century, however, when Selden wished to borrow a manuscript from the Bodleian Library, he was required to give a bond for a thousand pounds. It does not, therefore, follow that the reign of George II. was a dark age in English literature.[201]
Maitland points out one very important detail, which served to give to some individual manuscript a value that might, when later referred to, appear disproportionate to the expense of the hand labour in its preparation. Under the process of the multiplication of books by printing, each copy of a given edition must of course be a fac-simile of all the other copies, sharing their measure of correctness, and equally sharing their blunders. In the manuscript period, however, every copy of a work was of necessity unique, and the correctness of a particular manuscript was no pledge for the quality even of those which had been copied directly from it. “In fact, the correctness of every single copy could be ascertained only by minute and laborious collation, and by the same minuteness of method which is now requisite from an editor who revises the text of an ancient writer.... If a manuscript had received such a collation at the hands of trustworthy scholars, and if it had been shown to present a text of such completeness and accuracy as might safely be trusted as copy for future transcripts, such a manuscript would undoubtedly be valued at an exceptional price.”[202]