Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

When Peter of Celle had borrowed two volumes of S. Bernard’s works, he wrote to him: “Make haste and quickly copy these and send them to me; and according to my bargain, cause a copy to be made for me, and both those which I have sent to you, and the copies, as I have said, send to me, and take care that I do not lose a single tittle.” Writing to the Dean of Troyes, he says: “Send me the Epistles of the Bishop of Le Mans, for I want to copy them”; and, indeed, he seems to have a constant eye to the acquisition and multiplication of books.[209]

As to this commercium librorum, it would be easy, says Maitland, to multiply examples. In a letter of the Abbot Peter to Guigo, Prior of Chartreuse, he mentions that he had sent him the Lives of S. Nazianzen and S. Chrysostom, and the argument of S. Ambrose against Symmachus. That he had not sent the work of Hilary on the Psalms because his copy contained the same defect as the Prior’s. That he did not possess Prosper against Cassius, but that he had sent to Aquitaine for a copy. He begs the Prior to send the greater volume of S. Augustine, containing the letters which passed between him and S. Jerome, because a great part of their copy, while lying in one of the cells, had been eaten by a bear (casu comedit ursus),[210] a novel difficulty in the way of preserving literature.

Peter of Clugni, known as Peter the Venerable, became abbot of the monastery in 1122. Clugni, the Caput Ordinis, was at that time the most considerable of the Benedictine foundations, and might, in fact, be termed the most important monastery of its age. The correspondence of Peter and of his secretary Nicholas, who was for a time also secretary of Bernard of Clairvaux, forms an important contribution to the monastic history of the country and contains not a few references throwing light on the literary conditions of the time. Nicholas had, in addition to his business as the Abbot’s amanuensis, what Mabillon calls a librorum commercium with various persons. It appears from his letters that he used to lend books on condition that a copy should be returned with the volume lent. Nicholas, while a diligent scribe and an active-minded scholar, was discovered later, to be a very untrustworthy person. He left Clairvaux with books, money, and gold service that did not belong to him, and also (which Abbot Bernard mentions as a special grievance) with three seals, his own, the prior’s, and the abbot’s. His further career was a checkered one, but does not belong to this narrative.

Abbot Peter of Clugni, writing to Master Peter of Poitiers in 1170, lays some emphasis on the inadvisability of devoting too much time to the study of the ancients. “See, now, without the study of Plato, without the disputations of the Academy, without the subtleties of Aristotle, without the teaching of philosophers, the place and the way of happiness are discovered.... You run from school to school, and why are you labouring to teach and to be taught? Why is it that you are seeking through thousands of words and multiplied labours, what you might, if you pleased, obtain in plain language and with little labour? Why, vainly studious, are you reciting with the comedians, lamenting with the tragedians, trifling with the metricians, deceiving with the poets and deceived with the philosophers? Why is it that you are now taking so much trouble about what is not in fact philosophy but should rather (if I may say it without offence) be called foolishness.”

Counsels of this kind give some indication at least of the tendency in Poitiers, and doubtless also in Clugni, to devote to the old-time poetry and philosophy some of the hours which, under a stricter observance, should be reserved for the Scriptures or the Fathers. The venerable Abbot must himself have had some fairly comprehensive knowledge of the literature he was criticising, and the gentle satire of the phrase “deceived with the philosophers” does not give one the impression of coming from a clumsy-minded and ignorant monk such as Robertson describes Peter the Venerable to have been.

A further evidence not only of comprehensive knowledge but of a liberal spirit, is afforded by the fact that Peter gave to the West a translation (possibly the first) of the Alkoran. This is the form used by Peter himself for the Mohammedan scriptures. In a letter to S. Bernard, he speaks of having had this translation prepared of a work which had so greatly influenced the thought of the world that it ought to be known to Europe. He says further that the defenders of the true faith should familiarise themselves with the contentions of the Mohammedan heretics, in order to be able to refute these when the necessity arose.[211]

CHAPTER II.

SOME LIBRARIES OF THE MANUSCRIPT PERIOD.

THE following are some of the more important collections referred to in the records of the Middle Ages. In Constantinople the Patriarch had a library in Thomaïtes which was said to be of considerable importance, and the works in it are referred to very often in the transactions of the Synods. This collection was destroyed by fire in 780, but was speedily replaced. Many of the monasteries of the Greek Church possessed libraries, and in some of these libraries were preserved the oldest manuscripts known to the world. Among the most important of these collections was that contained in the monastery of Mt. Athos, some of the treasures of which have been preserved to the present day. During the time of Basilius Macedo (867-886), much work was said to have been done by the scribes of this monastery.[212]