Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

In Egypt it is claimed that until the conquest by the Arab, there was a good deal of literary activity in the monasteries, and in the monastery of S. Catherine of the Sinai range were preserved some specimens of the earlier manuscripts, of which the Testament discovered by Tischendorf is the most important example.

The Library of S. Giovanni in Naples, from which many valuable Greek manuscripts were secured for the Royal Library in Vienna, was not an old monastery collection, but had its origin, according to Blume, with Janus Parrhasius.[213] The Augustin monks presented the collection in 1729 to the Emperor Charles VI., in order that they might not be disturbed in their seclusion by the visits of zealous scholars.[214]

The earliest of ecclesiastical libraries was probably that collected by Bishop Alexander, in Jerusalem, at the beginning of the third century. Fifty years later a library was founded at Cesarea by Origen, which is described as extensive and important.[215] Collections were also made at an early date at Hippo, at Cirta, at Constantinople, and at S. Peter’s and the Lateran in Rome. All these earlier libraries were apparently connected with the churches, and in most cases places had been found for them within the church walls. Clark quotes from a narrative of the persecution of 303-304 a paragraph saying that the officers “went to the church where the Christians used to assemble, and spoiled it of chalices, lamps, etc., but when they came to the library (bibliothecam), the presses (armaria) were found empty.”[216] From this reference we may conclude that the several vessels and the books were in different parts of the same building.

The library of S. Augustine was bequeathed to the church of Hippo, and the collection was preserved within the church building.

The regulations of the libraries in all the Benedictine monasteries were based upon the Rule of S. Benedict (see ante, p. [28]). As Order after Order was founded, there came to be a steady development of feeling in regard to books, and an ever increasing care for their safe-keeping. S. Benedict had contented himself with general directions for study; the Cluniacs prescribe the selection of a special officer to take charge of the books, with an annual audit of the collection, and the assignment to each Brother of a single volume for his year’s study. The Cistercians and Carthusians provide for the loan of books to outsiders under certain conditions, and the practice was later adopted by the Benedictines. The Augustinians prescribe the kind of press (armarium) in which the books are to be kept, and both they and the Premonstratensians permit their books to be lent on receipt of pledges of sufficient value. Even the Mendicant Friars, who, under the original Rule of their Order, had restrained themselves from holding possessions of any kind, found before long that books were indispensable, so that their libraries came to excel those of most other Orders. Richard de Bury, in his Philobiblon, says of the Mendicants: “These men are as ants, ever preparing their meat in the summer, or as ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey ... although they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the Lord’s vineyard, they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of sacred books than all the other vine-dressers.”

Clark points out that the word Library was used by the Benedictines long before any special room was assigned in the Benedictine House as a storage place for the books. He is of opinion that until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the books were for the most part kept in the cloisters, the only portions of the monastery buildings, except the refectory and occasionally the califactorium (warming-house), in which the monks were allowed to congregate. The books so stored in the cloisters were shut up in presses, which secured for them a certain amount of protection. The term applied to these presses, armaria, was that used by the Romans for their book-cases. The monk charged with the care of the books took his name not from the books themselves, as in later times, but from the presses which contained them, and was generally styled armarius.

In some of the monasteries where literary studies were pursued with special ardour, the more persistent readers and scribes were provided with small wooden compartments or studies called carrells. In the book called the Rites of Durham is given the following description of these carrells: “In the north syde of the cloister, from the corner over againste the church dour to the corner over againste the Dorter dour, was all fynely glased from the hight to the sole within a little of the ground into the Cloister garth, and in every window iij Pewes or Carrells, where every one of the old monks had his carrell, several by himselfs, that, when they had dyned, they dyd resort to that place of Cloister, and there studyed upon these books, every one in his carrell, all the after nonne, unto evensong tyme. This was there exercise every daie.... In every carrell was a deske to lye there books upon, and the carrell was no greater than from one stanchell of the wyndowe to another, and over againste the carrells againste the church wall, did stande certain great almeries (or cupbords) of waynscott all full of bookes (with great store of ancient manuscripts to help them in their study) wherein did lye as well the old anncyent written Doctors of the Church as other prophane authors, with dyverse other holie men’s wourks, so that every one did studye what Doctor pleased them best, havinge the Librarie at all tymes to goe studye in besydes there carrells.”[217]

In the Customs of the Augustinian priory of Barnwell, written towards the end of the thirteenth century, the following passage occurs: “The press in which the books are kept ought to be lined inside with wood, that the damp of the walls may not moisten or stain the books. This press should be divided vertically as well as horizontally by sundry partitions, on which the books may be ranged so as to be separated from one another: for fear they be packed so close as to injure each other, or to delay those who want them.”

The catalogue of the House of the White Canons at Titchfield in Hampshire, dated 1400, shows that the books were kept in a small room, on shelves called columpnæ, and set against the walls. A closet of this kind was evidently not a working place, but simply a place of storage. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the larger monasteries had accumulated many hundred volumes, and it began to be customary to provide for the collections separate quarters, rooms constructed for the purpose. The presses in the cloisters were still utilised for books in daily reference.

In Christ Church, Canterbury, where as early as the fourteenth century, the collection comprised as many as 698 books, a library at Durham was built about 1425 by Archbishop Chichele: the library at Durham was built about the same time by Prior Wessyngton. That at Citeaux, which was placed over the scriptorium, dates from 1480, and that of St. Germain des Prés from 1513. The collection of the latter foundation was one of the earliest in France, and as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, there is record of its being consulted by strangers. At the time of the French Revolution, it contained 7000 manuscripts and 4900 printed books.[218]