As before indicated, the Monastery Reform, which was instituted with the beginning of the fifteenth century, exercised a very decided influence upon the interest in books and upon the development of libraries. In Tegernsee, where the once noted library had fallen into ruins, the Abbot Casper (1426-1461) reorganised it, restored such of the old manuscripts as were still in existence, bought new codices, and put to work a number of hired scribes. His successor, Conrad V., carried on the work actively and purchased for the sum of eleven hundred pounds heller no less than 450 volumes, in addition to which he secured a number of gifts or devout presents.[241]
In Salzburg, the Archbishop Johann II. (1429-1441) caused a new library building to be erected, and collected for it many beautiful manuscripts. In the monastery of Bergen, near Magdeburg, the Abbot Bursfelder (1450-1478) organised a library, and utilised for his books an old chapel. In 1477, the Prior Martin instituted a library in Bordesholm, and Brother Liborius, who was a professor in Rostock, gave over, in 1405, to this library, for the good of his soul, his works on jurisprudence, with the provision that they were to be placed in chains and to remain forever in the reading-room. A catalogue of this collection, which was prepared in 1498, and which contains more than five hundred titles, has been preserved.[242] The library of the Benedictine monastery of St. Ulrich, near Augsburg, retained its early importance until the invention of printing, and in 1472, as before mentioned, a printing office was instituted in connection with the monastery, by the Abbot and the Chapter, in which active work was carried on. Abbot Trithemius presented to the monastery of Sponheim, in 1480, the sum of fifteen hundred ducats for the enlargement of its library.
As before stated, the Brothers of Common Life planned their collections of books expressly with reference to the service of the students in their schools, and these libraries contained, therefore, a much larger proportion of books in the vernacular than were to be found in other monasteries. In some of the Brotherhood Homes, the library was divided into the collection for the Brothers and the collection for the students. It was ordered that at least once a year all books that were not out on loan should be called in and should be inspected in the presence of the Brothers.
Public Libraries.
—Of the libraries of antiquity, only a single one, and that the latest in foundation, the Imperial Library of Constantinople, continued in existence as late as the Middle Ages. This library, founded in 354 by the Emperor Constantius, was largely added to by Julian the Philosopher. Under the Emperor Basiliscus, the original library, which at that time was said to have contained no less than 120,000 volumes, was destroyed by fire. It was afterwards reinstituted by the Emperor Zeno, the prefect of the city, Julian, having given to the work his personal supervision. References are made to this library in 1276, and again early in the fourteenth century, when John Palæologus was able to present from it certain manuscripts (probably duplicates) to the well known manuscript dealer Aurispa of Venice. It is probable that the manuscripts of the imperial collection had been to some extent scattered before the fall of the city in 1453. Such manuscripts as had escaped destruction during the confusion of the siege of the city were hidden away by the scholars interested, in various monasteries and in out-of-the-way corners, from which they were brought out by degrees during the following two or three centuries.
Large quantities of these manuscripts found their way, however, very promptly to Italy, chiefly through Venice, and, as is described in another chapter, not a few of the Greek scholars who were driven from the Byzantine territories, or who refused to live under the rule of the Turk, brought with them into Italy, as their sole valuable possessions, collections of manuscripts, more or less important, which they used either as texts for their lectures or for transcribing for sale.
The collections in the monasteries of the West, brought together in the first place simply for the requirements of the monks and restricted (at least in theory) to devotional or doctrinal books, were, in large measure at least, placed at the disposal of scholars and readers outside of the monasteries, as the interest in literature came to extend beyond the class of ecclesiastics. With this extension of the use of the libraries, there came a natural development in the range of the books collected.
Long after the monks or ecclesiastics had ceased to exercise any control over the books or to be themselves the only readers interested in their preservation and use, the most convenient space for the collection was to be found in the church buildings. Many of the collections came, in fact, to be known as cathedral libraries.
In certain cases, books or money for the purchase of books was bequeathed in trust to ecclesiastical authorities with the direct purpose of providing a library for the use of the general public. The cathedral Prior of Vercelli (in Piedmont), Jacob Carnarius, who died in 1234, left his books to the Dominicans of S. Paul. He made it, however, a condition of the bequest that under proper security of deposit or pledge, the books should be placed at the disposal of any scholars desiring their use, and particularly of instructors in the Theological Faculty of the University of Vercelli.
Petrarch’s library was bequeathed in 1362 to the Church of S. Mark in Venice, with the condition that the collection was to be for the use of the general public. The books were neglected, and for some time disappeared altogether, and it was only in 1635 that a portion of them were recovered. The famous library of S. Mark dates from 1468, when Cardinal Bessarion presented to the city eight hundred manuscripts, assigning as his reason for the gift the generous hospitality extended by Venice to the refugees from Constantinople. These books were to be for the use of any qualified citizens of the city, a pledge of double the value being deposited for any manuscript borrowed. The library of Boccaccio, who died in 1375, was bequeathed to the monks of the Holy Ghost in Florence. This library was afterwards added to by the collection of the famous theologian, Luigi Marsigli, and that of Niccolo Niccoli.[243]