The Story of Books

by Gertrude Burford Rawlings

During the rule of the Arabs in Northern Africa and in Spain, thousands of manuscripts were gathered together in their chief cities, such as Cairo and Cordova, and many Arabic-Spanish and Moorish writings have been preserved in the Escurial Library, though a large part of this library was burnt in 1671. With these exceptions, the collections of books belonging to the various religious houses were practically the only libraries of early mediæval times. These collections, to begin with, were very small; so small, indeed, that there was no need to set apart a special room for them. Library buildings were not erected till the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, when the accumulation of books rendered them necessary, and those which are found in connection with old foundations will always prove to have been added later. It is said, however, that Gozbert, abbot of St Gall in the ninth century, who founded the library there by collecting what was then the large number of four hundred books, allotted them a special room over the scriptorium. But as a rule the books were kept in the church, and then, as the number increased, in the cloisters. The cloister was the common living-room of the monks, where they read and studied, and carried out most of their daily duties. The books were either stored in presses, though no such press remains to show us upon what pattern they were built, or in recesses in the wall, probably closed by doors. Two of these recesses may be seen in the cloisters at Worcester. In Cistercian houses, says Mr J. W. Clark, to whose Rede Lecture (1894) I am indebted for these details, this recess developed “into a small square room without a window, and but little larger than an ordinary cupboard. In the plans of Clairvaux and Kirkstall this room is placed between the chapter-house and the transept of the church; and similar rooms, in similar situations, have been found at Fountains, Beaulieu, Tintern, Netley, etc.” The books were placed on shelves round the walls. When the cloister windows came to be glazed, so as to afford better protection from the weather for the persons and things within the cloister, they were occasionally decorated with allusions to the authors of the books in the adjacent presses.

Sometimes carrells were set up in the cloister, a carrell being a sort of pew, in which study could be conducted with more privacy than in the open cloister. The carrell was placed so that it was closed at one end by one of the cloister windows and remained open at the other. Examples still survive at Gloucester.

The arrangement of the libraries which were subsequently added to most of the larger monasteries in the fifteenth century is unknown, as none of the furniture or fittings seem to have come down to the present day either in this country or in France or Italy. But Mr Clark thinks that the collegiate libraries will give us the key to the plan of the monastic libraries, since the rules relating to the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge were framed on those which obtained in the “book-houses” of the religious foundations. From these collegiate libraries we gather that it was customary to chain the books, so that they might be accessible to all and yet secure from those who might wish to appropriate them temporarily or otherwise. The shelf to which the volumes were fastened took the form or an “elongated lectern or desk,” at which the reader might sit. Pembroke College and Queens' College, Cambridge, had desks of this type, which was also in use on the Continent. In some places the desks were modified by the addition of shelves above or below.

Mr Falconer Madan, in his Books in Manuscript, quotes the following account, which he translates from the Latin register of Titchfield Abbey, written at the end of the fourteenth century, and which shows the care and method with which the books were kept: “The arrangement of the library of the monastery of Tychefeld is this:—There are in the library of Tychefeld four cases (columnæ) in which to place books, of which two, the first and second, are in the eastern face; on the southern face is the third, and on the northern face the fourth. And each of them has eight shelves (gradus), marked with a letter and number affixed on the front of each shelf.… So all and singular the volumes of the said library are fully marked on the first leaf and elsewhere on the shelf belonging to the book, with certain numbered letters. And in order that what is in the library may be more quickly found, the marking of the shelves of the said library, the inscriptions in the books, and the reference in the register, in all points agree with each other. Anno domini, MCCCC.” Then is shown the order in which the books lie on the shelves. Briefly, the sequence of subjects and books is as follows:—Bibles, Bibles with commentary, theology, lives of saints, sermons, canon law, commentaries on canon law, civil law, medicine, arts, grammar, miscellaneous volumes, logic and philosophy, English law, eighteen French volumes, and a hundred and two liturgical volumes. Titchfield Abbey owned altogether over a thousand volumes.

The monastic librarian, as we should call him, was known as the armarius, since he had charge of the armaria or book-presses. He frequently united this office to that of precentor or leader of the choir, for at first the service-books were his chief care. It was his business to make the catalogue, to examine the volumes from time to time to see that mould or book-worms or other dangers were not threatening them, to give out books for transcription, and to distribute the various writing-materials used in the scriptorium or writing-room. He had also to collate such works as were bound to follow one text, such as Bibles, missals, monastic rules, etc. To these duties he often added that of secretary to the abbot and to the monastery generally.

Many catalogues of monastic libraries are extant, and several belonging to continental foundations were compiled at a very early period. Of the library of St Gall, founded by the Abbé Gozbert in 816, a contemporary catalogue still exists. The St Gall library contained four hundred volumes, a large number for those days, and, moreover, was provided with a special room, a chamber over the scriptorium. It is not easy to see why in this and other cases of the co-existence of a library and a scriptorium one room was not made to do duty for both. But to return to the catalogues. Another early example is that of the Abbey of Clugni, in France, made in 831, and forming part of an inventory of the Abbey property. The Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau, on the Rhine, had four catalogues compiled in the ninth century—two of the books in the library, one of certain transcriptions made and added thereto, and one of additions to the library from other sources. Among English monastic book-lists, there is one of Whitby Abbey, which appears to have been made in 1180, and the library of Glastonbury Abbey, which excited the wonder and admiration of Leland, and which was started by St Dunstan round a nucleus of a few books formerly brought to the Abbey by Irish missionaries, was catalogued in 1247 or 1248. Catalogues of the books at Canterbury (Christ Church and St Augustine's monastery), Peterborough, Durham, Leicester, Ramsey, and other foundations are also known, and these, with the notices of Leland, form our only sources of information as to these various literary storehouses.

As regards their contents, the Scriptures, missals, service-books, and similar manuscripts formed the larger part of the monastic libraries, but besides these they included copies of patristic and classical works, devotional and moral writings, lives of saints, chronicles, books on medicine, grammar, philosophy, logic, and, later, romances and fiction were admitted into this somewhat austere company. The catalogue of the “boc-house” of the monastery of St Augustine at Canterbury, written towards the close of the fifteenth century, names many romantic works, including the Four Sons of Aymon, Guy of Warwick, The Book of Lancelot, The Story of the Graal, Sir Perceval de Galois, The Seven Sages, and others, and of some of these there is more than one copy.

Books were frequently lent to other monasteries, or to poor clerks and students. It was considered a sacred duty thus to share the benefits of the books with others; but sometimes the custodians of the precious volumes, aware of the failures of memory to which book-borrowers have ever been peculiarly liable, were so averse from running the risk of lending that the libraries were placed under anathema, and could not be lent under pain of excommunication. But the selfishness and injustice of such a practice being recognised, it was formally condemned by the Council of Paris in 1212, and the anathemas annulled. Anathemas were also pronounced against any who should steal or otherwise alienate a book from its lawful owners.

But as even in mediæval days there were those who loved books better than honesty, the loan of a volume was accompanied by legal forms and ceremonies, and the borrower, whatever his station or character, had to sign a bond for the due return of the work, and often to deposit security as well. Thus, when about 1225 the Dean of York presented several Bibles for the use of the students of Oxford, he did so on condition that those who used them should deposit a cautionary pledge. Again, in 1299, John de Pontissara, Bishop of Winchester, borrowed from the convent of St Swithun the Bibliam bene glossatum, i.e. the Bible with annotations, and gave a bond for its return. And in 1471, when books had become much more common, no less a person than the King of France, desiring to borrow some Arabian medical works from the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, had not only to deposit some costly plate as security, but to find a nobleman to act as surety with him for the return of the books, under pain of a heavy forfeit.

Many of the great monastic libraries owed their origin to the liberality of one donor, usually an ecclesiastic. Among other libraries destroyed by the Danes was the fine collection of books at Wearmouth monastery, made by Benedict Biscop, the first English book collector, who was so eager in the cause of books that he is said to have made no less than five journeys to Rome in order to search for them. Part of his library was given to the Abbey at Jarrow, and shared the same fate as the books at Wearmouth.