But though there were libraries in other countries, Italy always contained the greatest number of classical MSS. In the ninth century, Lupus, who was educated at Fulda, and afterwards became Abbot of Ferrieres, a monastery in the Orleanois, requested Pope Benedict III. to send him Cicero de Oratore and Quintilian, of both of which he possessed parts, but had neither of them complete[535]; and in another letter he begs from Italy a copy of Suetonius[536]. The series of his letters gives us a favourable impression of the state of profane literature in his time. In his very first letter to Einhart, who had been his preceptor, he quotes Horace and the Tusculan Questions. Virgil is repeatedly cited in the course of his epistles, and the lines of Catullus are familiarly referred to as authorities for the proper quantities of syllables. Lupus did not confine his care to the mere transcription of MSS. He bestowed much pains on the rectification of the texts, as is evinced by his letter to Ansbald, Abbot of Prum, where he acknowledges having received from him a copy of the epistles of Cicero, which would enable him to correct the MSS. of them which he himself possessed[537].
It was a rule in convents, that those who embraced the monasteric life should employ some hours each day in manual labour; but as all were not fit for those occupations which require much corporeal exertion, many of the monks fulfilled their tasks by copying MSS. Transcription thus became a favourite exercise in the ninth century, and was much encouraged by the Abbots[538]. In every great convent there was an apartment called the Scriptorium, in which writers were employed in transcribing such books as were deemed proper for the library. The heads of monasteries borrowed their classics from each other, and, having copied, returned them[539].—By this means, books were wonderfully multiplied. Libraries became the constant appendages of cloisters, and in Italy existed nowhere else. We do not hear, during this period, of either royal or private libraries. There was little information among the priests or parochial clergy, and almost every man of learning was a member of a convent.
But while MSS. thus increased in the monasteries, there were, at the same time, during this century, many counteracting causes, which rendered them more scarce than they would otherwise have been. During the Norman invasion, the convents were the chief objects of plunder. From the time, too, of the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens, in the seventh century, when the Egyptian papyrus almost ceased to be imported into Europe, till the close of the tenth, when the art of making paper from cotton rags seems to have been introduced, there were no materials for writing except parchment, a substance too expensive to be readily spared for mere purposes of literature[540]. The scarcity of paper, too, not only prevented the increase [pg A-10]of classical MSS., but occasioned the loss of some which were then in existence, from the characters having been deleted, in order to make way for a more favourite production. The monkish scribes were accustomed to peel off the surface of parchment MSS., or to obliterate the ink by a chemical process, for the purpose of fitting them to receive the works of some Christian author; so that, by a singular and fatal metamorphosis, a classic was frequently translated into a vapid homily or monastic legend. That many valuable works of antiquity perished in this way, is evinced by the number of MSS. which have been discovered, evidently written on erased parchments. Thus the fragments of Cicero’s Orations, lately found in the Ambrosian library, had been partly obliterated, to make room for the works of Sedulius, and the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon; and Cicero’s treatise de Republica had been effaced, in order to receive a commentary of St Augustine on the Psalms.
The tenth century has generally been accounted the age of deepest darkness in the west of Europe. During its course, Italy was united by Otho I. with the German empire, and was torn by civil dissensions. Muratori gives a detailed account of the plundering of Italian convents, which was the consequence of these commotions, and of the irruption of the Huns in 899[541]. Still, however, Italy continued to be the great depository of classical MSS.; and in that country they were occasionally sought with the utmost avidity. Gerbert, who became Pope in the last year of the tenth century, by name of Silvester II., spared neither pains nor expense in procuring transcriptions of MSS. This extraordinary man, impelled by a thirst of science, had left his home and country at an early period of life: He had visited various nations of Europe, but it was in Spain, then partly subject to the Arabs, that he had chiefly obtained an opportunity of gratifying his mathematical talent, and desire of general information. Being no less ready to communicate than eager to acquire learning, he founded a school on his return to Italy, and greatly increased the library at Bobbio, in Lombardy, to the abbacy of which he had been promoted. While Archbishop of Rheims, in France, that kingdom experienced the effects of his enlightened zeal. During his papacy, obtained for him by his pupil Otho III., he persevered in his love of learning. In his generosity to scholars, and his expenditure of wealth for the employment of copyists, as well as for exploring the repositories in which the mouldering relics of ancient learning were yet to be found, we trace a liberality, bordering on profusion.—“Nosti,” says he, in one of his epistles to the monk Rainaldo, “quanto studio librorum exemplaria undique conquiram; nosti quot scriptores in urbibus, aut in agris Italiæ passim habeantur. Age ergo, et te solo conscio, ex tuis sumptibus fac ut mihi scribantur Manilius de Astronomia, et Victorinus. Spondeo tibi, et certum teneo quod, quicquid erogaveris, cumulatim remittam[542].” Having by this means exhausted Italy, Silvester directed his researches to countries beyond the Alps, as we perceive from his letter to Egbert, Abbot of Tours.—“Cui rei preparandæ bibliothecam assidue comparo; et sicut Romæ dudum, et in aliis partibus Italiæ, in Germanià quoque, et Belgicà, scriptores auctorumque exemplaria multitudine nummorum redemi; adjutus benevolentia et studio amicorum comprovincialium: sic identidem apud vos per vos fieri sinite ut exorem. Quos scribi velimus, in fine epistolæ designabimus[543].” This list, however, is not printed in any of the editions of Gerbert’s Letters, which I have had an opportunity of consulting.
It thus appears that there were zealous researches for the classics, and successful discoveries of them, long before the age of Poggio, or even of Petrarch; but so little intercourse existed among different countries, and the monks had so little acquaintance with the treasures of their own libraries, that a classical author might be considered as lost in Italy, though familiar to a few learned men, and still lurking in many of the convents.
Gerbert, previous to his elevation to the Pontificate, had, as already mentioned, been Abbot of Bobbio; and the catalogue which Muratori has given of the library in that convent, may be taken as an example of the description and extent of the classical treasures contained in the best monastic libraries of the tenth century. While the collection, no doubt, chiefly consists of the works of the saints and fathers, we find Persius, Valerius Flaccus, and Juvenal, contained in one volume. [pg A-11]There are also enumerated in the list Cicero’s Topica, and his Catilinarian orations, Martial, parts of Ausonius and Pliny, the first book of Lucretius, four books of Claudian, the same number of Lucan, and two of Ovid[544]. The monastery of Monte Casino, which was the retreat, as we have seen, of Cassiodorus, was distinguished about the same period for its classical library.—“The monks of Casino, in Italy,” observes Warton, “were distinguished before the year 1000, not only for their knowledge of the sciences, but their attention to polite learning, and an acquaintance with the classics. Their learned Abbot, Desiderius, collected the best of the Roman writers. This fraternity not only composed learned treatises on music, logic, astronomy, and the Vitruvian architecture, but likewise employed a portion of their time in transcribing Tacitus, Jornandes, Ovid’s Fasti, Cicero, Seneca, Donatus the grammarian, Virgil, Theocritus, and Homer.”
During the eleventh century, the Benedictines having excited scandal by their opulence and luxury, the Carthusian and Cistertian orders attracted notice and admiration, by a self-denying austerity; but they valued themselves not less than the Benedictines, on the elegance of their classical transcriptions; and about the same period, translations from the Classics into the Lingua volgare, first commenced in Italy.
At the end of the eleventh century, the Crusades began; and during the whole course of the twelfth century, they occupied the public mind, to the exclusion of almost every other object or pursuit. Schools and convents were affected with this religious and military mania: All sedentary occupations were suspended, and a mark of reproach was affixed to every undertaking which did not promote the contagion of the times.
About the middle of the thirteenth century, and after the death of the Emperor Frederic II., Italy was for the first time divided into a number of petty sovereignties, unconnected by any system of general union, except the nominal allegiance still due to the Emperor. This separation, while it excited rivalry in arms, also created some degree of emulation in learning. Many Universities were established for the study of theology and the exercise of scholastic disputation; and though the classics were not publicly diffused, they existed within the walls of the convent, and were well known to the learned men of the period. Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, and author of the Tesoro, translated into Italian several of Cicero’s orations, some parts of his rhetorical works, and considerable portions of Sallust[545]. Dante, in his Amoroso Convito, familiarly quotes Livy, Virgil, and Cicero de Officiis; and Mehus mentions various translations of Seneca, Ovid, and Virgil, which had been executed in the age of Dante, and which he had seen in MSS. in the different libraries of Italy[546].
It was Petrarch, however, who, in the fourteenth century, led the way in drawing forth the classics from the dungeons where they had been hitherto immured, and holding up their light and glory to the eyes of men. While enjoying the reputation of having perfected the most melodious and poetical language of Europe, Petrarch has acquired a still higher title to fame, by his successful exertions in rousing his country from a slumber of ignorance which threatened to be eternal. In his earliest youth, instead of the dry and dismal works which at that time formed the general reading, he applied himself to the reading of Virgil and Cicero; and when he first commenced his epistolary correspondence, he strongly expressed his wish that their fame should prevail over the authority of Aristotle and his commentators; and declared his belief of the high advantages the world would enjoy if the monkish philosophy should give place to classical literature. Petrarch, as is evinced by his letters, was the most assiduous recoverer and restorer of ancient MSS. that had yet existed. He was an enthusiast in this as he was in every thing else that merited enthusiasm—love, friendship, glory, patriotism, and religion. He never passed an old convent without searching its library, or knew of a friend travelling into those quarters [pg A-12]where he supposed books to be concealed, without entreaties to procure for him some classical MS. It is evident that he came just in time to preserve from total ruin many of the mouldering remains of classical antiquity, and to excite among his countrymen a desire for the preservation of those treasures when its gratification was on the very eve of being rendered for ever impracticable. He had seen, in his youth, several of Cicero’s now lost treatises, and Varro’s great work Rerum Divinarum et Humanarum[547], which has forever disappeared from the world; and it is probable that had not some one, endued with his ardent love of letters, and indefatigable research, arisen, many similar works which we now enjoy, would soon have sunk into a like oblivion.