The University of Leiden in Holland adopted a modification of this design, for there the shelf is above the desk, and readers could only stand to use the books (fig. 5).
UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN.
An arrangement analogous to this was adopted at Citeaux, as we may gather from the catalogue, drawn up in 1480. I will not trouble you with details, but merely say that there was evidently a shelf below the desk as well as one above it. The cases therefore resembled those at Leiden, with this difference; and they were also probably of such a height that a reader could conveniently sit at them.
LIBRARY AT CESENA.
On the continent, where elaborate bindings came early into fashion, sometimes protected by equally elaborate bosses at their corners, it would have been impossible to arrange the volumes as we did side by side on the shelves. It therefore became the fashion to place a shelf below the desk, and to lay the books upon it on their sides. The earliest library fitted in this manner that I have been able to discover is at Cesena in North Italy. It was built in 1452, by Domenico Malatesta Novello, for the convent of S. Francesco. It is possible, therefore, that the parent house of S. Francesco at Assisi, which had a large library, divided, so early as 1381, into a Libreria publica and a Libreria secreta, had similar bookcases. I am going to shew you a general view of the room, which has a thoroughly medieval character, next the cases (fig. 6), and thirdly a single book with its chain (fig. 7). You will observe that the seats for the reader are no longer independent, but are combined with the bookcase.
LIBRARY AT CESENA.
