[256] The Canons held a long debate, 28 May, 1479, "de ambonibus seu lutrinis in nova libraria fiendis et collocandis"; but finally decided to use the furniture of the old library for the present.
[257] Voyage Liturgique de la France, par Le Sieur de Moléon, 1718, p. 268. I have to thank Dr James for this quotation.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FITTINGS OF MONASTIC LIBRARIES AND OF COLLEGIATE LIBRARIES PROBABLY IDENTICAL. ANALYSIS OF SOME LIBRARY-STATUTES. MONASTIC INFLUENCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. NUMBER OF BOOKS OWNED BY COLLEGES. THE COLLEGIATE LIBRARY. BISHOP COBHAM'S LIBRARY AT OXFORD. LIBRARY AT QUEENS' COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. AT ZUTPHEN. THE LECTERN SYSTEM. CHAINING OF BOOKS. FURTHER EXAMPLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
How were the libraries mentioned in the preceding chapter fitted up? For instance, what manner of bookcases did Archbishop Chichele put into his library at Canterbury in 1414, or the "bons ouvriers subtilz et plains de sens" supply to the Abbat of Clairvaux in 1496? The primitive book-presses have long ago been broken up; and the medieval devices that succeeded them have had no better fate. This dearth of material need not, however, discourage us. We have, I think, the means of discovering with tolerable certainty what monastic fittings must have been, by comparing the bookcases which still exist in a more or less perfect form in the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge with such monastic catalogues as give particulars of arrangement and not merely lists of books.
The collegiate system was in no sense monastic, indeed it was to a certain extent established to counteract monastic influence; but it is absurd to suppose that the younger communities would borrow nothing from the elder—especially when we reflect that the monastic system, as inaugurated by S. Benedict, had completed at least seven centuries of successful existence before Walter de Merton was moved to found a college, and that many of the subsequent founders of colleges were more or less closely connected with monasteries. Further, as we have seen that study was specially enjoined upon monks by S. Benedict, it is precisely in the direction of study that we might expect to find features common to the two sets of communities. And, in fact, an examination of the statutes affecting the library in the codes imposed upon some of the earlier colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, leads us irresistibly to the conclusion that they were derived from monastic Customs, using the word in its technical sense, and monastic practice. The resemblances are too striking to be accidental.
I shall therefore, in the next place, review, as briefly as I can, the statutes of some of the above colleges, taking them in chronological order[258]; and I shall translate some passages from them.