Of these embellishments the most distinctive was the glass. At St Albans the twelve windows contained figures illustrating the subjects of the books placed near them. For instance, the second window represented Rhetoric and Poetry; and the figures selected were those of Cicero, Sallust, Musaeus, Orpheus. Appropriate verses were inscribed beneath each. The whole scheme recalls the library of Isidore, Bishop of Seville, which I have already described[426]. In the library of Jesus College, Cambridge, each light contains a cock standing on a globe, the emblem of Bishop Alcock the founder, with a label in his beak bearing a suitable text, and under his feet an inscription containing half the designation required. For instance, the first two bookcases contained works on Physic, and in the window is the word PHI-SICA divided between the two lights[427]. In Election Hall at Eton College—a room originally intended for a library—we find the Classes of Civil Law, Criminal and Canon Law, Medicine, etc., illustrated by medallions shewing a church council, an execution, a physician and his patient, and the like[428]. At the Sorbonne, Paris, the 38 windows of the library were filled with the portraits of those who had conferred special benefits on the college[429]; at Froidmont[430] near Beauvais the authors of the Voyage Littéraire remark the beautiful stained glass in the library: and in Bishop Cobham's library at Oxford, according to Hearne, there "was brave painted glass containing the arms of the benefactors, which painted glass continued till the times of the late rebellion[431]."
Lastly, I will collect the different terms used to designate medieval bookcases. They are—arranged alphabetically—analogium, bancus or banca, descus, gradus, stallum, stalla, stallus or staulum, and sedile. I have sometimes thought that it would be possible to determine the form of the bookcase from the word used to describe it; but increased study has convinced me that this is impossible, and that the words were used quite loosely. For instance, bancus designates the cases in the Vatican Library which represent a variety of the lectern-system; and its French equivalent banc the cases at Clairvaux which were stalls with four shelves apiece. Again "desk" (descus) is used interchangeably with "stall" (stallum) in a catalogue of the University Library, Cambridge, dated 1473, to designate what I strongly suspect were lecterns; in 1693 by Bishop Hacket when describing the stalls which Dean Williams gave to the library at Westminster Abbey[432]: and in 1695 by Sir C. Wren to describe bookcases which were partly set against the walls, partly at right-angles to them.
It has been already shewn that gradus means a shelf, or a lectern, or a side of a lectern[433]; and sedile is obviously only the Latin equivalent for "seat," which was sometimes used, as at S. John's College, Cambridge, in 1623[434], to designate a bookcase. It was also used at Christ Church, Canterbury, for what I have shewn to be a stall with four shelves[435]. The word analogium was used in France to signify a lectern[436]. The word "class" (classis) is used at the University Library, Cambridge, in 1584, instead of the ancient "stall," and afterwards superseded it entirely. For instance, when a Syndicate was appointed in 1713 to provide accommodation for Bishop Moore's Library, the bookcases are described as Thecæ sive quas vocant classes. Gradually the term was extended until it reached its modern signification, namely, the shelves under a given window together with those on the sides of the bookcases to the right and left of the spectator facing it[437].
We sometimes meet with the word distinctio. For instance, an Apocalypse in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, which once belonged to St Augustine's College, Canterbury, is noted as having stood "distinctione prima gradu tertio"; and the same word is used in the introduction to the catalogue of Dover Priory to signify what I am compelled to decide was a bookcase. The word demonstratio, on the other hand, which occurs at the head of the catalogue of the library of Christ Church, Canterbury, made between 1285 and 1331, probably denotes a division of subject, and not a piece of furniture.
Until the lectern-system had gone out of fashion, a word to denote a shelf was not needed. When shelves had to be referred to, textus[438] was used at Canterbury, and linea[439] at Citeaux. On the other hand, at Saint Ouen at Rouen, this word indicates a row of bookcases, probably lecterns. In a record of loans[440] from that library in 1372 and following years, the books borrowed are set down as follows (to quote a few typical instances):
| Item, digestum novum, linea I, E, ii. | |
| Item, liber de regulis fidei, cum aliis, linea III, L, viii. | |
| Item, Tulius de officiis, linea II a parte sinistra, D, ii. |
These extracts will be sufficient to shew that the cases were arranged in three double rows, each double row being called a linea. Each lectern was marked with a letter of the alphabet, and each book with the number of the row, the letter of the lectern to which it belonged, and its number on the lectern. Thus, to take the first of the above entries, the Digest was to be found in the first row, on lectern E, and was the second volume on the said lectern. It is evident that there was a row of lecterns on each side of a central alley or passage, and that a book was to be found on the right hand, unless the left hand was specially designated.
A catalogue has been preserved of the books in the castle of Peñiscola on the east coast of Spain, when the anti-pope Benedict XIII. retired there in 1415. They were kept in presses (armaria), each of which was subdivided into a certain number of compartments (domuncule), each of which again contained two shelves (ordines)[441]. I suggest that this piece of furniture resembled, on a large scale, Le Chartrier de Bayeux, which I have already figured ([fig. 26]).
In conclusion, I will quote a passage in which the word library designates a bookcase. It occurs in an inventory of the goods in the church of S. Christopher le Stocks, London, made in 1488:
On the south side of the vestrarie standeth a grete library with ij longe lecturnalles theron to ley on the bokes[442].