[441] Le Librairie des Papes d' Avignon, par Maurice Faucon, Tome ii. p. 43, in Bibl. des Écoles Françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, Fasc. 50.
[442] Archæologia, Vol. 47, p. 120. I have to thank my friend Mr P. T. Micklethwaite, architect, for this quotation.
CHAPTER VII.
CONTRAST BETWEEN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES. COMMISSIONERS OF EDWARD VI. SUBSEQUENT CHANGES IN LIBRARY FITTINGS. S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, CAMBRIDGE. QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD. LIBRARIES ATTACHED TO CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS. CHAINING IN RECENT TIMES. CHAINS TAKEN OFF.
I have now traced the evolution of the bookcase from a clumsy contrivance consisting of two boards set at an angle to each other, to the stately pieces of furniture which, with but little alteration, are still in use; and I hope that I have succeeded in shewing that the fifteenth century was emphatically the library-era throughout Europe. Monasteries, cathedrals, universities, and secular institutions in general vied with each other in erecting libraries, in stocking them with books, and in framing liberal regulations for making them useful to the public.
To this development of study in all directions the sixteenth century offers a sad and startling contrast. In France the Huguenot movement took the form of a bitter hostility to the clergy—which, after the fashion of that day, exhibited itself in a very general destruction of churches, monasteries, and their contents; while England witnessed the suppression of the Monastic Orders, and the annihilation, so far as was practicable, of all that belonged to them. I have shewn that monastic libraries were the public libraries of the Middle Ages; more than this, the larger houses were centres of culture and education, maintaining schools for children, and sending older students to the Universities. In three years, between 1536 and 1539. the whole system was swept away, as thoroughly as though it had never existed. The buildings were pulled down, and the materials sold; the plate was melted; and the books were either burnt, or put to the vilest uses to which waste literature can be subjected. I will state the case in another way which will bring out more clearly the result of this catastrophe. Upwards of eight hundred monasteries were suppressed, and, as a consequence, eight hundred libraries were done away with, varying in size and importance from Christ Church, Canterbury, with its 2000 volumes, to small houses with little more than the necessary service-books. By the year 1540 the only libraries left in England were those at the two Universities, and in the Cathedrals of the old foundation. Further, the royal commissioners made no attempt to save any of the books with which the monasteries were filled. In France in 1789 the revolutionary leaders sent the libraries of the convents they pillaged to the nearest town: for instance, that of Citeaux to Dijon; of Clairvaux to Troyes; of Corbie to Amiens. But in England at the suppression no such precautions were taken; manuscripts seem to have been at a discount just then, for which the invention of printing may be to some extent responsible; their mercantile value was small; private collectors were few. So the monastic libraries perished, save a few hundred manuscripts which have survived to give us an imperfect notion of what the rest were like.
How great the loss was, has probably been recorded by more than one writer; but for the moment I can think of nothing more graphic than the words of that bitter protestant John Bale, a contemporary who had seen the old libraries, and knew their value. After lamenting that "in turnynge ouer of ye superstycyouse monasteryes so lytle respect was had to theyr lybraryes for the sauegarde of those noble and precyouse monumentes" (the works of ancient writers), he states what ought to have been done, and what really happened.