The precentor shall keep clean the presses belonging to the boys and the novices, and all others in which the books of the convent are stored, repair them when they are broken, provide coverings for the books in the library, and make good any damage done to them[134].
The precentor cannot sell, or give away, or pledge any books; nor can he lend any except on deposit of a pledge, of equal or greater value than the book itself. It is safer to fall back on a pledge, than to proceed against an individual. Moreover he may not lend except to neighbouring churches, or to persons of conspicuous worth[135].
The Customs of the Abbey of Evesham in Worcestershire give the same directions in a slightly different form.
It is part of the precentor's duty to entrust to the younger monks the care of the presses, and to keep them in repair: whenever the convent is sitting in cloister, he is to go round the cloister as soon as the bell has sounded, and replace the books, in case any brother through carelessness should have forgotten to do so.
He is to take charge of all the books in the monastery, and have them in his keeping, provided his carefulness and knowledge be such that they may be entrusted to him. No one is to take a book out unless it be entered on his roll: nor is any book to be lent to any one without a proper and sufficient voucher, and this too is to be set down on his roll[136].
The Carthusians—the second offshoot of the Benedictine tree (1084)—also preserved the primitive tradition of study. They not only read themselves, but were actively employed in writing books for others. In the chapter of their statutes which deals with the furniture allowed to each "tenant of a cell (incola celle)"—(for in this community each brother lived apart, with his sitting-room, bed-room, and plot of garden-ground)—all the articles needful for writing are enumerated, "for nearly all those whom we adopt we teach, if possible, to write," and then the writer passes on to books.
Moreover he—[the tenant of the cell]—receives two books out of the press for reading. He is admonished to take the utmost care and pains that they be not soiled by smoke or dust or dirt of any kind; for it is our wish that books, as being the perpetual food of our souls, should be most jealously guarded, and most carefully produced, that we, who cannot preach the word of God with our lips, may preach it with our hands[137].
They did, however, on occasion lend books, for it is provided that when books are lent no one shall retain them contrary to the will of the lenders[138]. It would be interesting to know how this rule was enforced.
The Cistercian Order—founded 1128—adopted the Benedictine Rule, and with it the obligation of study and writing. Moreover, in their anxiety to take due care of their books, they went further than their predecessors; for they entrusted them to a special officer, instead of to the precentor, and they admitted a special room to contain them into the ground-plan of their houses.