The Arabian conquests, too—notwithstanding the sore disasters which they at first seemed to threaten—turned rather, through the caliphs' subsequent patronage of learning and science, to the preservation and extension of literature. The Greek manuscripts came to be eagerly sought for by the Arabians and were translated into their own language. Colleges, schools, and libraries, in numerous places, were the tangible and assuring tokens of the subsequent favor of the Arabians toward literature. Bagdad in the far East and Cordova in the far West, with Cairo and Tripoli lying between, became seats of rich developments of science and letters and the depositories of books during the age when Europe was deeply enshrouded in intellectual darkness.[71]

[XX]
MONASTERIES AND THE MONASTIC INSTITUTION

The roots of the great monastic movement which continued for nearly the whole of the Middle Ages run well back into the early Christian centuries. While the beginnings of Monasticism are involved in uncertainty they probably sprang from exaggerated tendencies on the part of individuals, toward lives of privation, hardship, and exposure, of which there were early numerous examples and conspicuous manifestations. These travesties upon devout character and mere abnormalities of religious devotion were not true products of Christian sentiment and ideals but glaring manifestations of morbid self-assertion. This movement was not conterminous nor contemporaneous with the development of Christianity; it existed apart from and prior to Christianity. There were tendencies and examples in the direction here indicated among the Jewish teachers; and it had a large embodiment in the ancient Buddhist as in the modern Indian systems. The central idea of the early ascetics, ever, was that the body is a clog and hindrance to the spirit of man, and hence the assumption of merit in and through the practice of severe austerities and rigid self-abnegation. There were many gross, horrible, and idiotic applications of this practice in the early stages of Christian history as there are in India to-day. The period of its chief ascendency was in the third and fourth centuries.

The monastic movement spread in the fourth century into the extreme West. "Many of the islands around Ireland and Scotland," says Professor Thatcher, "were occupied by the monks, a large number of whom were hermits. Many monasteries were established. The movement became immensely popular, and within a hundred and fifty years there were hundreds of monasteries in the West and thousands of monks in them."[72] The order of Benedictines (founded by Benedict of Nursia at the beginning of the sixth century) ran its course and flourished for centuries. The order of Benedictines was followed (not superseded) by a succession of orders modeled somewhat after their earlier precurser. This movement extended its existence and its influence also far into the East as well as to the westward. Syria, Palestine, and Arabia—especially in the region of Mt. Sinai—were thickly studded with monasteries and "literally swarmed with recluses." Jerome, who lived well into the first quarter of the fifth century (died 420 A. D.), wrote at Bethlehem, Palestine, "We daily receive monks from India, and Persia, and Ethiopia."

The monasteries, so widely established during the period we are considering, became the schools and training-houses for the clergy—the only schools for a long period of time. And we are told that the rulers in the West encouraged the monasteries to open schools for boys in connection with their houses. The schools of this period, to be sure, would not compare with those of modern times, but they were the best available—in fact, the only schools; and they were not circumscribed to religious instruction. The testimony of Professor Dobschütz is that, "All the great fathers of the church insisted upon classical training; so did Jerome himself and Saint Augustine, not to speak of the great classical scholars in Christian bishoprics in the East. And even in the later centuries, when classical civilisation had gone and was only kept up artificially by assiduous reading, it was the church which maintained the right and the necessity of a classical training for the clergy.... There was a time when there was no reading at all outside the clergy and the monasteries, but this reading was a combination of classical and Biblical. That is the great merit of the medieval church."[73]

The value and the extent of the instruction given in these schools was, for the most part, exceedingly limited, in both range and research. The monasteries were—and continued to be, for long—of far greater significance and service, no doubt, in their relation to literature—to its preservation and also its dissemination—than they were as seats and sources of learning. "If there had not been great abbeys where schools of grammar were established, and where as many books as possible were jealously preserved, perhaps not one Latin writer would have come down to us."[74] Most of the monasteries, especially the larger ones, were provided with a "scriptorium" or a writing-room, where the monks with an inclination to literature and those also who were skillful with the pen were required, in the custom of most monasteries, to devote a proportion of every day to the employment of copying books. The large majority of all the scribes, throughout this entire period of a thousand years, were connected with the churches or the monasteries. By their employment in the writing-room worn-out manuscripts were replaced; borrowed books, transcribed, the copies made therefrom being retained at the return of the borrowed book; and thus in these and in other ways, gradually an increasing number of books found a home in the monasteries.

In the business of transcribing books, as often extensively carried on in many monasteries, several monks would sometimes copy manuscripts at the dictation of a reader and thus a number of copies would be produced at the same time. Each copy thus produced, however, was an "individual" and not a "manifold" or duplicate of the others, as in carbon copies or as printed from a type-plate. Writing at the dictation of another was an ancient custom. It may have been practiced in the transcription of the cuneiform tablets. It is affirmed that Jeremiah, the prophet, thus dictated the writing to his faithful scribe, "And they asked Baruch, saying, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth? Then Baruch answered them, He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book." (Jeremiah 36:17, 18.) It is possible, or perhaps probable, that the fifty copies of the Scriptures which Constantine is said to have ordered to be made for the churches in and about Constantinople, may all have been produced at the dictation of a single reader. In that event, each respective copy, while collectively made by individual monks in the scriptorium, would bear its own distinct individuality. The copies thus made at dictation would not be facsimiles of one another or a proof copy of the original, but each copy would preserve a special kinship to all the other copies made under the same general conditions. And this is an important consideration in textual criticism—especially in tracing "family" likeness of certain manuscripts. And so, no doubt, from the scriptoria of the monasteries came the books, or many of them, with which the provincial mansions of the nobility and the private and public libraries were supplied. These manuscripts, made by the monks, were afterwards collected (or many of them were) in the libraries of Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, and elsewhere, as well as those treasured in abbeys and churches.

The monks, who were the principal copyists of the times, fostered distinct traditions of penmanship that led to distinguishing "hands" (page [115]). They cultivated, also, not only the science and art of penmanship but the higher art of embellishment and illumination of manuscripts. For this they had both the time and the inspiring motive. From the monasteries of this period issued some of the finest specimens of the book-making industry and art extant in the world. In speaking of the illuminated books of the thirteenth century, Dr. Walsh says that, "Considering the number of them that are still in existence to this day, in spite of the accidents of fire, and water, and war, and neglect, and carelessness, and ignorance, there must have been an immense number of very handsome books made by the generations of the thirteenth century." And, quoting from another author concerning a special manuscript of this period, he says, "Every page is sufficient to make the fortune of the modern decorator by the quaint and unexpected novelties of invention which it displays at every turn of its intricate design."[75]