From The Dublin University Magazine.
The Libraries Of The Middle Ages And Their Contents.
Father Hardouin On The Classics.
The fourteenth century was doubtlessly an era of great literary activity with regard to transcribing and filling libraries with copies of the Latin Scriptures, of theological works in general, and of the classics. The learned and eccentric Jesuit, Father John Hardouin, fixed on it for the composition of all the supposed classic treasures of antiquity which we possess, except the works of Cicero, Pliny's Natural History, the Satires and Epistles of Horace, the Georgics and nine Eclogues of Virgil, the comedies of Plautus, the poems of Homer, and the history of Herodotus. All the rest were the brain-produce of the cloistered scholars of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially the latter, as being distinguished by the rage for collecting manuscripts and forming libraries. Not only were these supposed fruits of the classic pagan tree the growth of the Christian intellect of that late time, but the works of St. Augustin and his disciples were composed for them nine hundred years after their funerals.[Footnote 120]
[Footnote 120: John Hardouin, the son of a bookseller of Quimper, was born in 1646. He entered at an early age into the Society of Jesus. He soon distinguished himself by acute perception and a great memory, but still more by cherishing such paradoxes as the above. The AEneid, according to him, was the work of a Benedictine of the thirteenth century, and was an allegorical description of St. Peter's journey to Rome; and Horace's Lalage was a type of the Christian religion. The antique metals were all modern inventions, each letter representing a word. "You are quite right, father," said an antiquary to him one day. "These letters found on so many metals, Con. Os., and supposed to stand for 'Constantinopli Obsignatum,' (stamped [sealed] at Constantinople,) are evidently intended to read, 'Cusi Omnes Nummi Officina Benedictina'—all moneys struck in the Benedictine Mint." He was a most firm believer in all the dogmas of revealed religion, but a thorough Pyrrhonist in human traditions. He classed Jansenism, Thomassin, Malebranche, Quesnel, Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Descartes, Le Grand, and Regis among the atheists. They were Cartesians, merely another name for unbelievers. His learning was most extensive and his works numerous. He died in Paris in 1729 at the age of 88.]
There was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a literary warfare between the Classicists and Romancists as real as that which sprung up in Paris before the three days of July, but much less noisy. We find among the 145 volumes bequeathed to the library of the church of Langres in 1365, by Jean de Saffres, about two dozen of romances whose titles deserve to be remembered. They were Renart, (Reynard the Fox,) Girart de Roussillon, Garin la Loherain, Aimeri de Narbonne, Raoul de Cambrai, Bueves de Barbastre,[Footnote 121] Jean dit le Lanson, Parise la Duchesse, Merlin, Courberau d'Oliferne, Gibert dit Desrée, les Sept Sages, les Machabées, Troie la Grant, (Troy the Great,) Florimont, la Rose, Beaudoux, (Sweet Beauty or Beautifully Sweet.) Clyges, Perceval le Gallois, Basin et Gombaud, Amadas, (Amadis, qu.,) Galaad, Lancelot, Tristan, (Sir Tristrem.)
[Footnote 121: A cherished manual of our youth was Wild Roses or Cottage Tales, published by Anne Lemoine in some court whose name has escaped our memory. One of the stories was "Barbastal, or the Magician of the Forest of Bloody Ash!" Was Bueves de Barbastre the original of that terrible and interesting narrative?]
The Care Bestowed On The Libraries.
We may be certain that St. Benedict had not such books as these in his mind when he composed the following prayer of blessing on the works to be copied by his monks, a prayer which has been preserved in the Abbey of Fleuri-sur-Loire: