In some of the old abbeys the place of the library is still to be found sunk in the thickness of the wall, as well as the desks of wood or stone before it, fixed there for the behoof of the copyists.
Fires aided the class of knavish borrowers in destroying the labors of the learned and their copiers. Twenty-two thousand volumes were reported as burned at Saint Vicent at Laon. The entire books of Livy were lost, if some people are to be trusted, at the Benedictine abbey of Malmesbury. A savant said he saw the Treatises on the Republic, by Cicero, in a certain convent in 1517, and when he inquired some time after for it, the reply was, that they had been furto praerepti, [Footnote 124] (thievishly abstracted.)
[Footnote 124: Cardinal de Mai was enabled to rescue a portion of the work. A copy of his edition was published in London in 1828, with a fac-simile of a page of the palimpsest exhibiting the ancient and modern letters.]
Besides strong locks and vigorous anathemas, chains were used to secure some of the most valued volumes from pilfering fingers. Some suspected books were even fastened to their shelves with stout nails, as tradition relates to have happened to Roger Bacon's works at the hands of his unscientific brethren, Lord Litton's Friar Bungay being probably the most active on the occasion. Under the treatment of the nails the book could not be read. A relic of the old custom has remained till now in some churches of Florence, where missals and rituals may be read under wire gratings, and even the leaves turned over.
Unworthy Curators.
As a rule libraries in the possession of kings and lords were not as carefully watched as those in convents. A remarkable exception to conventual care is recorded by Boccaccio when relating a visit to the Benedictines of Mount Cassino. He found the door of the library left open, and the books covered by a thick coat of dust, grass growing on the windows, the volumes imperfect, the margins clipped, and everything denoting the greatest negligence. On inquiring the cause of the injury to the volumes, he learned that they erased the writing from the vellum to write psalters (the Seven Penitential Psalms) for young people on them, and clipped off the margins to receive short prayers. About the same time the French king's library was not better secured. It was near the falconry, and the new librarian Giles Malet, apprehensive that the "birds and other beasts" would take the liberty of coming in and injuring the volumes, the wire-worker got eighteen golden francs for applying wire screens to the windows.
At the same convent of Mount Cassino, Mabillon saw the remains of a manuscript of the tenth century, converted to covers. Montfaucon was informed by the archbishop of Rosano that one of his predecessors being rather annoyed by a succession of curious scholars to inspect some Greek documents in his possession, hid them in the earth to get rid of the annoyance. [Footnote 125]
[Footnote 125: The first of these two eminent scholars was born in the diocese of Rheims in 1632, and became a Benedictine monk at St. Maur, same diocese, at the age of 21. Being employed at Saint Denys to show the curiosities of the place, he fortunately broke a glass which had once belonged to Virgil! He received his congé in consequence. His next employment was on the lives of the Saints of the Benedictine order, the Spicilegium, and when his brethren of St. Maur were editing the works of the fathers he was entrusted with those of St. Bernard. Being sent by Colbert into Germany to collect for the library archives of France, he made many valuable acquisitions. The celebrated abbot of La Trappe, De Rancé, having contended that many in a religious state should not distract their attention with literature, Mabillon was appointed to answer him, a duty which he performed with great effect, but in a very mild manner. Le Tellier presented him to Louis XIV., by whom he was graciously received. The learned Du Cange being consulted by a stranger on some abstruse points, sent him to Dom Mabillon. "You have applied to an ignorant person," said D. M. "Go to my master in erudition, M. de Cange." "Why!" said the other, "it was he who directed me to you." This modest and devout and learned man died in Paris in 1707 at the age of seventy-five. Among his chief works is that history of the Benedictine order, and a work on diplomacy.]
Notwithstanding the care shown in influential quarters by heads of religious houses, by kings, by universities, and even the threats of excommunication issued against all pilferers or destroyers of good books, many instances of cruel neglect such as those quoted occurred. The curators of the Sainte Chapelle of Bourges felt so little interest in their literary property that the library was converted into a fowl-house, and valuable works were discovered there by sorrowful visitors, lying open on the desks, it being hard to say whether they were worse treated by the feathered or the unfeathered two-legged animals. These negligences notwithstanding, the work of conserving and reproducing standard works in the classics, and others in the native tongue, went on vigorously, the brave laborers little aware of the mighty aid near at hand for lightening and abridging the labor of hands and pens, and even unable to conceive the possibility of the results of a few mechanical appliances to the rapid and almost infinite multiplication of literary works, a single copy of which required such close application, and such a length of time for its production.