It is worthy of remark, that Petrarch, as we learn from his “Memoires,” whenever he made a long journey, carried his books along with him upon extra horses, as carefully as others, passing through the Desert, carry their provisions of daily food.
Leland’s story of the library of the Franciscans at Oxford has been often told: it was only accessible to the warden and bachelors of divinity; was full of cobwebs, moths, and filth; and contained no books of value, the best having been surreptitiously carried away.[156] In the monastic libraries the books were contained in painted presses or almeries. In the Abbatial libraries, according to the catalogues given by Leland, there were only the following classics—Cicero and Aristotle, which were common; Terence, Euclid, Quintus Curtius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Julius Frontinus, Apuleius, and Seneca. From this disregard of the classics—not to the shameful destruction only of the monastic libraries at the Dissolution—probably ensued that loss of the Decades of Livy, &c., which has been so justly lamented.[157]
Museum.—Adjoining the abbey library, says Erasmus, “was a certain small but elegant museum, which, upon the removal of a board, exhibited a fire-place if the weather proved cold, otherwise it appeared a solid wall.[158] Coryatt saw a stuffed crocodile in an abbey”—the one solitary specimen, perhaps, of Natural History.[159]
Upon the utility of profane learning in ecclesiastical studies, Petrarch has thus emphatically expressed himself:—“I know by experience,” he says, “how much human learning may contribute to give just notions, to make a man eloquent, to perfect his morals, and, what is more, to defend his religion. If it be not permitted to read the poets and heathen authors, because they do not speak of Christ, whom they did not know, with how much more reason ought we to prohibit heretical works? Yet the defenders of the Faith studiously peruse them. Profane literature, like certain solid aliment, does not hurt a good stomach, only a weak one. Reading, though wholesome to a sound mind, is poison to a feeble intellect. I know that letters are no obstacles to holiness, as some pretend. There are many roads to heaven. Ignorance is that which the idle take. The sciences may produce as many saints as ignorance. And surely we ought not to compare an ignorant devotion to an enlightened piety.”[160]
Monastic Wit.—Speaking of the wit and humour that often enliven the otherwise dull uniformity of monastic writings—“I met with the following epigram,” says Mr. Fosbroke, “in a MS. of the Ashmole library, of which I have never seen a copy; but as it was in a collection of poems made in the sixteenth century, I cannot tell its age:”—
Marriage, saith one, hath oft compared bin
Unto a fest, where meet a public rout;
Where those that are without would fain get in,
And those that are within would fain get out.
Acrostics were known to the Greeks; but the monks used those of a hieroglyphical kind, which could seldom be divined unless by aid of the inventor himself. In the hollow stonework over the kitchen chimney of Kingswood Abbey in Wilts—already noticed in this work—are a Tiger, hart, ostrich, mermaid, ass, and swan; the initial letters of which make the name of the founder, T h o m a s.[161]
Abbey Seals.—That of Tinterne Abbey, as already noticed in this volume, page 75, is imperfect.[162] Of ecclesiastical and monastic seals, those of a round form generally denoted, according to Lewis and Blomfield, something of royalty in the possessor, or a more than ordinary extent of jurisdiction. Monasteries of royal foundation had commonly round seals; bishops and superiors of houses had usually oval seals; the former held the pastoral staff in their left hands, abbots in their right. The earliest conventual seals commonly bore mere rude representations of their patron saints; the more recent were highly finished, the most common device being the superior of the house praying to the patron saint, who was represented as looking down upon him. Previously to the reign of Edward the Third, the conventual seals represented their patron saints and abbots seated upon thrones; but after this period, they as constantly exhibited these figures sitting or standing beneath canopies and arches. The Patron saint subduing and treading upon the dragon, was symbolical of his overcoming sin. A star, the symbol of the Epiphany, and a crescent of the increase of the Gospel, are frequently introduced into the seals.[163] In the Cistercian and Premonstratensian orders, the custody of the seal, though in general ill observed, was committed to the prior, and four others of the establishment elected for that trust.
Abbeys had not only different seals for different purposes, but these were often altered and changed; though, from the seal of Hyde Abbey being worth fifteen marks, the expense of having them engraved must have been extremely high. But so careless were the monks in the custody of it, that Matthew Paris mentions that it was thrown aside among a chest of papers. The abbot’s Bajulus, or domestic monk, was also the bearer of this seal. A silver seal and chain—‘sigillum argenti cum cathena’—is mentioned as that of a plain monk.[164]
Luxury.—With respect to luxuries—which in some monasteries, it was alleged, were earned to a degree quite inconsistent with their professed abstinence—Thomas Pennant, Abbot of Basingwerk, is said to have given twice the treasure of a king in wine, and was profuse of more humble liquors. The apartments for the reception of persons of quality, according to Davies, were furnished in a most expensive and gorgeous manner. But their profuse expenditure in wine, it must be remembered, was in consequence of a too liberal hospitality; for, while the monks themselves were restricted to a meagre diet, their guests, when men of rank and influence, were plentifully regaled with whatever was best in cellar and larder; and the whole country furnished no better cooks or butlers than were to be found in conventual houses.