THE ANTIQUARY’S BOOKS
GENERAL EDITOR: J. CHARLES COX, LL.D., F.S.A.

OLD ENGLISH LIBRARIES

OLD ENGLISH
LIBRARIES

THE MAKING, COLLECTION, AND USE OF BOOKS
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES
BY
ERNEST A. SAVAGE
WITH FIFTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

First Published in 1911

PREFACE

WITH the arrangement and equipment of libraries this essay has little to do: the ground being already covered adequately by Dr. Clark in his admirable monograph on The Care of Books. Herein is described the making, use, and circulation of books considered as a means of literary culture. It seemed possible to throw a useful sidelight on literary history, and to introduce some human interest into the study of bibliography, if the place held by books in the life of the Middle Ages could be indicated. Such, at all events, was my aim, but I am far from sure of my success in carrying it out; and I offer this book merely as a discursive and popular treatment of a subject which seems to me of great interest.

The book has suffered from one unhappy circumstance. It was planned in collaboration with my friend Mr. James Hutt, M.A., but unfortunately, owing to a breakdown of health, Mr. Hutt was only able to help me in the composition of the chapter on the Libraries of Oxford, which is chiefly his work. Had it been possible for Mr. Hutt to share all the labour with me, this book would have been put before the public with more confidence.

More footnote references appear in this volume than in most of the series of “Antiquary’s Books.” One consideration specially urged me to take this course. The subject has been treated briefly, and it seemed essential to cite as many authorities as possible, so that readers who were in the mood might obtain further information by following them up.

In a book covering a long period and touching national and local history at many points, I cannot hope to have escaped errors; and I shall be grateful if readers will bring them to my notice.

I need hardly say I am especially indebted to the splendid work accomplished by Dr. Montague Rhodes James, the Provost of King’s College, in editing The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, and in compiling the great series of descriptive catalogues of manuscripts in Cambridge and other colleges. I have long marvelled at Dr. James’ patient research; at his steady perseverance in an aim which, even when attained—as it now has been—could only win him the admiration and esteem of a few scholars and lovers of old books.

I have to thank Mr. Hutt for much general help, and for reading all the proof slips. To Canon C. M. Church, M.A., of Wells, I am indebted for his kindness in answering inquiries, for lending me the illustration of the exterior of Wells Cathedral Library, and for permitting me to reproduce a plan from his book entitled Chapters in the Early History of the Church of Wells. The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire have kindly allowed me to reproduce a part of their plan of Birkenhead Priory. Illustrations were also kindly lent by the Clarendon Press, the Cambridge University Press, Mr. John Murray, Mr. Fisher Unwin, the Editor of The Connoisseur, and Mr. G. Coffey, of the Royal Irish Academy. A small portion of the first chapter has appeared in The Library, and is reprinted by kind permission of the editors. Mr. C. W. Sutton, M.A., City Librarian of Manchester, has been in every way kind and patient in helping me. So too has Mr. Strickland Gibson, M.A., of the Bodleian Library, especially in connexion with the chapter on Oxford Libraries. Thanks are due also to the Deans of Hereford, Lincoln, and Durham, to Mr. Tapley-Soper, City Librarian of Exeter, and to Mr. W. T. Carter, Public Librarian of Warwick; also to my brother, V. M. Savage, for his drawings. The general editor of this series, the Rev. J. Charles Cox, LL.D., F.S.A., gave me much help by reading the manuscript and proofs; and I am grateful to him for many courtesies and suggestions.

ERNEST A. SAVAGE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

LIST OF PLATES

OLD ENGLISH LIBRARIES

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY—THE USE OF BOOKS IN EARLY IRISH MONASTERIES

“What tyme þat abbeies were first ordeyned
and monkis were first gadered to gydre.”
—Inscribed in MS. of Life of Barlaam and Josaphat,
Peterhouse, Camb.

§I

TO people of modern times early monachism must seem an unbeautiful and even offensive life. True piety was exceptional, fanaticism the rule. Ideals which were surely false impelled men to lead a life of idleness and savage austerity,—to sink very near the level of beasts, as did the Nitrian hermits when they murdered Hypatia in Alexandria. But this view does not give the whole truth. To shut out a wicked and sensual world, with its manifold temptations, seemed the only possible way to live purely. To get far beyond the influence of a barbaric society, utterly antagonistic to peaceful religious observance, was clearly the surest means of achieving personal holiness. Monachism was a system designed for these ends. Throughout the Middle Ages it was the refuge—the only refuge—for the man who desired to flee from sin. Such, at any rate, was the truly religious man’s view. And if monkish retreats sheltered some ignorant fanatics, they also attracted many representatives of the culture and learning of the time. This was bound to be so. At all times solitude has been pleasant to the student and thinker, or to the moody lover of books.

By great good fortune, then, the studious occupations which did so much to soften monkish austerities in the Middle Ages, were recognised early as needful to the system. Even the ascetics by the Red Sea and in Nitria did not deprive themselves of all literary solace, although the more fanatical would abjure it, and many would be too poor to have it. The Rule of Pachomius, founder of the settlements of Tabenna, required the brethren’s books to be kept in a cupboard and regulated lending them. These libraries are referred to in Benedict’s own Rule. We hear of St. Pachomius destroying a copy of Origen, because the teaching in it was obnoxious; of Abba Bischoi writing an ascetic work, a copy of which is extant; of anchorites under St. Macarius of Alexandria transcribing books; and of St. Jerome collecting a library summo studio et labore, copying manuscripts and studying Hebrew at his hermitage even after a formal renunciation of the classics, and then again, at the end of his life, bringing together another library at Bethlehem monastery, and instructing boys in grammar and in classic authors. Basil the Great, when founding eremitical settlements on the river Iris in Pontus, spent some time in making selections from Origen. St. Melania the younger wrote books which were noted for their beauty and accuracy. And when Athanasius introduced Eastern monachism into Italy, and St. Martin of Tours and John Cassian carried it farther afield into Gaul, the same work went on. In the cells and caves of Martin’s community at Marmoutier the younger monks occupied their time in writing and sacred study, and the older monks in prayer.[1] Sulpicius Severus (c. 353-425), the ecclesiastical historian, preferred retirement, literary study, and the friendship and teaching of St. Martin to worldly pursuits. At the famous island community of Lérins, in South Gaul, were instructed some of the most celebrated scholars of the West, among them St. Hilary. “Such were their piety and learning that all the cities round about strove emulously to have monks from Lérins for their bishops.”[2] Another centre of studious occupation was the monastery of Germanus of Auxerre; while near Vienne was a community where St. Avitus (c. 525) could earn the high reputation for holiness and learning which won him a metropolitan see. Many other facts and incidents prove the literary pursuits of the Gallic ascetics; as, for example, the reputation the nuns of Arles in the sixth century won for their writing; and the curious story of Apollinaris Sidonius driving after a monk who was carrying a manuscript to Britain, stopping him, and there and then dictating to secretaries a copy of the precious book which had so nearly escaped him.[3]

§ II

Monachism of this Eastern type came from Gaul to Ireland.[4] St. Patrick received his sacred education at Marmoutier; under Germanus at Auxerre; and possibly at Lérins. His companions on his mission to Ireland, and the missionaries who followed him, nearly all came from the same centres. Naturally, therefore, the same practices would be observed, not only in regard to religious discipline and organisation, but in regard to instruction and study. Even the mysterious Palladius, Patrick’s forerunner, is said to have left books in Ireland.[5] But the earliest important references to that use of books which distinguishes the educated missionary from the mere fanatical recluse are in connexion with Patrick. Pope Sixtus is said to have given him books in plenty to take with him to Ireland. Later he is supposed to have visited Rome, whence he brought books home to Armagh.[6] He gave copies of parts of the Scriptures to Irish chieftains. To one Fiacc he gave a case containing a bell, a crosier, tablets, and a meinister, which, according to Dr. Lanigan, may have been a cumdach enclosing the Gospels and the vessels for the sacred ministry, or, according to Dr. Whitley Stokes, simply a credence-table.[7] He sometimes gave a missal (lebar nuird). He had books at Tara. On one occasion his books were dropped into the water and were “drowned.” Presumably the books he distributed came from the Gallic schools, although his followers no doubt began transcribing as opportunity offered and as material came to hand. Patrick himself wrote alphabets, sometimes called the “elements”; most likely the elements or the A B C of the Christian doctrine, corresponding with the “primer.”[8]

This was the dawn of letters for Ireland. By disseminating the Scriptures and these primers, Patrick and his followers, and the train of missionaries who came afterwards,[9] secured the knowledge and use of the Roman alphabet. The way was clear for the free introduction of schools and books and learning. “St. Patrick did not do for the Scots what Wulfilas did for the Goths, and the Slavonic apostles for the Slavs; he did not translate the sacred books of his religion into Irish and found a national church literature.... What Patrick, on the other hand, and his fellow-workers did was to diffuse a knowledge of Latin in Ireland. To the circumstance that he adopted this line of policy, and did not attempt to create a national ecclesiastical language, must be ascribed the rise of the schools of learning which distinguished Ireland in the sixth and seventh centuries.”[10]

Mainly owing to the labours of Dr. John Healy, we now know a good deal about the somewhat slow growth of the Irish schools to fame; but for our purpose it will do to learn something of them in their heyday, when at last we hear certainly of that free use of books which must have been common for some time. From the sixth to the eighth century Ireland enjoyed an eminent place in the world of learning; and the lives and works of her scholars imply book-culture of good character. St. Columba was famed for his studious occupations. Educated first by Finnian of Moville, then by another tutor of the same name at the famous school of Clonard, he journeyed to other centres for further instruction after his ordination. From youth he loved books and studies. He is represented as reading out of doors at the moment when the murderer of a young girl is struck dead. In later life he realized the importance of monastic records. He had annals compiled, and bards preserved and arranged them in the monastic chests. At Iona the brethren of his settlement passed their time in reading and transcribing, as well as in manual labour. Very careful were they to copy correctly. Baithen, a monk on Iona, got one of his fellows to look over a Psalter which he had just finished writing, but only a single error was discovered.[11] Columba himself became proficient in copying and illuminating. He could not spend an hour without study, or prayer, or writing, or some other holy occupation.[12] He transcribed, we are told, over three hundred copies of the Gospels or the Psalter—a magnification of a saint’s powers by a devout biographer, but significant as it testifies to Columba’s love of studious labours, and shows how highly these ascetics thought of work of this kind. On two occasions, being a man as well as a saint, he broke into violence when crossed in his love of books. One story tells how he visited a holy and learned recluse named Longarad, whose much-prized books he wished to see. Being denied, he became wroth and cursed Longarad. “May the books be of no use to you,” he cried, “nor to any one after you, since you withhold them.” So far the tale is not improbable, but a little embroidery completes a legend. The books became unintelligible, so the story continues, the moment Longarad died. At the same instant the satchels in all the Irish schools and in Columba’s cell slipped off their hooks on to the ground.

A quarrel about a book, we are told, changed his career. He borrowed a Psalter from Finnian of Moville, and made a copy of it, working secretly at night. Finnian heard of the piracy, and, as owner of the original, claimed the copy. Columba refused to let him have it. Then Diarmid, King of Meath, was asked to arbitrate. Arguing that as every calf belonged to its cow, so every copy of a book belonged to the owner of the original, he decided in Finnian’s favour. Columba thought the award unjust, and said so. A little later, after another dispute with Diarmid on a question of monastic immunity, he called together his tribesmen and partisans, and offered battle. Diarmid was defeated. For some reason, not quite clear, these quarrels led to Columba’s voluntary exile (c. 563). He sailed from Ireland, and landed upon the silver strand of Iona, and to the end of his days his work lay almost entirely amid the heather-covered uplands and plains of this little island home.[13] Iona became a renowned centre of missionary work, quite over-shadowing in importance the earlier “Scottish” settlement of Whitherne or Candida Casa. Pilgrims went thither from Ireland and England to receive instruction, and returned to carry on pioneer work in their own homeland. Thence went forth missionaries to carry the Christian message throughout Scotland and northern England. Perhaps, too, here was planned the expedition to far-off Iceland. “Before Iceland was peopled by the Northmen there were in the country those men whom the Northmen called Papar. They were Christian men, and the people believed that they came from the West, because Irish books and bells and crosiers were found after them, and still more things by which one might know that they were west-men, i.e. Irish.”[14]

Not only to the far north, but to the Continent, did the Irish press their energetic way. In Gaul their chief missionary was Columban (c. 543-615), who had been educated at Bangor, then famous for the learning of its brethren. His works display an extensive acquaintance with Christian and Latin literature. Both the Greek and Hebrew languages may have been known to him, though this seems improbable and inconceivable.[15] In his Rule he provides for teaching in schools, copying manuscripts, and for daily reading.[16]

The monasteries of Luxeuil, Bobio, and St. Gall, founded by him and his companions on their mission in Gaul and Italy, became the homes of the most famous conventual libraries in the world—a result surely traceable to the example set by the Irish ascetics, and to the tradition they established.[17]

Other Irish monks are better known for their literary attainments than for missionary enterprise. St. Cummian, in a letter written about 634, displays much knowledge of theological literature, and a good deal of knowledge of a general kind.[18] Another monk named Augustine (c. 650) quotes from Eusebius and Jerome in a work affording many other evidences of learning.[19] Aileran (c. 660), abbot of Clonard, wrote a religious work which proves his acquaintance with Jerome, Philo, Cassian, Origen, and Augustine.[20]

An Englishman supplies valuable evidence of the state of Irish learning. Aldhelm’s (c. 656-709) works prove him to have had access in England to a good library; while in one learned letter he compares English schools favourably with the Irish, and declares Theodore and Hadrian would put Irish scholars in the shade. Yet he is on his mettle when communicating with Irish friends or pupils; he clearly reserves for them the flowers of his eloquence.[21] The Irish schools were indeed successful rivals of the English schools, and Irish scholars could use libraries as good, or nearly as good, as that at Aldhelm’s disposal. At this time the attraction which Ireland and Iona had for English students was extraordinary. English crowded the Irish schools, although the Canterbury school was not full.[22] The city of Armagh was divided into three sections, one being called Trian-Saxon, the Saxon’s third, from the great number of Saxon students living there.[23]

In 664 many English, both high and low in rank, left their native land for Ireland, where they sought instruction in sacred studies, or an opportunity to lead a more ascetic life. Some devoted themselves faithfully to a monkish career. Others applied themselves to study only, and for that purpose journeyed from one master’s cell to another. The Irish welcomed all comers. All received without charge daily food: barley or oaten bread and water, or sometimes milk—cibus sit vilis et vespertinus—a plain meal, once a day, in the afternoon. Books were supplied, or what is more likely, waxed tablets folded in book form. Teaching was as free as the open air in which it was carried on.[24]

Among the English at one time or another taking advantage of Irish hospitality were Gildas (c. 540), first native historian of England;[25] Ecgberht, presbyter, a Northumbrian of noble birth; Ethelhun, brother of Ethelwin, bishop of Lindsay; Oswald, king of Northumbria; Aldfrith, another Northumbrian king, who was educated either in Ireland or Iona; Alcuin, who received instruction at Clonmacnoise;[26] one named Wictberht, “notable ... for his learning and knowledge, for he had lived many years as a stranger and pilgrim in Ireland”; and St. Willibrord, who at the age of twenty journeyed to Ireland for purposes of study, because he had heard that learning flourished in that country.[27]

§ III

Most of the references we have made above belong to the sixth and seventh centuries, usually regarded as the best age of Irish monachism. But the Irish enjoyed their reputation unimpaired for a long time. Just before and after the Northmen descended on their land in 795, we find them making their mark abroad, not so much as missionaries but as scholars and teachers.[28]

A few instances will suffice. “The Acts of Charles, written by a monk of St. Gallen late in the ninth century, tells us of ‘two Scots from Ireland,’ who ‘lighted with the British merchants on the coast of Gaul,’ and cried to the crowd, ‘If any man desireth wisdom, let him come unto us and receive it, for we have it for sale.’ They were soon invited to the court of Charles. One of them, Clement, partly filled the place of Alcuin as head of the palace school.”[29] His reputation soon became widespread, and the abbot of Fulda sent several of his most capable monks to him to learn grammar.[30] His companion, Dungal, went on to Italy. He enjoyed a full share of the learning of his time; was a student of Cicero and Macrobius; knew Virgil well; and had some Greek.[31] A few fine books were bequeathed by him to the Irish monastery of Bobio, where copies were written and distributed through Italy. According to the learned Muratori, in one of these manuscripts is an inscription proving Dungal’s ownership.[32] One of the books so bequeathed was the famous Antiphonary of Bangor, now in the Ambrosian library at Milan.

Clement and Dungal were not the only Irishmen of note on the Continent. One, Dicuil, was an exponent of geography. He founded his treatise (c. 825) on Cæsar, Pliny, and Solinus; he quotes and names many other writers, including fourteen Greek; and generally impresses us with his earnest studentship. An Irish monk named Donatus wandered to Italy and became bishop of Fiesole (c. 829); he, too, was a scholar acquainted with Virgil, a teacher of grammar and prosody, and a lecturer on the saints.[33] Sedulius, the commentator, an Irish monk of Liége, copied Greek psalters, wrote Latin verses, knew Cicero’s letters, the works of Valerius Maximus, Vegetius, Origen, and Jerome; was well acquainted with mythology and history, and perhaps had some Hebrew.[34] Another Irishman, John the Scot (Joannes Scotus Erigena), became the most eminent scholar of his time: he alone, among all the learned men Charles the Bald had about him, was able to translate from Greek (c. 858-860). Well might Eric of Auxerre, writing to Charles, express his astonishment at this train of philosophers from Ireland, that barbarous land on the confines of the world.[35] All these wanderers, and many more, must have been responsible for the dissemination of the books produced by Irish hands; and, in fact, many manuscripts of Celtic origin and early in date, are still on the Continent, or have been found there and brought to Ireland.[36]

In some respects the evidence of book-culture in Ireland in these early centuries is inconsistent. The jealous guard Longarad kept over his books, the quarrel over Columba’s Psalter, and the great esteem in which scribes were held,[37] suggest a scarcity of books. The practice of enshrining them in cumdachs, or book-covers, points to a like conclusion. On the other hand, Bede tells us the Irish could lend foreign students books, so plentiful were they. His statement is corroborated by the number of scribes whose deaths have been recorded by the annalists; the Four Masters, for example, note sixty-one eminent scribes before the year 900, forty of whom belong to the eighth century.[38] In some of the monasteries a special room for books was provided. The Annals of Tigernach refer to the house of manuscripts.[39] An apartment of this kind is particularly mentioned as being saved from the flames when Armagh monastery was burned (1020). Another fact suggesting an abundance of books was the appointment of a librarian, which sometimes took place.[40] Although a special book-room and officer are only to be met with much later than the best age of Irish monachism, yet we may reasonably assume them to be the natural culmination of an old and established practice of making and using books.

Such statements, however, are not necessarily contradictory. Manuscripts over which the cleverest scribes and illuminators had spent much time and pains would be jealously preserved in cases or shrines; still, when we remember how many precious fruits of the past must have

perished, the number of beautiful Irish manuscripts extant goes to prove that books even of this character could not have been extraordinarily rare. “Workaday” copies of books would be made as well, in comparatively large numbers, and would no doubt be used very freely. Besides books properly so called, the religious used waxed tablets of wood, which were sometimes called books. St. Ciaran, for example, wrote on staves, which are called in one place his tablets, and in two other places the whole collection of his staves is called a book.[41] Such tablets were indeed books in which the fugitive pieces of the time were written.[42] Considering all things, Bede was without doubt quite correct in saying the Irish had enough books to lend to foreign students.

§ IV

Our account of the work accomplished by the Irish monks would be incomplete without reference to their writing, illuminating, and book-economy, the relics of which are so finely rare.

The old Irish runes gave place slowly to the Roman alphabet, which came into use, as we have already observed, after St. Patrick’s mission. This new writing was in two forms—round and pointed—but both were derived from the Roman half-uncial style. The clear and beautifully-shaped Irish round hand is closely akin to the half-uncial character of fifth and sixth century Latin writings found on the Continent. The Book of Kells, written probably at the end of the seventh century, is the finest example of the ornamental Irish round hand. St. Chad’s Gospels, now at Lichfield, written about the same time, is a manuscript of like character, but not so good. A later manuscript, the Gospels of MacRegol, which dates from the beginning of the ninth century, shows marked deterioration in the writing.

The Irish pointed style, used for quicker writing, is but a modified, pointed variety of the round hand, the letters being laterally compressed. This hand appears in some pages of the Book of Kells, but the best example is in the Book of Armagh.[43]

Although the Roman alphabet was introduced by Augustine at the Canterbury school, it wholly failed to have any effect on the native hand from that source. On the other hand, when, in the seventh century, Northumbria

was converted by Irish missionaries, the new Christians copied the Irish writing, so well, indeed, that the earliest specimens extant can hardly be distinguished from the beautiful penmanship of the Irish. The Book of Durham, generally called the Lindisfarne Gospels, of about 700, is an exquisite Northumbrian example of the Irish round hand, in the characteristic broad, heavy-stroke letters. Another good specimen of this style is the eighth century manuscript of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, in Cambridge University Library.

Irish illumination is as characteristic as the writing. Pictures and drawings of the human figure are not so common as in the work of other schools, and when they do appear are not often good. Still, some of them, as the scenes from the life of Christ in the Book of Kells, are quite unlike the illuminations of any other school; while the portraits of the Evangelists in the same book, in the Book of MacRegol, and in the Lindisfarne Gospels, are singularly interesting. Floral work is also rare. But in geometrical ornament, beautifully symmetrical—diagonal patterns, zigzags, waves, lozenges, divergent spirals, intertwisted and interwoven ribbon and cord work—and in grotesque zoological forms,—lizards, snakes, hounds, birds, and dragons’ heads,—the Irish school attained their highest artistic development. Their art is striking, not for originality, not for its beauty, which is nevertheless great, but for painstaking. Knowing but one style of making a book beautiful, they lavished much time and loving care to achieve their end. The detail is extraordinarily minute and complicated. “I have counted,” writes Professor Westwood, “[with a magnifying glass] in a small space scarcely three-quarters of an inch in length by less than half an inch in width, in the Book of Armagh, no less than 158 interlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines edged with black ones.” But, this intricacy notwithstanding, the designs as a whole are usually bold and effective. In the best kind of Irish illumination gold and silver are not used, but the colours are varied and brilliant, and are employed with taste and discretion; while the occasional staining of a leaf of vellum with a fine purple sometimes adds beauty and much distinction to an excellent design.

Of intricate geometrical ornament and grotesque figures, the illumination representing the symbols of the Four Evangelists (fo. 290) of the Book of Kells is perhaps the best example. Of divergent spirals and interlaced ribbon work the frontispiece of St. Jerome’s Epistle in the Book of Durrow affords notable examples. Two of the peculiar features of Irish decoration—the rows of red dots round a design and the dragon’s head—appear in the earliest, or nearly the earliest, Irish manuscript extant, namely, the Cathach Psalter, now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Whether the essential and peculiar features of this ornamentation are purely indigenous, as Professor Westwood contends, or whether they are of Gallo-Roman origin, as Fleury argues, is a moot point, calling for complicated discussion which would be out of place here.

The amount of illumination in the existing manuscripts varies, but the pages chosen for illuminating are nearly always the same. In the Book of Kells the illuminations consist of three portraits of the Evangelists, three scenes from the life of Christ, three combined symbols of the four Evangelists, eight pages of the Eusebian canons, and many

initials. The Book of Durham contains four portraits of the Evangelists, six initial pages, one ornamental page before each Gospel, and before St. Jerome’s Epistle, and eight pages of the Eusebian canons. The Book of Durrow has sixteen illuminated pages: four of the symbols of the Evangelists, six pages of initials, one ornamental page at the frontispiece, one before the letter of St. Jerome, and one before each Gospel.

The oldest Irish manuscript in existence is probably the Domnach Airgrid, or manuscript of the Silver Shrine, also called St. Patrick’s Gospels. Dr. Petrie believed the Domnach to be the identical reliquary given by St. Patrick to St. Mac Cairthinn, when the latter was put in charge of the see of Clogher, in the fifth century. “As a manuscript copy of the Gospels apparently of that early age is found with it, there is every reason to believe it to be that identical one for which the box was originally made.”[44] But both case and manuscript are now held to be somewhat later in date. Another very early manuscript is the sixth century fragment of fifty-eight leaves of a Latin Psalter, styled the Cathach or “Battler.” For centuries this fragment has been preserved in a beautiful case as a relic of Columba; as, indeed, the actual cause of the dispute between Columba and Finnian of Moville.

§ V

Two features of book-economy, although not peculiar to Ireland, are rarely met with outside that country. The religious used satchels or wallets to carry their books about with them. We are told Patrick once met a party of clerics and gillies with books in their girdles; and he gave them the hide he had sat and slept on for twenty years to make a wallet.[45] Columba is said to have made satchels, and to have blessed them. When these satchels were not carried they were hung upon pegs set in the wall of the cell or the church or the tower where they were preserved.[46] We have already noted the legend which tells how all the satchels in Ireland slipped off their pegs when Longarad died. A modern writer visiting the Abyssinian convent of Souriani has seen a room which, when we remember the connection between Egyptian and Celtic monachism, we cannot help thinking must closely resemble an ancient Irish cell.[47] In the room the disposition of the manuscripts was very original. “A wooden shelf was carried in the Egyptian style round the walls, at the height of the top of the door.... Underneath the shelf various long wooden pegs projected from the wall; they were each about a foot and a half long, and on them hung the Abyssinian manuscripts, of which this curious library was entirely composed. The books of Abyssinia are ... enclosed in a case tied up with leathern thongs; to this case is attached a strap for the convenience of carrying the volume over the shoulders, and by these straps the books were hung to the wooden pegs, three or four on a peg, or more if the books were small; their usual size was that of a small, very thick quarto. The appearance of the room, fitted up in this style, together with the presence of long staves, such as the monks of all the Oriental churches lean upon at the time of prayer, resembled less a library than a barrack or guardroom, where the soldiers had hung their knapsacks and cartridge boxes against the wall.” The few old Irish satchels remaining are black with age, and the characteristic decoration of diagonal lines and interlaced markings is nearly worn away. Two of them are preserved in England and Ireland: those of the Book of Armagh, in Trinity College, Dublin, and of the Irish Missal in Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The wallet at Oxford looks much like a modern schoolboy’s satchel; leather straps are fixed to it, by which it was slung round the neck. The Armagh wallet is made of one piece of leather, folded to form a case a foot long, a little more than a foot broad, and two and a half inches thick. The Book of Armagh does not fit it properly. Interlaced work and zoömorphs decorate the leather. Remains of rough straps are still attached to the sides.

The second special feature of Irish book-economy was the preservation of manuscripts in cumdachs or rectangular boxes, made just large enough for the books they were intended to enshrine. As in the case of the wallet, the cumdach was not peculiar to Ireland, although the finest examples which have come down to us were made in that country.[48] They are referred to several times in early Irish annals. Bishop Assicus is said to have made quadrangular book-covers in honour of Patrick.[49] In the Annals of the Four Masters is recorded, under the year 937, a reference to the cumdach of the Book of Armagh, or the Canon of Patrick. “Canoin Phadraig was covered by Donchadh, son of Flann, king of Ireland.” In 1006 the Annals note that the Book of Kells—“the Great Gospel of Columb Cille was stolen at night from the western erdomh of the Great Church of Ceannanus. This was the principal relic of the western world, on account of its singular cover; and it was found after twenty nights and two months, its gold having been stolen off it, and a sod over it.”[50] These cumdachs are now lost; so also is the jewelled case of the Gospels of St. Arnoul at Metz, and that belonging to the Book of Durrow.

By good hap, several cumdachs of the greatest interest are still preserved for our inspection. One of them, the Silver Shrine of the so-called St. Patrick’s Gospels, is a very peculiar case. It consists of three covers. The first, or inner, is of yew, and was perhaps made in the sixth or seventh century. The second, of copper, silver-plated, is of later make. The third, or outermost, is of silver, and was probably made in the fourteenth century. The cumdach of the Stowe Missal (1023) is a much more beautiful example. It is of oak, covered with plates of silver. The lower or more ancient side bears a cross within a rectangular frame. In the centre of the cross is a crystal set in an oval mount. The decoration of the four panels consists of metal plates, the ornament being a chequer-work of squares and triangles. The lid has a similar cross and frame, but the cross is set with pearls and

metal bosses, a crystal in the centre, and a large jewel at the end of each arm. The panels consist of silver-gilt plates embellished with figures of saints. The sides, which are decorated with enamelled bosses and open-work designs, are imperfect. On the box are inscriptions in Irish, such as the following: “Pray for Dunchad, descendant of Taccan, of the family of Cluain, who made this”; “A blessing of God on every soul according to its merit”; “Pray for Donchadh, son of Brian, for the king of Ireland”; “And for Macc Raith, descendant of Donnchad, for the king of Cashel.”[51] Other cumdachs are those in the Royal Irish Academy for Molaise’s Gospels (c. 1001-25), for Columba’s Psalter (1084), and those in Trinity College, Dublin, for Dimma’s book (1150) and for the Book of St. Moling. There are also the cumdachs for Cairnech’s Calendar and that of Caillen; both of late date. The library of St. Gall possesses still another silver cumdach, which is probably Irish.

These are the earliest relics we have of what was undoubtedly an old and established method of enshrining books, going back as far as Patrick’s time, if it be correct that Bishop Assicus made them, or if the first case of the Silver Shrine is as old as it is believed to be. The beautiful lower cover of the Gospels of Lindau, now in Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s treasure-house, proves that at least as early as the seventh century the Irish lavished as much art on the outside of their manuscripts as upon the inside.[52] It is natural to make a beautiful covering for a book which is both beautiful and sacred. All the volumes upon which the Irish artist exercised his talent were invested with sacred attributes. Chroniclers would have us believe they were sometimes miraculously produced. In the life of Cronan[53] is a story telling how an expert scribe named Dimma copied the four Gospels. Dimma could only devote a day to the task, whereupon Cronan bade him begin at once and continue until sunset. But the sun did not set for forty days, and by that time the copy was finished. The manuscript written for Cronan is possibly the book of Dimma, which bears the inscription: “It is finished. A prayer for Dimma, who wrote it for God, and a blessing.”[54]

It was believed such books could not be injured. St. Ciaran’s copy of the Gospels fell into a lake, but was uninjured. St. Cronan’s copy fell into Loch Cre, and remained under water forty days without injury. Even fire could not harm St. Cainnech’s case of books.[55] Nor is it surprising they should be looked upon as sacred. The scribes and illuminators who took such loving care to make their work perfect, and the craftsmen who wrought beautiful shrines for the books so made, were animated with the feeling and spirit which impels men to erect beautiful churches to testify to the glory of their Creator. As Dimma says, they “wrote them for God.”

CHAPTER II
THE ENGLISH MONKS AND THEIR BOOKS

“There are delightful libraries, more aromatic than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and numbers....”

Richard De Bury, Philobiblon, Thomas’ ed. 200

§I

THE Benedictine order established monastic study on a regular plan. Benedict’s forty-eighth rule is clear in its directions. “Idleness is hurtful to the soul. At certain times, therefore, the brethren must work with their hands, and at others give themselves up to holy reading.” From Easter to the first of October the monks were required to work at manual labour from prime until the fourth hour. From the fourth hour until nearly the sixth hour they were to read. After their meal at the sixth hour they were to lie on their beds, and those who cared to do so might read, but not aloud. After nones work must be resumed until evening. From October the first until the beginning of Lent they were to read until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour they were to take their meal and then read spiritual works or the Psalms. Throughout Lent they were required to read until the third hour, then work until the tenth. Every monk was to have a book from the library, and to read it through during Lent. On Sundays reading was their duty throughout the day, except in the case of those having special tasks. During reading hours two senior brethren were expected to go the rounds to see that the monks were actually reading, and not lounging nor gossiping. But the brethren were not allowed to have a book or tablets or a pen of their own.

Benedict’s inclusion of these directions was of capital importance in the advance of monkish learning. Being milder and more flexible, communal instead of eremitical, and so altogether more humane and attractive, his Rule gradually took the place of existing orders. And as the change came about, ill-regulated theological study gave way to superior methods of learning, solely due to the better organisation and greater liberality of the Benedictine order.

Benedictinism came to England with Augustine (597). The Rule, however, does not seem to have been strictly or consistently observed for a long time. But the studious labours of the monks remained just as important a part of their lives as they would have been had the monasteries closely followed Benedict’s directions. Especially would this be the case in the seventh century, and afterwards, during the time continental monachism was in rivalry with the Celtic missionaries.

§ II

From the first we hear of books in connexion with Canterbury. Gregory the Great gave to Augustine, either just before his English mission, or sent to him soon afterward, nine volumes, which were put in St. Augustine’s monastery—the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, beyond the walls. Being for church purposes, the books were very beautiful and valuable. There was the Gregorian Bible in two volumes, with some of its leaves coloured rose and purple, which gave a wonderful reflection when held to the light; the Psalter of Augustine; a copy of the Gospels called the Text of St. Mildred, upon which a countryman in Thanet swore falsely and, it is said, lost his sight; as well as another copy of the Gospels; a Psalter, with plain silver images of Christ and the four Evangelists on the cover; two martyrologies, one adorned with a silver figure of Christ, the other enriched with silver-gilt and precious stones; and an Exposition of the Gospels and Epistles, also enriched with gems.[56] Some of these books were kept above the altar. Bede also records the gift by Gregory to Augustine of “many manuscripts,” and his authority is unimpeachable, as he derived his knowledge of Canterbury affairs from written records and information supplied by Albinus, first English abbot of Augustine’s house.[57] This monastery “was thus the mother-school, the mother-university of England, ... at a time when Cambridge was a desolate fen, and Oxford a tangled forest in a wide waste of waters. They remind us that English power and English religion have, as from the very first, so ever since, gone along with knowledge, with learning, and especially with that learning and that knowledge which those old manuscripts give—the knowledge and learning of the Gospel.”[58] Few books would be treasured more carefully and treated with greater reverence by English churchmen and book lovers than these “first books of the English church,” if any of them could be found. They are referred to as existing when William Thorne wrote his chronicle (c. 1397),[59] and Leland tells us he saw and admired them; but after his time nearly all trace of them is lost.[60]

No further hint of books occurs until Theodore became Archbishop more than seventy years later. Theodore, who had been educated both at Tarsus and Athens, where he became a good Greek and Latin scholar, well versed in secular and divine literature, began a school at Canterbury for the study of Greek, and provided it with some Greek books. None of these books has been traced with certainty. Some may have existed in Archbishop Parker’s time. “The Rev. Father Matthew,” says Lambarde, in his Perambulation of Kent, ... “showed me, not long since, the Psalter of David, and sundry homilies in Greek, Homer also, and some other Greek authors, beautifully written on thick paper with the name of this Theodore prefixed in the front, to whose library he reasonably thought (being led thereto by show of great antiquity) that they sometime belonged.” The manuscript of Homer, now in Corpus Christi Library, Cambridge, did not belong to Theodore, but to Prior Selling, of whom we shall hear later. But possibly the famous Graeco-Latin copy of the Acts, now in the Bodleian Library, belonged either to Theodore or to his companion, Hadrian.[61]

Theodore, with Hadrian’s help, not only started the Canterbury School, but encouraged similar foundations in other English monasteries. In southern England, however, Canterbury remained the centre of learning, and many ecclesiastics were attracted to it in consequence. Bede amply proves its efficiency as a school. And forasmuch as both Theodore and Hadrian were “fully instructed both in sacred and in secular letters, they gathered a crowd of disciples, and rivers of wholesome knowledge daily flowed from them to water the hearts of their hearers; and, together with the books of Holy Scripture, they also taught them the metrical art, astronomy, and ecclesiastical arithmetic. A testimony whereof is, that there are still living at this day some of their scholars, who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as in their own, in which they were born.”[62] Elsewhere he mentions some of these scholars by name. Albinus, already referred to as the first English abbot of St. Augustine’s, “was so well instructed in literary studies, that he had no small knowledge of the Greek tongue, and knew the Latin as well as the English, which was his native language.”[63] “A most learned man” was another disciple, Tobias, bishop of Rochester, who, besides having a great knowledge of letters, both ecclesiastical and general, learned the Greek and Latin tongues “to such perfection, that they were as well known and familiar to him as his native language.”[64]

Canterbury’s most notable scholar was Aldhelm, the first bishop of Sherborne. In him were united the learning of the Canterbury and the Irish monks, for he studied first under Maildulf, the Irish monk and scholar who founded and gave his name to Malmesbury, and then under Hadrian. When he went to be consecrated an incident befell him which at once shows his zeal for learning, and casts a welcome ray of light on the importation of books. While at Canterbury he heard of the arrival of ships at Dover, and thither he journeyed to see whether they had brought anything in his way. He found on board plenty of books, among them one containing the complete Testaments. He offered to buy it, but his price was too low; although, afterwards, when it was believed his prayers had delivered the owner from a storm, he secured it on his own terms.[65]

Aldhelm at length became abbot of Malmesbury (c. 675), and under him it grew to much greater eminence, and attracted a large number of students. Here, in the solitude of the forest tract, he passed his time in singing merry ballads to win the ear of the people for his more serious words, playing the harp, in teaching, and in reading the considerable library he had at hand. Bede describes him as a man “of marvellous learning both in liberal and ecclesiastical studies.” Judging by his writings he was in these respects in the forefront of his contemporaries, although his learning was heavy and pretentious. From them also it is perfectly evident he could make use not only of the Bible, but of lives of the saints, of Isidore, of the Recognitions of Clement, of the Acts of Sylvester, of writings by Sulpicius Severus, Athanasius, Gregory, Eusebius, and Jerome, as well as of Terence, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and Prosper, and some other authors.[66]

§ III

Meanwhile Northumbria had become one of the leading centres of learning in Europe, almost entirely through the labours and influence of Irish missionaries. St. Aidan, an ascetic of Iona who journeyed to Northumbria at King Oswald’s request, founded Lindisfarne, which became the monastic and episcopal capital of that kingdom. Aidan required all his pupils, whether religious or laymen, to read the Scriptures, or to learn the Psalms. The education of boys was a part of his system. Wherever a monastery was founded it became a school wherein taught the monks who had followed him from Scotland. Cedd, the founder and abbot of Lastingham, was Aidan’s pupil, so was his brother, the great bishop Ceadda (Chad), who succeeded him in his abbacy. At Lindisfarne was wrought by Eadfrith (d. 721) the beautiful manuscript of the Gospels now preserved in the British Museum, and a little later the fine cover for it. Lastingham, founded on the desolate moorland of North Yorkshire, “among steep and distant mountains, which looked more like lurking-places for robbers and dens of wild beasts, than dwellings of men,” upheld the traditions of the Columban houses for piety, asceticism, and studious occupations. Thither repaired one Owini, not to live idle, but to labour, and as he was less capable of studying, he applied himself earnestly to manual work, the while better-instructed monks were indoors reading.

In many directions do we observe traces of Aidan’s good work. Hild, the foundress of Whitby Abbey, was for a short time his pupil. Her monastery was famous for having educated five bishops, among them John of Beverley, and for giving birth, in Caedmon, to the father of English poetry. “Religious poetry, sung to the harp as it passed from hand to hand, must have flourished in the monastery of the abbess Hild, and the kernel of Bede’s story concerning the birth of our earliest poet must be that the brethren and sisters on that bleak northern shore spoke ‘to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.’ ”[67] Of Melrose, an offshoot of Aidan’s foundation, the sainted Cuthbert was an inmate. At Lindisfarne, where “he speedily learned the Psalms and some other books,” the great Wilfrid was a novice. Of his studies, indeed, we know little: he seems to have sought prelatical power rather than learning. But he and his followers were responsible for the conversion of the Northumbrian church from Columban to Roman usages, and the introduction of Benedictinism into the monasteries; and consequently for bringing the studies of the monks into line with the rules of Benedict’s order.

Such progress would have been impossible had not the rulers of Northumbria from Oswald to Aldfrith been friendly to Christianity. Aldfrith had been educated at Iona, and was a man of studious disposition. His predecessor had advanced Northumbria’s reputation enormously by giving Benedict Biscop (629-90) sites for his monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow.[68] We know enough of this Benedict to wish we knew very much more. He suggests to us enthusiasm for his cause, and energy and foresight in labouring for it. Naturally, Aldhelm’s writings have gained him far more attention in literary histories than the Northumbrian has received. But the influence of Benedict, a man of much learning, wide-travelled, was at least as great and as far-reaching. Lérins, the great centre of monachism in Gaul, and Canterbury under Theodore, had been his schools. On six occasions he flitted back and forth to Rome, and to go to Rome, in those days, was a liberal education, both in worldly and spiritual affairs. Not a little of his influence was the direct outcome of his book-collecting. From all his journeys to Rome he is said to have returned laden with books. He certainly came back from his fourth journey with a great number of books of all kinds.[69] He also obtained books at Vienne. His sixth and last journey to Rome was wholly devoted to collecting books, classical as well as theological. When he died he left instructions for the preservation of the most noble and rich library he had gathered together.[70] “If we consider how difficult, fatiguing, ... even dangerous a journey between the British Islands and Italy must have been in those days of anarchy and barbarism, we can appreciate the intensity of Benedict’s passion for beautiful and costly volumes.”[71] The library he formed was worthy of the labour, we cannot doubt: possibly was the best then in Britain. It served as the model for the still more famous collection at York. The scholarship of Bede, who used it in writing his works, proclaims its value for literary purposes.[72] Bede tells us he always applied himself to Scriptural study, and in the intervals of observing monastic discipline and singing daily in the church, he took pleasure in learning, or teaching, or writing.[73] The picture of Bede in his solitary monastery, leading a placid life among Benedict’s books, poring over the beautifully-wrought pages with the scholar’s tense calm to find the material in the Fathers and the historians, and to seek the apt quotation from the classics, must always flash to the mind at the mere mention of his name.[74] Every fact in connexion with his work testifies to the excellent equipment of his monastery for writing ecclesiastical history, and to the cordial way in which the religious co-operated for the advancement of learning and research.

§ IV

Canterbury, Malmesbury, Lindisfarne, Wearmouth and Jarrow, and York were like mountain-peaks tipped with gold by the first rays of the rising sun, while all below remains dark. Yet while not indicative of widespread means of instruction, the existence of these centres, and the character of the work done in them, suggests that at other places the same sort of work, on a smaller and less influential scale, soon began. At Lichfield, on the moorland at Ripon, in “the dwelling-place in the meadows” at Peterborough, in the desolate fenland at Crowland and at Ely, on the banks of the Thames at Abingdon, and of the Avon at Evesham, in the nunneries of Barking and Wimborne, at Chertsey, Glastonbury, Gloucester, in the far north at Melrose, and even perhaps at Coldingham, Christianity was speeding its message, and learning—such as it was, primitive and pretentious—caught pale reflections from more famous places. Now and again definite facts are met with hinting at a spreading enlightenment. Acca, abbot and bishop of Hexham, for example “gave all diligence, as he does to this day,” wrote Bede, “to procure relics of the blessed Apostles and martyrs of Christ.... Besides which, he industriously gathered the histories of their martyrdom, together with other ecclesiastical writings, and erected there a large and noble library.” Of this library, unfortunately, there is not a wrack left behind. A tiny school was carried on at a monastery near Exeter, where Boniface was first instructed. At the monastery of Nursling he was taught grammar, history, poetry, rhetoric, and the Scriptures; there also manuscripts were copied. Books were produced under Abbess Eadburh of Minster, a learned woman who corresponded with Boniface and taught the metric art. Boniface’s letters throw interesting light on our subject. Eadburh sent him books, money, and other gifts. He also wrote home asking his old friend Bishop Daniel of Winchester for a fine manuscript of the six major prophets, which had been written in a large and clear hand by Winbert: no such book, he explains, can be had abroad, and his eyes are no longer strong enough to read with ease the small character of ordinary manuscripts. In another letter written to Ecgberht of York is recorded an exchange of books, and a request for a copy of the commentaries of Bede.

A decree of the Council held at Cloveshoe in 747, pointing out the want of instruction among the religious, and ordering all bishops, abbots, and abbesses to promote and encourage learning, whether it means that monkish education was on the wane or that it was not making such quick progress as was desired, at any rate does not mean that England was in a bad way in this respect, or that she lagged behind the Continent. On the contrary, England and Ireland were renowned homes of learning in Western Europe. Perhaps a few centres on the mainland could show libraries as good as those here; but certainly no country had such scholars. England’s pre-eminence was recognized by Charles the Great when he invited Alcuin to his court (781).

Alcuin was brought up at York from childhood. In company with Albert, who taught the arts and grammar at this northern school, Alcuin visited Gaul and Rome to scrape together a few more books. On returning later he was entrusted with the care of the library: a task for which he was well fitted, if enthusiasm, breaking into rime, be a qualification:—

“Small is the space which contains the gifts of heavenly Wisdom
Which you, reader, rejoice piously here to receive;
Better than richest gifts of the Kings, this treasure of Wisdom,
Light, for the seeker of this, shines on the road to the Day.”[75]

York could not retain Alcuin long. Fortunately, just when dissensions among the English kings, and the Danish raids began to harass England, and to threaten the coming decline of her learning, he was invited to take charge of a school established by Charles the Great. Charles had undertaken the task of reviving literary study, well-nigh extinguished through the neglect of his ancestors; and he bade all his subjects to cultivate the arts. As far as he could he accomplished the task, principally owing to the aid of the English scholar and of willing helpers from Ireland.

Alcuin was soon at the head of St. Martin’s of Tours where he was responsible for the great activity of the scribes in his day. He persuaded Charles to send a number of copyists to York. “I, your Flavius,” he writes, “according to your exhortation and wise desire, have been busy under the roof of St. Martin, in dispensing to some the honey of the Holy Scriptures. Others I strive to inebriate with the old wine of ancient studies; these I nourish with the fruit of grammatical knowledge; in the eyes of these again I seek to make bright the courses of the stars.... But I have need of the most excellent books of scholastic learning, which I had procured in my own country, either by the devoted care of my master, or by my own labours. I therefore beseech your majesty ... to permit me to send certain of our household to bring over into France the flowers of Britain, that the garden of Paradise may not be confined to York, but may send some of its scions to Tours.” What the “flowers of Britain” were at this time Alcuin has told us in Latin verse. At York, “where he sowed the seeds of knowledge in the morning of his life,” thou shall find, he rimes:—

“The volumes that contain
All the ancient fathers who remain;
There all the Latin writers make their home
With those that glorious Greece transferred to Rome,—
The Hebrews draw from their celestial stream,
And Africa is bright with learning’s beam.”

Then, after including in his metrical catalogue the names of forty writers, he proceeds:—

“There shalt thou find, O reader, many more
Famed for their style, the masters of old lore,
Whose many volumes singly to rehearse
Were far too tedious for our present verse.”[76]

A goodly store indeed in such an age.

§ V

Sunlight and shadow follow one another rapidly across England’s early history. The migration of York’s renowned scholar took place six years before the Viking irruptions began, and about twelve years before a heavy blow was struck at Northumbrian learning by the ravaging and destruction of the monasteries of Lindisfarne, and Wearmouth and Jarrow. After this there was but little peace for England. Kent was often attacked. In 838 the marauders fell upon East Anglia. Between 837 and 845 they made various fierce attacks upon Wessex. In 851 the pillage of Canterbury and London was a severe blow to the English. About fifteen years later, at the hands of the Danes, Melrose, Tynemouth, Whitby, and Lastingham shared Wearmouth’s fate. Of York and its library we hear no more. Peterborough and its large collection of sacred books perished at the hands of the same raiders as those who burnt Crowland (870). So bad grew affairs that Alfred the Great, writing to Bishop Werfrith, bewailed the small number of people south of the Humber who understood the English of their service, or could translate from Latin into English. Even beyond the Humber there were not many; not one could he remember south of the Thames when he began to reign. And he bethought himself of the wise men, both church and lay folk, formerly living in England, and how zealous they were in teaching and learning, and how men came from abroad in search of wisdom and instruction. Apparently some decline from this standard had been noticeable before ruin completely overtook the monasteries. He remembered how, before the land had been ravaged and burnt, “its churches stood filled with treasures and books, and with a multitude of His servants, but they had very little knowledge of the books, and could not understand them, for they were not written in their own language.... When I remembered all this, I much marvelled that the good and wise men who were formerly all over England, and had perfectly learnt all these books, did not wish to translate them into their own tongues.” By way of remedying this omission, he translated Cura Pastoralis into English. “I will send a copy to every bishopric in my kingdom; and on each there is a clasp worth 50 mancus. And I command in God’s name that no man take the clasp from the book or the book from the minster; it is uncertain how long there may be such learned bishops as now are, thanks be to God, nearly everywhere.”[77]

This letter, written in 890, marks the revival of interest in letters under Alfred. In adding to his own knowledge, and in promoting education among his people, he was assiduous and determined. During the leisure of one period of eight months, Asser seems to have read to him all the congenial books at hand, Alfred’s custom being to read aloud or to listen to others reading. Asser was a Welsh bishop, brought to Wessex to help the king in his work. For the same purpose Archbishop Plegmund[78] and Bishop Werfrith were brought from Mercia. Other scholars came from abroad. One named Grimbald, a monk from St. Bertin, came to take charge of the abbey of Hyde, Winchester, which Alfred had planned. John, of Old-Saxony, a learned monk of the flourishing Westphalian Abbey of Corvey—where a library existed in this century,[79]—was made by Alfred abbot of Athelney monastery and school. Perhaps John, called the Scot or Erigena, also came, but we do not know certainly. Alfred also introduced teachers, both English and foreign, into his monasteries, his aim being to provide the means of educating every freeborn and well-to-do youth. During the whole of the latter part of his reign the copying of manuscripts went on, though with only moderate activity.

That Alfred, amid the cares of a troublesome kingship, could find time to devote to this work, and realised the importance of vernacular literature, is one of the chief signs of his greatness. What he did had a lasting influence upon our literature. He tapped the wellspring of English prose. Mainly owing to his initiative, from his day till the Conquest all the literature of importance was in the vernacular, and the impulse so given to the language as a literary vehicle was strong enough to preserve it from extinction during the Norman domination, when it was superseded as the court and official language. But, so far as the making and circulation of books is concerned, the “revival” under Alfred did not prosper. The necessary machinery was almost entirely wanting. The monastic schools, the great—the only—means of disseminating the learning of the time, were few in number and not very influential. For Athelney, a small monastery, Alfred had difficulty in finding monks at all: he had to get them from abroad; while the rule in this house does not seem to have been wholly satisfactory. At the time of his death (c. 901) monachism was in a bad way. Fifty years later its plight would seem to have been worse. Only two houses, Abingdon and Glastonbury, could be really called monastic. “In the middle of the tenth century the Rule of St. Benedict, the standard of monasticism in Western Christendom, was, according to virtually contemporary authority, completely unknown in England. This will not appear strange if we consider that it was never very generally or strictly carried out here, that the Danish invasions had broken the continuity of monastic life, and that not many years earlier the very existence of the Rule had been forgotten in not a few continental monasteries.”[80] Although England always responded to the slightest effort to affect her culture, as the long deer grass waves an answer to every breath of the wind, yet the surprising eminence of some of the churchmen in the latter half of the century and the excellence of their work cannot be accounted for if the influence of Alfred’s reign had utterly died out. But it had not. Only the machinery was defective. The driving power remained, latent but ready for action. One indication of a surviving interest in these matters at this time is the gift of some nine books to St. Augustine’s Abbey by King Athelstan—an interesting little collection including Isidore de Natura Rerum, Persius, Donatus, Alcuin, Sedulius, and possibly a work by Bede. The machinery, however, was soon to be improved. Dunstan, Oswald, Edgar, and Ethelwold set matters right by reforming and extending the monastic system, and by making it the means of encouraging education and learning.

The leaders were Dunstan and Ethelwold. In youth the former was renowned for his eagerness in studying, and for the wealth and knowledge he acquired. He was a “lover of ballads and music,” “a hard student, an indefatigable worker, busy at books”; spending his leisure in reading sacred authors, and in correcting manuscripts, sometimes at daybreak. He was also very skilful at working in metal and at drawing and illuminating. Maybe the picture of him kneeling before the Saviour which is preserved in the Bodleian Library is by his own hand; this, however, is not certain.[81] But some relics of his literary work were preserved at Glastonbury until the Reformation—passages transcribed from Frank and Roman law books, a pamphlet on grammar, a mass of Biblical quotations, a collection of canons drawn from Dunstan’s Irish teachers, a book on the Apocalypse, and other works.[82] He entirely reformed Glastonbury and made it a flourishing school, where the Scriptures, ecclesiastical writings, and grammar were taught.

Ethelwold was a Glastonbury scholar and assistant to Dunstan. Glastonbury, and Abingdon, where he became Abbot, and Winchester, to which see he was consecrated, were the centres whence, during the sixty years succeeding Edgar’s accession, some forty monasteries were founded or restored. Winchester became pre-eminent. Ethelwold himself was a teacher of grammar. It was his delight to teach boys and young men, and to help them in their translations; hence it came to pass that many of his pupils became abbots and bishops.[83] A curious story is told in illustration of his studious disposition. One night, when reading after prolonged watching, sleep overcame him, and as he slept the candle fell on the page and remained burning there until a brother came along and snatched it up, when the book by a miracle was found to be uninjured.[84] A vignette of pure and true medievalism: the long and solitary watching, the saintly pursuit of divine wisdom, the wide-open book, with the bold and beautiful text, and the quaint decoration, wrought by loving hands, and the inevitable miracle,—the suggestion of a Divine Providence watching over and protecting all that is sacred.

Some beautiful examples of work of this period have been preserved. “Winchester” work is a familiar and expressive term in illumination, and nobody will ask why this is so if they have seen a manuscript executed there towards the end of the tenth century. The Benedictional and Missal of Archbishop Robert, which is certainly English, and most likely an example of New Minster work, is illuminated with miniatures, foliated and architectural borders, and capitals and letters of gold, in virile workmanship. A still finer example—the finest example of Old Minster craft—is the Benedictional of Ethelwold, now in the Duke of Devonshire’s library. The versified dedication, inscribed in letters of gold, tells us, in substance—“The Great Æthelwold ... illustrious, venerable and mild ... commanded a certain monk subject to him to write the present book: he ordered also to be made in it many arches elegantly decorated and filled up with various ornamented pictures expressed in divers beautiful colours, and gold.”[85] Godeman, abbot of Thorney, was the scribe, but the illuminator is unknown. Each full page has nineteen lines of writing, with letters nearly a quarter of an inch long. Alternate lines in gold, red, and black occur once or twice in the same page. There are thirty miniatures and thirteen fully illuminated pages, some of these having framed borders, foliated, others columns and arches. The figures are remarkably well drawn, the drapery being especially good. The whole is in a fine state of preservation, especially the gold ornaments; the gold used was leaf upon size, afterwards well burnished. Of the rival craftsmanship at New Minster we have a splendid example in the Golden Book of Edgar, so called

on account of its raised gold text.[86] Work of this grand character is the best testimony to the noble spirit of monachism in the days of Ethelwold.

One of Ethelwold’s pupils was Ælfric, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 995. He was responsible for the canon requiring every priest, before ordination, to have the Psalter, the Epistles, the Gospels, a Missal, the Book of Hymns, the Manual, the Calendar, the Passional, the Penitential, and the Lectionary. On his death he bequeathed all his books to St. Albans.[87]

Another pupil of the same name is still more famous. This scholar’s grammar, with its translated passages, his glossary—the oldest Latin-English dictionary—and his conversation-manual of questions and answers, with interlinear translations, suggest that he must have done much to make the study of Latin easier and more congenial; while his homilies display his art in making knowledge popular, and prove him to be the greatest master of English prose before the Conquest.

Several other interesting and suggestive facts belonging to this period have been preserved for us. Abbot Ælfward, for example, gave to his abbey of Evesham many sacred books and books on grammar (c. 1035): here, at any rate, progress was real.[88] At a manor of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds were thirty volumes, exclusive of church books (1044-65).[89] Bishop Leofric also obtained over sixty books for Exeter Cathedral about sixteen years before the Conquest, a collection to which we must refer later.

CHAPTER III
LIBRARIES OF THE GREAT ABBEYS—BOOK-LOVERS AMONG THE MENDICANTS—DISPERSAL OF MONKISH LIBRARIES

§I

THE Conquest wrought both good and evil to literature—evil because the Normans thought books written in the vernacular unworthy of preservation;[90] good because the change brought to the country settled government, and to the church an opportunity for reformation. Lanfranc was the moving spirit of reform, both in church administration and in the learning of its members. While still in Normandy he had built up a reputation for the monastic school at Bec, and probably had a share in collecting the excellent library that we know the monastery possessed in the twelfth century.[91] When he was appointed to the see of Canterbury he continued to work for the same ends, although his primacy can have left him little leisure. A fresh beginning had to be made in Canterbury. In 1067 a fire destroyed the city, including the cathedral and almost the whole of the monastic buildings; and in this disaster many “sacred and profane books” were burned. It was Lanfranc’s task to repair this loss. He brought books with him,[92] and introduced some changes and more method in the making and use of them. In the customary of the Benedictine order which he drew up to correspond with the best monastic practice, he included minute instructions about lending and reading books. He was also responsible in the main for the substitution of the continental Roman handwriting for the beautiful Hiberno-Saxon hand. In another respect his influence was more beneficial. Both at Bec and in England he aimed to turn out accurate texts of patristic books, and the better to achieve this end he himself corrected manuscripts. In the abbey of St. Martin de Sécz at one time there was a copy of the first ten Conferences of Cassian with his corrections; and in the library of Mans is a St. Ambrose which was overlooked by him.[93] Happily he was in a position to lend texts to monks for transcribing, and his help in this direction was sought by Abbot Paul of St. Albans. Recent research by Dr. Montagu James suggests that Lanfranc’s work for the Canterbury library was a good deal more practical and influential than has been usually believed. Among the survivors of the Canterbury collections at Trinity College, Cambridge, and elsewhere, “are some scores of volumes undoubtedly from Christ Church, all of one epoch,” the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and all written in hands modelled on an Italian style. “Another distinguishing mark,” writes Dr. James, “in these volumes is the employment of a peculiar purple in the decorative initials and headings.... The nearest approaches I find to it in England are in certain manuscripts which were once at St. Augustine’s Abbey, and in others which belonged to Rochester. It can be shown that books did occasionally pass from Christ Church to St. Augustine’s, and it can also be shown that certain of the Rochester books were written at Christ Church.” All these books, therefore, Dr. James believes, were given by Lanfranc or produced under his direction.[94]

Lanfranc also encouraged original composition, for Osbern, monk of Canterbury, compiled his lives of St. Dunstan, St. Alphege, and St. Odo under his eye.

In this work of bookmaking and collecting Lanfranc was supported or his example was followed by other monks from Normandy: by Abbot Walter of Evesham, who made many books;[95] by Ernulf of Rochester, who compiled the Textus Roffensis; and by many others. At this time grew up the practice of using English houses to supply books for Norman abbeys; this partly explains the number of manuscripts of English workmanship now abroad. A manuscript preserved in Paris contains a note by a canon of Ste-Barbe-en-Auge referring to Beckford in Gloucestershire, an English cell of his house, whence books were sent to Normandy.[96]

From Lanfranc to the close of the thirteenth century, was the summer-time of the English religious houses. The Cluniac or reformed Benedictines settled here about 1077. In 1105 the Austin Canons first planted a house in this country. The White Monks, another reformed Benedictine order, entered England in 1128, and in the course of four and twenty years founded fifty houses. Soon after, in 1139, the English Gilbertines were established, then came the White Canons, and in 1180 the Carthusian monks. The land was peppered with houses. In less than a century and a half, from the Conquest to about 1200, it is estimated that no fewer than 430 houses were founded, making, with 130 founded before the Conquest, 560 in all.[97] Many were wealthy: some were powerful, because they owned much property, and popular because, like Malmesbury, they were “distinguished for their ‘delightful hospitality’ to guests who, arriving every hour, consume more than the inmates themselves.”[98] The Cluniacs could almost be called a fashionable order.

During this prosperous age some of the great houses did their best work in writing and study. Thus to pick out one or two facts from a string of them. In 1104 Abbot Peter of Gloucester gave many books to the abbey library. In 1180 the refounded abbey of Whitby owned a fair library of theological, historical, and classical books.[99] About the same time Abbot Benedict ordered the transcription of sixty volumes, containing one hundred titles, for his library at Peterborough.[100] By 1244, in spite of losses in the fire of 1184, Glastonbury had a library of some four hundred volumes, historical books consorting with romances, Bibles and patristical works almost crowding out some forlorn classics.[101] Nearly half a century later

Abbot John of Taunton added to Glastonbury forty volumes, a notable gift in those days of costly books, while Adam of Domerham tells us he also made a fine, handsome, and spacious library.[102] In 1277 a general chapter of the Benedictines ordered the monks, according to their capabilities, to study, write, correct, illuminate, and bind books, rather than to labour in the field.[103]

To such facts as these should be added the record of the Canterbury, Dover, and Bury libraries, the histories of which have been so admirably written by Dr. M. R. James.[104] Of the library of St. Albans Abbey we have not such a fine series of catalogues. Yet no abbey could have a nobler record. From Paul (1077) to Whethamstede (d. 1465) nearly all its abbots were book-lovers.[105] Paul built a writing-room, and put in the aumbries twenty-eight fine books (volumina notabilia), and eight Psalters, a Collectarium, books of the Epistles and Gospels for the year, two copies of the Gospels adorned with gold and silver and precious stones, without speaking of ordinals, customaries, missals, troparies, collectaria, and other books. Here, as everywhere, the library began with church books: later, easier circumstances made the stream of knowledge broader, if shallower. The next abbot also added some books. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbot, was the author of a miracle play, an industrious scribe, and the donor of some books finely illuminated and bound. His successor, at one time the conventual archivist, loved books equally well, and got together a fair collection. Great Abbot Robert had many books written—“too many to be mentioned.”[106] Simon, the next abbot (1167), a learned and good-living man who encouraged others to learn, was especially fond of books, and had many fine manuscripts written for the painted aumbry in the church. He repaired and improved the scriptorium. He also made a provision whereby each succeeding abbot should have at work one special scribe, called the historiographer, an innovation to which we owe the matchless series of chronicles of Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris, William Rishanger, and John of Trokelowe. In a Cottonian manuscript is a portrait of Abbot Simon at his book-trunk, a picture interesting because it illustrates his predominant taste for books, as well as one method—then the usual method—of storing them.

John, worthy follower of Simon, was a man of learning, who added many noble and useful books to St. Albans’ store. William of Trompington (1214) distinguished himself by giving to the abbey books he had taken from his prior. Abbot Roger was a better man, and gave many books and pieces; but John III and IV and Hugh are barren rocks in our fertile valley, for apparently they did nothing for the library. Richard of Wallingford did worse than nothing. He bribed Richard de Bury with four volumes, and sold to him thirty-two books for fifty pounds of silver, retaining one-half of this sum for himself, and devoting the other moiety to Epicurus—“a deed,” cries the chronicler, “infamous to all who agreed to it, so to make the only nourishment of the soul serve the belly, and upon any account to apply spiritual dainties to the demands of the flesh.”[107] Abbot Michael de Mentmore, who had been educated at Oxford, and became schoolmaster at St. Albans, encouraged the educational work of the abbey by making

studies for the scholars. As he also ordered the morning mass to be celebrated directly after prime, or six o’clock, instead of at tierce, or about nine, to allow the students more time, it is safe to assume he was more zealous than popular. He also gave books which cost him more than £100. His successor, Thomas, enlarged his own study, and bought many books for it; and, with the assistance of Thomas of Walsingham, then precentor and master of the scriptorium, he built a writing-room at his own expense.

But Whethamstede was St. Albans’ greatest book-loving abbot. An ardent book-lover, especially fond of finely-illuminated volumes, he indulged his passion for manuscripts, and for conventual buildings, vestments, and property, until he got the abbey into debt, and was led to resign. After the death of his successor, Whethamstede was re-elected. In his time no fewer than eighty-seven volumes were transcribed.[108] In 1452-53 he built a new library at a cost of more than £150. Another library was erected for the College of the Black Monks at Oxford, for £60.[109] It was described as a “new erection of a library joyning on the south-side of the chapel, containing on each side five or more divisions, as it may be partly seen to this day by the windows thereof, to which he gave good quantity of his own study, and especially those of his own composition, which were not a few, and to deter plagiaries and others from abusing of them, prefixt these verses in the front of every one of the same books, as he did also to those that he gave to the publick library of the University:

“Fratribus Oxoniae datur in munus liber iste
Per patrem pecorum prothomartyris Angligenarum;
Quem, si quis rapiat raptim, titulumve retractet,
Vel Judae laqueum, vel furcas sentiat; Amen

“In other books which he gave to the said library these:

“Discior ut docti fieret nova regia plebi
Culta magisque Deae datur hic liber ara Minervae,
His qui Diis dictis libant holocausta ministris
Et circa bibulam sitiunt prae nectare limpham
Estque librique loci, idem dator, actor et unus.”[110]

This, in brief, is the story of St. Albans’ tribute to learning. In most monasteries the same kind of work went on, in a more circumscribed fashion, and without the same distinction of finish, which could probably only be attained at the big places where expert scribes and illuminators could be well trained.[111]

§ II

Fortunately, just when the great houses had attained the summit of their prosperity, and were beginning the slow decline to dissolution, learning and book-culture were freshly encouraged by the coming of the Friars.

The Black Friars settled at Canterbury and in London, near the Old Temple in Holborn, in 1221. The Grey Friars were at London, Oxford, and Cambridge in 1224, and by 1256 they were in forty-nine different localities.[112] It is strange how the latter order, founded by a man who forbade a novice to own a Psalter, came to be as earnest in buying books as the Benedictines were in copying them. St. Francis’ ideal, however, was impossible. The peripatetic nature of their calling, and their duty of tending the sick, compelled many friars to learn foreign languages, and to acquire some medical knowledge. Books were, therefore, useful to them, if not essential; as indeed St. Francis ultimately recognized. However, they could not own books themselves, but only in common with other members of the convent. If a friar was promoted to a bishopric, he had to renounce the use of the books he had had as a friar; and Clement IV forbade the consecration of a bishop until he had returned the books to his friary. When a book was given to a friar—and this often happened—he was in duty bound to hand it to his Superior. But if the friar was a man of parts the gift was devoted to acquiring books for his studies, or to giving him other necessary assistance; the duty, it was held, which the Superior owed him.[113] But these principles do not seem to have been strictly observed. In little more than thirty years after St. Francis’ death it was found necessary to draw up rules forbidding the brethren to own books except by leave from the chief officer of the order, or to keep any books which were not regarded as the property of the whole order, or to write books, or have them written for sale.[114]

By the end of the thirteenth century the Mendicants of Oxford were fairly well provided with books. Michael Scot came to Oxford, at the time of the greatest literary activity of the brethren, and introduced to them the physical and metaphysical works of Aristotle (1230).[115] Adam de Marisco seems to have been responsible for the first considerable additions to the collection. From his brother, Bishop Richard, he had already received a library; possibly this, with his own books, came into possession of the convent. Then out of love for him, Grosseteste left his writings or his library—it is not clear which—to the Grey Friars.[116]

This gift may have formed part—it is not certain—of the two valuable hoards existing in the fifteenth century in the same friary, one the convent library, open only to graduates, the other the Schools library, for seculars living among the brethren for the sake of the teaching they could get. In these collections were many Hebrew books, which had been bought upon the banishment of the Jews from England (1290).[117] Such books were not often found in the abbeys, although some got to Ramsey, where Grosseteste’s influence may be suspected.

The White Friars also had a library at Oxford, wherein they garnered the works of every famous writer of their order. They are praised for taking more care of their books than the brethren of other colours.[118] In later times, at any rate, some cause for the complaint against the Grey Friars existed. They appear to have sold many manuscripts to Dr. Thomas Gascoigne (c. 1433). He ultimately gave them to the libraries of Lincoln, Durham, Balliol, and Oriel Colleges. As the friars’ mode of life grew easier and the love of learning less keen, they got rid of many more books. In Leland’s time the library had melted away. After much difficulty he was allowed to see the book-room, but he found in it nothing but dust and dirt, cobwebs and moths, and some books not worth a threepenny piece.[119]

Roger de Thoris, afterwards Dean of Exeter, presented a library to the Grey Friars of his city in 1266.[120] What became of it we do not know. About the same time, in 1253 to be exact, the will of Richard de Wyche, Bishop of Chichester, is notable for its bequests to the friars; thus he left books to various friaries of the Grey Brethren—at

Chichester his glossed Psalter, at Lewes the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, at Winchelsea the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, at Canterbury Isaiah glossed, at London the Epistles of St. Paul glossed, and at Winchester the twelve Prophets glossed; as well as some volumes to the Black Friars—at Arundel the Book of Sentences, at Canterbury Hosea glossed, at London the Books of Job, the Acts, the Apocalypse, with the canonical epistles, and at Winchester the Summa of William of Auxerre.[121] Such friendliness for the Mendicants was far from common among the secular clergy. Besides the southern places mentioned in this bequest, friaries in the east, at Norwich and Ipswich, and in the west, at Hereford and Bristol, had goodly libraries.

The friary collections in London seem to have been important, especially that given to the Grey Friars in 1225,[122] just when they had settled near Newgate. The Austin Friars may have owned a library before 1364, when two of their number left the London house, taking with them books and other goods.[123] Early in the fifteenth century a library was built and a large addition was made to the books of this house by Prior Lowe, a friar afterwards occupying the sees of St. Asaph and of Rochester.[124] At this time the friars of London were specially fortunate. The White Friars enjoyed a good library, to which Thomas Walden, a learned brother of the order, presented many foreign manuscripts of some age and rarity.[125] The Grey Friars’ library was founded or refounded by Dick Whittington (1421).[126] The room “was in length one hundred twentie nine foote, and in breadth thirtie one: all seeled with Wainscot, having twentie eight desks, and eight double setles of Wainscot. Which in the next yeare following was altogither finished in building, and within three yeares after, furnished with Bookes, to the charges of” over £556, “whereof Richard Whittington bare foure hundred pound, the rest was borne by Doctor Thomas Winchelsey, a Frier there.”[127] On this occasion one hundred marks were paid for transcribing the works of Nicholas de Lyra, a Grey Friar highly esteemed for his knowledge of Hebrew, and “the greatest exponent of the literal sense of Scripture whom the medieval world can show.”[128]

Of few of the friary libraries have we definite knowledge of their size and character. But in the case of the Austin Friars of York, a catalogue of their library is extant. The collection was a notable one. The inventory was made in 1372, and the items in it, forming the bulk of the whole, with some later additions, amounted to 646. One member of the society named John Erghome was a remarkable man. He was a doctor of Oxford, where he had studied logic, natural philosophy, and theology. More than 220 books were his contribution to this splendid library, and he it was who added the Psalter and Canticles in Greek and a Hebrew book,—rarities indeed at that date. Classical literature is fairly well represented in the collection as a whole, but theology, and especially logic and philosophy, make up the bulk.[129]

In Scotland, too, the Grey Friars were busy library-making. We find the convent at Stirling buying five dozen parchments (1502). Fifty pounds were paid for books sent to them this year by the Cistercians of Culross, and to the Austin Canons of Cambuskenneth in the following year about half as much was paid; and similar records appear in the accounts.[130]

Other interesting testimony to the bookcraft and collecting habits of the friars is not wanting. Adam de Marisco writes to the Friar Warden of Cambridge asking for vellum for scribes.[131] Or he expresses the hope that Richard of Cornwall may be prevailed upon to stay in England, but if he goes he will be supplied with books and everything necessary for his departure.[132] From this letter, it was evidently usual for friars to seek and obtain permission to carry away books with them when going abroad, or going from one custody to another.[133] Then again Adam writes asking Grosseteste to send Aristotle’s Ethics to the Grey Friars’ convent in London.[134] In getting books the friars were sometimes unscrupulous. A royal writ was issued commanding the Warden of the Grey Friars at Oxford and another friar, Walter de Chatton, to return two books worth forty shillings which they were keeping from the rightful owner (1330).[135] More striking testimony to the book-collecting habits of the friars is the complaint to the Pope of their buying so many books that the monks and clergy had difficulty in obtaining them. In every convent, it was urged, was a grand and noble library, and every friar of eminence in the University had a fine collection of books.[136] Archbishop Fitzralph, who made this statement, detested the friars, and was besides prone to exaggerate; but he was not wholly wrong in this instance, as De Bury tells a similar tale. “Whenever it happened,” he says, “that we turned aside to the cities and places where the mendicants ... had their convents, we did not disdain to visit their libraries ...; there we found heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom. These men are as ants.... They have added more in this brief [eleventh] hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the other vine-dressers.”[137] Instead of declaiming against the hawks, De Bury trained them to prey for him, and was well rewarded for his pains. Nor is it beyond the bounds of probability that he enriched his own collection at the expense of the Grey Friars’ library at Oxford.[138]

The friars were not merely collectors. The scholarship of Bacon and other brethren does not concern us. But their correction of the texts of Scripture, and their bibliographical work, are germane to our subject. In mid-thirteenth century some Black Friars of Paris laboured to correct the text of the Latin Bible; and to enable copyists to restore the true text when transcribing, they drew up manuals, called Correctoria. One such manual, now known as the Correctorium Vaticanum, was prepared by William de la Mare, a Grey brother of Oxford, in the course of forty years’ labour; and it is “a work which before all others laid down sound principles of true scientific criticism upon which to base a correction of the Vulgate text.”[139]

Another special work of the Grey brethren, the Registrum Librorum Angliae[140] was less important, although it more clearly illustrates their high regard for books. Some time in the fourteenth century, by seeking information from about one hundred and sixty monasteries, some friars drew

up a list of libraries under the heads of the seven custodies or wardenships of their order in England, and catalogued the writings of some eighty-five authors represented in these collections. In this way was formed a combined bibliography and co-operative catalogue. Of this catalogue we are able to reproduce a page on which are indexed five authors, with numerical references to the libraries containing each work. Early in the fifteenth century a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, John Boston by name—possibly the librarian of that house—expanded the register by increasing to nearly seven hundred the number of authors, and by adding a score of names to the list of libraries. He also provided a short biographical sketch of each author “drawn from the best sources at his disposal; so that the book in its completed form might claim to be called a dictionary of literature.”[141]

§ III

We would fain fill in the outline we have given, for the friars and their book-loving ways are interesting. But enough has been written to show the origin and growth of libraries among the religious both of the abbeys and the friaries. Of the later days of monachism it is not so pleasant to write. The story has been well told many times, but no two writers, even in a broad and general way, let alone in detail, have read the facts alike. On the one hand it is urged that monachism became degenerate, both in reverence for spiritual affairs and in love of learning. Many monks, we are told, came to find more enjoyment in easy living than in ascetic and religious observances. Apart from the savage onslaughts in Piers Plowman, and the yarns of Layton and Legh, now quite discredited, we have the most credible evidence in Chaucer’s gentle satire:—

“A monk ther was, a fair for the maistrye,
An out-rydere, that lovede venerye; [hunting]
A manly man, to been an abbot able,
Ful many a deyntee hors hadde he in stable:
. . . . . . . . . .
He was a lord ful fat and in good point [well-equipped]
His eyen stepe, and rollinge in his heed.” [eyes bright]

The friars, too, were sometimes “merye and wantoun,” and

“knew the tavernes wel in every toun,
And everich hostiler or gay tappestere.”

And an indictment of some force might be based on the fact that the general chapter of the Benedictine order at Coventry in 1516 found it necessary to make regulations against immoderate and illicit eating and drinking, and against hunting and hawking.[142]

No doubt also many a monk would argue with himself:—

“What sholde he studie, and make him-selven wood [mad]
Upon a book in cloistre alwey to poure
Or swinken with his handes, and laboure [toil]
As Austin bit?” [As St. Augustine bids]

De Bury declaimed against the monks’ neglect of books. “Now slothful Thersites,” he cries, “handles the arms of Achilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy asses, winking owls lord it in the eagle’s nest, and the cowardly kite sits upon the perch of the hawk.

“Liber Bacchus is ever loved,
And is into their bellies shoved,
By day and by night.
Liber Codex is neglected,
And with scornful hand rejected
Far out of their sight.”

“And as if the simple monastic folk of modern times were deceived by a confusion of names, while Liber Pater is preferred to Liber Patrum, the study of the monks nowadays is in the emptying of cups and not the emending of books; to which they do not hesitate to add the wanton music of Timotheus, jealous of chastity, and thus the song of the merrymaker and not the chant of the mourner is become the office of the monks. Flocks and fleeces, crops and granaries, leeks and potherbs, drink and goblets, are nowadays the reading and study of the monks, except a few elect ones, in whom lingers not the image but some slight vestige of the fathers that preceded them.”[143] Specific instances of neglect and worse are recorded. We have already mentioned the giving and selling of books by the monks of St. Albans to Richard de Bury. From the account books of Bolton Abbey it would appear that three books only were bought during forty years of the fourteenth century.[144] At St. Werburgh’s, Chester, discipline was very lax. Two monks robbed the abbot of a book valued at £20, and of property valued at £100 or more, and stole from two of their brethren books and money (1409). About four years later one of the thieves was elected abbot, and his respect for learning may be gauged from the fact that in 1422 he was charged with not having maintained a scholar at Oxford or Cambridge for twelve years, although it was his duty to do so by the rules of his order.[145]

At Bury books were going astray in the first half of the fifteenth century. Abbot William Curteys (1429-45) issued an ordinance in which he declares books given out by the precentor to the brethren for purposes of study had been lent, pledged, and even stolen by them. Some of them he had recovered, and he hoped to secure more, but the process of recovery had been expensive and troublesome, both to himself and the people he found in possession of the books. He therefore sternly forbade the brethren to alienate books, and decrees certain punishments if his order was disobeyed. Brethren studying at the University seem to have been not immune from such faults.[146] The prior of Michelham sold books, papers, horses, and timber for his own personal profit (1478). A visitation of Wigmore showed that books were not “studied in the cloister because the seats were uncomfortable.”[147] Bishop Goldwell’s visitation of his diocese of Norwich in 1492 showed that at Norwich Priory no scholars were sent to study at Oxford, and at Wymondham Abbey the monks “refused to apply themselves to their books.” At Battle Abbey, in 1530, the one time fine library was in a sad state of neglect; no doubt books had been parted with. And as the last years of the monasteries coincided with a renewed interest among seculars in learning and with a revival of book-collecting, the monks of all houses must have been sorely tempted to sell books which laymen coveted, as the monks of Mount Athos have been bartering away their libraries ever since the seventeenth century.

But among so many houses some were bound to be ill-conducted. And it is important to remember that irregularities would be recorded oftener than more favourable facts. What had been usual would go unnoted; what was strange, and a departure from the highest standard of monachism, would be observed with regret by friends and dwelt on with spite by enemies. Although human memory is apt to register evil acts with more assiduity and fidelity than good, yet a contrary view of the last state of monachism may be argued with as much reason and with the support of equally reliable evidence. The great majority of the houses were not under lax control. The general organisation was not defective; nor was every monk a “lorel, a loller, and a ‘spille-tyme.’ ” Setting aside the question of general conduct, with which we have little to do, plenty of evidence may be collected to show that the work of the earlier periods was not only continued in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but that some of the monks enjoyed special distinction among their contemporaries. Writing was encouraged by directions of chapters in 1343, 1388, and 1444.[148] The early part of the fifteenth century was an age of library building, in the monasteries, as at the Universities. Special rooms for books were put up at Gloucester, Christ Church (Canterbury), Durham, Bury St. Edmunds, and other houses. Large and growing monastic libraries were in existence—at St. Albans and Peterborough, two at Canterbury of nearly two thousand volumes each, two thousand volumes at Bury, a thousand and more at Durham, six hundred at Ramsey, three hundred and fifty at Meaux. When John Leland crossed the threshold of the library at Glastonbury he stood stock still for a moment, awestruck and bewildered at the sight of books of the greatest antiquity. In 1482, the abbess of Syon monastery, Isleworth, entered into a regular contract for writing and binding books.[149] Some forty years later this abbey had at least fourteen hundred and twenty-one printed and manuscript volumes in its library.[150] More facts of similar character will be noted in the next chapter. Here we will content ourselves with noting a few of the most conspicuous instances of monkish scholarship in these later days. At Glastonbury, Abbot John Selwood was familiar with John Free’s work; indeed, presents a monk with one of that scholar’s translations from the Greek.[151] His successor, Bere, was a pilgrim to Italy, and was in correspondence with Erasmus, who desired him to examine his translation of the New Testament from the Greek. A monk of Westminster, who became abbot of his house in 1465, was a diligent student, noted for his knowledge of Greek.[152] At Christ Church, Canterbury, Prior Selling was particularly zealous on behalf of the library, and was one of the first to import Greek books into England in any considerable quantity.[153] Two manuscripts now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and one in New College, were transcribed by a Greek living at Reading Abbey (1497-1500).[154] These few references to the study of Greek are especially significant, as the revival of Greek studies had only just begun.

§ IV

The whole truth about the later days of the monasteries will never be known. Many of the original sources of our knowledge are tainted with partisanship and religious rancour and flagrant dishonesty. What does seem to be true is that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries monastic influence grew slowly weaker, although the system may not have been degenerate in itself. The cause is to be found in the very prosperity of monachism, which brought to the religious houses wealth and all its responsibilities. Wealth always imposes fetters, as every rich man, from Seneca downwards, has declared with unctuous lamentation. But

what first strikes the student who compares early English monachism with the later is, that whereas the monks of the first period were most concerned with their monastic duties, their religious observances, and their scribing and illuminating, the monks of the later period, and especially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were immersed in business, in the management of their wealth, the control of large estates. The possession of wealth led in one direction to excessive display, and to purchasing land and building beyond their means; a course which monks might easily persuade themselves was progressive and exemplary of true religious fervour, but which attracted to them envious eyes. Heavy subsidies to the Crown and the Pope oppressed them. Then again, many houses indulged in unwise and excessive almsgiving, which the monks might well believe to be right, but which brought them only the interested friendship of the needy. And in the management of their estates much litigation obstinately pursued caused internal dissension, was costly, and gained them only bitter enemies. Had the monasteries been allowed to exist, probably these evils would have cured themselves. But, owing to these evils,—to the decline of monastic influence of which they were the cause,—the Dissolution, once decided upon, could be carried out with terrible swiftness and completeness; no influence nor power which the religious could wield was able to delay or avert the blow struck by the king. Within a few years over one thousand houses were closed and their lands and property confiscated.

In the hastiness of the overthrow some conventual books were destroyed, or stolen, or sold off at low prices. In a few places damage was done even before the actual dissolution. At Christ Church, Canterbury, for example, the drunken servants of a royal commission carelessly brought about a fire, almost entirely destroying the library of Prior Selling,[155] which he probably designed to add to the collection of his monastery. But when the houses were suppressed, we are told, “whole libraries were destroyed, or made waste paper of, or consumed for the vilest uses. The splendid and magnificent Abbey of Malmesbury, which possessed some of the finest manuscripts in the kingdom, was ransacked, and its treasures either sold or burnt to serve the commonest purposes of life. An antiquary who travelled through that town, many years after the Dissolution, relates that he saw broken windows patched up with remnants of the most valuable manuscripts on vellum, and that the bakers had not even then consumed the stores they had accumulated, in heating their ovens.”[156] John Bale tells us the loss of the libraries had not mattered so much, “beynge so many in nombre, and in so desolate places for the more parte, yf the chiefe monumentes and most notable workes of our excellent wryters had been reserved. If there had been in every shyre of Englande but one solempne lybrary to the preservacyon of those noble workes, and preferrement of good lernynges in oure posteryte, it had bene yet sumwhat. But to destroye all without consyderacyon, is and wyll be unto Englande for ever, a most horryble infamy amonge the grave senyours of other nacyons. A great nombre of them whych purchased these superstycyouse mansyons reserved of those lybrary bokes, some to serve theyr jakes, some to scoure theyr candlestycks, and some to rubbe theyr bootes. Some they sold to the grossers and sopesellers, and some they sent over see to the bokebynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shyppes full, to the wonderynge of the foren nacyons. Yea, the unyversytees of this realme are not all clere in this detestable fact.... I know a merchant man which shall at thys tyme be namelesse, that boughte the contentes of two noble lybraryes for xl shyllynges pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. Thys stuffe hath he occupyed in the stede of graye paper by the space of more than these x years, and yet he hath store ynough for many yeares to come.”[157] To some extent Bale’s account of the contemptuous treatment of books is confirmed by records of sales: as, for example, the following:—

Bale’s statement is sadly borne out by the fate of the library of the Austin Friars of York. At one time this friary owned between six and seven hundred books. Now but five are known to remain.[159] “It is hardly open to doubt,” writes Dr. James, “that nine-tenths of the books have ceased to exist. To be sure, it is no news to us that thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of manuscripts were destroyed in the first half of the sixteenth century; but the truth comes heavily home when we are confronted with the actual figures of the loss sustained in one small corner of the field. We may fairly reckon that what happened in the case of the Austin Friars at York happened to many another house situated like it, in a populous centre, and thus enjoying good opportunities for acquiring books.”[160]

But the loss may be—and has been—exaggerated. In some instances a good part of a library was preserved. The Prior of Lanthony, a house in the outskirts of Gloucester, saved the books of his little community. From him they passed into the hands of one Theyer; later, possibly through Archbishop Bancroft, they found an ultimate resting-place in Lambeth Palace. During this interval many of them were perhaps lost or sold, but to-day some one hundred and thirty are known certainly to have come from Lanthony, or may be credited to that place on reasonably safe evidence.[161]

Then again Henry’s myrmidons—to use the classic word—would be unlikely to carry their vandalism too far. To do so, in view of the great value of books, would bring them no profit. Knowing their character, may we not reasonably assume that they sold as many books as they could to make illicit gains?[162] Sometimes they fell in love with their finds, as was natural. “Please it you to understand,” writes Thomas Bedyll, one of Henry VIII’s commissioners, “that in the reding of the muniments and charters of the house of Ramesey, I found a charter of King Edgar, writen in a very antiq Romane hand, hard to be red at the first sight, and light inowghe after that a man found out vj or vij words and after compar letter to letter. I am suer ye wold delight to see the same for the straingnes and antiquite thereof.... I have seen also there a chartor of King Edward writen affor the Conquest.”[163]

John Leland was one of those who saved books. Already he had been commissioned to examine the libraries of cathedrals, abbeys, priories, colleges, and other places wherein the records of antiquity were kept, when, observing with dismay the threatened loss of monastic treasures, he asked Cromwell to extend the commission to collecting books for the king’s library. The Germans, he says, perceiving our “desidiousness” and negligence, were daily sending young scholars hither, who spoiled the books, and cut them out of libraries, and returned home and put them abroad as monuments of their own country.[164]

His request was granted in part, and he tells us he sent to London for the royal library the choicest volumes in St. Augustine’s Abbey; but very few of these books now remain.[165] He had, he said, “conservid many good autors, the which otherwise had beene like to have perischid to no smaul incommodite of good letters, of the whiche parte remayne yn the moste magnificent libraries of yowr royal Palacis. Parte also remayne yn my custodye. Wherby I truste right shortely so to describe your most noble reaulme, and to publische the Majeste and the excellent actes of yowr progenitors.”[166]

Robert Talbot, rector of Haversham, Berkshire (d. 1558), collected monastic manuscripts: the choicest of them he left to New College. A portreeve of Ipswich, named William Smart, came into possession of some hundred volumes from Bury Abbey library. In 1599 he gave them to Pembroke College, where they are now.[167] John Twyne, (d. 1581), schoolmaster and mayor of Canterbury, certainly once owned the fifteenth-century catalogue of the St. Augustine’s Abbey library, and seems to have possessed many manuscripts. Both catalogue and manuscripts were transferred to Dr. John Dee, the famous alchemist. The catalogue, with some other books belonging to the doctor, got to the library of Trinity College, Dublin. But the manuscripts passed into the hands of Brian Twyne, John’s grandson, who bequeathed them to Corpus Christi College, Oxford; they are still there.[168] John Stow, whose gatherings form part of the Harleian collection, saved some books which once reposed in claustral aumbries, mainly owing to the protection and help of Archbishop Parker.

Archbishop Parker himself was assiduous in garnering books. “I have within my house, in wages,” he writes to Lord Burleigh, in 1573, “drawers and cutters, painters, limners, writers and bookbinders.” Again, “I toy out my time, partly with copying of books.” He made a strenuous endeavour to recover as many of the monks’ books as possible, using money and influence to this end; and accumulated an unusually large library, quite priceless in character.[169] Most of his choice books were presented to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and twenty-five of them to Cambridge University Library (1574). Dr. Montagu James, the leading authority on the provenance of Western manuscripts, has discovered or made suggestions as to the origin of nearly two hundred out of about three hundred and eighty.[170] Forty-seven are traced to Christ Church, Canterbury; twenty-six to St. Augustine’s Abbey. Later Dr. James extended his work to identifying the manuscripts which were once in the Canterbury abbeys and in the priory of St. Martin at Dover. From the fragmentary Christ Church catalogue of 1170, Dr. James has identified two, and possibly six, manuscripts; from Henry Eastry’s catalogue (14 cent.) of Christ Church books, he has identified either certainly or with much probability about one hundred and eighty; from the catalogue of St. Augustine’s Abbey library (c. 1497) over one hundred and seventy-five; as well as twenty from the Dover catalogue (1389). In addition, Dr. James has identified about one hundred and fifty manuscripts still extant which are certainly or probably attributable to Christ Church monastic library, but which are not in the catalogues handed down to us; and over sixty which are likewise attributable to St. Augustine’s monastery.[171] There are therefore about five hundred and seventy Canterbury manuscripts now remaining to us.

By making a similarly thorough investigation Dr. James has traced about three hundred and twenty-two manuscripts from Bury St. Edmunds.[172] Of the Westminster Abbey manuscripts it is difficult to say how many are extant, as the common medieval press marks are absent from the books of this house. But the presence of eleven manuscripts in the British Museum; two in Lambeth Palace; one at Sion College; three at the Bodleian, and five more in Oxford colleges; two at the Cambridge University Library, and two more in the colleges there; one at the Chetham Library, Manchester; and two at Trinity College, Dublin, well illustrate how the monastic books have been scattered since the Dissolution.[173] To these special examinations Dr. James has gradually added vastly to our knowledge of the provenance of manuscripts by his masterly series of catalogues of the ancient treasures of the Cambridge colleges, and he has proved to us that a considerable number of monastic books still survive.[174] Much more work of the same kind remains to be done; other labourers are needed; but the men of parts who are able and content to labour at a task without remuneration and with small thanks are few and far between; while fewer still are the publishers who can be persuaded to produce the results of these researches.

CHAPTER IV
BOOK-MAKING AND COLLECTING IN THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES

“For if hevene be on this erthe . and ese to any soule,
It is in cloistere or in scole . be many skilles I fynde;
For in cloistre cometh no man . to chide ne to fighte,
But alle is buxomnesse there and bokes . to rede and to lerne.”
Piers Plowman, B. x. 300

§I

BEFORE leaving the subject of monastic libraries, it is desirable to say something about their economy.

They were built up partly by importing books, partly by bequests from wealthy ecclesiastics, but largely—and in some cases wholly—by the labours of scribes. The scene of the scribe’s craft was the scriptorium or writing-room, which was usually a screened-off portion of the cloister, or a room beside the church and below the library, as at St. Gall, or a chamber over the chapter-house, as at St. Albans under Abbot Paul, at Cockersand Abbey and Birkenhead Priory. As a rule the monk was not allowed to write outside the scriptorium, although in some houses he could read elsewhere—as at Durham, where a desk to support books was fitted in the window of each dormitory cubicle. But brothers whose work was highly valued were allowed a small writing-room or scriptoriolum. Nicholas, Bernard’s secretary, had a room on the right of the cloister with its

door opening into the novices’ room—a cell, he says, “not to be despised; for it is ... pleasant to look upon, and comfortable for retirement. It is filled with most choice and divine books ... is assigned to me for reading, and writing, and composing, and meditating, and praying, and adoring the Lord of Majesty.”[175] Perhaps Nicholas’s room was like that shown in one manuscript, where we see a monk seated on a stool before a reading-stand of odd shape. The table, which is the top of a hexagonal receptacle for parchment and writing materials, or books, can be moved up and down on the screw. Above the screw is a bookrest; at the foot a pedestal, with the ink-bottle upon it. Apparently the room also contains cupboards for storing books. Nicholas, however, was favoured, for in the same passage he refers to the older monks reading the “books of divine eloquence in the cloister.” In Cistercian monasteries certain monks were so favoured, although they were not allowed to use their studies during the time the monks were supposed to be in the cloister.[176] At Oxford, after mid-fourteenth century, every student friar had set apart for him a place fitted with a combined desk and bookcase, or studium, of the kind commonly depicted in medieval illuminations. Grants of timber for making these studia are recorded: to the Black Friars of Oxford, for example, of seven oaks to repair their studies.[177]

The arrangements in the cloister are carefully described in the Durham Rites. At Durham “in the north syde of the cloister, from the corner over against the church dour to the corner over againste the Dortor dour, was all fynely glased, from the hight to the sole within a litle of the grownd into the cloister garth. And in every wyndowe iij pewes or carrells, where every one of the old Monks had his carrell, severall by himselfe, that, when they had dyned, they dyd resorte to that place of Cloister and there studyed upon there books, every one in his carrell, all the after nonne, unto evensong time. This was there exercise every daie. All there pewes or carrells was all fynely wainscotted and verie close, all but the forepart, which had carved wourke that gave light in at ther carrell doures of wainscott. And in every carrell was a deske to lye there books on. And the carrells was no greater then from one stanchell of the wyndowe to another.”[178] There were carrells at Evesham in the fourteenth century.[179] In 1485 Prior Selling constructed in the south walk at Christ Church, Canterbury, “the new framed contrivances called carrells” for the comfort of the monks at study.[180] Such recesses are to be found at Worcester and Gloucester; remains of some exist at the south end of the west walk of the cloisters at Chester, and others were in the destroyed south walk.[181] At Gloucester Cathedral, which was formerly the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter, are twenty beautiful carrells in the south cloister. They project below the ten main windows, two in each, and are arched, with battlemented tops or cornices. Except for the small double window which lights them, they look like recesses for statuary.

The Carthusian Rule records that few monks of the order could not write.[182] But this was by no means invariably the case. In early monastic times writing was usually the occupation of the weaker brethren: for example,

Ferreolus, in his rules (c. 550), deems reading and copying fit occupations for monks too weak for severer work.[183] Later, in some monasteries, less labour in the field and more writing was done. At Tours, Alcuin took the monks away from field labour, telling them study and writing were far nobler pursuits.[184] But it was not commonly the case to find in monasteries “ech man a scriveyn able.”

When books were not otherwise obtainable, or not obtainable quickly enough, it was the practice to hire scribes from outside the house. Abbot Gerbert, in a letter to the abbot of Tours, mentions that he had been paying scribes in Rome and various parts of Italy, in Belgium, and Germany, to make copies of books for his library “at great expense.”[185] At Abingdon hired scribes were sometimes employed, and the rule was for the abbot to find the food, and the armarius, or librarian, to pay for the labour.[186] This was commonly done when libraries were first formed. When Abbot Paul began to collect a library at St. Albans none of his brethren could write well enough to suit him, and he was obliged to fill his writing-room with hired scribes. He supplied them with daily rations out of the brethren’s and cellarer’s alms-food; such provision was always handy, and the scribes were not retarded by leaving their work.[187] Sometimes scribes were employed merely to save the monks trouble. At Corbie, in the fourteenth century, the religious neglected to work in the writing-room themselves, but allowed benefactors to engage professional scribes in Paris to swell the number of books. The Gilbertine order forbade hired scribes altogether, perhaps wisely.

The scribe’s method of work was simple. First he took a metal stylus or a pencil and drew perpendicular lines in the side margins of his parchment, and horizontal lines at equal distances from top to bottom of the page. Then the task of copying was straightforward. If the book was to be embellished he left spaces for the illuminator to fill in. When the illuminator took the book over, he carefully sketched in his designs for the capitals and miniatures, and then worked over them in colour, applying one colour to a number of sketches at a time. Anybody who is curious as to medieval methods of illuminating should read a little fifteenth-century treatise which describes “the crafte of lymnynge of bokys.” “Who so kane wyesly considere the nature of his colours, and kyndely make his commixtions with naturalle proporcions, and mentalle indagacions connectynge fro dyvers recepcions by resone of theyre naturys, he schalle make curius colourys.” Thereafter follow recipes to “temper vermelone to wryte therewith”; “to temper asure, roset, ceruse, rede lede,” and other pigments; “to make asure to schyne bryȝt,” “to make letterys of gold,” “blewe lethyre,” and “whyte lethyre”; with other curious information.[188]

In monasteries where the rule was strict the scribe wrought at his task for six hours daily.[189] All work was done by daylight, artificial light not being allowed. Lewis, a monk of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, in a copy of Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel, speaks of writing when he was stiff with cold, and of finishing by the light of night what he could not copy by day.[190] Such diligence was not usual.

In summer-time work in the cloister may well have been pleasant; in winter quite the contrary, even when the cloister and carrells were screened, as at Durham and Christ Church, Canterbury. Imagine the poor scribe rubbing his hands to restore the sluggish circulation, and being at last compelled to forgo his labour because they were too numbed to write. Cuthbert, the eighth-century abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow, writes to a correspondent telling him he had not been able to send all Bede’s works which were required, because the cold weather of the preceding winter had paralysed the scribes’ hands.[191] Again, Ordericus Vitalis winds up the fourth book of his ecclesiastical history by saying—nunc hyemali frigore rigens—he must break his narrative here, and take up other occupations for the winter.[192] Jacob, abbot of Brabant (1276), built scriptoria, or possibly carrells, round the calefactory, or warming-room, where the common fire was kept burning, and the lot of the scribe was made somewhat easier to bear.

A scribe could only write what the abbot or precentor set him. When his portion had been given out he could not change it for another.[193] If he were set to copy Virgil or Ovid or some lives of the saints the task would conceivably be pleasant. But such was seldom the scribe’s fortune. The continual transcription of Psalters and Missals and other service books must have been infinitely wearisome, at any rate, to the less devout members of the community. In some large and enterprising houses a scribe copied only a fragment of a book. Several brethren worked upon the same book at once, each beginning upon a skin at the point where another scribe was to leave off.[194] Or the book to be transcribed was dictated to the scribes, as at Tours under Alcuin. Both methods had the advantage of “publishing” a book quickly, but the work was as mechanical as is that of the compositor to-day. Under Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim, subdivision of labour was carried to its extreme limit. One monk cut the parchment, another polished it, the third ruled the lines to guide the scribe. After the scribe had finished his copying, another monk corrected, still another punctuated. In decorating, one artist rubricated, another painted the miniatures. Then the bookbinder collated the leaves and bound them in wooden covers. Even in the case of waxed tablets, one monk prepared the boards, another spread the wax. The whole process was designed to expedite production.

When a manuscript was fully written the scribe wrote his colophon or “explicit,” a short form of the phrase “explicitus est liber.” Sometimes the scribe plays upon words, thus: “Explicit iste liber; sit scriptor crimine liber”; or he exultantly praises: “Deo gratias. Ego, in Dei nomine, Warembertus scripsi. Deo gratias”; or he is modest: “Nomen scriptoris non pono, quia ipsum laudare nolo”;[195] or he feels querulous: “Be careful with your fingers; don’t put them on my writing. You do not know what it is to write. It is excessive drudgery: it crooks your back, dims your sight, twists your stomach and sides. Pray then, my brother, you who read this book, pray for poor Raoul, God’s servant, who has copied it entirely with his own hand in the cloister of St. Aignan.” Another inscription, in a manuscript at Worcester Cathedral, suggests that books were not read: why, argues this monk, write them?—nobody is profited; books are for the edification of readers, not of scribes. Note also the following:—

Finito libro sit laus et gloria Christo
Vinum scriptori debetur de meliori
Hic liber est scriptus qui scripsit sit benedictus. Amen.[196]

And this:—

Here endþ þe firste boke of all maner sores þe
whyche fallen moste commune and withe þe grace of gode I
will writte þe ij Boke þe whyche ys cleped the Antitodarie
Explicit quod scripcit Thomas Rosse.[197]

To a poor Raoul of mechanical ability the rule of silence must have been very irksome; the student would be grateful for it. Alcuin forbade gossip to prevent mistakes in copying. Among the Cluniacs the rule was strictly enforced in the church, refectory, cloister, and dormitory. A chapter of the Cistercian order (1134) enjoined silence in all rooms where the brethren were in the habit of writing.[198] The better to maintain silence nobody was permitted to enter the scriptorium save the abbot, the prior and sub-prior, and the precentor. When necessary it was permissible to speak in a low voice in the ear. But among the Cluniacs whispering was avoided as far as possible. Watch the monks communicating with the librarian. One wants a Missal, and he pretends, as the children say, to turn over leaves, thereby making the general sign for a book; then he makes the sign of the Cross to indicate that he wants a Missal book. Another wants the Gospels, and he makes the sign of the Cross on the forehead. This brother wants a pagan book, and, after making the general sign, he scratches his ear with his finger as an itching dog would with his feet; infidel writers were not unfairly compared with such creatures.[199] If such sign-language were really maintained, it must have been extensively supplemented as the library grew in size, for although striking the thumb and little

finger together would describe an Antiphonary, or making the sign of the Cross and kissing the finger would indicate a Gradual, yet some additions to the signs for a pagan book and a tract were necessary to signify what particular tract or book was wanted. But probably if this rule was observed at all—and we do not think it likely—the signs were used only for church books, and most often in church. In nearly every monastery the rule of silence was made. In the Brigittine house of Syon “silence after some convenience is to be kepte in the lybrary, whyls any suster is there alone in recordyng of her redynge.”[200] But it was at all times difficult to enforce, as the monks, in experience and habits, were but children.