BOOKS AND THEIR MAKERS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, Vol. I

to
The Memory of My Wife
who served me for years both as eyesight
and as writing-arm
and by whose hand the following pages
were in large part transcribed
this work is dedicated

In a previous volume I undertook to describe, or rather to indicate, the methods of the production and distribution of the earlier literature of the world and to sketch out the relations which existed between the author and his public during the ages known, rather vaguely, as classic, that is, in the periods of literary activity in Greece and ancient Rome. The materials for such a record were at best but fragmentary, and it was doubtless the case that, in a first attempt of the kind, I failed to get before me not a few of the references which are scattered through the works of classic writers, and which in any fairly complete presentation of the subject ought to have been utilised.

Imperfect as my study was, I felt, however, that I was justified in basing upon it certain general conclusions. It seems evident that in Greece, even during the period of the highest literary development, there did not exist anything that could be described as a system for the production and distribution of books. The number of copies of any work of Greek literature available for the use of the general public must at any time have been exceedingly limited, and it would probably be safe to say that, before the development of Alexandria as a centre of book-production, no such thing as a reading public existed. The few manuscripts that had been produced, and that possessed any measure of authenticity, were contained in royal archives or in such a State collection as that of[vi] Athens, or in the studies of the small group of scholarly teachers whose fame was sometimes in part due to the fact that they were owners of books.

The contemporary writers, including the authors of works treasured as masterpieces through all later ages, were not only content to do their work without any thought of material compensation, but appear to have been strangely oblivious of what would seem to us to be the ordinary practical measures for the preservation and circulation of their productions. The only reward for which they could look was fame with their own generation, and even for this it would seem that some effective distribution of their compositions was essential. The thought of preserving their work for the appreciation of future generations seems to have weighed with them but little. The ambition or ideal of the author appears to have been satisfied when his composition received in his own immediate community the honour of dramatic presentation or of public recitation. If his fellow citizens had accorded the approbation of the laurel crown, the approval of the outer world or of future generations was a matter of trifling importance. The fact that, notwithstanding this lack of ambition or incentive on the part of the authors, the non-existence of a reading public, and the consequent absence of any adequate machinery for the production and distribution of books, the knowledge of the “laurel-crowned” works, both of the earlier poets and of contemporary writers, should have been so widely diffused throughout the Greek community, is evidence that the public interest in dramatic performances and in the recitations of public reciters (“rhapsodists”) made, for an active-minded people like the Greeks, a very effective substitute for the literary enlightenment given to later generations by means of the written or the printed word.

A systematised method of book-production we find first in Alexandria, where it had been developed, if not originally[vii] instituted, by the intelligent and all-powerful interest of the Ptolemaic kings, but there appears to be no evidence that, even in Alexandria, which for the greater part of two centuries was the great book-producing mart of the world, was there any practice of compensation for authors. It is to be borne in mind, however, in this connection, that, with hardly an exception, the manuscripts produced in Alexandria were copies of books accepted as classics, the works of writers long since dead. For the editors of what might be called the Alexandrian editions of Greek classics, compensation was provided in the form of honoraria from the treasury of the Museum library or of salaried positions in the Museum Academy.

In Rome, during the Augustan period, we find record of a well organised body of publishers utilising connections with Athens, with Asia Minor, and with Alexandria, for the purpose of importing Greek manuscripts and of collecting trained Greek scribes, and carrying on an active trade in the distribution of books not only with the neighbouring cities of Italy, of Spain, and of Gaul, but with such far off corners of the empire as the Roman towns in Britain. There are not a few references in the literature of this period, and particularly in the productions of society writers like Martial and Horace, to the relations of authors with their publishers and to the business interests retained by authors in the sale of their books. This Augustan age presents, in fact, the first example in the history of publishing, of a body of literature, produced by contemporary writers, being manifolded and distributed under an effective publishing and bookselling machinery, so as to reach an extensive and widely separated reading public. When the Roman gentleman in his villa near Massilia (in Gaul), Colonia (on the Rhine), or Eboracum (in far off Britain), is able to order through the imperial post copies of the latest ode of Horace or satire of Martial, we have the beginnings of an effective publishing[viii] organisation. It is at this time also that we first find record of the names of noteworthy publishers, the bookmakers in Athens and in Alexandria having left their names unrecorded. It is the period of Atticus, of Tryphon, and of the Sosii. Concerning the matter of the arrangements with the authors, or the extent of any compensation secured by them, the information is at best but scanty and often confusing. It seems evident, however, that, apart from the aid afforded by imperial favour, by the interest of some provincial ruler of literary tendencies, or by the bounty of a wealthy private patron like Mæcenas, the rewards of literary producers were both scanty and precarious.

With the downfall of the Roman Empire, the organised book-trade of Rome and of the great cities of the Roman provinces came to an end. This trade had of necessity been dependent upon an effective system of communication and of transportation, a system which required for its maintenance the well built and thoroughly guarded roads of the empire; while it also called for the existence of a wealthy and cultivated leisure class, a class which during the periods of civil war and of barbaric invasions rapidly disappeared. Long before the reign of the last of the Roman emperors, original literary production had in great part ceased and the trade in the books of an earlier period had been materially curtailed; and by 476, when Augustulus was driven out by the triumphant Odovacar, the literary activities of the capital were very nearly at a close.

In the following study I have taken up the account of the production of books in Europe from the time of the downfall of the Empire of the West. I have endeavoured to show by what means, after the disappearance of the civilisation of the Roman State, were preserved the fragments of classic literature that have remained for the use of modern readers, and to what agencies were due the[ix] maintenance, throughout the confusion and social disorganisation of the early Middle Ages, of any intellectual interest or literary activities.

I find such agencies supplied in the first place by the scribes of the Roman Church, the organisation of which had replaced as a central civilising influence the power of the lost Roman Empire. The scriptoria of the monasteries rendered the service formerly given by the copyists of the book-shops or of the country houses, while their armaria, or book-chests, had to fill the place of the destroyed or scattered libraries of the Roman cities or the Roman villas. The work of the scribes was now directed not by an Augustus, a Mæcenas, or an Atticus, but by a Cassiodorus, a Benedict, or a Gregory, and the incentive to literary labour was no longer the laurel crown of the circus, the favours of a patron, or the honoraria of the publishers, but the glory of God and the service of the Church. Upon these agencies depended the existence of literature during the seven long centuries between the fall of the Western Empire and the beginning of the work of the universities, and, in fact, for many years after the foundation of the universities of Bologna and of Paris, the book-production of the monasteries continued to be of material importance in connection with the preservation of literature.

In a study of the organisation of the earliest book-trade of Bologna and Paris and of the method under which the text-books for the universities were produced and supplied, I have attempted to indicate the part played by the universities in the history of literary production. In a later chapter I have presented sketches of one or two of the more noteworthy of the manuscript dealers, who carried on, for a couple of centuries prior to the invention of printing, the business of supplying books to the increasing circles of readers outside of the universities.

In 1450 comes the invention of printing, which in[x] revolutionising the methods of distributing intellectual productions, exercised such a complex and far-reaching influence on the thought and on the history of mankind. I have described with some detail the careers of certain of the earlier printer-publishers of Europe, and have been interested in noting how important and distinctive were the services rendered by these publishers to scholarship and to literature.

The concluding chapter sketches the growth of the conception of the idea of property in literature, and the gradual development and extension throughout the States of Europe of the system of privileges which formed the precedent and the foundations for the modern system of the law of literature and of interstate copyright legislation. I have taken pleasure in pointing out that the responsibility for securing this preliminary recognition of property in literary productions and of the property rights of literary producers rested with the printer-publishers, and that the shaping of the beginnings of a copyright system for Europe is due to their efforts. It was they also who bore the chief burden of the contest, which extended over several centuries, for the freedom of the press from the burdensome censorship of Church and State, a censorship which in certain communities appeared likely for a time to throttle literary production altogether. I can but think that the historians of literature and the students of the social and political conditions on which literary production is so largely dependent, have failed to do full justice to men like Aldus, the Estiennes, Froben, Koberger, and Plantin, who fought so sturdily against the pretensions of pope, bishop, or monarch to stand between the printing-press and the people and to decide what should and what should not be printed.

I have thought it worth while, in giving the business history of these old-time publishers, to present the lists of their more characteristic publications,—lists which seem[xi] to me to possess pertinence and value as giving an impression of the nature and the range of the literary interests of the time and of the particular community in which the publisher was working, while they are also, of course, indicative of the personal characteristics of the publisher himself. When we find Aldus in Venice devoting his presses almost exclusively to classical literature, and in the classics, so largely to Greek; while in Basel and Nuremberg the early printers are producing the works of the Church Fathers, in Paris the first Estienne (in the face of the fierce opposition of the theologians) is multiplying editions of the Scriptures, and in London, Caxton and his immediate successors, disregarding both the literature of the old world and the writings of the Church, are presenting to the English public a long series of romances and fabliaux,—we may understand that we have to do not with a series of accidental publishing selections, but with the results of a definite purpose and policy on the part of capable and observing men, a policy which gives an indication of the nature and interests of their several communities, while it characterises also the aims and the individual ideals of the publishers themselves. Some of these earlier publishers were willing simply to produce the books for which the people about them were asking, while others, with a higher ambition and a larger feeling of responsibility, proposed themselves to educate a book-reading and a book-buying public, and thus to create the demand for the higher literature which their presses were prepared to supply.

These earlier printer-publishers took upon themselves, in fact, the responsibility which had previously rested with the universities, and, back of the universities, with the monasteries, of selecting the literature that was to be utilised by the community and through which the intellectual life of the generation was to be in large part shaped and directed. They thus took their place in the series of[xii] literary agencies by means of which the world’s literature had been selected, preserved, and rendered available for mankind, a chain which included such diverse and widely separated links as the Ptolemies of Alexandria, the princely patrons of Rome, Cassiodorus, S. Benedict and his monasteries, the schools of Charlemagne and Alcuin, the universities of Bologna and Paris, and, finally, the printer-publishers who utilised the great discovery of Gutenberg.

The fact that, during both the manuscript period and the first two centuries of printing, the writings of Cicero were reproduced far more largely than those of any other of the Roman writers, is interesting as indicating a distinct literary preference on the part of successive generations both of producers and of readers. The pre-eminence of Aristotle in the lists of the mediæval issues of the Greek classics has, I judge, a different significance. Aristotle stood for a school of philosophy, the teachings of which had in the main been accepted by the Church, and copies of his writings were required for the use of students. The continued demand for the works of Cicero depended upon no such adventitious aid, and can, therefore, fairly be credited to their perennial value as literature.

My readers will bear in mind that I have not undertaken any such impossible task as a history of literary production, or even a record of all the factors which controlled literary production. I have attempted simply to present a study of certain conditions in the history of the manifolding and distribution of books by which the production and effectiveness of literature was very largely influenced and determined, and under which the conception of such a thing as literary property gradually developed. The recognition of a just requirement or of an existing injustice must, of course, always precede the framing of legislation to meet the requirement or to remedy the injustice,[xiii] and the conception of literary property and a recognition of the inherent rights (and of the existing wrongs) of literary producers had to be arrived at before copyright legislation could be secured.

I have specified as the limit of the present treatise the close of the seventeenth century, although I have found it convenient in certain chapters to make reference to events of a somewhat later date. It has been my purpose, however, to present a study of the conditions of literary production in Europe prior to copyright law, and the copyright legislation of Europe may be said to begin with the English statute of 1710, known as the Act of Queen Anne.

I trust that in the near future some competent authority may find himself interested in preparing a history of copyright law, and I shall be well pleased if the present volumes may be accepted by the historian of copyright and by the students of the subject as forming a suitable general introduction to such a history.

WORKS CITED OR REFERRED TO AS AUTHORITIES.

Abelard and the Origin and Early History of Universities. By Gabriel Compayré. New York, 1893.

Actes Concernants le Pouvoir, etc., de l’Université de Paris. Paris, 1698.

Adams, G. B. Civilization during the Middle Ages. New York, 1894.

Adrian, J. V. Catalogus Codd. MSS. Biblioth. Acad. Gissensis. 4 vols., 1840.

Alcuini Opera. Edited by Froben. Basel, 1514.

Al-Makkari, Ahmed Ibn Mohammed. History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain. Trans. by Pascual de Gayangos. 2 vols., 4to. London, 1843.

Ampère, J. J. Histoire Littéraire de la France avant Charlemagne. 2 vols. Paris, 1868.

—— Histoire Littéraire de la France sous Charlemagne. 2 vols. Paris, 1870.

Anselmus (S.) Opuscula. Edited by Haas. Tübingen, 1863.

—— Opera Omnia. Edited by Migne. Paris, 1852.

Athenæ Oxoniensis. Compiled by Wood, with Continuation by Bliss. 4 vols. Oxford, 1813-1820.

d’Aubigné, J. H. Merle. See under “D.”

Bacon, Roger. Opera Inedita. Edited by Brewer, J. S., in the Rolls Series. London, 1860.

Barach, C. S. Handschriften zu Donaueschingen. Vienna, 1862.

Barstch, Adam. Le Peintre Graveur. 21 vols. 8°. Vienna, 1803, 1821.

Bastard, Aug. (Cte.). La Librairie de Jean de France, duc de Berri. Paris, 1834.

Bayle, Peter. Historical and Critical Dictionary (English Version). 5 vols. London.

Beckmann, J. Beyträge zur Geschichte der Erfindungen. Leipzig, 1786.

[xviii]

Bede, (Venerable). Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Edited by G. H. Moberley. Oxford, 1869.

—— Ecclesiastical Histy. of England. Trans. by Giles. Lond., 1847.

Bentham, James. The Cathedral Church of Ely. Cambridge, 1771.

Bibliothèque de l’École de Chartres. Cinquième Série.

Blades, Wm. The Biography and Typography of William Caxton, England’s First Printer. London, 1877.

Blume, Fr. Anton. Iter Italicum. Berlin, 1824.

Bossuet. Œuvres. 32 vols. Paris, 1828.

Brown, Horatio F. The Venetian Printing Press. An Historical Study. London and New York, 1891.

Bulæus, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis ab anno 800. 6 vols. Paris, 1665-1673.

Burckhardt, Jacob. Die Cultur der Renaissance. Berlin, 1889.

Casaubon, Isaac. Life, 1559-1614. By Mark Pattison. 2d edition. Oxford, 1892.

Cassiodori Opera. Edited by Garet. 2 vols., fol. Rouen, 1679.

Cassiodorus, Das Leben von. Franz, J. Berlin, 1877.

Cassiodorus, Letters of. Trans., with an Introduction, by Thomas Hodgkin. London, 1884.

Castellani, Carlo. La Stampa in Venezia dalla sua Orig. alla Aldo Manuzio. Venice, 1889.

Catalogue Général des Manuscrits des Bibliothèques Publiques. Paris, 1849.

Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis. Paris, 1889.

Chassant. Dictionnaire des Abréviations Latines et Françaises Usitées dans les Manuscrits. Paris, 1864.

Chevillier, André. L’Origine de l’Imprimerie de Paris. Paris, 1694.

Christine de Pisan. Les Écrits Politiques de. Paris, 1838.

Chroniken, Die, der Deutschen Städte. 5 vols. Berlin, 1789-1792.

Chronique Métrique de Godefroy de Paris. 8 vols. Paris, 1827.

Clark, J. W. Libraries in the Mediæval and Renaissance Periods. Oxford, 1894.

Columbæ, S. Vita Adamnani. Edited from Dr. Reeves’s text, with an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary. By J. T. Fowler. Oxford, 1894.

Compayré, Gabriel. Abelard and the Origin and Early History of Universities. New York, 1893.

Copinger, W. A. The Law of Copyright in Works of Literature and Art. London, 1870.

Coxe. The College of Merton, Oxford.

—— New College, Oxford.

[xix]

Crévier, J. B. L. Histoire de l’Université de Paris. 8 vols. Paris, 1761.

Curwen, Henry. A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New. London, 1873.

D’Achéry, Lucas. Vetera Analecta (cum disquisitionibus J. Mabillon). Paris, 1723.

—— Spicilegium, sive Collectio Veterum Scriptorum, etc. 3 vols. Paris, 1823.

D’Aubigné, J. H. Merle. Letter to an English Clergyman, Printed in the Record (newspaper) Dec. 12, 1844, in Reply to Strictures of Maitland.

—— History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century. 5 vols. London, 1866.

De la Caille. Histoire de l’Imprimerie. Paris, 1689.

Delalain, Paul. Étude sur la Librairie Parisienne du XIIIe au XVe Siècle. Paris, 1891.

Delalande, E. Étude sur la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique. Paris, 1879.

Delisle, L. Cartulaire de Normandie (Mémoire des Antiquaires de Normandie). Rouen, 1852.

—— Recherches sur l’Ancienne Bibliothèque de Corbie (Mémoire de l’Institut). 4 vols. Paris, 1854.

Delprat, G. H. M. Verhandlung over de Broederschop van G. Groote. Amsterdam, 1853.

—— Die Brüderschaft des gemeinsames Lebens. Leipzig, 1840.

Denifle et Chatelain. Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis. Vols. I, II, III. Paris, 1889, 1891.

Denifle, Père. Die Entstehung der Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400. Vol. I. Berlin, 1885.

Denk, V. M. Otto. Geschichte des Gallo, Frankischen Unterrichts und Bildungswesens von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf Karl den Grossen. Mayence, 1892.

De Rancé. Traité de la Saincteté et des Devoirs de la Vie Monastique. Paris, 1682.

Dibdin, T. F. Typographical Antiquities; or, The History of Printing in Great Britain. 4 vols. London, 1810-1819.

—— Bibliograph. Antiquas, and A Picturesque Tour in France and Germany. 3 vols. London, 1829.

—— The Library Companion; or, The Young Man’s Guide and the Old Man’s Comfort in the Choice of a Library. 2d edition. London, 1825.

Didot, Ambr. Firmin. Histoire de la Typographie. Paris, 1882.

—— Alde Manuce et l’Hellenisme à Venise. Paris, 1875.

[xx]

Digby, Sir Kenelm H. Mores Catholici; or, Ages of Faith. 3 vols. London, 1848.

Drummond, Robert B. Erasmus: His Life and Character. 2 vols. London, 1873.

Du Breuil, Jacq. Le Théâtre des Antiquités de Paris. 6 vols., 4to. Paris, 1612.

Dugdale, Sir Wm. Monasticum Anglicanum. 8 vols. London, 1849.

Dümmler, E. Anselm der Peripatetiker. Berlin, 1880.

—— St. Gall. Denkmäler in den Mittheilungen d. Züricher Antiq. Gesch. 12 vols.

Dümmler, F. Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte. 6 vols.

Durer, A. Geschichte seines Lebens, M. Thausing. Nuremberg, 1828.

Ebert, H. Zur Handschriftenkunde. Leipzig, 1825.

Ekkehardus. Jun. de Cassib. Mon. St. Galli ap. Gold. Scr. Rer. Alem. 2 vols. St. Gall.

Ellis, George (Editor). Specimens of Early English Poetry. 3 vols. London, 1790.

Elzevier, Les. Histoire et Annales Typographiques. Alphonse Willems. Brussels, 1880.

Engelhardt. Herrad von Landsberg und ihr Werk. Stuttgart, 1818.

Erasmus. Opera. London, 1703.

Estienne, Henri. La Foire de Frankfort, Traduit en Français, avec le Texte Latin. Paris, 1875.

Evelyn, John. Memoirs. Edited by Bray. 4 vols. London, 1879.

Fosbroke, J. D. British Monachism; Manners and Customs of Monks and Nuns. London, 1843.

Fournier, Marcel. Les Statuts et Priviléges des Universités Françaises. Paris, 1891.

Franklin, Alfred. La Sorbonne, ses Origines, sa Bibliothèque, etc. 2d edition. Paris, 1875.

—— Les Anciennes Bibliothèques de Paris. Paris, 1867.

Friedrich, Th. P. Kirchen-Geschichte Deutschlands. 2 vols. Halle, 1793.

Frommann (Editor.) Aufsätze des Buchhandels im 16ten Jahrhundert. Jena, 1876.

Froude, J. A. Life and Letters of Erasmus. American edition. New York, 1894.

Géraud, H. Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel. Paris, 1837.

Gerson, Johann. Christliche Kindererziehung (in Schultze’s Berühmte Lehrer des Mittelalten). Gütersloh, 1880.

—— De Laude Scriptorum (Opera). 2 vols. Paris, 1706.

[xxi]

Geschichte der Offentl. Bibliothek zu Bamberg. Nuremberg, 1832.

Geschichte der Präger Univers. Bibliothek. 8 vols. Prague, 1851.

Gesta Abb. Fontanell. (in Monumenta Germania Historica).

Giesebrecht, W. De Litterarum Studiis apud Italos primis Medii Ævi Sæculis. Berlin, 1845.

Goldsmidt, Edmund. The Aldine Press at Venice. Privately Printed. Edinburgh, 1877.

Görres, Joseph von. Histor. Polit. Blätter. 6 vols. Munich, 1859.

Gottlieb, Theodor. Über Mittelalterliche Bibliotheken. Leipzig, 1890.

Götze, Ludwig. Geschichte der Buchdrücker-Kunst in Magdeburg. Magdeburg, 1879.

Grammatici Latini. Edited by Keil, H. 8 vols. Leipzig, 1855-1880. (For Cassiodorus.)

Gregory I. (the Great). Opera. (In Library of the Fathers.) 4 vols. Oxford, 1854.

Grein. Bibliothek der Angel-Sächsischen Poesie. Edited by Wülker. Cassel, 1883.

Greswell, E. A View of the Early Parisian Greek Press, Including the Lives of the Stephani, and Notices of Other Contemporary Greek Printers in Paris. 2 vols. Oxford, 1833.

Greswell, Wm. P. Annals of Parisian Typography. Notices and Illustrations of the Most Remarkable Productions of the Gothic Press in Paris. London, 1818.

Grimm, Jacob. Kleine Schriften. 5 vols. Berlin, 1878-1880.

Guérard. Cartulaire de l’Église de Nôtre-Dame de Paris. Paris.

—— Cartulaire de St. Père-de Chartres.

Guignes, de, G. La Typographie Orientale et Grecque de l’Imprimerie Royale. Paris, 1787.

Hagen, G. Anecdota Helvet. Leipzig, 1810.

—— Litterär. Grundriss zur Geschichte der Deutschen Poesie. Berlin, 1812.

Hallam, Hy. Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. 4 vols. New York, 1886.

Hardy, Sir Thos. Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland. Rolls Series. 3 vols. London, 1862, 1871.

Hartshorne, C. H. The Book Rarities of the University of Cambridge. London, 1829.

Hase, Oscar. Die Koberger, Eine Darstellung des Buchhändlerischen geschäftsbetriebes in der Zeit des überganges vom Mittelalter zür Neuzeit. Leipzig, 1885.

[xxii]

Herzog, J. J. Das Leben Johann Oekolampads. Basel, 1843.

Histoire Littéraire de la France, par des Religieux Bénédictins de la Congrégation de St. Maur. 12 vols. Paris, 1733-1763.

—— Continuation. 7 vols. Paris, 1814, 1838.

Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders. 4 vols. Oxford, 1880-85.

—— The Letters of Cassiodorus. Translated, with an Introduction. London, 1886.

Hoffmann, P. F. L. Altdeutsche Handschriften. Leipzig, 1862.

Hroswitha of Gandersheim. Théâtre de. 3 vols. Paris, 1857.

Huber, V. A. The English Universities. London, 1840.

Humphreys, H. Noel. History of the Art of Printing. London, 1868.

Hütten, Ulrich von. Leben, von Strauss. Bonn, 1878.

Jusserand, J. J. The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare. London and New York, 1890.

—— English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages. 4th edition. London and New York, 1892.

—— A Literary History of the English People. 3 vols. London, Paris, and New York, 1895-1896.

Kapp, F. Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels bis in das 17te Jahrhundert. Leipzig, 1886.

Keller, A. von. Altdeutsche Handschriften. Leipzig, 1872.

Kirchhoff, Albrecht. Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels im 17ten Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1849.

—— Die Handschriftenhändler des Mittelalters. 2d edition. Leipzig, 1853.

Klostermann, R. Das Geistige Eigenthum an Schriften, Kunstwerken und Erfindungen. Berlin, 1871.

Knight, Charles. The Old Printer and the Modern Press. London, 1854.

Kohler, I. Das Autorrecht. Jena, 1880.

Köpke, F. C. Otton. Studien. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1829.

Kotzebue, August V. Denkschrift über den Büchernachdruck. Leipzig, 1814.

Laboulaye, Édouard. Études sur la Propriété Littéraire en France et en Angleterre. Paris, 1858.

Lacroix, Paul. Science and Literature in the Middle Ages. London, 1886.

Lalanne, Ludovic. Curiosités Bibliographiques. 2d edition. Paris, 1852.

Laurie, S. S. The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities, with a Survey of Mediæval Education. New York, 1887.

[xxiii]

Leuter. Hist. Wessofont. 2 vols. Bamberg, 1837.

Linde, A. van der. Gutenberg, Geschichte u. Erdichtung nach der Quellen ausgewiesen. Stuttgart, 1878.

Lorck, C. B. Hand-buch der Geschichte der Buchdrücker-Kunst. Leipzig, 1882.

Louisy, M. P. Le Livre, et les Arts qui s’y rattachent, depuis les origines jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe Siècle. Paris, 1886.

Luden, H. Vom freien Geistes-Verkehr. Leipzig, 1814.

Luther, Life. By Julius Köstlin. Translated from the German. New York, 1893.

Lyon-Caen, Ch., and Delalain, Paul. Lois Françaises et Étrangères sur la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique. 2 vols. Paris, 1889.

Mabillon, Jean. Réflexions sur la Réponse de M. l’Abbé de la Trappe. 2 vols. Paris, 1689.

—— Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti. 9 vols. Paris, 1668-1673.

—— Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti. 6 vols. Paris, 1703, 1759.

—— De Re Diplomatica. 6 vols. Paris, 1681.

—— Iter Burgundicum. Paris, 1684.

—— Iter Germanicum. Paris, 1685.

—— Iter Italicum. Paris, 1687-1689.

—— Traité des Études Monastiques. 2 vols. Paris, 1753.

—— Vetera Analecta. (See D’Achéry.)

Madan, Falconer. The Early Oxford Press. A Bibliography of Printing and Publishing at Oxford, 1468-1640. Oxford, 1895.

Madden, J. P. A. Lettres d’un Bibliographe. 5 vols. Paris, 1878.

Maitland, S. R. The Dark Ages, a Series of Essays intended to illustrate the state of religion and literature in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. London, 1845.

Maittaire, Michel. Annales Typographici ab Artis Inventæ Origine ad Annum 1557. 9 vols. Paris, 1719-1741.

—— Historia Typographorum Aliquot Parisiensium Vitas et Libros Complectens. 2 vols. London, 1717.

Marsham. Προπύλαιον (in Monast. Anglican).

Martene, Edmond. De Antiquis Ecclesiæ Ritibus. 4 vols. Antwerp, 1736-1738.

—— De Antiquis Monachorum Ritibus. 2 vols. London, 1690.

—— Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum. 5 vols. Paris, 1717.

—— Voyage Littéraire de Deux Bénédictins de la Congrégation de St. Maur. 1st and 2d Series. Paris, 1717, 1724.

[xxiv]

Massmann. Die Goth. Urkunden von Neapel und Arezzo. Vienna, 1838.

Mathesius. Memoirs of the Life and Death of Martin Luther. 1566.

Malden. On the Origin of the Universities. London, 1835.

Meiners. Geschichte der Entstehung u. Entwickelung der hohen Schulen. Göttingen, 1802, 1805.

Merlet. Catalogue des Livres de l’Abbaye de St. Père-de-Chartres au XIe Siècle.

Michaud, Abbé. Guillaume de Champeaux et les Écoles de Paris au XIIe Siècle. Paris, 1867.

Milner, Joseph. History of the Church of Christ. London, 1875.

Milton, John. Areopagitica. A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Edited by T. H. White. London, 1819.

Mittarelli, J. B. Annales Camaldulenses Ordinis S. Benedicti. 9 vols. Venice, 1755-1773.

Mone, Fr. J. Im Anzeige der deutschen Vorzeit. 6 vols. Carlsruhe, 1846.

—— Zeitschrift für Gesch. des Oberrheins.

Montalembert, The Count de. The Monks of the West from St. Benedict to St. Bernard. 8 vols. Edinburgh, 1861-1879.

Monumenta Germaniæ Historica. Edited by Pertz. 6 vols. Hanover, 1826-1841.

Monumenta Germaniæ Historica. Edited by Wilhelm Meyer. 10 vols. Leipzig, 1888-1894.

Morier, Sir James. A Journey through Persia, etc. 2 vols. London, 1812.

Mosheim, J. L. Institutes of Ecclesiastical History. Trans. by Murdock and Soames. Edited by Stubbs. London, 1863.

Mucciolo, J. M. Catalogus Codd. MSS. Malatest. Cæsan. Bibliotheca. Cæsanæ, 1780.

Mullinger, J. Bass. The Schools of Charles the Great and the Restoration of Education in the Ninth Century. London, 1877.

Muratori. Antiquitates Italicæ Medii Ævi. 6 vols. Mediolani. 1738-1742.

Naudé, G. Additions à l’Histoire de Lowys XI. par Comines. Édit. par Fresnoy. 4 vols. Paris.

Newman, Cardinal. Historical Sketches. 3 vols. London, 1889.

O’Curry, Eugene. Lectures on the MSS. Materials of the Ancient History of Ireland. Dublin, 1874.

Oesterly, H. Wegweiser durch die Literatur der Urkunden-Sammlungen. 2 vols. Berlin, 1885-1886.

Otley, W. Y. An Enquiry Concerning the Invention of Printing. London, 1837.

[xxv]

Ozanam. La Civilisation Chrétienne chez les Francs. 2 vols. Paris, 1866.

Pattison, Mark. Isaac Casaubon, 1559-1614. Oxford, 1892.

Paulsen, Friedrich. The German Universities, their Character and Historical Development. Trans. by E. D. Perry. New York and London, 1895.

Peignot, G. Manual du Bibliophile. Paris, 1805.

Perrens, F. T. The History of Florence from the Domination of the Medici to the Fall of the Republic, 1434-1531. Trans. by H. Lynch. 2 vols. London, 1892.

Pertz, Geo. Han. (Editor). Archiv d. Gesellschaft für ältere Deutsche Geschichts-Kunde. Berlin, 1846.

Petit-Radel. Recherches sur les Bibliothèques Anciennes. Paris, 1819.

Pez, Bernardus. Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus. 5 vols. Leipzig, 1721-1729.

—— Same, vol. iv. Codex Diplomatico-historico-epistolaris.

—— Thes. Diss. Isagog. (See vol. ii. of the Thesaurus Anecdotorum.)

Plantin, Christophe, Imprimeur Anversois. By Max Rooses. Antwerp, 1883.

Plater, Thom. Selbst-Biographie. Basel, 1836.

Poggii, Florentini. Opera. Florence, 1513.

Priviléges de l’Université de Poitiers. Poitiers, 1726.

Pütter, J. S. Beyträge zum Teutschen Staats u. Fürsten-Rechte. Göttingen, 1777.

Rahn, H. Geschichte der Bildenden Künste in der Schweiz. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1832.

Rashdall, Hastings. The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 2 vols. Oxford, 1895.

Recueil des Priviléges de l’Université de Paris. Paris, 1822.

Reifferscheid, A. Westfälische Volkslieder in Wort u. Weise. Heilbronn, 1879.

Renouard, A. C. Traité des Droits d’Auteurs dans la Littérature, les Sciences et les Beaux-Arts. 2 vols. Paris, 1838.

Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. Neue Folge. Band 49. Frankfort, 1894.

Robertson, Alex. Fra Paolo Sarpi. London, 1895.

Robertson, Wm. View of Europe during the Middle Ages. (Introduction to his History of Charles V.)

—— History of Charles V. Edited by W. H. Prescott, Boston, 1880.

[xxvi]

Rockinger, L. von. Zum Bairischen Schriftswesen. 2 vols. Vienna, 1892.

—— Die Untersuchung der Handschriften des Schwabenspiegels. Vienna, 1890.

Romberg, Édouard. Études sur la Propriété Artistique et Littéraire. Brussels, 1892.

Rooses, Max. Christophe Plantin, Imprimeur Anversois. Antwerp, 1883.

Ruinart. Iter Litterarium in Alsatiam et Lotharingiam. Paris, 1697.

Savigny, F. C. Geschichte des Römischen Rechtes im Mittelalter. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1877.

Schmidt, C. Geschichte der Ältesten Bibliothek in Strasburg. Strasburg, 1881.

—— Geschichte der ersten Buchdrücker zur Strassburg. Strasburg, 1882.

Schuck, J. Aldus Manutius u. Seine Zeitgenossen in Italien u. Deutschland. Berlin, 1862.

Schürmann, Aug. Die Rechtsverhältnisse der Autoren und Verleger. Halle, 1889.

Schwabenspiegel. Munich, 1874.

Scott, Mary A. Elizabethan Translations from the Italian. Baltimore, 1895.

Scrutton, T. E. The Laws of Copyright. London, 1883.

Social England. A Record of the Progress of the People. Edited by H. D. Traill. 6 vols. London and New York, 1894-1896.

Stenzel, Th. Geschichte der Frankischen Kaiser. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1885.

Sweet, Henry. King Alfred’s Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. Early English Text Society. London, 1871-1872.

Symonds, J. A. The Renaissance in Italy. 7 vols. London, 1875-1886.

Thomassy. Les Écrits Politiques de Christine de Pisan. Paris, 1838.

Thurot. De l’Organisation de l’Enseignement dans l’Université de Paris au Moyen Age. Paris, 1850.

Timperley, C. H. A Dictionary of Printers and Printing, with the Progress of Literature Ancient and Modern. London, 1839.

Tiraboschi, Girolamo. Storia della Litteratura Italiana. 16 vols. Milan, 1822-1826.

Trithemius, J. Annalium Hirsangensium. 2 vols. St. Gall, 1690.

Ulphilas. Vet. et Nov, Test. Fragmenta. Edited by Gabelentz and Lobe. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1843-1860.

Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins. 6 vols. Cologne, 1852-1856.

[xxvii]

Valéry. Correspondance de Mabillon et de Montfaucon. Paris.

Valla, Lorenzo. Opera. Basel, 1543.

Vigfusson and Powell (Editors). Corpus Poeticum Boreale. The Poetry of the old Northern Tongue from the Earliest to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford, 1883.

Viriville, Vallet de. Histoire de l’Instruction Publique en Europe. Paris, 1849.

Vitalis, Ordericus. Coenobii Uticensis Monachi, Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ. 2 vols. Paris, 1840.

Vitet. De la Presse au Seizième Siècle.

Voyage Littéraire de deux Religieux Bénédictins (E. Martene et D. Durand). 2 vols. Paris, 1717-1724.

Warton, Thomas. History of English Poetry (1774-1781). Edited by Hazlitt. 4 vols. 1871.

Wattenbach, W. Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter. Leipzig, 1875.

Weidmann, Fr. Geschichte der Stifts-Bibliothek. Vienna, 1841.

—— Geschichte der Bibliothek von St. Gallen. St. Gall, 1842.

West, A. F. Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools. New York, 1892.

Westwood, J. O. Facsimiles of Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS. London, 1868.

Wetter, J. Geschichte der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst. Mayence, 1836.

Wilder, Daniel W. The Life of Shakespeare, Compiled from the Best Sources, without Comment. Boston, 1893.

Wilken, R. F. Geschichte der Heidelberg. Bücher-Sammlungen. Heidelberg, 1817.

Willems, Alphonse. Les Elzevier, Histoire et Annales Typographiques. Brussels, 1880.

Winter, V. A. Die Cistercianer. Munich, 1815.

Wirth, Herm. Archives für die Geschichte der Stadt Heidelberg. 4 vols. Heidelberg.

Wood, A. Athenæ, etc. (See Athenæ.)

Wright, Thomas. A Selection of Latin Stories from MSS. of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Percy Society. London, 1842.

Zasius. Epistolæ ad viros ætatis suæ doctissimos. Ulm, 1774.

Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum.

Zeitschrift für Geschichte des Oberrheins.

Ziegelbauer, H. Observationes Literariæ S. Benedicti. 4 vols. Leipzig, 1784.

[1]

PART I.

BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT.

In the year 410, Rome was captured and sacked by Alaric the Visigoth. At this time, S. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, was labouring at his Commentaries on Ezekiel, while it was the downfall of the imperial city which incited S. Augustine to begin the composition of his greatest work, The City of God: “the greatest city of the world has fallen in ruin, but the City of God abideth forever.” The treatise required for its completion twenty-two books. “The influence of France and of the printing-press,” remarks Hodgkin, “have combined to make impossible the production of another De Civitate Dei. The multiplicity of authors compels the controversialist who would now obtain a hearing, to speak promptly and concisely. The examples of Pascal and of Voltaire teach him that he must speak with point and vivacity.”[1] S. Augustine was probably the most voluminous writer of the earlier Christian centuries. He was the author of no less than 232 books, in addition to many tractates or homilies and innumerable epistles.[2] His literary work was continued [4]even during the siege of Hippo by the Vandals, and he died in Hippo (in 431), in his seventy-sixth year, while the siege was still in progress.

In regard to the lack of historical records of the time, I will again quote Hodgkin, who, in his monumental work on Italy and Her Invaders, has himself done so much to make good the deficiency: “It is perhaps not surprising that in Italy itself there should have been during the fifth century an utter absence of the instinct which leads men to record for the benefit of posterity events which are going on around them. When history was making itself at such breathless speed and in such terrible fashion, the leisure, the inclination, the presence of mind necessary for writing history might well be wanting. He who would under happier auspices have filled up the interval between the bath and the tennis court by reclining on the couch in the winter portico of his villa and there languidly dictating to his slave the true story of the abdication of Avitus, or the death of Anthemius, was himself now a slave keeping sheep in the wilderness under a Numidian sun or shrinking under the blows of one of the rough soldiers of Gaiseric.”

Hodgkin finds it more difficult to understand “why the learned and leisurely provincial of Greece, whose country for nearly a century and a half (395-539) escaped the horrors of hostile invasion, and who had to inspire them the grandest literary traditions in the world, should have left unwritten the story of the downfall of Rome.”

“The fact seems to be,” he goes on to say, “that at this time all that was left of literary instinct and historiographic power in the world had concentrated itself on theological (we cannot call it religious) controversy, and what tons of worthless material the ecclesiastical historians and controversialists of the time have left us!... Blind, most of them, to the meaning of the mighty drama which was being enacted on the stage of the world ...[5] they have left us scarcely a hint as to the inner history of the vast revolution which settled the Teuton in the lands of the Latin.... One man alone gives us that detailed information concerning the thoughts, characters, persons of the actors in the great drama which can make the dry bones of the chronologer live. This is Caius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, man of letters, imperial functionary, country gentleman, and bishop, who, notwithstanding much manifest weakness of character and a sort of epigrammatic dulness of style, is still the most interesting literary figure of the fifth century.”[3]

Sidonius was born at Lyons, A.D. 430. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all served as Prætorian Prefects in Gaul, in which province his own long life was passed. In 472, Sidonius became Bishop of Arverni, and from that time, as he rather naïvely tells us, he gave up (as unbecoming ecclesiastical responsibilities) the writing of compositions “based on pagan models.” In 475, the year before the last of the western emperors, Augustulus, was driven from Rome by Odovacar,[4] the Herulian, the Visigoth king, Euric, became master of Auvergne. Sidonius was at first banished, but in 479 was restored to his diocese, and continued his work there as bishop and as writer until his death, ten years later. At the time of the death of Sidonius, Cassiodorus, who was, during the succeeding eighty years, to have part in so much of the eventful history of Italy, was ten years old. There are some points of similarity in the careers of the two men. Both were of noble family and both began their active work as officials, one of the Empire, the other of the Gothic kingdom of Italy, while both also became ecclesiastics. Each saw his country taken possession of by a foreign invader, and for the purpose of serving his countrymen, (with which purpose may very possibly have [6]been combined some motives of personal ambition,) each was able and willing to make himself useful to the new ruler and thus to retain official position and influence; and finally, both had literary facility and ambition, and, holding in regard the works of the great classic writers, endeavoured to model upon these works the style of their own voluminous compositions. The political work of Cassiodorus was of course, however, much the more noteworthy and important, as Sidonius could hardly claim to be considered a statesman.

In their work as authors, the compositions of Sidonius are, as I judge from the description, to be ranked higher in literary quality than those of the later writer, and to have been more successful also in following the style of classic models. The style of Cassiodorus is described as both verbose and grandiloquent. In his ecclesiastical, or rather his monastic work, taken up after half a century of active political life, it was the fortune of Cassiodorus, as will be described later, to exercise an influence which continued for centuries, and which was possibly more far-reaching than was exerted by the career of any abbot or bishop in the later history of the Church.

The careers of both Sidonius and Cassiodorus have a special interest because the two men held rather an exceptional position between the life of the old empire which they survived and that of the new Europe of the Middle Ages, the beginning of which they lived to see.

Of the writings of Sidonius, Hodgkin speaks as follows: “A careful perusal of the three volumes of the Letters and Poems of Sidonius (written between the years 455 and 490) reveals to us the fact that in Gaul the air still teems with intellectual life, that authors were still writing, amanuenses transcribing, friends complimenting or criticising, and all the cares and pleasures of literature filling the minds of large classes of men just as when no empires were sinking and no strange nationalities suddenly arising[7] around them.... A long list of forgotten philosophers did exist in that age, and their works, produced in lavish abundance, seem to have had no lack of eager students.”

As an example of the literary interests of a country gentleman in Gaul, Hodgkin quotes a letter of Sidonius, written about 469: “Here too [i. e. in a country house in Gaul] were books in plenty; you might fancy you were looking at the breast-high book-shelves (plantei) of the grammarians, or the wedge-shaped cases (cunei) of the Athenæum, or the well-filled cupboards (armaria) of the booksellers. I observed, however, that if one found a manuscript beside the chair of one of the ladies of the house, it was sure to be on a religious subject, while those which lay by the seats of the fathers of the family were full of the loftiest strains of Latin eloquence. In making this distinction, I do not forget that there are some writings of equal literary excellence in both branches, that Augustine may be paired off against Varro, and Prudentius against Horace. Among these books, the works of Origen, the Adamantine, were frequently perused by readers holding our faith. I cannot understand why some of our arch-divines should stigmatise him as a dangerous and heterodox author.”[5]

In summing up the work of Sidonius, Hodgkin points out the noteworthy opportunities for making a literary reputation which were missed by him. “He might have been the Herodotus of mediæval Europe. He could have given authentic pictures of the laws and customs of the Goths, Franks, and Burgundians ... a full portraiture of the great apostle of the Germanic races, Ulfilas, and the secret causes of his and their devotion to the Arian form of Christianity; and he could have recorded the Gothic equivalents of the mythological tales in the Scandinavian Edda and the story of the old Runes and [8]their relation to the Mœso-Gothic alphabet. All these details and a hundred more, full of interest to science, to art, to literature, Sidonius might have preserved for us had his mind been as open as was that of Herodotus to the manifold impressions made by picturesque and strange nationalities.”

It was doubtless fortunate for the literary reputation of Sidonius that his father-in-law, Avitus, came to be emperor. The reign of Avitus was short, but he had time to give to his brilliant son-in-law a position as Court poet or poet-laureate, while it was probably due to the imperial influence that the Senate decreed the erection (during the lifetime of the poet) of the brass statue of Sidonius, which was placed between the two libraries of Trajan. These libraries, containing the one Greek and the other Latin authors, stood between the column of Trajan and the Basilica Ulpia. Sidonius describes his statue as follows:

(Since Nerva Trajanus decreed the erection of a permanent statue, which is inscribed with the records of my honours, and is placed between the authors of the two libraries.

The fact that the entrance to the Ulpian Library is aglow with the bronze of my statue, can add nothing to the laurels of other poets.)

[9]

In the opinion of Hodgkin, the books in these two collections in the Bibliotheca Ulpia may very well have been of more importance to later generations than those of the library of Alexandria. The books from Trajan’s libraries were, according to Vopiscus, transported in all or in part to the Baths of Diocletian. Hodgkin understands that, between 300 and 450, they were restored to their original home.[7]

In the year 537 A.D., the rule of the Goths in Italy, which had been established by Theodoric in 493, was practically brought to a close by the victories of Belisarius, the general of the Eastern Empire, and, thirty years later, the destruction of the Gothic State was completed by the invasion of the Lombards. With the Lombards in possession of Northern Italy, and the Vandals, in a series of campaigns against the armies from Constantinople, overrunning the southern portions of the peninsula, the social organisation of the country must have been almost destroyed, and the civilisation which had survived from the old Empire, while never entirely disappearing, was doubtless in large part submerged. A certain continuity of Roman rule and of Roman intellectual influence was, however, preserved through the growing power of the Church, which was already claiming the inheritance of the Empire, and which, as early as 590, under the lead of Pope Gregory the Great, succeeded in making good its claims to ecclesiastical supremacy throughout the larger part of Europe. In its control of the consciences of rulers, the Church frequently, in fact, secured a domination that was by no means limited to things spiritual.

The history of books in manuscript and of the production and distribution of literature in Europe from the beginning of the work of S. Benedict to the time when the printing-press of Gutenberg revolutionised the methods of book-making, a period covering about nine [10]centuries, may be divided into three stages. During the first, the responsibility for the preservation of the old-time literature and for keeping alive some continuity of intellectual life, rested solely with the monasteries, and the work of multiplying and of distributing such books as had survived was carried on by the monks, and by them only. During the second stage, the older universities, the organisation of which had gradually been developed from schools (themselves chiefly of monastic origin), became centres of intellectual activity and shared with the monasteries the work of producing books. The books emanating from the university scribes were, however, for the most part restricted to a few special classes, classes which had, as a rule, not been produced in the monasteries, and, as will be noted in a later chapter, the university booksellers (stationarii or librarii) were in the earlier periods not permitted to engage in any general distribution of books. With the third stage of manuscript literature, book-producing and bookselling machinery came into existence in the towns, and the knowledge of reading being no longer confined to the cleric or the magister, books were prepared for the use of the larger circles of the community, and to meet the requirements of such circles were, to an extent increasing with each generation, written in the tongue of the people.

The first period begins with the foundation by S. Benedict, in 529, of the monastery of Monte Cassino, and by Cassiodorus, in 531, of that of Vivaria or Viviers, and continues until the last decade of the twelfth century, when we find the earliest record of an organised book-business in the universities of Bologna and Paris. The beginning of literary work in the universities, to which I refer as indicating a second stage, did not, however, bring to an end, and, in fact, for a time hardly lessened, the production of books in the monasteries.

The third stage of book-production in Europe may be[11] said to begin with the first years of the fifteenth century, when the manuscript trade of Venice and Florence became important, when the book-men or publishers of Paris, outside of the university, had developed a business in the collecting, manifolding, and selling of manuscripts, and when manuscripts first find place in the schedules of the goods sold at the fairs of Frankfort and Nordlingen. The costliness of the skilled labour required for the production of manuscripts, and the many obstacles and difficulties in the way of their distribution, caused the development of the book-trade to proceed but slowly. It was the case, nevertheless, and particularly in Germany, that a very considerable demand for literature of certain classes had been developed among the people before the close of the manuscript period, a demand which was being met with texts produced in constantly increasing quantities and at steadily lessening cost. When the printing-press arrived it found, therefore, already in existence a wide-spread literary interest and a popular demand for books, a demand which, with the immediate cheapening of books, was, of course, enormously increased. The production of books in manuscript came to a close, not with the invention of the printing-press in 1450, but with the time when printing had become generally introduced, about twenty-five years later.

It was in the monasteries that were preserved such fragments of the classic literature as had escaped the general devastation of Italy; and it was to the labours of the monks of the West, and particularly to the labours of the monks of S. Benedict, that was due the preservation for the Middle Ages and for succeeding generations of the remembrance and the influence of the literature of classic times. For a period of more than six centuries, the safety of the literary heritage of Europe, one may say of the world, depended upon the scribes of a few dozen scattered monasteries.

[12]

The Order of S. Benedict was instituted in 529, and the monastery of Monte Cassino, near Naples, founded by him in the same year, exercised for centuries an influence of distinctive importance upon the literary interests of the Church, of Italy, and of the world. This monastery (which still exists) is not far from Subiaco, the spot chosen by S. Benedict for his first retreat. It was in the monastery of Subiaco (founded many years afterwards) that was done, nearly a thousand years later, the first printing in Italy. The Rule of S. Benedict, comprising the regulations for the government of his Order, contained a specific instruction that a certain number of hours in each day were to be devoted to labour in the scriptorium. The monks who were not yet competent to work as scribes were to be instructed by the others. Scribe work was to be accepted in place of an equal number of hours given to manual labour out-of-doors, while the skilled scribes, whose work was of special importance as instructors or in the scriptorium, were to be freed from a certain portion of their devotional exercises or observances. The monasteries of the Benedictines were for centuries more numerous, more wealthy, and more influential than those of any other Order, and this provision of a Rule which directed the actions, controlled the daily lives, and inspired the purposes of thousands of earnest workers among the monks of successive generations, must have exercised a most noteworthy influence on the history of literary production in Europe. It is not too much to say that it was S. Benedict who provided the “copy” which a thousand years later was to supply the presses of Gutenberg, Aldus, Froben, and Stephanus.

I have not been able to find in the narratives of the life of S. Benedict any record showing the origin of his interest in literature, an interest which was certainly exceptional for an ecclesiastic of the sixth century. It seems very probable, however, that Benedict’s association[13] with Cassiodorus had not a little to do with the literary impetus given to the work of the Benedictines. Cassiodorus, who, as Chancellor of King Theodoric, had taken an active part in the government of the Gothic kingdom, passed the last thirty years of his life first as a monk and later as abbot in the monastery of Vivaria, or Viviers, in Calabria, which he had himself founded in 531. Cassiodorus is generally classed by the Church chronicles as a Benedictine, and his monastery is referred to by Montalembert as the second of the Benedictine foundations. Hodgkin points out, however, that the Rule adopted by the monks of Viviers, or prescribed for them by its founder, was not that of S. Benedict, but was drawn from the writings of Cassian, the founder of western monachism, who had died a century before.[8] The two Rules were, however, fully in accord with each other in spirit, while for the idea of using the convent as a place of literary toil and theological training, Benedict was indebted to Cassiodorus. “At a very early date in the history of their Order,” says Hodgkin, “the Benedictines, influenced probably by the example of the monastery of Vivaria, commenced that long series of services to the cause of literature which they have never wholly intermitted. Instead of accepting the ... formula from which some scholars have contended that Cassiodorus was a Benedictine, we should perhaps be rather justified in maintaining that Benedict, or at least his immediate followers, were Cassiodorians.”[9]

It was the fortune of Cassiodorus to serve as a connecting link between the world of classic Rome and that of the Middle Ages. He saw the direction and control of the community pass from the monarchs and the leaders of armies to the Church and to the monasteries, [14]and he was himself an active agent in helping to bring about such transfer. Born in 479, only three years after the overthrow of the last of the Emperors of the West, he grew up under the rule of Odovacar, the Herulian. While still a youth, he had seen the Herulian kingdom destroyed by Theodoric, and he had lived to mourn over the ruins of the realm founded by the Goth, which he had himself helped to govern. He saw his beloved Italy taken possession of by the armies of Narses and Belisarius from the east, and a little later overrun by the undisciplined hordes of the Lombards from the north. The first great schism between the Eastern and the Western Churches began during his boyhood and terminated before, as Abbot of Vivaria, it became necessary for him to take a decided part on the one side or the other. A Greek by ancestry, a Roman by training, the experience of Cassiodorus included work and achievements as statesman, orator, scholar, author, and ecclesiastic. He had witnessed the extinction of the Roman Senate, of which both his father and himself had been members; the practical abolition of the Consulate, an honour to which he had also attained; and the close of the schools of philosophy in Athens, with the doctrines of which he, almost alone in his generation of Italians, was familiar. He had done much to maintain in the Court and throughout the kingdom of Theodoric, such standard of scholarly interests and of literary appreciation as was practicable with the resources available; and, in like manner, he brought with him to his monastery a scholarly enthusiasm for classic literature, of which literature he may not unnaturally have felt himself to be almost the sole surviving representative. It is difficult to over-estimate the extent of the service rendered by Cassiodorus to literature and to later generations in initiating the training of monks as scribes, and in putting into their hands for their first work in the scriptorium the masterpieces of[15] classic literature. He belonged both to the world of ancient Rome, which he had outlived, and to that of the Middle Ages, the thought and work of which he helped to shape. With the close of the official career of Cassiodorus as Secretary of State for the Gothic kingdom of Italy, the history of ancient Europe may, for the purpose of my narrative, be considered to end. With the consecration of Cassiodorus, as Abbot of the monastery of Vivaria, (which took place about 550, when he was seventy years of age), and the instituting by him of the first European scriptorium, I may begin the record of the production of books during the Middle Ages.

I HAVE used for the heading of the chapter the term “the making of books” rather than “literary work,” because the service rendered by the earlier monastic scribes (a service of essential importance for the intellectual life of the world) consisted chiefly, as has been indicated, not in the production of original literature, but in the reproduction and preservation of the literature that had been inherited from earlier writers,—writers whose works had been accepted as classics. While it was the case that in this literary labour it was the Benedictines who for centuries rendered the most important service, the first of the European monasteries in which such labour was carried on as a part of the prescribed routine or rule of the monastic life was that of Vivaria or Viviers, founded by Cassiodorus, which was never formally associated with the Benedictine Order, and which had, in fact, adopted, in place of the Benedictine Rule, a rule founded on the teachings of Cassian, who had died early in the fifth century. The work done, under the instructions of Cassiodorus, by the scribes of Viviers, served as an incentive and an example for Monte Cassino, the monastery founded by S. Benedict, while the scriptorium instituted in Monte Cassino was accepted as a model by the long series of later Benedictine monasteries which during the succeeding seven centuries became centres of literary activity.

After the destruction of the Gothic kingdom of Italy,[17] it was with these monasteries that rested the intellectual future of Europe. Mankind was, for the time at least, to be directed and influenced, not so much by royal chancellors or prætorian guards, as by the monks preaching from their cells and by the monastic scribes distributing the world’s literature from the scriptorium.

Theodoric appointed him Quæstor, an office which made him the mouth-piece of the sovereign. To the [18]Quæstor belonged the duty of conducting the official correspondence of the Court, of receiving ambassadors, and of replying in fitting harangues to their addresses, so that he was at once foreign secretary and Court orator. He also had the responsibility of giving a final revision to all the laws which received the signature of the King, and of seeing that these were properly worded and did not conflict with previous enactments.[11] Theodoric, who had received what little education he possessed from Greek instructors in Constantinople, was said never to have mastered Latin, and he doubtless found the services of his eloquent and scholarly minister very convenient.

It was the contention of Theodoric that his kingdom represented the natural continuation of the Roman Empire, and that he was himself the legitimate successor of the emperors. He took as his official designation not Rex Italiæ, but Gothorum et Romanorum Rex. This contention was fully upheld by the Quæstor, who felt himself to be the representative at once of the official authority of the new kingdom and of the literary prestige of the old Empire, and who did what was in his power to preserve in Ravenna the classical traditions of old Rome and to make the Court the centre of literary influence and activity. Theodoric and his Goths had accepted the creed of the Arians, but the influence of his minister, who was a Christian of the Athanasian or Trinitarian faith, was sufficient to preserve a spirit of toleration throughout the kingdom. It is to Cassiodorus that is due what was probably the first official utterance of toleration that Europe had known, an utterance that in later European history was to be so largely set at nought: Religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credat invitus.[12] [We must not enforce (acceptance of) a creed, since no one can think or can believe against his will.] It is not one of the least of the services of Cassiodorus that [19]he should at this early date, when the bitterness of controversy was active in the Church, have been able to set a standard of wise and Christian toleration. His action had a good effect later in his own monastery and in the monasteries whose work was modelled on that of Viviers. It was only in monastic centres like Viviers and Monte Cassino, where Christian influence and educational work were held to be of more importance than theological issues, that literary activity became possible, and it was only in such monasteries that labour was expended in preserving the writings of “pagan” (that is, of classic) authors.

In 514, Cassiodorus became Consul, a title which, while no longer standing for any authority, was still held to be one of the highest honours, and in 515 he received the title of patrician. In 519, he published, under the title of Chronicon, an abstract of history from the deluge to the year 519. Hodgkin points out that in his record of events of the fifth century, a very large measure of favourable, or rather of partial attention is given to the annals of the Goths. Shortly after the publication of the Chronicon, Cassiodorus began work on his History of the Goths, which was finally completed in twelve books, and the chief purpose of which was to vindicate the claims of the Goths to rank among the historic nations of antiquity, by bringing them into connection with Greece and Rome, and by making the origin of Gothic history Roman. This history of Cassiodorus is known only by tradition, not a single copy of it having been preserved. The system of scribe-work in the monasteries, to which we owe nearly all of the old-world literature that has come down to us, did not prove adequate to preserve the greatest work of its founder. A treatise on the origin of the Goths by a later writer named Jordæus, concerning whom little is known, is avowedly based upon the history of Cassiodorus, and is the principal source of information concerning the character of this history.

[20]

At the time of the death of Theodoric, Cassiodorus was holding the important place of Master of the Offices, a post which combined many of the duties that would to-day be discharged by a Home Secretary, a Secretary of War, and a Postmaster-General. Under the regency of Queen Amalasuentha, Cassiodorus received his final official honour in his appointment as Prætorian Prefect. In the collection of letters published under the title of Variæ, Cassiodorus gives accounts of the work done by him in these various official stations, and these letters present vivid and interesting pictures of the methods of the administration of the kingdom, and also throw light upon many of its relations with foreign powers.

Cassiodorus continued to do service as minister for the successors of Amalasuentha, Athalaric, Theodadad, and Witigis, and retired from official responsibility only a few months before the capture of Ravenna by Belisarius, in 540, brought the Ostrogothic monarchy to an end. At the time of the entry of the Greek army, Cassiodorus, now a veteran of sixty years, was in retirement in his monastery in Bruttii (the modern Calabria). It was doubtless because of the absence of Cassiodorus from the capital, that no mention is made of him in the narrative of the campaign written by Procopius the historian, who, as secretary to Belisarius, entered Rome with the latter after the victories over Witigis.

Cassiodorus must have possessed very exceptional adaptability of character, not to say elasticity of conscience, to be able, during a period extending over nearly half a century, to retain the favour of so many of the successive rulers of Italy and apparently to make his services necessary to each one of them. It is certain, however, that Italy benefited largely by the fact that through the various contests and changes of monarchs, it had been possible to preserve a certain continuity of executive policy and of administrative methods. The further fact that the “perpetual”[21] or at least the continuing minister was at once a Greek and a Roman, and not only a statesman but a scholar, and that he had succeeded in preserving through all the devastations of civil wars and of foreign invasions a great collection of classic books and a persistent (even though restricted) interest in classic literature, exercised an enormous influence upon the culture of Europe for centuries to come. The career of Cassiodorus had, as we have seen, been varied and honourable. It was, however, his exceptional fortune to be able to render the most important and the most distinctive service of his life after his life’s work had apparently been completed.

Shortly after his withdrawal to Bruttii, and when, as said, he was already more than sixty years old, he retired to his monastery, Vivaria, and during the thirty-six years of activity that remained for him, he not only completed a number of important literary productions of his own, but he organised the literary work of the monastery scriptorium, which served as a model for that of Monte Cassino, and, through Monte Cassino, for the long series of Benedictine monasteries that came into existence throughout Europe. It was the hand of Cassiodorus which gave the literary impetus to the Benedictine Order, and it was from his magnificent collection of manuscripts, rescued from the ruins of the libraries of Italy, that was supplied material for the pens of thousands of monastic scribes.

After his retirement to Bruttii, Cassiodorus founded a second monastery, known as Mons Castellius, the work of which was planned for a more austere class of hermits than those who had associated themselves together at Vivaria. Of both monasteries he retained the practical control, and, according to Trithemius (whose opinion is accepted by Montalembert) of Vivaria he became abbot.[13] [22]Hodgkin, while himself citing the extract from Trithemius, thinks it possible that Cassiodorus never formally became abbot, but says that the direction and supervision of the work of the two monasteries rested in any case in his hands.[14]

His treatise on the Nature of the Soul (De Anima) was probably completed just before he began his monastic life, and was itself an evidence of the change in the direction of his thoughts and of his ideals. Cassiodorus had now done with politics. As Hodgkin points out, the dream of his life had been to build up an independent Italian State, strong with the strength of the Goths, and wise with the wisdom of the Romans. It is evident that he also felt himself charged with a special responsibility in preserving for later generations the literature and the learning of the classic world. With the destruction of the Gothic kingdom, that dream had been scattered to the winds. The only institutions which retained a continuity of organisation were those belonging to the Church, and it was through the Church that must be preserved for later generations the thought and the scholarship of antiquity. It was with a full understanding of this change in the nature of his responsibilities, that Cassiodorus decided to consecrate his old age to religious labours and to a work even more important than any of his political achievements: the preservation, by the pens of monastic copyists, of the Christian Scriptures, of the writings of the early Fathers, and of the great works of classical antiquity.

Some years before his retirement from Ravenna, Cassiodorus had endeavoured to induce Pope Agapetus (535-536) to found a school of theology and Christian literature at Rome, modelled on the plan of the schools of Alexandria and Nisibis. The confusion consequent on the invasion of Italy by Belisarius had prevented the fulfilment [23]of this scheme. The aged statesman was now, however, planning to accomplish, by means of his two monasteries, a similar educational work.

Hodgkin summarises the aims of earlier monasticism, (aims which were most fully carried out in the monasteries of the East and of Africa,) as follows: In the earlier days of monasticism, men like the hermits of the Thebaïd had thought of little else but mortifying the flesh by vigils and fastings, and withdrew from all human voices in order to enjoy an ecstatic communion with their Maker. The life in common of monks like those of Nitria and Lerinum had chastened some of the extravagances of these lonely enthusiasts, while still keeping in view their main purpose. S. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, had shown what great results might be obtained for the Church of all ages from the patient literary toil of one religious recluse. And finally, S. Benedict, in that Rule of his, which was for centuries to be the code of monastic Christendom, had sanctified work as one of the most effectual preservatives of the bodily and spiritual health of the ascetic.

“It was the glory of Cassiodorus,” says Hodgkin,[15] “that he first and pre-eminently insisted on the expediency of including intellectual labour in the sphere of monastic duties.... This thought [may we not say this divinely suggested thought?] in the mind of Cassiodorus was one of infinite importance to the human race. Here, on the one hand, were the vast armies of monks, whom both the unsettled state of the times and the religious ideas of the age were driving irresistibly into the cloister; and who, when immured there with only theology to occupy their minds, became, as the great cities of the East knew only too well, preachers of discord and mad fanaticism. Here, on the other hand, were the accumulated stores of two thousand years of literature, sacred and profane, the writings of Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophers, Latin rhetoricians, [24]perishing for want of men with leisure to transcribe them. The luxurious Roman noble with his slave amanuenses multiplying copies of his favourite authors for his own and his friends’ libraries, was an almost extinct existence. With every movement of barbarian troops over Italy, whether those barbarians called themselves the men of Witigis or of Justinian, some towns were being sacked, some precious manuscripts were perishing from the world. Cassiodorus perceived that the boundless, the often wearisome leisure of the convent might be profitably spent in arresting this work of denudation, in preserving for future ages the intellectual treasure which must otherwise inevitably have perished. That this was one of the great services rendered by the monasteries to the human race, the most superficial student has learned, but not all who have learned it know that the monks’ first decided impulse in this direction was derived from Cassiodorus.”

The German biographer of Cassiodorus, Franz, uses similar language:

Das Verdienst, zuerst die Pflege der Wissenschaften in den Bereich der Aufgaben des Klosterlichen Lebens aufgenommen zu haben, kann man mit vollem Rechte für Cassiodorus in Anspruch nehmen.[16]

In the account given by Cassiodorus of the scriptorium of his monastery, he describes, with an enthusiasm which ought to have been contagious, the noble work done there by the antiquarius[17]: “He may fill his mind with the Scriptures while copying the sayings of the Lord; with his fingers he gives life to men and arms against the wiles of the devil. As the antiquarius copies the words of Christ, so many wounds does he inflict upon Satan. What he writes in his cell will be scattered far and wide over distant provinces. Man multiplies the words of Heaven, and, if I may dare so to speak, the three fingers [25]of his right hand are made to express the utterances of the Holy Trinity. The fast travelling reed writes down the holy words and thus avenges the malice of the Wicked One, who caused a reed to be used to smite the head of the Saviour.” The passage here quoted refers only to the work of the copyists of the Christian Scriptures. There are other references, however, in the same work to indicate that the activity of the scriptorium was not confined to these, but was also employed on secular literature.[18]

The devotion and application of the monks produced in the course of years a class of scribes whose work in the transcribing and illuminating of manuscripts far surpassed in perfection and beauty the productions of the copyists of classic Rome. In the monasteries north of the Alps the work of the scribes was, for the earlier centuries, devoted principally to the production of copies of missals and other books of devotion and of portions of the Scriptures. In Italy, however, where classical culture never entirely disappeared, attention continued to be given to the transcription of the Latin texts of which any manuscripts had been preserved, and it was these transcripts of the monks of Cassiodorus and S. Benedict that gave the “copy” for the first editions of Cicero, Virgil, and the other classic writers, produced by the earliest printers of Germany and Italy.

Cassiodorus took pains to emphasise the importance of binding the sacred codices in covers worthy of the beauty of their contents, following the example of the householder in the parable, who provided wedding garments [26]for all who came to the supper of his son. One pattern volume had been prepared containing samples of various sorts of covers, from which the scribe might choose that which pleased him best. The abbot had also provided, to help the nightly toil of the scriptorium, mechanical lamps of some ingenious construction which appears to have made them self-trimming and to have insured a continuously sufficient supply of oil. The labour of the scribes was regulated on bright days by sun-dials, and on cloudy days and during the hours of the night by water-clocks.

In order to set an example of literary diligence to his monks, and to be able to sympathise with the difficulties of scribe work, Cassiodorus himself transcribed (probably from the translation of Jerome) the Psalter, the Prophets, and the Epistles. In addition to his labours as a transcriber, Cassiodorus did a large amount of work as an original author and as a compiler. According to the judgment of Migne, Franz, and Hodgkin, the importance of his original writings varied very considerably, and is by no means to be estimated in proportion to their bulk. One of the most considerable of these was his great commentary on the Psalms, in the text of which he was able to discover refutations of all the heresies that had thus far racked the Church, together with the rudiments of all the sciences which had become known to the world. This was followed by a commentary on the Epistles and by a history of the Church, the latter having been undertaken in co-operation with his friend Epiphanius. This history, known as the Historia Tripartita, is said to have had a larger circulation than any other of the author’s works. A fourth work, which gives more of the personality of the writer, was an educational treatise entitled, Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum. In the first part of this treatise, which bore the title of De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum,[27] the author gives an account of the organisation of his scriptorium. In the second division of the treatise, entitled De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum, the author states his view of the relative importance of the four liberal arts, Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, and Mathematics, the last named of which he divides into the four “disciplines” of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. Geometry and Astronomy occupy together one page, Arithmetic and Music each two pages, Grammar two pages, Rhetoric six pages, while to Logic are devoted eighteen pages. The final production of his industrious life was a treatise called De Orthographia, which was completed when its author was ninety-three years old, and which was planned expressly to further the work of the monastic scribes in collecting and correcting the codices of ancient books.

The death of Cassiodorus occurred in 575, in the ninety-sixth year of his age. An inheritor of the traditions of imperial Rome, Cassiodorus had been able, in a career extending over nearly a century, to be of signal service to his country under a series of foreign rulers. He had succeeded, through his personal influence with these rulers, in maintaining for Italy an organisation based on Roman precedents, and in preserving for the society of the capital an interest in the preservation and cultivation of classic literature. When the political institutions of Italy had been shattered and the very existence of civilisation was imperilled, he had transferred his services to the Church, recognising, with the adaptability which was the special characteristic of the man, that with the Church now rested the hopes of any continuity of organised society, of intellectual interest, of civilisation itself. He brought to the Church the advantage of exceptional executive ability and of long official experience, and he also brought a large measure of scholarship and an earnest zeal for literary and educational interests. It[28] is not too much to say that the continuity of the thought and civilisation of the ancient world with that of the Middle Ages was due, more than to any other one man, to the life and labours of Cassiodorus.

The great achievement of Benedict was the one literary product of his life, the Regula. It comprises seventy-three short chapters, probably not designed by the author for use beyond the bounds of the communities under his own immediate supervision. It proved to be the thing for which the world of religious and thoughtful men was then longing, a complete code of monastic duty. By a strange parallelism, almost in the very year in which the great Emperor Justinian was codifying the results of seven centuries of Roman secular legislation for the benefit of the judges and the statesmen of the new Europe, Benedict, on his lonely mountain top, was composing his code for the regulation of the daily life of the great civilisers of Europe for seven centuries to come.

The Rule of S. Benedict, Chap. 48. Concerning Daily Manual Labour.—“Idleness is the enemy of the soul: hence brethren ought at certain seasons to occupy themselves with manual labour, and again at certain hours with holy reading. Between Easter and the calends of October let them apply themselves to reading from the fourth hour until the sixth hour.... From the calends[29] of October to the beginning of Lent, let them apply themselves to reading until the second hour. During Lent, let them apply themselves to reading from morning until the end of the third hour, and in these days of Lent, let them receive a book apiece from the library and read it straight through. These books are to be given out at the beginning of Lent.”[19]

This simple regulation, uttered by one the power and extent of whose far-reaching influence have rarely been equalled among men, gave an impulse to study that grew with the growth of the Order, and that secured a continuity of intellectual light and life through the dark ages, the results of which have endured to modern times. “Wherever a Benedictine house arose, or a monastery of any one of the Orders, which were but offshoots from the Benedictine tree, books were multiplied and a library came into existence, small indeed at first, but increasing year by year, till the wealthier houses had gathered together collections of books that would do credit to a modern university.”[20]

It was, of course, the case that the injunction to read, an injunction given at a time when books were very few and monks were becoming many, carried with it an instruction for writing until copies of the books prescribed should have been produced in sufficient numbers to meet the requirements of the readers. The armaria could be filled only through steady and persistent work in the scriptoria, and, as we shall see later, such scribe-work was accepted not only as a part of the “manual labour” prescribed in the Rule, but not infrequently (in the case of the skilled scribes) in lieu of some portion of the routine of religious observance. Benedict would not have his monks limit themselves to spiritual labour, to the action of the soul upon itself. He made external labour, manual or literary, a strict obligation of his Rule. The routine of [30]the monastic day was to include seven hours for manual labour, two hours for reading.[21] In later years, the Benedictine monasteries became centres of instruction, supplying the place, as far as was practicable, of the educational system of the departed empire. As Order after Order was founded, there came to be a steady development of interest in books and an ever increasing care for their safe-keeping. S. Benedict had contented himself with general directions for study; the Cluniacs prescribed the selection of a special officer to take charge of the books, with an annual audit of them and the assignment to each brother of a single volume.

“The followers of the Saint continued in their patient labour, praying, digging, and transcribing. The scriptoria of the Benedictine monastery will multiply copies not only of missals and theological treatises, but of the poems and histories of antiquity. Whatever may have been the religious value or the religious dangers of the monastic life, the historian at least is bound to express his gratitude to these men, without whose life-long toil the great deeds and thoughts of Greece and Rome might have been as completely lost to us as the wars of the buried Lake-dwellers or the thoughts of the Palæolithic man. To take an illustration from S. Benedict’s own beloved Subiaco, the work of his disciples has been like one of the great aqueducts of the valley of the Arno—sometimes carried underground for centuries through the obscurity of unremembered existence, sometimes emerging to the daylight and borne high upon the arcade of noble lives, but equally through all its course, bearing the precious stream of ancient thought from the far off hills of time into the humming and crowded cities of modern civilisation.”[22]

[32]

While the two monasteries of Cassiodorus in Calabria and the Benedictine foundation of Monte Cassino near Naples, were entitled to first reference on the ground of the exceptional influence exercised by them upon the literary development of the monks, they were by no means the earliest of the western monastic foundations. This honour belongs, according to Denk,[24] to the monastery of Ligugé, near Poitiers (Monasterium Locociagense), founded in 360 A.D. by Bishop Martin of Tours. The second in point of date, that of Marmoutier, near Tours, was instituted by the same bishop a year or two later. Gaul proved to be favourable ground for the spread of monastic tenets and influence, and by the year 400 its foundations included over two thousand monks.

In 405, S. Honoratus, later Bishop of Arles, founded a monastery on the island of Lerin, on the south coast of France, which became a most important centre of learning and the mother of many monasteries.[25] In the educational work carried on at Lerin, full consideration was given to classic authors, such as Cicero, Virgil, and Xenophon, as well as to the writings of the Fathers, and the scribes were kept busied in the production of copies.

There must have been a certain amount of literary activity also in the monasteries of the East and of Africa some time before any of the monastic foundations in Europe had come into existence. The numerous writings of the Fathers secured a wide circulation among the faithful, a circulation which could have been possible only through the existence of efficient staffs of skilled scribes and in connection with some system of distribution between widely separated churches. Teachers like Origen in Cæsarea, in the third century, and S. Jerome in Bethlehem and S. Augustine in Hippo, in the fifth century, put [33]forth long series of writings, religious, philosophical, and polemical, with apparently an assured confidence that these would reach wide circles of contemporary readers, and that they would be preserved also for generations to come. The sacking of Rome by Alaric (in 410) is used by S. Augustine as a text or occasion for the publication of his beautiful conception of “The City of God” in much the same manner as a preacher of later times might have based a homily on the burning of Moscow or the fall of Paris. The preacher of Hippo speaks as if he were addressing, not the small circle of his African diocese, but mankind at large. And he was, of course, justified in his faith, for the De Civitate Dei was the book which, next to the Scriptures, was most surely to be found in every monastery in Europe, while when the work of the scriptorium was replaced by the printing-press, it became one of the most frequently printed books in Europe. It appears from a reference by S. Augustine, that nuns as well as monks were included among the African scribes. In speaking of a nun named Melania, who, early in the fifth century, founded a convent at Tagaste, near Carthage, he says that she had “gained her living by transcribing manuscripts,” and mentions that she wrote swiftly, beautifully, and correctly,—scribebat et celeriter et pulchre, citra errorem.[26]

The scribe-work in the monasteries of Africa and of the East was, therefore, sufficiently effective to preserve large portions of the writings of the Fathers and of other early Christian teachers, and it is, in fact, to the libraries of these Eastern monasteries that is chiefly due the preservation of the long series of Greek texts which found their way into Europe after the Renaissance. I have, however, been able to find no record of the system pursued in the scriptoria and armaria of the Greek monasteries, and the narrative in the present chapter is, therefore, confined [34]to a sketch of the literary undertakings of the monks of the West.

The earliest known example of the work of a European monk dates from the year 517. The manuscript is in the Capitular library in Verona, and has been reproduced in fac-simile by Ottley. The script is that known as half uncial.[27] At the time this manuscript was being written, Theodoric the Goth was ruling in Italy, with Cassiodorus as his minister, and the monastery at Viviers was still to be founded.

S. Gregory the Great, who became Pope in 590, exercised an important influence over the intellectual interests of his age. Gregory had been charged with having destroyed the ancient monuments of Rome, with having burned the Palatine library, including the writings of Cicero and Livy, with having expelled the mathematicians from Rome, and with having reprimanded Bishop Didier of Vienna (in Gaul) for teaching grammar to children. Montalembert contends that these charges are all slanders and that the Pope was not only an unequalled scholar, but that he fully appreciated the importance for the intellectual development of the Church, of a knowledge of the classics. Gregory is quoted as saying, in substance: “The devils know well that the knowledge of profane literature helps us to understand sacred literature. In dissuading us from this study, they act as the Philistines did when they interdicted the Israelites from making swords and lances, and obliged that nation to come to them for the sharpening of their axes and plough-shares.”[28] Gregory was himself the author of a considerable series of writings, and, while his Latin was not that of Cicero, he contributed (according to Ozanam) as much as did S. Augustine to form the new Latin, what might be called the Christian Latin, which was destined to become [35]the language of the pulpit and the school, and which forms the more immediate foundation of an important group of the languages of modern Europe.

His works include the Sacramentary, which determined the language and the form of the Liturgy, a series of Dialogues, and a Pastoral, in which were collected a series of discourses planned to regulate the vocation, life, and doctrines of the pastors. Of this book, Ozanam says that it gave form and life to the entire hierarchical body. Then came a series of commentaries on the Scriptures, followed by no less than thirty-five books called Moralia, which were commentaries on the Book of Job. His last important production was a series of Epistles, comprised in thirteen volumes. He may possibly have been the most voluminous author since classic times, and his books had the special advantage of reaching circles of readers who were waiting for them, and of being distributed through the already extended machinery of the Church.

Another important ecclesiastical author of the same generation was Isidore, Bishop of Seville. The Spanish Liturgy compiled by him and known as the Mozarabic, survived the ruin of the Visigothic Church and was thought by the great Cardinal Ximenes worthy of resuscitation. Isidore also wrote a history of the Goths and a translation of the philosophy of Aristotle. He may be considered as the first scholar to introduce to Europe of the Middle Ages the teachings of Greek philosophy. His greatest undertaking was, however, in the form of an encyclopædia, treating, under the heading of the Seven Liberal Arts, of all the learning that was within his reach. It was entitled Twenty Books of Etymologies, or The Origin of Things, and included in its volumes a number of classical fragments which, without the care of its editor, would probably have perished forever.

Isidore is the first Christian who arranged and edited for Christians the literature of antiquity. He died in 636,[36] but the incentive that he had given to learning and to literature survived him in a numerous group of disciples.[29] Among Isidore’s pupils was King Sisebut, whose interest in scholarship caused him to endow liberally a number of the Spanish monasteries.

Charlemagne took from among the poor boys in the court school, one, who was described as optimus dictator et scriptor, and having trained him as chaplain and secretary, provided for him later a bishopric.[30]

[37]

The use of the word dictator is to be noted as indicating the mediæval employment of the term in connection with writing. Dictare seems, from an early date, to have been used in the first place to indicate instruction in the art of writing, while later it is employed constantly to specify the direct work of the writer or composer, in the sense in which one would say to-day that he had indited a letter. With the same general sense, the term dictamen is used for the thing indited or for a composition. Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim (whose poems later had the honour of forming the material for one of the first books printed in South Germany), used the term dictare continually for activity in authorship. Wattenbach quotes from the Legenda Aurea of S. Ambrose the words libros quos dictabat propria manu scribebat (he wrote out with his own hand the books that he composed).

As long as any portions of the Roman Empire held together and the classic culture still preserved its influence, a considerable class of men secured their support through work as scribes. In Italy this class seems never entirely to have disappeared. Some small circles of the people retained, even after the land had been many times overrun by invaders, some interest in the classics, and were prepared to pay for more or less trustworthy manuscript copies of these. In Italy also there appears to have been a much larger use of writing in connection with trade and commerce than obtained throughout the rest of Europe until a much later time. While in Germany and France such scholarship as remained was restricted almost entirely to the ecclesiastics and to the monastery centres, in Italy the Church, during the earlier period, took a smaller interest in scholarship. There came into existence, however, a group of literary laymen, who were in a measure a continuation of or a succession to the old Latin grammarians, and who maintained some of their interest in classic culture and preserved, however imperfectly, some remnants of classic knowledge.

[38]

Wattenbach quotes the words of Gerbert,[31] Nosti Quot Scriptores in Urbibus aut in Agris Italiæ Passim Habeantur (you know how many writers there are here and there throughout the cities and fields of Italy).

The schools established under the rule of the Lombards helped to preserve the art of writing and to widen the range of its experts. By the time, therefore, of the establishment of the earlier Italian universities, an organised class of scribes was already in existence whose skill could be utilised for university work, and, as will be shown more specifically in a later chapter, the universities took these scribes under their jurisdiction and extended over them the protection of university privilege.[32]

In France, after the time of Charlemagne, it was the case, as we have seen, that those who had any educational or literary ambitions were almost necessarily obliged to become ecclesiastics, as it was only in monasteries and in the training schools attached to the monasteries, that the necessary education could be secured. As one result of this, the number of ecclesiastics increased much more rapidly than the number of places in which they could be occupied or of foundations upon which they could be supported. Priests for whom no priestly work was found became, therefore, what might be called lay-clerics, and were employed in connection with the work of the courts, or of magistrates, or as scribes and secretaries.

In this manner there came into the hands of these lay-clerics, not only the management of correspondence, personal, official, and diplomatic, but a very large proportion of the direction of the affairs with which such correspondence had to do. As far, therefore, as the clerical personality represented ecclesiastical purposes and aims, the influence of ecclesiasticism must have been very [39]much greater during the age in which the art of writing was confined to the Church than at any earlier or any later period of the world’s history. Such influence was, however, probably less in fact than in appearance, as it seems to have been the case that a very large proportion of such clerics were priests in name only, and that their interests, purposes, and ambitions were outside of the Church, and were not necessarily even in sympathy with the development of the control of the Church over the affairs of the world.

Wattenbach is of opinion that the scribes of this period secured a larger return for their work than came to any other class of labourers or officials. Among many other examples, he gives a quotation from Dümmler concerning a Lombard cleric of Rotland, named Anselm, who, in 1050, prided himself upon the number of books he had written, and said: Multos oportet libros scriberes, ut inde precium sumeres, quo a tuis lenonibus te redimeres.[33] (You ought to write many books in order to obtain money with which to buy yourself off from those having claims upon you.)

Notker wrote in 1020 to the Bishop of Sitten, who wanted to obtain some books: Si vultis ea, sumtibus enim indigent, mittite plures pergamenas et scribentibus præmia et suscipietis eorum exempla.[34] (If you want these books, you must send more parchment and also moneys for the scribes. You will then receive your copies.)

In the twelfth century, the monks of Tegernsee, under the Abbot Rupert, were working on the production of the books for the library of some noble lady.[35] The Brother Liaupold, in Mallerstorf, spoke of having “earned much money through his pen.” This happened in the last quarter of the twelfth century. The lines quoted by [40]Wattenbach were found upon a manuscript bearing Liaupold’s name.[36]

For the libraries of their own monasteries, the monks worked without direct pay, and it was only later, as the ambition of the librarians increased or as the business of distributing copies of manuscripts became more important, that the monasteries found it worth while to employ, either in place of or in addition to their own monks, scribes from outside. In Salzburg, Pastor Peter Grillinger paid, in 1435, to the scribes of the neighbouring monasteries three hundred gulden for the production of a Bible (probably an illuminated copy), and presented this to the library of the Cathedral.[37]

In the accounts of the monastery at Aldersbach, Rockinger finds entries, in 1304, of payments for scriptores librorum.

The well-known manuscript of Henri Bohic was written in 1374 by a monk of Corbie, who, according to the cash record of his monastery, received for his work, in addition to the parchment and other materials, the sum of thirty-six solidos. For the monastery at St. Gall, Mathias Burer, of Lindau, who was chaplain in Meminger, and who died in 1485, wrote twenty-four volumes.

In 1470, the same Burer gave to the monastery, in exchange for a benefice, his entire library. The record does not specify how many volumes the library comprised. In 1350, a certain Constantine was arrested in Erfurt as a heretic. Special efforts were made to save him from death or banishment on the ground that he was a skilled scribe. The record does not appear to show whether or not this plea was successful.

Conrad de Mure speaks of women working as scribes during the latter part of the thirteenth century. It is probable that these women were nuns, but it is not so [41]specified. In the Histoire de l’Imprimerie[38] reference is made to a woman who appears to have acted as an independent scribe—that is to say, not to have been attached to the university or to the guild of booksellers.

On the tax list of Paris, in 1292, are recorded twenty-four escrivains.[39] It is probable that the actual number was much greater, as the scribes who were ecclesiastics were exempt from taxation, and their names, therefore, would not have appeared upon the list.

In 1460, a certain Ducret, clerc à Dijon, received from the Duke for his work as scribe, a groschen for each sheet, which is referred to as the prix accoustumé.[40]

In 1401, Peter of Bacharach, described as a citizen of Mainz, wrote out for the Court at Eltville (Elfeld) a Schwabenspiegel. This is to be noted because it is an example of scribe work being done by one who was not a cleric. Burkard Zink tells us that in 1420, being in Augsburg, he took unto himself a wife. She had nothing and he had nothing, but she earned money with her spinning-wheel and he with his pen. In the first week he wrote vier sextern des grossen papiers, karta regal, and the ecclesiastics for whom the work was being done were so well pleased with it that they gave him for two sexterns four groschen. His week’s work brought him sixteen groschen, or forty cents.[41] Clara Hatzlern, a citizen of Augsburg, is recorded as having written for money between the years 1452 and 1476. A copy of a Schwabenspiegel transcribed by her was contained in the collection at Lambach.[42]

The examples named indicate what was, in any case, probably the only class of scribe work done outside of the monasteries and outside of the universities or before the [42]university period, by the few laymen who were able to write. Their labour was devoted exclusively to the production of books in the tongue of the people; if work in Latin were required, it was still necessary (at least until the institution in the thirteenth century of university scribes) to apply to the monasteries. With the development of literature in Italy, during the following century, there came many complaints concerning the lack of educated scribes competent to manifold the works. These complaints, as well as to the lack of writers as concerning the ignorance and carelessness shown in their work, continued as late as the time of the Humanists, and are repeated by Petrarch and Boccaccio.

The terms librarius, scriptor, and antiquarius were also used for scribes making copies of books, while notarius was more likely to denote a clerk whose work was limited to the preparation of documents. Alcuin speaks of employing notarii.

[43]

In the inscription in a manuscript by Engelberg of the twelfth century, we find the lines: Hic Augustini liber est atque Frowini; alter dictavit, alter scribendo notavit.[45] This indicates that Augustine was the author, while Frowin served as scribe. A manuscript of the sixth century, contained in the Chapter-House library in Verona, bears the signature Antiquarius Eulalius. A manuscript of Orosius, written in the seventh century, is inscribed: Confectus codex in statione Viliaric Antiquarii. (A codex completed in the writing-stall of Viliaric the scribe.) This scribe was probably a Goth, as among the signatures in a Ravenna document, containing the list of the clerics of the Gothic Church, occurs the name Viljaric bokareis.[46] Otto von Freising says of his notarius, Ragewin: Qui hanc historiam ex ore nostro subnotavit (who wrote down this story from my lips); and Gunther, in 1212, complains of a headache which he had brought upon himself ut verba inventa notario vix possim exprimere, that is in the attempt to shape the words that he was dictating to his clerks. It was in Italy that the notarii first became of sufficient importance to organise themselves into a profession and to undertake the training, for other work, of young scribes, and it was from Italy that the scribes were gradually distributed throughout Europe. Their most important employment for some time in Italy was in connection with the work of the Church, and particularly in the preparation and manifolding of the documents sent out from Rome. The special script that was adopted for the work of the Papal office was known as scripta notaria.[47]

According to Wattenbach, the use of papyrus for the documents of the Church, and even for the Papal Bulls, extended as late as the tenth century. Sickel speaks of a [44]Bull of Benedict VIII., of 1022, as the latest known to him which is written on papyrus.

The term chartularii, or cartularii, was applied to clerics originally trained for the work of the Church, but who occasionally devoted themselves also to the manifolding of books. In the memoir of Arnest, who was the first Archbishop of Prague, it was related that he always kept three cartularii at work in the transcribing of books. In the twelfth century, Ordericus speaks of the monks who write books both as antiquarii and as librarii.[48] Richard de Bury uses the term in describing the renewal of old manuscripts, and restricts it to scribes who possessed scholarly and critical knowledge. Petrarch makes a similar application.[49] The term dictare was, during the Middle Ages, usually employed to describe the author’s work in composing, or in composing and writing with his own hand, and bears but seldom the meaning of “dictate.” The proper rendering would be more nearly our word “indite.”

The term used during the earlier Middle Ages to denote the Scriptures was not Biblia, but Bibliotheca. According to Maitland, the latter term has its origin with S. Jerome, who, in offering to lend books to his correspondent Florentius, writes: ... et quoniam largiente Domino, multis sacræ bibliothecæ codicibus abundamus, etc.[50] (And since by the grace of God, we possess a great many codices of the sacred writings.)

In nearly every instance in which reference is made to the complete collection of the Scriptures, the term used is Bibliotheca integra, or Bibliotheca tota. It was evidently the case that for centuries after the acceptance of the Canon, the several divisions or books of which the Bible consists were still frequently considered in the light of separate and independent works, and were transcribed and circulated separately.

[45]

The texts have been preserved of a number of songs ascribed to Columba, and, whether or not these verses were really the work of the monk, the tradition that he was the first of the Irish poets doubtless has foundation. In the time of Columba, the Irish monasteries already possessed texts in greater quantity than could be found in the monasteries of Scotland or England, but even in Ireland manuscripts were rare and costly, and were preserved with jealous care in the monastic libraries. Not only was very great value put upon these volumes, but they were even supposed to possess the emotions and the passions of living beings. Columba was himself a collector of manuscripts, and his biography by O’Donnell attributes to him the laborious feat of having transcribed with his own hand three hundred copies of the Psalter. According to one of the stories, Columba journeyed to Ossory in the south-west to visit a holy and very learned recluse, a doctor of laws and philosophy, named Longarad. Columba asked leave to examine the doctor’s books, and when the old man refused, the monk burst out in an imprecation: “May thy books no longer do thee any good, neither to them who come after thee, since thou[46] takest occasion by them to show thine inhospitality.” The curse was heard, and after Longarad died, his books became unintelligible. An author of the ninth century says that the books still existed, but that no man could read them.[51]

Another story speaks of Columba’s undertaking, while visiting his ancient master Finnian, to make a clandestine and hurried copy of the abbot’s Psalter. He shut himself up at night in the church where the Psalter was deposited, and the light needed for his nocturnal work radiated from his left hand while he wrote with the right. A curious wanderer, passing the church, was attracted by the singular light, and looked in through the keyhole, and while his face was pressed against the door his eye was suddenly torn out by a crane which was roosting in the church. The wanderer went with his story to the abbot, and Finnian, indignant at what he considered to be a theft, claimed from Columba the copy which the monk had prepared, contending that a copy made without permission ought to belong to the owner of the original, on the ground that the transcript is the offspring of the original work. As far as I have been able to ascertain, this is the first instance which occurs in the history of European literature of a contention for copyright. Columba refused to give up his manuscript, and the question was referred to King Diarmid, or Dermott, in the palace at Tara. The King’s judgment was given in a rustic phrase which has passed into a proverb in Ireland: “To every cow her calf [le gach boin a boinin], and consequently to every book its copy.”[52]

Columba protested loudly, and threatened the King with vengeance. He retired to his own province chanting the song of trust, the text of which has been preserved and which is sacred as one of the most authentic relics of [47]the ancient Irish tongue. He succeeded in arousing against the King the great and powerful clans of his relatives and friends, and after a fierce struggle the King was overcome and was obliged to take refuge at Tara.

The manuscript which had been the object of this strange conflict of copyright, a conflict which developed into a civil war, was afterwards venerated as a kind of national military and religious palladium. Under the name of Cathac, or “the fighter,” the Latin Psalter said to have been transcribed by Columba was enshrined in the base of a portable altar as the national relic of the O’Donnell clan. It was preserved for 1300 years in the O’Donnell family, and as late as 1867, belonged to a baronet of that name, who placed it on exhibition in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. O’Curry prints a fac-simile of a fragment of the manuscript, which he believes to be in the hand-writing of S. Columba, and O’Curry and Reeves are in accord in the opinion that the famous copy of the Gospels known as the “Book of Kells” is also the work of the poet monk.[53]

After the successful issue of his contest with Finnian, S. Columba journeyed through the land, making a kind of expiatory pilgrimage for the purpose of atoning for the bloodshed of which he had been the cause. He went for counsel to his soul-friend or confessor, S. Laisren. The saint bade him as a penance leave Ireland and go and win souls for Christ, as many as the lives that had been lost in the battle of Culdreimhne, and never again look upon his native land. He finally took up his abode in the desolate little island of Iona, on the coast of Scotland. Other refugees were attracted to the island by the fame of the saint, and there finally came into existence on the barren rocks a great monastery which for centuries exercised throughout Britain and North Europe a wide-spread [48]influence in behalf of higher Christianity and of intellectual life.

From Iona and its associated monasteries of Ireland and Scotland came scholarly teachers to France and Germany whose influence was important in giving a new direction to the work of later generations of monks. Among the Continental monasteries in which was developed through such influence a higher range of scholarly activity, were Luxeuil (in the Vosges Mountains), Corbie (on the Somme), Bobbio (in Lombardy), and St. Gall (in Switzerland). Wattenbach says that, notwithstanding their scholarly knowledge, these Scotch monks were wild and careless in their orthography. As an example of the barbarity of style and of form, he quotes a manuscript of the date of 750 (written during the rule of Pepin).

A number of years later, when, through the monks of Iona and under the general direction of S. Columba, a number of monasteries had been founded throughout Scotland, Columba had occasion to plead before the Parliament of Drumceitt in behalf of the Bards, who might be called the authors of their time, and with whom the poet monk had a keen personal sympathy. The Bards of Ireland and Britain were at once the poets, the genealogists, the historians, and the musicians of their countries, and their position and their influence constituted a very characteristic feature of Celtic life in the centuries between 500 and 800.

The Irish nation, always enamoured of its traditions, its fabulous antiquity, and its local glories, regarded with ardent sympathy the men who could clothe in a poetic dress all the law and the superstitions of the past, and who could give literary form and force to the passions and the interests of the present. The Bards were divided into three orders: The Fileas, who sang of religion and war; the Brehons, whose name is associated with the ancient laws of the country which they versified and[49] recited; and the Seanachies, who enshrined in verse the national history and antiquities, and, above all, the genealogies and the prerogatives of the ancient families who were regarded as especially representative of the national and warlike passions of the Irish people.[54]

The great influence and power enjoyed by the Bards had naturally produced not a few abuses, and at the time of the Parliament of Drumceitt their popularity had suffered and a violent opposition had been raised against them. They were charged with insolence and with greed, and they were particularly censured for having made a traffic and a trade of their poetry, a charge which recalls some of the criticisms of classic times.

The enmities raised against them had gathered so much force that King Aedh found himself compelled to propose to the Assembly of Drumceitt the abolition of the Order and the abandonment, or, as one authority suggests, the massacre of the Bards. It would appear as if Ireland had been suffering from an excess of poetic utterances and felt that some revolutionary methods were required in order to restore to the land quiet and peace. Montalembert is of opinion that the clergy did not take any part in the prosecution of a class which they might, not unnaturally, have regarded as their rivals. The Bards had, however, for the most part kept in friendly relations with the bishops, monks, and saints, and each monastery, like each prince and lord, possessed a Bard (who in later years became an annalist) whose chief office it was to sing the glory and record the history of the community.

Nevertheless, the Bards were certainly, as a body, a residuum of the paganism that had been so recently supplanted, and it is probable that the Church, if not joining in the onslaught upon their body, was not prepared to take any active part in their defence. It seems as if the decision of the Assembly, under the influence of King [50]Aedh, would certainly have been adverse to the poets. It was Columba, the poet monk, who saved them. He, who was born a poet and who, to the last day of his life, remained a poet, interceded for the Bards with such eloquence and earnestness that his plea had to be listened to. He claimed that the general exile of the poets would be the death of a venerated antiquity and of a literature which was a part of the country’s life. “The bright corn must not be burned,” he said, “because of the weeds that mingled with it.”[55] Influenced by his impassioned plea, the Assembly yielded at length, under the condition that the number of Bards should be henceforth limited and that the Order should be placed under certain rules to be framed by Columba himself. Thus poetry was to continue to exist, but it was not to be allowed to oppress the community with its redundance.

It is doubtless the case that one reason for the exceptional fame of Columba and the large amount of legendary detail that has been preserved of his achievements, was this great service that he had rendered to the poets of his time. They showed their gratitude by exalting his glory in numberless songs and recitals, and it is chiefly from these that has been made up the narrative of the saint’s life. Another result of this intervention on the part of the monk for the protection of the poets was a still closer association between the Church and the literary spirit of the age. All antagonism between the religious ideal and the influence of the poetry of the Bards seems from this time to have disappeared. The songs of the Bards were no longer in any measure devoted to the cause of paganism, but music and poetry became closely identified with the ideals of the Church and with the work of the monasteries. The Church had preserved the poets, and poetry became the faithful handmaid of the Church.

[51]

While the educational work in the convent schools was for the most part not carried on beyond what might be called elementary classes, there were not a few examples of abbesses whose scholastic attainments would rival those of the abbots. Montalembert speaks of convents founded, under the auspices of S. Jerome, by S. Paula and her daughter, and is not prepared to admit that in any essential detail the history of S. Paula is legendary. He reminds us that Hebrew and Greek were the daily study of these two admirable women, who advised S. Jerome in all his difficulties and cheered him under all discouragements.[57] Montalembert is probably on firmer ground when he speaks of the scholarly attainments of S. Aura, the friend of S. Eloi, and of the nun Bertile, whose learned lectures on Holy Scripture drew to Chelles in the sixth century a large concourse of auditors of both sexes. S. Radegonde, known by her profound studies of the three Fathers, S. Gregory, S. Basle, and S. Athanasius, is commemorated by Fortunatus, as is also Gertrude, Abbess of Nivelle, who sent messengers to Rome and to Ireland to buy books.[58] I do not find a record of the date of these book-buying expeditions of the abbess.

In Germany, the list of the learned nuns includes S. Lioba, who was said to be so eager for knowledge that she never left her books except for divine service. She was a pupil of S. Boniface, and to her was due the framing of the system of instruction instituted after the mission of S. Boniface in North Germany. [52] Hroswitha, the illustrious nun of Gandersheim (who died in 997), has been referred to more than once. Hroswitha’s dramatic poetry has been preserved for nearly eight centuries, and has had the honour of being reprinted as late as 1857. Her writings included a history in verse of Otho the Great, and the lives of several saints. Her most important works, however, were sacred dramas composed by her to be acted by the nuns of the convent. M. Magin points out that these dramas show an intimate acquaintance with the authors of classic antiquity.[59] Curiously enough, there was, nearly a century earlier, another Hroswitha in Gandersheim, who was the daughter of the Duke of Saxony, and who became the fourth abbess of the convent. She composed a much esteemed treatise on logic.[60]

Cecilia, daughter of William the Conqueror, who was Abbess of Kucaen, won fame for her school in grammar, philosophy, and in poetry. Herrad of Landsberg, who governed forty-six noble nuns at Mont St. Odile in Alsace, composed, under the name of Hortus Delictarum, a sort of cosmology, which is recorded as the first attempt at a scientific encyclopædia, and which is noted for the breadth of its ideas on painting, philosophy, mythology, and history. This was issued shortly after the death of William the Conqueror.[61] To the Abbess of Eichstadt, who died about 1120, Germany is indebted for the preservation of the Heldenbuch, a treasury of heroic stories.[62]

The principal and most constant occupation of the learned Benedictine nuns was the transcription of manuscripts. It is difficult to estimate too highly the extent of the services rendered by these feminine hands to learning and to history throughout the Middle Ages. They brought [53]to the work a dexterity, an elegance of attainment, and an assiduity which the monks themselves could not attain, and some of the most beautiful specimens of caligraphy which have been preserved from the Middle Ages are the work of the nuns. The devotion of nuns as scribes began indeed with the early ages of Christian times. Eusebius speaks of young maidens whom the learned men of his time employed as copyists.[63] In the fifth century, S. Melania the younger distinguished herself by the beauty and exactness of her transcripts.[64] In the sixth century, the nuns of the convent at Arles, incited by the example of the Abbess of St. Césaire, acquired a no less brilliant reputation. In the seventh century, S. Gertrude, who was learned in the Holy Scriptures, sent to Rome to ask not only for works of the highest Christian poetry, but also for teachers capable of instructing her nuns to comprehend certain allegories.[65] In the eighth century, S. Boniface begged the abbess to write out for him in golden letters the Epistle of S. Peter. Cæsarius of Arles gave instructions that in the convents which had been founded by him and the supervision of which rested with his sister, the “Virgins of Christ” should give their time between their prayers and psalms to the reading and to the writing of holy works.[66] In the eighth century the nuns of Maseyk, in Holland, busied themselves in a similar fashion, not only in writing, but particularly in illuminating (etiam scribendo atque pingendo), in which they became proficients.[67]

In the ninth century, the Benedictine nuns of Eck on the Meuse, and especially the two abbesses Harlinde and Renilde, attained great celebrity by their caligraphic [54]work and by the beauty of the illuminated designs used in their manuscripts.[68] In the time of S. Gregory VII., a nun at Wessobrunn, in Bavaria, named Diemude, undertook to transcribe a series of important works, the mere enumeration of which would startle modern readers. These works formed, as we read in the saint’s epitaph, a whole library, which she offered as a tribute to S. Peter. The production of this library still left time for Diemude to carry on with Herluca, a nun of the neighbouring convent of Eppach, a correspondence remarkable as well for its grace of expression as for its spiritual insight.[69] A list of her transcripts is given in the section on the scriptorium.

Among other convent scribes is recorded the name of the nun Gita, in Schwarzenthau, who made transcripts, about 1175, of the writings of her abbot, Irimbert. In Mallesdorf, at about the same time, a nun of Scottish parents, named Leukardis, who understood Greek, Latin, and German, was active in the scriptorium, and her work excited so much admiration that the monk Laiupold, himself a famous scribe, instituted in her memory an anniversarium.[70]

Brother Idung sent his dialogues concerning the monks of Clugni and the Cistercians to the nuns of Niedermünster, near Regensburg, ut legibiliter scribatur et diligenter emendetur ab aliquibus sororibus.[71] In the same century (the twelfth) the names of Gertrude, Sibilia, and other nuns appear on the transcript of the codex written for the Domini Monasterienses, which codex came into the library of Arnstein in exchange for a copy of the Pastorals of Gregory. Johann Gerson, writing in 1423, refers with cordial approbation to some beautiful copies prepared by the nuns, of the works of Origen.[72] In St. Gall, where the [55]literary activity of the monks has already been referred to, the nuns in the convent of S. Catharine were, in the thirteenth and in the first half of the fourteenth centuries, also engaged in preparing transcripts of holy books.

Without the monks, says Marsham (a Protestant writer), we should have been as ignorant of our history as children.[74] England, converted by her monks, has special reason to be proud of the historians furnished by her abbeys.[75] One chronicler, Gildas, has painted with fiery touches the miseries of Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. To another, the Venerable Bede, author of the ecclesiastical history of Britain, we owe the detailed account of the Catholic Renaissance under the [56]Saxons. Bede’s chronicle extends to the year 731. Its author died four years later. Among later monkish chroniclers may be mentioned Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland, whose history extends to 1091; Vitalis, a monk of Shrewsbury, whose chronicle reached to 1141, and many others. The chronicle of Vitalis gives an animated picture of the struggle between the Saxons and the Normans, and of the vicissitudes during this period of the Church of England. Later monastic historians were: William of Malmesbury (circa 1095-1143), Geoffrey of Monmouth (circa 1090-1154), Henry of Huntingdon (circa 1120-1180), Roger of Wendover (circa 1169-1237), Matthew Paris (circa 1185-1259), and Ralph Higden (circa 1280-1370). Further reference to the work of these English chroniclers is made in the chapter on Books in England during the Manuscript Period. This series of monkish chronicles presents, says Montalembert, an inexhaustible amount of information as to the manners, laws, and ideas of the times, and unites with the important information of history the personal attractiveness of biography.[76]

Among the chroniclers of France are to be noted S. Gregory of Tours; S. Abbon, of St. Germain des Prés, who wrote the history of the wars of King Eudes and an account of the sieges of Paris by the Normans; Frodoard, who died in 968, and who wrote the annals of the tenth century; Richer, whose history covers the period between 880 and 995; Helgaud, who wrote the life of King Robert; Aimoin, a monk of Fleury, who died in 1008, and who wrote a very curious life of S. Abbon and a record of the miracles at Fleury of S. Bénoît; Chabanais, a monk of St. Cybar in Angoulême, who died in 1028, and whose record reaches to 1025. It has been republished by Pertz in the fourth volume of the Scriptores. Raoul Glaber, a monk of St. Germain d’Auxerre, wrote a history of his own time in five books, which covers the period from the [57]accession of Hugh Capet to 1046. Hugh, Abbot of Flavigny, wrote with considerable detail the history of the eleventh century. These various monkish chronicles have served as a basis for the first national and popular monuments of French history. The famous chronicles of S. Denys, which were written very early in Latin, were translated into French in the beginning of the thirteenth century. They contain the essence of the historic and poetic traditions of old France.

The mediæval history of Italy is in like manner dependent almost entirely upon the records of the literary monks. The great collection of Muratori is based upon the monkish chronicles, especially of those of Volturna, Novalese, Farfa, Casa Aurio, and of Monte Cassino. From the latter abbey, there sprang a series of distinguished historians: Johannes Diaconus, the biographer of S. Gregory the Great, who wrote during the reign of Charlemagne; Paulus Diaconus, the friend of Charlemagne; Leo, Bishop of Ostia, first author of the famous chronicle of Monte Cassino, and Peter Diaconus, who continued its chronicle. Another monk of Monte Cassino recounts the wonderful story of the conquest gained by the Norman chivalry in the two Sicilies, a story reproduced and completed by the Sicilian monk Malaterra.

The list of the learned historians in the German monasteries is also an important one. The German collections of scriptories, such as those of Eckard, Pez, Leibnitz, and others, present an enormous mass of monastic chronicles. Among the earlier chroniclers were to be noted Eginard, Theganus, and Rodolphus of Fulda, who preserved the records of the dynasty of the Carlovingians. One of the earlier historians of Charlemagne was a monk of St. Gall, while the chronicles of that abbey, carried on by a long series of its writers, have left a most valuable and picturesque representation of successive epochs of its history. Regino, Abbot of Prüm, wrote a history of the ninth[58] century. Wittikind, a monk of Corvey, wrote the chronicles of the reign of Henry I., and of Otho the Great. Ditmar, who was at first a monk of Magdeburg and later Bishop of Mersebourg, has left a detailed chronicle, extending from 920 to 1018, of the emperors of the House of Saxony. Among the eleventh-century writers, is Hermannus Contractus, son of the Count of Woegen, who was brought up at St. Gall but was later attached to Reichenau. The history of the great struggle between the Church and the Empire was written by Lambert, a monk of Hersfeld, and continued by Berthold of Reichenau, Bernold of St. Blaise, and by Ekkhard, Abbot of Aurach.[77] The first historian of Poland was a French monk named Martin, while another monk of Polish origin, named Nestor, who died in 1116, composed the earliest annals of Russia (then newly converted to Christianity) which were known to Europe. Among the monkish historians of the eleventh century, the most noteworthy were William of Malmesbury, Gilbert of Nogent, Abbot Suger, and Odo of Deuil.

The persistent labour given by these monkish chroniclers to works, the interest and importance of which were largely outside the routine of their home monasteries and had in many cases no direct connection with religious observances, indicates that they were looking to a larger circle of readers than could be secured within the walls of their own homes. While the evidences concerning the arrangements for the circulation of these chronicles are at best but scanty, the inference is fairly to be drawn that through the interchange of books between the libraries of the monasteries, by means of the services of travelling monks, and in connection with the educational work of the majority of the monasteries, there came to be, as early as the ninth century, a very general circulation of the long series of chronicles among the scholarly readers of [59]Europe. Even the literary style in which the majority of the chronicles were written gives evidence that the writers were addressing themselves, not to one locality or to restricted circles of readers, but to the world as they knew it, and that they also had an assured confidence in the preservation of their work for the service and information of future generations. The historian Stenzel (himself a Protestant) points out that these monkish historians wrote under certain exceptional advantages which secured for their work a larger amount of impartiality and of accuracy of statement than could safely be depended upon with, for instance, what might be called Court chronicles, that is to say, histories which were the work of writers attached to the Courts. The monks, said Stenzel, in daring to speak the truth of those in power, had neither family nor property to endanger, and their writings, prepared under the eye of their monastic superiors and under the sovereign protection of the Church, escaped at once the coercion or the influence of contemporary rulers and the dangers of flattery for immediate popular appreciation.[78] In the same strain, Montalembert contends that the literary monks worked neither for gain nor for fame, but simply for the glory of God. They wrote amidst the peace and freedom of the cloister in all the candour and sincerity of their minds. Their only ambition was to be faithful interpreters of the teaching which God gives to men in history by reminding them of the ruin of the proud, the exaltation of the humble, and the terrible certainty of eternal judgment. He goes on to say that if princes and nobles never wearied of founding, endowing, and enriching monasteries, neither did the monks grow weary of chronicling the services and the exploits of their benefactors, in order to transmit these to posterity. Thus did they pay to the Catholic chivalry a just debt of gratitude.[79]

This pious opinion of Montalembert is a little naïve [60]in its expression when taken in connection with his previous conclusion that the records of the monks could be trusted implicitly for candour, sincerity, and impartiality. It is difficult to avoid the impression that in recording the deeds of the noble leaders of their time, the monks would naturally have given at least a full measure of attention and praise to those nobles who had been the greatest benefactors to their Order or to the particular monastery of the writer. The converse may also not unnaturally be assumed. If a monarch, prince, or noble leader should be neglectful of the claims of the monastery within his realm, if there might be ground to suspect the soundness of his faith to the Catholic Church, or doubt in regard to the adequacy of his liberality to his ecclesiastical subjects, it is probable that his exploits in war or in other directions were minimised or unrecorded. It is safe to assume also that after the Reformation, the Protestant side of the long series of complicated contests could hardly have been presented by the monkish chroniclers with perfect impartiality. Bearing in mind, however, how many personal influences may have operated to impair the accuracy and the impartiality of these chroniclers, they are certainly entitled to a full measure of appreciation for the inestimable service rendered by them in the long ages in which, outside of the monasteries, there were no historians. It seems also to have been the case that with many of the monks who devoted the larger portion of their lives to literary work, their ambition and ideals as authors overshadowed any petty monkish zeal for their Order or their monastery, and that it was their aim to present the events of their times simply as faithful historians.

An example of this high standard of work is presented by Ordericus Vitalis, who, as an English monk in a Norman abbey,[80] was able to say: “I will describe the revolutions of England and of Normandie without flattery to [61]any, for I expect my reward neither from the victors nor the vanquished.”[81]

Louis IX. took the ground that it was better to transcribe books than to purchase the originals, because in this way the mass of books available for the community was increased. Louis was, however, speaking only of religious literature; he could not believe that the world would be benefited by any distribution of the works of profane writers. Ziegelbauer is in accord with Montalembert and others in giving to the Benedictines of Iceland the credit for the collections made of the Eddas and for the preservation of the principal traditions of the Scandinavian mythology. He also confirms the conclusion arrived at by the Catholic historians generally, that the literary monuments of Greece and Rome which escaped the devastation of the barbarians were saved by the monks and by them alone. He cites, as a few examples from the long list of classics that were thus preserved, five books of the Annals of Tacitus, found at Corbie; the treatise of Lactantius on the Death of Persecutors, preserved at Moissac; the Auluraria of Plautus, and the Commentaries of Servius on Virgil, preserved in Fleury; the Republic of Cicero, found in the library of Fleury in the tenth century, etc.[83]

[62]

In confirmation of the statement that the classics were by no means neglected by the earlier monastery collectors, Montalembert cites Alcuin, who enumerated among the books in his library at York the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Pliny, Virgil, Statius, Lucan, and Trogus Pompeïus. A further reference to this library will be found in the chapter on the Monastery Schools. In Alcuin’s correspondence with Charlemagne, he quotes Ovid, Horace, Terence, and Cicero, and acknowledges that in his youth he had been more moved by the tears of Dido than by the Psalms of David.[84] Loup de Ferrières speaks of having borrowed from his friends the treatise De Oratore of Cicero, a Commentary on Terence, the works of Quintilian, Sallust, and Suetonius. He says further that he was occupying himself in correcting the text of the oration of Cicero against Verres, and that of Macrobius.[85] Abbot Didier of Monte Cassino, who later became Pope, succeeding Gregory VII., had transcripts made by his monks of the works of Horace and Seneca, of several treatises of Cicero, and of the Fasti of Ovid.[86] S. Anselm, Abbot of Bec in the time of Gregory VII., recommends to his pupils the careful study of Virgil and of other profane writers, “omitting the licentious passages.” Exceptis his in quibus aliqua turpitudo sonat.[87] It is not clear what method the abbot proposed to have pursued in regard to the selection of the passages to be eliminated. It is hardly probable that at this time there had been prepared, either for the use of the monks or of any other readers, anything in the form of expurgated editions. S. Peter Damian seems to have expressed the true mind of an important group at least of the churchmen of his time, when he referred to the study of pagan writers. He says: “To study poets and philosophers for the purpose of rendering the wit more keen and better fitted to penetrate [63]the mysteries of the Divine Word, is to spoil the Egyptians of their treasures in order to build a tabernacle for God.[88]”

Montalembert is of opinion, from his study of monastic history in France, that, at least during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, classic writers were probably more generally known and more generally appreciated than at the present day. He points out that the very fact of the existence of various ordinances and instructions intended to repress any intemperate devotion to the pagan writers is sufficient evidence of the extent of the interest in or passion for pagan literature. He cites among other rulers of the Church who issued protests or cautions against pagan literature, S. Basil, S. Jerome, S. Gregory, S. Radbert, S. Peter Damian, Lanfranc, etc., etc.[89] In the Customs of Clugni, there is a curious passage prescribing the different signs that were to be used in asking for books during the hours of silence, which indicates at once the frequency of these pagan studies, and also the grade of esteem in which they ought to be held by the faithful monk. The general rule, when asking for any book, was to extend the hand, making motions similar to those of turning over the leaves. In order, however, to indicate a pagan work, a monk was directed to scratch his ear as a dog does, because, says the regulation, unbelievers may well be compared to that animal.[90]

As before indicated, the work of transcribing manuscripts was held under the monastic rules to be a full equivalent of manual labour in the fields. The Rule of S. Ferreol, written in the sixth century, says that, “He who does not turn up the earth with the plough ought to write the parchment with his fingers.”[91] It is quite possible [64]that for men of the Middle Ages, who had little fondness for a sedentary life, work in the scriptorium may have been a more exacting task than work that could be carried on out-of-doors. There were no fires in the cells of the monks, and in many portions of Europe the cold during certain months of the year must, in the long hours of the day and night, have been severe. Montalembert quotes a monk of St. Gall who, on a corner of one of the beautiful manuscripts prepared in that abbey, has left the words: “He who does not know how to write imagines it to be no labour, but although these fingers only hold the pen, the whole body grows weary.” It became, therefore, natural enough to use this kind of labour as a penitential exercise.[92] Othlo, a monk of Tegernsee, who was born in 1013, has left an enumeration of the work of his pen which makes it difficult to understand how years enough had been found for such labour. The list includes nineteen missals, written and illuminated with his own hand, the production of which, he tells us, nearly cost him his eyesight.[93]

Dietrich or Theodoric, the first Abbot of St. Evroul (1050-1057), who was himself a skilled scribe (Ipse manu propria scribendo volumina plura), and who desired to incite his monks to earnest work as writers, related to them the story of a worldly and sinful Brother, who, notwithstanding his frivolities, was a zealous scribe, and who had, in industrious moments, written out an enormous folio volume containing religious instruction. When he died, the devil claimed his soul. The angels, however, brought before the throne of judgment the great book, and for each letter therein written, pardon was given for one sin, and behold, when the count was completed, there was one letter over; and, says Dietrich naïvely, it was a very big book. Thereupon, judgment was given that the soul of the monk [65]should be permitted again to enter his body, in order that he might go through a period of penance on earth.[94]

In the monastery of Wedinghausen, near Arnsberg in Westphalia, there was a skilled and zealous scribe named Richard, an Englishman, who spent many years in adding to the library of the institution. Twenty years after his death, when the rest of his body had crumbled into dust, the right hand, with which this holy work had been accomplished, was found intact, and has since been preserved under the altar as a holy relic.[95]

There has been more or less discussion as to whether in the scriptoria, it was the practice for monks to write at dictation. Knittel[96] takes the ground that the larger portion of the work was done so slowly, and probably with such a different degree of rapidity on the part of the different scribes, that it would have been as impracticable for it to have been prepared under dictation as it would be to do copper engraving under dictation. Ebert,[97] confirming Knittel’s conclusions, points out that when works were needed in haste, it was probably arranged to divide up the sheets to be copied among a number of scribes. He finds evidence of this arrangement of the work in a number of manuscripts, the different portions of which, put together under one cover, are evidently the work of different hands. Wattenbach specifies manuscripts in which not only are the different pages in different script, but the divisions have been written with varying arrangements of space; in some cases the space, which had been left for an interpolated chapter having evidently been wrongly measured, so that the script of such interpolated chapter had to be crowded together instead of having the [66]same spacing as that of the body of the work. Sickel presents examples of the letters of Alcuin which are evidently the work of a number of scribes. Each began his work with a new letter, and where, at the end of the divisions, leaves remained free, other letters were later written in. In the later Middle Ages, however, there is evidence of writing at dictation, and this practice began to obtain more generally as the results of the work of the scribes came to have commercial value. When the work of preparing manuscripts was transferred from the monasteries to the universities, dictation became the rule, and individual copying the exception. West finds evidence that as early as the time of Alcuin, the monks trained by him or in his schools, wrote from dictation. “In the intervals between the hours of prayer and the observance of the round of cloister life, come hours for the copying of books under the presiding direction of Alcuin. The young monks file into the scriptorium and one of them is given the precious parchment volume containing a work of Bede or Isidore or Augustine, or else some portion of the Latin Scriptures, or even a heathen author. He reads slowly and clearly at a measured rate while all the others, seated at their desks, take down his words; thus perhaps a score of copies are made at once. Alcuin’s observant eye watches each in turn and his correcting hand points out the mistakes in orthography and punctuation. The master of Charles the Great, in that true humility that is the charm of his whole behaviour, makes himself the writing-master of his monks, stooping to the drudgery of faithfully and gently correcting many puerile mistakes, and all for the love of studies and for the love of Christ. Under such guidance and deeply impressed by the fact that in the copying of a few books they were saving learning and knowledge from perishing, and thereby offering a service most acceptable to God, the copying in the scriptorium went on in sobriety from[67] day to day. Thus were produced those improved copies of books which mark the beginning of a new age in the conserving and transmission of learning. Alcuin’s anxiety in this regard was not undue, for the few monasteries where books could be accurately transcribed were as necessary for publication in that time as are the great publishing houses to-day.”[98]

Among the monasteries which, as early as the time of Charlemagne, developed special literary activity, was that of S. Wandrille, where the Abbot Gerwold (786-806) instituted one of the earlier schools of the empire. A priest named Harduin took charge of this school. He was said to be in hac arte non mediocriter doctus. It was further stated that, plurima ecclesiæ nostræ proprio sudore conscripta reliquit volumina, id est volumen quatuor evangeliorum Romana litera scriptum.[99] (He had left for one church many books written by the sweat of his brow, that is to say, a volume of the four Evangelists written in the “Roman letter.”) This expression, litera Romana, occurs frequently in the monastery chronicles and appears to indicate the uncial script. The scriptorium of St. Gall, in which was done some of the most elaborate or important of the earlier literary work of the monks, is frequently referred to in the chronicles of the monasteries. Another important scriptorium was that in the monastery of Tournai, which, under the rule of the Abbot Odo, won for itself great fame, so that its manuscripts were sought by the Fathers of the Church far and wide, for the purpose of correcting by them copies with less scholarly authority.[100]

The work of the scribes was not always voluntary; there is evidence that it was not unfrequently imposed as a penance. In a codex from Lorch[101] occur after the words, [68]Jacob scripsit, written in by another hand, the lines: Quandam partem hujus libri non spontanea voluntate, sed coactus, compedibus constrictus sicut oportet vagum atque fugitivum vincire.[102] (Jacob wrote ... a certain portion of this book not of his own free will but under compulsion, bound by fetters, just as a runaway and fugitive has to be bound.)

The aid of the students in the monastery schools was not unfrequently called in. Fromund of Tegernsee wrote under a codex: Cœpi hunc libellum, sed pueri nostri quos docui, meo juvamine perscripserunt.[103] (I began this book, but the students whom I taught, finished transcribing it with my help.)

The monk who was placed in charge of the armarium was called the armarius, and upon him fell the responsibility of providing the writing materials, of dividing the work, and probably also of preserving silence while the work was going on, and of reprimanding the writers of careless or inaccurate script. In some monasteries the armarius must also have been the librarian, and, in fact, as much of the work done in the writing-room was for the filling up of the gaps in the library, it would be natural enough for the librarian to have the planning of it. It was also the librarian, who, being in correspondence with the custodians of the libraries of other monasteries, was best able to judge what work would prove of service in securing new books in exchange for duplicates of those in his own monastery. Upon the librarius or armarius, or both, fell the responsibility of securing the loans of the codices of which copies were to be made. On such loans it was usually necessary to give security in the shape of pledges either of other manuscripts or of property apart from manuscripts.

The scribes were absolved from certain of the routine of the monastery work. They were called into the fields [69]or gardens only at the time of harvest, or in case of special need. They had also the privilege of visiting the kitchen, in order to polish their writing tablets, to melt their wax, and to dry their parchment.[104]

The custom of reading at meals, while a part of the usual monastic routine, was by no means confined to the monasteries. References to the use of books at the tables of the more scholarly noblemen are found as early as the time of Charlemagne. Eginhart records that Charlemagne himself while at supper was accustomed to listen to histories and the deeds of ancient kings. He delighted also in the books of S. Augustine and especially in the Civitate Dei.[105]

In England, after the Norman conquest, there was for a time a cessation of literary work in the Saxon monasteries. The Norman ecclesiastics, however, in taking possession of certain of the older monasteries and instituting also new monasteries of their own, carried on the production of manuscripts with no less zeal. One of the most important centres of literary activity in England was the monastery of St. Albans, where the Abbot Paul secured, about the year 1100, funds for instituting a scriptorium, and induced some wealthy friends to present some valuable codices for the first work of the scribes. As the monks at that time in St. Albans were not themselves skilled in writing, Paul brought scribes from a distance, and, through the liberality of his friends, secured funds by which they were paid daily wages, and were able to work undisturbed. It would appear from this description that some at least among these scribes were not themselves monks.

In the thirteenth century, Matthew Paris compiled his chronicles, the writing in which appears to have been, for the greater part at least, done by his own hand, but at this time, in a large proportion of the literary work carried [70]on in the English monasteries, the transcribing was done by paid scribes. This, however, was much less the case in the Continental monasteries. In Corbie, towards the latter half of the century, there is a record of zealous writing on the part of a certain Brother Nevelo. Nevelo tells us that he had a penance to work off for a grave sin, and that he was allowed to do this by work in the scriptorium.[106] During this century, the monasteries of the Carthusians were particularly active in their literary work, but this work was limited almost entirely to theological and religious undertakings. An exception is presented in the chronicles of the Frisian monk Emo. While Emo was still a school-boy, he gave the hours which his companions employed in play, to mastering penmanship and the art of illuminating. Later, he was, with his brother Addo, a student in the schools in Paris, Orleans, and Oxford, and while in these schools, in addition to their work as students, they gave long hours of labour, extending sometimes through the entire night, to the transcribing of chronicles and to the preparation of copies of the so-called heathen literature.

Emo was the first abbot of the monastery in Wittewierum (1204-1237), and it is recorded that the abbot, while his brothers were sleeping, devoted his nights to the writing and illuminating of the choir books. In this monastery, Emo succeeded in bringing together in the armarium librorum an important collection of manuscripts, and he took pains himself to give instructions to the monks in their work as scribes.

The quaint monastic record entitled the Customs of Clugni was written by Ulrich, a monk of Clugni, some time between the years 1077 and 1093 at the request or under the instructions of William, Abbot of Hirschau. This was the Abbot William extolled by Trithemius as having restored the Order of S. Benedict, which had [71]almost fallen into ruin in Germany. Trithemius speaks of his having founded eight monasteries and restored more than one hundred, and says that next to the reformation wrought by the foundation and influence of Clugni, the work done by Abbot William was the most important recorded in the annals of his Order.

William trained twelve of his monks to be excellent writers, and to these was committed the office of transcribing the Holy Scriptures and the treatises of the Fathers. Besides these, there were in the scriptorium of Hirschau a large number of lesser scribes, who wrought with equal diligence in the transcription of other books. In charge of the scriptorium was placed a monk “well versed in all kinds of knowledge,” whose business it was to assign the task for each scribe and to correct the mistakes of those who wrote negligently. William was Abbot of Hirschau for twenty-two years, and during this time his monks wrote a great many volumes, a large proportion of which were distributed to supply the wants of other and more needy monasteries.

There was often difficulty, particularly in the less wealthy monasteries, in securing the parchment required for their work. It is evident from such account-books as have been preserved, that throughout the whole of Europe, but particularly in the north of the Continent and in England, parchment continued to be a very costly commodity until quite late in the thirteenth century. It was not unnatural that, as a result of this difficulty, the monastic scribes should, when pressed for material, have occasionally utilised some old manuscript by cleaning off the surface, for the purpose of making a transcript of the Scriptures, of some saintly legend, or of any other religious work the writing of which came within the range of their daily duty.

There has been much mourning on the part of the scholars over the supposed value of precious classics which[72] may thus have been destroyed, or of which but scanty fragments have been preserved in the lower stratum of the palimpsest. Robertson is particularly severe upon the ignorant clumsiness of the monks in thus destroying, for the sake of futile legends, so much of the great literature of the world. Among other authors, Robertson quotes in this connection Montfaucon as saying that the greater part of the manuscripts on parchment which he had seen (those of an ancient date excepted), are written on parchment from which some former treatise had been erased. Maitland, who is of opinion that the destruction of ancient literature brought about by the monks has been much overestimated, points out that Robertson has not quoted Montfaucon correctly, the statement of the latter being expressly limited to manuscripts written since the “twelfth century.” It is Maitland’s belief that a large proportion of the palimpsests or doubly written manuscripts which bear date during the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries, represent, as far as they are monastic at all, not monastery writings placed upon classic texts, but monastery work replacing earlier works of the monastery scriptoria. Partial confirmation of this view is the fact that so large an interest was taken by monks in all parts of Europe in the preservation and transcribing of such classical works as came into their hands. In fact, as previously pointed out, the preservation of any fragments whatsoever of classical literature is due to the intelligent care of the monks. To the world outside of the monastery, the old-time manuscripts were, with hardly an exception, little more than dirty parchments.

It seems probable that a great part of such scraping of old manuscripts as was done was not due to the requirements of the legends or missals, but was perpetrated in order to carry on the worldly business of secular men. An indication of the considerable use of parchment for business purposes, and of instances of what we should[73] to-day call its abuse, is the fact that, as late as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, notaries were forbidden to practise until they had taken an oath to use none but new parchment.[107]

The belief that the transcribing of good books was in itself a protection against the wiles of the evil one, naturally added to the feeling of regard in which the writer held his work, a feeling under the influence of which it became not unusual to add at the close of the manuscript an anathema against any person who should destroy or deface it. A manuscript of St. Gall contains the following:

[Let no one through all ages who wishes to have any part with Gallus (the Saint or the Abbey) remove (or purloin) this book.]

In a Sacramentary of the ninth century given to St. Bénoît-sur-Loire, the donor, having sent the volume as a present from across seas, devotes to destruction like to that which came upon Judas, Ananias, and Caiaphas any person who should remove the book from the monastery.[109] In a manuscript of S. Augustine, now in the Bodleian Library is written: “This book belongs to S. Mary of Robert’s Bridge; whosoever shall steal it or sell it, or in any way alienate it from this house, or mutilate it, let him be anathema maranatha. Amen.” A later owner had found himself sufficiently troubled by this imprecation to write beneath: “I, John, Bishop of Exeter, know not where the aforesaid house is, nor did I steal this book, but acquired it in a lawful way.”[110]

In an exhortation to his monks, delivered in 1486, by John of Trittenheim (or Trithemius), Abbot of Sponheim, [74]the abbot, after rebuking the monks for their sloth and negligence, goes on to say: “I have diminished your labours out of the monastery, lest by working badly you should only add to your sins; and have enjoined on you the manual labour of writing and binding books.... There is, in my opinion, no labour more becoming a monk than the writing of ecclesiastical books, and preparing what is needful for others who write them, for this holy labour will generally admit of being interrupted by prayer and of watching for the food of the soul no less than of the body. Need also urges us to labour diligently in writing books if we desire to have at hand the means of usefully employing ourselves in spiritual studies. For you will recall that all the library of this monastery, which formerly was so fine and complete, had been dissipated, sold, and made away with by the disorderly monks before us, so that when I came here, I found but fourteen volumes. It is true that the industry of the printing art, lately, in our own day, discovered at Mentz, produces many volumes every day; but depressed as we are by poverty, it is impossible for us to buy them all.”[111]

It was certainly the case that, after the invention of printing, there was a time during which manuscripts came to be undervalued, neglected, and even destroyed by wholesale, but Maitland is of opinion that this time had been prepared for by a long period of gradually increasing laxity of discipline and morals in many monastic institutions. This view is borne out by the history of the Reformation, the popular feeling in regard to which was undoubtedly very much furthered by the demoralisation of the monasteries, a demoralisation which naturally carried with it a breaking down of literary interests and pursuits. There had, for some time, been less multiplication, less care, and less use of books, and many a fine collection had mouldered away. According to Martene [75]and Mabillon, the destruction due to the heedlessness of the monks themselves was largely a matter of the later times, that is, of the fifteenth century and the last half of the fourteenth century.

Maitland is of the opinion that in the later portions of the Middle Ages the work of the monastic scribes was more frequently carried on not in a general writing-room, but in separate apartments or cells, which were not usually large enough to contain more than one person. Owing to the fact that writing was the chief and almost only in-doors business of a monk not engaged in religious service, and because of the great quantity of work that was done and the number of cells devoted to it, these small rooms came to be generally referred to as scriptoria, even when not actually used or particularly intended for the purpose of writing. Thus we are told that Arnold, Abbot of Villers in Brabant, from 1240 to 1250, when he resigned his office, occupied a scriptorium (he called it a scriptoriolum or little writing cell), where he lived as a private person in his own apartment.[112] These separate cells were usually colder and in other ways less comfortable than the common scriptorium. Lewis, a monk of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, in an inscription addressed to the reader, in a copy he had prepared of Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel, says: Dum scripsit friguit, et quod cum lumine solis scribere non potuit, perfecit lumine noctis.[113] (He was stiff with cold, while he wrote, and what he could not write by the light of the sun, he completed by the light of night.) There is evidence, however, in some of the better equipped monasteries, of the warming of the cells by hot air from the stove in the calefactory. Martene mentions that when S. Bernard, owing to the illness produced by his early austerities, was compelled by the Bishop of Chalons to retire to a cell, he could not be persuaded to relax the severity of his asceticism [76]so far as to permit the introduction of any fireplace or other means of warming it. His friends, however, contrived, with pious fraud, to heat his cell without his knowledge, by introducing hot air through the stone floor under the bed.[114]

The scriptorium of earlier times was, however, as previously described, an apartment specially set aside as a general workroom and capable of containing many workers, and in which many persons did, in fact, work together, usually under the direction of a librarius or chief scribe, in a very business-like manner, in the transcription of books. Maitland quotes from a document, which is, he states, one of the very few existing specimens of French Visigothic manuscripts in the uncial character, and which dates from the eighth century, the following form of consecration or benediction, entitled (in monastic Latin) Orationem in scriptorio: “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to bless this scriptorium of Thy servants and all that work therein: that whatsoever sacred writings shall be here read or written by them, they may receive with understanding and may bring the same to good effect.”[115] (see also page 61).

In the more carefully constructed monasteries, the scriptorium was placed to adjoin the calefactory, which simplified the problem of the introduction of hot air.

A further evidence, if such were needed, that the larger literary undertakings were carried on in a scriptorium common room and not in separate cells, is given by the regulation of the general Chapter of the Cistercian Order in 1134, which directs that the same silence should be maintained in the scriptorium as in the cloister: In omnibus scriptoriis ubicunque ex consuetudine monachi scribunt, silentium teneatur sicut in claustro.[116]

Odo, who in 1093 became Abbot of S. Martin at Tournai, [77]writes that he confided the management of the outside work of the monastery to Ralph, the prior. This left the abbot free to devote himself to reading and to supervising the work in his scriptorium. Odo exulted in the number of writers whom the Lord had given to him. “If you had gone into the cloister during the working hours, you would have seen a dozen scribes writing, in perfect silence, at tables constructed for the purpose.” Odo caused to be transcribed all of Jerome’s Commentaries on the Prophets, all the works of S. Gregory, and all the works that he could find of S. Augustine, S. Ambrose, Bishop Isidore, the Venerable Bede, and Anselm, then Abbot of Bec and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Odo’s successor, Heriman, who gives this account, says with pride that such a library as Odo brought together in S. Martin could hardly be paralleled in any monastery in the country, and that other monasteries were begging for texts from S. Martin’s with which to collate and correct their own copies.[117]

Maitland mentions that certain of the manuscripts written in Odo’s scriptorium, including the fourth volume of the Gregorialis of Alulfus, were (in 1845) in the library of Dr. Todd, of Trinity College, Dublin.[118]

In estimating the extent of book production of the manuscript period, we may very easily place too large a comparative weight on the productive power of the Press. Maitland points out that although the power of multiplication of literary productions was, of course, during the Dark Ages infinitely below that which now exists, and while the entire book production of the two periods may not be compared, yet as regards those books which were considered as the standard works in sacred literature and in the approved secular literature, the difference was not so extreme as may easily be supposed. He enquires, to [78]emphasise his point, what proportion the copies of Augustine’s City of God and of Gregory’s Morals, printed between the years 1700 and 1800, bear to those written between the years 1100 and 1200.[119]

I think, with Maitland, that, according to the evidence on record, for books such as those given above as typical examples, the written production during the century selected would probably have exceeded the number of copies of the same books turned out by the printing-presses during the eighteenth century. We must recall to ourselves that for a term of six or seven centuries, writing was a business, and was also a religious duty; an occupation taken up by choice and pursued with a degree of zeal, persistence, and enthusiasm for which in the present day there is no parallel.

Mabillon speaks of a volume by Othlonus, a monk of S. Emmeram’s at Ratisbon, who was born about the year 1013. In this book, which is entitled De ipsius tentationibus, varia fortuna, et scriptis, the monk gives an account of his literary labours and of the circumstances which led to his writing the various works bearing his name.

“For the same reason, I think proper to add an account of the great knowledge and capacity for writing which was given me by the Lord in my childhood. When as yet a little child, I was sent to school and quickly learned my letters, and I began, long before the usual time of learning and without any order from the master, to learn the art of writing. Undertaking this in a furtive and unusual manner, and without any teacher, I got a habit of holding my pen wrongly, nor were any of my teachers afterwards able to correct me on that point; for I had become too much accustomed to it to be able to change. Those who saw my earlier work unanimously decided that I should never write well. After a short time the facility came to me, and while I was in the monastery of Tegernsee [79](in Bavaria) I wrote many books.... Being sent to Franconia while I was yet a boy, I worked so hard at writing that before I returned I had nearly lost my sight.... After I became a monk in the monastery of S. Emmeram, I was appointed the schoolmaster. The duties of this office so fully occupied my time, that I was able to do the transcribing in which I was interested only by night and on holidays.... I was, however, able, in addition to writing the books which I had myself composed, and the copies of which I gave away for the edification of those who asked for them, to prepare nineteen missals (ten for the abbots and monks in our own monastery, four for the brethren at Fulda, and five for those in other places), three books of the Gospels, and two with the Epistles and Gospels, which are called Lectionaries; besides which, I wrote four service-books for matins. I wrote in addition a good many books for the brethren at Fulda, for the monks at Hirschfeld and at Amerbach, for the Abbot of Lorsch, for certain friends at Passau, and for other friends in Bohemia, for the monastery of Tegernsee, for the monastery of Pryel, for the monastery of Obermünster and for that of Niedermünster, and for my sister’s son. Moreover, to many others I gave or sent, at different times, sermons, proverbs, and edifying writings.... Afterwards, old age’s infirmity of various kinds hindered me.”[120]

If there were many hundred scribes of the diligence of Othlonus, the mass of literature produced in the scriptorium may very easily have rivalled the later output of the printing-presses. The labours of Othlonus were, if the records are to be trusted, eclipsed by those of the nun Diemude or Diemudis of the monastery of Wessobrunn. An anonymous monk of this monastery, writing in the year 1513, says:

“Diemudis was formerly a most devout nun of this our [80]monastery of Wessobrunn. [Pez states that Diemudis lived in the time of Gregory VII., who became Pope in 1073. She was, therefore, though probably somewhat younger, a contemporary of the monk Othlonus of Ratisbon.] For our monastery was formerly double or divided into two parts; that is to say, of monks and nuns. The place of the monks was where it now is; but that of the nuns, where the parish church now stands. This virgin was most skilful in the art of writing: for though she is not known to have composed any work, yet she wrote with her own hand many volumes in a most beautiful and legible character, both for divine service and for the public library of the monastery. Of these books she has left a list in a certain plenarius.[121] The titles are as follows:

A Missal, with the Gradual and Sequences. Another Missal, with the Gradual and Sequences, given to the Bishop of Trèves. Another Missal, with the Epistles, Gospels, Graduals, and Sequences. Another Missal, with the Epistles and Gospels for the year, the Gradual and Sequences, and the entire service for baptism. A Missal, with Epistles and Gospels. A Book of Offices. Another Book of Offices, with the baptismal service (given to the Bishop of Augsburg). A Book, with the Gospels and Lessons. A Book, with the Gospels. A Book, with the Epistles. A Bible, in two volumes, given for the estate in Pisinberch. A Bible, in three volumes. S. Gregory ad regaredum. S. Gregory on Ezekiel. Sermons and Homilies of certain ancient Doctors, three volumes. Origen on the Old Testament. Origen on the Canticles. Augustine on the Psalms, three volumes. Augustine on the Gospels and on the First Epistle of S. John, two volumes. Augustine, Epistles, to the number of lxxv. Augustine, Treatises. S. Jerome’s Epistles, to the number of clxiv. The Tripartite History of Cassiodorus. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. [81]S. Augustine, Fifty Sermons. The Life of S. Silvester. Jerome against Vigilantius. Jerome, De Consolatione Mortuorum. The Life of S. Blasius. The Life of John the Almoner, Patriarch of Alexandria early in the seventh century. Paschasius on the Body and Blood of Christ. The Conflict of Lanfranc with Berengarius. The Martyrdom of S. Dionysius. The Life of S. Adrian. S. Jerome, De Hebraicis Quæstionibus. S. Augustine, Confessions. Canons. Glossa per A. B. C. Composita (i. e., a Gloss alphabetically arranged).

These are the volumes written with her own hand by the aforesaid handmaid of God, Diemudis, to the praise of God and of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the patrons of the monastery.”[122]

The same writer says that Diemudis (whom he calls exaratrix diligentissima) carried on a correspondence by very sweet letters (epistolæ suaves valde) with Herluca, who was for thirty-six years a nun at Eppach, and that the letters were in his time (1513), that is four and a half centuries later, extant in the monastery of Bernried.

Certain of the monasteries, in connection with their [82]literary activity in behalf of the Pope, came into special disfavour with the Emperor. Among them was Hirschau, the importance of whose literary work has been previously referred to. This monastery fell under the displeasure of the Emperor Frederick IV., but the monks, says their own annalist, sustained by their prayers, braved the sword of the tyrant and despised the menaces of offended princes.[124] Abbot William of Hirschau had for twenty-two years been the soul of monastic regeneration in Germany. He was one of the great scholars of his time and had done not a little to further the literary pre-eminence of his monastery, and he became one of the most valiant defenders of the popes during this contest. Among other ecclesiastical writers whose pens were active in the defence of the papal decrees and in assailing the utterances of the schismatics, and whose work, by means of the distributing machinery which had already been organised between the monasteries, secured for the time a large circulation, were Bernard, at one time master of the schools of Constance, but later a monk at Hirschau; Bernold, a monk of St. Blaise; Adelbert, a monk of Constance; and Gebhard, another monk of Hirschau.[125]

Gregory was possibly the first pope who made effective and extended use of the writings of devout authors for the purpose of influencing public opinion. If we may judge by the results of his long series of contests with the imperial power in Germany, the selection of these literary weapons was one proof of his sagacity. In this contest, the scriptoria of the monasteries proved more powerful than the armies of the emperors; as, five hundred years later, the printing-presses of the Protestants proved more effective than the Bulls of the Papacy.

The most important, in connection with its influence and consequences, of the discoveries made by scholars concerning the fraudulent character of historic documents, [83]occurred as late as the beginning of the fifteenth century. It was about 1440 when Laurentius Valla, at that time acting as secretary for King Alphonso of Naples, wrote his report upon the famous Donation of Constantine, the document upon which the Roman Church had for nearly a thousand years based its claims to be the direct representative in Western Europe of the old imperial authority. Valla brought down upon his head much ecclesiastical denunciation. The evidences produced by him of the fact that the document had been fabricated a century or more after the death of Constantine could not be gotten rid of, and, although for a number of years the Church continued to maintain the sacred character of the Donation, and has, in fact, never formally admitted that it was fraudulent, it was impossible, after the beginning of the sixteenth century, even for the ecclesiastics themselves to base any further claims for the authority of the Church upon this discredited parchment.

Of almost equal importance was the discovery of the fabrication of the pseudo Isidoric Decretals. The Decretals had been concocted early in the ninth century by certain priests in the West Frankish Church, and had been eagerly accepted by Pope Nicholas I., who retained in the archives of the Vatican the so-called originals. The conclusion that the Decretals had been fraudulently imposed upon the Church was not finally accepted until the beginning of the fourteenth century. It was with the humanistic movement of the Renaissance that historical criticism had its birth, and a very important portion of the work of such criticism consisted in the analysis of the lack of foundation of a large number of fabulous legends upon which many of the claims of the Church had been based.

There were evidently waves of literary interest and activity in the different monasteries, between which waves the art of writing fell more or less into disuse and the libraries were neglected. In the monastery at Murbach,[84] for instance, in which, in the beginning of the century, important work had been done, it is recorded that in 1291 no monks were found who were able to write, and the same was said in 1297 of the more famous monastery of St. Gall.[126] On the other hand, the newly organised Orders of travelling or mendicant monks took an active interest in preparing and in distributing manuscript copies of works of doctrine at about the time when, in the older and richer Orders, literary earnestness was succumbing to laziness and luxury. With these mendicant monks, began also to come into circulation a larger proportion of original writings, transcribed and corrected, and probably to some extent sold by the authors themselves. Richard de Bury makes bitter references in his Philobiblon (chapters v. and vi.) to the general antagonism of the Church towards literature, but speaks with appreciation of the educational services rendered by the mendicant monks. Writing was done also by the monks of the Minorite Order, but their rules and their methods of life called for such close economy that the manuscripts left by them are distinguished by the meagreness and inadequacy of the material and the closely crowded script, which, in order further to save space, contains many abbreviations.

Roger Bacon is said to have come into perplexity because, when he wished to send his treatises to Pope Clement IV., he could find no one among the Brothers of his Order who was able to assist him in transcribing the same, while scribes outside of the Order to whom he attempted to entrust the work gave him untrustworthy and slovenly copies.[127]

With the beginning of the fourteenth century, it is possible to note a scholarly influence exercised upon certain of the monasteries by the universities. The most enterprising [85]of the monks made opportunities for themselves to pass some years of their novitiate in one or more of the universities, or later secured leave of absence from the monasteries for the purpose of visiting the universities. It also happened that from the monasteries where literary work had already been successfully carried on, monks were occasionally called to the universities in order to further the literary undertakings of the theological faculties. Finally, the abbots, and other high officials of the monasteries, were, after the beginning of the fourteenth century, more frequently appointed from among the ecclesiastics who had had a university training.

The library in Heidelberg, the university of which dates from 1386, received from the monastery at Salem a large number of beautiful manuscripts, and finally, an illuminated breviary was completed in 1494 by the Cistercian Amandus, who, after the destruction of his monastery in Strasburg, had found refuge in Salem, where in 1529 he became abbot. There is evidence that, at this time, both in Salem and in other monasteries in which the business of manifolding and of selling or exchanging manuscripts became important, a large proportion of the work of illustrating or illuminating was done by paid artists.

After the reform movement which began with the Council of Basel, there came into existence, in connection with the renewal of theological discussions, a fresh literary activity in many of the monasteries. In the monastery at Camp, in 1440, the library was renewed and very much extended, and here were written by Guillaume de Reno, scriptor egregius nulli illo tempore in arte sua secundus, the Catholicon, books of the Mass, and other devotional works. Abbot Heinrich von Calcar provided Guillaume for eighteen years with a yearly supply of parchment, valued at seventeen florins, and of other writing material.

In Michelsberg, Abbot Ulrich III. (1475-1483) and his successor Andreas restored the long-time deserted library,[86] and by work by the scribes of the monastery and through the exchange of works for the productions of other monasteries, secured an important collection of manuscripts. In 1492, Andreas, abbot of the monastery of Bergen, near Magdeburg, renewed the scriptorium, which, later, became active in the production of copies of works connected with this earlier reformation.

Adolph von Hoeck, who died in 1516, Prior of Scheda in Westphalia, was a skilled scribe as well as a zealous reformer. In Monsee, a certain Brother, Jacob of Breslau, who died in 1480, was said to have written so many volumes that six horses could with difficulty bear the burden of them.[128] In the monastery at Tegernsee, already referred to, there was, under Abbot Conrad V. (1461-1492), an active business in the manifolding and distribution of writings. The same was the case in Blaubeuern, where, as early as 1475, a printing-press was put into operation, but the preparation of manuscripts continued until the end of the century. Among the works issued from Blaubeuern in manuscript form after the beginning of printing, were the Chronicles of Monte Cassino, by Andreas Ysingrin, completed in 1477, and the Life of the Holy Wilhelm of Hirschau, by Brother Silvester, completed in 1492.[129]

This year of 1492 appears to have been one of exceptional intellectual as well as physical activity. It records not merely the completion of a number of important works marking the close of the manuscript period of literary production, but the publication, as will be noted in a later chapter, of a long series of the more important of the earlier printed books in Mayence, Basel, Venice, Milan, and Paris.

In Belgium, through the first half of the fifteenth century, while many of the monasteries had fallen into a condition of luxurious inactivity, work was still carried on [87]in the Laurentium monastery of Liége by Johann of Stavelot, and by other zealous scribes, and in several other of the Benedictine monasteries of the Low Countries the scriptoria were kept busied. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, and for some years after the beginning of the work of the German printers, the production of manuscripts in Germany continued actively in the monastery of S. Peter at Erfurt, and in the monasteries of S. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, the work of which has been recorded with full precision and detail in the famous catalogue of Wilhelm Wittwer.

In 1472, in this latter monastery, Abbot Melchior founded the first printing-office at Augsburg in order to give to the monks continued employment, and in order also to be able to enlarge the library by producing copies of books for exchange. It was a long time, however, before the work of the printing-press came to be sufficiently understood to bring to a stop the labours of the scribes in manifolding manuscripts for sale and for exchange. The writings of the nun Helena of Hroswitha, the Chronicle of Urspergense, and other works continued to be prepared in manuscript form after printed editions were in the market. The same was the case with the great choir books, which continued during nearly half the century to be very largely prepared by hand in the scriptoria. This persistence of the old methods was partly due to habit and to the difficulty of communication with the centres in which the printing-presses were already at work, but was very largely, of course, the result of the fact that in the monasteries was always available a large amount of labour, and that the use of this labour for the preparation of sacred books had come to form part of the religious routine of the institution.

With the development of the system of common schools, the educational work which had previously been carried on in the convents was very largely given up, thus throwing upon the hands of the monks a still greater proportion[88] of leisure time. In 1492, Johann of Trittenheim, Abbot of Sponheim, wrote to the Abbot Gerlach of Deutz a letter, De Laude Scriptorum, in which he earnestly invokes the scribes (he was addressing the scribes of the monasteries) by no means to permit themselves to be deterred from their holy occupation by the invasion of the printing-presses. Such admonitions might continue the work of the monks in certain of the scriptoria, but were, of course, futile in the attempt to preserve for any length of time the business of circulating manuscript copies in competition with the comparatively inexpensive, and often beautiful, productions of the printers.

An important part in the work of the preparation and distribution of manuscripts was taken by the so-called “Brothers of common life” (clerici de vita communi), who later, also occupied themselves with the new invention of printing. They cannot properly be classed with the scribes of the monasteries, for they made their work a trade and a means of revenue. This practice obtained, to be sure, also with certain of the monasteries, but it must be considered as exceptional with them. The Brothers differed also from the writers in the university towns and elsewhere, who prepared manuscripts for renting out to students and readers, partly because of the special conditions of their Brotherhood, under which the earnings of individual Brothers all went into a common treasury, but chiefly because they made their work as scribes a means of religious and moral instruction. The earnings secured from the sale of manuscripts were also largely devoted to the missionary work of the Brotherhood. The chief authority for the history of the Brotherhood is the work of Delprat, published in Amsterdam in 1856.

The Brotherhood house in Deventer, Holland, founded by Gerhard Groote in 1383, became an important workshop for the production and distribution of manuscripts. Delprat states that the receipts from these sales were[89] for a time the main support of the Brotherhood house. In 1389, a copy of the Bible which had been written out by Brother Jan von Enkhuizen was sold for five hundred gulden in gold.[130] In Liége, the Brothers were known as Broeders van de Penne, because they carried quill pens in their caps. Groote seems himself to have taken a general supervision of this business of the production of books, selecting the books to be manifolded, verifying the transcripts, and arranging for the sale of the copies which were passed as approved. Florentius Radewijus had the general charge of the manuscripts (filling the rôle which to-day would be known as that of stock clerk) and of preparing the parchment for the scribes and writing in the inscriptions of the finished manuscripts. Later, with the development of the Order and the extension of its book business, each Brotherhood house had its librarius, or manager of the manufacturing and publishing department; its rubricator, who added the initial letters or illuminated letters in the more expensive manuscripts; its ligator, who had charge of the binding, etc.

It was a distinctive feature of the works prepared by the Brothers that they were very largely written in the language of the land instead of in Latin, which elsewhere was, as we have seen, the exclusive language for literature. It was, in fact, one of the charges made by the ecclesiastics against the Order that they put into common language doctrinal instruction which ordinary readers, without direct guidance of the Church, were not competent to understand, and which tended, therefore, to work mischief. In 1398, the Brothers took counsel on the point whether it were permissible to distribute among the people religious writings in Low German, and they appear to have secured the authorisation required. They laid great stress upon the precision of their script, and they were, as a rule, opposed to needless expenditure for ornamentation of [90]text or of covers. Under the influence of Groote, the work of preparing manuscripts of good books was taken up by the monks and the nuns of Windesheim, but, according to Busch, the books produced in Windesheim were but rarely sold. In some cases these seem to have been distributed gratis, while in others they were given in exchange for other books required for the library of the monastery or convent.[131]

Wattenbach says that the Brothers in the Home at Hildesheim were called upon for an exceptional amount of labour in preparing books of the Mass and other devotional works in connection with the reform movement in the monasteries of lower Saxony, which was active in the middle of the fifteenth century. In the year 1450 (the year in which Gutenberg perfected his printing-press) it is recorded that the Hildesheim Brothers earned from the sale of their manuscripts no less than a thousand gulden.[132] In connection with their interest in the production and distribution of cheap literature, the Brothers did not fail to make very prompt and intelligent utilisation of the new invention of printing, and among the earlier printing-offices established in Germany and in the Low Countries were those organised by the Brothers at Deventer, Zwoll, Gouda, Bois-le-duc, Brussels, Louvain, Marienthal, Rostock, etc.

Before the literary work of the English monasteries [91]began, there was already in existence a considerable body of literature, which was the expression of the pre-christian conceptions and ideals of the Anglo-Saxons and their Scandinavian kinsmen. Certain of the most famous of the literary creations of the Anglo-Saxons were probably produced subsequent to the time of the acceptance by the people of Christianity, but these productions continued to represent the imagination and the methods of thought of the pagan ancestry, and to utilise as their themes the old-time legends. These Saxon compositions were almost exclusively in the form of poems, epics, and ballads devoted to accounts of the achievements of heroes (more or less legendary) in their wars with each other, and in their adventures with the gods and with the powers of magic and evil. In these early epics, devoted chiefly to strife, women bear but a small part, and the element of love enters hardly at all.

While it is doubtless the case that the Saxon epics, like the Greek poems of the Homeric period and the compositions of the Celtic bards, were preserved for a number of generations in the memories of the reciters, there are references indicating that the writing of the texts on the parchment began at a comparatively early date after the occupation of England. This would imply the existence of some trained scribes before work was begun in the scriptoria of the Saxon monasteries. Such lay scribes must, however, have been very few indeed, and the task of handing down for posterity the old legendary ballads must have depended chiefly upon the scops, which was the name given to the poets or bards attached to the court of a prince or chieftain. It is, however, not until the acceptance of Christianity by the Saxons that there comes to be any abiding interest in letters. As Jusserand puts it: “These same Anglo-Saxons, whose literature at the time of their invasion consisted of the songs mentioned by Tacitus, carmina antiqua, which they trusted to memory[92] alone, who compiled no books, and who for written monuments had Runic inscriptions graven on utensils or on commemorative stones, now have in their turn monks who compose chronicles and kings who know Latin. Libraries are formed in the monasteries; schools are attached to them; manuscripts are thus copied and illuminated in beautiful caligraphy and in splendid colours. The volutes and knots with which the worshippers of Woden ornamented their fibulæ, their arms, the prows of their ships, are reproduced in purple and azure, the initials of the Gospels. The use made of them is different, the taste remains the same.”

It is undoubtedly the case that the preservation of such fragments of Anglo-Saxon literature as have come down to us, and probably of most of the Scandinavian compositions which were transmitted through the Saxons, was due to the monastery scribes whose copies were in part transcribed from the earlier parchments and in part were taken down from the recitals made in the monasteries by the bards or minstrels. The service was in fact similar to that previously rendered by the Irish monks to Celtic literature, and by the scribes of Gaul and Italy to the writings of classic times.

The identity or kinship of much of the heroic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons with that of the Scandinavians is pointed out by Grein in his Anglo-Saxon Library, and by Vigfusson and York-Powell in their Corpus Poeticum Boreale. The greatest of the old English epics, Beowulf, sometimes called “the Iliad of the Saxons,” was put into written form some time in the eighth century and, like all similar epics, was doubtless the result of the weaving together of a series of ballads of varied dates and origins. The text of the poem has been preserved almost complete in a manuscript, now placed in the Cottonian collection in the British Museum, which dates from the latter part of the tenth century.

[93]

It will be understood that, as a matter of convenience in a brief reference of this kind, I am using the term Saxon and Anglo-Saxon in no strict ethnological sense, but simply to designate the Teutonic element of the people of England, an element whose influence is usually considered to have begun with the landing of Hengist and Horsa in 451.

The first of the Anglo-Saxon monks to be ranked as a poet appears to have been the cowherd Cædmon, a vassal of the Abbess Hilda and a monk of Whitby. Caædmon’s songs were sung about 670. He is reported to have put into verse the whole of Genesis and Exodus, and, later, the life of Christ and the Acts of the Apostles, but his work was not limited to the paraphrasing of the Scriptures. A thousand years before the time of Paradise Lost, the Northumbrian monk sang before the Abbess Hilda the Revolt of Satan. Fragments of this poem, discovered by Archbishop Usher, and printed for the first time in 1655, have been preserved, and have since that date been frequently published.[133] Cædmon died in 680, and Milton in 1674. The Abbess Hilda, who was herself a princess of royal family, appears to have had a large interest in furthering the study of literature, not only in the nunnery founded by her, but in a neighbouring monastery which came largely under her influence. In both nunnery and monastery, schools for the children of the district were instituted, which schools were probably the earliest of their class in that portion of Britain.

The Northumbrian poet Cynewulf, whose work was done between the years 760 and 800, may be referred to as a connecting link between the group of national or popular bards and the literary workers of the Church. His earlier years were passed as a wandering minstrel, but later in life he passed through some religious experience and entered a monastery, devoting himself thereafter to [94]religious poetry. His conversion was doubtless the means of preserving (through the scriptorium of his monastery) such of his compositions as have remained, and thus of making a place for his name among the authors of England.

Among the earlier Saxon monks whose educational work was important are to be included S. Wilfred (634-709) and S. Cuthbert (637-687). Wilfred introduced into England the Rule of the Benedictines, and exercised a most important influence in instituting Benedictine monasteries and in bringing these monasteries into relations with the Church of Rome. His life was a stormy one, but notwithstanding the various contentions with the several monarchs who at that time divided between them the territory of England, and in spite of several periods of banishment, he found time to carry on a great work in furthering the intellectual life of his Benedictine monks. It was largely due to him that the Benedictine monasteries accepted almost from the first the responsibility of conducting the schools of the land. These schools achieved so great repute that Anglo-Saxons of high rank were eager to confide their children to Wilfred to be brought up in one of his monastic establishments. At the close of their school training they were to choose between the service of God and that of the King. Wilfred is also to be credited with the establishing within the English monasteries of a course of musical instruction, the teachers of which had largely been trained in the great school of Gregorian music at Canterbury.

Another of the Saxon abbots whose name remains associated with the intellectual life of the monasteries was Benedict Biscop. Montalembert speaks of Biscop as representing science and art in the Church, as Wilfred had stood for the organising of the English Church as a public body, and Cuthbert for the renewal and development of its life. The monasteries of Wearmouth and of Yarrow,[95] founded by Biscop, were endowed with great libraries and became the centres of an active literary life. Biscop made no less than six journeys to Rome in the interest of his monastery work, and, in the seventh century, a journey to Rome from Britain was not an easy experience. His fourth expedition, begun in the year 671, was undertaken partly in the interests of literature and for the purpose of securing books for the education of his monks. He obtained in the Papal capital a rich cargo of books, some of which he had purchased while others were given to him. In Vienne, the ancient capital of Gaul, he secured a further collection. The monastery of Wearmouth, founded in 673, had the benefit of a large portion of the books brought from Italy by the abbot. It was his desire that each monastery for which he was responsible should possess a library, which seemed to him indispensable for the instruction, discipline, and the good organisation of the community. Biscop’s fifth journey was made partly for the purpose of securing pictures, coloured images, and artistic decorations for the chapel of the monastery, but the sixth pilgrimage, made in 685, was again devoted almost entirely to the collection of books.

For the details of the work of Biscop in the organisation of his monasteries and in the supervision of the work in their scriptoria, and concerning his various architectural and artistic undertakings, we are largely indebted to the historian Beda, or Bede. Bede was a pupil of Biscop in the monastery of Yarrow, and it was in this monastery that were written the famous Chronicles. It was the time of comparative peace in the island which preceded the first Danish invasion. The fame of the scholar who produced these chronicles was destined to eclipse that of nearly all the Saxon saints and kings, who were in fact known to posterity principally through the pen of the Venerable Bede. It is to Biscop, however, that should be credited the literary surroundings under which Bede was[96] educated, and it is probable that without the stimulating influence of the books secured by the abbot in his wearisome journeys to Southern Europe, the monk would hardly have had the capacity or the incentive to complete his work.

Coelfried, who later became Abbot of Yarrow, and who, after the death of Biscop, was in charge also of the monastery of Wearmouth, continued the interest of his predecessor in the libraries and in the work done by the scribes in the scriptoria. Among the books brought from Rome by Biscop was a curious work on cosmography, which King Alfred was very anxious to possess. Abbot Coelfried finally consented to let the King have the book in exchange for land sufficient to support eight families. Coelfried had had made in the scriptorium of Wearmouth two complete copies of the Bible according to the version of S. Jerome, the text of which had been brought from Rome. These copies were placed, one in the church of Wearmouth and one in that of Yarrow, and were open for the use not only of the monks, but of any others who might desire to consult them and who might be able to read the script. Montalembert refers to this instance as a refutation of “the stupid calumny” which represents the Church as having in former times interdicted to her children the knowledge of the sacred Scriptures.[134]

When Aldhelm, who became Bishop of Sherborn in the year 705, went to Canterbury to be consecrated by his old friend and companion Berthwold (pariter literis studuerant, pariterque viam religionis triverant—together they had studied literature and together they had followed the path of religion), the Archbishop kept him there many days, taking counsel with him about the affairs of his diocese. Hearing of the arrival during this time of ships at Dover, he went there to inspect their unloading and to see if they had brought anything in his way (si quid [97]forte commodum ecclesiastico usui attulissent nautæ qui e Gallico sinu in Angliam provecti librorum copiam apportassent—to see whether the ships which had arrived from the French coast had brought, with the books which formed a part of their cargoes, any volumes of value for the work of the Church). Among many other books he saw one containing the whole of the Old and New Testaments, which book he bought, and which, according to William of Malmesbury, who in the twelfth century wrote the life of Aldhelm, was at that time still preserved at Sherborn.[135]

The great Bible given by King Offa, in 780, to the church at Worcester is described in the chronicle of Malmesbury as Magnam Bibliam.[136] As before indicated, however, the common name of this time for a collection of the Scriptures was not Biblia but Bibliotheca. In a return of their property which the monks of St. Riquier at Centule made in the year 831, by order of Louis the Débonnaire, we find, among a considerable quantity of books: Bibliotheca integra ubi continentur libri lxxii., in uno volumine (a complete Bible, in which seventy-two books are comprised in one volume), and also Bibliotheca dispersa in voluminibus xiv.[137] (a Bible divided into fourteen volumes).

Fleury says of Olbert, Abbot of Gembloux: Étant abbé, il amassa à Gembloux plus de cent volumes d’auteurs ecclésiastiques, et cinquante d’auteurs profanes, ce qui passoit pour une grande Bibliothèque.[138] Warton, using Fleury for his authority, speaks of the “incredible labour and immense expense” which Olbert had given to the formation of this library. There is, however, no authority in the quotation from Fleury for such a description of the exceptional nature of the labour and of the outlay. On the contrary, Fleury goes on to say that Olbert, who had been [98]sent to reform and restore the monastery, which was in a state of great poverty and disorder, had put the monks to work at writing, in order to keep them from being idle. He himself set an example of industry as a scribe by writing out, with his own hand, the whole of the Old and the New Testament, a work which was completed in the year 1040.[139] Maitland calculates that a scribe must be both expert and industrious to perform in less than ten months the task of transcribing all the books of the Old and the New Testament. He estimates, further, that at the rate at which the law stationers of London paid their writers in his time (1845), such a transcript would cost, for the writing only, between sixty and seventy pounds.[140]

The sterling service rendered by King Alfred to the literary interests of England was important in more ways than one, and while his work does not strictly belong to the record of the English monasteries, it may properly enough be associated with the literary history of the English Church; for the King had been adopted as a spiritual son by Pope Leo IV., and in organising and supervising the work of the Church, he took upon himself a large measure of the responsibilities which later were discharged by the Primate. Alfred ruled over the West Saxons from 871 to 901. His reign was a stormy one, and during a number of years it seemed doubtful whether the existence of the little Saxon Kingdom could be maintained against the assaults of the Danes. There came finally, however, a period of peace when Alfred, with Winchester as his capital, was able to give attention to the organisation of education in his kingdom.

During the long years of invasion and of civil war, the literary interests and culture that had come to the Saxons through the Romans had been in great part swept away. The collections of books had been burned and could not be replaced because the clerics had forgotten [99]their Latin. Alfred complained that at the time of his accession in Winchester he could not find south of the Thames a single Englishman able to translate a letter from Latin into English. “When I considered all this, I remembered also how I saw, before it had all been ravaged and burned, how the churches throughout the whole of England stood filled with treasures and books, and there was also a great multitude of God’s servants, but they had very little knowledge of the books; they could not understand any of them because they were not written in their own language.” Alfred can find but one explanation for the omission of the “good and wise men who were formerly all over England” to leave translations of these books. “They did not think that men could ever be so careless and that learning could so soon decay.” The King recalls, however, that there are still left many who “can read English writing.” “I began therefore among the many and manifold troubles of this Kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis and in English Shepherd’s Book (Hirdeboc), sometimes word for word and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my Archbishop, and Asser, my Bishop, and Grimbold my Mass-priest, and John my Mass-priest.”[141] It will be noted in these references of King Alfred, that the collections of books, the loss of which he laments, had been contained in the churches. It was also to the ecclesiastics that he was turning for help in the work of rendering into English the instruction for his people to be found in the few Latin volumes that had been preserved.

Jusserand says that Asser was to Alfred what Alcuin had been to Charlemagne, and that he helped the King, by means of the production of translations and by founding schools, to preserve and to spread learning. King Alfred [100]was, however, not content with using his royal authority and influence for the instituting of schools, but himself gave to work as a translator personal time and labour which must have been spared with difficulty from his duties as a ruler and as a military commander. He chooses for his translations books likely to fill up the greatest gaps in the minds of his countrymen, “some books that are most needful for all men to know”: the Book of Orosius, which is to serve as a hand-book of universal history; the Chronicles of Bede, that will instruct them concerning the history of their own ancestors; the Pastoral Rule of S. Gregory, which will make clear to churchmen their ecclesiastical duties; and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boëthius, recommended as a guide for the lives of both ecclesiastics and laymen. These royal translations are at once placed in the scriptoria of the monasteries and in the writing-rooms of the monastery schools for manifolding, and secure through these channels an immediate and important educational influence.

It is also under the instructions of Alfred that the old national chronicles, written in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, are copied, corrected, and continued. Of these chronicles, seven, more or less complete and differing from each other to some extent, have been preserved. The history of the world presents possibly no other instance of a monarch who devoted himself so steadfastly, with his own personal labour, to the educational and spiritual development of his people.

In the latter portion of the tenth century, S. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury under King Edgar, takes up the task of instructing the clergy and people. Under his influence, new monasteries are endowed, a further series of monastery schools is instituted, and special attention is given in the scriptoria and in the writing-rooms of the schools to the production of copies of translations of pious works. The special literary feature of the work done in[101] Dunstan’s school was the attention given to the production of collections of sermons in the vulgar tongue. A number of these collections has been preserved, an example of which, known as the Blickling Homilies (from Blickling Hall, Norfolk, where the MS. was found) was compiled before 971. The series also included homilies by Ælfric, who was Abbot of Eynsham in 1005, and sermons of Wulfstan, who was Bishop of York in 1002.

The canons of Ælfric were written between the years 950 and 1000. The authorities do not appear to be clear whether these canons were the work of the Archbishop or of a grammarian of the same name, while, according to one theory, the Archbishop and the grammarian were the same person. The canons were addressed to Wulfin, Bishop of Sherborn, and they were written in such a form that the Bishop might communicate them to his clergy as a kind of episcopal charge. The twenty-first canon orders: “Every priest also, before he is ordained, must have the arms belonging to his spiritual work; that is, the holy books, namely, the Psalter, the Book of Epistles, the Book of Gospels, the Missal, the Book of Hymns, the Manual, the Calendar (Computus), the Passional, the Penitential, the Lectionary. These books a priest requires and cannot do without, if he would properly fulfil his office and desires to teach the law to the people belonging to him. And let him carefully see that they are well written.”[142]

The library of the English monastery or priory was under the care of the chantor, who could neither sell, pawn, nor lend books without an equivalent pledge; he might, however, with respect to neighbouring churches or to persons of consideration, relax somewhat the strictness of this rule. In the case of a new foundation, the King sometimes sent letters-patent to the different abbeys requesting them to give copies of theological and religious books in their own collections. In certain instances, the [102]King himself provided such transcripts for the new foundation. In the catalogue of the abbatial libraries of England, prepared by Leland, record is found of only the following classics: Cicero and Aristotle (these two appear in nearly all the catalogues), Terence, Euclid, Quintus Curtius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Julius Frontinus, Apuleius, and Seneca.[143] It is difficult from such a list to arrive at the basis or standard of selection.

Thomas Duffus Hardy gives some interesting information concerning the later literary and historical work done in the monasteries of Britain,[144] and for a portion of the following notes concerning this work I am chiefly indebted to him. The Abbey of St. Albans was founded towards the close of the eighth century, but it was not until the latter part of the eleventh century, or nearly three hundred years later, that the scriptorium was instituted. The organisation of the scriptorium was due to Paul, the fourteenth abbot, who presided over the monastery from 1077 to 1093, and who had the assistance in this work of the Bishop Lanfranc. Paul was by birth a Norman, and was esteemed a man of learning as well as of piety. After the scriptorium had been opened, the abbot placed in it eight Psalters, a Book of Collects, a Book of Epistles, a book containing the Gospels for the year, two Gospels bound in gold and silver and ornamented with gems, and twenty-eight other notable volumes. In addition to these, there was a number of ordinals, costumals, missals, troparies, collectories, and other books for the use of the monks in their devotions. This summary of the first contents of the library is taken by Hardy from the Gesta Abbatum, a chronicle of St. Albans.

The literary interests of Paul were, it appears, continued by a large proportion at least of his successors, and many [103]of these made important contributions to the library. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbot, gave to the scriptorium a missal bound in gold, and another missal in two volumes, both incomparably illuminated in gold and written in an open and legible script. He also gave a precious illuminated psalter, a book containing the benediction and sacraments, a book of exorcism, and a collectory. (The description is taken from the Gesta.)

Ralph, the seventeenth abbot, was said to have become a lover of books after having heard Wodo of Italy expound the Scriptures. He collected with diligence a large number of valuable manuscripts. Robert de Gorham, who was called the reformer of the liberty of the Church of St. Albans, after becoming prior, gave many books to the scriptorium, more than could be mentioned by the author of the Gesta. Simon, who became abbot in 1166, caused to be created the office of historiographer. Simon had been educated in the abbey, and did not a little to add to its fame as a centre of literature. He repaired and enlarged the scriptorium, and he kept two or three scribes constantly employed in it. The previous literary abbots had for the most part brought from without the books added to the collection, but it was under Simon that the abbey became a place of literary production as well as of literary reproduction. He had an ordinance enacted to the effect that every abbot must support out of his personal funds one adequate scribe. Simon presented to the abbey a considerable group of books that he had himself been collecting before his appointment as abbot, together with a very beautiful copy of the Old and New Testaments.

The next literary abbot was John de Cell, who had been educated in the schools of Paris, and who was profoundly learned in grammar, poetry, and physics. On being elected abbot, he gave over the management of the temporal affairs of the abbey to his prior, Reymond,[104] and devoted himself to religious duties and to study. Reymond himself was a zealous collector, and it was through him that was secured for the library, among many other books, a copy of the Historica Scholastica cum Allegoriis, of Peter Comester. The exertions of these scholarly abbots and priors won for St. Albans a special distinction among the monasteries of Britain, and naturally led to the compilation of the historic annals which gave to the abbey a continued literary fame. Hardy is of opinion that these historic annals date from the administration of Simon, between the years 1166 and 1183.

Richard of Wendover, who succeeded Walter as historiographer, compiled, between the years 1230 and 1236, the Flores Historiarum, one of the most important of the earlier chronicles of England. Hardy points out that it could have been possible to complete so great a work within the term of six years, only on the assumption that Richard found available much material collected by Walter, and it is also probable that other compilations were utilised by Richard for the work bearing his name. It is to be borne in mind that the monastic chronicles were but seldom the production of a single hand, as was the case with the chronicles of Malmesbury and of Beda. The greater number of such chronicles grew up from period to period, fresh material being added in succeeding generations, while in every monastic house in which there were transcribers, fresh local information was interpolated until the tributary streams had grown more important than the original current. In this manner, the monastic annals were at one time a transcript, at another time an abridgment, and at another an original work. “With the chronicler, plagiarism was no crime and no degradation. He epitomised or curtailed or adapted the words of his predecessors in the same path with or without alteration (and usually without acknowledgment), whichever best suited his purpose or that of his monastery. He did not[105] work for himself but at the command of others, and thus it was that a monastery chronicle grew, like a monastery house, at different times, and by the labour of different hands.”

Of the heads that planned such chronicles or of the hands that executed them, or of the exact proportion contributed by the several writers, no satisfactory record has been preserved. The individual is lost in the community.

In the earlier divisions of Wendover’s chronicle, covering the centuries from 231 down to about 1000, Wendover certainly relied, says Hardy, upon some previous compilation. About the year 1014, that narrative, down to the death of Stephen, showed a marked change in style, giving evidence that after this period some other authority had been adopted, while there was also a larger introduction of legendary matter. From the accession of Henry II., in 1235, when the Flores Historiarum ends, Wendover may be said to assume the character of an original author. On the death of Richard, the work of historiographer was taken up by Matthew Paris. His Lives of the Two Offas and his famous Chronicles were produced between the years 1236 and 1259.

In certain of the more literary of the English monasteries, the divine offices were moderated in order to allow time for study, and, under the regulations of some foundations, “lettered” persons were entitled to special exemption from the performance of certain daily services, and from church duty.[145]

At a visitation of the treasury of St. Pauls, made in the year 1295, by Ralph de Baudoke, the Dean (afterwards Bishop of London), there were found twelve copies of the Gospels adorned, some with silver, and others with pearls and gems, and a thirteenth, the case (capsa) containing which was decorated not merely with gilding but with [106]relics.[146] The treasury also contained a number of other divisions of the Scriptures, together with a Commentary of Thomas Aquinas. Maitland says that the use of relics as a decoration was an unusual feature. He goes on to point out that the practice of using for manuscripts a decorated case, caused the case, not infrequently, to be more valuable than the manuscript itself, so that it would be mentioned among the treasures of the church, when the book contained in it was not sufficiently important to be even specified.

The binding of the books which were in general use in the English monasteries for reference was usually in parchment or in plain leather. The use of jewels, gold, or silver for the covers, or for the capsæ, was, with rare exceptions, limited to the special copies retained in the church treasury. William of Malmesbury in the account which he gives of the chapel made at Glastonbury by King Ina, mentions that twenty pounds and sixty marks of gold were used in the preparation of the Coöpertoria Librorum Evangelii.[147]

An exception to the general statement concerning the neglect of the rulers to make provision for education should, however, be made in the case of Charlemagne, whose reign covered the period 790 to 830. It was the aim of Charlemagne to correct or at least to lessen the provincial differences and local barbarities of style, expression, [107]pression, orthography, etc., in the rendering of Latin, and it was with this end in view that he planned out his great scheme of an imperial series of schools, through which should be established an imperial or academic standard of style and expression. This appears to have been the first attempt since the time of the Academy of Alexandria to secure a scholarly uniformity of the standard throughout the civilised world, and the school at Tours may be considered as a precursor of the French Academy of modern times. For such a scheme the Emperor was dependent upon the monks, as it was only in the monasteries that could be found the scholarship that was required for the work. He entrusted to Alcuin, a scholarly English Benedictine, the task of organising the imperial schools. The first schools instituted by Alcuin in Aachen and Tours, and later in Milan, were placed in charge of Benedictine monks, and formed the models for a long series of monastic schools during the succeeding centuries. Alcuin had been trained in the cathedral schools founded in York by Egbert, and Egbert had been brought up by Benedict Biscop in the monastery of Yarrow, where he had for friend and fellow pupil the chronicler Bede. The results of the toilsome journeys taken by Biscop to collect books for his beloved monasteries of Wearmouth and Yarrow[148] were far-reaching. The training secured by Alcuin as a scribe and as a student of the Scriptures, the classics, and the “seven liberal arts” was more immediately due to his master Ælbert, who afterward succeeded Egbert as archbishop.

The script which was accepted as the standard for the imperial schools, and which, transmitted through successive Benedictine scriptoria, served seven centuries later as a model for the first type-founders of Italy and France, can be traced directly to the school at York.

Alcuin commemorated his school and its master in a [108]descriptive poem On the Saints of the Church at York, which is quoted in full by West.[149] In 780, Alcuin succeeded Ælbert as master of the school, and later, was placed in charge of the cathedral library, which was at the time one of the most important collections in Christendom. In one of his poems he gives a kind of metrical summary of the chief contents of this library. The lines are worth quoting because of the information presented as to the authors at that time to be looked for in a really great monastic library. The list includes a distinctive though very restricted group of Latin writers, but, as West points out, the works “by glorious Greece transferred to Rome” form but a meagre group. The catalogue omits Isidore, although previous references make clear that the writings of the great Spanish bishop were important works of reference in York as in all the British schools. It is West’s opinion that the Aristotle and other Greek authors referred to were probably present only in Latin versions. These manuscripts in the York library were undoubtedly for the most part transcripts of the parchments collected for Wearmouth and Yarrow by Biscop.

The Library of York Cathedral.

Alcuin’s work on the Continent began in 782, when, resigning his place as master of the cathedral school in York, he took charge of the imperial or palace school at Tours. His work in the palace school included not only the organisation of classes for the younger students, but the personal charge of a class which comprised the Emperor himself, his wife Luitgard, and other members of the royal or imperial family. Whether for the younger or for the older students, however, the instruction given had to be of a very elementary character. The distinctive value of the work was, it is to be borne in mind, not in the extent of the instruction given to the immediate pupils, but in making clear to the Emperor and to his sons who were to succeed him, the importance of [110]securing a certain uniformity of script and of educational work throughout the Empire.

It is very probable that not a few of the earlier copyists who completed in the scriptoria the tasks set for them by the instructors trained in Tours and in Aachen, transcribed texts the purport of which they had not mastered. It was through their work, however, that the texts themselves were preserved and were made available for later scribes and students who were competent to comprehend the spirit as well as the letter of their contents.

Mabillon is in accord with later authorities such as Compayré and West, as to the deplorable condition of learning at this time throughout the Empire ruled by Charles. Says West: “The plight of learning in Frankland at this time was deplorable. Whatever traditions had found their way from the early Gallic schools into the education of the Franks had long since been scattered and obliterated in the wild disorders which characterised the times of the Merovingian kings.... The copying of books had almost ceased, and all that can be found that pretends to the name of literature in this time is the dull chronicle or ignorantly conceived legend.”[151]

A description such as this emphasises the importance of the work initiated by Alcuin, work the value of which the ruler of Europe was fortunately able to appreciate and ready to support. In his relation to scholarly interests in Europe and to the preservation of the literature of the past, Alcuin may fairly be considered as the successor of Cassiodorus. He was able in the eighth century to render a service hardly less distinctive than that credited to Cassiodorus three hundred years earlier. There is the further parallel that, like Cassiodorus, he possessed a very keen and intelligent interest in the form given to literary expression, and in all the details of the work given to the copyists. The instructions given in [111]Alcuin’s treatise on orthography for the work of the scribes, follow very closely in principle, and differ, in fact, but slightly in detail from, the instructions given by Cassiodorus in his own treatise on the same subject. A couplet which stands at the head of the first page reads as follows: “Let him who would publish the sayings of the ancients read me, for he who follows me not will speak without regard to law.”[152] Alcuin’s care in regard to the consistency of punctuation and orthography and his intelligent selection of a clearer and neater form of script than had heretofore been employed, have impressed a special character on the series of manuscripts dating from the early portion of the ninth century and written in what is termed the Caroline minuscule. In a letter written to Charles from Tours in 799, Alcuin mentions that he has copied out on some blank parchment which the King had sent him a short treatise on correct diction, with illustrations from Bede. He goes on to speak of the special value to literature of the distinctions and subdistinctions of punctuation, the knowledge of which has, he complains, almost disappeared: “But even as the glory of all learning and the ornaments of wholesome erudition begin to be seen again by reason of your noble exertions, so also it seems most fitting that the use of punctuation should also be resumed by scribes.... Let your authority so instruct the youths at the palace that they may be able to utter with perfect elegance whatsoever the clear eloquence of your thought may dictate, so that whatsoever may go to the parchment bearing the royal name it may display the excellence of the royal learning.”[153] A very delicate hint, remarks West, for Charles to mind his commas and his colons.

Up to the time of Charlemagne there appears to have been so little facility in writing and so few scribes were available, that government records were not kept even [112]at the Courts. The schools established by Alcuin at Tours, under the direction of Charlemagne, were in fact the first schools for writers which had existed in Western Europe for centuries. One of the earlier applications made of the knowledge gained in the imperial schools was for the critical analysis of certain historical documents which had heretofore been accepted as final authorities. In the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, anything that was in writing appears to have been accepted as necessarily trustworthy and valuable, very much as in the earlier times of printing the fact that a statement was in print caused it to be accepted as something not to be contradicted. The critical faculty, combined with the scholarly knowledge necessary and properly applied, was, however, of slow growth, and centuries must still have passed before, in this work of differentiating the value of documents, the authority of scholars secured its full recognition.

After this work of Alcuin began, that is to say, after the beginning of the ninth century, it became the rule of each properly organised monastery to include, in addition to the scriptorium, an armarium, or writing-chamber, which was utilised as a class-room for instruction in writing and in Latin. In a letter of Canonicus Geoffrey, of St.-Barbe-en-Auge, dated 1170, occurs the expression, Claustrum sine armario est quasi castrum sine armamentario,[154] (a monastery without a writing-chamber is like a camp without a storehouse of munitions or an armory.)

The Capitular of Charlemagne, issued in the year 789, addressed itself to the correction of the ignorance and carelessness of the monks, and to the necessity of preserving a standard of correctness for the work of transcribing holy writings. It contains the phrase:

Et pueros vestros non sinite eos vel legendo vel scribendo corrumpere. Et si opus est evangelium, psalterium et missale [113]scribere, perfectæ ætatis homines scribant cum omni diligentia.

(Do not permit your pupils, either in reading or writing, to garble the text;—and when you are preparing copies of the gospel, the psalter, or the missal, see that the work is confided to men of mature age, who will write with due care.)

The following lines were written by Alcuin as an injunction to pious scribes:

AD MUSÆUM LIBROS SCRIBENTIUM.

(Quoted from the Vienna Codex, 743. Denis, i., 313.)

Wattenbach is of opinion that these lines stood over the door of the scriptorium of S. Martin’s Monastery.

West says that the lines were written as an injunction to the scribes of the school at Tours. He gives the following version, which takes in certain further lines of the original than those cited by Wattenbach:

“Here let the scribes sit who copy out the words of the Divine Law, and likewise the hallowed sayings of the holy Fathers. Let them beware of interspersing their own frivolities in the words they copy, nor let a trifler’s hand make mistakes through haste. Let them earnestly seek out for themselves correctly written books to transcribe, that the flying pen may speed along the right path.[114] Let them distinguish the proper sense by colons and commas, and let them set the points each one in its due place, and let not him who reads the words to them either read falsely or pause suddenly. It is a noble work to write out holy books, nor shall the scribe fail of his due reward. Writing books is better than planting vines, for he who plants a vine serves his belly, but he who writes a book serves his soul.”[155]

In a manuscript which was written in S. Jacob’s Monastery in Liége, occurred the following lines:

The most important of the works of Alcuin that can be called original were his educational writings, comprising treatises On Grammar, On Orthography, On Rhetoric and the Virtues, On Dialectics, A Disputation with Pepin, and a study of astronomy entitled De Cursu et Saltu Lunæ ac Bissexto. West mentions three other treatises which have been ascribed to him: On the Seven Arts, A Disputation for Boys, and the Propositions of Alcuin.[157] Alcuin was more fortunate than his great predecessor Cassiodorus in [115]respect to the preservation of his writings. Manuscripts of all of these remained in existence until the time came when the complete set of works could be issued in printed form, and the work of the old instructor could be appreciated by a generation living a thousand years after his life had closed. He died at Tours in 804, in his seventieth year. Mabillon speaks of Alcuin as “the most learned man of his age.” Laurie is disposed to lay stress upon the monastic limitations of his intellect, and thinks that his principal ability was that of an administrator; West emphasises the “pure unselfishness of his character,” and adds, with discriminating appreciation: “We must also credit him with a certain largeness of view, in spite of his circumscribed horizon. He had some notion of the continuity of the intellectual life of man, of the perils that beset the transmission of learning from age to age, and of the disgrace which attached to those who would allow those noble arts to perish which the wisest of men among the ancients had discovered.... Perceiving that the precious treasure of knowledge was then hidden in a few books, he made it his care to transmit to future ages copies undisfigured by slips of the pen or mistakes of the understanding. Thus in every way that lay within his power, he endeavoured to put the fortunes of learning for the times that should succeed him in a position of advantage, safeguarded by an abundance of truthfully transcribed books, interpreted by teachers of his own training, sheltered within the Church and defended by the civil power.”[158] Professor West’s appreciative summary does full justice to the work and the ideals of Charlemagne’s great schoolmaster. I should only add that in the special service he was in a position to render in the preservation, transmission, and publication of the world’s literature, Alcuin must be accorded a very high place in the series of literary workers which, beginning with Cassiodorus, includes [116]such names as Columba, Biscop, Aurispa, Gutenberg, Aldus, Estienne, and Froben.

The most noteworthy of the successors of Alcuin in the palace school at Tours was John Scotus Erigena, who in 845 was appointed master by Charles the Bold. The influence of the Irish monk widened the range of study and gave to it an active-minded and speculative tendency that brought about a wide departure from the settled conservatism which had always characterised the teaching of Alcuin. The list of books given to the scribe for copying was increased, and now included, for instance, works of such doubtful orthodoxy as the Satyricon of Martianus Capella, a voluminous compilation constituting a kind of cyclopædia of the seven liberal arts. Its composition dates from about 500.[159]

In a treatise, De Instituto Clericorum, written in 819 (that is, during the reign of Louis I.), by Rabanus Maurus, who was Abbot of Fulda and later, Archbishop of Mayence, is cited the following regulation: “The canons and the decrees of Pope Zosimus have decided that a clerk proceeding to holy orders shall continue five years among the readers ... and after that shall for four years serve as an acolyte or sub-deacon.” (The Zosimus referred to was Pope for but one year, 417-418.) Rabanus had just before remarked, “Lectores are so called a legendo.” He goes on to say that “he who would rightly and properly perform the duty of a reader must be imbued with learning and conversant with books, and must further be instructed in the meaning of words and in the knowledge of the words themselves,” etc.[160] Rabanus follows this with a series of very practical instructions and suggestions for effective education on the part of the readers. These were based upon the treatise on elocution written nearly two hundred years earlier by the [117]learned Bishop Isidore of Seville, and they were again copied three years after the time of Rabanus by Ibo, Bishop of Chartres, in the treatise De Rebus Ecclesiasticis. Maitland, to whom I am indebted for this citation, finds cause for indignant criticism of the historian Robertson for the superficial and misleading references made by the historian to the dense ignorance of the Church in the Middle Ages. Maitland suggests that if Robertson had applied for holy orders to the Archbishop of Seville in the seventh century, the Archbishop of Mayence in the ninth, or the Bishop of Chartres in the eleventh, he would have found the examination rather more of a task than he expected. West speaks of Rabanus as “Alcuin’s greatest pupil,” and as intellectually “a greater man than his master.”[161] He wrote a long series of theological and educational treatises.

From the Constitutions of Reculfus, who became Bishop of Soissons in 879, it is evident that he expected the clergy to be able both to read and to write. The Bishop says: “We admonish that each one of you should be careful to have a Missal, a Lectionary, a Book of the Gospels, a Martyrology, an Antiphonary, a Psalter, and a copy of the Forty Homilies of S. Gregory, corrected and pointed by our copies which we use in the holy mother Church; and also fail not to have as many sacred and ecclesiastical books as you can get, for from these you shall receive food and condiment for your souls.... If, however, any one of you is not able to obtain all the books of the Old Testament, at least let him diligently take pains to transcribe for himself correctly the first book of the whole sacred history, that is, Genesis, by reading which he may come to understand the creation of the world.”[162] The counsel was good, even although a perfectly clear understanding of the creation might after all not have been secured.

[118]

By the close of the ninth century, a large proportion of the monasteries of the Continent and of England carried on schools which were open to the children of as large a district as could be reached. In many cases, the elementary classes were succeeded by classes in advanced instruction, while from these were selected favourites or exceptionally capable pupils, who enjoyed in still higher studies the advantage of the guidance and service of the best scholars in the monastery. West, in summing up the later influence of Alcuin, speaks of the stream of learning as having flowed from York to Tours and from Tours (through Rabanus) to Fulda, thence to Auxerre, Ferrières, Corbies (old and new), Reichenau, St. Gall, and Rheims, one branch of it finally reaching Paris.[163] Mabillon speaks of the abbey schools of Fleury as containing during the tenth and eleventh centuries as many as five thousand scholars.

In Italy, the most important schools were those instituted at Monte Cassino, Pomposa, and Classe. Giesebrecht is, however, of opinion that the educational work of the Italian monasteries was less important than that carried on by the monasteries in Germany, France, or England. In Germany, the monasteries which have already been mentioned as centres of intellectual activity were also those which had instituted the most important and effective of the schools, the list including St. Gall, Fulda, Reichenau, Hirschau, Wissembourg, Hersfeld, and many others.

In France and Belgium, the names of the conspicuous abbey schools include those of Marmoutier, Fontenelle, Fleury, Corbie, Ferrières, Bec, Clugni. In England, the most noteworthy of the abbey schools were St. Albans, Glastonbury, Malmesbury, Croyland, and S. Peter’s of Canterbury. From the epoch of Charlemagne to that of S. Louis, the great abbeys of Christian Europe served [119]in fact not only as its schools but as its universities. The more intelligent of the nobility and the kings themselves were interested in securing for their children the educational advantages of the monastery schools. Among the French kings who were brought up in this way are to be named Pepin the Little, Robert the Pious, and Louis the Fat. In Spain, Sancho the Great, King of Navarre and of Castile, was a graduate of the monastery of Leyre.

In England, we have the noteworthy example of Alfred, who was not ashamed, after having reached mature years, to repair his imperfect education by attending the school established in Oxford by the Benedictines, where he is said to have studied grammar, philosophy, rhetoric, history, music, and versification.[164]

A large number of the convents, following the example of the abbeys, contained schools in which were trained not only the future novices, but also numbers of young girls destined for the life of the Courts or of the world.

Mabillon finds occasion to correct the impression on the part of some writers of the sixteenth century, that the monasteries had been established solely for the purpose of carrying on educational work. He writes: C’est une illusion de certains gens qui ont écrit dans le siècle précédent que les monastères n’avaient esté d’abord établis que pour servir d’écoles faisantes profession d’enseigner les sciences humaines.

De Rancé, who wrote a Traité de la saincteté et du devoir de la vie monastique, took the ground that the pursuit of literature was inconsistent with the monastic profession, and that the reading of the monks ought to be confined to the Scriptures and a few books of devotion. The treatise was understood to be an attack upon the Benedictine monks of St. Maur, for that they were learned was a matter of general knowledge, and the monks of La [120]Trappe, the Order with which De Rancé had associated himself, had an old-time antagonism to their scholarly neighbours. It may be considered as a good service for literature and for monastic history that the treatise of De Rancé, narrow and unimportant in itself as it was, should have been published. Nine years later, in the year 1691, was issued the reply of the Benedictines, the learned and valuable Traité des Études Monastiques of Dom Mabillon, which will be referred to more particularly in the following chapter.

The historians of these monastic schools have laid stress upon the limited conceptions possessed by their founders and by the instructors, of the purpose and possibilities of education, conceptions which of necessity affected not only the work done in the school-room, but the character of the literature produced in the scriptoria. Laurie, for instance, writes as follows: “The Christian conception of education was, unfortunately (like that of old Cato), narrow. It tended steadily to concentrate and to contract men’s intellectual interests. The Christian did not think of the culture of the whole man. He could not consistently do so. His whole purpose was the salvation of the soul.... Salvation was to be obtained through abnegation of the world and through faith.... Christianity, accordingly, found itself necessarily placed in mortal antagonism to ‘Humanitas’ and to Hellenism, and had to go through the troublous experiences of nearly 1400 years before the possibility of the union of reason with authority, of religion with Hellenism, could be conserved.... As was indeed inevitable, theological discussion more and more occupied the active intellect of the time, to the subordination, if not total neglect of humane letters and philosophy. The Latin and Greek classics were ultimately denounced. As the offspring of the pagan world, if not indeed inspired by demons, they were dangerous to the faith.”[165]

[121]

From the Apostolic Constitutions, ascribed to the middle of the fourth century, Mr. Bass Mullinger quotes the injunction: “Refrain from all the writings of the heathen: for what hast thou to do with strange discourses, laws, or false prophets, which, in truth, turn aside from the faith those who are weak in the understanding ... wherefore abstain scrupulously from all strange and devilish books.”[166]

It was S. Augustine who said Indocti cœlum rapiunt—“It is the ignorant who take the kingdom of heaven,”—and Gregory the Great who asserted that he would blush to have Holy Scripture subjected to the rules of grammar.[167] West speaks of the conceptions of grammar and of rhetoric taught by Alcuin as “crude” and “puerile,” and of his theories of language as “childish.”

It is, of course, a truism to point out that the educational work done by Alcuin and the other great instructors of the monastic schools is not to be judged by the standard of later ages. The students for whose training they were responsible, whether children or adults, princes or peasants, must have been, with hardly an exception, in a very elementary condition of mental development, and it was necessary for the instruction to be in like manner elementary. In this study, I am, however, not undertaking to consider the history of education in early Europe, a subject which has been so ably presented in the works of Mullinger, Laurie, Compayré, and West. I am concerned with the work of these early schoolmasters simply because to their persistent efforts was due the preservation of literature in Europe. If Alcuin and his successors had done nothing else than to secure a substantially uniform system of writing throughout the great schools in which were trained abbots and scribes for hundreds of monasteries, they would have conferred an inestimable service upon Europe. But their work did go much further. Notwithstanding the various injunctions and warnings of [122]ecclesiastical leaders against “pagan” literature, it proved impracticable to prevent this literature from being preserved and manifolded in numberless scriptoria. The record of the opposition has been preserved in a series of edicts and injunctions. But the fact that the interest in the writings of the ancients proved strong enough to withstand all the fulminations and censures is evidenced by the long series of manuscripts of the classics produced in the monasteries during the tenth and eleventh centuries. The writers of these manuscripts were the product of the schools instituted by Charlemagne and Alcuin.

Mabillon’s work forms a magnificent monument not only to the learning, diligence, and literary skill of its writer, but to the enormous value of the services rendered, during a number of centuries, by the monks of his Order, in the preservation of literature from the ravages of barbarism and in the development of scholarship. Mabillon also makes clear the lasting importance of the original initiative given to the literary labour of the Benedictines by the Rule of their founder. An important portion of the material upon which Mabillon’s treatise was based, was collected during a series of journeys made by him in company with his brother under the instructions first of [123]the great minister Colbert, and later, of Le Tellier, Archbishop of Rheims, for the purpose of examining or of searching for documents relating to the royal family and of procuring books for the royal library. The first of these journeys, undertaken in the year 1682, was completed entirely within French territory and was entitled Iter Burgundicum. The second covered a considerable portion of South Germany and Switzerland, and is known as the Iter Germanicum. The third was devoted to Italy, and is described under the title of Iter Italicum; while the fourth investigation was made in Alsace and Lorraine, and the record is entitled Iter Literarium in Alsatiam et Lotharingiam.

The plan of the journeys involved a thorough ransacking of as many libraries as they could secure admission to, the libraries being, with but few exceptions, contained in the monasteries. The immediate result of these journeys was the addition to the royal library of some three thousand volumes, chiefly collected in Italy, and the later result, the publication of the records above specified, which form a most valuable presentation of the condition of the monastic collections in the seventeenth century, and which give in their lists the titles of a considerable number of valuable works which have since entirely disappeared.

A century later than S. Benedict, an unknown hermit called “the Master” prepared a Rule under which monks were required to study until they reached the age of fifty.[169] The Rule of S. Aurelian and S. Ferreol rendered this regulation universal, and that of Grimlaïcus identified the character of the hermit with that of “doctor.”[170] In all countries where the Benedictine Orders flourished, literature and scholarship exercised an abiding influence. It is impossible, contends Montalembert, to name an abbey famed for the number and holiness of its monks [124]which is not also noted for learning and for its school of literature. The Benedictine monks during the four or five centuries after the foundation of the Order certainly appear to have held themselves faithful to the precept of S. Jerome, “A book always in your hand or under your eyes.” (Nunquam de manu necque oculis recedat liber.[171]) They also accepted very generally the example of Bede, who said that it had been for him always delightful either to learn, to teach, or to write.[172] Warton is authority for the statement that in the year 790 Charlemagne granted to the abbot and monks of Sithiu an unlimited right of hunting, in order that they might procure from the skins of the deer killed, gloves, girdles, and covers for their books. He goes on to say: “We may imagine that these religious were more fond of hunting than of reading. It is certain that they were obliged to hunt before they could read, and it seems probable that under these circumstances they did not manufacture many volumes.”[173] Maitland, in referring to the original text of the concession, finds, however, that this has been misread by Warton. The permission to hunt, for the useful purpose specified, was given not for the monks but for the servants of the monastery.

With all the great Benedictine monasteries, it was the routine to institute first a library, then a scriptorium for the manifolding of books, and finally schools, open, not only to students who were preparing for the Church, but to all in the neighbourhood who had need of or desire for instruction. The copies prepared in the scriptorium of the texts from the library were utilised in the first place for the duplicates needed of the works in most frequent reference, but more particularly for securing by exchange copies of texts not already in the library, and, in many instances, also for adding either to the direct wealth of [125]the monastery (by exchange for lands or cattle) or to its income by making sale of the works through travelling monks or by correspondence with other monasteries.

The list of monasteries which became in this manner literary and publishing centres would include nearly all the great Benedictine foundations of both Britain and the Continent. There was probably, however, a greater activity during the period between 600 and 1200, in the matter at least of collecting and circulating books, in the monasteries of France than in those of Italy, Germany, or Britain; but more important even than Clugni, Marmoutier, or Corbie, in France, was the great Swiss abbey of St. Gall, an abbey the realm of which reached almost to the proportions of a small municipality. In the shade of its walls, there dwelt a whole nation, divided into two branches, the familia intus, which comprised the labourers, shepherds, and workmen of all trades, and the familia foris, composed of serfs, who were bound to do three days’ work in each week.

Within the monastery itself, there were, in the latter half of the tenth century, no less than five hundred monks, together with a great group of students. In Germany, the most noted of what might be called the literary monasteries during the ninth and tenth centuries were those of Fulda, Reichenau, Lorsch, Hirschau, and Gandersheim. It was in the latter that the nun Hroswitha composed her famous dramas. In France, in addition to those already specified, should be mentioned Fleury, St. Remy, St. Denis, Luxeuil, S. Vincent at Toul, and Aurillac. In Belgium, S. Peter’s at Ghent was, during the tenth century, the most important of the scholarly monasteries. In England, in addition to the earlier foundations, already referred to, of Wearmouth and Yarrow, St. Albans and Glastonbury became the most famous. Before the eleventh century, the literature that came into existence from contemporary writers or reproductions of the works[126] of classic writers outside of the monasteries must have been very trifling indeed. One of the most noteworthy publications which emanated from St. Gall was the great dictionary or Vocabulary bearing the name of Solomon (Abbot of St. Gall and later, Bishop of Constance), a work which was in fact a kind of literary and scientific encyclopædia. This manuscript, comprising in all 1070 pages, was put into print in the latter part of the fifteenth century.[174] The records of the famous library of the monastery have been brought together by later scholars, and it is their testimony that the manuscripts contained in it were among the most beautiful and accurate specimens of caligraphy known. These St. Gall manuscripts were also noted for their exquisite miniatures and illuminations. The parchment used for them was prepared by the hands of the monks, and they also did their own binding.[175] The fame of Sintram, one of the most noteworthy of the copyists, was known throughout all the countries north of the Alps; Omnis orbis cisalpinus Sintramni digitos miratur.[176]

In the two schools attached to St. Gall, lectures were given, in the latter half of the tenth century, on Cicero, Quintilian, Horace, Terence, Juvenal, Persius, Ovid, and Sophocles.[177] There was even said to be among the monks of St. Gall a society established for the study of Greek, called the Hellenic Brothers.[178] The Duchess Hedwig of Suabia herself taught Greek to Abbot Burckhart II. when he was a child, and rewarded him by the gift of a “Horace” for his readiness in verse-making. The Abbot later described in verse the embarrassment caused to him by a kiss with which the learned Duchess had favoured him.[179] The Duchess had, when a young woman, learned Latin from the Ekkehart who, later, became Dean of St. Gall (Ekkehart I.), in partnership with whom she wrote [127]a commentary on Virgil. A very charming account of the tuition of this fascinating young Duchess is given in Scheffel’s famous romance called Der Treue Ekkehart. Arx states that Ekkehart III. and IV. and Notker Labeo were familiar with Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, and made from them Greek verses.[180]

There is every evidence to indicate that there was during the tenth century a knowledge of Greek in certain monastery centres of South Europe, which knowledge, two centuries later, had disappeared almost entirely, so that the re-introduction into Italy of the writings of Greek poets and philosophers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries came as a fresh revelation. Mabillon contended that while the monks made Holy Scripture the basis for their theological studies, it is certain that they acquired apart from these studies, a mass of other knowledge, and notably all that they could gather with regard to physical science. Thence it arose that in mediæval works the term scripturæ, or even scripturæ sacræ, does not always mean the Holy Scriptures, but stands for all books which treat of Christian or ecclesiastical truths or which are useful aids in understanding the Word of God.[181] Montalembert, commenting on this passage, goes on to say that to the monk of the tenth century no knowledge was unfamiliar. Philosophy in its scholastic form, grammar and versification, music, botany, mechanics, astronomy, geometry in its most practical application, all of these were the objects of their research and of their writings. The curious poem addressed by the monk Alfano to Theodoric, son of the Count Marses and at the time a novice at Monte Cassino, is cited in support of this view. The poem presents a detailed account of the daily occupations in the great monastery, in which occupations literary work holds a very large place. It also gives a [128]summary of the scholastic pursuits carried on in the monastery.[182]

A service possibly even greater than that of the preservation of literature and of the keeping alive of an intellectual spirit, was rendered by the monks in the great educational work carried on by them. In the Monasterium Resbacense, in Brieggan, founded by Bishop Andœnus in 634, whose first abbot, S. Ægilius, was a pupil of S. Columban’s, the list of books in the scriptorium included Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Donatus, Priscian, and Boëthius. Of later authors, the works of Beda, Isidore, Aldhelm, the Gesta Francorum, etc.[183] By the time of Charles Martel and the battle of Poitiers, there had been much plundering and devastation of the monasteries and convents, the effects of which remained even after the Arabs were driven back. During the tumultuous reigns of the Pepins, many clerics returned to or took up the profession of arms, and devotion and literature were alike neglected.[184] The biographer of S. Eligius, writing in 760 (under Pepin) says:[185]

“What do we want with the so-called philosophies of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, or with the rubbish and nonsense of such shameless poets as Homer, Virgil, and Menander? What service can be rendered to the servants of God by the writings of the heathen Sallust, Herodotus, Livy, Demosthenes, or Cicero?” Fredegar, called Scholasticus, wrote his chronicle in a Burgundian monastery, about 600. He complains that “the world is in its decrepitude. Intellectual activity is dead, and the ancient writers have no successors.”

The man to whom the revival of the literary interests of the northern monasteries was largely due was the Archbishop Chrodegang of Metz, 742-766, Chancellor of Charles Martel, a Benedictine. He framed rules for the monasteries [129]which restored discipline and infused new life. His code was adopted throughout France, Italy, and Germany, and even in England. A certain uniformity of instruction was thus secured in the monastery schools in singing, language, and script, which persisted almost until the time of Alcuin, and the influence of which extended even beyond the monasteries.

Mabillon tells a story of Odo, Abbot of Clugni (who died about 942), who was so seduced by the love of knowledge that he was led to employ himself with the vanities of the poets, and resolved to read the works of Virgil regularly through. On the following night, however, he saw in a dream a large vase of marvellous beauty, but filled with innumerable serpents, which, springing forth, twined about him, but without doing him any injury. The holy man, waking and prudently considering the vision, took the serpents to stand for the figments of the poets, and the vase to represent Virgil’s book, which was painted outwardly with worldly eloquence, but was internally defiled with the vanity of impure meaning. From thenceforward, renouncing Virgil and his pomps, and keeping the poets out of his chamber, he sought his mental nourishment solely from the sacred writings.[186]

Honorius, the reputed author of the Gemma Animæ, writes in 1120: “It grieves me when I consider in my mind the number of persons who, having lost their senses, are not ashamed to give their utmost labour to the investigation of the abominable figments of the poets, and the captious arguments of the philosophers, which are wont inextricably to bind the mind that is drawn away from God in the bonds of vices and to be ignorant of the Christian profession whereby the soul may come to reign everlastingly with God; as it is the height of madness to be anxious to learn the laws of an usurper and to be ignorant of the edicts of the lawful sovereign. Moreover, [130]how is the soul profited by the strife of Hector, or the argumentation of Plato, or the poems of Virgil, or the elegies of Ovid, who now, with their like, are gnashing their teeth in the prison of the infernal Babylon, under the cruel tyranny of Pluto.”[187]

Peter the Venerable, who was Abbot of Clugni in the middle of the twelfth century, is referred to by the historian Milner as a flagrant example of the ignorance of the monastic authorities of his time. Maitland finds cause for no little indignation with the hasty and ill-founded statements of Milner, and devotes several chapters to an account of the monastery of Clugni under the rule of Peter, presenting very ample evidence of the literary activity and scholarly interests of the abbot and of his close relations with the intellectual leaders of his time, leaders who were, with hardly an exception, monks and ecclesiastics. “Who will venture to say,” writes Maitland, “that Peter would have been pilloried as an ignorant and trifling writer if Milner had happened to have any personal knowledge of his history and his works and if he had read in one of the long series of Peter’s Epistles the words, Libri et maxime Augustiniani, ut nosti, apud nos auro preciosiores sunt.”[188] (Books, and especially those of S. Augustine, are esteemed by us as more precious than gold.)

The literary journeys of Mabillon were followed by similar journeys on the part of Father Montfaucon and Edouard Martene, who were both, like Mabillon, members of the learned Benedictines of St. Maur. Mabillon’s journeys covered the period of the long wars following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (in 1685), including the campaigns between France and England in the Low Countries. It was probably due to these campaigns that his researches did not include any of the monasteries of the lower Rhine, of Flanders, or of Brabant. Martene’s [131]journeys continued during a term of six years, in which time he examined manuscripts in more than one hundred cathedrals and at least eight hundred abbeys. The materials collected were utilised first in the new edition of the Gallia Christiana, and later, in five folio volumes, comprising only matter previously unpublished, issued under the title Thesaurus Novum Anecdotorum. The account of the journey was printed under the title Voyage Littéraire de Deux Religieux Benedictins.

In 1718, Martene and Montfaucon were again sent on their literary travels, and the later collections were issued in 1724 in nine folio volumes, under the title Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum Historicorum, Dogmaticorum, Moralium, Amplissima Collectio. I specify these works of the literary Benedictines because, although by their date they do not properly belong to my narrative, they form a very important authority for what is known of the literary history of the monasteries. In some of the monasteries which had in earlier times been famous as centres of literary activity, the libraries were found by Mabillon and Martene in a grievous condition of destitution and dilapidation. At Clugni, for instance, they describe the catalogue (itself six hundred years old), written on parchment-covered boards three feet and a half long and eighteen inches wide (grandes tablettes qu’on ferme comme un livre), containing some thousands of titles, but of the books there remained scarcely one hundred. Martene was told that the Huguenots had carried them off to Geneva. At Novantula, of all its former riches Mabillon found but two manuscripts; and at Beaupré, of the great collection of manuscripts there remained but two or three; while many other famous libraries were in similar condition. The destruction of so large a portion of the collection of manuscripts and of the earlier printed books was due to a variety of causes. During the ninth century, the ravages of the Danes and Normans brought desolation upon[132] a long list of the monasteries throughout Europe which could most easily be reached from the coast. In the index to the third volume of Mabillon’s annals, is given a long list of the Benedictine monasteries pillaged or destroyed by the Normans. The record begins Normanni, monasteria et eis incensa, eversa, direpta. In many of these visitations the loss of books must have been considerable. When, for instance, the abbey of Peterborough in Northamptonshire was burned by the Danes in the year 870, Ingulph records the destruction of a large collection of books, sanctorum librorum ingens bibliotheca.[189] Maitland points out that this expression probably stood for really a great library, as when Ingulph speaks of the destruction in 1091 of the collection of 700 volumes belonging to his own monastery, he does not so describe it.[190]

Serious ravages were also made in Central Europe in the tenth century by the Hungarians. Martene says that after the battle on the river Brenta, the pagans advanced to Novantula, killed many of the monks, and burned the monastery with a number of books, codices multos concremavere.[191] The monasteries in Italy suffered primarily from the Saracens, and those in Spain from the Moors. The losses caused by the religious wars of the later centuries were, however, according to Mabillon, much more serious than those brought about by the pagans. The Calvinists are held responsible for the destruction, among others, of St. Theodore, near Vienna, of St. Jean, Grimberg, Dilighen, of Jouaire, and, most important of all, of Fleury.[192] The ravages caused by fire were possibly greater than those produced by war, many of the collections having been kept in wooden buildings. Among the noted monasteries which suffered in this way were Gembloux, Liége, Lucelle, Loroy, St. Gall, Fulda, Lorsch, Croyland, [133]and Teano near Monte Cassino. In the burning of the latter perished, as Mabillon was informed, the original manuscript of the famous Rule of S. Benedict. Martene speaks of the Church of Romans in Dauphiny as having been ruined six times: by the Moors, by the Archbishop Sebon, twice by fire, by Guigne Dauphin in the twelfth century, and finally by the Calvinists. The library at the time of his visit still contained a few manuscripts.

In view of these various classes of perils, it may well be a matter of wonder, not that the monastic collections have so largely perished, but that so considerable a number of manuscripts has been preserved. The fact that so many mediæval manuscripts have escaped destruction by fire and flood, and have been saved from the ravages of invading pagans or of contending Christians, seems indeed to be good presumptive evidence of the enormous activity of literary production in the monastery scriptoria during the centuries between 529 and 1450, the date of the founding of Monte Cassino, and that of the invention of printing.

Among the monasteries whose collections of books were noteworthy and whose literary exchanges were not [134]infrequently sufficiently important to be described as a publishing or bookselling trade, may be mentioned the following: Wearmouth and Yarrow, already referred to, the book production in which was active as early as the seventh century; St. Josse-sur-Mer, where, in the ninth century, the Abbot Loup of Ferrières is reported to have kept a depot of books, from which he carried on an active trade with England[194]; Bobbio in Lombardy, the literary treasures in which have been largely preserved in the Ambrosian library; the monastery of Pomposa near Ravenna, whose library, collected by Abbot Jerome in 1093, was said to be finer than any other of the time in Italy; La Chiusa, whose collection rivalled that of Pomposa; Novalese, whose library, at the time of the destruction of the abbey by the Saracens in 905, is reported to have contained no less than 6500 volumes[195]; and Monte Cassino, which under the Abbot Didia, a friend of Gregory VII., possessed a very rich collection. This collection was the result of the researches in Italy of the African Constantine, who, after having passed forty years in the East studying the scientific treatises of Egypt, Persia, Chaldea, and India, had been driven from Carthage by envious rivals. He came to the tomb of S. Benedict, where he assumed the monastic habit, and he endowed his new dwelling with the rich treasures collected in his wanderings.[196] There are also to be mentioned Fulda, whose library at one time surpassed all others in Germany, excepting perhaps that of St. Gall; Croyland, whose library in the eleventh century numbered 3000 volumes; and many others.

The work of Ziegelbauer gives in detail the old catalogue of the library of Fulda and those of a number of other abbeys. The estimates of the relative importance of these collections are in the main based upon Ziegelbauer’s [135]statistics. There seems to be no question that these monastery libraries carried on with each other an active correspondence and exchange of books, and that this exchange business developed in not a few cases, as in that of St. Josse-sur-Mer, into what was practically a book-trade. It is the conclusion of Mabillon, as of Montalembert, that during the time in which Christian Europe was covered with active monasteries and convents in which thousands of monks and nuns were engaged in constant transcription, books could hardly have been really rare, at least as compared with the extent of the circle of scholars and readers who required them.

Cahier points out that in addition to these great monastery collections, there were libraries of greater or less importance in nearly all the cathedrals, in many of the collegiate churches, and in not a few of the castles. Mabillon is of opinion that the prices of books during the Middle Ages have been very much overestimated, and that the impression as to such prices has been largely based upon isolated and misunderstood instances.[197] Robertson speaks of the collection of Homilies bought in 1056 by Grecia, Countess of Arizon, for two hundred sheep, a measure of wheat, one of millet, one of rye, several marten skins, and four pounds of silver, but Robertson omits to mention that the volumes so purchased were exceptionally beautiful specimens of caligraphy, of painting, and of carving. Maitland points out that it would be as reasonable to quote as examples of prices in the nineteenth century the exorbitant sums paid at special sales by the bibliomaniacs of to-day. “May not some literary historian of the future,” he goes on to say, “at a time when the march of intellect has got past the age of cumbersome and expansive penny magazines and is revelling in farthing cyclopædias, record as an evidence of the scarcity and costliness of books in the nineteenth century, [136]that in the year 1812 an English nobleman gave £2260 and another £1060 for a single volume, and that the next year a Johnson’s Dictionary was sold by public auction for £200. A few such facts would quite set up some future Robertson, whose readers would never dream that we could get better reading, and plenty of it, very much cheaper at that very time.”[198]

It is, of course, the case that there has been such a thing as bibliomania since there have been books in the world, no less in the manuscript period than after the age of printing. “The art of printing,” says Morier, “is unknown in Persia, and beautiful writing is, therefore, considered a high accomplishment. It is carefully taught in the schools, and those who excel in it are almost classed with literary men. They are employed to copy books, and some have attained to such eminence in this art, that a few lines written by one of these celebrated penmen are often sold for a considerable sum. I have known seven pounds given for four lines written by Dervish Musjeed, a celebrated penman, who has been dead for some time, and whose beautiful specimens of writing are now scarce.”[199]

Robertson quotes in support of his general contention a statement of Naudé to the following effect: “In 1471, when Louis XI. borrowed from the Faculty of Medicine in Paris the works of Rasis, the Arabian physician, he not only deposited as a pledge a considerable quantity of plate, but was obliged to procure a nobleman to join with him as surety in a deed, binding himself, under a great forfeiture, to restore the volumes.”[200] In the eighteenth century, however, when Selden wished to borrow a manuscript from the Bodleian Library, he was required to give [137]a bond for a thousand pounds. It does not, therefore, follow that the reign of George II. was a dark age in English literature.[201]

Maitland points out one very important detail, which served to give to some individual manuscript a value that might, when later referred to, appear disproportionate to the expense of the hand labour in its preparation. Under the process of the multiplication of books by printing, each copy of a given edition must of course be a fac-simile of all the other copies, sharing their measure of correctness, and equally sharing their blunders. In the manuscript period, however, every copy of a work was of necessity unique, and the correctness of a particular manuscript was no pledge for the quality even of those which had been copied directly from it. “In fact, the correctness of every single copy could be ascertained only by minute and laborious collation, and by the same minuteness of method which is now requisite from an editor who revises the text of an ancient writer.... If a manuscript had received such a collation at the hands of trustworthy scholars, and if it had been shown to present a text of such completeness and accuracy as might safely be trusted as copy for future transcripts, such a manuscript would undoubtedly be valued at an exceptional price.”[202]

Muratori speaks of books when presented to churches being offered at the altar, pro remedio animæ suæ,[203] and on this quotation Robertson bases a further argument concerning the high value of books. It was, however, the ordinary routine that when a person made a present of anything to a church, it was offered at the altar, and it was understood, if not always specifically expressed, that such offering was made either for his own spiritual benefit or for that of some other person. It was doubtless the case that gifts of books to a church were rare as compared with the gifts of other things, for the simple reason [138]that nearly all the books that came into existence were produced in the churches or in the attendant monasteries.

Delisle says that the loan of books from monastery libraries was considered one of the most meritorious of all acts of mercy. Against this view there are many examples of the formal prohibition of the lending of any books outside of the walls of the monastery. Some communities placed the books of their libraries under an anathema,—that is to say, they forbade under pain of excommunication either borrowing or lending. This selfish policy was, however, formally condemned in 1212 by the Council of Paris, the Fathers of which urged more charitable sentiments on these bibliophiles: “We forbid monks to bind themselves by any oath not to lend books to the poor, seeing that such a loan is one of the chief works of mercy. We desire that the books of a community should be divided into two classes, one to remain in the house for the use of the Brothers, the other to be lent out to the poor according to the judgment of the abbot.”[204]

In support of his contention concerning the general disappearance of literature during the Middle Ages, Robertson quotes the authority of Muratori to the effect that, “even monasteries of considerable note had only one missal.”[205] Maitland has no difficulty in showing that the passage cited has been wrongly understood, and that the generalisation based upon it is absurd. Muratori was referring to a letter of a certain Bonus, who was for thirty years (1018-1048) Abbot of the monastery of S. Michael, in Pisa. In this letter, Bonus gives an account of the founding of the monastery, and says that when he came to Pisa he found there, not a monastery, but simply a chapel, which was in a most deplorable and destitute condition, wanting vessels, vestments, bells, and nearly all [139]the requisites for the performance of divine service, and having no service-books but a missal (nisi unum missale). The statement so worded is of course no evidence that there may not have been several copies of the missal. It simply shows that there were no other books (such as texts of the Epistles or Gospels) for use in the service. Bonus goes on to say, with commendable pride, that in fifteen years’ time “the little hut,” as he calls it, had expanded into a monastery, with suitable offices and with a considerable estate in land, the single tin cup had been exchanged for gold and silver chalices, and in place of one “missal,” the monks rejoiced in the possession of a library of thirty-four volumes. It is difficult to understand how Robertson could have justified himself in basing, on a careless version of a statement concerning a missal in a single half-ruined chapel, a broad and misleading generalisation concerning the general absence of books from monasteries. The list of the library later secured by the abbot includes copies of the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Epistles, the Rule of S. Benedict, the Book of Job, the Book of Ezekiel, five Diurnals, eight Antiphonarii, three Nocturnals, a tractate by S. Augustine on Genesis, a book of Dialogues, a Glossary, a Pastoral, a book of Canons, a book entitled Summum Bonum, five Missals, a book entitled Passionarum unum novum ubi sunt omnes passiones ecclesiasticæ (I give the wording from the catalogue), and the Liber Bibliotheca. “Bibliotheca” is the term very generally applied at this period to the Bible, and often used for a collection comprising but a few books of the Bible. The catalogue shows that the good Abbot had made a very fair beginning towards a monastic library.

The letters of Gerbert, Abbot of Bobbio (who, in 998, became Pope under the name of Sylvester II.), throw some light upon the literary interests of that famous monastery and of the time. He writes (about 984) to a monk[140] named Rainald (letter 130 of the collection): “You know with what zeal I seek for copies of books from all quarters, and you know how many scribes there are everywhere in Italy, both in the cities and in the rural districts, I entreat you then ... that you will have transcripts made for me of M. Manilius’ De Astrologia, Victorinus’ De Rhetorica, and of the Ophthalmicus of Demosthenes.... Whatever you lay out I will repay you to the full, according to your accounts.” In letter 123, Gerbert writes to Thietmar of Mayence for a portion of one of the works of Boëthius, his copy being defective. In letter 9, written to Abbot Giselbert, he asks for assistance in making good certain deficiencies in his manuscript of the oration of Cicero, Pro Rege Deiotaro. In letter 8, to the Archbishop of Rheims, he requests that prelate to borrow for him from Abbot Azo a copy of Cæsar’s Commentaries. In return he offers the loan of eight volumes of Boëthius. In letter 7, he requests his friend Airard to attend to the correction of the manuscript of Pliny, and to preparing transcripts of two other manuscripts. In letter 44, to Egbert, Abbot of Tours, he states that he has been much occupied in collecting a library, and that he had for a long time been paying transcribers in Rome, in other parts of Italy, in Germany, and in Belgium, and in buying at great expense texts of important authors. He asks the Abbot to aid in doing similar work in France, and he gives a list (unfortunately lost) of the works for transcripts of which he is looking. He is ready to supply the parchment and to defray all the expenses of the work. In other letters he makes reference to his own writings on rhetoric, arithmetic, and spherical geometry.

These letters, for the reference to which I am indebted to Maitland,[206] assuredly give the impression that even in the dark period of the tenth century, there was no little activity in certain ecclesiastical circles and monastic centres [141]in the transcribing, collecting, and exchanging of books, and not merely of missals, breviaries, or monkish legends, but of literature recognised as classic.

Another letter, written a century and a half later, makes reference to the practice of exchanging books or of using them as pledges. A prior writes to an abbot in 1150: “To his Lord, the Venerable Abbot of—— wishes health and happiness. Although you desire to have the books of Tully, I know that you are a Christian and not a Ciceronian. But you go over to the camp of the enemy not as a deserter, but as a spy. I should, therefore, have sent you the books of Tully which we have, De Re Agraria, the Philippics, and the Epistles, but that it is not our custom that any books should be lent to any person without good pledges. Send us, therefore, the Noctes Atticæ of Aulus Gellius and Origen on the Canticles. The books which we have just brought from France, if you wish for any of them, I will send you.” The Abbot replies at the end of a long letter: “I have sent you as pledges for your books, Origen on the Canticles, and instead of Aulus Gellius (which I could not have at this time), a book which is called Strategematon, which is military.”[207]

The custom of securing books by chains, which prevailed with the libraries of all the earlier religious institutions, did not originate with these. Eusebius mentions that the Roman Senate in the time of Claudius ordered the treatise of Philo Judæus on the Impiety of Caligula to be chained in the library as a famous monument. There appears to have been an early appreciation on the part of certain of the monastery scholars of the importance of indexes. Fosbroke quotes among others the example of John Brome, Prior of Gorlestone, who, in the fifteenth century, put indexes to almost all the books in his library. From an examination of the catalogues of various of the ecclesiastical libraries, Fosbroke arrives at the calculation [142]that the proportion of the works contained under the several main sub-headings was approximately as follows: Divinity, 175; scholastic literature, 89; epistles and controversial literature, 65; history, 54; biography, 32; arts, mathematics, and astrology, 31; philosophy, 13; law, 6.[208] This classification does not give any separate heading for allegory, although this was a subject in which not a few of the earlier monkish writers largely interested themselves.

As an example of monkish allegorical literature, Fosbroke mentions a work written in 1435, under the instructions of a cloth shearer in France, whose name he does not give. The cloth cutter, being a great lover of tennis, had written a ballad upon that game. When he was old, he wished to atone for his early sins and frivolities, and he secured the services of a Dominican monk, who wrote, at his instance and expense, an allegory on the game of tennis. The wall of the tennis court stood for faith, which should always rest on a solid foundation, while in the other conditions of the game the Dominican finds the cardinal virtues, the evangelists, active and contemplative life, the old and the new law, etc.

In the thirteenth century, Omons, who might be described as the Lucretius of his day, wrote a work entitled The Picture of the World, from which one could gather an impression of the character of the philosophy of the early Middle Ages. In the department of metaphysics, Omons (using largely material borrowed from Thales, Anaxagoras, Epicurus, and Plato) described God as comparatively an idle being, and speaks of Him as having at the time of creating Matter also created Nature. Nature executed the will of God as an axe executes the will of the carpenter; it sometimes, however, through want or excess of matter, produces deformities.

The Liberal Arts, Omons divides under the usual septenary [143]arrangement, which is adopted as early as the fifth century by Capella. Omons makes mathematics, however, not a mere science of numbers, but the knowledge of everything that is produced in any regular order whatever, while rhetoric includes judicial verdicts, decretals, laws, etc. The term “liberal” he applied only to an art which explicitly appertained to the mind; and therefore, medicine, painting, sculpture, navigation, the military art, architecture, etc., although in their theories as intellectual as are mathematics and astronomy, were, because applicable to bodily purposes, denominated trades. The term “philosopher” means only men versed in the occult sciences of nature, and among the later philosophers Omons held no one so eminent as Virgil. This was not the Bard of Mantua, but an ugly little Italian conjurer, who, during the tenth century, had performed various feats of legerdemain.

When Peter of Celle had borrowed two volumes of S. Bernard’s works, he wrote to him: “Make haste and quickly copy these and send them to me; and according to my bargain, cause a copy to be made for me, and both those which I have sent to you, and the copies, as I have said, send to me, and take care that I do not lose a single tittle.” Writing to the Dean of Troyes, he says: “Send me the Epistles of the Bishop of Le Mans, for I want to copy them”; and, indeed, he seems to have a constant eye to the acquisition and multiplication of books.[209]

As to this commercium librorum, it would be easy, says Maitland, to multiply examples. In a letter of the Abbot Peter to Guigo, Prior of Chartreuse, he mentions that he had sent him the Lives of S. Nazianzen and S. Chrysostom, and the argument of S. Ambrose against Symmachus. That he had not sent the work of Hilary on the Psalms because his copy contained the same defect as the Prior’s. That he did not possess Prosper against Cassius, but that [144]he had sent to Aquitaine for a copy. He begs the Prior to send the greater volume of S. Augustine, containing the letters which passed between him and S. Jerome, because a great part of their copy, while lying in one of the cells, had been eaten by a bear (casu comedit ursus),[210] a novel difficulty in the way of preserving literature.

Peter of Clugni, known as Peter the Venerable, became abbot of the monastery in 1122. Clugni, the Caput Ordinis, was at that time the most considerable of the Benedictine foundations, and might, in fact, be termed the most important monastery of its age. The correspondence of Peter and of his secretary Nicholas, who was for a time also secretary of Bernard of Clairvaux, forms an important contribution to the monastic history of the country and contains not a few references throwing light on the literary conditions of the time. Nicholas had, in addition to his business as the Abbot’s amanuensis, what Mabillon calls a librorum commercium with various persons. It appears from his letters that he used to lend books on condition that a copy should be returned with the volume lent. Nicholas, while a diligent scribe and an active-minded scholar, was discovered later, to be a very untrustworthy person. He left Clairvaux with books, money, and gold service that did not belong to him, and also (which Abbot Bernard mentions as a special grievance) with three seals, his own, the prior’s, and the abbot’s. His further career was a checkered one, but does not belong to this narrative.

Abbot Peter of Clugni, writing to Master Peter of Poitiers in 1170, lays some emphasis on the inadvisability of devoting too much time to the study of the ancients. “See, now, without the study of Plato, without the disputations of the Academy, without the subtleties of Aristotle, without the teaching of philosophers, the place and the way of happiness are discovered.... You run from [145]school to school, and why are you labouring to teach and to be taught? Why is it that you are seeking through thousands of words and multiplied labours, what you might, if you pleased, obtain in plain language and with little labour? Why, vainly studious, are you reciting with the comedians, lamenting with the tragedians, trifling with the metricians, deceiving with the poets and deceived with the philosophers? Why is it that you are now taking so much trouble about what is not in fact philosophy but should rather (if I may say it without offence) be called foolishness.”

Counsels of this kind give some indication at least of the tendency in Poitiers, and doubtless also in Clugni, to devote to the old-time poetry and philosophy some of the hours which, under a stricter observance, should be reserved for the Scriptures or the Fathers. The venerable Abbot must himself have had some fairly comprehensive knowledge of the literature he was criticising, and the gentle satire of the phrase “deceived with the philosophers” does not give one the impression of coming from a clumsy-minded and ignorant monk such as Robertson describes Peter the Venerable to have been.

A further evidence not only of comprehensive knowledge but of a liberal spirit, is afforded by the fact that Peter gave to the West a translation (possibly the first) of the Alkoran. This is the form used by Peter himself for the Mohammedan scriptures. In a letter to S. Bernard, he speaks of having had this translation prepared of a work which had so greatly influenced the thought of the world that it ought to be known to Europe. He says further that the defenders of the true faith should familiarise themselves with the contentions of the Mohammedan heretics, in order to be able to refute these when the necessity arose.[211]

SOME LIBRARIES OF THE MANUSCRIPT PERIOD.

THE following are some of the more important collections referred to in the records of the Middle Ages. In Constantinople the Patriarch had a library in Thomaïtes which was said to be of considerable importance, and the works in it are referred to very often in the transactions of the Synods. This collection was destroyed by fire in 780, but was speedily replaced. Many of the monasteries of the Greek Church possessed libraries, and in some of these libraries were preserved the oldest manuscripts known to the world. Among the most important of these collections was that contained in the monastery of Mt. Athos, some of the treasures of which have been preserved to the present day. During the time of Basilius Macedo (867-886), much work was said to have been done by the scribes of this monastery.[212]

In Egypt it is claimed that until the conquest by the Arab, there was a good deal of literary activity in the monasteries, and in the monastery of S. Catherine of the Sinai range were preserved some specimens of the earlier manuscripts, of which the Testament discovered by Tischendorf is the most important example.

The Library of S. Giovanni in Naples, from which many valuable Greek manuscripts were secured for the Royal Library in Vienna, was not an old monastery collection, but had its origin, according to Blume, with Janus [147]Parrhasius.[213] The Augustin monks presented the collection in 1729 to the Emperor Charles VI., in order that they might not be disturbed in their seclusion by the visits of zealous scholars.[214]

The earliest of ecclesiastical libraries was probably that collected by Bishop Alexander, in Jerusalem, at the beginning of the third century. Fifty years later a library was founded at Cesarea by Origen, which is described as extensive and important.[215] Collections were also made at an early date at Hippo, at Cirta, at Constantinople, and at S. Peter’s and the Lateran in Rome. All these earlier libraries were apparently connected with the churches, and in most cases places had been found for them within the church walls. Clark quotes from a narrative of the persecution of 303-304 a paragraph saying that the officers “went to the church where the Christians used to assemble, and spoiled it of chalices, lamps, etc., but when they came to the library (bibliothecam), the presses (armaria) were found empty.”[216] From this reference we may conclude that the several vessels and the books were in different parts of the same building.

The library of S. Augustine was bequeathed to the church of Hippo, and the collection was preserved within the church building.

The regulations of the libraries in all the Benedictine monasteries were based upon the Rule of S. Benedict (see ante, p. 28). As Order after Order was founded, there came to be a steady development of feeling in regard to books, and an ever increasing care for their safe-keeping. S. Benedict had contented himself with general directions for study; the Cluniacs prescribe the selection of a special officer to take charge of the books, with an annual audit [148]of the collection, and the assignment to each Brother of a single volume for his year’s study. The Cistercians and Carthusians provide for the loan of books to outsiders under certain conditions, and the practice was later adopted by the Benedictines. The Augustinians prescribe the kind of press (armarium) in which the books are to be kept, and both they and the Premonstratensians permit their books to be lent on receipt of pledges of sufficient value. Even the Mendicant Friars, who, under the original Rule of their Order, had restrained themselves from holding possessions of any kind, found before long that books were indispensable, so that their libraries came to excel those of most other Orders. Richard de Bury, in his Philobiblon, says of the Mendicants: “These men are as ants, ever preparing their meat in the summer, or as ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey ... although they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the Lord’s vineyard, they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of sacred books than all the other vine-dressers.”

Clark points out that the word Library was used by the Benedictines long before any special room was assigned in the Benedictine House as a storage place for the books. He is of opinion that until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the books were for the most part kept in the cloisters, the only portions of the monastery buildings, except the refectory and occasionally the califactorium (warming-house), in which the monks were allowed to congregate. The books so stored in the cloisters were shut up in presses, which secured for them a certain amount of protection. The term applied to these presses, armaria, was that used by the Romans for their book-cases. The monk charged with the care of the books took his name not from the books themselves, as in later times, but from the presses which contained them, and was generally styled armarius.

[149]

In some of the monasteries where literary studies were pursued with special ardour, the more persistent readers and scribes were provided with small wooden compartments or studies called carrells. In the book called the Rites of Durham is given the following description of these carrells: “In the north syde of the cloister, from the corner over againste the church dour to the corner over againste the Dorter dour, was all fynely glased from the hight to the sole within a little of the ground into the Cloister garth, and in every window iij Pewes or Carrells, where every one of the old monks had his carrell, several by himselfs, that, when they had dyned, they dyd resort to that place of Cloister, and there studyed upon these books, every one in his carrell, all the after nonne, unto evensong tyme. This was there exercise every daie.... In every carrell was a deske to lye there books upon, and the carrell was no greater than from one stanchell of the wyndowe to another, and over againste the carrells againste the church wall, did stande certain great almeries (or cupbords) of waynscott all full of bookes (with great store of ancient manuscripts to help them in their study) wherein did lye as well the old anncyent written Doctors of the Church as other prophane authors, with dyverse other holie men’s wourks, so that every one did studye what Doctor pleased them best, havinge the Librarie at all tymes to goe studye in besydes there carrells.”[217]

In the Customs of the Augustinian priory of Barnwell, written towards the end of the thirteenth century, the following passage occurs: “The press in which the books are kept ought to be lined inside with wood, that the damp of the walls may not moisten or stain the books. This press should be divided vertically as well as horizontally by sundry partitions, on which the books may be ranged so as to be separated from one another: for fear they be packed so close as to injure each other, or to delay those who want them.”

[150]

The catalogue of the House of the White Canons at Titchfield in Hampshire, dated 1400, shows that the books were kept in a small room, on shelves called columpnæ, and set against the walls. A closet of this kind was evidently not a working place, but simply a place of storage. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the larger monasteries had accumulated many hundred volumes, and it began to be customary to provide for the collections separate quarters, rooms constructed for the purpose. The presses in the cloisters were still utilised for books in daily reference.

In Christ Church, Canterbury, where as early as the fourteenth century, the collection comprised as many as 698 books, a library at Durham was built about 1425 by Archbishop Chichele: the library at Durham was built about the same time by Prior Wessyngton. That at Citeaux, which was placed over the scriptorium, dates from 1480, and that of St. Germain des Prés from 1513. The collection of the latter foundation was one of the earliest in France, and as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, there is record of its being consulted by strangers. At the time of the French Revolution, it contained 7000 manuscripts and 4900 printed books.[218]

The Queen of Sicily, who in 1517 visited Clairvaux, one of the two great Cistercian foundations in France, describes the library as follows: “On the same side of the cloister are fourteen studies, where the monks do their reading and writing, and over these studies, one mounts by a broad spiral staircase to the new library. This library is 189 feet long by 17 feet wide. It contains 48 seats (bancs) and in each banc four shelves (poulpitres) furnished with books on all subjects, but chiefly theology; the greater number of the said books are of vellum and are written by hand, richly storied and illuminated.”

The phrase “written by hand,” indicates that the Queen [151]was already acquainted with books produced from type, some of which had in fact been produced in Italy as early as 1464.

Another description, written in 1723 by the author of the Voyage Littéraire, speaks of “the fifteen little cells, all in a row, where the Brethren formerly used to write books, for which reason they are still called the writing rooms. Over these cells is the library, the building for which is large, vaulted, well lighted, and stocked with a large number of manuscripts, fastened by chains to desks; but there are not many printed books.”

The provisions of the statutes affecting the library imposed upon the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, were evidently borrowed directly from the customs of the monasteries. The statutes of Oriel College, Oxford, dated 1329, present an example: “The common books (libri communes) of the House are to be brought out and inspected once a year, on the feast of the Commemoration of Souls (November 2d) in the presence of the Provost or his deputy, and of the scholars (Fellows). Each one of the scholars, in the order of seniority, may select a single book which either treats of the science to which he is devoting himself, or which he requires for his use. This he may keep until the same festival in the succeeding year, when a similar selection of books is to take place, and so on, from year to year. If there should happen to be more books than persons, those that remain are to be selected in the same manner.”

A statute of Archbishop Lanfranc, for the English Benedictines, dated 1070, and based, as he tells us, on the general monastic practice of his time, gives the following regulation: “On the Monday after the first Sunday in Lent, before Brethren come into the Chapter House, the librarian [here called not armarius but custos librorum] shall have a carpet laid down and all the books got together upon it, except those which the year previous[152] had been assigned for reading. These the Brethren are to bring with them, when they come into the Chapter House, each his book in his hand. Then the librarian shall read a statement as to the manner in which Brethren have had books during the past year. As each Brother hears his name pronounced, he is to give back the book which had been entrusted to him for reading; and he whose conscience accuses him of not having read through the book which he had received, is to fall on his face, confess his fault, and entreat forgiveness. The librarian shall then make a fresh distribution of books, namely a different volume to each Brother for his reading.”

It would appear from this reference as if Lanfranc’s monks were under obligations to read through but one book each year, which was certainly a very moderate allowance. It is also to be noted that the books appear not to have been distributed according to the preferences of the readers, but to have been assigned at the will of the librarian. There must certainly have been no little difference in the character and extent of the duty imposed of reading through one book (even with so long an allowance of time) according to the particular volume which the custos saw fit to assign. The worthy Archbishop writes, however, as if a book were a book and one as good for edification or as fitting for penance as another.

It is evident that there were two classes of volumes, one utilised for distribution for separate reading, and the other reserved for reference and placed in a separate room (first called armarium and later bibliotheca) where they were fastened with irons chains to lecterns or reading-desks.

In the various details concerning the distribution of books, the arrangement of the lecterns for the chained books, etc., the practice in the early colleges was evidently modelled on that of the monasteries. The system of chaining, as adopted in England, would allow of the books[153] being readily taken down from the shelves and placed on the lectern for reading. One end of the chain was attached to the middle of the upper edge of the right-hand board or cover; the other to a ring which played on a bar which set in front of the shelf on which the book stood. The fore-edge of the books, not the back, was turned to the front. A swivel, usually in the middle of the chain, prevented tangling. The chains varied in length according to the distance of the shelf from the desk.[219]

In a copy of Locke’s Treatise on the Epistles, printed in 1711, Maitland found inscribed the following “advertisement”: “Since, to the great reproach of the nations and a much greater one of our Holy Religion, the thievish disposition of some that enter into libraries to learn there no good, hath made it necessary to secure the innocent books, and even the sacred volumes themselves, with chains (which are better deserved by those ill persons who have too much learning to be hanged and too little to be honest), care should be taken hereafter that as additions shall be made to this library (of which there is a hopeful expectation), the chains should neither be longer nor more clumsy than the use of them requires, and that the loops whereby they are fastened to the books may be rivetted on such a part of the cover and so smoothly as not to gall or raze the books while these are removed from or to their respective places.”[220]

Isidore, Bishop of Seville (c. 560-636), possessed probably the largest collection of books at that time in Europe. It was contained in fourteen presses or armaria, each of which was ornamented with a bust and inscribed with verses. The series of verses concludes with the following notice addressed ad interventorem, a term which may be interpreted a talkative intruder:

[154]

(The scribe allows no one to speak in his presence; there is nothing for you to do here, chatterbox; you had better go outside)—a motto which would serve very well for a reading-room of to-day.

In Rome the Church had, from an early date, preserved a collection of manuscripts which related more particularly to church matters, but which included also some specimens of the Roman Classics. In 855, Lupus, of Ferrières, writes to Pope Benedict III., begging for the loan of certain texts from which to make transcripts. He specifies the Commentary of S. Jerome on Jeremiah, Cicero de Oratore, Quintilian, and Terence.[221]

In the centuries following, however, as the Roman Church sank into a condition of ignorance and strife, and Italy was continuously upset by invasions, the library in Rome and the collections which had been instituted in certain churches outside of Rome were either seriously lessened or entirely destroyed. As late, however, as 1276, a few valuable manuscripts were still to be found in the church collections. Wattenbach speaks of the collection in Verona, in the library of the Town Hall, as one of the most important of those in Italy in which old manuscripts have been preserved to the present time. Next in importance among the older collections, he mentions that of Hexham in England, which had been originally collected by Bishop Acca in the year 700, and which is referred to by Bede.[222]

With this is to be mentioned the library of York, which is first described by Alcuin.[223]

Among the earlier important library collections was that of the monastery of Vivaria, which had been founded by Cassiodorus; the writings were classified according to their contents, and were arranged in a series of armaria.

[155]

After the beginning of the seventh century, the most noteworthy collection was that of Bobbio, a portion of which remained as late as 1618, and was taken by Paul V. for the Vatican Library. Another portion found its way to Turin.

The literary activity of the monastery of Corbie has already been mentioned, and the library there continued in existence during the entire lifetime of the monastery. After 1350 the monks appear to have themselves given up the work of writing. Étienne de Conty is recorded as one of the special benefactors of the library. He collected books for it, and he employed special scribes to add to the collection.[224]

In Germany, the monastery of Reichenau was noted as early as 821 for its excellent collection of manuscripts. The librarian Reginbert prepared in 821 an exhaustive catalogue of the collection. Not a few of the manuscripts were, as appeared by the notes in the catalogue, the work of his own hands. Of these manuscripts, which he had prepared with so great zeal and labour, there have remained but five sheets of one book, with a portion of the catalogue.

Of nearly as early a date is the first catalogue of the library of St. Gall, previously referred to; in the catalogue of this there are beneath the titles various critical notes. There is record of the loan of books to the Emperor Charles III., to Frau Rickert, and to Liutward, Bishop of Vercelli.[225]

In the monastery of Pomposa, in Lombardy, Abbot Jerome brought together in the eleventh century (in spite of certain grumblings on the part of the monks, the ground for which is not clearly explained) a great collection of manuscripts.[226] A certain Henricus Clericus, writing [156]in 1093, describing this collection to a friend, says that in no church, not even in Rome, could so wonderful a group of books be found. Henricus prepared a catalogue of the library, and at the close of the catalogue he finds it necessary, as a matter of consistency, to apologise for the abbot who had ventured to include in the collection heathen books. The presence of such books, known at the time as libri scholastici, was, however, by no means exceptional in monastery collections, and in many of these were to be found copies of Virgil, Ovid, and particularly Cicero. While this was more frequently the case in Italy, it occurred also in Germany. An inventory made in 1233 of the monastery of Neumünster, near Wurzburg, includes in a special list the titles of a number of the Classics.

A similar separate catalogue of libri scholastici was made in 1297 for the collection in the cathedral library of Lübeck.

While the principal increase in the monastery libraries had been secured through the work of scribes and through exchanges, and occasionally through purchases, a considerable proportion of the books came to them through gifts or bequests. The gift that it was customary for a novice to make on entering a monastery very frequently took the form of books.

In 1055, the priest Richlof, in placing his son with the Benedictines, gave as an accompanying present a farm and some books, and his mother gave a copy of a treatise of S. Ambrose.[227]

Léon Maitre says that in Fleury, each new scholar was expected to present at least two codices. Towards the end of the eleventh century, a noble cleric, who entered as a monk the monastery at Tegernsee, brought with him so many books that, according to the account, when placed by the principal altar they covered this from top to bottom.[228]

[157]

In what was known as the Scottish Monastery, near Vienna, there was kept in the thirteenth century a record of gifts, which record includes a long list of presents of books. In the latter part of the century, the monastery appears to have degenerated, the library fell into disuse, and the presents of books ceased. In 1418 the so-called Scottish monks were driven out, and the foundation was taken possession of by Germans. From this date the record of gifts of books again began.

In 1453, the monastery received as a bequest from Dr. Johannes Polzmacher his entire library. The library came to include a considerable list of works on jurisprudence together with a series of classics, including several copies of Ovid. The latter appears to have been a special favourite in the monastic collections. The books on jurisprudence were utilised for the profit of the monastery by being loaned out to the jurisprudence Faculty of the university. They were, it appears, also occasionally loaned to the students for transcribing. In the chance of the manuscripts suffering damage while out on hire, the borrower was compelled to deposit an adequate pledge in the shape either of money or other valuable property.[229]

The monastery in Bobbio received books from wandering Irishmen, as is indicated by the following inscription:

(Holy Columba of Scotland, thy votary Dungal has bestowed upon thee this book, whereby the hearts of the brothers may be gladdened. Do thou who readest it pray that God may be the reward of thy labour.)

[158]

In the monastery of St. Père-de-Chartres the Abbot Alveus, who died in 955, presented to S. Peter a book Pro Vita Æterna.[231]

Dietrich Schreiber, a citizen of Halle, who, notwithstanding his name, is said not to have been a scribe, gave, in 1239, for the good of his soul, to the preaching Brothers of Leipzig, a canonistic manuscript, with the condition that either of his sons should have the privilege of redeeming the same for the sum of five marks, in case he might require it in connection with his study of the law.[232] Robert of Lille, who died in 1339, left in his will to his daughters a certain illuminated calendar, with the condition attached that after their death the calendar was to be given to the nuns of Chikessaund.[233]

It is also the case that bequests securing an annual income were occasionally given with the specific purpose of founding or endowing monastery scriptoria and libraries. The Abbot of St. Père-de-Chartres ordered, in 1145, that the tenants or others recognising the authority of the monastery must take up each year for the support of the library the sum of eighty-six solidos.[234]

His successor, Fulbert, instituted a new room for the collection and kept the monks themselves at work, so that in 1367 a catalogue, inscribed in four rolls, gives the titles of 201 volumes.[235]

Also in Evesham, in Worcestershire, England, a statute enacted in 1215 provides that certain tenths coming into the priory should be reserved for the purpose of buying parchment and for the increase of the library. During the following year the amount available for this purpose was five solidos, eighteen deniers.[236]

[159]

The account books of the monks of Ely showed that in the year 1300 they purchased five dozen sheets of parchment, four pounds of ink, eight calf-skins, four sheep-skins, five dozen sheets of vellum, and six pairs of book clasps. In the same year they paid six shillings for a Decretal and two shillings for a Speculum Gregor. In 1329, the Precentor received six shillings and seven pence with which he was instructed to go to Balsham to purchase books. In the same year, four shillings were paid for twelve iron chains (used, of course, for fastening the books safely to the reading-desks). Between 1350 and 1356, the purchases appear to have included no less than seventy dozen sheets of parchment and thirty dozen sheets of vellum.[237]

Prince Borwin, of Rostock, in 1240 presented the monastery of Dargun with a hide of land, the proceeds of which were to be used for the repairing and preservation of the books in the library.[238] Adam, treasurer of the Chapter of Rennes, in 1231, presented his library to the abbey of Penfont, with the condition that the books were never to be diverted from the abbey, and that copies were to be lent only against adequate pledges.

In 1345, a library was founded in the House of the German Brothers of Beuggen, near Rheinfelden, through the exertions of Wulfram of Nellenberg. He directed that all books left by deceased Brothers throughout Elsass were to be brought to this library, and the living Brothers were also earnestly urged to present their own books to the same collection.[239]

The great library of the monastery of Admunt was catalogued in 1380 by Brother Peter of Arbonne. The Chapter of S. Pancras, in Leyden, received in 1380, [160]through a bequest of Philip of Leyden, a collection of eighty manuscripts, the catalogue of which has been preserved.[240]

As before indicated, the Monastery Reform, which was instituted with the beginning of the fifteenth century, exercised a very decided influence upon the interest in books and upon the development of libraries. In Tegernsee, where the once noted library had fallen into ruins, the Abbot Casper (1426-1461) reorganised it, restored such of the old manuscripts as were still in existence, bought new codices, and put to work a number of hired scribes. His successor, Conrad V., carried on the work actively and purchased for the sum of eleven hundred pounds heller no less than 450 volumes, in addition to which he secured a number of gifts or devout presents.[241]

In Salzburg, the Archbishop Johann II. (1429-1441) caused a new library building to be erected, and collected for it many beautiful manuscripts. In the monastery of Bergen, near Magdeburg, the Abbot Bursfelder (1450-1478) organised a library, and utilised for his books an old chapel. In 1477, the Prior Martin instituted a library in Bordesholm, and Brother Liborius, who was a professor in Rostock, gave over, in 1405, to this library, for the good of his soul, his works on jurisprudence, with the provision that they were to be placed in chains and to remain forever in the reading-room. A catalogue of this collection, which was prepared in 1498, and which contains more than five hundred titles, has been preserved.[242] The library of the Benedictine monastery of St. Ulrich, near Augsburg, retained its early importance until the invention of printing, and in 1472, as before mentioned, a printing office was instituted in connection with the monastery, by the Abbot and the Chapter, in which active work was carried on. Abbot Trithemius presented to the monastery [161]of Sponheim, in 1480, the sum of fifteen hundred ducats for the enlargement of its library.

As before stated, the Brothers of Common Life planned their collections of books expressly with reference to the service of the students in their schools, and these libraries contained, therefore, a much larger proportion of books in the vernacular than were to be found in other monasteries. In some of the Brotherhood Homes, the library was divided into the collection for the Brothers and the collection for the students. It was ordered that at least once a year all books that were not out on loan should be called in and should be inspected in the presence of the Brothers.

[162]

Large quantities of these manuscripts found their way, however, very promptly to Italy, chiefly through Venice, and, as is described in another chapter, not a few of the Greek scholars who were driven from the Byzantine territories, or who refused to live under the rule of the Turk, brought with them into Italy, as their sole valuable possessions, collections of manuscripts, more or less important, which they used either as texts for their lectures or for transcribing for sale.

The collections in the monasteries of the West, brought together in the first place simply for the requirements of the monks and restricted (at least in theory) to devotional or doctrinal books, were, in large measure at least, placed at the disposal of scholars and readers outside of the monasteries, as the interest in literature came to extend beyond the class of ecclesiastics. With this extension of the use of the libraries, there came a natural development in the range of the books collected.

Long after the monks or ecclesiastics had ceased to exercise any control over the books or to be themselves the only readers interested in their preservation and use, the most convenient space for the collection was to be found in the church buildings. Many of the collections came, in fact, to be known as cathedral libraries.

In certain cases, books or money for the purchase of books was bequeathed in trust to ecclesiastical authorities with the direct purpose of providing a library for the use of the general public. The cathedral Prior of Vercelli (in Piedmont), Jacob Carnarius, who died in 1234, left his books to the Dominicans of S. Paul. He made it, however, a condition of the bequest that under proper security of deposit or pledge, the books should be placed at the disposal of any scholars desiring their use, and particularly of instructors in the Theological Faculty of the University of Vercelli.

Petrarch’s library was bequeathed in 1362 to the Church[163] of S. Mark in Venice, with the condition that the collection was to be for the use of the general public. The books were neglected, and for some time disappeared altogether, and it was only in 1635 that a portion of them were recovered. The famous library of S. Mark dates from 1468, when Cardinal Bessarion presented to the city eight hundred manuscripts, assigning as his reason for the gift the generous hospitality extended by Venice to the refugees from Constantinople. These books were to be for the use of any qualified citizens of the city, a pledge of double the value being deposited for any manuscript borrowed. The library of Boccaccio, who died in 1375, was bequeathed to the monks of the Holy Ghost in Florence. This library was afterwards added to by the collection of the famous theologian, Luigi Marsigli, and that of Niccolo Niccoli.[243]

To Florence, which stood at the front of the intellectual development of Italy, belongs the credit of instituting the largest and most important of the earlier public libraries of Italy. Niccolo Niccoli, one of the most energetic of the scholarly book collectors, specified in his will, made in 1430, that his manuscripts should be placed in the Camal-dulensian monastery of S. Maria, where his friend Traversari was prior, and that these manuscripts were to be available for public use. In 1437, however, the day before his death, he added a codicil to his will, under which the decision as to the abiding-place for his manuscripts was left to sixteen trustees.

He died in debt, however, and the books would have been seized by his creditors if they had not been redeemed by Cosimo de’ Medici. Cosimo placed them in the Dominican monastery of S. Mark, the collection in which, in 1444, comprised four hundred Latin and Greek manuscripts. Cosimo gave much care to the further development of this collection. As has already been mentioned, [164]he used for the purpose the services of the great manuscript dealer, Vespasiano. After the earthquake of 1453, he caused the library building to be restored with greater magnificence than before. The care of the library was continued, after the death of Cosimo, by his son Pietro, and the collection finally became the foundation of the famous Laurentian library, which is in existence to-day.

Pietro took pains to send the Greek grammarian, Laskaris, twice to the Orient to collect further manuscripts. From his first journey, Laskaris brought back no less than two hundred works, of which eighty had not heretofore been known in Italy. On his second journey, Laskaris died.

The library suffered much during the invasion of Charles VIII., but a large proportion of the books were redeemed from the French invaders by the Dominican monks, who paid for them three thousand gulden.

Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici (later Pope Leo X.) took the collection from the monastery with him to Rome, but it was afterwards returned to Florence by Pope Clemens VII.

Clemens gave to Michel Angelo the commission to build a hall for the library, but both Pope and architect died before the work was completed, and the building took shape only finally in 1571, the plan of Michel Angelo having been carried out in substance.

The library of the Vatican passed through various vicissitudes according to the interest or the lack of interest of the successive popes, but under Pope Nicholas V. (1447-1455) it became one of the most important collections in the world for the use of scholars. In 1471, Sixtus IV. completed the library building and the rooms for the archives and added many works, and it was under this Pope that the use of the books was thrown open (under certain conditions) to the general public.

Frederick, Duke of Urbino, is reported to have spent as[165] much as 40,000 ducats on the ducal collection in Urbino, and Vespasiano rendered important services in the selection and development of this library. The books were, in 1657, under the papacy of Alexander VII., transferred to the Vatican.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there was very considerable interest in literary work in Hungary and some noteworthy collections of manuscripts were there brought together. The collectors in Italy found in fact some of their richest treasures, particularly in manuscripts in Greek, in the monasteries of Hungary and of Transylvania. The cause of literature was much furthered by King Matthias Corvinus, who brought together a very valuable collection in Ofen. He kept four scribes in Florence preparing works for the Ofen library, and thirty were continually at work in Ofen itself. His wife, Beatrix, who was a daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples, and a grand-daughter of Alfonso the Good, is said to have exercised no little influence upon the literary culture of the Hungarian Court. At her instance, many Italian scholars were brought to Hungary, and their aid utilised in completing the library. The codices Budences came to be well known in the scholarly world, and secured fame both for the beauty of their script and the richness of their adornment. Wattenbach says of these, however, that their text is very largely inaccurate, giving the impression that the transcripts had been prepared hurriedly and to order. After the death of King Matthias, a number of his books came into the possession of Emperor Maximilian, who used them for the foundation of the Court Library of Vienna. This was the only portion of the original Hungarian collection which escaped destruction at the hands of the Turks.

Among the public libraries in France is to be noted that of Louis IX., which was open for the use of scholars, but which, being limited almost entirely to devotional[166] books, could not have been of any great scholarly service. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard de Furnival, chancellor of the Cathedral of Amiens, instituted a public library, and himself wrote, as a guide for the same, a work entitled Biblionomia.

The libraries of S. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg have already been referred to.[244]

According to Savigny, there were before the time of printing no university libraries in Italy. The stationarii provided both instructors and students with such books as were prescribed in the courses, and the demand for others appears not to have been great. In Paris, on the other hand, a collection of books for the use of the students was instituted as early as 1270, the first benefactor being Stephen, Archdeacon of Canterbury. Stephen gave his books to the church of Notre Dame to be loaned to poor students of theology. In 1297, Peter of Joigny, in continuation of the same work, gave a collection of books in trust to the university directly for the use of these poor students of theology. The famous College of the Sorbonne probably dates from 1253. The librarium of the college was instituted in 1289, and it was specified that the books were for the common use of the instructors and students. The catalogue of this collection, prepared in the following year, is still in existence and contains 1017 titles.[245]

Each socius of the college had a key to the library rooms and was permitted to take guests in with him. The books were all fastened to the wall or to the reading-desks by chains, so that the risk of abstraction was not a serious one. The statutes of 1321 prescribed that of every work issued, one copy in the best form must be preserved for the Sorbonne collection. This is probably the first statute of the kind having in view the preservation, in a public collection, of copies of all works produced. It is to be borne in mind, however, in the first place, that it could [167]have had reference only to books produced under the direct supervision of the college, and secondly, that there was here no question of original literary production, but merely of copies of the older works accepted as possessing doctrinal authority. The books in this library (and probably in other similar libraries) which were not protected by chains were called libri vagantes, and these could, under certain restrictions, be loaned out. Wattenbach is of opinion, however, that no books other than duplicates were placed in this class.

Another library of importance was contained in the College of Narbonne, which had been founded in 1316, and which was itself a continuation of an earlier foundation instituted in 1238 by the Archbishop Peter, at the time he was about to take part in the Crusade. The books were to be open for the use of students as well in Paris as of Narbonne.[246]

In the College of Plessis, the statutes of 1455 described that all books, with the exception of the Missals, must be chained, and that no unchaining should be permitted except with the authorisation of the master of all the bursars. In the College of the Scots, the loaning of books outside of the building was absolutely forbidden.

To the College of the Sorbonne belongs the credit of taking the initiative step in inviting the first printers to Paris. In 1469, the prior and the librarian made themselves responsible for finding work and support for two printers, called to Paris from Mayence. The fact that the Prior Johann Heynlin was himself a German was doubtless of influence in bringing to the college early information concerning the importance of the new art.[247] The first book which was printed in Paris was the letters of Gasparin of Bergamo, which appeared in 1470 (twenty years after the perfecting of the Gutenberg press), and bore the imprint in ædibus Sorbonnæ.

[168]

In England, the foundation of the Franciscans in Oxford took, early in the thirteenth century, active part in furthering library facilities for the clerics and the students. They appear to have had two collections, one called libraria conventus, doubtless restricted to theological and religious books, and one described as libraria scholarium or studentium, which contained a number of examples of the classics. It was to the Franciscans that Bishop Grosseteste, who died in 1253, bequeathed all his books.

The interest in literature of Richard de Bury, the friend of Petrarch, has already been referred to. He was the instructor of King Edward III., and exercised later, important official responsibilities. He served as a foreign representative more than once, and was for a time chancellor of the kingdom. At the time of his death in 1345, he was Bishop of Durham. He had a passion for the collecting of books, and with the exceptional advantages of wealth, official station, and knowledge of distant countries, he had advantages in this pursuit possessed by no other Englishman of the time. It is said that the other rooms in his house having already been crowded with books, these were massed in his bedroom also in such quantities that he could get to his bed only by stepping upon them. His library was bequeathed to Durham College in Oxford, which had been founded by himself. The college was discontinued by Henry VIII., and the books were scattered, not even the catalogue, which Bury had himself prepared, having been preserved. In confiding his books to Oxford for the use of the students, Richard gives various earnest injunctions as to the proper respect in which they should be held and the care with which they should be handled. A reader who should handle the books with dirty hands or while eating or drinking, could, in Bury’s opinion, be fitly punished with nothing less than banishment. The collection of Durham College was to be open[169] not only to the use of the members of the college itself, but of all masters and students in Oxford, but no books of which there were no duplicates were to be taken out of the building.

The earliest university library of Germany was that of the College Carolinum in Prague, instituted by Charles IV. The next in date appears to have been that of Heidelberg, where as early as 1386 the Faculty of Arts had a library for itself in addition to the general collection belonging to the university. As before stated, there was also a collection in the Castle which was open for the use of all readers, students, citizens, or strangers. The university library in Vienna dates from 1415, and that in Erfurt from 1433. The town library in Leipzig had for its origin a collection possessed by the Augustinian monks in the monastery of S. Thomas, which collection was thrown open for the use of the public in 1445. Additions to the library were to be made only under the inspection and supervision of the monastery authorities.

The most noteworthy library which had no connection with any university was instituted at Alzei (in Hesse Cassel) in 1409. Its founders were Johannes of Kirchdorf, Prebendary of the Cathedral of Worms and chaplain of King Rupert.

The books were given in order that the clerics and other scholarly people who belonged to the city of Alzei “could use the same for entertainment and instruction, and could spread among the community at large the learning contained therein.”[248]

In Hamburg there was, as early as 1469, a collection comprising forty volumes of medical books, for the use more particularly of the city physician and his assistant, and also for general reference. In 1480 the burgermeister Neuermeister left a considerable legacy for the foundation of a city library. In Frankfort, the library of the [170]Carmelite monastery was taken over in 1477 for the use of the city, in order that the “books could be made of service for the enlightenment of the community to the greater glory of God and of the Mother of God.”

The collection formed by Charlemagne has already been referred to, and also the provision of his will, under which, after his death, the books were to be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Charles the Bald, with whose name it is not easy to associate intellectual activity, appears to have been a great collector of books. After his death his library was, under his directions, divided between St. Denis, Compiègne, and his son.[250] It is recorded of William the Great of Aquitaine, who died in 1030, and who was the father of the Empress Agnes, that “he had many books and read zealously therein.”[251] Count Baldwin of Guines, who died in 1205, brought together a collection of books which he had translated into the Romance tongue. Louis IX. of France was interested in the idea of bringing together a collection of devout books, and, although he did not live to carry out his plan, the manuscripts which were left by him served for the scholar Vincennes of Beauvais in the preparation of his great encyclopedia.

Louis heard, during his crusade, of some sultan who had caused to be prepared transcripts of all the noted works of philosophy. This example incited the zeal [171]of Louis, who gave directions that all the “authentic, useful, and devout books” which were to be found within his realm were to be transcribed, and the transcripts placed in the Royal Library. The collection was, however, not allowed to remain complete, as in his will Louis directed that the books should be divided between the preacher monks and the Minorites of Paris, the Abbey Royaumont, and the Dominican monks of Compiègne.[252]

John, Duke of Berry, son of the Good King John, and brother of King Charles V., found opportunity, even during the troublous times which culminated with the battle of Poitiers and the imprisonment of his father, to bring together a noteworthy collection of books. It was this collection that made the beginning of the library of the Louvre, instituted by Charles V., a library for which Gilles Mallet prepared in 1373 a very complete catalogue. Barrois published in 1830, in Paris, a work devoted entirely to a description of the books collected by Prince John and his brother Charles.

David Aubert, whose translation of the History of the Emperors was published[253] in 1457, makes, in the preface to this history, special mention of the literary tastes of Philip, Duke of Burgundy. He says that Philip made a daily practice of having read to him ancient histories and that he kept employed a great number of skilled translators, learned historians, and capable scribes who were busied in adding to his great library. This collection of Philip appears later to have been scattered as there is no record of its preservation.

The Duke of Bedford found time, between his frequent campaigns, to interest himself in the collection of manuscripts, and more particularly of works which were beautifully illuminated. He purchased, for 1200 francs, a portion of the library of Charles V., which had been [172]captured, and, these books being taken to Oxford, finally found place in the Bodleian collection.

Philip of Cleves, who died in 1528 and who was connected with the Burgundy House, shared the passion of his relatives for magnificent manuscripts.

An inventory of Margaret, Duchess of Brittany, contains the descriptive titles of eleven books of devotion and four romances, “all bound in satin.”[254]

The name of Anne of Brittany, the wife of King Charles VIII., and later of Louis XII., has long been famous in connection with her fondness for books of devotion and with the great collection which she succeeded in making of these. An inventory of 1498 gives the titles of 1140 books as belonging to Anne’s collection.[255]

In Italy, it was not until the time of Petrarch that there came to be any general interest in the collection of books. This interest was naturally associated with the great Humanistic movement of which it may be considered as partly the cause and partly the effect. The development of literary interests in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries will be considered in the chapter on the Renaissance.

In Germany, the collections outside of the monasteries appear to have been less important than in Burgundy and in France, the difference being probably in part due to the narrower cultivation of the German noblemen, and probably also in part to their smaller resources. In fact, the more important collections do not appear to have been in the possession of the nobility at all, but to have come into existence through the public spirit of citizens of lower degree. The library of two hundred volumes brought together as early as 1260 by Hugo Trimberg, a schoolmaster of St. Gangolf, has already been referred to.

[173]

Duke Ludwig of Brieg is described as having had as early as 1360 a considerable collection of books, and as having had written, in 1353, by some scribe whose name has not been preserved, the Hedwig legends.

The Electors of the Palatinate interested themselves in the formation of libraries, having possibly been influenced to some extent by their relations with their neighbours on the other side of the Rhine. Authors such as Matthias of Kemnat and Michel Behaim worked at the instance of the Electors and under pay from them. The books of Kemnat and Behaim were either originally written in German, or were promptly translated into German for the use of the Electors and of their wives. A number of books in this series are also ornamented with pictures, but, according to the descriptions, the art work in these illustrations was much inferior to that done at the same time in Burgundy.

The most important group of the Heidelberg manuscripts was collected by Ludwig III., who died in 1437.[256] His daughter Mechthild, whose first husband was the Count Ludwig of Wurtemberg, and whose second, the Archduke Albrich, retained in her widowhood in her castle at Rotenburg a collection of ninety-four volumes of the mediæval poets, whose works were written in the vernacular.[257] Ulbrich of Rappoldstein kept two scribes engaged for five years in transcribing the Parsival, and the cost of the work amounted to £200.

It is apparent from the preceding sketch that the development of literature and the circulation of books during the Middle Ages were considerable, notwithstanding the serious difficulties there were to contend with during the ten centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire of the West and the time of the invention of printing.

[174]

Under the “Peace of the World” secured by the imperial rule, there had come to be an active literary production and a development of literary interests throughout the community which called for a wide distribution and a general use of books. There was available for the use of publishers a great list of accepted classics, Greek and Latin, and there were also various epochs during which there came into existence works by contemporary writers of distinctive importance, many of which have been preserved as classics for future generations.

The publishers of this period had a convenient and inexpensive material to use for the making of books, and they had available for book production the labour of skilled and inexpensive scribes,—chiefly slaves. The well established means of communication throughout the Empire enabled the publishers of Rome and Massilia and other literary centres to keep open connections with cities in the farthest districts of the realm, and there is adequate evidence of a well organised trade in the distribution of books over almost the entire civilised world, a trade which continued active until the latter part of the fourth century.

With the fall of the Empire of the West and with the destruction of so much of the civilised organisation and machinery which had been dependent upon Roman rule, the book trade, or, at least, the trade outside of Italy, practically disappeared. There remained, however, with certain classes a knowledge of the classics and an interest in their preservation, and there remained also in the monasteries the knowledge and practice of writing and the collections of the works of the early Church Fathers, the multiplication of which, for the use of the increasing number of priests, called for continued labour on the part of the clerical scribes.

When the work of writing came to be instituted, particularly in the Benedictine Order, as a part of the[175] regular routine of the life of a properly ordered monastery, and when such work came to be accepted as a part of the daily or weekly services rendered by the monks, the preservation of the art of writing and the preservation of the manuscripts, the existence of which depended upon this continued knowledge, were assured.

For centuries after 476, such literary vitality as there was depended practically upon these Benedictine monasteries. After the tenth century, we find a wider literary interest throughout the community, and in certain Courts and circles of nobility, literature began to be accepted as fashionable, and an interest in literature to be accepted as part of the proper outfit of a gentleman.

The second stage, therefore, in the development of the interest in books which secured the multiplication of enough copies of many of the older books to prevent them from passing out of existence, was in the formation of the collections by princes and nobles, collections which were, as we have noted, usually under the charge of clerical scribes.

The third and more important stage of development came with the recognition, on the part of the newly founded universities of Bologna, Paris, Prague, Heidelberg, and Oxford, of the fact that the work of higher education required the use of collections of books for the reference of instructors and for the direct use of the students. With the instituting in the universities of a class of scribes (stationarii, librarii) recognised as university officials, a recognition which carried with it certain privileges and protection, and which went far to offset the hampering restrictions of university and ecclesiastical supervision, the book production of Europe took a more assured form.

The fourth step in the extension of literary interests was taken by the towns-people, partly at the instance of priests who were themselves sprung from the people, and[176] partly under the influence of students returning from university work to their native towns; and collections of books were made for the use of the towns-people, while libraries, originally planned only for the work of the monasteries and for the use of clerics, were thrown open to students generally. There appear to have been in the manuscript period and in the earlier ages of printing a larger number of such town libraries and a larger extent of literary interest among the citizen class in Germany than in either France or England.

In Italy, the development of literary interests and of literary production worked from an early date much more outside of church organisations than was the case either in Germany or in France.

In such centres of literary activity as Florence, Milan, Padua, Rome, and later, Venice, the production of the classics and the multiplying of the books of the Italian writers themselves was carried on at the instance and to a large extent with the money of the wealthier citizens, citizens who in many cases held no official positions whatever. The intellectual life of Italy was, however, from an early date, very largely influenced by the thought and the learning that came to it from the Greeks of Constantinople, an influence which was increasing in importance for a quarter of a century before the fall of the Greek Empire, and which, after 1453, was naturally still more extended and emphasised by the large immigration of Greek scholars flying from Turkish rule and bringing with them the literary treasures of the East. It was this invasion of Greek thought and the restoration of the knowledge of the poetry and philosophy of classic Greece, which gave the immediate impetus to the great intellectual movement known as the Renaissance.

As the Renaissance movement took hold of the imagination of Italian scholars, it found ready for its use the new invention of printing, and through the presses of[177] Aldus and his associates, the thought of the Old World, reshaped with the knowledge of the fifteenth century, gave a fresh inspiration to the intellectual life of Europe.

In Germany, where the Renaissance movement also influenced the intellectual life of the time, a more important impetus to the intellectual activity came with the work of the Reformation. The printing-press made the teachings of Luther and his associates available for the widest popular distribution, and the towns-people and villagers who bought from the book peddlers the tracts containing the vigorous statements of the Reformers, and who bought also the answering arguments of the defenders of the Roman Church, were not merely wrestling with a religious or theological issue, but were furthering the general education of the community and were helping to lay the foundation of the book trade of the future. From the earliest date of the printing-press, it was the case that there was in Germany a larger distribution of books, printed in the vernacular, among what one may call (for purposes of classification) the lower orders of the community, than was the case in either Italy, France, or Germany. The development of the relation between literature and the community, which came after the establishment of the new art of printing, belongs, however, to a later chapter.

THE MAKING OF BOOKS IN THE EARLY UNIVERSITIES.

THE first revival of the long slumbering trade in manuscripts took place in Italy, the cradle of the universities. Although after the breaking down of the old civilisation of the Western Empire, Italy had suffered more through invasions and devastations than any other country of Europe, it had nevertheless succeeded in preserving a certain continuity of cultivation and some remnants of learning or germs of intellectual life, from which germs there came again into growth an intellectual development for Europe. For the purposes of this study, I am concerned with the history of the early universities of Europe only in connection with their relations to the production of books. I propose, therefore, to give a brief description of the organisation and the character of the book-trade that came into existence in one or two of the representative university towns, with some reference to the general influence of the first universities upon the development and the distribution of literature.

As has been indicated in the introductory chapter, it is my understanding that, with the beginning of the thirteenth century, the responsibility for the preservation and the development of the intellectual life of Europe, for the mental training of the increasing proportion of the community which was conscious of intellectual existence, and for the transmission to the existing generations of what had been preserved of the thought and[179] learning of the past, was transferred from the monasteries and the ecclesiastical schools to the newly organised universities.

This change meant among other things that the control and direction of education no longer rested with the ecclesiastics, that the class of scholars was no longer limited to the clerics, and that there were other directions in which scholarly achievement was to be sought than those heretofore marked out by the Church. I do not mean to say that after the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the schools of Bologna and Paris had developed into universities, the Church consciously abandoned the control of education, a control which had rested in its hands for eight centuries. The representatives of the Church authority themselves took an important part in bringing into existence not a few of the universities, and in connection with the organisation of the theological Faculties and in other ways, the popes and the bishops retained for a long series of years an important and abiding influence over much of the university work. Heretical doctrines, or what Rome believed to be heretical doctrines, were taught not infrequently in university lecture-rooms, but the authority on the part of the Church to interfere with such teaching, and to secure the withdrawal of the license from the lecturer, was continually claimed and was frequently enforced. The fact remained, however, that the general direction and control of the work of higher education rested no longer with ecclesiastics but with laymen. Of the four great divisions of university instruction, Theology, Philosophy (or Art), Law, and Medicine, the first remained of necessity under the direction of the Church, while in the supervision of the second the Church undertook to exercise an influence which of necessity varied greatly from time to time according to the institution and according also to the character of the particular popes and bishops. The third[180] and fourth Faculties were, however, entirely independent of ecclesiastical influence, and the mere fact of the existence outside of the Church of an important division of learning and of a great body of scholars must have had a powerful effect on the imagination of communities which had for so many generations been accustomed to look to the Church as the source or as the interpreter of all knowledge.

The principal authorities on the rise and the general history of the earlier universities are Denifle, Laurie, Mullinger, and Compayré. The titles of their several works, on which have in the main been based such statements or conclusions as are expressed in the following pages, are given in full in the bibliography. The details concerning the work of the university scribes and the manuscript dealers are chiefly derived from the works of Wattenbach and Kirchhoff.[258]

It is to be noted that several centuries before the institution in Christian Europe of the first of the universities, and at a time when, outside of a few monastic scriptoria, the interest in literature in Christian states was almost non-existent, in the countries which had accepted the faith of Mahomet a system of higher education had been effectively organised, and in connection with the intellectual activity of the universities and libraries of Bagdad, Alexandria, Cairo, and Cordova, there had been a very considerable production of literature in the departments of jurisprudence, philosophy, and science. In fact, the first knowledge that came to the Europe of the Middle Ages concerning Greek thought and Greek literature was brought to it through Arabian scholars, and it was by means of the lecturers of Cordova that the doctrines of [181]Aristotle were made known to the philosophers of Paris. The list of the scholarly writers who were associated during the eleventh and twelfth centuries with the great Arabian schools is a long one, and the books produced by them included not a few works which had an abiding influence on the thought of Europe. I have, however, no information concerning the methods employed for the manifolding and distribution of the books, and a consideration of them does not properly find place in this study. The names of Avicenna (d. 1027) and Averrhoes (d. 1198) will be recognised as representative of the class of authors referred to, the men who, by their translations of Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, and other Greek classics, recalled what Laurie calls the university life of the Greeks.[259]

In explaining how the universities are to be distinguished from the cathedral schools or the Benedictine schools out of which they were developed, Laurie gives the following definition of the first universities: “They were specialised schools, as opposed to the schools of Arts, and they were open to all, without restriction, as studia publica or generalia, as opposed to the more restricted ecclesiastical schools, which were under a Rule.”[260]

For the older institutions, it is not practicable to fix with any precision the date of their beginning, and no year can be named in which they first exercised the functions of a university. The first university that was formally founded was that of Prague, which dates from April, 1348. Bologna, Paris, Padua, Oxford, and Cambridge were not founded but grew, that is, were developed under special influences out of pre-existing schools. The first European school which, while never developing into a university, did do specialised university work, was that of Salerno, which may be said to have initiated for Europe systematised and scientific instruction in medicine. Fons [182]Medicinæ was the name given to it by Petrarch. The school of Salerno has one special claim to commemoration in any general sketch of the intellectual life of Europe. Its foundation and early development were due to the famous Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, the monastery which had been established by S. Benedict (in 529), and the scriptorium in which was the creation of Cassiodorus. Salerno, which was later affiliated with the University of Naples, fills, therefore, the place of a connecting link between the educational work of the old-time Benedictine scriptorium and the scientific activities and intellectual life of the new university system of Europe. Indeed, through that wonderful old man, Cassiodorus, at once Greek, Roman, and Goth, statesman, author, and monk, the chain of continuity is borne directly back to the classic world of imperial Rome.

The study of letters in Monte Cassino had come to include medicine, and the writings of Galen and Hippocrates were transcribed in the scriptorium, and were later made the first text-books in the medical school established by the monks at Salerno. Charlemagne is said to have interested himself in the school and in 802 to have ordered certain Greek medical treatises to be translated for its use from the Arabic into Latin.[261] The man who finally developed the monks’ medical school (then known as the civitas Hippocratica) into a great and specialised studium publicum was, however, Constantine, a Carthaginian Christian. His work was done between the years of 1065 and 1087, under the special favour and patronage of Robert Guiscard, who was at that time ruler of Apulia. In the time of Robert the school contained some women students, probably the earliest in Europe. There are references also at this period to several female writers on medical subjects. Salerno dates as a privileged school from 1100. The University of Naples, with which the medical college [183]of Salerno was later affiliated, was instituted by Frederick II. (the “Wonder of the World”) in 1224. Notwithstanding the brilliancy of the Court of Frederick and the feverish energy of the monarch himself, the literary work done in his university was not of abiding importance, and it is Bologna which serves as the type of the earlier universities of Europe, and which divides with the University of Paris the honour of having served as a general model for later foundations.

The University of Bologna lays claim to be the oldest in Europe. According to one tradition it was founded by Charlemagne about 800, but the celebration in 1890 of its thousandth anniversary indicates that its modern historians have contented themselves with a somewhat later date. The jurist Irnerius, who gave instruction in civil law in Bologna between 1100 and 1135, was able to do for the school of law a very similar work to that done by Constantine a century earlier for the school of medicine at Salerno, and under his direction the school became a studium publicum or generale. Bologna dates as a privileged studium from 1158, when the Universitas secured a formal recognition from Frederick I. Tiraboschi speaks of the university as having been in a flourishing condition as early as the twelfth century, and in 1224, when the Emperor Frederick II., in his zeal on behalf of his newly founded university at Naples, undertook to suppress that of Bologna, the latter is reported to have had no less than 10,000 students. Its great jurist of that time was Azo or Azolinus. The edict was revoked in 1227, and the schools of the university were, in fact, never closed. The University of Padua dates from about 1215, and that of Vercelli (in Piedmont) from 1228. In 1248, Innocent IV. established the University of Piacenza, with privileges similar to those enjoyed by Paris and Bologna. Pisa dates from about 1340, Florence from 1321, and Pavia from 1362. Galeazzo Visconti secured for Pavia from[184] Charles IV. a charter with the privileges of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford. Notwithstanding the competition of so many rival institutions, and the special favour shown from time to time to certain of these by one prince or another (as in the case of the Emperor Frederick to Naples), Bologna not only retained its pre-eminence among the universities of Italy, but secured for itself a great reputation throughout Europe, attracting students of every nationality. In Bologna, Padua, and Pavia special attention was given to jurisprudence, while the school of Florence was noted for the liberal remuneration granted to its instructors in rhetoric and in belles-lettres. In this respect, however, Florence stood almost alone. The instructors in literature, classed as Humanists, were obliged for the most part to seek appreciation and remuneration not in the universities, but at the Courts of the cultivated princes and in the palaces of the more intellectual of the noblemen, and, fortunately for the literary life of Italy, literature had, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a popularity and acceptance among princes and nobles to an extent not known elsewhere in Europe.

While the university life of Italy dates from the close of the twelfth century, it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that we find any trace of regulations concerning the production and distribution of manuscripts. It appears that for a term of perhaps a quarter of a century there had been in Bologna and in the other older university towns a certain amount of interest in the production, hiring, and selling of manuscripts, a trade which had been carried on without any supervision or restriction on the part of the university authorities, and the same was the case with the work of the earlier manuscript dealers in Paris.

The term stationarii, which first appears in Bologna in 1259 and in Paris some years later, indicates at once a change in the method of work of these university scribes[185] as compared with previous writers who had been ready to do work in one place or another as opportunity offered. For a number of years there was, in connection with this university work, practically no selling of books. The special responsibility of the stationarii was to keep in stock a sufficient number of authorised and verified transcripts or copies of the books ordered or recommended in the educational courses of the university, and to rent these to the students or to the instructors at rates which were prescribed by university regulations. The stationarii also took over the books of the students who died while in the university, or of departing students, as in most of the universities it was a misdemeanour to carry any books at all out of the university town.

In Bologna, Padua, and probably other Italian universities, the Jews were forbidden to carry on any trade in books. If, therefore, Jews coming into a town had manuscripts which they wished to dispose of, it was necessary for them to place these manuscripts in the hands of the stationarii, and they would make sale of them on commission. As before specified, however, the buyers of books in a university town could purchase only the use of the books during their sojourn in such town. On leaving the town, it was necessary that the books should be placed again with the stationarii for sale to others connected with the university. It is probable, however, that this regulation applied only to the special list of text-books or reference books authorised and prescribed by the university. A certain Heinrichs of Kirchberg relates that on leaving Padua in 1256, he had managed to bring away with him a considerable package of books. He had accomplished this by hiding the books in a load of hay which he took with him through the town gates without being discovered.[262] In 1334, the university regulation was modified so that after having secured the special permission [186]of the authorities, a student could take with him from the university books which he had purchased.

Until the time when the manuscript traders were replaced by the dealers in printed books, the most important function of the university dealers was not in the sale, but in the hiring out of manuscripts, and the term stationarius came from a very early date to be limited to the functionary who, under the regulations of the university, provided, for hire, the students, and in some cases the instructors, with the material required for their work.

In order to facilitate the manifolding and prompt distribution of the texts needed, and in order also to lessen for the students the cost of securing these texts, the practice obtained from the beginning of dividing the manuscripts into portions, to which portions were given the name peciæ or petiæ—or in the Italian form, pezze. At first, the extent of these divisions must have been more or less arbitrary, but later, the number of pages or sheets to be contained in them was made a matter of specific university regulation. According to the regulation, the pecia was to contain sixteen columns, each with sixty-two lines, and each line with thirty-two letters, and the material was to be written on sheets comprising together a form, quaterne.

The pecia served as the unit of the calculation for the charge for the rental. The older manuscripts had been written in a much larger format than that found convenient for university work, and the above specified form was now arrived at as, on the whole, best meeting the requirements of the students and the convenience of the scribes.

For some years after the formal recognition by the university statutes of the stationarii, the number of these was naturally limited, a limitation which had a service for the university authorities in facilitating the supervision considered important, and which was, of course, of business[187] value for the stationarii themselves. A certain amount not only of scholarly knowledge but also of capital must have been requisite on the part of the stationarii in order to bring together for manifolding authentic codices or texts, and also to keep themselves supplied with writing materials, which during the thirteenth century continued to be costly. There is evidence that in certain cases, particularly in Padua, a salary was paid from the university chest to the stationarii, which was an admission on the part of the university authorities that the prices prescribed for the rent of the peciæ were not in themselves adequate to secure a living income for the scribes.

The stationarii were occasionally known in the Italian universities by the name of bedelli, or bidelli. The bedelli were originally university officials, whose functions probably covered some such disciplinary work as that which is to-day in the hands of the Oxford proctors. The name suggests also the English term beadle, applied to the English parish official who was charged with the duty of keeping the peace, and I find that the lexicographers derive the word beadle directly from the earlier term bedel, the name given to the English university functionary who had to do with matters of discipline and particularly with the direction of public functions, processions, etc. The name is derived from pedum, a stick, the allusion being probably to the baton or staff of office. The use in Italy of the term bidellus for the scribes hiring out manuscripts, was evidently due to the fact that the privileges of this business were in certain cases given to the university officials, in addition, probably, to their other duties.

The name of peciarii was sometimes applied to the officials whose duty it was to supervise the work of the stationarii. In 1300, there is reference to six peciarii in Bologna.

The earliest Italian reference to university scribes dates from 1228, and concerns not the University of Bologna,[188] but the smaller institution of Vercelli in Piedmont. The Vercelli regulations order the employment of two exemplatores, who were to be charged with the duty of providing the texts required for the use of the instructors and students in the Faculties of jurisprudence and theology. The prices to be paid for these manuscripts were to be fixed by the rector of the university. As this is the earliest regulation of which there is record concerning bookselling in the universities, I think it worth while to cite the text itself:

Item habebit Commune Vercellarum duos exemplatores, quibus taliter providebit, quod eos scholares habere possint, qui habeant exemplantia in utroque jure et in Theologia competentia et correcta tam in textu quam in glossa; ita quod solutio fiat a scholaribus pro exemplis secundum quod convenit, ad taxationem Rectoris.[263]

[The University of Vercelli shall also employ two exemplatores, for whom suitable provision shall be made, so that they may be at the service of the scholars who require manuscripts authoritative and correct both as to the text and in the commentaries, either in the department of law or in that of theology, and in return for the copies (or for the use of the copies) received from the exemplatores, the students shall pay a fitting price (or rental) to be fixed by the Rector of the university.]

In similar fashion, the statutes of the University of Padua of the year 1283 provide that two stationarii or bidelli should be employed, one of whom should be at the service of the Faculty of jurisprudence, and the other should serve those of arts and of medicine. The theological Faculty was not instituted in Padua until much later. The two bidelli drew salaries, the first of eight ducats per year, and the second of two ducats, forty sols. They were charged with the duty of keeping a supply of peciæ of the texts prescribed in the lists and of placing these supplies [189]at the disposal of the students and scholars calling for the same. In the year 1420, the statutes of the High School of Modena prescribed that the stationarius (there appears to have been question of but one official for the entire institution) must keep a supply of the texts of the Roman and Canonical law, the summa notaria, the speculum, the Lectures of Cinus and of Innocentius.

The stationarius was to charge for the rent of a pecia of the prescribed texts four denarii, of the glossarii five denarii, and of other texts six denarii. I do not find in the regulations any specification of the term covered by this rental. The city was to assure the stationarius of freedom from military service, and was to give him “the yearly compensation of ten lire.”[264]

A reference by the Italian scholar Filelfo indicates that from this university arrangement the term bidellus came to be applied to scribes outside of university towns. Filelfo speaks of a librarius publicus, “who, in the ordinary speech, is called bidellus.”

With the increase in the larger universities, such as Bologna and Padua, of the number of students and instructors requiring literary material, the practice gradually took shape of purchasing instead of hiring the texts required, and the stationarii developed into librarii. In its original signification, the term librarius stood for librarian; and as late as the fourteenth century the French word librairie was used for a library or a collection of books. It seems to have been only after the introduction of printing that the use of the term librairie finally came to be restricted in France to a collection of books held for sale, that is to say, to a book-shop.

The book-dealers, who in the earlier years of the manuscript period devoted themselves to keeping collections of manuscripts, filled, in fact, rather the rôle of librarians than of booksellers. They were ready to rent out their [190]manuscripts for a consideration, or to permit customers to consult the texts without taking them from the shop. The practice of making from their original stock of texts authenticated copies for general sale, was a matter of comparatively slow development.

Bologna had become the most important school in Europe for the study of Roman and Canonical law, and it was in Bologna that the undertakings of the university bookseller first became important. The booksellers were not only subject to the supervision of the university, but were also brought under the regulations of the town, and the town authorities undertook to prescribe prices as well for the renting as for the selling of the manuscripts, and also to prescribe penalties for the renting or selling of incorrect or incomplete texts.

The university regulations specified that there must be on the part of the booksellers no modification of the text under which new readings or glosses should be inserted to replace those accepted as authoritative, and a penalty was attached to the selling or renting of the texts in any other form than that in which they were prescribed by the instructors of the Faculty to which the study belonged. In 1289, the penalty for the contravention of this regulation, previously fixed at ten lire, was raised to one hundred lire.[265]

A few years later, a university regulation specified that the stationarii peciarum who undertook to rent out the authoritative texts, must keep in stock sufficient supplies of 117 specified works. In the year 1300, there were in the university six official stationarii, of whom three were Italians and three, foreigners. They had to be appointed each year, but it seems probable that when their work proved satisfactory they were re-appointed from year to year.

The responsibility for the general supervision of the [191]texts and for their correctness and completeness rested with the bidellus generalis. Any reader who should discover blemishes or omissions in the peciæ was under obligation to report the same to the bidellus generalis, and the stationarius who was responsible for the preparation of the defective text was fined five solidos, one half of the fine going to the university chest, one quarter to the bidellus, and one quarter to the informant.

The stationarii were ordered to post up in a conspicuous place in their shops all the regulations having to do with their trade, in order that all buyers could know what they were entitled to receive. They were not at liberty to decline to rent to university members any peciæ on the official list. On the other hand, if they rented out peciæ to students who had been expelled or who were under suspension, they were themselves liable to fine. The usual rental at this time, that is to say, the beginning of the thirteenth century, was four denarii for a quaterne (four sheets) and two denarii for a pecia. The denarius was the equivalent of about ten cents.

The rental for works not on the official list was somewhat higher, as these would not be called for so continuously and as the preparation of supplies of the same must, therefore, be more of a speculation. In renting manuscripts outside of Bologna (which could be done only under special permission of the university authorities and which occurred as a rule only with members of other universities) an additional two denarii for a quaterne could be demanded. Students renting the peciæ were obliged to deposit a pledge of sufficient value to secure the stationarii against loss. Between the regulations applying to the stationarii peciarum, and those controlling the general stationarii, who had authority to sell as well as to rent and whose business lay outside of the university, there were various differences. The general stationarius appeared to have undertaken from time to time the sale[192] of books on commission, which to the university stationarius was forbidden.

One of the earlier university regulations prohibited students from purchasing manuscripts with a view of selling them again for a profit, but this, according to Savigny, fell into disuse in the course of the fourteenth century. As late as 1334, the regulations of Bologna strictly prohibited students from taking with them, on leaving the universities, any books whatsoever, without a special authorisation on the part of the heads of their respective Faculties. Regulations of this kind naturally interfered with the normal development of the book trade in a city so largely dependent upon its university as was Bologna, and formed one cause for the greater activity of the general book trade in cities like Venice, where the regulations of the commune were not supplemented by those of university authorities.

The city statutes of Bologna of 1259, prohibited the stationarii librarii from taking a higher commission on the sale of manuscripts than two and a half per cent. It was also specified that no sale of a work left on commission should be made without the direct knowledge of the owner. The stationarius peciarum belonged at the outset to the membership of the university, and, in accepting the authority of its supervision and its regulations, enjoyed also the university privileges, which included freedom from certain municipal obligations. Many of the university stationarii belonged, as mentioned, to the class of bidelli.

It was forbidden for any member of the university to promise or to engage, either directly or indirectly, to pay to the stationarius a higher commission or compensation than that prescribed in the regulations. The penalty for an infraction of this rule, a penalty imposed upon both the parties concerned, was a fine of five livres. The student was also under obligations to denounce to the rector[193] any attempt on the part of the dealer to secure an additional compensation.[266] The very severity of these prohibitions gives indication of difficulty in securing enforcement of the system.

The statutes of Padua and of the other Italian universities of the manuscript trade, were similar to, and were probably in the main based upon, those of Bologna. In Padua, the earliest regulations which have been preserved bear date as late as 1465, which is one year later than the introduction into Italy of the printing-press. The regulations of 1465 prescribed the size of the peciæ and confirmed the rental prices to the schedule of those of Bologna. The renting of manuscripts could, however, have continued but for a short period after the issue of these regulations. In Padua, as in Bologna, the stationarii peciarum had to make a deposit, in entering upon their business, of four hundred lire. They had also to go through with an examination at the hands of the university authorities, and they then had to take an oath of loyalty to the university. This entitled them to their formal appointment, which needed, however, as stated, to be confirmed from year to year.

In Padua, as in Bologna, there were fixed commissions for the sale of manuscripts, and these commissions, in themselves quite moderate, were to be paid half by the buyer and half by the seller. It appears, however, that the prices were probably not fully controlled by these regulations, as there are examples of so-called “presents” being given by buyers to the sellers after the sale of manuscripts on the commission basis specified in the regulations had been duly recorded.

In Padua, as in Bologna, it was strictly forbidden for Jews to take any part in the buying and selling of manuscripts. The only way in which a Jew could secure a manuscript desired by him was through the intervention [194]of the university authorities, who might make purchase of the same on his behalf. The bidellus was the official usually employed for the purpose. It may be assumed that some additional commission was here required, and that the Jews had to pay more dearly for their university texts than the Christians.

There does not appear to be record of the loaning of manuscripts to students for their own transcribing, although in Paris this evidently formed an important portion of the manuscript business. In Bologna, as in Padua, the trade in bookbinding was directly associated with that of manuscript selling, and the ligatori librorum carried on their work in the shops of the librarii. In Bologna, the manuscripts were in the main devoted to the subjects of the law and scholastic theology, while in Padua the more important division was medicine.

The literary requirements, however, for doctors of law as for doctors of medicine, must have been at best but moderate. Savigny states that in the thirteenth century the collection of books belonging to a doctor of the law in Bologna rarely comprised more than from four to six volumes, and the medical collections were hardly as large. It is with the beginning of the fifteenth century that there comes to be a larger understanding of the relations of literature to education and a material increase in the demand in the university towns for supplies of books outside of the texts actually in use in the lecture room.

Compayré gives the following list of the books required in the ordinary and in the extraordinary courses of law in Bologna, a list which was, he says, practically the same at Montpellier: The several works of the Corpus Juris of Justinian, comprising the Codex (which dates from 529), the Digestum Vetus, the Infortiatum, the Digestum Novum. These were identical with the three parts which the pupils of Irnerius distinguished as the Pandects or Digest, the Institutes, the Authenticum. To these sources[195] of the Roman law were later added the Constitutiones of Frederick I. and Frederick II., and in Montpellier the Usus Feudorum, a collection of feudal laws.

The statutes of the universities fixed the time within which the reading of the prescribed books must be completed. Professors were obliged, in entering upon their duties, to take the following oath: “I swear to read and to finish reading within the time fixed by the statutes, the books or parts of books which have been assigned for my lectures.” Severe penalties were inflicted on those whose courses had not been completed within the required time.[267] There ought, as a rule, to have been no difficulty in completing the task assigned, for each Faculty had, as a rule, only a single work or at most a single author assigned for its consideration. The Faculty of Arts had Aristotle, that of Civil Law the Corpus Juris of Justinian, that of Common Law the Decretals of Gratian. Compayré suggests that, according to the maxim of Seneca, timeo hominem unius libri, the Faculties of the Middle Ages might well have been awe-inspiring.

The list of the texts of the medical Faculties was, however, somewhat more considerable. The course in Montpellier, where medicine became still more important than law, followed in the main that of Salerno. The first place was given to Hippocrates and Galen. It is somewhat surprising that as late as 1250 the teachings of these old-time practitioners (whose work was done respectively in the fourth century B.C. and the second century A.D.) should still have remained the chief authorities in medical science. Compayré refers to them as the Aristotles of Medicine. In the program of the Faculty of Paris of 1270, however, the names of Hippocrates and Galen do not appear.

With the two Greeks were associated the original works of Constantine and his translations from Rhazes Hali-Abbas, Ysaac, Avicenna, Johannicus, and other [196]Arabic and Persian writers, and finally the treatise of John of St. Amand, and of Nicholas of Salerno. The Antidotarium, or Book of Antidotes, known also as the Book of Medicaments, was for some centuries a work of standard reference and of popular sale. The influence of the Arabs in the instructional literature of medicine seems to have been almost as controlling as that of the Greeks in philosophy and of the Romans in law.

Rabelais, who studied medicine in Montpellier between 1520 and 1530, is said to have been the first among the students who was able to read his Greek authors in the original instead of in Latin translations.[268] Rabelais found time while in college not only for Greek and medicine, but for literature. The first part of the Pantagruel was written before he had secured his final diploma.

By the middle of the thirteenth century, the number of the books required for use in the university courses had increased to such an extent that four catalogues were issued, one for each of the four Faculties—Law, Medicine, Theology, and Arts. The lectures and the instruction were given entirely in Latin, which was the only language that could have been understood by all of the various nationalities represented, or even by the representatives of the different Italian dialects.

In Spain, the earliest university was that of Palencia, which was founded in 1212. Salamanca, founded a few years later, soon exceeded Palencia in importance, and, particularly in connection with the work of its medical Faculty, secured for itself, before the close of the thirteenth century, a repute throughout Europe. Compayré is of opinion that the instruction given in Salamanca, not only in medicine but in science generally and in philosophy, was very largely influenced by the presence in the peninsula of Moorish scholars. “The philosophy of Averrhoes and the medicine of Avicenna exerted a manifest influence [197]on the development of studies at Salamanca.”[269] It seems probable, if this belief is well founded, that the Arabian literature, produced and manifolded in Cordova, found its way to Salamanca, and through Salamanca to Salerno, Bologna, and Paris.

The formal constitution of the University of Paris dates from 1202. Certain of its historians, however, claim for its first work as an educational institution a much earlier date. Crévier, for instance, says: “The University of Paris as a school goes back to Alcuin ... Charlemagne was its founder.”[270] Charlemagne’s practical interest in education has caused his name to be associated with the schools of Tours, Aachen, Milan, Salerno, Bologna, and Paris. The most recent writer on the subject, Compayré, is of opinion that this is an exaggerated statement. He finds evidence of an unbroken succession of Benedictine schools, such as those of Rheims, Tours, Angers, Laon, Bec, and others, which had preserved a continuity of educational work from the time of Charlemagne to that of Louis VIII., and which, under such leaders as Lanfranc (1005-1089), and S. Anselm (1033-1109), had developed and maintained a high degree of intellectual activity. He considers these to have constituted the direct succession to the schools of the palace of Charlemagne, but he fails to find in them the prototype of the university system. For Compayré, the actual founder of the University of Paris was Abelard, who died sixty years before the university secured its organisation. It is his contention that it was Abelard who, by his learning, his independence of thought, his eloquence, and his mastery over the minds of men, is to be credited with the initiation of the great movement from which was to proceed not only the University of Paris, but the long series of universities for which Paris served as an incentive and the type. It was Abelard, says Compayré, who, if not [198]first, at least with the most direct and far-reaching influence, introduced dialectics into theology and reason into authority, breaking away from the mere passive transmission of the beliefs and timid dialectics accepted by the schools of theology, and thus making possible the development of a true university spirit. “The method of Abelard is the soul of scholastic philosophy,”[271] the philosophy which, until the Renaissance, reigned supreme in the University of Paris. Abelard’s method, says Père Denifle, is presented in the book which during several centuries served as the text for theological instruction, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and its influence is also to be noted in that other noteworthy work which became the authority for the schools of common law, the Decretals of Gratian.

Abelard may be called the first professor of superior instruction. His work was certainly begun with éclat, for his classes are said to have numbered at times no less than five thousand pupils. “First of the French philosophers ... he may justly be considered as the precursor of Ramus and Descartes, in other words, of the Renaissance and of the modern spirit.”[272] Apart from this more far-reaching influence, he was able to do for the school of Paris what the jurist Irnerius was, during nearly the same years, accomplishing for the school of Bologna, making possible, namely, its development into the university. It was through the work done by Abelard that “the theological school of Paris became the seminary of Christian Europe.”[273] This influence continued through the succeeding centuries in which Paris still remained the centre of theological instruction, a result which necessarily had later an important effect in shaping the character of the earlier issues of the Paris Press.

The term University is not a synonym of the university of science, but simply of the university of teachers and students who composed a group and who instituted association [199]of studies. “In the language of the Civil Law,” says Malden, “all corporations were called Universitates, as forming one whole out of many individuals.”[274]

The organisation of the University of Paris, while differing in certain important details from that of Bologna, was substantially identical with the Italian institutions in respect to the privileges conceded to instructors and students. In successive enactments or crown edicts, the members of the universities of Paris, Montpellier, and Poitiers were exempted, not only from the regular national taxes and from the town dues (octroi), but also from special war taxes. In 1295, Philip the Fair decreed that under no pretext could the goods of the members of the universities be taken or their revenues attached.[275] The following statute of the University of Padua represented fairly enough the status of students in all the universities of France and of Italy: “Students must be considered as citizens in what concerns the advantages, but not in that which constitutes the burdens of citizens.” Under this same principle, members of the universities were also exempt from military service.

The authorities of the University of Paris exercised a very direct control from the outset over all the details of the business of making, renting, and selling books. This authority became in Paris a matter of much more immediate importance and abiding influence than in Bologna. In the latter, as we have seen, the business of the book-dealers was very closely limited to the production of the texts immediately required for the work of the class-room. In Paris, however, in the manuscript period, two and a half centuries before the introduction of the printing-press, the book-trade of the university had become in great measure the book-trade of the city. During a large part of this time, moreover, Paris shared with Florence the position of the centre of the intellectual activities of [200]Europe. The scribes and their masters who were manifolding manuscripts in the Latin quarter, were not only supplying text-books to the students of the university, but were preparing literature for the scholarly readers of Paris, of France, and of Europe. The book-dealers of Paris constituted, however, for several centuries, with a few exceptions, a guild organised within the university. The members of this guild, the libraires jurés, were members of the university, and the operations of the guild were under the direct control of the university authorities. This arrangement gave to the book-dealers material advantages in the possession of university privileges and in the control of a practical monopoly of the business of producing books. It involved, however, certain corresponding disadvantages. University control meant supervision, censorship, restriction, regulation of prices, interference with trade facilities, and various hampering conditions which delayed very seriously, both before and after the introduction of printing, the development of the business of making and of circulating books, and, as a result of this, placed not a few obstacles in the way of the literary and the intellectual development of the community. Chevillier says: “The book-trade of Paris owes its origin to the university, by which, under the approval of the king, it was organised into an association of masters. This association was, from the outset, controlled directly by the university, from the authorities of which it received its statutes and regulations, and by which the master libraires were licensed, jurés.”[276]

“The reproduction of a work of scholarship (to which class belonged of necessity the text-books prescribed for the work of the university,)” remarks Delalain, “called for on the part of the scribe a considerable measure of scholarly knowledge and also for a detailed and careful supervision. It was held, therefore, by the university authorities [201]that the responsibility properly belonged to them to supervise the series of operations by means of which these university texts were prepared and were circulated. It was essential that the completeness and the correctness of each copy should be verified, and that these copies should be confided to trustworthy persons for their sale or their hire, in order that there should be no risk of inaccuracies in the texts themselves or of any unnecessary enhancement of the cost to instructors or to students of their purchase or their hire. On this ground, the university of Paris asserted from the beginning of its history the right to control the book-trade of the city, a contention which was confirmed and maintained by all the kings of France after Philip Augustus.”[277]

The “book-trade” was held to include all the dealers and artisans who were concerned with the production and distribution of manuscripts; that is, the copyists and their employers, the binders, the illuminators, the sellers of parchment, and, later, the manufacturers of paper. While the control of the university was exercised over the entire book-trade, the interest of the authorities was naturally much keener in regard to the divisions having to do with the production of books than in the work of the booksellers. The matter of chief importance, in fact, according to the accepted theory, the sole purpose for the existence of the book-trade, was to secure for the members of the university a sufficient supply, at a fixed and moderate charge, of correct and complete texts of the prescribed works; while it was also essential to protect those members from the contamination of heretical writings or of heretical comments on books of accepted orthodoxy.

A regulation of December, 1316, prescribes that no stationarius shall employ a copyist until such employee shall have been duly sworn before the university, or before [202]the Rector and four procureurs, to execute his functions faithfully, and, having been accepted as a trustworthy scribe, shall have had his name inscribed on the official register.

As a partial offset to the series of restrictions and limitations under which was carried on the work of these early publishers, it is in order to specify certain privileges and exemptions enjoyed by them as members of the university. These included exemption from taxes; exemption from service on the watch or on the city guard; and the privilege of jurisdiction, commonly known as committimus. Under this last, they were empowered in suits or cases, civil or personal, and whether engaged as plaintiffs or defendants, to bring witnesses or other principals before the Juges Conservateurs, functionaries charged with the maintenance or protection of privileges.[278]

Issues concerning personal rights arising between the members of the university were decided before the tribunal or court of the Rector. Cases affecting realty, and all cases between the members and outsiders, were tried before the Conservateurs des Priviléges, an authority of necessity favourably disposed to the members of the university. The ground assigned for this privilege was that instructors and pupils, and those engaged in aiding their work (i. e. the makers of books), should not be exposed to loss of valuable time by being called away from their work to distant parts.[279] An edict of Philip Augustus, in 1200, confirmed by S. Louis in 1229, and by Philip the Fair in 1302, directed that the cases of university members be brought before the Bishop of Paris. The university found disadvantages in being under the jurisdiction of the Bishop (whose censorship later proved particularly troublesome for the publishers), and applications were made to replace the authority of the ecclesiastical courts with that of the [203]royal courts. In 1334, letters-patent of Philip of Valois directed the provost of Paris, who was at that time conservateur of the royal privileges, to take the university under his special protection, and in 1341 the members of the university were forbidden to enter proceedings before any other authority. In 1361, under an edict of King John, the members of the university were again declared exempt from taxes and assessments of all kinds (portes, gabelles, impositions, aides, et subsides). The repetition from reign to reign of certain edicts and regulations such as the above does not imply that the earlier ones had been recalled, but that they had to some extent fallen into desuetude, or that attempts had been made to override them.

By letters-patent issued in 1369, Charles V. declared that all dealers in books and makers of books required for the use of “our scholars” should be exempt from all taxes, etc. The exemption included binders, illuminators, parchment-makers, etc. It appears that some abuses had crept in under this exemption, as in 1384 it was ordered that no book-dealers should be freed from taxes if they carried on for gain any other occupation.[280]

The policy of favouring the production and sale of books by freeing the publishers and dealers from taxes and other burdens was continued and even developed after the introduction of printing. The kings, impressed with the possibilities of this great discovery, recognised that it was for the interest of the realm to free books, printed or written, not only from octroi or city duties, but from customs or importation charges. Letters-patent of Henry II., dated 1553, read as follows: Avons ordonné et ordonnons lesdits livres, escrits ou imprimez, reliez ou non reliez, estre et demeurer exempts desdits droits de traicte foraine, Domaine forain et haut passage.[281] This was a more liberal policy than at that time prevailed in Italy or in England, [204]or, in fact, than has as yet been accepted in the nineteenth century by the United States. In order to obtain the advantage of such exemption, the publishers had to secure from the Rector of the university a passport or certificate for their packages.

One of the earlier regulations of the university affecting the book-trade was that under which the supervision of the sale of parchment was left in the hands of the Rector. This sale was usually authorised only at the annual Lendit fair. The dealers, bringing their parchment, exposed this for inspection. Before any other purchases were permitted, the Rector selected the quantity needed for the university, for which payment was made at a price fixed in advance. He then received from the parchment-dealers, for the treasury of the university, or for the special fund of the book guild, a gratuity which amounted to from two thousand to three thousand francs.

In Paris, as in Bologna, during the whole of the thirteenth century and the first portion of the fourteenth, the principal work of the university book-dealers was not the selling but the renting of books. The regulations concerning the division of manuscripts into chapters or peciæ were, however, not carried out with the same precision in Paris as in the Italian universities, nor was it practicable to exercise in the larger city, or even within the confines of the Latin Quarter, as close a supervision as in Bologna or Padua over the rates for renting and over the stock of copies kept by the stationarii. The general purpose of the regulations was, however, the same, and the routine of renting prices and the general rate of commission on the books sold were, as said, matters of university regulation. With a community of students ranging in number from ten thousand to (in the most prosperous days of the university) as high as thirty thousand, the monopoly of supplying text-books, whether through sale or through renting, must have constituted an important business. It[205] was not until some time after the introduction of printing that the importance and prospect of profit of publishing done outside of the university limits, and freed from a portion of the university restrictions, came to be sufficient to make it worth while for certain of the more enterprising of the printers to give up the trade in text-books and their privileges as libraires jurés and to establish themselves as independent dealers.

In the University of Paris we find in use in the twelfth century, in addition to the terms librarii, stationarii, and petiarii, the term mangones. The word mango originally designated a merchant or dealer, but appears to have carried an implication of untrustworthiness or slipperiness. It is satisfactory, therefore, to understand that mangones very speedily went out of use as a name for dealers in books.[282] The petiarii are not mentioned in the statutes of the university, where they appear to be replaced by the parcheminii.[283]

Guérard interprets the term stationarius as standing first for a scribe with a fixed location (un écrivain sédentaire), as opposed to a copyist who was prepared to accept work in any place where it could be secured. Later, the term was understood to designate a master scribe who directed the work of a bureau of copyists; and still later, the stationarius, sometimes then called stationarius librorum, possessed a complete book-making establishment, where were employed, in addition to the copyists, the illuminators, binders, and other artisans. At this stage of his development, the stationarius has become the equivalent of the printer-publisher of a later generation. Guérard is inclined to limit the earlier use in Paris of the term librarius to the keeper of a shop in which books were kept for sale, but in which no book-production was carried on.[284] It is evident, however, that in France, as in [206]Italy, there was no very definite or consistent use of the several terms, and that before the introduction of printing, librarius and stationarius were applied almost indifferently to dealers having to do either with the production or with the sale of books. Chassant is authority for the statement that at the time of the introduction of printing into France there were in the two cities of Paris and Orleans more than ten thousand individual scribes or copyists who gained their living with their pens.[285] It is not surprising that the first printers, whose diabolical invention took the bread away from these workers, had their lives threatened and their work interrupted.

The letters-patent of Charles V., dated November 5, 1368, specify fourteen libraires and eleven écrivains (employing stationarii) as at that time registered in Paris. No one was admitted to the profession of librarius or stationarius who was not a man of approved standing and character, and who had not also given evidence of an adequate and scholarly knowledge of manuscript interpretation and of the subject to which he proposed to give attention. The examination was made before the four chief publishers (les quatre grands libraires). Having secured the approval of the board of publishers, the applicant was obliged to secure also acceptance from the representatives of the Rector, and to submit certain guarantees for the satisfactory performance of his responsibilities. He was called upon to submit, for himself and heirs, all his property as well as his person to the control of the court of Paris as a pledge for the execution of his trust. As late as 1618, in the reign of Charles IX., the master printers (i. e., printer-publishers) were obliged to hold certificates from the Rector and the university, to the effect that they were skilled in the art of printing, and that they possessed full knowledge of Latin and of Greek.

[207]

The libraires jurés comprised two classes, the libraires grands (officium magni librariatus), and the libraires petits (officium parvi librariatus).[286] The immediate responsibility for the government of the body rested with the four chief libraires (les quatre grands libraires). It was they who fixed the prices for the sale or hire of manuscripts, and who supervised the examination of manuscripts with reference, first, as to their admission into the official list of the university texts, and, secondly, as to the completeness and accuracy of the particular parchment submitted. They also inspected the book-shops and the workrooms of the copyists, and verified from time to time the accuracy and the quality of the copies prepared from these accepted texts; they passed upon the qualifications of applicants for the position of libraire juré; and, finally, they exercised a general supervision over the enforcement of all the university regulations affecting the book-trade, and gave special attention to those prohibiting any interference with this trade by an outside dealer, one who was not a libraire juré. These four chief libraires were each under a bond or “caution” for the amount of 200 livres. In addition to the exemption from general taxes and guard duty conceded to all the libraires jurés, these four enjoyed from time to time certain special privileges. In October, 1418, by a regulation of Charles VI., the four chief libraires are exempted by name from certain special duties on wine, etc., which had been imposed for the purpose of securing funds pour la recouvrance de nos Villes et Chastel de Monstreau ou Faut-Yonne.[287] It was also necessary for him to find two responsible bondsmen for an amount of not less than 100 livres each.[288][289] In Bologna in [208]1400 the bond was also fixed at 200 livres, the equivalent of 5065 francs.[290]

The special obligations imposed upon and accepted by the librarii and stationarii, as specified in documents between the years 1250 and 1350, can be summarised as follows:

I. To accept faithfully and loyally all the regulations of the university concerning the production and the sale of books.

II. Not to make within the term of one month any agreement, real or nominal, transferring to themselves the ownership of books which had been placed in their hands for sale.

III. Not to permit the loss or disappearance of any book so consigned for the purpose later of acquiring ownership of the same.

IV. To declare conscientiously and exactly the just and proper price of each book offered for sale, and to specify such price, together with the name of the owner, in some conspicuous place in the work itself.

V. To make no disposition of a consigned book without having in the first place informed the owner or his representative of the price to be secured for the same, and to make immediate report and accounting of such price when received.

VI. To charge as commission for the service of selling such book not more than four deniers to a member of the university and not more than six deniers to an outsider. This commission was to be paid by the purchaser, who seems to have been considered the obliged party in the transaction.[291]

[209]

VII. To place conspicuously in the windows of their shops a price list of all works kept on sale.

The stationarii on their part were also held:

I. To employ no scribes for the production of manuscripts other than those who had been accepted and certified before the Rector.

II. To offer for sale or for hire no manuscripts that had not been passed upon and “taxed” by the appointed authority.

III. To refuse to no applicant who was a member of the university the loan for hire of a manuscript, even though the applicant should require the same for the purpose of producing copies.

It is evident that a regulation of this character would, in the case of an original work by a contemporary author, have operated as a denial of any author’s rights. Such original work constituted, however, at this time the very rare exception, and their authors were evidently obliged to content themselves with the prestige of securing circulation. The case of a manuscript representing outlay and skilled labour on the part of the dealer, who might have had to make a toilsome journey to secure it, and who had later paid for the service of one or more editors for its collation and revision, was, of course, of much more frequent occurrence. It is difficult to understand why this class of effort and enterprise should not have been encouraged by the university authorities instead of being so largely nullified by regulations which made of such a manuscript common property. This regulation is, however, identical with that of Bologna. The penalty there for refusing to place a manuscript at the service of a member of the university was five livres.[292]

IV. To offer for rent no texts that were not complete and correct.

V. In the event of a work being brought to Paris by a stranger, to give immediate information to the authorities [210]in order that before such work could be copied for hire or for sale it should be passed upon by the authorities as orthodox and as suitable for the use of the members of the university, and as being complete and correct in its own text.

Any libraire who, having been duly sworn, should be convicted of violation of these regulations, forfeited his office, and all the rights and privileges thereto appertaining; and all members of the university, instructors or students, were strictly prohibited (under penalty of forfeiture of their own membership) from having further dealings with such a delinquent.[293]

These various regulations, while possibly required in connection with the general interests of the university, were certainly exacting and must have interfered not a little with any natural development of the book-trade. It is nevertheless the case that the makers of books and the book-dealers in Paris occupied a more independent and a more dignified position than had been accorded to their brethren in Bologna. The latter appear to have risen hardly above the grade of clerks or lower-class functionaries, while these earlier Parisian publishers secured from the outset recognition as belonging to the higher educational work of the university, work in the shaping of which they themselves took an important part.

In 1316 (the year of the accession of Philip V.) the association of libraires jurés (authorised or certified book-dealers) comprised but thirteen members.[294] A year earlier there had been twenty-two, and I can only assume that the war troubles had had their natural influence in depressing and breaking up the book business. In 1323, the list comprises twenty-nine names, including the widow of De Peronne. In 1368, the number had again fallen to twenty-five. In 1488, the university list gives the names [211]of twenty-four libraires, in addition to whom were registered two illuminators, two binders, and two écrivains.[295] The écrivains specified were undoubtedly master scribes, the register here quoted apparently not including the names of the copyists employed. At this date, however, the work of the printers had been going on in Paris for fourteen years, and the business of those concerned with the production of books in manuscript form must have been very largely reduced. The work of the master scribes continued, however, in the sixteenth century, but by the close of the fifteenth had become limited to the production, for collectors, of manuscripts as works of art.

While the majority of libraires jurés were naturally Frenchmen, there was no regulation to prevent the holding of such a post by a foreigner, and the list always, as a matter of fact, included several foreign names. The presence in the university of large groups of foreign students made it quite in order, and probably necessary, that they should find among the book-dealers some who could speak their home language and who could make clear to them the requirements concerning the university texts. The presence of these foreign book-dealers also facilitated the arrangements for the exchange of manuscripts between Paris and foreign universities. These foreign book-dealers, while obliged in ordinary routine to take an oath of fealty to the university, were not called upon to become citizens of France.

The list includes from time to time the names of women libraires, these women being usually widows of libraires who had duly qualified themselves. The women must themselves, however, in order to secure such appointments, have been able to pass the examination in Latin, in palæography, and in the technicalities of manuscript book-making. In respect as well to the admission of foreigners as to that of women, the Paris guild of the university [212]book-dealers practised a more liberal policy than that followed by the university authorities of Bologna or the Stationers’ Hall of London. Later, this liberal policy was restricted, and in 1686 it was ordered that no foreigners should be admitted to the lists of the master libraires of the university.

The purchase of a manuscript during the fourteenth century was attended with almost as many formalities and precautions as are to-day considered necessary for the transfer of a piece of real estate. The dealer making the sale was obliged to give to the purchaser guarantees to the effect, first, that he was himself the owner or the duly authorised representative of the owner of the work; and, secondly, that the text of this was complete and correct, and as security for these guarantees he pledged his goods, and sometimes even his person. As a single example of a transaction illustrating this practice, I quote a contract cited by Du Breuil. This bears date November, 1332, and sets forth that a certain Geoffrey de Saint Léger, a duly qualified clerc libraire, acknowledges and confesses that he has sold, ceded, and transferred to the noble gentleman Messire Gérard de Montagu, Avocat du Roi au Parlement (counsellor at the royal court), all right, title, and interest in a work entitled Speculum Historiale in consuetudines Parisienses, contained in four volumes bound in red leather. The consideration named is forty livres Parisian, the equivalent, according to the tables of de Wailly, of 1013 francs. The vendor pledges as security for the obligation under the contract all his worldly goods, together with his own person (tous et chacun de ses biens, et guarantie de son corps même), and the contract is attested before two notaries.[296]

While the university assumed the strictest kind of control and supervision over the work of the book-dealers, it conceded, as an offset, to the association of these dealers [213]a very substantial monopoly of the trade of making and selling books. It was prohibited, under severe penalties, for a person not a libraire juré to do business in a book-shop or at any fixed stand; that is to say, he could not sell as a stationnaire, but had to carry on his trade as a pedlar or chap-man, from a pack or a cart. The value of the manuscript that such pedlar was permitted to offer for sale was restricted to ten sous, the equivalent of half a franc. At the price at which manuscripts were held during the fourteenth century, this limitation restricted the trade of the peripatetic vendors to single sheets, or broadsides, containing usually a Pater, an Ave, or a Credo, or a brief calendar or astrological table. Successive edicts were issued from reign to reign, renewing the prohibition upon the selling of books, whether in French or Latin (excepting only of such maximum value), by any drapers, grocers, pedlars, or dealers of any kind.[297]

In all the official references of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the book-dealers, the ground is taken that they formed a class apart from mechanics or from traders in ordinary merchandise. They were considered to be engaged in an intellectual pursuit, and were treated as members of a profession upon whose service the work of the university and that of the Church were largely dependent. Thus in 1649 the Recueil makes use of these words:

Les Marchands-Libraires, Imprimeurs et Relieurs seront toujours censés du corps de nostre bien aymée fille aisnée l’Université; du tout séparés des arts méchaniques, et autres Corps de Mestiers ou marchandises; et come tels, conservés en la jouissance de tous les droicts; priviléges, franchises, libertez, préséances et prérogatives attribuées à ladite université et à eux par les Royes nos prédécesseux et par nous.[298]

[214]

It was, therefore, not permitted to the libraire to bring discredit upon his profession by also engaging in any “sordid pursuits” (viles occupations), and in so doing he rendered himself liable to being deposed from his high post (declaré déchu de son noble office). He could, however, unite with his work as libraire that of a notary, or that of a royal counsellor or practitioner in the higher court (avocat du roi au Parlement).

Notwithstanding the personal prestige and the substantial advantages which were thus enjoyed by the book-dealers of the university, there were from time to time instances of protest, amounting occasionally to insubordination, on the part of the libraires, who, as their business aims and possibilities developed, became restive under the long series of trammels and restrictions, and particularly in connection with those imposed by the ecclesiastical division of the university authorities. The dread, however, of losing any portion of their privileges, and particularly the risk of any impairment of their monopoly of the book-trade of the university and of Paris, operated always as a sufficient consideration to prevent the insubordination from going to extremes. Throughout the entire period of the Middle Ages the control of the university continued, therefore, practically absolute over the book-trade of Paris, the influence of the Church and the (more or less spasmodic) authority of the Crown being exercised by means of the university machinery.

This state of affairs continued for some period of years after the introduction of printing. The university still insisted upon its responsibility for the correctness and the completeness of the texts issued from the Paris press, although it gave up of necessity the routine of examining individual copies of the printed editions. On the other hand, the censorship control on the part of the theological Faculty over the moral character and orthodoxy of the works printed was insisted upon more strenuously[215] than ever as the Church began to recognise the enormous importance of the influence upon public opinion of the widely distributed printed volumes. The effect of this ecclesiastical control upon the business of printing books is set forth with some detail in the chapter on the early printers of Paris. It is sufficient to say here that the contention on the part of the university to control, as a portion of the work of higher education, the business of the makers and sellers of books, while sharply attacked and materially undermined after the middle of the seventeenth century, was not formally abandoned until the beginning of the eighteenth. At this time the Crown took over to itself all authority to regulate the press, an authority which disappeared only with the revolution of 1789.

For six centuries the book-trade of Paris and of France, whether it consisted in the production of manuscripts for the exclusive use of members of the university, or of printed books for the enlightenment of the general public, had been obliged to do its work under the hampering and burdensome regulations and restrictions of a varying series of authorities. The rectors of the university, the theologians of the Sorbonne, the lawyers of the Parliament of Paris, the chancellors of the Crown, the kings themselves, had all taken a hand, sometimes in turn, not infrequently in conflict with each other, in the task of “regulating” the trade in books. The burden of the restrictions was, in pretence at least, offset by various privileges and exemptions, but they remained burdens notwithstanding. It may well be a cause of surprise that in the face of such a long series of hampering difficulties, difficulties more serious than those with which any publishers in the world, outside of Rome, had to contend, the manuscript publishers and the later printer-publishers of Paris should have been able to do so much to make Paris a literary and a publishing centre. As has been already[216] indicated, it was certainly the case that during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Paris shared with Florence the position of being the centre of the manuscript trade of Europe. It was also the case, as will be set forth in a later chapter, that the first printer-publishers of Paris did most noteworthy work in furthering the development of scholarly publishing and the production of scholarly books. It required, however, the revolution of 1789 to establish the principle that the business of producing and distributing books could secure its legitimate development only when freed from censorship restrictions and regulations, and that it was a business the control of which belonged properly not to the university, the Courts of Parliament, or the Crown, but to the people themselves.

Considering the scarcity and the costliness of books in the Middle Ages, it is somewhat surprising that the work of instruction rested so directly upon books, that is, depended upon the mastery of a text. Thurot says: “It is the distinctive character of instruction in the Middle Ages that the science was not taught directly and in itself, but by the explanation of books which derived their authority solely from their writers.”[299] Roger Bacon formulates it: “When one knows the text, one knows all that concerns the science which is the object of the text.”[300] Instead of taking a course of logic or of ethics, says Compayré, the phrase was reading a book on logic or ethics, legere or audire librum. This close adherence to the text secured, of course, an assured demand in the university towns first for the hired pecias and later for the purchased manuscripts.

The foundation of the College of the Sorbonne dates from 1257. It was organised by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to Louis IX. The college was at once affiliated with the University of Paris, of which it became the [217]theological Faculty, and in the general direction of which it exercised at times a controlling influence. The college is connected with my subject on the ground of its assumption of the theological censorship of the Paris book-trade and of its frequent attempts to exercise a general censorship over all the productions of the Paris printing-press.

As we shall note later in the history of the Paris book-trade, various complications arose between the publishers and booksellers possessing a university license (the libraires jurés) and certain unlicensed dealers who undertook to come into competition with them. The locality occupied by these unlicensed booksellers was on the Island of the Cité, immediately by the precincts of Notre Dame. In fact it was the case with the book-trade generally north of the Alps that its business was very largely carried on in the portals of a church if not under the immediate shadow of the cathedral.

While in Italy the Church furthered but slightly the early production of books and, later, did not a little to hamper the undertakings of the publishers, it was the case in France and quite largely also in South Germany, that the publishers found themselves very largely dependent upon the scholarly interests and the scholarly co-operation of the clerics, and the association of the Church with the book-trade was, for a large proportion at least of the fifteenth century, an important one.

In Paris, the booksellers licensed by the university were all in the Latin Quarter, and in the same region were to be found the sellers of parchment, the illuminators, the scribes, binders, etc., who also carried university licenses and were under university supervision. It is probable that the specification in the Tax Roll of 1292 of eight librarii in Paris refers only to the booksellers licensed by the university and carrying on their business in the Latin Quarter.

In Bayeux, in 1250, certain clerics were exempted from[218] taxation if they dealt in parchment or if they were engaged in the copying of manuscripts, and the book-shops along the walls of the cathedral were also exempt from taxation. It is not clear to me in looking up this record, whether the tax mentioned was a town tax or a general tax, or whether it was one of the ecclesiastical levies.[301]

Roger Bacon’s reference to the scribes of Paris has already been mentioned. He could not secure from the Brothers of his Order a transcript of his work which he desired to present to Pope Clement, because they were too ignorant to write the same out intelligently, while he was afraid to confide the work to the public scribes of France lest they might make improper use of the material.[302] It is Wattenbach’s opinion that the wrongful use of his production dreaded by Bacon was the sale of unauthorised copies of it by the scribes to whom the preparation of the authorised copies should be confided.

In 1292, Wenzel, King of Bohemia, presented to the monastery of Königsaal, 200 marks in silver for the purchase of books, and the purchases were made from the book-sellers in Paris. Richard de Bury extols Paris as the great centre of the book-trade. Of the value of the book collections in Rome and the possibility there of securing literary treasures, he had already spoken, but the treasures of Paris appear to have impressed him still more keenly. There he found occasion to open his purse freely and took in exchange for base gold, books of inestimable value. Joh. Gerson, in his treatise De Laude Scriptorum expresses the dread lest the persistent carrying away from Florence of his books by wealthy visitors may not too seriously diminish its literary treasures.

The Paris publishers appear to have sent out travelling salesmen or representatives to take orders for their wares. As early as 1480, a publisher named Guillaume Tousé, [219]of Paris, made complaint to the chancellor of Brittany to the effect that he had entrusted a commission to a certain Guillaume de l’Espine to carry books into Lower Brittany and to make sale of the same during a period of six months. He had taken with him books to the value of five hundred livres and was to have a salary of ten crowns for the six months’ work. He had, however, failed to return or to make report of his commission. Tousé secured a judgment against his delinquent traveller, but the record does not show whether he ever succeeded in getting hold of him again.[303]

In the universities of Oxford and of Cambridge, the stationarii began their work some years later than in Paris or Bologna. They had the advantage, however, of freedom from the greater portion of the restrictions and special supervision which hampered the work of the scribes in the Italian and French universities, and as a result their business developed more promptly and more actively, and in the course of a few years, they became the booksellers of the university towns. It was, of course, from this university term stationarii that the name of stationers came at the outset to be applied to the organised book-dealers of Great Britain. The Guild of the British book-dealers completed its organisation in 1403, nearly sixty years before the introduction into England of the printing-press.[304]