231
Alban's books: "This book belongs to St. Alban. May
whoever steals it from him or erases his inscription
of ownership [titulum deleverit] be anathema. Amen.
The high value set on books is also emphasized by the many decrees enjoining care in their use. ** Wlien the rcli^ous are enj^ud in reading, says an order of the Cieneral Benedictme Chapter, ** they shall, if p<^ Bible, hold the books in their left hands, wrapped in the sleeve of their tunics and resting on their knees, their right hands sliall be uncovered, with which to hold and turn ^e leaves of the aforesaid books" (Gasquet, "Old English Bible", 29). Numl)erless other appeals recommending care, tenderness, and even reverence, in the treatment of books might be quoted from medic^ sources. In the Philobi1> km" of Bishop Richard of Bury we have a whole treatise upon the subject, written with an enthusiasm which could not have been exccc<lcd by a nineteenth- century bibliophile. lie says, for example (chap, xvii): "And surely next to the vestments and vessels dedicated to our liord's Bod}', holy books deserve to be rightly treated by the clergy-, to which great iniury 18 done BO often as they are touched oy imclean hands." This care naturally extended to the presses in which the books were permanently lodged. The Augustinians, in particukr, had a formal rule that "the press in which the books are kept ought to be fined mside with wood, that the damp of the walls may not moisten or stain the books' , and de\ices were further suggested to prevent the books from being "packed so close as to injure each other, or delav those who want to consult them" (Clark, "Care of Books", 71).
Still, the monastic system did not until much later make provision for any separate room to 1>e used as a fibrary. It was in the cloister, in which little alcoves called "carrels" were fitted up, securing a certain amount of privacy for each student, that the literary work of the house, whether in reading or transcribing, was mainly done. The result of this system was that the books were not kept all together but preserved in presses in different parts of the building. At Dur- nam, for example, "some were kept in the church, others in the 'spendiment' or trea$ur>% and others again in the refectory', and in more than one place in the cloister" (Gasquet, "Old Eng. Bible", 10). This Bcatterinff of the books was the more likely to happen because, from the very nature of the case, a collection of volumes written by hand and kept up only by limited monastic resources could never be very vast. Until the art of printing had lent its aid to multiplv books and to cheapen them, a comparatively small number of cupboards were sufficient to contain the literary treasures of the very largest monastery. At Christ Church, Canterbury, Henr>' de Estria's Cata- logue of about the year loOO enumerates 3CKK) titles in Bome 1850 volumes. At Glastonbury^ in 1247 there were 500 works in 340 volumes. The Benedictines at Dover in 1389 possessed 449, while the largest English monastic library, so far as is known to us, viz., that at Buiy St. Edmimds, at the l)eginning of the fif- teenth century, contained 2000 volumes.
The practice just referred to, of scattering ]xx)ks in different presses and collections, was prol>a})Iy also much influenced by the custom of lending, or allowing outsiders to consuftj books, upon which something has previously been said. Naturally, there will always nave been volumes which any community, monastic or collegiate, reserved for the exclusive use of its mem- bers. Liturgical books and some asccticul treatises, eicular copies of the Scripture, etc., will have he- ed to this class, while there will have been divi.s- ions even among the books to which the outside world had access. The following passage, for example, is Tery suggestive. Thomas CJascoigne says of the Fran- ciscans at Oxford alx)ut the year 144o: "They had two libnuries in the same house; tlio one oallod l h<^ con-
vent library, and the other the library of the Bchooh;
whereof the former was open only to graduates: the
latter to the scholars they called seculars, who lived
among those friars for the sake of learning ". All this
must have been very inconvenient, and it is not sur-
prising that in the course of the fifteenth century the
desirability of gathering their hbrary treasures into
one large apartment where study might be carried on
occurred to the authorities of many monastic and col-*
legiate institutions. During the whole of this period,
therefore, libraries of some pretensions began to be
built. Thus, to take a few examples, at Cluist Church,
Canterbury, a Ubrar>', 60 feet long by 22 broad, was
built by Archbishop Chichele, between 1414 and 1443,
over the Prior's Chapel. The library' at Durham was
constructed between 1416 and 1446, by Prior Wes-
syngton, over the old sacristy; that at Citeaux, in
1480, over the scriptoriumj or writing-room, forming
part of the cloister; that at Clairvaux, between 1495
and 1503, in the same position; that at the Augustin-
ian monastery of St- Victor in Paris, between 1501 and
1508; and that at St-Germain des Pr^ in the same
city, about 1513, over the south cloister.
The transformation of Clairvaux is easy to under- stand on account of two descriptions left us at a later date. A visitor in 1517 tells us: *' On the same side of the cloister are fourteen studies [the carrels] where the monks write and study; and over the said studies is the new library, to which one mounts by a broad and lofty spiral staircase from the aforesaid cloister. " The description goes on to extol the beauty of this new construction, which, adapting itself, of course, to the shape of the cloister below, was 189 feet long by 17 wide. In it, we are told, "there were 48 seats [bavcsl and in each seat four shelves [poulpitres] furnishea with books on all subjects". These books, although the writer does not say so, were probably chained to the shelves after the custom of tnat |)eriod. At any rate this is what the authors of the "Voyage htt^r- aire", two hundred years later, say of the same li- brary: "From the great cloister you pass into the cloister of conversation, so called l^ecause the brethren are allowed to converse there. In this cloister there are twelve or fifteen little cells [the carrels], all of a row, where the brethren fomicrlv used to wnte books; for this reason they are still called at the present day the writing rooms. Over these cells is the Library', the building for which is large, vaulted, well lighted, and stocked with a large numl>er of manuscripts fast- ened by chains to desks, but there are not many printed' books."
This, then, is a type of the transformation which was going on in the last century of the Middle Ages, a process immensclv accelerated, no doubt, by the mul- tiplication of books consequent uiX)n the invention of printing. The newly constructea libraries, whether connected with imiversitics, or cathedrals, or religious houses, were rooms of considerable size, generally broken up into compartments or stalls, such as may still be seen in Duke Humphrey's Librar\' in the Bod- leian at Oxford. Here the books were chained to the shelves, but they could l)e taken down and laid upon the desk at which the student sat, and at which he could also use his writing materials without incon- venience. Some few survivals of this old arranRoment, for example at Hereford Cathedral, and at Zutphen (where, however, the diained books can only be con- sulted standing), still exist. But it was not for very many years that this system lasted, except as a per- p(»tuation of old tradition.
Mode KM Libraries. — Foremost among the agen- cies which have contributed to the collection and pres- ervation of books in later times is the papacy. The popes, as munificent puitrons of learning, have founded a number of libraries and enriched them with manuscripts and documents of the greatest value. The most important of thc^se papal foundations is the
