The manuscripts of the Abbey of Saint Victor, in 1308, were attached to desks; the books of Notre Dame of Paris, similarly arranged, were designated in numerical order in the first catalogues. The custom was probably abandoned shortly after the invention of printing, as the catenati of the church of St. Gratien of Tours were a curiosity to Lebrun Desmarettes in the reign of Louis XIV., and scarcer than an uncut Elsevier is in France, a book with the chain-mark of the original catenatus.
These books were not decorated by goldsmiths and enamellers with precious stones and “flower de luce of dyamounts,” nor covered with the enamelled plaques of the town of Limoges, which were of the finest bindings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but they were of as great luxury of solidity: thick boards, leather-covered, massive ornaments, heavy metalled corners, and frequently with an excavation in the interior of the binding for the reception of a silver crucifix, guarded by a metal door.
An estimate of the weight of such a binding may be formed without reference to the volume of the Epistles of Cicero, now in the Florence Laurentian library; Petrarch’s autograph copy of the work, of such ponderous weight that it severely injured his
