Volume 1 — CHAPTER I. (continued 3)

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 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]

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 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.

The Benedictines of the Continent.

—The two writers who have given the largest attention to the record of the literary and scholarly work of the Benedictines during the seven centuries between 500 and 1200 A.D., are Mabillon and Ziegelbauer. Dom Mabillon was himself a Benedictine monk and had a full inheritance of the literary spirit and scholarly devotion which characterised the Order. He was born in Rheims in 1632, and his treatise on monastic studies, Traité des Études Monastiques, which has remained the chief authority on its subject, was published in Paris in 1691. Ziegelbauer’s Observationes Literariæ S. Benedicti appeared a century later.[168]

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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.

The Libraries of the Monasteries and Their Arrangements for the Exchange of Books.

—Geoffrey, sub-prior of S. Barbe, in Normandy, is the author of a phrase which has since been frequently quoted. In a letter written in 1170 to Peter Mangot, a monk of Baugercy, in the diocese of Tours, he says: “A monastery (claustrum) without a library (sine armario) is like a castle (castrum) without an armory (sine armamentario). Our library is our armory. Thence it is that we bring forth the sentences of the Divine Law like sharp arrows to attack the enemy. Thence we take the armour of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God.”[193]

Among the monasteries whose collections of books were noteworthy and whose literary exchanges were not 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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]