8.
CHAPTER VIII
OF THE NUMEROUS OPPORTUNITIES WE HAVE
HAD OF COLLECTING A STORE OF BOOKS
SINCE to everything there is a season and an
opportunity, as the wise Ecclesiastes witnesseth,
let us now proceed to relate the manifold opportunities
through which we have been assisted by the
divine goodness in the acquisition of books.
Although from our youth upwards we had always
delighted in holding social commune with learned men
and lovers of books, yet when we prospered in the
world and made acquaintance with the King's majesty
and were received into his household, we obtained
ampler facilities for visiting everywhere as we would,
and of hunting as it were certain most choice preserves,
libraries private as well as public, and of the regular
as well as of the secular clergy. And indeed while
we filled various offices to the victorious Prince and
splendidly triumphant King of England, Edward the
Third from the Conquest—whose reign may the
Almighty long and peacefully continue—first those
about his court, but then those concerning the public
affairs of his kingdom, namely the offices of Chancellor
and Treasurer, there was afforded to us, in consideration
of the royal favour, easy access for the purpose of
freely searching the retreats of books. In fact, the
fame of our love of them had been soon winged abroad
everywhere, and we were reported to burn with such
desire for books, and especially old ones, that it was
more easy for any man to gain our favour by means
of books than of money. Wherefore, since supported
by the goodness of the aforesaid prince of worthy
memory, we were able to requite a man well or ill, to
benefit or injure mightily great as well as small, there
flowed in, instead of presents and guerdons, and instead
of gifts and jewels, soiled tracts and battered
codices, gladsome alike to our eye and heart. Then
the aumbries. of the most famous monasteries were
thrown open, cases were unlocked and caskets were
undone, and volumes that had slumbered through
long ages in their tombs wake up and are astonished,
and those that had lain hidden in dark places are
bathed in the ray of unwonted light. These long
lifeless books, once most dainty, but now become
corrupt and loathsome, covered with litters of mice
and pierced with the gnawings of the worms, and who
were once clothed in purple and fine linen, now lying
in sackcloth and ashes, given up to oblivion, seemed
to have become habitations of the moth. Natheless
among these, seizing the opportunity, we would sit
down with more delight than a fastidious physician
among his stores of gums and spices, and there we
found the object and the stimulus of our affections.
Thus the sacred vessels of learning came into our
control and stewardship; some by gift, others by
purchase, and some lent to us for a season.
No wonder that when people saw that we were
contented with gifts of this kind, they were anxious of
their own accord to minister to our needs with those
things that they were more willing to dispense with
than the things they secured by ministering to our
service. And in good will we strove so to forward
their affairs that gain accrued to them, while justice
suffered no disparagement. Indeed, if we had loved
gold and silver goblets, high-bred horses, or no small
sums of money, we might in those days have furnished
forth a rich treasury. But in truth we wanted manuscripts
not moneyscripts; we loved codices more than
florins, and preferred slender pamphlets to pampered
palfreys.
Besides all this, we were frequently made ambassador
of this most illustrious Prince of everlasting
memory, and were sent on the most various affairs of
state, now to the Holy See, now to the Court of
France, and again to various powers of the world, on
tedious embassies and in times of danger, always
carrying with us, however, that love of books which
many waters could not quench. For this like a delicious
draught sweetened the bitterness of our journeyings
and after the perplexing intricacies and
troublesome difficulties of causes, and the all but
inextricable labyrinths of public affairs afforded us a little
breathing space to enjoy a balmier atmosphere.
O Holy God of gods in Sion, what a mighty
stream of pleasure made glad our hearts whenever we
had leisure to visit Paris, the Paradise of the world,
and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few
for the greatness of our love! There are delightful
libraries, more aromatic than stores of spicery; there
are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes; there
are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars;
there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics;
peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics.
There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences
Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent
in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary
world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric
apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures
and numbers; there Paul reveals the mysteries; there
his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes
the hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces
in Latin characters all that Cadmus collected in
Phœnician letters; there indeed opening our treasuries
and unfastening our purse-strings we scattered
money with joyous heart and purchased inestimable
books with mud and sand. It is naught, it is naught,
saith every buyer. But in vain; for behold how good
and how pleasant it is to gather together the arms of
the clerical warfare, that we may have the means to
crush the attacks of heretics, if they arise.
Further, we are aware that we obtained most excellent
opportunities of collecting in the following
way. From our early years we attached to our society
with the most exquisite solicitude and discarding all partiality
all such masters and scholars and professors in the
several faculties as had become most distinguished by
their subtlety of mind and the fame of their learning.
Deriving consolation from their sympathetic conversation,
we were delightfully entertained, now by demonstrative
chains of reasoning, now by the recital of
physical processes and the treatises of the doctors of
the Church, now by stimulating discourses on the
allegorical meanings of things, as by a rich and well-varied
intellectual feast. Such men we chose as
comrades in our years of learning, as companions in
our chamber, as associates on our journeys, as guests
at our table, and, in short, as helpmates in all the
vicissitudes of life. But as no happiness is permitted
to endure for long, we were sometimes deprived of
the bodily companionship of some of these shining
lights, when justice looking down from heaven, the
ecclesiastical preferments and dignities that they
deserved fell to their portion. And thus it happened,
as was only right, that in attending to their own cures
they were obliged to absent themselves from attendance
upon us.
We will add yet another very convenient way by
which a great multitude of books old as well as new
came into our hands. For we never regarded with
disdain or disgust the poverty of the mendicant orders,
adopted for the sake of Christ; but in all parts of the
world took them into the kindly arms of our compassion,
allured them by the most friendly familiarity
into devotion to ourselves, and having so allured them
cherished them with munificent liberality of beneficence
for the sake of God, becoming benefactors of
all of them in general in such wise that we seemed
none the less to have adopted certain individuals with
a special fatherly affection. To these men we were
as a refuge in every case of need, and never refused
to them the shelter of our favour, wherefore we
deserved to find them most special furtherers of our
wishes and promoters thereof in act and deed, who
compassing land and sea, traversing the circuit of the
world, and ransacking the universities and high schools
of various provinces, were zealous in combatting for
our desires, in the sure and certain hope of reward.
What leveret could escape amidst so many keen-sighted
hunters? What little fish could evade in
turn their hooks and nets and snares? From the
body of the Sacred Law down to the booklet containing
the fallacies of yesterday, nothing could escape
these searchers. Was some devout discourse uttered
at the fountain-head of Christian faith, the holy
Roman Curia, or was some strange question ventilated
with novel arguments; did the solidity of Paris,
which is now more zealous in the study of antiquity
than in the subtle investigation of truth, did English
subtlety, which illumined by the lights of former
times is always sending forth fresh rays of truth,
produce anything to the advancement of science or the
declaration of the faith, this was instantly poured still
fresh into our ears, ungarbled by any babbler, unmutilated
by any trifler, but passing straight from the
purest of wine-presses into the vats of our memory to
be clarified.
But whenever it happened that we turned aside to
the cities and places where the mendicants we have
mentioned had their convents, we did not disdain to
visit their libraries and any other repositories of books;
nay, there we found heaped up amid the utmost
poverty the utmost riches of wisdom. We discovered
in their fardels and baskets not only crumbs falling
from the masters' table for the dogs, but the shewbread
without leaven and the bread of angels having
in it all that is delicious; and indeed the garners of
Joseph full of corn, and all the spoil of the Egyptians,
and the very precious gifts which Queen Sheba
brought to Solomon.
These men are as ants ever preparing their meat in
the summer, and ingenious bees continually fabricating
cells of honey. They are successors of Bezaleel
in devising all manner of workmanship in silver and
gold and precious stones for decorating the temple of
the Church. They are cunning embroiderers, who
fashion the breastplate and ephod of the high priest
and all the various vestments of the priests. They
fashion the curtains of linen and hair and coverings of
ram's skins dyed red with which to adorn the tabernacle
of the Church militant. They are husbandmen
that sow, oxen treading out corn, sounding
trumpets, shining Pleiades and stars remaining in
their courses, which cease not to fight against Sisera.
And to pay due regard to truth, without prejudice to
the judgment of any, although they lately at the
eleventh hour have entered the lord's vineyard, as the
books that are so fond of us eagerly declared in our
sixth chapter, they have added more in this brief
hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the
other vine-dressers; following in the footsteps of
Paul, the last to be called but the first in preaching,
who spread the gospel of Christ more widely than all
others. Of these men, when we were raised to the
episcopate we had several of both orders, viz., the
Preachers and Minors, as personal attendants and
companions at our board, men distinguished no less
in letters than in morals, who devoted themselves
with unwearied zeal to the correction, exposition,
tabulation, and compilation of various volumes. But
although we have acquired a very numerous store of
ancient as well as modern works by the manifold
intermediation of the religious, yet we must laud the
Preachers with special praise, in that we have found
them above all the religious most freely communicative
of their stores without jealousy, and proved them
to be imbued with an almost Divine liberality, not
greedy but fitting possessors of luminous wisdom.
Besides all the opportunities mentioned above, we
secured the acquaintance of stationers and booksellers,
not only within our own country, but of those spread
over the realms of France, Germany, and Italy, money
flying forth in abundance to anticipate their demands;
nor were they hindered by any distance or by the
fury of the seas, or by the lack of means for their
expenses, from sending or bringing to us the books
that we required. For they well knew that their
expectations of our bounty would not be defrauded,
but that ample repayment with usury was to be found
with us.
Nor, finally, did our good fellowship, which aimed
to captivate the affection of all, overlook the rectors
of schools and the instructors of rude boys. But
rather, when we had an opportunity, we entered
their little plots and gardens and gathered sweet-smelling
flowers from the surface and dug up their
roots, obsolete indeed, but still useful to the student,
which might, when their rank barbarism was digested
heal the pectoral arteries with the gift of eloquence.
Amongst the mass of these things we found some
greatly meriting to be restored, which when skilfully
cleansed and freed from the disfiguring rust of age,
deserved to be renovated into comeliness of aspect.
And applying in full measure the necessary means, as
a type of the resurrection to come, we resuscitated
them and restored them again to new life and health.
Moreover, we had always in our different manors
no small multitude of copyists and scribes, of binders,
correctors, illuminators, and generally of all who could
usefully labour in the service of books. Finally, all
of both sexes and of every rank or position who had
any kind of association with books, could most easily
open by their knocking the door of our heart, and
find a fit resting-place in our affection and favour.
In so much did we receive those who brought books,
that the multitude of those who had preceded them
did not lessen the welcome of the after-comers, nor
were the favours we had awarded yesterday prejudicial
to those of to-day. Wherefore, ever using all
the persons we have named as a kind of magnets to
attract books, we had the desired accession of the
vessels of science and a multitudinous flight of the
finest volumes.
And this is what we undertook to narrate in the
present chapter.
