University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI: THE CHARACTER OF THE MEDIEVAL LIBRARY, AND THE EXTENT OF CIRCULATION OF BOOKS

1. § I

AFTER a storm a fringe of weed and driftwood stretches a serried line along the sands, and now and then—too often on the flat shores of one of our northern estuaries, whence can be seen the white teeth of the sea biting at the shoals flanking the fairway—are mingled with the flotsam sodden relics of life aboard ship and driftwood of tell-tale shape, which silently point to a tragedy of the sea. Usually the daily paper completes the tale; but on some rare occasion these poor bits of drift remain the only evidence of the vain struggle, and from them we must piece together the narrative as best we can. And as the sea does not give up everything, nor all at once, some wreckage sinking, or perishing, or floating upon the water a long time before finding a well-concealed hiding-place upon some unfrequented shore, so the past yields but a fraction of its records, and that

fraction slowly and grudgingly. So far this book has been a gathering of the flotsam of a past age: odd relics and scattered records, a sign here and a hint there; often unrelated, sometimes contradictory. In more skilful hands possibly a coherent story might be wrought out of these pièces justificatives; but the author is too well aware of the difficulty of arranging and selecting from the mass of material, remembers too well the tale of mistakes thankfully avoided, and is too apprehensive that other errors lurk undiscovered, to be confident that he has succeeded in his aim. Whether the story is worth telling is another matter. Surely it is. To be able to follow the history of the Middle Ages, to become acquainted with the people, their mode of life and customs and manners, is of profound interest and great utility; and it is by no means the least important part of such study to discover what books they had, how extensively the books were read, and what section of the people read them.

Let us here sum up the information given in detail in the foregoing pages; adding thereto some other facts of interest. And first, what of the character of the medieval library?

During the earlier centuries monastic libraries contained books which were deemed necessary for grammatical study in the claustral schools, and other books, chiefly the Fathers, as we have seen, which were regarded as proper literature for the monk. The books used in the cathedral schools were similar. Such schools and such libraries were for the glory of God and the increase of clergy and religious. At first, especially, the ideal of the monks was high, if narrow. It is epitomised in the untranslatable epigram Claustrum sine armario (est) quasi castrum sine armamentario.[11.2] "The library is the

monastery's true treasure," writes Thomas a Kempis; [11.3] "without which the monastery is like . . . a well without water . . . an unwatched tower." Again: "Let not the toil and fatigue pain you. They who read the books formerly written beautifully by you will pray for you when you are dead. And if he who gives a cup of cold water shall not lack his guerdon, still less shall he who gives the living water of wisdom lose his reward in heaven." [11.4] St. Bernard wrote in like terms. Books were their tools, "the silent preachers of the divine word," or the weapons of their armoury. "Thence it is," writes a sub-prior to his friend, "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."[11.5] With such an end in view Reculfus of Soissons required his clergy to have a missal, a lectionary, the Gospels, a martyrology, an antiphonary, a psalter, a book of forty homilies of Gregory, and as many Christian books as they could get (879). With this end in view were chosen for reading in the Refectory at Durham (1395) such books as the Bible, homilies, Legends of the Saints, lives of Gregory, Martin, Nicholas, Dunstan, Augustine, Cuthbert, King Oswald, Aidan, Thomas of Canterbury, and other saints.[11.6] With this end in view the monastic libraries contained a very large proportion of Bibles, books of the Bible, and commentaries —a proportion suggesting the Scriptures were studied with a closeness and assiduity for which the monks have not always received due credit. [11.7] A great deal of room was given up to the works of the Fathers—their confessions, retractations, and letters, their polemics against heresies, their dogmatic and doctrinal treatises, and their sermons and ethical discourses. Of all these writings those of Hilary, Basil, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, and the great Augustine were most popular. John Cassian, Leo, Prosper, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, Aldhelm, Bede, Anselm, and Bernard, and the two encyclopædists, Martianus Capella and Isidore of Seville, were the church's great teachers, and their works and the sacred poetry and hymns of Juvencus the Spanish priest, of Prudentius, of Sedulius, the author of a widely-read and influential poem on the life of Christ, and of Fortunatus, were nearly always well represented in the monastic catalogues, as may be seen on a cursory examination of those of Christ Church and St. Augustine's, Canterbury, of Durham, of Glastonbury in 1248, of Peterborough in 1400, and of Syon in the sixteenth century. In the earlier libraries the greater part of the books were Scriptural and theological; to these were added later a mass of books on canon and civil law; so that the monastic collection may be characterised as almost entirely special and fit for Christian service, as this service was conceived by the religious.

And classical literature was received into the fold for a like purpose. From the earliest days of Christendom prejudice against the classics was widespread among Christians. Such books, it was urged, had no connexion with the Church or the Gospel; Ciceronianism was not the road to God; Plato and Aristotle could not show the way to happiness; Ovid, above all, was to be avoided.[11.8] In dreams the poets took the form of demons; they must be exorcised, for the soul did not profit by them. The precepts —and for these the Christian sought—in the poems were

like serpents, born of the evil one; the characters, devils. Some Christians sighed as they thrust the tempting books away. Jerome frankly confesses he cared little for the homely Latin of the Psalms, and much for Plautus and Cicero. For a time he renounced them with other vanities of the world; yet when going through the catacombs at Rome, where the Apostles and Martyrs had their graves, a fine line of Virgil thrills him; and later he instructed boys at Bethlehem in Plautus, Terence, and Virgil, much to the horror of Rufinus. Even in the eleventh century this feeling existed. Lanfranc wrote to Dumnoaldus to say it was unbefitting he should study such books, but he confessed that although he now renounced them, he had read them a good deal in his youth. Somewhat later Herbert "Losinga," abbot of Ramsey, had a dream which led him to cease reading and imitating Virgil and Ovid; but elsewhere he recommends his pupils to accept Ovid as a model in Latin verse, while he quotes the Tristia.[11.9] The rules of some orders, as those of Isidore, St. Francis, and St. Dominic, forbade the reading of the classics, save by permission. For their value in teaching grammar and as models of literary style, however, certain classic authors— especially Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, and Statius —were regarded as supplementary to the grammatical works of Donatus, Victorinus, Macroblus, and Priscian, and were studied by the religious throughout the Middle Ages. They were grammatical text-books, as indeed they are still; but then they were very little else. A man would call himself Virgil, not from inordinate vanity, but from a naive pride in his profession of grammarian: to his way of thinking the great poet was no more.[11.10] "As decade followed decade," writes Mr. H. O. Taylor, "and century followed century, there was no falling off in the study of the Æneid. Virgil's fame towered, his authority became absolute. But how? In what respect? As a supreme master of grammatical correctness and rhetorical excellence and of all learning. With increasing emptiness of soul, the grammarians—the `Virgils'—of the succeeding centuries put the great poet to ever baser uses."[11.11]

From time to time the use of the classics even for grammatical purposes was condemned, though unavailingly. They were necessary in the schools; evils, doubtless, but unavoidable. Then, again, some of the classics were looked upon as allegorical: from the sixth century to the Renascence the Æneid was often interpreted in this way; and Virgil's Fourth Eclogue was thought to be a prophecy of Christ's coming. Ovid allegorised contained profound truths; his Art of Love, so treated, was not unfit for nuns. [11.12] Other writers, as Lucan, were appreciated for their didacticism; Juvenal, Cato and Seneca the younger as moralists. And some of the religious fell a prey to these evils, inasmuch as they assessed them at their true value as literature.

The classics therefore were accepted. Anselm recommended Virgil. Horace, in his most amorous moods, was sung by the monks. Ovid, either adapted or in his natural state, was a great favourite. In an appendix we have scheduled the chief classics found in English monastic catalogues to indicate roughly the extent to which they were collected and used. A glance at Becker's sheaf of catalogues will show us that Aristotle, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Persius, Plato, Pliny the elder, Porphyry, Sallust, Statius, Terence, and especially Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, and Virgil are well represented. But it must not be supposed that they were in monastic libraries in excessive numbers. On the contrary. An inspection of almost any catalogue of

such a library will prove that only a small proportion of it consisted of classical writings, especially in those catalogues compiled prior to the time when Aristotle's works dominated the whole of medieval scholarship. The monastic library was throughout the Middle Ages the armoury of the religious against evil, and the few slight changes of character which it underwent at one time and another do not alter the fact that on the whole it was a fit and proper collection for its purpose.[11.13]

2. § II

After the twelfth century broadening influences were at work. The education given in the cathedral and monastic schools was found to be too restricted; the monasteries, moreover, now began to refuse assistance to secular students.[11.14] To some extent the catechetic method of the theologians was forced to give place to the dialectic method, equally dogmatic, but more exciting and stimulating. Hence was compiled such a book as Peter Lombard's Sentences (1145-50), a cyclopædia of disputation, wherein theological questions were collected under heads, together with Scriptural passages and statements of the Fathers bearing on these questions. By the thirteenth century Lombard was the standard text-book of the schools: a work of such reputation that it was studied in preference to the Scriptures, as Bacon complained.

A demand also arose for instruction in civil and canon law, which the existing schools did not supply. This broader learning was provided in the early universities, at first to the dislike of the Church, and sometimes to the

annoyance of royal heads. Particular objection was taken to the study of law. An Italian named Vicario (Vacarius) lectured on Justinian at Oxford in 1149. Then he abridged the Code and Digest for his students there. King Stephen forbade him to proceed with his lectures, and prohibited the use of treatises on foreign law, many manuscripts of which were consequently destroyed. But these measures were not very effectual. Within a short time civil law became recognised in the University as a proper subject of study. By 1275, when another Italian jurist named Francesco d'Accorso, a distinguished teacher at Bologna, came to Oxford to lecture, the study of civil law was pursued with the royal favour.[11.15]

The searcher among old wills cannot fail to be struck with the number of law books in the small private libraries. Sometimes the whole of one of these little collections consists of law books; often there are more books of this kind than of any other. For example, of eighty books bequeathed by Prior Eastry to Christ Church, Canterbury, forty-three were on canon and civil law: of eighty-four books given to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, by the founder, exactly one-half were juridical. A wealthy canon of York left but half a dozen books, all on law. The books bequeathed to Peterborough Abbey by successive abbots were chiefly on law. Many other examples could be recited. There was a reason for this. Friar Bacon,writing in 1271, complained that jurists got all rewards and benefices, while students of theology and philosophy lacked the means of livelihood, could not obtain books, and were unable to pursue their scientific studies. Canonists, even, were only rewarded because of their previous knowledge of civil law: at Oxford three years had to be devoted to the study of civil law before a student could be admitted as bachelor of canon

law. Consequently a man of parts, with a leaning towards theological and philosophical learning, took up the study of civil law, with the hope of more easily winning preferment.[11.16] "Compared with such [legal] lore," writes Mr. Mullinger, "theological learning became but a sorry recommendation to ecclesiastical preferment; most of the Popes at Avignon had been distinguished by their attainments in a subject which so nearly concerned the temporal interests of the Church; and the civilian and the canonist alike looked down with contempt on the theologian, even as Hagar, to use the comparison of Holcot, despised her barren mistress." [11.17] The most casual glance through some pages of monastic records will show how frequent and endless was the litigation in which the Church was engaged, and consequently how useful a knowledge of civil law would be.

But these changes were trifling compared with the stimulus given to medieval learning by the influx of Greek books and of Arabic versions of them. In the second half of the eleventh century the works of Galen and Hippocrates were re-introduced into Italy from the Arabian empire by a North African named Constantine, who translated them at the famous monastery of Monte Cassino. These translations, with the numerous Arabian commentaries, and the conflict of the physicians of the new school with those of the old and famous school of Salerno, constitute the revival of medical studies which occurred at that time. [11.18] It would seem that this revival was felt quickly in England, as in the twelfth century four books by Galen and two by Hippocrates, with some Arabian works, were to be found in the monastic library of Durham; a number significant of the liberal feeling of the monks of this house, inasmuch as in all the catalogues transcribed by Becker appear only

ten books by Galen and nine by Hippocrates. [11.19] Before 1150 the whole of the Organon of Aristotle was known to scholars; [11.20] but not till about that time did the other works begin to be exported from Arabic Spain. Then Latin versions of Arabic translations of the Physics and Metaphysics were first made.

Daniel of Morley (fl. 1170-90) brought into this country manuscripts of Aristotle, and commentaries upon him got in the Arab schools of Toledo, then the centre of Mohammedan learning. Michael the Scot (c. 1175-1234), "wondrous wizard, of dreaded fame," was another agent of the Arab influence. He received his education perhaps at Oxford, certainly at Paris and Toledo. From manuscripts obtained at the last place he translated two abstracts of the Historia animalium, and some commentaries of Averroës on Aristotle (1215-30).[11.21] A third pilgrim from these islands, Alfred the Englishman, also made use of Arabic versions; and most likely both he and Michael brought home with them manuscripts from Toledo and Paris. Of the renderings made by these men and by some foreign workers in the same field, Friar Bacon speaks with the utmost contempt. Their writings were utterly false. They did not know the sciences they dealt with. The Jews, the Arabs, and the Greeks, who had good manuscripts, destroyed and corrupted them, rather than let them fall into the hands of unlettered and ignorant Christians. [11.22] Aristotle should be read in the original, he also says; it would be better if all translations were burnt. The criticism is acrid; but the men he contemns served scholarship well by quickening the interest in Greek books,

and they succeeded so well because they gave to the schoolmen not only versions of Aristotle's text, but commentaries and elucidations written by Arabs and Jews who had carefully studied the text, and could explain the meaning of obscure passages in it.[11.23]

When these translations were coming to England, travellers were bringing Greek books directly from the East. A doctor of medicine named William returned to Paris from Constantinople in 1167, carrying with him "many precious Greek codices."[11.24] About 1209 a Latin translation of Aristotle's Physics or Metaphysics was made from a Greek manuscript brought straight from Constantinople. Some of these few importations were certainly destroyed at once, probably all were, for Aristotle was proscribed in Paris in the following year, and again in 1215, at the very time when Michael the Scot was procuring versions in another direction, at Toledo.[11.25] Not until mid-thirteenth century was the ban wholly removed.

For a time, owing to the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders, intercourse between East and West had become far freer than it had been for centuries (1203-61). Certain Greek philosophers of learned mien came to England about 1202, but did not stay; and some Armenians, among them a bishop, visited St. Albans. Whether they or Nicholas the Greek, clerk to the abbot of that monastery, brought books with them we do not know; Nicholas, at any rate, seems to have assisted Grosseteste in his Greek studies.[11.26] John of Basingstoke,

Grosseteste's archdeacon, carried Greek manuscripts—many valuable manuscripts, we are told—from Athens, whither Grosseteste had sent him. The bishop himself imported books to this country, probably from Sicily and South Italy.[11.27] He had a copy of Suidas' Lexicon, possibly the earliest copy brought to the West. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs was also in Grosseteste's possession: the manuscript was brought home by John of Basingstoke, and still exists in the Cambridge University Library. [11.28] These forged Testaments were translated by Nicholas the Greek, and as no fewer than thirty-one copies of the Latin version still remain they must have had a good circulation.[11.29] Possibly the Greek Octateuch (Genesis to Ruth), now in the Bodleian Library, was imported into this country by Grosseteste or by somebody for him; at one time the manuscript was in the library of Christ Church, Canterbury. [11.30] Among other Greek books which Grosseteste used and translated, or had translated under his direction, were the Epistles of St. Ignatius, a Greek romance of Asenath, the Egyptian wife of the patriarch Joseph, and some writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. At Ramsey, where the bishop's influence may be suspected, Prior Gregory (fl. 1290) owned a Græco-Latin psalter, still extant.[11.31] Possibly all the importations were of similar character, and the number of them cannot have been great or we should have heard more of them.

Friar Bacon, writing about 1270, complains that he could not get all the books he wanted, nor were the versions of the books he had satisfactory. Parts of the Scriptures were untranslated, as, for example, two books of Maccabees,

which he knew existed in Greek, and books of the Prophets referred to in the books of Kings and Chronicles; the chronology of the Antiquities of Josephus was incorrectly rendered, and biblical history could not be usefully studied without a true version of this book. Books of the Hebrew and Greek expositors were almost wanting to the Latins: Origen, Basil, Gregory, Nazianzene, John of Damascus, Dionysius, Chrysostom, and others, both in Hebrew and Greek. [11.32] The scientific books of Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Seneca, and other ancients could only be had at great cost. Their principal works had not been translated into Latin. "The admirable books of Cicero De Republica are not to be found anywhere, as far as I can hear, although I have made anxious inquiry for them in different parts of the world and by various messengers." [11.33]

The period during which the intellectual life of the Middle Ages was broadened by the introduction of new knowledge and ideas originally from Greek sources, began, as we have said, with the influx of translations from the Arabic. The movement culminated with the work of William of Moerbeke, Greek Secretary at the Council of Lyons (1274), who, between 1270 and 1281, translated several of Aristotle's works from the Greek, including the Rhetorica and the Politica. Fortunately we have a record belonging to this time of a collection of books which shows admirably the character of the change. A certain John of London (c. 1270-1330), believed to have been Bacon's pupil, probably became a monk of St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, and in due course bequeathed a library of books to his house. This collection amounted to nearly eighty books, of which twenty-three were on mathematics and astronomy, a like number on medicine, ten on philosophy, six on logic, four historical, three on grammar,

one poetry, and the rest collections. [11.34] Such a collection is remarkable not only for its character, but on account of its size, which was very large for anybody to own privately in that age.

3. § III

On one occasion, after spending much time in searching wills and in examining catalogues without finding a reference to an interesting book—to either an ancient or a medieval classic the writer well remembers the little shock of pleasure he felt when, in a single half-hour, he noted Piers Plowman in one brief unpromising will, and six English books among the relics of a mason. Nearly all the libraries of private persons and of academies are depressing in character. Rarely can be found a bright human book gleaming like a diamond in the dust. Score after score of decreta, decretales, Sextuses, and Clementines, and chestsful of the dreariest theological disquisition impress upon the weary searcher the fact that academic libraries were usually even more dryasdust than monastic collections, and he begins to understand how prosperous law may be as a calling, and to have an inkling of what is known, in classic phrase, as a good plain Scotch education.

Between an academic library and a monastic collection there were differences of character and in the beauty and value of the manuscripts. As a general rule a large proportion of the monks' books were more or less richly ornamented: they were the treasures as well as the tools of the community. The books of the colleges were usually for practical purposes: they were tools, treasured, doubtless, for their contents, not for the beauty of the writing or because they were decorated. The difference in character of the collections as a whole was one of proportion in the

representation of the various classes of books. Generally speaking, the monastic collection comprised proportionately more theology and less canon and civil law than the academic library. In the subjects of the trivium and the quadrivium, and in philosophy, a college was more strongly equipped than a monastery; on the other hand, a monastery frequently had a larger proportion of classical literature, and always more "light" or romance literature.

Early university studies were in two parts, the trivium —grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium— music, astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic. These were the seven liberal arts. A fresco in a chapel in the Church of S. Maria Novella at Florence illustrates these arts. On the right of the cartoon is the figure of grammar; beneath is Priscian. For the study of this subject John Garland recommended Priscian and Donatus. Priscian was a leading text-book on the subject, and it was supported by a short manual compiled from Donatus. At Oxford extracts from these authors were thrown into the form of logical quaestiones to afford subjects of argument at the disputations held once a week before the masters of grammar. [11.35] To these books should be added a dictionary, with some peculiar and quaint etymologies, by Papias the Lombard; grammatical works by John Garland; Bishop Hugutio's etymological dictionary (c. 1192); a dreary hexameter poem by Alexander Gallus, the Breton Friar (d. 1240)—"the olde Doctrinall, with his diffuse and unperfite brevitie"; Eberhard's similar poem (c. 1212), called Graecismus, because it includes a chapter on derivations from the Greek; and a very large book, the

Catholicon (c. 1286), partly a grammar and partly a dictionary, with copious quotations from Latin classics, which had been compiled with some skill and care by John Balbi, a Genoese Black Friar. Papias and Hugutio were sharply condemned by Friar Bacon, but they remained in use long after his time, and Balbi owed much to both of them. Many copies of the Catholicon seem to have been made, although the transcription of so large a book was costly: even before it was printed (1460), copies for reference were sometimes chained up in English churches, and after it was printed this practice became more general, at any rate in France. By the fourteenth century Priscian was almost superseded by Alexander and Eberhard, whose versified grammars came into common use; a jingle, whether it be— in the fourteenth century, or in the twentieth century, seems to help the harassed student along the linguistic path. The reading of Virgil and Statius and some other writers put flesh upon these grammatical dry bones. But as the masters of grammar at Oxford were expected to be guardians of morals as well, they were expressly forbidden to read and expound to their pupils Ovid's Ars amandi, the Elegies of Pamphilus, and other indecent books.[11.36]

Next to the figure of Grammar is Rhetoric, with Cicero

seated beneath. Cicero, with Aristotle, Quintilian and Boëthius were the chief exponents of rhetoric; with Virgil, Ovid, Statius, and sometimes such a book as Guido delle Colonne's epic of Troy, as examples of literary style. John Garland (fl. 1230) recommended Cicero's De Inventione (Rhetorica), De Oratore, the Ad Herennium ascribed to Cicero, Quintilian's Institutes and the Declamationes ascribed to him. The third figure is Logic, coupled with the figure of Aristotle. The Categories and Porphyry's Isagoge were the books of greatest service in the study of this subject; with Boëthius' translations and expositions of Aristotle and Porphyry. All the foregoing and Cicero's Topica are selected by John Garland. Later the Summulae logicales of Peter the Spaniard (fl. 1276), William of Heytesbury's Sophismata (c. 1340), the Summa logices of the great English schoolman, William of Ockham (d. c. 1349), and the Quaestiones of William Brito (d. 1356) were the chief manuals of dialectic.

The first figure in the representation of the quadrivium is Music, with Tubal Cain beneath. In this subject, for which few books were necessary, Boëthius was the guide. With Astronomy is associated Ptolemy. The Cosmographia and Almagest of Ptolemy, and the works of some Arabian authors, with books of tables, were the student's manuals. In our cartoon Geometry has Euclid for companion. Arithmetic is associated with Pythagoras in the picture: for this subject Boëthius was the text-book. [11.37]

Besides the seven liberal arts, natural, metaphysical, and moral philosophy, or the three philosophies, were added in the thirteenth century. For these studies Aristotle and his

commentators were the chief guides. The medical authorities of the middle ages have been catalogued for us by Chaucer in his description of a doctor of "phisyk"— Of these names eight are included in Duke Humfrey's gifts to Oxford in 1439 and 1443; and ten of them are represented in the catalogue of Peterhouse Library in 1418. Besides the writers mentioned by Chaucer, works on fevers by Isaac the Arab, the Antidotarium of Nicholas, and the Isagoge of Johannicius were in general use.

Next to theology—in which class the chief books were the same as in the claustral library, although liturgical books are more rarely found—the largest section of an academic collection was that of civil and canon law. It comprised the various digests, the works of Cinus of Pistoia and Azo; texts of decrees, decretals, Liber Sextus Decretalium, Liber Clementinae, with many commentaries, the Constitutions of Ottobon and Otho, the book compiled by Henry of Susa, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, called Summa Ostiensis, the Rosarium of Archdeacon Guido de Baysio, and Durand's Speculum Judiciale. The last three books are frequently met with, and were highly esteemed by medieval jurists.[11.38]

In a previous chapter we have noted the somewhat fresher character of the library given to Oxford University by the Duke of Gloucester. We have two later records which may be referred to now to indicate the change wrought by the Renascence. A catalogue of William

Grocyn's books was drawn up soon after his death in 1519. This collection proves its owner to have been conservative in his tastes, as the medieval favourites are well represented. Of Greek books there are only Aristotle, Plutarch in a Latin translation, and a Greek and Latin Testament—a curiously small collection in view of his interest in Greek, and in view of the fact that many of the chief Greek authors had been printed before his death. It seems likely that his Greek books had been dispersed. But the change is apparent in the excellent series of Latin classics, which included Tacitus and Lucretius, and in the number of books by Italian writers, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ficino, Filelfo, Lorenzo della Valle, Æneas Sylvius, and Perotti.

Still more significant of the change are the references to the course of study in the statutes of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1517). The approved prose writers are Cicero—an apology is offered for the use of barbarous words not known to Cicero—Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, Pliny, Livy, and Quintilian. Virgil, Ovid Lucan, Juvenal, Terence and Plautus are approved as poets. Suitable books to study during the vacations are the works of Lorenzo della Valle, Aulus Gellius, and Poliziano. In Greek the writings—most of them quite new to the age—of Isocrates, Lucian, Philostratus, Aristophanes, Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Plutarch are recommended. Such a list bears few resemblances to the academic library we have attempted to describe.[11.39]

4. § IV

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries romances began to creep into all libraries, save the academic, in

which they are rarely found. As soon as romance literature took a firm hold upon public favour the monks added some of it to their collections. Probably romances were first bought to be copied and sold to augment the monastic income; and more perhaps were sold than preserved. Ascham avers that "in our fathers tyme nothing was red, but bookes of fayned cheualrie, wherein a man by redinge, shuld be led to none other ende, but onely to manslaughter and baudrye.... These bokes (as I haue heard say) were made the moste parte in Abbayes and Monasteries, a very lickely and fit fruite of suche an ydle and blynde kinde of lyuyne."[11.40] Thomas Nashe, in his story of The Unfortunate Traveller, describes romances as "the fantasticall dreams of those exiled Abbie lubbers," that is, the monks.[11.41] These writers were but echoing such charges as that in Piers Plowman, which declares that a friar was much better acquainted with the Rimes of Robin Hood and Randal Erle of Chester than with his Paternoster. A number of romances are indeed found in monastic catalogues. The library at Glastonbury included four romances (1248); that at Christ Church, Canterbury, contained a few in late thirteenth century. Guy de Beauchamp bequeathed romances to Bordesley Abbey (1315), In the first year of the fifteenth century Peterborough had some romances. At the end of the same century St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, had in its library of over eighteen hundred books only a few romances; while in Leicester Abbey, among a library of about three hundred and fifty books, we find only the Troy book, Drian and Madok, Beves of Hamtoun, all in French, Gesta Alexandri Magni, and one or two others. Edward III bought a book of romance from a nun of Amesbury in 1331—a work of such interest that he kept it in his room. There are plenty of other instances. But in no case have we found an excessive number of romances in monastic libraries, and the charges—if they can worthily be called charges—so often made against monks on this score fall to the ground.[11.42]

The romances oftenest appearing in monastic catalogues and other records are the following: The Story of Troy, especially Joseph of Exeter's Latin version, the great Arthurian cycle, the beautiful story of Amis and Amiloun, renowned all over Europe, Joseph of Arimathea, Charlemagne, Alexander, which was of the best of romances, Guy of Warwick, which was very popular, and the semi-historical Richard Cœur de Lion. But many others were in circulation. In Cursor mundi a number of the popular stories of the day are mentioned—

Again, many "speak of men who read romances—

Popular romances of this kind had a great influence upon the lives of the people. The long lists of medieval theology and sophistry usually laid before us, and the great majority of the writings which have survived, sometimes lead us to believe the culture of the Middle Ages to have been of a more serious cast than it really was. The oral circulation of romance literature must have been enormous. The spun-out, dreary poems which now make such difficult reading are infinitely more entertaining when read aloud: the voice gives life and character to a humdrum narrative, and the gestour would know how to make the best of incidents which he knew from experience to be specially interesting to an audience. Such yarns would be most attractive to "lewd" or illiterate men—

[Description: ANCIENT VELLUM BOOK-MARKER WITH REVOLVING DISC FROM A DOUBLE-COLUMN CANTERBURY BIBLE; THE DISC CAN BE USED TO MARK COLUMN AND LlNE. MS. 49 C.C. COLL. CAMB.]

The need of multiplying manuscripts of these poems would not be greatly felt. The reciter would be obliged to learn them off by heart; he need not, and often did not, possess written versions of the poems he recited. And even literate men, as Bishop Grosseteste, preferred to listen to these gestours, rather than to read the narrative themselves. Therefore, any estimate we may form of the number of manuscripts of romances in existence at any time in the fourteenth century, for example, would give not the smallest idea of the extent to which these tales were known.

5. § V

The medieval collector of books sometimes, and the monastic librarian nearly always, took care that his library was strong in hagiology and history. He felt the need of books which would tell him of the past history of his church and of the lives of her greatest teachers. When collected these books were an incentive to the more cultivated of the monks to begin the history of his country or his house, or to write or re-write the lives of saints. The fruit is preserved for us in a long line of monkish historians and hagiographers. As a rule the histories they wrote were of little value; but when they had brought the tale down to their own times they continued it with the help of records to their hand, narrated events within their own memory, and maintained the narrative in the form of annals. The method of annalising was simple. At the end of the incomplete manuscript a loose or easily detachable sheet was kept, whereon events of importance to the nation and the monastery and locality of the annalist were written in pencil from time to time during the year. At the end of the year the historian welded these jottings into a narrative. When this was done another leaf for notes was placed after

the manuscript. The value of the work so accomplished is incalculable. Without these records it would now be impossible for us to realise what the Middle Ages were like. This service, added to the enormously greater service which monachism did for us in preserving ancient literature, will always breed kind thoughts of a system so repugnant to our modern view of human endeavour.

6. § VI

What was the extent of circulation of books during the manuscript age? For the period before the Conquest we can only offer the merest conjecture, which does not help us materially. The rarity of the extant manuscripts of this age is no guide to the extent of their production. During the raids of the northmen the destruction and loss must have been very great indeed. After the Conquest the indifference and contempt with which the conquerors regarded everything Saxon must have been responsible for the destruction of nearly every manuscript written in the vernacular. But, on the other hand, we find suggestions of a greater production than is commonly credited to this period. Religious fervour to make books was not wanting, as some of our most beautiful relics—works exhibiting much painstaking and skilful and even loving labour, calligraphy, and decoration aflame with high endeavour— belong to the Hiberno-Saxon period and the days of Ethelwold. Nor after Alfred's day was regard lacking for vernacular literature itself rather than for the glory of a faith: how else are we to explain the precious fragments of Anglo-Saxon manuscript which have been preserved for us, especially the Exeter book and the Vercelli book? That the production was considerable is suggested by the records we have. Think of the Irish manuscripts now scattered

on the continent; of the library of York; of Bede's workshop and the northern libraries; and of those in the south, at Canterbury, Malmesbury, and elsewhere. But the use of such manuscripts as were in existence was restricted to monks, wealthy ecclesiastics, and a few of the wealthy laity.

After the Conquest the state of affairs was the same. The period of the greatest literary activity in the monasteries now began, and large claustral libraries were soon formed. The monks then had plenty of books; wealthy clergy also had small collections. An ecclesiastic or a layman who had done a monastery some service, or whose favour it was politic to cultivate, could borrow books from the monastic library, under certain strict conditions. Some people availed themselves of this privilege; but not at any time during the manuscript period to a great extent.[11.51]

Outside this small circle the people were almost bookless: nearly the whole of the literary wealth of the Middle Ages belonged to the monks and the church. Books were extremely costly. The medieval book-buyer paid more for his book on an average than does the modern collector of first editions and editions de luxe, who pays in addition several guineas a volume for handsome bindings. The prices we have tabulated will fully bear out this statement. But even more striking evidence of the high value set upon books is the care taken in selling or bequeathing them. To-day a line or two in a wealthy man's will disposes of all his books. He commonly throws them in with the "residue," unmentioned. In the manuscript age a testator distributed his little hoard book by book. Often he not only bequeaths a volume to a friend, but determines its fate after his friend's death. For example, a daughter is to have a copy of the Golden Legend, "and to occupye to hir

owne use and at hir owne liberte durynge hur lyfe, and after hur decesse to remayne to the prioress and the convent of Halywelle for evermore, they to pray for the said John Burton and Johne his wife and alle crystene soyles (1460)."[11.52] A manuscript now in Worcester Cathedral Library bears an inscription telling us that, likewise, one Thomas Jolyffe left it to Dr. Isack, a monk of Worcester, for his lifetime, and after his death to Worcester Priory. A manuscript now in the British Museum was bought in 1473 at Oxford by Clement of Canterbury, monk and scholar, from a bookseller named Hunt for twenty shillings, in the presence of Will. Westgate, monk.[11.53] In a manuscript of the Sentences is a note telling us that it was the property of Roger, archdeacon of Lincoln: he bought it from Geoffrey the chaplain, the brother of Henry, vicar of North Elkington, the witnesses being master Robert de Luda, clerk, Richard the almoner, the said Henry the vicar, his

[Description: RECORD OF SALE OF BOOK CAPTURED AT POITIERS (see p. 247)]

clerk, and others.[11.54] An instance of a different kind will suffice. When, after a good deal of rioting at Oxford, many of the more studious masters and scholars went to Stamford, the king threatened that if they did not return to Oxford they would lose their goods, and especially their books. The warning was disregarded, but the threatened forfeiture of their books was evidently thought to be a strong measure.[11.55]

In his poems Chaucer endows two poor clerks with small libraries. His first portrait of an Oxford clerk is delightful—

Almost equally pleasing is his picture of another who lived with a rich churl—

Both descriptions have been used as evidence that books were not so scarce as supposed; that poor people could get books if they specially needed them. But are these pictures quite true? Has not the poet taken advantage of the licence allowed to his kind? The records preserved at Oxford do not corroborate him. Some of the students were very poor. It seems likely that a would-be clerk attached himself to a master or scholar as a servant in return for teaching in the "kunnyng of writyng" and perhaps other knowledge—

Mr. Anstey points out that a very large number, probably the majority of scholars, were not well provided for. They eked out their precarious allowances by begging, by learning handicrafts, and by "picking up the various doles at funerals and commemoration masses, where such needy miserables were always to be found." [11.57] Such students would not be likely to have many or perhaps any books. "The stock of books possessed by the younger scholars seems to have been almost nil. The inventories of goods, which we possess, in the case of non-graduates contain hardly any books. The fact is that they mostly could not afford to buy them.... The chief source of supplying books was by purchase from the University sworn stationers, who had to a great extent a monopoly, the object of which was to

prevent the sale and removal from Oxford of valuable books. Of such books there were plainly very large numbers constantly changing hands; they were the pledges so continually deposited on borrowing from chests, and seem, from scattered hints, to have been a very fruitful source of litigation and dispute."[11.58] Most of these books were in the hands of seniors. Truly enough many a poor clerk would as lief have twenty "bokes" to his name as anything else treble the value. But he would undergo much sharp self-denial and receive much "wherewith to scoleye" ere he got together so considerable a collection of "bokes grete and smale," to say nothing of instruments. As such a large proportion of the scholars were poor, and unable to acquire books, nearly all the instruction given was oral. Well-to-do scholars would not find, therefore, books of very great service; and indeed they were as ill-equipped in this respect as their poorer brethren. The accounts of the La Fytes, two scholars whose expenses were paid by Edward I himself, contain records of the purchase of two copies of only the Institutions of Quintilian (c. 1290). [11.59] Is not Chaucer describing his own room in both passages—the room he loved to seek after his day's work at the desk? Here at the bedhead are his books, including the astronomical treatise of Ptolemy called Almagest. Beside them is the astrolabe, an instrument about which he wrote; and trimly arranged apart his augrim-stones, or counters for making calculations. Such an outfit we might expect him to have: just such a library, neither smaller nor larger.

This supposition calls to mind another argument sometimes used to prove how easy it was to make a small collection of books. Chaucer's poems display his acquaintance, more or less thoroughly, with many authors. Surely,

it is urged, his library was a good one for the time: then how was it possible for a man of his means to own such? He was not wealthy. As a courtier and a public officer the calls upon his purse must have been heavy: little indeed could be left for books. The explanation is probably simple. Books were freely lent, more freely than nowadays; and Chaucer would be able to eke out his library in this way. Another point is important. Professor Lounsbury, who has spent years in an exhaustive study of Chaucer, points out a curious circumstance. "It must be confessed," he says—a shade of disparagement lurks in the phrase—"it must be confessed that Chaucer's quotations from writers exhibit a familiarity with prologues and first books and early chapters which contrasts ominously with the comparative infrequency with which he makes citations from the middle and latter parts of most of the works he mentions."[11.60] Surely the implication is unjust. Stationers used to let out on hire parts of books or quires. Manuscript volumes were also often made up of parts of works by several authors. Books being scarce, it was preferable to make some volumes select miscellanies, little libraries in themselves. Hear Chaucer himself—

In composite volumes often only the earlier parts of authors' works were included. If Chaucer owned a few

books of this kind, his familiarity with parts of authors— and oftenest with the earlier parts—is accounted for satisfactorily; so also is the range and variety of his reading. Examine the Christ Church Canterbury catalogue in Henry Eastry's time, and note what a remarkable variety of subjects is comprised in what we nowadays consider rather a paltry number of books. There is another point worth bearing in mind. Speaking of Bishop Shirwood's books, a writer in the English Historical Review says: "Many of the books bear his mark, Nota, scattered over the margins, or a hand with a long pointing finger. These notes occur usually at the beginnings. In the days when chapters and sections were unknown and division into books rare, when headlines were not and pages sometimes had no signatures even, not to speak of numbers, a reader had to go solidly through a book, and could not lightly turn up a passage he wished for, by the aid of a reference. But except in Cicero and in Plutarch—which is read almost from beginning to end—the marks do not often go far. Shirwood was doubtless too busy to find much time for reading, and before he had made much way with a book a new purchase had come to arouse his interest." [11.62]

But to the general rule of scarcity of books some exceptions are known. When a book won a reputation, the cost of producing copies was not wholly restrictive of circulation. Copies of some works of the Fathers were produced in great numbers. The Bible, whole or in part, was copied with such industry that it became the commonest of manuscripts, as it now is the commonest of printed books. Peter Lombard's Sentences became a famous book: the standard of the schools; everywhere to be found side by side with the Bible, everywhere discussed and commented

upon. A twelfth century author of quite different character had a good hold upon the people; the number of copies of Geoffrey of Monmouth must have been considerable, for the British Museum now has thirty-five copies and Bodley's Library sixteen. "Possibly, no work before the age of printed books attained such immediate and astonishing popularity . . . translations, adaptations, and continuations of it formed one of the staple exercises of a host of medieval scribes." [11.63] A glance at the monastic and academic library catalogues of later date than mid-thirteenth century will prove more clearly than a shelf full of books how enormous was the influence of Aristotle. If such a collocation as the Bible and Shakspere sums up the present-day Englishman's ideals of spiritual sustenance and literary power, a similar collocation of the Bible and Aristotle would sum up, with a greater approach to truth, the ideals of the medieval schoolman. Popularity fell to Piers Plowman. Apart from the large currency given to it by ballad singers, many manuscripts were in existence, for even now forty-five of them, more or less complete, remain. As M. Jusserand aptly remarks: "This figure is the more remarkable when we consider that, contrary to works written in Latin or in French, Langland's book was not copied and preserved outside his own country."[11.64] Again, but a few years after the writing of the Canterbury Tales, a copy of it was bequeathed, among other books, by a clerk named Richard Sotheworth of East Hendred, Berks (1417).[11.65] The impression is left upon one's mind that this work had found its way quickly and in many copies into country places.

But as only a few books had a comparatively large circulation, these few had a disproportionately powerful

influence. The Bible was paramount. Aristotle dominated the whole mental horizon of the schoolmen. Alfred of Beverley tells us that Geoffrey of Monmouth's book "was so universally talked of that to confess ignorance of its stories was the mark of a clown." [11.66] So great was the influence of Piers Plowman, that from it were taken watchwords at the great rising of the peasants.[11.67] The power of such works could not be wholly hemmed in by the barrier of manuscript: like a spring torrent it would burst forth and carry all before it. In the manuscript period a book of great originality and power, or a work which reproduced the thought of the time accurately and with spirit, ran no great risk of being passed over and forgotten; too little was produced for much that was good to be lost. It was copied once and again; became very slowly but very surely known to a few, then to many; and all the time waxed more and more influential in its teaching. The growth was slow, but then the lifetime was long. Now the chance of a good book going astray is much greater What watcher of the great procession of modern books does not fear that something supremely fine and great has passed unobserved in the huge, motley crowd?