Books and their makers during the Middle Ages _ A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of the sev

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Title: Books and their makers during the Middle Ages
A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of
literature from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of
the seventeenth century, Vol. I

Author: George Haven Putnam

Release date: September 1, 2023 [eBook #71536]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1896

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Transcriber’s note
Variable spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Minor punctuation inconsistencies
have been silently repaired. The index appears in the second volume. A list of the
changes made can be found at the end of the book.

BOOKS AND THEIR MAKERS
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES,
Vol. I

BOOKS AND THEIR MAKERS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES
summary of contents of volume ii.

The First Printer-Publishers of France.—The Later Estiennes
and Casaubon.—Caxton and the Introduction of Printing into
England.—The Kobergers of Nuremberg.—Froben of Basel.—
Erasmus and his Books.—Luther as an Author.—Plantin of
Antwerp.—The Elzevirs of Leyden and Amsterdam.—Italy:
Privileges and Censorship.—Germany: Privileges, and Book-Trade
Regulations.—France: Privileges, Censorship, and Legislation.—
England: Privileges, Monopolies, Censorship, and Legislation.—
Conclusion. The Development of the Conception of Literary
Property.—Index to the Work.

BOOKS AND THEIR MAKERS
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

A STUDY OF THE CONDITIONS OF THE PRODUCTION AND
DISTRIBUTION OF LITERATURE FROM THE FALL OF
THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE CLOSE OF
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

BY
Geo. Haven Putnam, A.M.
AUTHOR OF “AUTHORS AND THEIR PUBLIC IN ANCIENT TIMES”
“THE QUESTION OF COPYRIGHT,” ETC.

VOLUME I.
476-1600

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON
27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND
The Knickerbocker Press
1896

Copyright, 1896
by
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London

The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N. Y.

to
The Memory of My Wife
who served me for years both as eyesight
and as writing-arm
and by whose hand the following pages
were in large part transcribed
this work is dedicated

PREFACE.

I n a previous volume I undertook to describe, or rather to indicate, the
methods of the production and distribution of the earlier literature of the
world and to sketch out the relations which existed between the author and
his public during the ages known, rather vaguely, as classic, that is, in the
periods of literary activity in Greece and ancient Rome. The materials for
such a record were at best but fragmentary, and it was doubtless the case
that, in a first attempt of the kind, I failed to get before me not a few of the
references which are scattered through the works of classic writers, and
which in any fairly complete presentation of the subject ought to have been
utilised.
Imperfect as my study was, I felt, however, that I was justified in basing
upon it certain general conclusions. It seems evident that in Greece, even
during the period of the highest literary development, there did not exist
anything that could be described as a system for the production and
distribution of books. The number of copies of any work of Greek literature
available for the use of the general public must at any time have been
exceedingly limited, and it would probably be safe to say that, before the
development of Alexandria as a centre of book-production, no such thing as
a reading public existed. The few manuscripts that had been produced, and
that possessed any measure of authenticity, were contained in royal archives
or in such a State collection as that of Athens, or in the studies of the small
group of scholarly teachers whose fame was sometimes in part due to the
fact that they were owners of books.
The contemporary writers, including the authors of works treasured as
masterpieces through all later ages, were not only content to do their work
without any thought of material compensation, but appear to have been

strangely oblivious of what would seem to us to be the ordinary practical
measures for the preservation and circulation of their productions. The only
reward for which they could look was fame with their own generation, and
even for this it would seem that some effective distribution of their
compositions was essential. The thought of preserving their work for the
appreciation of future generations seems to have weighed with them but
little. The ambition or ideal of the author appears to have been satisfied
when his composition received in his own immediate community the
honour of dramatic presentation or of public recitation. If his fellow citizens
had accorded the approbation of the laurel crown, the approval of the outer
world or of future generations was a matter of trifling importance. The fact
that, notwithstanding this lack of ambition or incentive on the part of the
authors, the non-existence of a reading public, and the consequent absence
of any adequate machinery for the production and distribution of books, the
knowledge of the “laurel-crowned” works, both of the earlier poets and of
contemporary writers, should have been so widely diffused throughout the
Greek community, is evidence that the public interest in dramatic
performances and in the recitations of public reciters (“rhapsodists”) made,
for an active-minded people like the Greeks, a very effective substitute for
the literary enlightenment given to later generations by means of the written
or the printed word.
A systematised method of book-production we find first in Alexandria,
where it had been developed, if not originally instituted, by the intelligent
and all-powerful interest of the Ptolemaic kings, but there appears to be no
evidence that, even in Alexandria, which for the greater part of two
centuries was the great book-producing mart of the world, was there any
practice of compensation for authors. It is to be borne in mind, however, in
this connection, that, with hardly an exception, the manuscripts produced in
Alexandria were copies of books accepted as classics, the works of writers
long since dead. For the editors of what might be called the Alexandrian
editions of Greek classics, compensation was provided in the form of
honoraria from the treasury of the Museum library or of salaried positions
in the Museum Academy.
In Rome, during the Augustan period, we find record of a well organised
body of publishers utilising connections with Athens, with Asia Minor, and
with Alexandria, for the purpose of importing Greek manuscripts and of

collecting trained Greek scribes, and carrying on an active trade in the
distribution of books not only with the neighbouring cities of Italy, of
Spain, and of Gaul, but with such far off corners of the empire as the
Roman towns in Britain. There are not a few references in the literature of
this period, and particularly in the productions of society writers like
Martial and Horace, to the relations of authors with their publishers and to
the business interests retained by authors in the sale of their books. This
Augustan age presents, in fact, the first example in the history of
publishing, of a body of literature, produced by contemporary writers, being
manifolded and distributed under an effective publishing and bookselling
machinery, so as to reach an extensive and widely separated reading public.
When the Roman gentleman in his villa near Massilia (in Gaul), Colonia
(on the Rhine), or Eboracum (in far off Britain), is able to order through the
imperial post copies of the latest ode of Horace or satire of Martial, we have
the beginnings of an effective publishing organisation. It is at this time also
that we first find record of the names of noteworthy publishers, the
bookmakers in Athens and in Alexandria having left their names
unrecorded. It is the period of Atticus, of Tryphon, and of the Sosii.
Concerning the matter of the arrangements with the authors, or the extent of
any compensation secured by them, the information is at best but scanty and
often confusing. It seems evident, however, that, apart from the aid afforded
by imperial favour, by the interest of some provincial ruler of literary
tendencies, or by the bounty of a wealthy private patron like Mæcenas, the
rewards of literary producers were both scanty and precarious.
With the downfall of the Roman Empire, the organised book-trade of
Rome and of the great cities of the Roman provinces came to an end. This
trade had of necessity been dependent upon an effective system of
communication and of transportation, a system which required for its
maintenance the well built and thoroughly guarded roads of the empire;
while it also called for the existence of a wealthy and cultivated leisure
class, a class which during the periods of civil war and of barbaric invasions
rapidly disappeared. Long before the reign of the last of the Roman
emperors, original literary production had in great part ceased and the trade
in the books of an earlier period had been materially curtailed; and by 476,
when Augustulus was driven out by the triumphant Odovacar, the literary
activities of the capital were very nearly at a close.

In the following study I have taken up the account of the production of
books in Europe from the time of the downfall of the Empire of the West. I
have endeavoured to show by what means, after the disappearance of the
civilisation of the Roman State, were preserved the fragments of classic
literature that have remained for the use of modern readers, and to what
agencies were due the maintenance, throughout the confusion and social
disorganisation of the early Middle Ages, of any intellectual interest or
literary activities.
I find such agencies supplied in the first place by the scribes of the
Roman Church, the organisation of which had replaced as a central
civilising influence the power of the lost Roman Empire. The scriptoria of
the monasteries rendered the service formerly given by the copyists of the
book-shops or of the country houses, while their armaria, or book-chests,
had to fill the place of the destroyed or scattered libraries of the Roman
cities or the Roman villas. The work of the scribes was now directed not by
an Augustus, a Mæcenas, or an Atticus, but by a Cassiodorus, a Benedict, or
a Gregory, and the incentive to literary labour was no longer the laurel
crown of the circus, the favours of a patron, or the honoraria of the
publishers, but the glory of God and the service of the Church. Upon these
agencies depended the existence of literature during the seven long
centuries between the fall of the Western Empire and the beginning of the
work of the universities, and, in fact, for many years after the foundation of
the universities of Bologna and of Paris, the book-production of the
monasteries continued to be of material importance in connection with the
preservation of literature.
In a study of the organisation of the earliest book-trade of Bologna and
Paris and of the method under which the text-books for the universities
were produced and supplied, I have attempted to indicate the part played by
the universities in the history of literary production. In a later chapter I have
presented sketches of one or two of the more noteworthy of the manuscript
dealers, who carried on, for a couple of centuries prior to the invention of
printing, the business of supplying books to the increasing circles of readers
outside of the universities.
In 1450 comes the invention of printing, which in revolutionising the
methods of distributing intellectual productions, exercised such a complex
and far-reaching influence on the thought and on the history of mankind. I

have described with some detail the careers of certain of the earlier printer-
publishers of Europe, and have been interested in noting how important and
distinctive were the services rendered by these publishers to scholarship and
to literature.
The concluding chapter sketches the growth of the conception of the idea
of property in literature, and the gradual development and extension
throughout the States of Europe of the system of privileges which formed
the precedent and the foundations for the modern system of the law of
literature and of interstate copyright legislation. I have taken pleasure in
pointing out that the responsibility for securing this preliminary recognition
of property in literary productions and of the property rights of literary
producers rested with the printer-publishers, and that the shaping of the
beginnings of a copyright system for Europe is due to their efforts. It was
they also who bore the chief burden of the contest, which extended over
several centuries, for the freedom of the press from the burdensome
censorship of Church and State, a censorship which in certain communities
appeared likely for a time to throttle literary production altogether. I can but
think that the historians of literature and the students of the social and
political conditions on which literary production is so largely dependent,
have failed to do full justice to men like Aldus, the Estiennes, Froben,
Koberger, and Plantin, who fought so sturdily against the pretensions of
pope, bishop, or monarch to stand between the printing-press and the people
and to decide what should and what should not be printed.
I have thought it worth while, in giving the business history of these old-
time publishers, to present the lists of their more characteristic publications,
—lists which seem to me to possess pertinence and value as giving an
impression of the nature and the range of the literary interests of the time
and of the particular community in which the publisher was working, while
they are also, of course, indicative of the personal characteristics of the
publisher himself. When we find Aldus in Venice devoting his presses
almost exclusively to classical literature, and in the classics, so largely to
Greek; while in Basel and Nuremberg the early printers are producing the
works of the Church Fathers, in Paris the first Estienne (in the face of the
fierce opposition of the theologians) is multiplying editions of the
Scriptures, and in London, Caxton and his immediate successors,
disregarding both the literature of the old world and the writings of the

Church, are presenting to the English public a long series of romances and
fabliaux,—we may understand that we have to do not with a series of
accidental publishing selections, but with the results of a definite purpose
and policy on the part of capable and observing men, a policy which gives
an indication of the nature and interests of their several communities, while
it characterises also the aims and the individual ideals of the publishers
themselves. Some of these earlier publishers were willing simply to produce
the books for which the people about them were asking, while others, with a
higher ambition and a larger feeling of responsibility, proposed themselves
to educate a book-reading and a book-buying public, and thus to create the
demand for the higher literature which their presses were prepared to
supply.
These earlier printer-publishers took upon themselves, in fact, the
responsibility which had previously rested with the universities, and, back
of the universities, with the monasteries, of selecting the literature that was
to be utilised by the community and through which the intellectual life of
the generation was to be in large part shaped and directed. They thus took
their place in the series of literary agencies by means of which the world’s
literature had been selected, preserved, and rendered available for mankind,
a chain which included such diverse and widely separated links as the
Ptolemies of Alexandria, the princely patrons of Rome, Cassiodorus, S.
Benedict and his monasteries, the schools of Charlemagne and Alcuin, the
universities of Bologna and Paris, and, finally, the printer-publishers who
utilised the great discovery of Gutenberg.
The fact that, during both the manuscript period and the first two
centuries of printing, the writings of Cicero were reproduced far more
largely than those of any other of the Roman writers, is interesting as
indicating a distinct literary preference on the part of successive generations
both of producers and of readers. The pre-eminence of Aristotle in the lists
of the mediæval issues of the Greek classics has, I judge, a different
significance. Aristotle stood for a school of philosophy, the teachings of
which had in the main been accepted by the Church, and copies of his
writings were required for the use of students. The continued demand for
the works of Cicero depended upon no such adventitious aid, and can,
therefore, fairly be credited to their perennial value as literature.

My readers will bear in mind that I have not undertaken any such
impossible task as a history of literary production, or even a record of all
the factors which controlled literary production. I have attempted simply to
present a study of certain conditions in the history of the manifolding and
distribution of books by which the production and effectiveness of literature
was very largely influenced and determined, and under which the
conception of such a thing as literary property gradually developed. The
recognition of a just requirement or of an existing injustice must, of course,
always precede the framing of legislation to meet the requirement or to
remedy the injustice, and the conception of literary property and a
recognition of the inherent rights (and of the existing wrongs) of literary
producers had to be arrived at before copyright legislation could be secured.
I have specified as the limit of the present treatise the close of the
seventeenth century, although I have found it convenient in certain chapters
to make reference to events of a somewhat later date. It has been my
purpose, however, to present a study of the conditions of literary production
in Europe prior to copyright law, and the copyright legislation of Europe
may be said to begin with the English statute of 1710, known as the Act of
Queen Anne.
I trust that in the near future some competent authority may find himself
interested in preparing a history of copyright law, and I shall be well
pleased if the present volumes may be accepted by the historian of
copyright and by the students of the subject as forming a suitable general
introduction to such a history.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface v
Bibliography xvii
PART I.—BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT.
Introductory 3
I.— The Making of Books in the Monasteries 16
Cassiodorus and S. Benedict 17
The Earlier Monkish Scribes 30
The Ecclesiastical Schools and the Clerics as Scribes 36
Terms Used for Scribe-Work 42
S. Columba, the Apostle to Caledonia 45
Nuns as Scribes 51
Monkish Chroniclers 55
The Work of the Scriptorium 61
The Influence of the Scriptorium 81
The Literary Monks of England 90
The Earlier Monastery Schools 106
The Benedictines of the Continent 122
The Libraries of the Monasteries and Their
133
Arrangements for the Exchange of Books
II.— Some Libraries of the Manuscript Period 146
Public Libraries 161
Collections by Individuals 170
III.— The Making of Books in the Early Universities 178

IV.— The Book-Trade in the Manuscript Period 225
Italy 225
Books in Spain 253
The Manuscript Trade in France 255
Manuscript Dealers in Germany 276
The Manuscript Period in England 302
PART II.—THE EARLIER PRINTED BOOKS.
The Renaissance as the Forerunner of the Printing-
I.— 317
Press
The Invention of Printing and the Work of the First
II.— 348
Printers of Holland and Germany
III.— The Printer-Publishers of Italy, 1464-1600 403
Aldus Manutius 417
The Successors of Aldus 440
Milan 445
Lucca and Foligno 455
Florence 456
Genoa 458

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PART I.
BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT.

PART I.
BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT.

INTRODUCTORY.

I n the year 410, Rome was captured and sacked by Alaric the Visigoth.
At this time, S. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, was labouring at his
Commentaries on Ezekiel, while it was the downfall of the imperial city
which incited S. Augustine to begin the composition of his greatest work,
The City of God: “the greatest city of the world has fallen in ruin, but the
City of God abideth forever.” The treatise required for its completion
twenty-two books. “The influence of France and of the printing-press,”
remarks Hodgkin, “have combined to make impossible the production of
another De Civitate Dei. The multiplicity of authors compels the
controversialist who would now obtain a hearing, to speak promptly and
concisely. The examples of Pascal and of Voltaire teach him that he must
speak with point and vivacity.”[1] S. Augustine was probably the most
voluminous writer of the earlier Christian centuries. He was the author of
no less than 232 books, in addition to many tractates or homilies and
innumerable epistles.[2] His literary work was continued even during the
siege of Hippo by the Vandals, and he died in Hippo (in 431), in his
seventy-sixth year, while the siege was still in progress.
In regard to the lack of historical records of the time, I will again quote
Hodgkin, who, in his monumental work on Italy and Her Invaders, has
himself done so much to make good the deficiency: “It is perhaps not
surprising that in Italy itself there should have been during the fifth century
an utter absence of the instinct which leads men to record for the benefit of
posterity events which are going on around them. When history was making
itself at such breathless speed and in such terrible fashion, the leisure, the

inclination, the presence of mind necessary for writing history might well
be wanting. He who would under happier auspices have filled up the
interval between the bath and the tennis court by reclining on the couch in
the winter portico of his villa and there languidly dictating to his slave the
true story of the abdication of Avitus, or the death of Anthemius, was
himself now a slave keeping sheep in the wilderness under a Numidian sun
or shrinking under the blows of one of the rough soldiers of Gaiseric.”
Hodgkin finds it more difficult to understand “why the learned and
leisurely provincial of Greece, whose country for nearly a century and a
half (395-539) escaped the horrors of hostile invasion, and who had to
inspire them the grandest literary traditions in the world, should have left
unwritten the story of the downfall of Rome.”
“The fact seems to be,” he goes on to say, “that at this time all that was
left of literary instinct and historiographic power in the world had
concentrated itself on theological (we cannot call it religious) controversy,
and what tons of worthless material the ecclesiastical historians and
controversialists of the time have left us!... Blind, most of them, to the
meaning of the mighty drama which was being enacted on the stage of the
world ... they have left us scarcely a hint as to the inner history of the vast
revolution which settled the Teuton in the lands of the Latin.... One man
alone gives us that detailed information concerning the thoughts, characters,
persons of the actors in the great drama which can make the dry bones of
the chronologer live. This is Caius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, man of
letters, imperial functionary, country gentleman, and bishop, who,
notwithstanding much manifest weakness of character and a sort of
epigrammatic dulness of style, is still the most interesting literary figure of
the fifth century.”[3]
Sidonius was born at Lyons, a.d. 430. His father, grandfather, and great-
grandfather had all served as Prætorian Prefects in Gaul, in which province
his own long life was passed. In 472, Sidonius became Bishop of Arverni,
and from that time, as he rather naïvely tells us, he gave up (as unbecoming
ecclesiastical responsibilities) the writing of compositions “based on pagan
models.” In 475, the year before the last of the western emperors,
Augustulus, was driven from Rome by Odovacar,[4] the Herulian, the
Visigoth king, Euric, became master of Auvergne. Sidonius was at first
banished, but in 479 was restored to his diocese, and continued his work

there as bishop and as writer until his death, ten years later. At the time of
the death of Sidonius, Cassiodorus, who was, during the succeeding eighty
years, to have part in so much of the eventful history of Italy, was ten years
old. There are some points of similarity in the careers of the two men. Both
were of noble family and both began their active work as officials, one of
the Empire, the other of the Gothic kingdom of Italy, while both also
became ecclesiastics. Each saw his country taken possession of by a foreign
invader, and for the purpose of serving his countrymen, (with which
purpose may very possibly have been combined some motives of personal
ambition,) each was able and willing to make himself useful to the new
ruler and thus to retain official position and influence; and finally, both had
literary facility and ambition, and, holding in regard the works of the great
classic writers, endeavoured to model upon these works the style of their
own voluminous compositions. The political work of Cassiodorus was of
course, however, much the more noteworthy and important, as Sidonius
could hardly claim to be considered a statesman.
In their work as authors, the compositions of Sidonius are, as I judge
from the description, to be ranked higher in literary quality than those of the
later writer, and to have been more successful also in following the style of
classic models. The style of Cassiodorus is described as both verbose and
grandiloquent. In his ecclesiastical, or rather his monastic work, taken up
after half a century of active political life, it was the fortune of Cassiodorus,
as will be described later, to exercise an influence which continued for
centuries, and which was possibly more far-reaching than was exerted by
the career of any abbot or bishop in the later history of the Church.
The careers of both Sidonius and Cassiodorus have a special interest
because the two men held rather an exceptional position between the life of
the old empire which they survived and that of the new Europe of the
Middle Ages, the beginning of which they lived to see.
Of the writings of Sidonius, Hodgkin speaks as follows: “A careful
perusal of the three volumes of the Letters and Poems of Sidonius (written
between the years 455 and 490) reveals to us the fact that in Gaul the air
still teems with intellectual life, that authors were still writing, amanuenses
transcribing, friends complimenting or criticising, and all the cares and
pleasures of literature filling the minds of large classes of men just as when
no empires were sinking and no strange nationalities suddenly arising

around them.... A long list of forgotten philosophers did exist in that age,
and their works, produced in lavish abundance, seem to have had no lack of
eager students.”
As an example of the literary interests of a country gentleman in Gaul,
Hodgkin quotes a letter of Sidonius, written about 469: “Here too [i. e. in a
country house in Gaul] were books in plenty; you might fancy you were
looking at the breast-high book-shelves (plantei) of the grammarians, or the
wedge-shaped cases (cunei) of the Athenæum, or the well-filled cupboards
(armaria) of the booksellers. I observed, however, that if one found a
manuscript beside the chair of one of the ladies of the house, it was sure to
be on a religious subject, while those which lay by the seats of the fathers of
the family were full of the loftiest strains of Latin eloquence. In making this
distinction, I do not forget that there are some writings of equal literary
excellence in both branches, that Augustine may be paired off against Varro,
and Prudentius against Horace. Among these books, the works of Origen,
the Adamantine, were frequently perused by readers holding our faith. I
cannot understand why some of our arch-divines should stigmatise him as a
dangerous and heterodox author.”[5]
In summing up the work of Sidonius, Hodgkin points out the noteworthy
opportunities for making a literary reputation which were missed by him.
“He might have been the Herodotus of mediæval Europe. He could have
given authentic pictures of the laws and customs of the Goths, Franks, and
Burgundians ... a full portraiture of the great apostle of the Germanic races,
Ulfilas, and the secret causes of his and their devotion to the Arian form of
Christianity; and he could have recorded the Gothic equivalents of the
mythological tales in the Scandinavian Edda and the story of the old Runes
and their relation to the Mœso-Gothic alphabet. All these details and a
hundred more, full of interest to science, to art, to literature, Sidonius might
have preserved for us had his mind been as open as was that of Herodotus
to the manifold impressions made by picturesque and strange nationalities.”
It was doubtless fortunate for the literary reputation of Sidonius that his
father-in-law, Avitus, came to be emperor. The reign of Avitus was short,
but he had time to give to his brilliant son-in-law a position as Court poet or
poet-laureate, while it was probably due to the imperial influence that the
Senate decreed the erection (during the lifetime of the poet) of the brass
statue of Sidonius, which was placed between the two libraries of Trajan.

These libraries, containing the one Greek and the other Latin authors, stood
between the column of Trajan and the Basilica Ulpia. Sidonius describes his
statue as follows:

Cum meis poni statuam perennem
Nerva Trajanus titulis videret,
Inter auctores utriusque fixam Bibliothecæ.
(Sidonius, Ex., ix., 16.)

Nil vatum prodest adjectum laudibus illud
Ulpia quod rutilat porticus ære meo.
(Sidonius, Carm., viii., 7, 8.)[6]

(Since Nerva Trajanus decreed the erection of a permanent statue, which
is inscribed with the records of my honours, and is placed between the
authors of the two libraries.
The fact that the entrance to the Ulpian Library is aglow with the bronze
of my statue, can add nothing to the laurels of other poets.)
In the opinion of Hodgkin, the books in these two collections in the
Bibliotheca Ulpia may very well have been of more importance to later
generations than those of the library of Alexandria. The books from Trajan’s
libraries were, according to Vopiscus, transported in all or in part to the
Baths of Diocletian. Hodgkin understands that, between 300 and 450, they
were restored to their original home.[7]
In the year 537 a.d., the rule of the Goths in Italy, which had been
established by Theodoric in 493, was practically brought to a close by the
victories of Belisarius, the general of the Eastern Empire, and, thirty years
later, the destruction of the Gothic State was completed by the invasion of
the Lombards. With the Lombards in possession of Northern Italy, and the
Vandals, in a series of campaigns against the armies from Constantinople,
overrunning the southern portions of the peninsula, the social organisation
of the country must have been almost destroyed, and the civilisation which
had survived from the old Empire, while never entirely disappearing, was
doubtless in large part submerged. A certain continuity of Roman rule and
of Roman intellectual influence was, however, preserved through the

growing power of the Church, which was already claiming the inheritance
of the Empire, and which, as early as 590, under the lead of Pope Gregory
the Great, succeeded in making good its claims to ecclesiastical supremacy
throughout the larger part of Europe. In its control of the consciences of
rulers, the Church frequently, in fact, secured a domination that was by no
means limited to things spiritual.
The history of books in manuscript and of the production and distribution
of literature in Europe from the beginning of the work of S. Benedict to the
time when the printing-press of Gutenberg revolutionised the methods of
book-making, a period covering about nine centuries, may be divided into
three stages. During the first, the responsibility for the preservation of the
old-time literature and for keeping alive some continuity of intellectual life,
rested solely with the monasteries, and the work of multiplying and of
distributing such books as had survived was carried on by the monks, and
by them only. During the second stage, the older universities, the
organisation of which had gradually been developed from schools
(themselves chiefly of monastic origin), became centres of intellectual
activity and shared with the monasteries the work of producing books. The
books emanating from the university scribes were, however, for the most
part restricted to a few special classes, classes which had, as a rule, not been
produced in the monasteries, and, as will be noted in a later chapter, the
university booksellers (stationarii or librarii) were in the earlier periods not
permitted to engage in any general distribution of books. With the third
stage of manuscript literature, book-producing and bookselling machinery
came into existence in the towns, and the knowledge of reading being no
longer confined to the cleric or the magister, books were prepared for the
use of the larger circles of the community, and to meet the requirements of
such circles were, to an extent increasing with each generation, written in
the tongue of the people.
The first period begins with the foundation by S. Benedict, in 529, of the
monastery of Monte Cassino, and by Cassiodorus, in 531, of that of Vivaria
or Viviers, and continues until the last decade of the twelfth century, when
we find the earliest record of an organised book-business in the universities
of Bologna and Paris. The beginning of literary work in the universities, to
which I refer as indicating a second stage, did not, however, bring to an end,

and, in fact, for a time hardly lessened, the production of books in the
monasteries.
The third stage of book-production in Europe may be said to begin with
the first years of the fifteenth century, when the manuscript trade of Venice
and Florence became important, when the book-men or publishers of Paris,
outside of the university, had developed a business in the collecting,
manifolding, and selling of manuscripts, and when manuscripts first find
place in the schedules of the goods sold at the fairs of Frankfort and
Nordlingen. The costliness of the skilled labour required for the production
of manuscripts, and the many obstacles and difficulties in the way of their
distribution, caused the development of the book-trade to proceed but
slowly. It was the case, nevertheless, and particularly in Germany, that a
very considerable demand for literature of certain classes had been
developed among the people before the close of the manuscript period, a
demand which was being met with texts produced in constantly increasing
quantities and at steadily lessening cost. When the printing-press arrived it
found, therefore, already in existence a wide-spread literary interest and a
popular demand for books, a demand which, with the immediate
cheapening of books, was, of course, enormously increased. The production
of books in manuscript came to a close, not with the invention of the
printing-press in 1450, but with the time when printing had become
generally introduced, about twenty-five years later.
It was in the monasteries that were preserved such fragments of the
classic literature as had escaped the general devastation of Italy; and it was
to the labours of the monks of the West, and particularly to the labours of
the monks of S. Benedict, that was due the preservation for the Middle Ages
and for succeeding generations of the remembrance and the influence of the
literature of classic times. For a period of more than six centuries, the safety
of the literary heritage of Europe, one may say of the world, depended upon
the scribes of a few dozen scattered monasteries.
The Order of S. Benedict was instituted in 529, and the monastery of
Monte Cassino, near Naples, founded by him in the same year, exercised for
centuries an influence of distinctive importance upon the literary interests
of the Church, of Italy, and of the world. This monastery (which still exists)
is not far from Subiaco, the spot chosen by S. Benedict for his first retreat.
It was in the monastery of Subiaco (founded many years afterwards) that

was done, nearly a thousand years later, the first printing in Italy. The Rule
of S. Benedict, comprising the regulations for the government of his Order,
contained a specific instruction that a certain number of hours in each day
were to be devoted to labour in the scriptorium. The monks who were not
yet competent to work as scribes were to be instructed by the others. Scribe
work was to be accepted in place of an equal number of hours given to
manual labour out-of-doors, while the skilled scribes, whose work was of
special importance as instructors or in the scriptorium, were to be freed
from a certain portion of their devotional exercises or observances. The
monasteries of the Benedictines were for centuries more numerous, more
wealthy, and more influential than those of any other Order, and this
provision of a Rule which directed the actions, controlled the daily lives,
and inspired the purposes of thousands of earnest workers among the monks
of successive generations, must have exercised a most noteworthy influence
on the history of literary production in Europe. It is not too much to say that
it was S. Benedict who provided the “copy” which a thousand years later
was to supply the presses of Gutenberg, Aldus, Froben, and Stephanus.
I have not been able to find in the narratives of the life of S. Benedict any
record showing the origin of his interest in literature, an interest which was
certainly exceptional for an ecclesiastic of the sixth century. It seems very
probable, however, that Benedict’s association with Cassiodorus had not a
little to do with the literary impetus given to the work of the Benedictines.
Cassiodorus, who, as Chancellor of King Theodoric, had taken an active
part in the government of the Gothic kingdom, passed the last thirty years
of his life first as a monk and later as abbot in the monastery of Vivaria, or
Viviers, in Calabria, which he had himself founded in 531. Cassiodorus is
generally classed by the Church chronicles as a Benedictine, and his
monastery is referred to by Montalembert as the second of the Benedictine
foundations. Hodgkin points out, however, that the Rule adopted by the
monks of Viviers, or prescribed for them by its founder, was not that of S.
Benedict, but was drawn from the writings of Cassian, the founder of
western monachism, who had died a century before.[8] The two Rules were,
however, fully in accord with each other in spirit, while for the idea of using
the convent as a place of literary toil and theological training, Benedict was
indebted to Cassiodorus. “At a very early date in the history of their Order,”
says Hodgkin, “the Benedictines, influenced probably by the example of the
monastery of Vivaria, commenced that long series of services to the cause

of literature which they have never wholly intermitted. Instead of accepting
the ... formula from which some scholars have contended that Cassiodorus
was a Benedictine, we should perhaps be rather justified in maintaining that
Benedict, or at least his immediate followers, were Cassiodorians.”[9]
It was the fortune of Cassiodorus to serve as a connecting link between
the world of classic Rome and that of the Middle Ages. He saw the
direction and control of the community pass from the monarchs and the
leaders of armies to the Church and to the monasteries, and he was himself
an active agent in helping to bring about such transfer. Born in 479, only
three years after the overthrow of the last of the Emperors of the West, he
grew up under the rule of Odovacar, the Herulian. While still a youth, he
had seen the Herulian kingdom destroyed by Theodoric, and he had lived to
mourn over the ruins of the realm founded by the Goth, which he had
himself helped to govern. He saw his beloved Italy taken possession of by
the armies of Narses and Belisarius from the east, and a little later overrun
by the undisciplined hordes of the Lombards from the north. The first great
schism between the Eastern and the Western Churches began during his
boyhood and terminated before, as Abbot of Vivaria, it became necessary
for him to take a decided part on the one side or the other. A Greek by
ancestry, a Roman by training, the experience of Cassiodorus included work
and achievements as statesman, orator, scholar, author, and ecclesiastic. He
had witnessed the extinction of the Roman Senate, of which both his father
and himself had been members; the practical abolition of the Consulate, an
honour to which he had also attained; and the close of the schools of
philosophy in Athens, with the doctrines of which he, almost alone in his
generation of Italians, was familiar. He had done much to maintain in the
Court and throughout the kingdom of Theodoric, such standard of scholarly
interests and of literary appreciation as was practicable with the resources
available; and, in like manner, he brought with him to his monastery a
scholarly enthusiasm for classic literature, of which literature he may not
unnaturally have felt himself to be almost the sole surviving representative.
It is difficult to over-estimate the extent of the service rendered by
Cassiodorus to literature and to later generations in initiating the training of
monks as scribes, and in putting into their hands for their first work in the
scriptorium the masterpieces of classic literature. He belonged both to the
world of ancient Rome, which he had outlived, and to that of the Middle
Ages, the thought and work of which he helped to shape. With the close of

the official career of Cassiodorus as Secretary of State for the Gothic
kingdom of Italy, the history of ancient Europe may, for the purpose of my
narrative, be considered to end. With the consecration of Cassiodorus, as
Abbot of the monastery of Vivaria, (which took place about 550, when he
was seventy years of age), and the instituting by him of the first European
scriptorium, I may begin the record of the production of books during the
Middle Ages.

CHAPTER I.
THE MAKING OF BOOKS IN THE MONASTERIES.

I HAVE used for the heading of the chapter the term “the making of
books” rather than “literary work,” because the service rendered by the
earlier monastic scribes (a service of essential importance for the
intellectual life of the world) consisted chiefly, as has been indicated, not in
the production of original literature, but in the reproduction and
preservation of the literature that had been inherited from earlier writers,—
writers whose works had been accepted as classics. While it was the case
that in this literary labour it was the Benedictines who for centuries
rendered the most important service, the first of the European monasteries
in which such labour was carried on as a part of the prescribed routine or
rule of the monastic life was that of Vivaria or Viviers, founded by
Cassiodorus, which was never formally associated with the Benedictine
Order, and which had, in fact, adopted, in place of the Benedictine Rule, a
rule founded on the teachings of Cassian, who had died early in the fifth
century. The work done, under the instructions of Cassiodorus, by the
scribes of Viviers, served as an incentive and an example for Monte
Cassino, the monastery founded by S. Benedict, while the scriptorium
instituted in Monte Cassino was accepted as a model by the long series of
later Benedictine monasteries which during the succeeding seven centuries
became centres of literary activity.
After the destruction of the Gothic kingdom of Italy, it was with these
monasteries that rested the intellectual future of Europe. Mankind was, for
the time at least, to be directed and influenced, not so much by royal
chancellors or prætorian guards, as by the monks preaching from their cells
and by the monastic scribes distributing the world’s literature from the
scriptorium.
Cassiodorus and S. Benedict.—In the literary history of Europe, the
part played by Cassiodorus was so important and the service rendered by
him was so distinctive, that it seems pertinent for the purposes of this story
to present in some detail the record of his life and work. As is indicated by

the name by which he is known in history, Cassiodorus was of Greek
lineage, his family belonging to the Greek city of Scyllacium in Southern
Italy. His full name was Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator. His
ancestors had, for several generations, held under the successive rulers of
Italy positions of trust and honour, and the family ranked with the
patricians. The father of the author and abbot, usually referred to as
Cassiodorus the third, was finance minister under Odovacar, and when the
Herulian King had been overcome and slain by Theodoric, the minister was
skilful enough to make himself necessary to the Gothic conqueror, from
whom he received various important posts, and by whom he was finally
appointed Prætorian Prefect. The Cassiodorus with whom this study is
concerned, known as Cassiodorus the fourth, was born about 479, or three
years after the Gothic conquest.[10] He began his official career as early as
twenty, and it was while holding, at this age, the position of Consilarius,
that he brought himself to the favourable attention of Theodoric by means
of an eloquent panegyric spoken in praise of that monarch.
Theodoric appointed him Quæstor, an office which made him the mouth-
piece of the sovereign. To the Quæstor belonged the duty of conducting the
official correspondence of the Court, of receiving ambassadors, and of
replying in fitting harangues to their addresses, so that he was at once
foreign secretary and Court orator. He also had the responsibility of giving a
final revision to all the laws which received the signature of the King, and
of seeing that these were properly worded and did not conflict with
previous enactments.[11] Theodoric, who had received what little education
he possessed from Greek instructors in Constantinople, was said never to
have mastered Latin, and he doubtless found the services of his eloquent
and scholarly minister very convenient.
It was the contention of Theodoric that his kingdom represented the
natural continuation of the Roman Empire, and that he was himself the
legitimate successor of the emperors. He took as his official designation not
Rex Italiæ, but Gothorum et Romanorum Rex. This contention was fully
upheld by the Quæstor, who felt himself to be the representative at once of
the official authority of the new kingdom and of the literary prestige of the
old Empire, and who did what was in his power to preserve in Ravenna the
classical traditions of old Rome and to make the Court the centre of literary
influence and activity. Theodoric and his Goths had accepted the creed of

the Arians, but the influence of his minister, who was a Christian of the
Athanasian or Trinitarian faith, was sufficient to preserve a spirit of
toleration throughout the kingdom. It is to Cassiodorus that is due what was
probably the first official utterance of toleration that Europe had known, an
utterance that in later European history was to be so largely set at nought:
Religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credat invitus.[12]
[We must not enforce (acceptance of) a creed, since no one can think or can
believe against his will.] It is not one of the least of the services of
Cassiodorus that he should at this early date, when the bitterness of
controversy was active in the Church, have been able to set a standard of
wise and Christian toleration. His action had a good effect later in his own
monastery and in the monasteries whose work was modelled on that of
Viviers. It was only in monastic centres like Viviers and Monte Cassino,
where Christian influence and educational work were held to be of more
importance than theological issues, that literary activity became possible,
and it was only in such monasteries that labour was expended in preserving
the writings of “pagan” (that is, of classic) authors.
In 514, Cassiodorus became Consul, a title which, while no longer
standing for any authority, was still held to be one of the highest honours,
and in 515 he received the title of patrician. In 519, he published, under the
title of Chronicon, an abstract of history from the deluge to the year 519.
Hodgkin points out that in his record of events of the fifth century, a very
large measure of favourable, or rather of partial attention is given to the
annals of the Goths. Shortly after the publication of the Chronicon,
Cassiodorus began work on his History of the Goths, which was finally
completed in twelve books, and the chief purpose of which was to vindicate
the claims of the Goths to rank among the historic nations of antiquity, by
bringing them into connection with Greece and Rome, and by making the
origin of Gothic history Roman. This history of Cassiodorus is known only
by tradition, not a single copy of it having been preserved. The system of
scribe-work in the monasteries, to which we owe nearly all of the old-world
literature that has come down to us, did not prove adequate to preserve the
greatest work of its founder. A treatise on the origin of the Goths by a later
writer named Jordæus, concerning whom little is known, is avowedly based
upon the history of Cassiodorus, and is the principal source of information
concerning the character of this history.

At the time of the death of Theodoric, Cassiodorus was holding the
important place of Master of the Offices, a post which combined many of
the duties that would to-day be discharged by a Home Secretary, a Secretary
of War, and a Postmaster-General. Under the regency of Queen
Amalasuentha, Cassiodorus received his final official honour in his
appointment as Prætorian Prefect. In the collection of letters published
under the title of Variæ, Cassiodorus gives accounts of the work done by
him in these various official stations, and these letters present vivid and
interesting pictures of the methods of the administration of the kingdom,
and also throw light upon many of its relations with foreign powers.
Cassiodorus continued to do service as minister for the successors of
Amalasuentha, Athalaric, Theodadad, and Witigis, and retired from official
responsibility only a few months before the capture of Ravenna by
Belisarius, in 540, brought the Ostrogothic monarchy to an end. At the time
of the entry of the Greek army, Cassiodorus, now a veteran of sixty years,
was in retirement in his monastery in Bruttii (the modern Calabria). It was
doubtless because of the absence of Cassiodorus from the capital, that no
mention is made of him in the narrative of the campaign written by
Procopius the historian, who, as secretary to Belisarius, entered Rome with
the latter after the victories over Witigis.
Cassiodorus must have possessed very exceptional adaptability of
character, not to say elasticity of conscience, to be able, during a period
extending over nearly half a century, to retain the favour of so many of the
successive rulers of Italy and apparently to make his services necessary to
each one of them. It is certain, however, that Italy benefited largely by the
fact that through the various contests and changes of monarchs, it had been
possible to preserve a certain continuity of executive policy and of
administrative methods. The further fact that the “perpetual” or at least the
continuing minister was at once a Greek and a Roman, and not only a
statesman but a scholar, and that he had succeeded in preserving through all
the devastations of civil wars and of foreign invasions a great collection of
classic books and a persistent (even though restricted) interest in classic
literature, exercised an enormous influence upon the culture of Europe for
centuries to come. The career of Cassiodorus had, as we have seen, been
varied and honourable. It was, however, his exceptional fortune to be able

to render the most important and the most distinctive service of his life after
his life’s work had apparently been completed.
Shortly after his withdrawal to Bruttii, and when, as said, he was already
more than sixty years old, he retired to his monastery, Vivaria, and during
the thirty-six years of activity that remained for him, he not only completed
a number of important literary productions of his own, but he organised the
literary work of the monastery scriptorium, which served as a model for
that of Monte Cassino, and, through Monte Cassino, for the long series of
Benedictine monasteries that came into existence throughout Europe. It was
the hand of Cassiodorus which gave the literary impetus to the Benedictine
Order, and it was from his magnificent collection of manuscripts, rescued
from the ruins of the libraries of Italy, that was supplied material for the
pens of thousands of monastic scribes.
After his retirement to Bruttii, Cassiodorus founded a second monastery,
known as Mons Castellius, the work of which was planned for a more
austere class of hermits than those who had associated themselves together
at Vivaria. Of both monasteries he retained the practical control, and,
according to Trithemius (whose opinion is accepted by Montalembert) of
Vivaria he became abbot.[13] Hodgkin, while himself citing the extract from
Trithemius, thinks it possible that Cassiodorus never formally became
abbot, but says that the direction and supervision of the work of the two
monasteries rested in any case in his hands.[14]
His treatise on the Nature of the Soul (De Anima) was probably
completed just before he began his monastic life, and was itself an evidence
of the change in the direction of his thoughts and of his ideals. Cassiodorus
had now done with politics. As Hodgkin points out, the dream of his life
had been to build up an independent Italian State, strong with the strength
of the Goths, and wise with the wisdom of the Romans. It is evident that he
also felt himself charged with a special responsibility in preserving for later
generations the literature and the learning of the classic world. With the
destruction of the Gothic kingdom, that dream had been scattered to the
winds. The only institutions which retained a continuity of organisation
were those belonging to the Church, and it was through the Church that
must be preserved for later generations the thought and the scholarship of
antiquity. It was with a full understanding of this change in the nature of his
responsibilities, that Cassiodorus decided to consecrate his old age to

religious labours and to a work even more important than any of his
political achievements: the preservation, by the pens of monastic copyists,
of the Christian Scriptures, of the writings of the early Fathers, and of the
great works of classical antiquity.
Some years before his retirement from Ravenna, Cassiodorus had
endeavoured to induce Pope Agapetus (535-536) to found a school of
theology and Christian literature at Rome, modelled on the plan of the
schools of Alexandria and Nisibis. The confusion consequent on the
invasion of Italy by Belisarius had prevented the fulfilment of this scheme.
The aged statesman was now, however, planning to accomplish, by means
of his two monasteries, a similar educational work.
Hodgkin summarises the aims of earlier monasticism, (aims which were
most fully carried out in the monasteries of the East and of Africa,) as
follows: In the earlier days of monasticism, men like the hermits of the
Thebaïd had thought of little else but mortifying the flesh by vigils and
fastings, and withdrew from all human voices in order to enjoy an ecstatic
communion with their Maker. The life in common of monks like those of
Nitria and Lerinum had chastened some of the extravagances of these
lonely enthusiasts, while still keeping in view their main purpose. S.
Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, had shown what great results might be
obtained for the Church of all ages from the patient literary toil of one
religious recluse. And finally, S. Benedict, in that Rule of his, which was for
centuries to be the code of monastic Christendom, had sanctified work as
one of the most effectual preservatives of the bodily and spiritual health of
the ascetic.
“It was the glory of Cassiodorus,” says Hodgkin,[15] “that he first and
pre-eminently insisted on the expediency of including intellectual labour in
the sphere of monastic duties.... This thought [may we not say this divinely
suggested thought?] in the mind of Cassiodorus was one of infinite
importance to the human race. Here, on the one hand, were the vast armies
of monks, whom both the unsettled state of the times and the religious ideas
of the age were driving irresistibly into the cloister; and who, when
immured there with only theology to occupy their minds, became, as the
great cities of the East knew only too well, preachers of discord and mad
fanaticism. Here, on the other hand, were the accumulated stores of two
thousand years of literature, sacred and profane, the writings of Hebrew

prophets, Greek philosophers, Latin rhetoricians, perishing for want of men
with leisure to transcribe them. The luxurious Roman noble with his slave
amanuenses multiplying copies of his favourite authors for his own and his
friends’ libraries, was an almost extinct existence. With every movement of
barbarian troops over Italy, whether those barbarians called themselves the
men of Witigis or of Justinian, some towns were being sacked, some
precious manuscripts were perishing from the world. Cassiodorus perceived
that the boundless, the often wearisome leisure of the convent might be
profitably spent in arresting this work of denudation, in preserving for
future ages the intellectual treasure which must otherwise inevitably have
perished. That this was one of the great services rendered by the
monasteries to the human race, the most superficial student has learned, but
not all who have learned it know that the monks’ first decided impulse in
this direction was derived from Cassiodorus.”
The German biographer of Cassiodorus, Franz, uses similar language:
Das Verdienst, zuerst die Pflege der Wissenschaften in den Bereich der
Aufgaben des Klosterlichen Lebens aufgenommen zu haben, kann man mit
vollem Rechte für Cassiodorus in Anspruch nehmen.[16]
In the account given by Cassiodorus of the scriptorium of his monastery,
he describes, with an enthusiasm which ought to have been contagious, the
noble work done there by the antiquarius[17]: “He may fill his mind with
the Scriptures while copying the sayings of the Lord; with his fingers he
gives life to men and arms against the wiles of the devil. As the antiquarius
copies the words of Christ, so many wounds does he inflict upon Satan.
What he writes in his cell will be scattered far and wide over distant
provinces. Man multiplies the words of Heaven, and, if I may dare so to
speak, the three fingers of his right hand are made to express the utterances
of the Holy Trinity. The fast travelling reed writes down the holy words and
thus avenges the malice of the Wicked One, who caused a reed to be used to
smite the head of the Saviour.” The passage here quoted refers only to the
work of the copyists of the Christian Scriptures. There are other references,
however, in the same work to indicate that the activity of the scriptorium
was not confined to these, but was also employed on secular literature.[18]
The devotion and application of the monks produced in the course of
years a class of scribes whose work in the transcribing and illuminating of

manuscripts far surpassed in perfection and beauty the productions of the
copyists of classic Rome. In the monasteries north of the Alps the work of
the scribes was, for the earlier centuries, devoted principally to the
production of copies of missals and other books of devotion and of portions
of the Scriptures. In Italy, however, where classical culture never entirely
disappeared, attention continued to be given to the transcription of the Latin
texts of which any manuscripts had been preserved, and it was these
transcripts of the monks of Cassiodorus and S. Benedict that gave the
“copy” for the first editions of Cicero, Virgil, and the other classic writers,
produced by the earliest printers of Germany and Italy.
Cassiodorus took pains to emphasise the importance of binding the
sacred codices in covers worthy of the beauty of their contents, following
the example of the householder in the parable, who provided wedding
garments for all who came to the supper of his son. One pattern volume had
been prepared containing samples of various sorts of covers, from which
the scribe might choose that which pleased him best. The abbot had also
provided, to help the nightly toil of the scriptorium, mechanical lamps of
some ingenious construction which appears to have made them self-
trimming and to have insured a continuously sufficient supply of oil. The
labour of the scribes was regulated on bright days by sun-dials, and on
cloudy days and during the hours of the night by water-clocks.
In order to set an example of literary diligence to his monks, and to be
able to sympathise with the difficulties of scribe work, Cassiodorus himself
transcribed (probably from the translation of Jerome) the Psalter, the
Prophets, and the Epistles. In addition to his labours as a transcriber,
Cassiodorus did a large amount of work as an original author and as a
compiler. According to the judgment of Migne, Franz, and Hodgkin, the
importance of his original writings varied very considerably, and is by no
means to be estimated in proportion to their bulk. One of the most
considerable of these was his great commentary on the Psalms, in the text
of which he was able to discover refutations of all the heresies that had thus
far racked the Church, together with the rudiments of all the sciences which
had become known to the world. This was followed by a commentary on
the Epistles and by a history of the Church, the latter having been
undertaken in co-operation with his friend Epiphanius. This history, known
as the Historia Tripartita, is said to have had a larger circulation than any

other of the author’s works. A fourth work, which gives more of the
personality of the writer, was an educational treatise entitled, Institutiones
Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum. In the first part of this treatise, which
bore the title of De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum, the author gives an
account of the organisation of his scriptorium. In the second division of the
treatise, entitled De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum, the
author states his view of the relative importance of the four liberal arts,
Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, and Mathematics, the last named of which he
divides into the four “disciplines” of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and
Astronomy. Geometry and Astronomy occupy together one page,
Arithmetic and Music each two pages, Grammar two pages, Rhetoric six
pages, while to Logic are devoted eighteen pages. The final production of
his industrious life was a treatise called De Orthographia, which was
completed when its author was ninety-three years old, and which was
planned expressly to further the work of the monastic scribes in collecting
and correcting the codices of ancient books.
The death of Cassiodorus occurred in 575, in the ninety-sixth year of his
age. An inheritor of the traditions of imperial Rome, Cassiodorus had been
able, in a career extending over nearly a century, to be of signal service to
his country under a series of foreign rulers. He had succeeded, through his
personal influence with these rulers, in maintaining for Italy an organisation
based on Roman precedents, and in preserving for the society of the capital
an interest in the preservation and cultivation of classic literature. When the
political institutions of Italy had been shattered and the very existence of
civilisation was imperilled, he had transferred his services to the Church,
recognising, with the adaptability which was the special characteristic of the
man, that with the Church now rested the hopes of any continuity of
organised society, of intellectual interest, of civilisation itself. He brought to
the Church the advantage of exceptional executive ability and of long
official experience, and he also brought a large measure of scholarship and
an earnest zeal for literary and educational interests. It is not too much to
say that the continuity of the thought and civilisation of the ancient world
with that of the Middle Ages was due, more than to any other one man, to
the life and labours of Cassiodorus.
S. Benedict.—The Life of S. Benedict, written by Pope Gregory I. (who
was born in 543, the year of the death of the saint), was for centuries one of

the most popular books circulated in Europe. The full title is: Vita et
Miracula Venerabilis Benedicti conditoris, vel Abbatis Monasterii; quod
appellatur arcis Provinciæ Campaniæ. “The Life and Miracles of the
Venerable Benedict, Founder and Abbot of the Monastery which is called
(of) the Citadel of the Province of Campania.” This biography was, later,
translated by Pope Zacharias from the original Latin into Greek.
The great achievement of Benedict was the one literary product of his
life, the Regula. It comprises seventy-three short chapters, probably not
designed by the author for use beyond the bounds of the communities under
his own immediate supervision. It proved to be the thing for which the
world of religious and thoughtful men was then longing, a complete code of
monastic duty. By a strange parallelism, almost in the very year in which
the great Emperor Justinian was codifying the results of seven centuries of
Roman secular legislation for the benefit of the judges and the statesmen of
the new Europe, Benedict, on his lonely mountain top, was composing his
code for the regulation of the daily life of the great civilisers of Europe for
seven centuries to come.
The Rule of S. Benedict, Chap. 48. Concerning Daily Manual Labour.
—“Idleness is the enemy of the soul: hence brethren ought at certain
seasons to occupy themselves with manual labour, and again at certain
hours with holy reading. Between Easter and the calends of October let
them apply themselves to reading from the fourth hour until the sixth
hour.... From the calends of October to the beginning of Lent, let them
apply themselves to reading until the second hour. During Lent, let them
apply themselves to reading from morning until the end of the third hour,
and in these days of Lent, let them receive a book apiece from the library
and read it straight through. These books are to be given out at the
beginning of Lent.”[19]
This simple regulation, uttered by one the power and extent of whose far-
reaching influence have rarely been equalled among men, gave an impulse
to study that grew with the growth of the Order, and that secured a
continuity of intellectual light and life through the dark ages, the results of
which have endured to modern times. “Wherever a Benedictine house
arose, or a monastery of any one of the Orders, which were but offshoots
from the Benedictine tree, books were multiplied and a library came into
existence, small indeed at first, but increasing year by year, till the wealthier

houses had gathered together collections of books that would do credit to a
modern university.”[20]
It was, of course, the case that the injunction to read, an injunction given
at a time when books were very few and monks were becoming many,
carried with it an instruction for writing until copies of the books prescribed
should have been produced in sufficient numbers to meet the requirements
of the readers. The armaria could be filled only through steady and
persistent work in the scriptoria, and, as we shall see later, such scribe-
work was accepted not only as a part of the “manual labour” prescribed in
the Rule, but not infrequently (in the case of the skilled scribes) in lieu of
some portion of the routine of religious observance. Benedict would not
have his monks limit themselves to spiritual labour, to the action of the soul
upon itself. He made external labour, manual or literary, a strict obligation
of his Rule. The routine of the monastic day was to include seven hours for
manual labour, two hours for reading.[21] In later years, the Benedictine
monasteries became centres of instruction, supplying the place, as far as
was practicable, of the educational system of the departed empire. As Order
after Order was founded, there came to be a steady development of interest
in books and an ever increasing care for their safe-keeping. S. Benedict had
contented himself with general directions for study; the Cluniacs prescribed
the selection of a special officer to take charge of the books, with an annual
audit of them and the assignment to each brother of a single volume.
“The followers of the Saint continued in their patient labour, praying,
digging, and transcribing. The scriptoria of the Benedictine monastery will
multiply copies not only of missals and theological treatises, but of the
poems and histories of antiquity. Whatever may have been the religious
value or the religious dangers of the monastic life, the historian at least is
bound to express his gratitude to these men, without whose life-long toil the
great deeds and thoughts of Greece and Rome might have been as
completely lost to us as the wars of the buried Lake-dwellers or the
thoughts of the Palæolithic man. To take an illustration from S. Benedict’s
own beloved Subiaco, the work of his disciples has been like one of the
great aqueducts of the valley of the Arno—sometimes carried underground
for centuries through the obscurity of unremembered existence, sometimes
emerging to the daylight and borne high upon the arcade of noble lives, but
equally through all its course, bearing the precious stream of ancient

thought from the far off hills of time into the humming and crowded cities
of modern civilisation.”[22]
The Earlier Monkish Scribes.—The literary work begun under the
direction of Cassiodorus in the scriptorium of Viviers, and enjoined by S.
Benedict upon his monks at Monte Cassino, was, as said, carried on by
successive generations of monastic scribes during a number of centuries. In
fact, until the organisation of the older universities, in the latter part of the
twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, the production and the
reproduction of literature was practically confined to the monasteries. “The
monasteries,” says Maitland, in his erudite and vivacious work, The Dark
Ages, “were, in those days of misrule and turbulence, beyond all price not
only as places where (it may be imperfectly, but better than elsewhere) God
was worshipped, ... but as central points whence agriculture was to spread
over bleak hills and barren downs and marshy plains, and deal its bread to
millions perishing with hunger and its pestilential train; as repositories of
the learning which then was, and as well-springs for the learning which was
to be; as nurseries of art and science, giving to invention the stimulus, the
means, and the reward; and attracting to themselves every head that could
devise and every hand that could execute; as the nucleus of the city which
in after days of pride should crown its palaces and bulwarks with the
towering cross of its cathedral.”[23] It was fortunate for the literary future of
Europe that the Benedictine Order, which had charged itself with literary
responsibilities, should have secured almost from the outset so considerable
a development and should for centuries have remained the greatest and
most influential of all the monastic orders. At the beginning of the ninth
century, Charlemagne ordered an inquiry to be made (as into a matter
requiring careful research) as to whether there were any monks who
professed any other rule than the Rule of S. Benedict; from which it would
appear that such monks were considered as rare and noteworthy exceptions.
While the two monasteries of Cassiodorus in Calabria and the
Benedictine foundation of Monte Cassino near Naples, were entitled to first
reference on the ground of the exceptional influence exercised by them
upon the literary development of the monks, they were by no means the
earliest of the western monastic foundations. This honour belongs,
according to Denk,[24] to the monastery of Ligugé, near Poitiers
(Monasterium Locociagense), founded in 360 a.d. by Bishop Martin of

Tours. The second in point of date, that of Marmoutier, near Tours, was
instituted by the same bishop a year or two later. Gaul proved to be
favourable ground for the spread of monastic tenets and influence, and by
the year 400 its foundations included over two thousand monks.
In 405, S. Honoratus, later Bishop of Arles, founded a monastery on the
island of Lerin, on the south coast of France, which became a most
important centre of learning and the mother of many monasteries.[25] In the
educational work carried on at Lerin, full consideration was given to classic
authors, such as Cicero, Virgil, and Xenophon, as well as to the writings of
the Fathers, and the scribes were kept busied in the production of copies.
There must have been a certain amount of literary activity also in the
monasteries of the East and of Africa some time before any of the monastic
foundations in Europe had come into existence. The numerous writings of
the Fathers secured a wide circulation among the faithful, a circulation
which could have been possible only through the existence of efficient
staffs of skilled scribes and in connection with some system of distribution
between widely separated churches. Teachers like Origen in Cæsarea, in the
third century, and S. Jerome in Bethlehem and S. Augustine in Hippo, in the
fifth century, put forth long series of writings, religious, philosophical, and
polemical, with apparently an assured confidence that these would reach
wide circles of contemporary readers, and that they would be preserved also
for generations to come. The sacking of Rome by Alaric (in 410) is used by
S. Augustine as a text or occasion for the publication of his beautiful
conception of “The City of God” in much the same manner as a preacher of
later times might have based a homily on the burning of Moscow or the fall
of Paris. The preacher of Hippo speaks as if he were addressing, not the
small circle of his African diocese, but mankind at large. And he was, of
course, justified in his faith, for the De Civitate Dei was the book which,
next to the Scriptures, was most surely to be found in every monastery in
Europe, while when the work of the scriptorium was replaced by the
printing-press, it became one of the most frequently printed books in
Europe. It appears from a reference by S. Augustine, that nuns as well as
monks were included among the African scribes. In speaking of a nun
named Melania, who, early in the fifth century, founded a convent at
Tagaste, near Carthage, he says that she had “gained her living by

transcribing manuscripts,” and mentions that she wrote swiftly, beautifully,
and correctly,—scribebat et celeriter et pulchre, citra errorem.[26]
The scribe-work in the monasteries of Africa and of the East was,
therefore, sufficiently effective to preserve large portions of the writings of
the Fathers and of other early Christian teachers, and it is, in fact, to the
libraries of these Eastern monasteries that is chiefly due the preservation of
the long series of Greek texts which found their way into Europe after the
Renaissance. I have, however, been able to find no record of the system
pursued in the scriptoria and armaria of the Greek monasteries, and the
narrative in the present chapter is, therefore, confined to a sketch of the
literary undertakings of the monks of the West.
The earliest known example of the work of a European monk dates from
the year 517. The manuscript is in the Capitular library in Verona, and has
been reproduced in fac-simile by Ottley. The script is that known as half
uncial.[27] At the time this manuscript was being written, Theodoric the
Goth was ruling in Italy, with Cassiodorus as his minister, and the
monastery at Viviers was still to be founded.
S. Gregory the Great, who became Pope in 590, exercised an important
influence over the intellectual interests of his age. Gregory had been
charged with having destroyed the ancient monuments of Rome, with
having burned the Palatine library, including the writings of Cicero and
Livy, with having expelled the mathematicians from Rome, and with having
reprimanded Bishop Didier of Vienna (in Gaul) for teaching grammar to
children. Montalembert contends that these charges are all slanders and that
the Pope was not only an unequalled scholar, but that he fully appreciated
the importance for the intellectual development of the Church, of a
knowledge of the classics. Gregory is quoted as saying, in substance: “The
devils know well that the knowledge of profane literature helps us to
understand sacred literature. In dissuading us from this study, they act as the
Philistines did when they interdicted the Israelites from making swords and
lances, and obliged that nation to come to them for the sharpening of their
axes and plough-shares.”[28] Gregory was himself the author of a
considerable series of writings, and, while his Latin was not that of Cicero,
he contributed (according to Ozanam) as much as did S. Augustine to form
the new Latin, what might be called the Christian Latin, which was destined

to become the language of the pulpit and the school, and which forms the
more immediate foundation of an important group of the languages of
modern Europe.
His works include the Sacramentary, which determined the language and
the form of the Liturgy, a series of Dialogues, and a Pastoral, in which
were collected a series of discourses planned to regulate the vocation, life,
and doctrines of the pastors. Of this book, Ozanam says that it gave form
and life to the entire hierarchical body. Then came a series of commentaries
on the Scriptures, followed by no less than thirty-five books called Moralia,
which were commentaries on the Book of Job. His last important
production was a series of Epistles, comprised in thirteen volumes. He may
possibly have been the most voluminous author since classic times, and his
books had the special advantage of reaching circles of readers who were
waiting for them, and of being distributed through the already extended
machinery of the Church.
Another important ecclesiastical author of the same generation was
Isidore, Bishop of Seville. The Spanish Liturgy compiled by him and
known as the Mozarabic, survived the ruin of the Visigothic Church and
was thought by the great Cardinal Ximenes worthy of resuscitation. Isidore
also wrote a history of the Goths and a translation of the philosophy of
Aristotle. He may be considered as the first scholar to introduce to Europe
of the Middle Ages the teachings of Greek philosophy. His greatest
undertaking was, however, in the form of an encyclopædia, treating, under
the heading of the Seven Liberal Arts, of all the learning that was within his
reach. It was entitled Twenty Books of Etymologies, or The Origin of
Things, and included in its volumes a number of classical fragments which,
without the care of its editor, would probably have perished forever.
Isidore is the first Christian who arranged and edited for Christians the
literature of antiquity. He died in 636, but the incentive that he had given to
learning and to literature survived him in a numerous group of disciples.[29]
Among Isidore’s pupils was King Sisebut, whose interest in scholarship
caused him to endow liberally a number of the Spanish monasteries.
The Ecclesiastical Schools and the Clerics as Scribes.—The so-
called secular clergy were, during the earlier Middle Ages, employed very
largely in connection with the business of the government, being in fact in

many regions the only class of the population possessing the education
necessary for the preparation of documents and the preservation of records.
In Italy, towards the close of the thirteenth century, there came into
existence the class of notaries who took charge of a good many business
details which in Germany and France were cared for by the clergy. Under
the Merovingian kings, there were government officials and judiciary
officials who were laymen. During the rule of the Carlovingians, however,
the writing work of the chapel and of the government offices was
consolidated, falling into the hands of the clerics, or secular clergy. For a
number of centuries, outside of Italy, it was very exceptional for any
documents or for any correspondence to be written by other than the clergy.
Every citizen of importance was obliged to have his special clericus, clerc,
or pfaff, who took care of his correspondence and accounts. A post of this
kind was in fact the surest means for an ambitious priest to secure in the
first place, a footing in the world, and later, ecclesiastical positions and
income. The secretary or chancellor of the king, was almost always, as a
matter of routine, sooner or later rewarded with a bishopric.
Charlemagne took from among the poor boys in the court school, one,
who was described as optimus dictator et scriptor, and having trained him
as chaplain and secretary, provided for him later a bishopric.[30]
The use of the word dictator is to be noted as indicating the mediæval
employment of the term in connection with writing. Dictare seems, from an
early date, to have been used in the first place to indicate instruction in the
art of writing, while later it is employed constantly to specify the direct
work of the writer or composer, in the sense in which one would say to-day
that he had indited a letter. With the same general sense, the term dictamen
is used for the thing indited or for a composition. Hroswitha, the nun of
Gandersheim (whose poems later had the honour of forming the material
for one of the first books printed in South Germany), used the term dictare
continually for activity in authorship. Wattenbach quotes from the Legenda
Aurea of S. Ambrose the words libros quos dictabat propria manu scribebat
(he wrote out with his own hand the books that he composed).
As long as any portions of the Roman Empire held together and the
classic culture still preserved its influence, a considerable class of men
secured their support through work as scribes. In Italy this class seems
never entirely to have disappeared. Some small circles of the people

retained, even after the land had been many times overrun by invaders,
some interest in the classics, and were prepared to pay for more or less
trustworthy manuscript copies of these. In Italy also there appears to have
been a much larger use of writing in connection with trade and commerce
than obtained throughout the rest of Europe until a much later time. While
in Germany and France such scholarship as remained was restricted almost
entirely to the ecclesiastics and to the monastery centres, in Italy the
Church, during the earlier period, took a smaller interest in scholarship.
There came into existence, however, a group of literary laymen, who were
in a measure a continuation of or a succession to the old Latin grammarians,
and who maintained some of their interest in classic culture and preserved,
however imperfectly, some remnants of classic knowledge.
Wattenbach quotes the words of Gerbert,[31] Nosti Quot Scriptores in
Urbibus aut in Agris Italiæ Passim Habeantur (you know how many
writers there are here and there throughout the cities and fields of Italy).
The schools established under the rule of the Lombards helped to
preserve the art of writing and to widen the range of its experts. By the
time, therefore, of the establishment of the earlier Italian universities, an
organised class of scribes was already in existence whose skill could be
utilised for university work, and, as will be shown more specifically in a
later chapter, the universities took these scribes under their jurisdiction and
extended over them the protection of university privilege.[32]
In France, after the time of Charlemagne, it was the case, as we have
seen, that those who had any educational or literary ambitions were almost
necessarily obliged to become ecclesiastics, as it was only in monasteries
and in the training schools attached to the monasteries, that the necessary
education could be secured. As one result of this, the number of
ecclesiastics increased much more rapidly than the number of places in
which they could be occupied or of foundations upon which they could be
supported. Priests for whom no priestly work was found became, therefore,
what might be called lay-clerics, and were employed in connection with the
work of the courts, or of magistrates, or as scribes and secretaries.
In this manner there came into the hands of these lay-clerics, not only the
management of correspondence, personal, official, and diplomatic, but a
very large proportion of the direction of the affairs with which such

correspondence had to do. As far, therefore, as the clerical personality
represented ecclesiastical purposes and aims, the influence of
ecclesiasticism must have been very much greater during the age in which
the art of writing was confined to the Church than at any earlier or any later
period of the world’s history. Such influence was, however, probably less in
fact than in appearance, as it seems to have been the case that a very large
proportion of such clerics were priests in name only, and that their interests,
purposes, and ambitions were outside of the Church, and were not
necessarily even in sympathy with the development of the control of the
Church over the affairs of the world.
Wattenbach is of opinion that the scribes of this period secured a larger
return for their work than came to any other class of labourers or officials.
Among many other examples, he gives a quotation from Dümmler
concerning a Lombard cleric of Rotland, named Anselm, who, in 1050,
prided himself upon the number of books he had written, and said: Multos
oportet libros scriberes, ut inde precium sumeres, quo a tuis lenonibus te
redimeres.[33] (You ought to write many books in order to obtain money
with which to buy yourself off from those having claims upon you.)
Notker wrote in 1020 to the Bishop of Sitten, who wanted to obtain some
books: Si vultis ea, sumtibus enim indigent, mittite plures pergamenas et
scribentibus præmia et suscipietis eorum exempla.[34] (If you want these
books, you must send more parchment and also moneys for the scribes. You
will then receive your copies.)
In the twelfth century, the monks of Tegernsee, under the Abbot Rupert,
were working on the production of the books for the library of some noble
lady.[35] The Brother Liaupold, in Mallerstorf, spoke of having “earned
much money through his pen.” This happened in the last quarter of the
twelfth century. The lines quoted by Wattenbach were found upon a
manuscript bearing Liaupold’s name.[36]
For the libraries of their own monasteries, the monks worked without
direct pay, and it was only later, as the ambition of the librarians increased
or as the business of distributing copies of manuscripts became more
important, that the monasteries found it worth while to employ, either in
place of or in addition to their own monks, scribes from outside. In
Salzburg, Pastor Peter Grillinger paid, in 1435, to the scribes of the

neighbouring monasteries three hundred gulden for the production of a
Bible (probably an illuminated copy), and presented this to the library of the
Cathedral.[37]
In the accounts of the monastery at Aldersbach, Rockinger finds entries,
in 1304, of payments for scriptores librorum.
The well-known manuscript of Henri Bohic was written in 1374 by a
monk of Corbie, who, according to the cash record of his monastery,
received for his work, in addition to the parchment and other materials, the
sum of thirty-six solidos. For the monastery at St. Gall, Mathias Burer, of
Lindau, who was chaplain in Meminger, and who died in 1485, wrote
twenty-four volumes.
In 1470, the same Burer gave to the monastery, in exchange for a
benefice, his entire library. The record does not specify how many volumes
the library comprised. In 1350, a certain Constantine was arrested in Erfurt
as a heretic. Special efforts were made to save him from death or
banishment on the ground that he was a skilled scribe. The record does not
appear to show whether or not this plea was successful.
Conrad de Mure speaks of women working as scribes during the latter
part of the thirteenth century. It is probable that these women were nuns, but
it is not so specified. In the Histoire de l’Imprimerie[38] reference is made to
a woman who appears to have acted as an independent scribe—that is to
say, not to have been attached to the university or to the guild of
booksellers.
On the tax list of Paris, in 1292, are recorded twenty-four escrivains.[39]
It is probable that the actual number was much greater, as the scribes who
were ecclesiastics were exempt from taxation, and their names, therefore,
would not have appeared upon the list.
In 1460, a certain Ducret, clerc à Dijon, received from the Duke for his
work as scribe, a groschen for each sheet, which is referred to as the prix
accoustumé.[40]
In 1401, Peter of Bacharach, described as a citizen of Mainz, wrote out
for the Court at Eltville (Elfeld) a Schwabenspiegel. This is to be noted
because it is an example of scribe work being done by one who was not a
cleric. Burkard Zink tells us that in 1420, being in Augsburg, he took unto

himself a wife. She had nothing and he had nothing, but she earned money
with her spinning-wheel and he with his pen. In the first week he wrote vier
sextern des grossen papiers, karta regal, and the ecclesiastics for whom the
work was being done were so well pleased with it that they gave him for
two sexterns four groschen. His week’s work brought him sixteen groschen,
or forty cents.[41] Clara Hatzlern, a citizen of Augsburg, is recorded as
having written for money between the years 1452 and 1476. A copy of a
Schwabenspiegel transcribed by her was contained in the collection at
Lambach.[42]
The examples named indicate what was, in any case, probably the only
class of scribe work done outside of the monasteries and outside of the
universities or before the university period, by the few laymen who were
able to write. Their labour was devoted exclusively to the production of
books in the tongue of the people; if work in Latin were required, it was
still necessary (at least until the institution in the thirteenth century of
university scribes) to apply to the monasteries. With the development of
literature in Italy, during the following century, there came many complaints
concerning the lack of educated scribes competent to manifold the works.
These complaints, as well as to the lack of writers as concerning the
ignorance and carelessness shown in their work, continued as late as the
time of the Humanists, and are repeated by Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Terms Used for Scribe-Work.—With the Greeks, the term
γραμματεύς denoted frequently a “magistrate.” The term ταχυγράφοι
corresponded as nearly as might be with our “stenographer.” For this the
Romans used the form notarius. The scribes whose work was devoted to
books were called, under the later empire, bibliographoi or καλλιγράφοι.
The name καλλιγράφος was applied to the Emperor, Theodosius II.
Montfaucon gives a list of the names of the Greek scribes who were known
to him.[43] The oldest dates from 759, and the next in order from 890 a.d.
The oldest Plato manuscript in the Bodleian library was written in 896 for
the Diaconus Arethas of Patras. Arethas was, later, Archbishop of Cæsarea,
and had also had written for him a Euclid, and in 914 a group of theological
works. His scribes were the calligraph John, a cleric named Stephen, and a
notarius whose name is not given.[44]

The terms librarius, scriptor, and antiquarius were also used for scribes
making copies of books, while notarius was more likely to denote a clerk
whose work was limited to the preparation of documents. Alcuin speaks of
employing notarii.
In the inscription in a manuscript by Engelberg of the twelfth century, we
find the lines: Hic Augustini liber est atque Frowini; alter dictavit, alter
scribendo notavit.[45] This indicates that Augustine was the author, while
Frowin served as scribe. A manuscript of the sixth century, contained in the
Chapter-House library in Verona, bears the signature Antiquarius Eulalius.
A manuscript of Orosius, written in the seventh century, is inscribed:
Confectus codex in statione Viliaric Antiquarii. (A codex completed in the
writing-stall of Viliaric the scribe.) This scribe was probably a Goth, as
among the signatures in a Ravenna document, containing the list of the
clerics of the Gothic Church, occurs the name Viljaric bokareis.[46] Otto von
Freising says of his notarius, Ragewin: Qui hanc historiam ex ore nostro
subnotavit (who wrote down this story from my lips); and Gunther, in 1212,
complains of a headache which he had brought upon himself ut verba
inventa notario vix possim exprimere, that is in the attempt to shape the
words that he was dictating to his clerks. It was in Italy that the notarii first
became of sufficient importance to organise themselves into a profession
and to undertake the training, for other work, of young scribes, and it was
from Italy that the scribes were gradually distributed throughout Europe.
Their most important employment for some time in Italy was in connection
with the work of the Church, and particularly in the preparation and
manifolding of the documents sent out from Rome. The special script that
was adopted for the work of the Papal office was known as scripta notaria.
[47]

According to Wattenbach, the use of papyrus for the documents of the
Church, and even for the Papal Bulls, extended as late as the tenth century.
Sickel speaks of a Bull of Benedict VIII., of 1022, as the latest known to
him which is written on papyrus.
The term chartularii, or cartularii, was applied to clerics originally
trained for the work of the Church, but who occasionally devoted
themselves also to the manifolding of books. In the memoir of Arnest, who
was the first Archbishop of Prague, it was related that he always kept three

cartularii at work in the transcribing of books. In the twelfth century,
Ordericus speaks of the monks who write books both as antiquarii and as
librarii.[48] Richard de Bury uses the term in describing the renewal of old
manuscripts, and restricts it to scribes who possessed scholarly and critical
knowledge. Petrarch makes a similar application.[49] The term dictare was,
during the Middle Ages, usually employed to describe the author’s work in
composing, or in composing and writing with his own hand, and bears but
seldom the meaning of “dictate.” The proper rendering would be more
nearly our word “indite.”
The term used during the earlier Middle Ages to denote the Scriptures
was not Biblia, but Bibliotheca. According to Maitland, the latter term has
its origin with S. Jerome, who, in offering to lend books to his
correspondent Florentius, writes: ... et quoniam largiente Domino, multis
sacræ bibliothecæ codicibus abundamus, etc.[50] (And since by the grace of
God, we possess a great many codices of the sacred writings.)
In nearly every instance in which reference is made to the complete
collection of the Scriptures, the term used is Bibliotheca integra, or
Bibliotheca tota. It was evidently the case that for centuries after the
acceptance of the Canon, the several divisions or books of which the Bible
consists were still frequently considered in the light of separate and
independent works, and were transcribed and circulated separately.
S. Columba, the Apostle to Caledonia.—One of the earliest of the
monks of the North of Europe whose life was associated with scholarship
and intellectual influence, was S. Columba, the Apostle to Caledonia,
whose life covered the term between the years 521 and 597. Columba
belongs to the list of Irish saints, although the larger portion of his life’s
work was done in Scotland. Before he had reached the age of twenty-five,
he had presided over the foundation of no less than twenty-seven
monasteries in Ireland, the oldest of which were Darrow and Derry; the
latter, having long been the seat of a great Catholic bishopric, became,
under its modern name of Londonderry, the bulwark of the Protestant
contest against the efforts of the last of the Stuart kings.
The texts have been preserved of a number of songs ascribed to
Columba, and, whether or not these verses were really the work of the
monk, the tradition that he was the first of the Irish poets doubtless has

foundation. In the time of Columba, the Irish monasteries already possessed
texts in greater quantity than could be found in the monasteries of Scotland
or England, but even in Ireland manuscripts were rare and costly, and were
preserved with jealous care in the monastic libraries. Not only was very
great value put upon these volumes, but they were even supposed to possess
the emotions and the passions of living beings. Columba was himself a
collector of manuscripts, and his biography by O’Donnell attributes to him
the laborious feat of having transcribed with his own hand three hundred
copies of the Psalter. According to one of the stories, Columba journeyed to
Ossory in the south-west to visit a holy and very learned recluse, a doctor of
laws and philosophy, named Longarad. Columba asked leave to examine
the doctor’s books, and when the old man refused, the monk burst out in an
imprecation: “May thy books no longer do thee any good, neither to them
who come after thee, since thou takest occasion by them to show thine
inhospitality.” The curse was heard, and after Longarad died, his books
became unintelligible. An author of the ninth century says that the books
still existed, but that no man could read them.[51]
Another story speaks of Columba’s undertaking, while visiting his
ancient master Finnian, to make a clandestine and hurried copy of the
abbot’s Psalter. He shut himself up at night in the church where the Psalter
was deposited, and the light needed for his nocturnal work radiated from his
left hand while he wrote with the right. A curious wanderer, passing the
church, was attracted by the singular light, and looked in through the
keyhole, and while his face was pressed against the door his eye was
suddenly torn out by a crane which was roosting in the church. The
wanderer went with his story to the abbot, and Finnian, indignant at what he
considered to be a theft, claimed from Columba the copy which the monk
had prepared, contending that a copy made without permission ought to
belong to the owner of the original, on the ground that the transcript is the
offspring of the original work. As far as I have been able to ascertain, this is
the first instance which occurs in the history of European literature of a
contention for copyright. Columba refused to give up his manuscript, and
the question was referred to King Diarmid, or Dermott, in the palace at
Tara. The King’s judgment was given in a rustic phrase which has passed
into a proverb in Ireland: “To every cow her calf [le gach boin a boinin],
and consequently to every book its copy.”[52]

Columba protested loudly, and threatened the King with vengeance. He
retired to his own province chanting the song of trust, the text of which has
been preserved and which is sacred as one of the most authentic relics of
the ancient Irish tongue. He succeeded in arousing against the King the
great and powerful clans of his relatives and friends, and after a fierce
struggle the King was overcome and was obliged to take refuge at Tara.
The manuscript which had been the object of this strange conflict of
copyright, a conflict which developed into a civil war, was afterwards
venerated as a kind of national military and religious palladium. Under the
name of Cathac, or “the fighter,” the Latin Psalter said to have been
transcribed by Columba was enshrined in the base of a portable altar as the
national relic of the O’Donnell clan. It was preserved for 1300 years in the
O’Donnell family, and as late as 1867, belonged to a baronet of that name,
who placed it on exhibition in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.
O’Curry prints a fac-simile of a fragment of the manuscript, which he
believes to be in the hand-writing of S. Columba, and O’Curry and Reeves
are in accord in the opinion that the famous copy of the Gospels known as
the “Book of Kells” is also the work of the poet monk.[53]
After the successful issue of his contest with Finnian, S. Columba
journeyed through the land, making a kind of expiatory pilgrimage for the
purpose of atoning for the bloodshed of which he had been the cause. He
went for counsel to his soul-friend or confessor, S. Laisren. The saint bade
him as a penance leave Ireland and go and win souls for Christ, as many as
the lives that had been lost in the battle of Culdreimhne, and never again
look upon his native land. He finally took up his abode in the desolate little
island of Iona, on the coast of Scotland. Other refugees were attracted to the
island by the fame of the saint, and there finally came into existence on the
barren rocks a great monastery which for centuries exercised throughout
Britain and North Europe a wide-spread influence in behalf of higher
Christianity and of intellectual life.
From Iona and its associated monasteries of Ireland and Scotland came
scholarly teachers to France and Germany whose influence was important
in giving a new direction to the work of later generations of monks. Among
the Continental monasteries in which was developed through such influence
a higher range of scholarly activity, were Luxeuil (in the Vosges
Mountains), Corbie (on the Somme), Bobbio (in Lombardy), and St. Gall

(in Switzerland). Wattenbach says that, notwithstanding their scholarly
knowledge, these Scotch monks were wild and careless in their
orthography. As an example of the barbarity of style and of form, he quotes
a manuscript of the date of 750 (written during the rule of Pepin).
A number of years later, when, through the monks of Iona and under the
general direction of S. Columba, a number of monasteries had been founded
throughout Scotland, Columba had occasion to plead before the Parliament
of Drumceitt in behalf of the Bards, who might be called the authors of their
time, and with whom the poet monk had a keen personal sympathy. The
Bards of Ireland and Britain were at once the poets, the genealogists, the
historians, and the musicians of their countries, and their position and their
influence constituted a very characteristic feature of Celtic life in the
centuries between 500 and 800.
The Irish nation, always enamoured of its traditions, its fabulous
antiquity, and its local glories, regarded with ardent sympathy the men who
could clothe in a poetic dress all the law and the superstitions of the past,
and who could give literary form and force to the passions and the interests
of the present. The Bards were divided into three orders: The Fileas, who
sang of religion and war; the Brehons, whose name is associated with the
ancient laws of the country which they versified and recited; and the
Seanachies, who enshrined in verse the national history and antiquities, and,
above all, the genealogies and the prerogatives of the ancient families who
were regarded as especially representative of the national and warlike
passions of the Irish people.[54]
The great influence and power enjoyed by the Bards had naturally
produced not a few abuses, and at the time of the Parliament of Drumceitt
their popularity had suffered and a violent opposition had been raised
against them. They were charged with insolence and with greed, and they
were particularly censured for having made a traffic and a trade of their
poetry, a charge which recalls some of the criticisms of classic times.
The enmities raised against them had gathered so much force that King
Aedh found himself compelled to propose to the Assembly of Drumceitt the
abolition of the Order and the abandonment, or, as one authority suggests,
the massacre of the Bards. It would appear as if Ireland had been suffering
from an excess of poetic utterances and felt that some revolutionary

methods were required in order to restore to the land quiet and peace.
Montalembert is of opinion that the clergy did not take any part in the
prosecution of a class which they might, not unnaturally, have regarded as
their rivals. The Bards had, however, for the most part kept in friendly
relations with the bishops, monks, and saints, and each monastery, like each
prince and lord, possessed a Bard (who in later years became an annalist)
whose chief office it was to sing the glory and record the history of the
community.
Nevertheless, the Bards were certainly, as a body, a residuum of the
paganism that had been so recently supplanted, and it is probable that the
Church, if not joining in the onslaught upon their body, was not prepared to
take any active part in their defence. It seems as if the decision of the
Assembly, under the influence of King Aedh, would certainly have been
adverse to the poets. It was Columba, the poet monk, who saved them. He,
who was born a poet and who, to the last day of his life, remained a poet,
interceded for the Bards with such eloquence and earnestness that his plea
had to be listened to. He claimed that the general exile of the poets would
be the death of a venerated antiquity and of a literature which was a part of
the country’s life. “The bright corn must not be burned,” he said, “because
of the weeds that mingled with it.”[55] Influenced by his impassioned plea,
the Assembly yielded at length, under the condition that the number of
Bards should be henceforth limited and that the Order should be placed
under certain rules to be framed by Columba himself. Thus poetry was to
continue to exist, but it was not to be allowed to oppress the community
with its redundance.
It is doubtless the case that one reason for the exceptional fame of
Columba and the large amount of legendary detail that has been preserved
of his achievements, was this great service that he had rendered to the poets
of his time. They showed their gratitude by exalting his glory in numberless
songs and recitals, and it is chiefly from these that has been made up the
narrative of the saint’s life. Another result of this intervention on the part of
the monk for the protection of the poets was a still closer association
between the Church and the literary spirit of the age. All antagonism
between the religious ideal and the influence of the poetry of the Bards
seems from this time to have disappeared. The songs of the Bards were no
longer in any measure devoted to the cause of paganism, but music and

poetry became closely identified with the ideals of the Church and with the
work of the monasteries. The Church had preserved the poets, and poetry
became the faithful handmaid of the Church.
Nuns as Scribes.—One of the oldest rules relating to convents, that of
S. Cæsarius of Arles, instituted in the fifth century and brought a hundred
years later to Poitiers by S. Radegonde, required that all the sisters should
be able to read and that they should devote two hours a day to study—
Omnes bonæ litteras discant, etc.[56]
While the educational work in the convent schools was for the most part
not carried on beyond what might be called elementary classes, there were
not a few examples of abbesses whose scholastic attainments would rival
those of the abbots. Montalembert speaks of convents founded, under the
auspices of S. Jerome, by S. Paula and her daughter, and is not prepared to
admit that in any essential detail the history of S. Paula is legendary. He
reminds us that Hebrew and Greek were the daily study of these two
admirable women, who advised S. Jerome in all his difficulties and cheered
him under all discouragements.[57] Montalembert is probably on firmer
ground when he speaks of the scholarly attainments of S. Aura, the friend of
S. Eloi, and of the nun Bertile, whose learned lectures on Holy Scripture
drew to Chelles in the sixth century a large concourse of auditors of both
sexes. S. Radegonde, known by her profound studies of the three Fathers, S.
Gregory, S. Basle, and S. Athanasius, is commemorated by Fortunatus, as is
also Gertrude, Abbess of Nivelle, who sent messengers to Rome and to
Ireland to buy books.[58] I do not find a record of the date of these book-
buying expeditions of the abbess.
In Germany, the list of the learned nuns includes S. Lioba, who was said
to be so eager for knowledge that she never left her books except for divine
service. She was a pupil of S. Boniface, and to her was due the framing of
the system of instruction instituted after the mission of S. Boniface in North
Germany. Hroswitha, the illustrious nun of Gandersheim (who died in 997),
has been referred to more than once. Hroswitha’s dramatic poetry has been
preserved for nearly eight centuries, and has had the honour of being
reprinted as late as 1857. Her writings included a history in verse of Otho
the Great, and the lives of several saints. Her most important works,
however, were sacred dramas composed by her to be acted by the nuns of

the convent. M. Magin points out that these dramas show an intimate
acquaintance with the authors of classic antiquity.[59] Curiously enough,
there was, nearly a century earlier, another Hroswitha in Gandersheim, who
was the daughter of the Duke of Saxony, and who became the fourth abbess
of the convent. She composed a much esteemed treatise on logic.[60]
Cecilia, daughter of William the Conqueror, who was Abbess of Kucaen,
won fame for her school in grammar, philosophy, and in poetry. Herrad of
Landsberg, who governed forty-six noble nuns at Mont St. Odile in Alsace,
composed, under the name of Hortus Delictarum, a sort of cosmology,
which is recorded as the first attempt at a scientific encyclopædia, and
which is noted for the breadth of its ideas on painting, philosophy,
mythology, and history. This was issued shortly after the death of William
the Conqueror.[61] To the Abbess of Eichstadt, who died about 1120,
Germany is indebted for the preservation of the Heldenbuch, a treasury of
heroic stories.[62]
The principal and most constant occupation of the learned Benedictine
nuns was the transcription of manuscripts. It is difficult to estimate too
highly the extent of the services rendered by these feminine hands to
learning and to history throughout the Middle Ages. They brought to the
work a dexterity, an elegance of attainment, and an assiduity which the
monks themselves could not attain, and some of the most beautiful
specimens of caligraphy which have been preserved from the Middle Ages
are the work of the nuns. The devotion of nuns as scribes began indeed with
the early ages of Christian times. Eusebius speaks of young maidens whom
the learned men of his time employed as copyists.[63] In the fifth century, S.
Melania the younger distinguished herself by the beauty and exactness of
her transcripts.[64] In the sixth century, the nuns of the convent at Arles,
incited by the example of the Abbess of St. Césaire, acquired a no less
brilliant reputation. In the seventh century, S. Gertrude, who was learned in
the Holy Scriptures, sent to Rome to ask not only for works of the highest
Christian poetry, but also for teachers capable of instructing her nuns to
comprehend certain allegories.[65] In the eighth century, S. Boniface begged
the abbess to write out for him in golden letters the Epistle of S. Peter.
Cæsarius of Arles gave instructions that in the convents which had been
founded by him and the supervision of which rested with his sister, the

“Virgins of Christ” should give their time between their prayers and psalms
to the reading and to the writing of holy works.[66] In the eighth century the
nuns of Maseyk, in Holland, busied themselves in a similar fashion, not
only in writing, but particularly in illuminating (etiam scribendo atque
pingendo), in which they became proficients.[67]
In the ninth century, the Benedictine nuns of Eck on the Meuse, and
especially the two abbesses Harlinde and Renilde, attained great celebrity
by their caligraphic work and by the beauty of the illuminated designs used
in their manuscripts.[68] In the time of S. Gregory VII., a nun at
Wessobrunn, in Bavaria, named Diemude, undertook to transcribe a series
of important works, the mere enumeration of which would startle modern
readers. These works formed, as we read in the saint’s epitaph, a whole
library, which she offered as a tribute to S. Peter. The production of this
library still left time for Diemude to carry on with Herluca, a nun of the
neighbouring convent of Eppach, a correspondence remarkable as well for
its grace of expression as for its spiritual insight.[69] A list of her transcripts
is given in the section on the scriptorium.
Among other convent scribes is recorded the name of the nun Gita, in
Schwarzenthau, who made transcripts, about 1175, of the writings of her
abbot, Irimbert. In Mallesdorf, at about the same time, a nun of Scottish
parents, named Leukardis, who understood Greek, Latin, and German, was
active in the scriptorium, and her work excited so much admiration that the
monk Laiupold, himself a famous scribe, instituted in her memory an
anniversarium.[70]
Brother Idung sent his dialogues concerning the monks of Clugni and the
Cistercians to the nuns of Niedermünster, near Regensburg, ut legibiliter
scribatur et diligenter emendetur ab aliquibus sororibus.[71] In the same
century (the twelfth) the names of Gertrude, Sibilia, and other nuns appear
on the transcript of the codex written for the Domini Monasterienses, which
codex came into the library of Arnstein in exchange for a copy of the
Pastorals of Gregory. Johann Gerson, writing in 1423, refers with cordial
approbation to some beautiful copies prepared by the nuns, of the works of
Origen.[72] In St. Gall, where the literary activity of the monks has already
been referred to, the nuns in the convent of S. Catharine were, in the

thirteenth and in the first half of the fourteenth centuries, also engaged in
preparing transcripts of holy books.
Monkish Chroniclers.—In addition to the services rendered by the
monks in the preservation of classic literature, and in addition also to the
great amount of work required of them in the routine of their monastery for
the preparation of books of devotion and instruction, a most valuable task
was performed by many of the monastic scribes in the production of the
records or annals of their times. The work of the literary monks included the
functions not only of scribes, but of librarians, collectors, teachers, and
historians. The records that have come down to us of several centuries of
mediæval European history are due almost exclusively to the labours of the
monastic chroniclers. Even those who did not compose books which can
properly be described as historical, have left in their cartularies documents
by the help of which the archæologists can to-day solve the most important
problems relating to the social, civil, domestic, and agricultural life of their
ancestors. The cartularies, says M. C. Giraud, were the most curious
monuments of the history of the time.[73]
Without the monks, says Marsham (a Protestant writer), we should have
been as ignorant of our history as children.[74] England, converted by her
monks, has special reason to be proud of the historians furnished by her
abbeys.[75] One chronicler, Gildas, has painted with fiery touches the
miseries of Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. To another, the
Venerable Bede, author of the ecclesiastical history of Britain, we owe the
detailed account of the Catholic Renaissance under the Saxons. Bede’s
chronicle extends to the year 731. Its author died four years later. Among
later monkish chroniclers may be mentioned Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland,
whose history extends to 1091; Vitalis, a monk of Shrewsbury, whose
chronicle reached to 1141, and many others. The chronicle of Vitalis gives
an animated picture of the struggle between the Saxons and the Normans,
and of the vicissitudes during this period of the Church of England. Later
monastic historians were: William of Malmesbury (circa 1095-1143),
Geoffrey of Monmouth (circa 1090-1154), Henry of Huntingdon (circa
1120-1180), Roger of Wendover (circa 1169-1237), Matthew Paris (circa
1185-1259), and Ralph Higden (circa 1280-1370). Further reference to the
work of these English chroniclers is made in the chapter on Books in
England during the Manuscript Period. This series of monkish chronicles

presents, says Montalembert, an inexhaustible amount of information as to
the manners, laws, and ideas of the times, and unites with the important
information of history the personal attractiveness of biography.[76]
Among the chroniclers of France are to be noted S. Gregory of Tours; S.
Abbon, of St. Germain des Prés, who wrote the history of the wars of King
Eudes and an account of the sieges of Paris by the Normans; Frodoard, who
died in 968, and who wrote the annals of the tenth century; Richer, whose
history covers the period between 880 and 995; Helgaud, who wrote the life
of King Robert; Aimoin, a monk of Fleury, who died in 1008, and who
wrote a very curious life of S. Abbon and a record of the miracles at Fleury
of S. Bénoît; Chabanais, a monk of St. Cybar in Angoulême, who died in
1028, and whose record reaches to 1025. It has been republished by Pertz in
the fourth volume of the Scriptores. Raoul Glaber, a monk of St. Germain
d’Auxerre, wrote a history of his own time in five books, which covers the
period from the accession of Hugh Capet to 1046. Hugh, Abbot of Flavigny,
wrote with considerable detail the history of the eleventh century. These
various monkish chronicles have served as a basis for the first national and
popular monuments of French history. The famous chronicles of S. Denys,
which were written very early in Latin, were translated into French in the
beginning of the thirteenth century. They contain the essence of the historic
and poetic traditions of old France.
The mediæval history of Italy is in like manner dependent almost entirely
upon the records of the literary monks. The great collection of Muratori is
based upon the monkish chronicles, especially of those of Volturna,
Novalese, Farfa, Casa Aurio, and of Monte Cassino. From the latter abbey,
there sprang a series of distinguished historians: Johannes Diaconus, the
biographer of S. Gregory the Great, who wrote during the reign of
Charlemagne; Paulus Diaconus, the friend of Charlemagne; Leo, Bishop of
Ostia, first author of the famous chronicle of Monte Cassino, and Peter
Diaconus, who continued its chronicle. Another monk of Monte Cassino
recounts the wonderful story of the conquest gained by the Norman chivalry
in the two Sicilies, a story reproduced and completed by the Sicilian monk
Malaterra.
The list of the learned historians in the German monasteries is also an
important one. The German collections of scriptories, such as those of
Eckard, Pez, Leibnitz, and others, present an enormous mass of monastic

chronicles. Among the earlier chroniclers were to be noted Eginard,
Theganus, and Rodolphus of Fulda, who preserved the records of the
dynasty of the Carlovingians. One of the earlier historians of Charlemagne
was a monk of St. Gall, while the chronicles of that abbey, carried on by a
long series of its writers, have left a most valuable and picturesque
representation of successive epochs of its history. Regino, Abbot of Prüm,
wrote a history of the ninth century. Wittikind, a monk of Corvey, wrote the
chronicles of the reign of Henry I., and of Otho the Great. Ditmar, who was
at first a monk of Magdeburg and later Bishop of Mersebourg, has left a
detailed chronicle, extending from 920 to 1018, of the emperors of the
House of Saxony. Among the eleventh-century writers, is Hermannus
Contractus, son of the Count of Woegen, who was brought up at St. Gall but
was later attached to Reichenau. The history of the great struggle between
the Church and the Empire was written by Lambert, a monk of Hersfeld,
and continued by Berthold of Reichenau, Bernold of St. Blaise, and by
Ekkhard, Abbot of Aurach.[77] The first historian of Poland was a French
monk named Martin, while another monk of Polish origin, named Nestor,
who died in 1116, composed the earliest annals of Russia (then newly
converted to Christianity) which were known to Europe. Among the
monkish historians of the eleventh century, the most noteworthy were
William of Malmesbury, Gilbert of Nogent, Abbot Suger, and Odo of Deuil.
The persistent labour given by these monkish chroniclers to works, the
interest and importance of which were largely outside the routine of their
home monasteries and had in many cases no direct connection with
religious observances, indicates that they were looking to a larger circle of
readers than could be secured within the walls of their own homes. While
the evidences concerning the arrangements for the circulation of these
chronicles are at best but scanty, the inference is fairly to be drawn that
through the interchange of books between the libraries of the monasteries,
by means of the services of travelling monks, and in connection with the
educational work of the majority of the monasteries, there came to be, as
early as the ninth century, a very general circulation of the long series of
chronicles among the scholarly readers of Europe. Even the literary style in
which the majority of the chronicles were written gives evidence that the
writers were addressing themselves, not to one locality or to restricted
circles of readers, but to the world as they knew it, and that they also had an
assured confidence in the preservation of their work for the service and

information of future generations. The historian Stenzel (himself a
Protestant) points out that these monkish historians wrote under certain
exceptional advantages which secured for their work a larger amount of
impartiality and of accuracy of statement than could safely be depended
upon with, for instance, what might be called Court chronicles, that is to
say, histories which were the work of writers attached to the Courts. The
monks, said Stenzel, in daring to speak the truth of those in power, had
neither family nor property to endanger, and their writings, prepared under
the eye of their monastic superiors and under the sovereign protection of the
Church, escaped at once the coercion or the influence of contemporary
rulers and the dangers of flattery for immediate popular appreciation.[78] In
the same strain, Montalembert contends that the literary monks worked
neither for gain nor for fame, but simply for the glory of God. They wrote
amidst the peace and freedom of the cloister in all the candour and sincerity
of their minds. Their only ambition was to be faithful interpreters of the
teaching which God gives to men in history by reminding them of the ruin
of the proud, the exaltation of the humble, and the terrible certainty of
eternal judgment. He goes on to say that if princes and nobles never
wearied of founding, endowing, and enriching monasteries, neither did the
monks grow weary of chronicling the services and the exploits of their
benefactors, in order to transmit these to posterity. Thus did they pay to the
Catholic chivalry a just debt of gratitude.[79]
This pious opinion of Montalembert is a little naïve in its expression
when taken in connection with his previous conclusion that the records of
the monks could be trusted implicitly for candour, sincerity, and
impartiality. It is difficult to avoid the impression that in recording the
deeds of the noble leaders of their time, the monks would naturally have
given at least a full measure of attention and praise to those nobles who had
been the greatest benefactors to their Order or to the particular monastery of
the writer. The converse may also not unnaturally be assumed. If a
monarch, prince, or noble leader should be neglectful of the claims of the
monastery within his realm, if there might be ground to suspect the
soundness of his faith to the Catholic Church, or doubt in regard to the
adequacy of his liberality to his ecclesiastical subjects, it is probable that his
exploits in war or in other directions were minimised or unrecorded. It is
safe to assume also that after the Reformation, the Protestant side of the

long series of complicated contests could hardly have been presented by the
monkish chroniclers with perfect impartiality. Bearing in mind, however,
how many personal influences may have operated to impair the accuracy
and the impartiality of these chroniclers, they are certainly entitled to a full
measure of appreciation for the inestimable service rendered by them in the
long ages in which, outside of the monasteries, there were no historians. It
seems also to have been the case that with many of the monks who devoted
the larger portion of their lives to literary work, their ambition and ideals as
authors overshadowed any petty monkish zeal for their Order or their
monastery, and that it was their aim to present the events of their times
simply as faithful historians.
An example of this high standard of work is presented by Ordericus
Vitalis, who, as an English monk in a Norman abbey,[80] was able to say: “I
will describe the revolutions of England and of Normandie without flattery
to any, for I expect my reward neither from the victors nor the
vanquished.”[81]

The Work of the Scriptorium.—The words employed at the
consecration of the scriptorium are evidence of the spirit in which the
devout scholars approached their work: Benedicere digneris, Domine, hoc
scriptorium famulorum tuorum, ut quidquid scriptum fuerit, sensu capiant,
opere perficiant. (Vouchsafe, O Lord, to bless this work-room of Thy
servants, that they may understand and may put in practice all they write.)
[82]

Louis IX. took the ground that it was better to transcribe books than to
purchase the originals, because in this way the mass of books available for
the community was increased. Louis was, however, speaking only of
religious literature; he could not believe that the world would be benefited
by any distribution of the works of profane writers. Ziegelbauer is in accord
with Montalembert and others in giving to the Benedictines of Iceland the
credit for the collections made of the Eddas and for the preservation of the
principal traditions of the Scandinavian mythology. He also confirms the
conclusion arrived at by the Catholic historians generally, that the literary
monuments of Greece and Rome which escaped the devastation of the
barbarians were saved by the monks and by them alone. He cites, as a few

examples from the long list of classics that were thus preserved, five books
of the Annals of Tacitus, found at Corbie; the treatise of Lactantius on the
Death of Persecutors, preserved at Moissac; the Auluraria of Plautus, and
the Commentaries of Servius on Virgil, preserved in Fleury; the Republic of
Cicero, found in the library of Fleury in the tenth century, etc.[83]
In confirmation of the statement that the classics were by no means
neglected by the earlier monastery collectors, Montalembert cites Alcuin,
who enumerated among the books in his library at York the works of
Aristotle, Cicero, Pliny, Virgil, Statius, Lucan, and Trogus Pompeïus. A
further reference to this library will be found in the chapter on the
Monastery Schools. In Alcuin’s correspondence with Charlemagne, he
quotes Ovid, Horace, Terence, and Cicero, and acknowledges that in his
youth he had been more moved by the tears of Dido than by the Psalms of
David.[84] Loup de Ferrières speaks of having borrowed from his friends the
treatise De Oratore of Cicero, a Commentary on Terence, the works of
Quintilian, Sallust, and Suetonius. He says further that he was occupying
himself in correcting the text of the oration of Cicero against Verres, and
that of Macrobius.[85] Abbot Didier of Monte Cassino, who later became
Pope, succeeding Gregory VII., had transcripts made by his monks of the
works of Horace and Seneca, of several treatises of Cicero, and of the Fasti
of Ovid.[86] S. Anselm, Abbot of Bec in the time of Gregory VII.,
recommends to his pupils the careful study of Virgil and of other profane
writers, “omitting the licentious passages.” Exceptis his in quibus aliqua
turpitudo sonat.[87] It is not clear what method the abbot proposed to have
pursued in regard to the selection of the passages to be eliminated. It is
hardly probable that at this time there had been prepared, either for the use
of the monks or of any other readers, anything in the form of expurgated
editions. S. Peter Damian seems to have expressed the true mind of an
important group at least of the churchmen of his time, when he referred to
the study of pagan writers. He says: “To study poets and philosophers for
the purpose of rendering the wit more keen and better fitted to penetrate the
mysteries of the Divine Word, is to spoil the Egyptians of their treasures in
order to build a tabernacle for God.[88]”
Montalembert is of opinion, from his study of monastic history in France,
that, at least during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, classic writers were

probably more generally known and more generally appreciated than at the
present day. He points out that the very fact of the existence of various
ordinances and instructions intended to repress any intemperate devotion to
the pagan writers is sufficient evidence of the extent of the interest in or
passion for pagan literature. He cites among other rulers of the Church who
issued protests or cautions against pagan literature, S. Basil, S. Jerome, S.
Gregory, S. Radbert, S. Peter Damian, Lanfranc, etc., etc.[89] In the Customs
of Clugni, there is a curious passage prescribing the different signs that
were to be used in asking for books during the hours of silence, which
indicates at once the frequency of these pagan studies, and also the grade of
esteem in which they ought to be held by the faithful monk. The general
rule, when asking for any book, was to extend the hand, making motions
similar to those of turning over the leaves. In order, however, to indicate a
pagan work, a monk was directed to scratch his ear as a dog does, because,
says the regulation, unbelievers may well be compared to that animal.[90]
As before indicated, the work of transcribing manuscripts was held under
the monastic rules to be a full equivalent of manual labour in the fields. The
Rule of S. Ferreol, written in the sixth century, says that, “He who does not
turn up the earth with the plough ought to write the parchment with his
fingers.”[91] It is quite possible that for men of the Middle Ages, who had
little fondness for a sedentary life, work in the scriptorium may have been a
more exacting task than work that could be carried on out-of-doors. There
were no fires in the cells of the monks, and in many portions of Europe the
cold during certain months of the year must, in the long hours of the day
and night, have been severe. Montalembert quotes a monk of St. Gall who,
on a corner of one of the beautiful manuscripts prepared in that abbey, has
left the words: “He who does not know how to write imagines it to be no
labour, but although these fingers only hold the pen, the whole body grows
weary.” It became, therefore, natural enough to use this kind of labour as a
penitential exercise.[92] Othlo, a monk of Tegernsee, who was born in 1013,
has left an enumeration of the work of his pen which makes it difficult to
understand how years enough had been found for such labour. The list
includes nineteen missals, written and illuminated with his own hand, the
production of which, he tells us, nearly cost him his eyesight.[93]
Dietrich or Theodoric, the first Abbot of St. Evroul (1050-1057), who
was himself a skilled scribe (Ipse manu propria scribendo volumina plura),

and who desired to incite his monks to earnest work as writers, related to
them the story of a worldly and sinful Brother, who, notwithstanding his
frivolities, was a zealous scribe, and who had, in industrious moments,
written out an enormous folio volume containing religious instruction.
When he died, the devil claimed his soul. The angels, however, brought
before the throne of judgment the great book, and for each letter therein
written, pardon was given for one sin, and behold, when the count was
completed, there was one letter over; and, says Dietrich naïvely, it was a
very big book. Thereupon, judgment was given that the soul of the monk
should be permitted again to enter his body, in order that he might go
through a period of penance on earth.[94]
In the monastery of Wedinghausen, near Arnsberg in Westphalia, there
was a skilled and zealous scribe named Richard, an Englishman, who spent
many years in adding to the library of the institution. Twenty years after his
death, when the rest of his body had crumbled into dust, the right hand, with
which this holy work had been accomplished, was found intact, and has
since been preserved under the altar as a holy relic.[95]
There has been more or less discussion as to whether in the scriptoria, it
was the practice for monks to write at dictation. Knittel[96] takes the ground
that the larger portion of the work was done so slowly, and probably with
such a different degree of rapidity on the part of the different scribes, that it
would have been as impracticable for it to have been prepared under
dictation as it would be to do copper engraving under dictation. Ebert,[97]
confirming Knittel’s conclusions, points out that when works were needed
in haste, it was probably arranged to divide up the sheets to be copied
among a number of scribes. He finds evidence of this arrangement of the
work in a number of manuscripts, the different portions of which, put
together under one cover, are evidently the work of different hands.
Wattenbach specifies manuscripts in which not only are the different pages
in different script, but the divisions have been written with varying
arrangements of space; in some cases the space, which had been left for an
interpolated chapter having evidently been wrongly measured, so that the
script of such interpolated chapter had to be crowded together instead of
having the same spacing as that of the body of the work. Sickel presents
examples of the letters of Alcuin which are evidently the work of a number
of scribes. Each began his work with a new letter, and where, at the end of

the divisions, leaves remained free, other letters were later written in. In the
later Middle Ages, however, there is evidence of writing at dictation, and
this practice began to obtain more generally as the results of the work of the
scribes came to have commercial value. When the work of preparing
manuscripts was transferred from the monasteries to the universities,
dictation became the rule, and individual copying the exception. West finds
evidence that as early as the time of Alcuin, the monks trained by him or in
his schools, wrote from dictation. “In the intervals between the hours of
prayer and the observance of the round of cloister life, come hours for the
copying of books under the presiding direction of Alcuin. The young monks
file into the scriptorium and one of them is given the precious parchment
volume containing a work of Bede or Isidore or Augustine, or else some
portion of the Latin Scriptures, or even a heathen author. He reads slowly
and clearly at a measured rate while all the others, seated at their desks, take
down his words; thus perhaps a score of copies are made at once. Alcuin’s
observant eye watches each in turn and his correcting hand points out the
mistakes in orthography and punctuation. The master of Charles the Great,
in that true humility that is the charm of his whole behaviour, makes
himself the writing-master of his monks, stooping to the drudgery of
faithfully and gently correcting many puerile mistakes, and all for the love
of studies and for the love of Christ. Under such guidance and deeply
impressed by the fact that in the copying of a few books they were saving
learning and knowledge from perishing, and thereby offering a service most
acceptable to God, the copying in the scriptorium went on in sobriety from
day to day. Thus were produced those improved copies of books which
mark the beginning of a new age in the conserving and transmission of
learning. Alcuin’s anxiety in this regard was not undue, for the few
monasteries where books could be accurately transcribed were as necessary
for publication in that time as are the great publishing houses to-day.”[98]
Among the monasteries which, as early as the time of Charlemagne,
developed special literary activity, was that of S. Wandrille, where the
Abbot Gerwold (786-806) instituted one of the earlier schools of the
empire. A priest named Harduin took charge of this school. He was said to
be in hac arte non mediocriter doctus. It was further stated that, plurima
ecclesiæ nostræ proprio sudore conscripta reliquit volumina, id est volumen
quatuor evangeliorum Romana litera scriptum.[99] (He had left for one

church many books written by the sweat of his brow, that is to say, a
volume of the four Evangelists written in the “Roman letter.”) This
expression, litera Romana, occurs frequently in the monastery chronicles
and appears to indicate the uncial script. The scriptorium of St. Gall, in
which was done some of the most elaborate or important of the earlier
literary work of the monks, is frequently referred to in the chronicles of the
monasteries. Another important scriptorium was that in the monastery of
Tournai, which, under the rule of the Abbot Odo, won for itself great fame,
so that its manuscripts were sought by the Fathers of the Church far and
wide, for the purpose of correcting by them copies with less scholarly
authority.[100]
The work of the scribes was not always voluntary; there is evidence that
it was not unfrequently imposed as a penance. In a codex from Lorch[101]
occur after the words, Jacob scripsit, written in by another hand, the lines:
Quandam partem hujus libri non spontanea voluntate, sed coactus,
compedibus constrictus sicut oportet vagum atque fugitivum vincire.[102]
(Jacob wrote ... a certain portion of this book not of his own free will but
under compulsion, bound by fetters, just as a runaway and fugitive has to be
bound.)
The aid of the students in the monastery schools was not unfrequently
called in. Fromund of Tegernsee wrote under a codex: Cœpi hunc libellum,
sed pueri nostri quos docui, meo juvamine perscripserunt.[103] (I began this
book, but the students whom I taught, finished transcribing it with my help.)
The monk who was placed in charge of the armarium was called the
armarius, and upon him fell the responsibility of providing the writing
materials, of dividing the work, and probably also of preserving silence
while the work was going on, and of reprimanding the writers of careless or
inaccurate script. In some monasteries the armarius must also have been the
librarian, and, in fact, as much of the work done in the writing-room was for
the filling up of the gaps in the library, it would be natural enough for the
librarian to have the planning of it. It was also the librarian, who, being in
correspondence with the custodians of the libraries of other monasteries,
was best able to judge what work would prove of service in securing new
books in exchange for duplicates of those in his own monastery. Upon the
librarius or armarius, or both, fell the responsibility of securing the loans of

the codices of which copies were to be made. On such loans it was usually
necessary to give security in the shape of pledges either of other
manuscripts or of property apart from manuscripts.
The scribes were absolved from certain of the routine of the monastery
work. They were called into the fields or gardens only at the time of
harvest, or in case of special need. They had also the privilege of visiting
the kitchen, in order to polish their writing tablets, to melt their wax, and to
dry their parchment.[104]
The custom of reading at meals, while a part of the usual monastic
routine, was by no means confined to the monasteries. References to the use
of books at the tables of the more scholarly noblemen are found as early as
the time of Charlemagne. Eginhart records that Charlemagne himself while
at supper was accustomed to listen to histories and the deeds of ancient
kings. He delighted also in the books of S. Augustine and especially in the
Civitate Dei.[105]
In England, after the Norman conquest, there was for a time a cessation
of literary work in the Saxon monasteries. The Norman ecclesiastics,
however, in taking possession of certain of the older monasteries and
instituting also new monasteries of their own, carried on the production of
manuscripts with no less zeal. One of the most important centres of literary
activity in England was the monastery of St. Albans, where the Abbot Paul
secured, about the year 1100, funds for instituting a scriptorium, and
induced some wealthy friends to present some valuable codices for the first
work of the scribes. As the monks at that time in St. Albans were not
themselves skilled in writing, Paul brought scribes from a distance, and,
through the liberality of his friends, secured funds by which they were paid
daily wages, and were able to work undisturbed. It would appear from this
description that some at least among these scribes were not themselves
monks.
In the thirteenth century, Matthew Paris compiled his chronicles, the
writing in which appears to have been, for the greater part at least, done by
his own hand, but at this time, in a large proportion of the literary work
carried on in the English monasteries, the transcribing was done by paid
scribes. This, however, was much less the case in the Continental
monasteries. In Corbie, towards the latter half of the century, there is a

record of zealous writing on the part of a certain Brother Nevelo. Nevelo
tells us that he had a penance to work off for a grave sin, and that he was
allowed to do this by work in the scriptorium.[106] During this century, the
monasteries of the Carthusians were particularly active in their literary
work, but this work was limited almost entirely to theological and religious
undertakings. An exception is presented in the chronicles of the Frisian
monk Emo. While Emo was still a school-boy, he gave the hours which his
companions employed in play, to mastering penmanship and the art of
illuminating. Later, he was, with his brother Addo, a student in the schools
in Paris, Orleans, and Oxford, and while in these schools, in addition to
their work as students, they gave long hours of labour, extending sometimes
through the entire night, to the transcribing of chronicles and to the
preparation of copies of the so-called heathen literature.
Emo was the first abbot of the monastery in Wittewierum (1204-1237),
and it is recorded that the abbot, while his brothers were sleeping, devoted
his nights to the writing and illuminating of the choir books. In this
monastery, Emo succeeded in bringing together in the armarium librorum
an important collection of manuscripts, and he took pains himself to give
instructions to the monks in their work as scribes.
The quaint monastic record entitled the Customs of Clugni was written by
Ulrich, a monk of Clugni, some time between the years 1077 and 1093 at
the request or under the instructions of William, Abbot of Hirschau. This
was the Abbot William extolled by Trithemius as having restored the Order
of S. Benedict, which had almost fallen into ruin in Germany. Trithemius
speaks of his having founded eight monasteries and restored more than one
hundred, and says that next to the reformation wrought by the foundation
and influence of Clugni, the work done by Abbot William was the most
important recorded in the annals of his Order.
William trained twelve of his monks to be excellent writers, and to these
was committed the office of transcribing the Holy Scriptures and the
treatises of the Fathers. Besides these, there were in the scriptorium of
Hirschau a large number of lesser scribes, who wrought with equal
diligence in the transcription of other books. In charge of the scriptorium
was placed a monk “well versed in all kinds of knowledge,” whose business
it was to assign the task for each scribe and to correct the mistakes of those
who wrote negligently. William was Abbot of Hirschau for twenty-two

years, and during this time his monks wrote a great many volumes, a large
proportion of which were distributed to supply the wants of other and more
needy monasteries.
There was often difficulty, particularly in the less wealthy monasteries, in
securing the parchment required for their work. It is evident from such
account-books as have been preserved, that throughout the whole of
Europe, but particularly in the north of the Continent and in England,
parchment continued to be a very costly commodity until quite late in the
thirteenth century. It was not unnatural that, as a result of this difficulty, the
monastic scribes should, when pressed for material, have occasionally
utilised some old manuscript by cleaning off the surface, for the purpose of
making a transcript of the Scriptures, of some saintly legend, or of any other
religious work the writing of which came within the range of their daily
duty.
There has been much mourning on the part of the scholars over the
supposed value of precious classics which may thus have been destroyed, or
of which but scanty fragments have been preserved in the lower stratum of
the palimpsest. Robertson is particularly severe upon the ignorant
clumsiness of the monks in thus destroying, for the sake of futile legends,
so much of the great literature of the world. Among other authors,
Robertson quotes in this connection Montfaucon as saying that the greater
part of the manuscripts on parchment which he had seen (those of an
ancient date excepted), are written on parchment from which some former
treatise had been erased. Maitland, who is of opinion that the destruction of
ancient literature brought about by the monks has been much overestimated,
points out that Robertson has not quoted Montfaucon correctly, the
statement of the latter being expressly limited to manuscripts written since
the “twelfth century.” It is Maitland’s belief that a large proportion of the
palimpsests or doubly written manuscripts which bear date during the
twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries, represent, as far as they are
monastic at all, not monastery writings placed upon classic texts, but
monastery work replacing earlier works of the monastery scriptoria. Partial
confirmation of this view is the fact that so large an interest was taken by
monks in all parts of Europe in the preservation and transcribing of such
classical works as came into their hands. In fact, as previously pointed out,
the preservation of any fragments whatsoever of classical literature is due to

the intelligent care of the monks. To the world outside of the monastery, the
old-time manuscripts were, with hardly an exception, little more than dirty
parchments.
It seems probable that a great part of such scraping of old manuscripts as
was done was not due to the requirements of the legends or missals, but was
perpetrated in order to carry on the worldly business of secular men. An
indication of the considerable use of parchment for business purposes, and
of instances of what we should to-day call its abuse, is the fact that, as late
as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, notaries were forbidden to practise
until they had taken an oath to use none but new parchment.[107]
The belief that the transcribing of good books was in itself a protection
against the wiles of the evil one, naturally added to the feeling of regard in
which the writer held his work, a feeling under the influence of which it
became not unusual to add at the close of the manuscript an anathema
against any person who should destroy or deface it. A manuscript of St. Gall
contains the following:

Auferat hunc librum nullus hinc omne per ævum
Cum Gallo partem quisquis habere cupit.[108]

[Let no one through all ages who wishes to have any part with Gallus
(the Saint or the Abbey) remove (or purloin) this book.]
In a Sacramentary of the ninth century given to St. Bénoît-sur-Loire, the
donor, having sent the volume as a present from across seas, devotes to
destruction like to that which came upon Judas, Ananias, and Caiaphas any
person who should remove the book from the monastery.[109] In a
manuscript of S. Augustine, now in the Bodleian Library is written: “This
book belongs to S. Mary of Robert’s Bridge; whosoever shall steal it or sell
it, or in any way alienate it from this house, or mutilate it, let him be
anathema maranatha. Amen.” A later owner had found himself sufficiently
troubled by this imprecation to write beneath: “I, John, Bishop of Exeter,
know not where the aforesaid house is, nor did I steal this book, but
acquired it in a lawful way.”[110]
In an exhortation to his monks, delivered in 1486, by John of Trittenheim
(or Trithemius), Abbot of Sponheim, the abbot, after rebuking the monks

for their sloth and negligence, goes on to say: “I have diminished your
labours out of the monastery, lest by working badly you should only add to
your sins; and have enjoined on you the manual labour of writing and
binding books.... There is, in my opinion, no labour more becoming a monk
than the writing of ecclesiastical books, and preparing what is needful for
others who write them, for this holy labour will generally admit of being
interrupted by prayer and of watching for the food of the soul no less than
of the body. Need also urges us to labour diligently in writing books if we
desire to have at hand the means of usefully employing ourselves in
spiritual studies. For you will recall that all the library of this monastery,
which formerly was so fine and complete, had been dissipated, sold, and
made away with by the disorderly monks before us, so that when I came
here, I found but fourteen volumes. It is true that the industry of the printing
art, lately, in our own day, discovered at Mentz, produces many volumes
every day; but depressed as we are by poverty, it is impossible for us to buy
them all.”[111]
It was certainly the case that, after the invention of printing, there was a
time during which manuscripts came to be undervalued, neglected, and
even destroyed by wholesale, but Maitland is of opinion that this time had
been prepared for by a long period of gradually increasing laxity of
discipline and morals in many monastic institutions. This view is borne out
by the history of the Reformation, the popular feeling in regard to which
was undoubtedly very much furthered by the demoralisation of the
monasteries, a demoralisation which naturally carried with it a breaking
down of literary interests and pursuits. There had, for some time, been less
multiplication, less care, and less use of books, and many a fine collection
had mouldered away. According to Martene and Mabillon, the destruction
due to the heedlessness of the monks themselves was largely a matter of the
later times, that is, of the fifteenth century and the last half of the fourteenth
century.
Maitland is of the opinion that in the later portions of the Middle Ages
the work of the monastic scribes was more frequently carried on not in a
general writing-room, but in separate apartments or cells, which were not
usually large enough to contain more than one person. Owing to the fact
that writing was the chief and almost only in-doors business of a monk not
engaged in religious service, and because of the great quantity of work that

was done and the number of cells devoted to it, these small rooms came to
be generally referred to as scriptoria, even when not actually used or
particularly intended for the purpose of writing. Thus we are told that
Arnold, Abbot of Villers in Brabant, from 1240 to 1250, when he resigned
his office, occupied a scriptorium (he called it a scriptoriolum or little
writing cell), where he lived as a private person in his own apartment.[112]
These separate cells were usually colder and in other ways less comfortable
than the common scriptorium. Lewis, a monk of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, in
an inscription addressed to the reader, in a copy he had prepared of
Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel, says: Dum scripsit friguit, et quod cum
lumine solis scribere non potuit, perfecit lumine noctis.[113] (He was stiff
with cold, while he wrote, and what he could not write by the light of the
sun, he completed by the light of night.) There is evidence, however, in
some of the better equipped monasteries, of the warming of the cells by hot
air from the stove in the calefactory. Martene mentions that when S.
Bernard, owing to the illness produced by his early austerities, was
compelled by the Bishop of Chalons to retire to a cell, he could not be
persuaded to relax the severity of his asceticism so far as to permit the
introduction of any fireplace or other means of warming it. His friends,
however, contrived, with pious fraud, to heat his cell without his
knowledge, by introducing hot air through the stone floor under the bed.[114]
The scriptorium of earlier times was, however, as previously described,
an apartment specially set aside as a general workroom and capable of
containing many workers, and in which many persons did, in fact, work
together, usually under the direction of a librarius or chief scribe, in a very
business-like manner, in the transcription of books. Maitland quotes from a
document, which is, he states, one of the very few existing specimens of
French Visigothic manuscripts in the uncial character, and which dates from
the eighth century, the following form of consecration or benediction,
entitled (in monastic Latin) Orationem in scriptorio: “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to
bless this scriptorium of Thy servants and all that work therein: that
whatsoever sacred writings shall be here read or written by them, they may
receive with understanding and may bring the same to good effect.”[115]
(see also page 61).
In the more carefully constructed monasteries, the scriptorium was
placed to adjoin the calefactory, which simplified the problem of the

introduction of hot air.
A further evidence, if such were needed, that the larger literary
undertakings were carried on in a scriptorium common room and not in
separate cells, is given by the regulation of the general Chapter of the
Cistercian Order in 1134, which directs that the same silence should be
maintained in the scriptorium as in the cloister: In omnibus scriptoriis
ubicunque ex consuetudine monachi scribunt, silentium teneatur sicut in
claustro.[116]
Odo, who in 1093 became Abbot of S. Martin at Tournai, writes that he
confided the management of the outside work of the monastery to Ralph,
the prior. This left the abbot free to devote himself to reading and to
supervising the work in his scriptorium. Odo exulted in the number of
writers whom the Lord had given to him. “If you had gone into the cloister
during the working hours, you would have seen a dozen scribes writing, in
perfect silence, at tables constructed for the purpose.” Odo caused to be
transcribed all of Jerome’s Commentaries on the Prophets, all the works of
S. Gregory, and all the works that he could find of S. Augustine, S.
Ambrose, Bishop Isidore, the Venerable Bede, and Anselm, then Abbot of
Bec and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Odo’s successor, Heriman,
who gives this account, says with pride that such a library as Odo brought
together in S. Martin could hardly be paralleled in any monastery in the
country, and that other monasteries were begging for texts from S. Martin’s
with which to collate and correct their own copies.[117]
Maitland mentions that certain of the manuscripts written in Odo’s
scriptorium, including the fourth volume of the Gregorialis of Alulfus, were
(in 1845) in the library of Dr. Todd, of Trinity College, Dublin.[118]
In estimating the extent of book production of the manuscript period, we
may very easily place too large a comparative weight on the productive
power of the Press. Maitland points out that although the power of
multiplication of literary productions was, of course, during the Dark Ages
infinitely below that which now exists, and while the entire book
production of the two periods may not be compared, yet as regards those
books which were considered as the standard works in sacred literature and
in the approved secular literature, the difference was not so extreme as may
easily be supposed. He enquires, to emphasise his point, what proportion

the copies of Augustine’s City of God and of Gregory’s Morals, printed
between the years 1700 and 1800, bear to those written between the years
1100 and 1200.[119]
I think, with Maitland, that, according to the evidence on record, for
books such as those given above as typical examples, the written production
during the century selected would probably have exceeded the number of
copies of the same books turned out by the printing-presses during the
eighteenth century. We must recall to ourselves that for a term of six or
seven centuries, writing was a business, and was also a religious duty; an
occupation taken up by choice and pursued with a degree of zeal,
persistence, and enthusiasm for which in the present day there is no parallel.
Mabillon speaks of a volume by Othlonus, a monk of S. Emmeram’s at
Ratisbon, who was born about the year 1013. In this book, which is entitled
De ipsius tentationibus, varia fortuna, et scriptis, the monk gives an
account of his literary labours and of the circumstances which led to his
writing the various works bearing his name.
“For the same reason, I think proper to add an account of the great
knowledge and capacity for writing which was given me by the Lord in my
childhood. When as yet a little child, I was sent to school and quickly
learned my letters, and I began, long before the usual time of learning and
without any order from the master, to learn the art of writing. Undertaking
this in a furtive and unusual manner, and without any teacher, I got a habit
of holding my pen wrongly, nor were any of my teachers afterwards able to
correct me on that point; for I had become too much accustomed to it to be
able to change. Those who saw my earlier work unanimously decided that I
should never write well. After a short time the facility came to me, and
while I was in the monastery of Tegernsee (in Bavaria) I wrote many
books.... Being sent to Franconia while I was yet a boy, I worked so hard at
writing that before I returned I had nearly lost my sight.... After I became a
monk in the monastery of S. Emmeram, I was appointed the schoolmaster.
The duties of this office so fully occupied my time, that I was able to do the
transcribing in which I was interested only by night and on holidays.... I
was, however, able, in addition to writing the books which I had myself
composed, and the copies of which I gave away for the edification of those
who asked for them, to prepare nineteen missals (ten for the abbots and
monks in our own monastery, four for the brethren at Fulda, and five for

those in other places), three books of the Gospels, and two with the Epistles
and Gospels, which are called Lectionaries; besides which, I wrote four
service-books for matins. I wrote in addition a good many books for the
brethren at Fulda, for the monks at Hirschfeld and at Amerbach, for the
Abbot of Lorsch, for certain friends at Passau, and for other friends in
Bohemia, for the monastery of Tegernsee, for the monastery of Pryel, for
the monastery of Obermünster and for that of Niedermünster, and for my
sister’s son. Moreover, to many others I gave or sent, at different times,
sermons, proverbs, and edifying writings.... Afterwards, old age’s infirmity
of various kinds hindered me.”[120]
If there were many hundred scribes of the diligence of Othlonus, the
mass of literature produced in the scriptorium may very easily have rivalled
the later output of the printing-presses. The labours of Othlonus were, if the
records are to be trusted, eclipsed by those of the nun Diemude or Diemudis
of the monastery of Wessobrunn. An anonymous monk of this monastery,
writing in the year 1513, says:
“Diemudis was formerly a most devout nun of this our monastery of
Wessobrunn. [Pez states that Diemudis lived in the time of Gregory VII.,
who became Pope in 1073. She was, therefore, though probably somewhat
younger, a contemporary of the monk Othlonus of Ratisbon.] For our
monastery was formerly double or divided into two parts; that is to say, of
monks and nuns. The place of the monks was where it now is; but that of
the nuns, where the parish church now stands. This virgin was most skilful
in the art of writing: for though she is not known to have composed any
work, yet she wrote with her own hand many volumes in a most beautiful
and legible character, both for divine service and for the public library of
the monastery. Of these books she has left a list in a certain plenarius.[121]
The titles are as follows:
A Missal, with the Gradual and Sequences. Another Missal, with the
Gradual and Sequences, given to the Bishop of Trèves. Another Missal,
with the Epistles, Gospels, Graduals, and Sequences. Another Missal, with
the Epistles and Gospels for the year, the Gradual and Sequences, and the
entire service for baptism. A Missal, with Epistles and Gospels. A Book of
Offices. Another Book of Offices, with the baptismal service (given to the
Bishop of Augsburg). A Book, with the Gospels and Lessons. A Book, with
the Gospels. A Book, with the Epistles. A Bible, in two volumes, given for

the estate in Pisinberch. A Bible, in three volumes. S. Gregory ad
regaredum. S. Gregory on Ezekiel. Sermons and Homilies of certain ancient
Doctors, three volumes. Origen on the Old Testament. Origen on the
Canticles. Augustine on the Psalms, three volumes. Augustine on the
Gospels and on the First Epistle of S. John, two volumes. Augustine,
Epistles, to the number of lxxv. Augustine, Treatises. S. Jerome’s Epistles,
to the number of clxiv. The Tripartite History of Cassiodorus. The
Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. S. Augustine, Fifty Sermons. The Life of
S. Silvester. Jerome against Vigilantius. Jerome, De Consolatione
Mortuorum. The Life of S. Blasius. The Life of John the Almoner, Patriarch
of Alexandria early in the seventh century. Paschasius on the Body and
Blood of Christ. The Conflict of Lanfranc with Berengarius. The Martyrdom
of S. Dionysius. The Life of S. Adrian. S. Jerome, De Hebraicis
Quæstionibus. S. Augustine, Confessions. Canons. Glossa per A. B. C.
Composita (i. e., a Gloss alphabetically arranged).
These are the volumes written with her own hand by the aforesaid
handmaid of God, Diemudis, to the praise of God and of the holy Apostles
Peter and Paul, the patrons of the monastery.”[122]
The same writer says that Diemudis (whom he calls exaratrix
diligentissima) carried on a correspondence by very sweet letters (epistolæ
suaves valde) with Herluca, who was for thirty-six years a nun at Eppach,
and that the letters were in his time (1513), that is four and a half centuries
later, extant in the monastery of Bernried.

The Influence of the Scriptorium.—Hildebrand, who, under the
name Gregory VII., became Pope in 1073, appears to have made large use
of the literary facilities of the monasteries to bring effectively before the
public the doctrinal teachings which seemed to him essential for the
wholesome development of the strength of the Church in its great contest
with the imperial power and for the proper rule of the world. The histories
of the time speak of monks travelling throughout the Empire circulating
writings in favour of the Church, by means of which writings schism could
be withstood and the zeal of good Catholics aroused.[123]
Certain of the monasteries, in connection with their literary activity in
behalf of the Pope, came into special disfavour with the Emperor. Among
them was Hirschau, the importance of whose literary work has been
previously referred to. This monastery fell under the displeasure of the
Emperor Frederick IV., but the monks, says their own annalist, sustained by
their prayers, braved the sword of the tyrant and despised the menaces of
offended princes.[124] Abbot William of Hirschau had for twenty-two years
been the soul of monastic regeneration in Germany. He was one of the great
scholars of his time and had done not a little to further the literary pre-
eminence of his monastery, and he became one of the most valiant
defenders of the popes during this contest. Among other ecclesiastical
writers whose pens were active in the defence of the papal decrees and in
assailing the utterances of the schismatics, and whose work, by means of
the distributing machinery which had already been organised between the
monasteries, secured for the time a large circulation, were Bernard, at one
time master of the schools of Constance, but later a monk at Hirschau;
Bernold, a monk of St. Blaise; Adelbert, a monk of Constance; and
Gebhard, another monk of Hirschau.[125]
Gregory was possibly the first pope who made effective and extended use
of the writings of devout authors for the purpose of influencing public
opinion. If we may judge by the results of his long series of contests with
the imperial power in Germany, the selection of these literary weapons was
one proof of his sagacity. In this contest, the scriptoria of the monasteries
proved more powerful than the armies of the emperors; as, five hundred

years later, the printing-presses of the Protestants proved more effective
than the Bulls of the Papacy.
The most important, in connection with its influence and consequences,
of the discoveries made by scholars concerning the fraudulent character of
historic documents, occurred as late as the beginning of the fifteenth
century. It was about 1440 when Laurentius Valla, at that time acting as
secretary for King Alphonso of Naples, wrote his report upon the famous
Donation of Constantine, the document upon which the Roman Church had
for nearly a thousand years based its claims to be the direct representative in
Western Europe of the old imperial authority. Valla brought down upon his
head much ecclesiastical denunciation. The evidences produced by him of
the fact that the document had been fabricated a century or more after the
death of Constantine could not be gotten rid of, and, although for a number
of years the Church continued to maintain the sacred character of the
Donation, and has, in fact, never formally admitted that it was fraudulent, it
was impossible, after the beginning of the sixteenth century, even for the
ecclesiastics themselves to base any further claims for the authority of the
Church upon this discredited parchment.
Of almost equal importance was the discovery of the fabrication of the
pseudo Isidoric Decretals. The Decretals had been concocted early in the
ninth century by certain priests in the West Frankish Church, and had been
eagerly accepted by Pope Nicholas I., who retained in the archives of the
Vatican the so-called originals. The conclusion that the Decretals had been
fraudulently imposed upon the Church was not finally accepted until the
beginning of the fourteenth century. It was with the humanistic movement
of the Renaissance that historical criticism had its birth, and a very
important portion of the work of such criticism consisted in the analysis of
the lack of foundation of a large number of fabulous legends upon which
many of the claims of the Church had been based.
There were evidently waves of literary interest and activity in the
different monasteries, between which waves the art of writing fell more or
less into disuse and the libraries were neglected. In the monastery at
Murbach, for instance, in which, in the beginning of the century, important
work had been done, it is recorded that in 1291 no monks were found who
were able to write, and the same was said in 1297 of the more famous
monastery of St. Gall.[126] On the other hand, the newly organised Orders of

travelling or mendicant monks took an active interest in preparing and in
distributing manuscript copies of works of doctrine at about the time when,
in the older and richer Orders, literary earnestness was succumbing to
laziness and luxury. With these mendicant monks, began also to come into
circulation a larger proportion of original writings, transcribed and
corrected, and probably to some extent sold by the authors themselves.
Richard de Bury makes bitter references in his Philobiblon (chapters v. and
vi.) to the general antagonism of the Church towards literature, but speaks
with appreciation of the educational services rendered by the mendicant
monks. Writing was done also by the monks of the Minorite Order, but their
rules and their methods of life called for such close economy that the
manuscripts left by them are distinguished by the meagreness and
inadequacy of the material and the closely crowded script, which, in order
further to save space, contains many abbreviations.
Roger Bacon is said to have come into perplexity because, when he
wished to send his treatises to Pope Clement IV., he could find no one
among the Brothers of his Order who was able to assist him in transcribing
the same, while scribes outside of the Order to whom he attempted to
entrust the work gave him untrustworthy and slovenly copies.[127]
With the beginning of the fourteenth century, it is possible to note a
scholarly influence exercised upon certain of the monasteries by the
universities. The most enterprising of the monks made opportunities for
themselves to pass some years of their novitiate in one or more of the
universities, or later secured leave of absence from the monasteries for the
purpose of visiting the universities. It also happened that from the
monasteries where literary work had already been successfully carried on,
monks were occasionally called to the universities in order to further the
literary undertakings of the theological faculties. Finally, the abbots, and
other high officials of the monasteries, were, after the beginning of the
fourteenth century, more frequently appointed from among the ecclesiastics
who had had a university training.
The library in Heidelberg, the university of which dates from 1386,
received from the monastery at Salem a large number of beautiful
manuscripts, and finally, an illuminated breviary was completed in 1494 by
the Cistercian Amandus, who, after the destruction of his monastery in
Strasburg, had found refuge in Salem, where in 1529 he became abbot.

There is evidence that, at this time, both in Salem and in other monasteries
in which the business of manifolding and of selling or exchanging
manuscripts became important, a large proportion of the work of illustrating
or illuminating was done by paid artists.
After the reform movement which began with the Council of Basel, there
came into existence, in connection with the renewal of theological
discussions, a fresh literary activity in many of the monasteries. In the
monastery at Camp, in 1440, the library was renewed and very much
extended, and here were written by Guillaume de Reno, scriptor egregius
nulli illo tempore in arte sua secundus, the Catholicon, books of the Mass,
and other devotional works. Abbot Heinrich von Calcar provided Guillaume
for eighteen years with a yearly supply of parchment, valued at seventeen
florins, and of other writing material.
In Michelsberg, Abbot Ulrich III. (1475-1483) and his successor Andreas
restored the long-time deserted library, and by work by the scribes of the
monastery and through the exchange of works for the productions of other
monasteries, secured an important collection of manuscripts. In 1492,
Andreas, abbot of the monastery of Bergen, near Magdeburg, renewed the
scriptorium, which, later, became active in the production of copies of
works connected with this earlier reformation.
Adolph von Hoeck, who died in 1516, Prior of Scheda in Westphalia, was
a skilled scribe as well as a zealous reformer. In Monsee, a certain Brother,
Jacob of Breslau, who died in 1480, was said to have written so many
volumes that six horses could with difficulty bear the burden of them.[128]
In the monastery at Tegernsee, already referred to, there was, under Abbot
Conrad V. (1461-1492), an active business in the manifolding and
distribution of writings. The same was the case in Blaubeuern, where, as
early as 1475, a printing-press was put into operation, but the preparation of
manuscripts continued until the end of the century. Among the works issued
from Blaubeuern in manuscript form after the beginning of printing, were
the Chronicles of Monte Cassino, by Andreas Ysingrin, completed in 1477,
and the Life of the Holy Wilhelm of Hirschau, by Brother Silvester,
completed in 1492.[129]
This year of 1492 appears to have been one of exceptional intellectual as
well as physical activity. It records not merely the completion of a number

of important works marking the close of the manuscript period of literary
production, but the publication, as will be noted in a later chapter, of a long
series of the more important of the earlier printed books in Mayence, Basel,
Venice, Milan, and Paris.
In Belgium, through the first half of the fifteenth century, while many of
the monasteries had fallen into a condition of luxurious inactivity, work was
still carried on in the Laurentium monastery of Liége by Johann of Stavelot,
and by other zealous scribes, and in several other of the Benedictine
monasteries of the Low Countries the scriptoria were kept busied. Towards
the end of the fifteenth century, and for some years after the beginning of
the work of the German printers, the production of manuscripts in Germany
continued actively in the monastery of S. Peter at Erfurt, and in the
monasteries of S. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, the work of which has been
recorded with full precision and detail in the famous catalogue of Wilhelm
Wittwer.
In 1472, in this latter monastery, Abbot Melchior founded the first
printing-office at Augsburg in order to give to the monks continued
employment, and in order also to be able to enlarge the library by producing
copies of books for exchange. It was a long time, however, before the work
of the printing-press came to be sufficiently understood to bring to a stop
the labours of the scribes in manifolding manuscripts for sale and for
exchange. The writings of the nun Helena of Hroswitha, the Chronicle of
Urspergense, and other works continued to be prepared in manuscript form
after printed editions were in the market. The same was the case with the
great choir books, which continued during nearly half the century to be very
largely prepared by hand in the scriptoria. This persistence of the old
methods was partly due to habit and to the difficulty of communication with
the centres in which the printing-presses were already at work, but was very
largely, of course, the result of the fact that in the monasteries was always
available a large amount of labour, and that the use of this labour for the
preparation of sacred books had come to form part of the religious routine
of the institution.
With the development of the system of common schools, the educational
work which had previously been carried on in the convents was very largely
given up, thus throwing upon the hands of the monks a still greater
proportion of leisure time. In 1492, Johann of Trittenheim, Abbot of

Sponheim, wrote to the Abbot Gerlach of Deutz a letter, De Laude
Scriptorum, in which he earnestly invokes the scribes (he was addressing
the scribes of the monasteries) by no means to permit themselves to be
deterred from their holy occupation by the invasion of the printing-presses.
Such admonitions might continue the work of the monks in certain of the
scriptoria, but were, of course, futile in the attempt to preserve for any
length of time the business of circulating manuscript copies in competition
with the comparatively inexpensive, and often beautiful, productions of the
printers.
An important part in the work of the preparation and distribution of
manuscripts was taken by the so-called “Brothers of common life” (clerici
de vita communi), who later, also occupied themselves with the new
invention of printing. They cannot properly be classed with the scribes of
the monasteries, for they made their work a trade and a means of revenue.
This practice obtained, to be sure, also with certain of the monasteries, but
it must be considered as exceptional with them. The Brothers differed also
from the writers in the university towns and elsewhere, who prepared
manuscripts for renting out to students and readers, partly because of the
special conditions of their Brotherhood, under which the earnings of
individual Brothers all went into a common treasury, but chiefly because
they made their work as scribes a means of religious and moral instruction.
The earnings secured from the sale of manuscripts were also largely
devoted to the missionary work of the Brotherhood. The chief authority for
the history of the Brotherhood is the work of Delprat, published in
Amsterdam in 1856.
The Brotherhood house in Deventer, Holland, founded by Gerhard
Groote in 1383, became an important workshop for the production and
distribution of manuscripts. Delprat states that the receipts from these sales
were for a time the main support of the Brotherhood house. In 1389, a copy
of the Bible which had been written out by Brother Jan von Enkhuizen was
sold for five hundred gulden in gold.[130] In Liége, the Brothers were known
as Broeders van de Penne, because they carried quill pens in their caps.
Groote seems himself to have taken a general supervision of this business
of the production of books, selecting the books to be manifolded, verifying
the transcripts, and arranging for the sale of the copies which were passed
as approved. Florentius Radewijus had the general charge of the

manuscripts (filling the rôle which to-day would be known as that of stock
clerk) and of preparing the parchment for the scribes and writing in the
inscriptions of the finished manuscripts. Later, with the development of the
Order and the extension of its book business, each Brotherhood house had
its librarius, or manager of the manufacturing and publishing department;
its rubricator, who added the initial letters or illuminated letters in the more
expensive manuscripts; its ligator, who had charge of the binding, etc.
It was a distinctive feature of the works prepared by the Brothers that
they were very largely written in the language of the land instead of in
Latin, which elsewhere was, as we have seen, the exclusive language for
literature. It was, in fact, one of the charges made by the ecclesiastics
against the Order that they put into common language doctrinal instruction
which ordinary readers, without direct guidance of the Church, were not
competent to understand, and which tended, therefore, to work mischief. In
1398, the Brothers took counsel on the point whether it were permissible to
distribute among the people religious writings in Low German, and they
appear to have secured the authorisation required. They laid great stress
upon the precision of their script, and they were, as a rule, opposed to
needless expenditure for ornamentation of text or of covers. Under the
influence of Groote, the work of preparing manuscripts of good books was
taken up by the monks and the nuns of Windesheim, but, according to
Busch, the books produced in Windesheim were but rarely sold. In some
cases these seem to have been distributed gratis, while in others they were
given in exchange for other books required for the library of the monastery
or convent.[131]
Wattenbach says that the Brothers in the Home at Hildesheim were called
upon for an exceptional amount of labour in preparing books of the Mass
and other devotional works in connection with the reform movement in the
monasteries of lower Saxony, which was active in the middle of the
fifteenth century. In the year 1450 (the year in which Gutenberg perfected
his printing-press) it is recorded that the Hildesheim Brothers earned from
the sale of their manuscripts no less than a thousand gulden.[132] In
connection with their interest in the production and distribution of cheap
literature, the Brothers did not fail to make very prompt and intelligent
utilisation of the new invention of printing, and among the earlier printing-
offices established in Germany and in the Low Countries were those

organised by the Brothers at Deventer, Zwoll, Gouda, Bois-le-duc, Brussels,
Louvain, Marienthal, Rostock, etc.
The Literary Monks of England.—In accepting the influence of
literary ideals, the Anglo-Saxon monks were much slower and less
imaginative than the quicker and more idealistic Celts. The quickening of
the intellectual development of the monasteries in England was finally
brought about through the influence of Celtic missionaries coming directly
from Ireland or from the Irish monasteries of the Scottish region, such as
Iona and its associates.
Before the literary work of the English monasteries began, there was
already in existence a considerable body of literature, which was the
expression of the pre-christian conceptions and ideals of the Anglo-Saxons
and their Scandinavian kinsmen. Certain of the most famous of the literary
creations of the Anglo-Saxons were probably produced subsequent to the
time of the acceptance by the people of Christianity, but these productions
continued to represent the imagination and the methods of thought of the
pagan ancestry, and to utilise as their themes the old-time legends. These
Saxon compositions were almost exclusively in the form of poems, epics,
and ballads devoted to accounts of the achievements of heroes (more or less
legendary) in their wars with each other, and in their adventures with the
gods and with the powers of magic and evil. In these early epics, devoted
chiefly to strife, women bear but a small part, and the element of love enters
hardly at all.
While it is doubtless the case that the Saxon epics, like the Greek poems
of the Homeric period and the compositions of the Celtic bards, were
preserved for a number of generations in the memories of the reciters, there
are references indicating that the writing of the texts on the parchment
began at a comparatively early date after the occupation of England. This
would imply the existence of some trained scribes before work was begun
in the scriptoria of the Saxon monasteries. Such lay scribes must, however,
have been very few indeed, and the task of handing down for posterity the
old legendary ballads must have depended chiefly upon the scops, which
was the name given to the poets or bards attached to the court of a prince or
chieftain. It is, however, not until the acceptance of Christianity by the
Saxons that there comes to be any abiding interest in letters. As Jusserand
puts it: “These same Anglo-Saxons, whose literature at the time of their

invasion consisted of the songs mentioned by Tacitus, carmina antiqua,
which they trusted to memory alone, who compiled no books, and who for
written monuments had Runic inscriptions graven on utensils or on
commemorative stones, now have in their turn monks who compose
chronicles and kings who know Latin. Libraries are formed in the
monasteries; schools are attached to them; manuscripts are thus copied and
illuminated in beautiful caligraphy and in splendid colours. The volutes and
knots with which the worshippers of Woden ornamented their fibulæ, their
arms, the prows of their ships, are reproduced in purple and azure, the
initials of the Gospels. The use made of them is different, the taste remains
the same.”
It is undoubtedly the case that the preservation of such fragments of
Anglo-Saxon literature as have come down to us, and probably of most of
the Scandinavian compositions which were transmitted through the Saxons,
was due to the monastery scribes whose copies were in part transcribed
from the earlier parchments and in part were taken down from the recitals
made in the monasteries by the bards or minstrels. The service was in fact
similar to that previously rendered by the Irish monks to Celtic literature,
and by the scribes of Gaul and Italy to the writings of classic times.
The identity or kinship of much of the heroic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons
with that of the Scandinavians is pointed out by Grein in his Anglo-Saxon
Library, and by Vigfusson and York-Powell in their Corpus Poeticum
Boreale. The greatest of the old English epics, Beowulf, sometimes called
“the Iliad of the Saxons,” was put into written form some time in the eighth
century and, like all similar epics, was doubtless the result of the weaving
together of a series of ballads of varied dates and origins. The text of the
poem has been preserved almost complete in a manuscript, now placed in
the Cottonian collection in the British Museum, which dates from the latter
part of the tenth century.
It will be understood that, as a matter of convenience in a brief reference
of this kind, I am using the term Saxon and Anglo-Saxon in no strict
ethnological sense, but simply to designate the Teutonic element of the
people of England, an element whose influence is usually considered to
have begun with the landing of Hengist and Horsa in 451.

The first of the Anglo-Saxon monks to be ranked as a poet appears to
have been the cowherd Cædmon, a vassal of the Abbess Hilda and a monk
of Whitby. Caædmon’s songs were sung about 670. He is reported to have
put into verse the whole of Genesis and Exodus, and, later, the life of Christ
and the Acts of the Apostles, but his work was not limited to the
paraphrasing of the Scriptures. A thousand years before the time of
Paradise Lost, the Northumbrian monk sang before the Abbess Hilda the
Revolt of Satan. Fragments of this poem, discovered by Archbishop Usher,
and printed for the first time in 1655, have been preserved, and have since
that date been frequently published.[133] Cædmon died in 680, and Milton in
1674. The Abbess Hilda, who was herself a princess of royal family,
appears to have had a large interest in furthering the study of literature, not
only in the nunnery founded by her, but in a neighbouring monastery which
came largely under her influence. In both nunnery and monastery, schools
for the children of the district were instituted, which schools were probably
the earliest of their class in that portion of Britain.
The Northumbrian poet Cynewulf, whose work was done between the
years 760 and 800, may be referred to as a connecting link between the
group of national or popular bards and the literary workers of the Church.
His earlier years were passed as a wandering minstrel, but later in life he
passed through some religious experience and entered a monastery,
devoting himself thereafter to religious poetry. His conversion was
doubtless the means of preserving (through the scriptorium of his
monastery) such of his compositions as have remained, and thus of making
a place for his name among the authors of England.
Among the earlier Saxon monks whose educational work was important
are to be included S. Wilfred (634-709) and S. Cuthbert (637-687). Wilfred
introduced into England the Rule of the Benedictines, and exercised a most
important influence in instituting Benedictine monasteries and in bringing
these monasteries into relations with the Church of Rome. His life was a
stormy one, but notwithstanding the various contentions with the several
monarchs who at that time divided between them the territory of England,
and in spite of several periods of banishment, he found time to carry on a
great work in furthering the intellectual life of his Benedictine monks. It
was largely due to him that the Benedictine monasteries accepted almost
from the first the responsibility of conducting the schools of the land. These

schools achieved so great repute that Anglo-Saxons of high rank were eager
to confide their children to Wilfred to be brought up in one of his monastic
establishments. At the close of their school training they were to choose
between the service of God and that of the King. Wilfred is also to be
credited with the establishing within the English monasteries of a course of
musical instruction, the teachers of which had largely been trained in the
great school of Gregorian music at Canterbury.
Another of the Saxon abbots whose name remains associated with the
intellectual life of the monasteries was Benedict Biscop. Montalembert
speaks of Biscop as representing science and art in the Church, as Wilfred
had stood for the organising of the English Church as a public body, and
Cuthbert for the renewal and development of its life. The monasteries of
Wearmouth and of Yarrow, founded by Biscop, were endowed with great
libraries and became the centres of an active literary life. Biscop made no
less than six journeys to Rome in the interest of his monastery work, and, in
the seventh century, a journey to Rome from Britain was not an easy
experience. His fourth expedition, begun in the year 671, was undertaken
partly in the interests of literature and for the purpose of securing books for
the education of his monks. He obtained in the Papal capital a rich cargo of
books, some of which he had purchased while others were given to him. In
Vienne, the ancient capital of Gaul, he secured a further collection. The
monastery of Wearmouth, founded in 673, had the benefit of a large portion
of the books brought from Italy by the abbot. It was his desire that each
monastery for which he was responsible should possess a library, which
seemed to him indispensable for the instruction, discipline, and the good
organisation of the community. Biscop’s fifth journey was made partly for
the purpose of securing pictures, coloured images, and artistic decorations
for the chapel of the monastery, but the sixth pilgrimage, made in 685, was
again devoted almost entirely to the collection of books.
For the details of the work of Biscop in the organisation of his
monasteries and in the supervision of the work in their scriptoria, and
concerning his various architectural and artistic undertakings, we are largely
indebted to the historian Beda, or Bede. Bede was a pupil of Biscop in the
monastery of Yarrow, and it was in this monastery that were written the
famous Chronicles. It was the time of comparative peace in the island
which preceded the first Danish invasion. The fame of the scholar who

produced these chronicles was destined to eclipse that of nearly all the
Saxon saints and kings, who were in fact known to posterity principally
through the pen of the Venerable Bede. It is to Biscop, however, that should
be credited the literary surroundings under which Bede was educated, and it
is probable that without the stimulating influence of the books secured by
the abbot in his wearisome journeys to Southern Europe, the monk would
hardly have had the capacity or the incentive to complete his work.
Coelfried, who later became Abbot of Yarrow, and who, after the death of
Biscop, was in charge also of the monastery of Wearmouth, continued the
interest of his predecessor in the libraries and in the work done by the
scribes in the scriptoria. Among the books brought from Rome by Biscop
was a curious work on cosmography, which King Alfred was very anxious
to possess. Abbot Coelfried finally consented to let the King have the book
in exchange for land sufficient to support eight families. Coelfried had had
made in the scriptorium of Wearmouth two complete copies of the Bible
according to the version of S. Jerome, the text of which had been brought
from Rome. These copies were placed, one in the church of Wearmouth and
one in that of Yarrow, and were open for the use not only of the monks, but
of any others who might desire to consult them and who might be able to
read the script. Montalembert refers to this instance as a refutation of “the
stupid calumny” which represents the Church as having in former times
interdicted to her children the knowledge of the sacred Scriptures.[134]
When Aldhelm, who became Bishop of Sherborn in the year 705, went to
Canterbury to be consecrated by his old friend and companion Berthwold
(pariter literis studuerant, pariterque viam religionis triverant—together
they had studied literature and together they had followed the path of
religion), the Archbishop kept him there many days, taking counsel with
him about the affairs of his diocese. Hearing of the arrival during this time
of ships at Dover, he went there to inspect their unloading and to see if they
had brought anything in his way (si quid forte commodum ecclesiastico usui
attulissent nautæ qui e Gallico sinu in Angliam provecti librorum copiam
apportassent—to see whether the ships which had arrived from the French
coast had brought, with the books which formed a part of their cargoes, any
volumes of value for the work of the Church). Among many other books he
saw one containing the whole of the Old and New Testaments, which book
he bought, and which, according to William of Malmesbury, who in the

twelfth century wrote the life of Aldhelm, was at that time still preserved at
Sherborn.[135]
The great Bible given by King Offa, in 780, to the church at Worcester is
described in the chronicle of Malmesbury as Magnam Bibliam.[136] As
before indicated, however, the common name of this time for a collection of
the Scriptures was not Biblia but Bibliotheca. In a return of their property
which the monks of St. Riquier at Centule made in the year 831, by order of
Louis the Débonnaire, we find, among a considerable quantity of books:
Bibliotheca integra ubi continentur libri lxxii., in uno volumine (a complete
Bible, in which seventy-two books are comprised in one volume), and also
Bibliotheca dispersa in voluminibus xiv.[137] (a Bible divided into fourteen
volumes).
Fleury says of Olbert, Abbot of Gembloux: Étant abbé, il amassa à
Gembloux plus de cent volumes d’auteurs ecclésiastiques, et cinquante
d’auteurs profanes, ce qui passoit pour une grande Bibliothèque.[138]
Warton, using Fleury for his authority, speaks of the “incredible labour and
immense expense” which Olbert had given to the formation of this library.
There is, however, no authority in the quotation from Fleury for such a
description of the exceptional nature of the labour and of the outlay. On the
contrary, Fleury goes on to say that Olbert, who had been sent to reform and
restore the monastery, which was in a state of great poverty and disorder,
had put the monks to work at writing, in order to keep them from being idle.
He himself set an example of industry as a scribe by writing out, with his
own hand, the whole of the Old and the New Testament, a work which was
completed in the year 1040.[139] Maitland calculates that a scribe must be
both expert and industrious to perform in less than ten months the task of
transcribing all the books of the Old and the New Testament. He estimates,
further, that at the rate at which the law stationers of London paid their
writers in his time (1845), such a transcript would cost, for the writing only,
between sixty and seventy pounds.[140]
The sterling service rendered by King Alfred to the literary interests of
England was important in more ways than one, and while his work does not
strictly belong to the record of the English monasteries, it may properly
enough be associated with the literary history of the English Church; for the
King had been adopted as a spiritual son by Pope Leo IV., and in organising

and supervising the work of the Church, he took upon himself a large
measure of the responsibilities which later were discharged by the Primate.
Alfred ruled over the West Saxons from 871 to 901. His reign was a stormy
one, and during a number of years it seemed doubtful whether the existence
of the little Saxon Kingdom could be maintained against the assaults of the
Danes. There came finally, however, a period of peace when Alfred, with
Winchester as his capital, was able to give attention to the organisation of
education in his kingdom.
During the long years of invasion and of civil war, the literary interests
and culture that had come to the Saxons through the Romans had been in
great part swept away. The collections of books had been burned and could
not be replaced because the clerics had forgotten their Latin. Alfred
complained that at the time of his accession in Winchester he could not find
south of the Thames a single Englishman able to translate a letter from
Latin into English. “When I considered all this, I remembered also how I
saw, before it had all been ravaged and burned, how the churches
throughout the whole of England stood filled with treasures and books, and
there was also a great multitude of God’s servants, but they had very little
knowledge of the books; they could not understand any of them because
they were not written in their own language.” Alfred can find but one
explanation for the omission of the “good and wise men who were formerly
all over England” to leave translations of these books. “They did not think
that men could ever be so careless and that learning could so soon decay.”
The King recalls, however, that there are still left many who “can read
English writing.” “I began therefore among the many and manifold troubles
of this Kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin
Pastoralis and in English Shepherd’s Book (Hirdeboc), sometimes word for
word and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learned it from
Plegmund, my Archbishop, and Asser, my Bishop, and Grimbold my Mass-
priest, and John my Mass-priest.”[141] It will be noted in these references of
King Alfred, that the collections of books, the loss of which he laments, had
been contained in the churches. It was also to the ecclesiastics that he was
turning for help in the work of rendering into English the instruction for his
people to be found in the few Latin volumes that had been preserved.
Jusserand says that Asser was to Alfred what Alcuin had been to
Charlemagne, and that he helped the King, by means of the production of

translations and by founding schools, to preserve and to spread learning.
King Alfred was, however, not content with using his royal authority and
influence for the instituting of schools, but himself gave to work as a
translator personal time and labour which must have been spared with
difficulty from his duties as a ruler and as a military commander. He
chooses for his translations books likely to fill up the greatest gaps in the
minds of his countrymen, “some books that are most needful for all men to
know”: the Book of Orosius, which is to serve as a hand-book of universal
history; the Chronicles of Bede, that will instruct them concerning the
history of their own ancestors; the Pastoral Rule of S. Gregory, which will
make clear to churchmen their ecclesiastical duties; and the Consolation of
Philosophy of Boëthius, recommended as a guide for the lives of both
ecclesiastics and laymen. These royal translations are at once placed in the
scriptoria of the monasteries and in the writing-rooms of the monastery
schools for manifolding, and secure through these channels an immediate
and important educational influence.
It is also under the instructions of Alfred that the old national chronicles,
written in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, are copied, corrected, and continued. Of
these chronicles, seven, more or less complete and differing from each other
to some extent, have been preserved. The history of the world presents
possibly no other instance of a monarch who devoted himself so steadfastly,
with his own personal labour, to the educational and spiritual development
of his people.
In the latter portion of the tenth century, S. Dunstan, Archbishop of
Canterbury under King Edgar, takes up the task of instructing the clergy and
people. Under his influence, new monasteries are endowed, a further series
of monastery schools is instituted, and special attention is given in the
scriptoria and in the writing-rooms of the schools to the production of
copies of translations of pious works. The special literary feature of the
work done in Dunstan’s school was the attention given to the production of
collections of sermons in the vulgar tongue. A number of these collections
has been preserved, an example of which, known as the Blickling Homilies
(from Blickling Hall, Norfolk, where the MS. was found) was compiled
before 971. The series also included homilies by Ælfric, who was Abbot of
Eynsham in 1005, and sermons of Wulfstan, who was Bishop of York in
1002.

The canons of Ælfric were written between the years 950 and 1000. The
authorities do not appear to be clear whether these canons were the work of
the Archbishop or of a grammarian of the same name, while, according to
one theory, the Archbishop and the grammarian were the same person. The
canons were addressed to Wulfin, Bishop of Sherborn, and they were
written in such a form that the Bishop might communicate them to his
clergy as a kind of episcopal charge. The twenty-first canon orders: “Every
priest also, before he is ordained, must have the arms belonging to his
spiritual work; that is, the holy books, namely, the Psalter, the Book of
Epistles, the Book of Gospels, the Missal, the Book of Hymns, the Manual,
the Calendar (Computus), the Passional, the Penitential, the Lectionary.
These books a priest requires and cannot do without, if he would properly
fulfil his office and desires to teach the law to the people belonging to him.
And let him carefully see that they are well written.”[142]
The library of the English monastery or priory was under the care of the
chantor, who could neither sell, pawn, nor lend books without an equivalent
pledge; he might, however, with respect to neighbouring churches or to
persons of consideration, relax somewhat the strictness of this rule. In the
case of a new foundation, the King sometimes sent letters-patent to the
different abbeys requesting them to give copies of theological and religious
books in their own collections. In certain instances, the King himself
provided such transcripts for the new foundation. In the catalogue of the
abbatial libraries of England, prepared by Leland, record is found of only
the following classics: Cicero and Aristotle (these two appear in nearly all
the catalogues), Terence, Euclid, Quintus Curtius, Sidonius Apollinaris,
Julius Frontinus, Apuleius, and Seneca.[143] It is difficult from such a list to
arrive at the basis or standard of selection.
Thomas Duffus Hardy gives some interesting information concerning the
later literary and historical work done in the monasteries of Britain,[144] and
for a portion of the following notes concerning this work I am chiefly
indebted to him. The Abbey of St. Albans was founded towards the close of
the eighth century, but it was not until the latter part of the eleventh century,
or nearly three hundred years later, that the scriptorium was instituted. The
organisation of the scriptorium was due to Paul, the fourteenth abbot, who
presided over the monastery from 1077 to 1093, and who had the assistance
in this work of the Bishop Lanfranc. Paul was by birth a Norman, and was

esteemed a man of learning as well as of piety. After the scriptorium had
been opened, the abbot placed in it eight Psalters, a Book of Collects, a
Book of Epistles, a book containing the Gospels for the year, two Gospels
bound in gold and silver and ornamented with gems, and twenty-eight other
notable volumes. In addition to these, there was a number of ordinals,
costumals, missals, troparies, collectories, and other books for the use of the
monks in their devotions. This summary of the first contents of the library is
taken by Hardy from the Gesta Abbatum, a chronicle of St. Albans.
The literary interests of Paul were, it appears, continued by a large
proportion at least of his successors, and many of these made important
contributions to the library. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbot, gave to the
scriptorium a missal bound in gold, and another missal in two volumes,
both incomparably illuminated in gold and written in an open and legible
script. He also gave a precious illuminated psalter, a book containing the
benediction and sacraments, a book of exorcism, and a collectory. (The
description is taken from the Gesta.)
Ralph, the seventeenth abbot, was said to have become a lover of books
after having heard Wodo of Italy expound the Scriptures. He collected with
diligence a large number of valuable manuscripts. Robert de Gorham, who
was called the reformer of the liberty of the Church of St. Albans, after
becoming prior, gave many books to the scriptorium, more than could be
mentioned by the author of the Gesta. Simon, who became abbot in 1166,
caused to be created the office of historiographer. Simon had been educated
in the abbey, and did not a little to add to its fame as a centre of literature.
He repaired and enlarged the scriptorium, and he kept two or three scribes
constantly employed in it. The previous literary abbots had for the most part
brought from without the books added to the collection, but it was under
Simon that the abbey became a place of literary production as well as of
literary reproduction. He had an ordinance enacted to the effect that every
abbot must support out of his personal funds one adequate scribe. Simon
presented to the abbey a considerable group of books that he had himself
been collecting before his appointment as abbot, together with a very
beautiful copy of the Old and New Testaments.
The next literary abbot was John de Cell, who had been educated in the
schools of Paris, and who was profoundly learned in grammar, poetry, and
physics. On being elected abbot, he gave over the management of the

temporal affairs of the abbey to his prior, Reymond, and devoted himself to
religious duties and to study. Reymond himself was a zealous collector, and
it was through him that was secured for the library, among many other
books, a copy of the Historica Scholastica cum Allegoriis, of Peter
Comester. The exertions of these scholarly abbots and priors won for St.
Albans a special distinction among the monasteries of Britain, and naturally
led to the compilation of the historic annals which gave to the abbey a
continued literary fame. Hardy is of opinion that these historic annals date
from the administration of Simon, between the years 1166 and 1183.
Richard of Wendover, who succeeded Walter as historiographer,
compiled, between the years 1230 and 1236, the Flores Historiarum, one of
the most important of the earlier chronicles of England. Hardy points out
that it could have been possible to complete so great a work within the term
of six years, only on the assumption that Richard found available much
material collected by Walter, and it is also probable that other compilations
were utilised by Richard for the work bearing his name. It is to be borne in
mind that the monastic chronicles were but seldom the production of a
single hand, as was the case with the chronicles of Malmesbury and of
Beda. The greater number of such chronicles grew up from period to period,
fresh material being added in succeeding generations, while in every
monastic house in which there were transcribers, fresh local information
was interpolated until the tributary streams had grown more important than
the original current. In this manner, the monastic annals were at one time a
transcript, at another time an abridgment, and at another an original work.
“With the chronicler, plagiarism was no crime and no degradation. He
epitomised or curtailed or adapted the words of his predecessors in the same
path with or without alteration (and usually without acknowledgment),
whichever best suited his purpose or that of his monastery. He did not work
for himself but at the command of others, and thus it was that a monastery
chronicle grew, like a monastery house, at different times, and by the labour
of different hands.”
Of the heads that planned such chronicles or of the hands that executed
them, or of the exact proportion contributed by the several writers, no
satisfactory record has been preserved. The individual is lost in the
community.

In the earlier divisions of Wendover’s chronicle, covering the centuries
from 231 down to about 1000, Wendover certainly relied, says Hardy, upon
some previous compilation. About the year 1014, that narrative, down to the
death of Stephen, showed a marked change in style, giving evidence that
after this period some other authority had been adopted, while there was
also a larger introduction of legendary matter. From the accession of Henry
II., in 1235, when the Flores Historiarum ends, Wendover may be said to
assume the character of an original author. On the death of Richard, the
work of historiographer was taken up by Matthew Paris. His Lives of the
Two Offas and his famous Chronicles were produced between the years
1236 and 1259.
In certain of the more literary of the English monasteries, the divine
offices were moderated in order to allow time for study, and, under the
regulations of some foundations, “lettered” persons were entitled to special
exemption from the performance of certain daily services, and from church
duty.[145]
At a visitation of the treasury of St. Pauls, made in the year 1295, by
Ralph de Baudoke, the Dean (afterwards Bishop of London), there were
found twelve copies of the Gospels adorned, some with silver, and others
with pearls and gems, and a thirteenth, the case (capsa) containing which
was decorated not merely with gilding but with relics.[146] The treasury also
contained a number of other divisions of the Scriptures, together with a
Commentary of Thomas Aquinas. Maitland says that the use of relics as a
decoration was an unusual feature. He goes on to point out that the practice
of using for manuscripts a decorated case, caused the case, not infrequently,
to be more valuable than the manuscript itself, so that it would be
mentioned among the treasures of the church, when the book contained in it
was not sufficiently important to be even specified.
The binding of the books which were in general use in the English
monasteries for reference was usually in parchment or in plain leather. The
use of jewels, gold, or silver for the covers, or for the capsæ, was, with rare
exceptions, limited to the special copies retained in the church treasury.
William of Malmesbury in the account which he gives of the chapel made at
Glastonbury by King Ina, mentions that twenty pounds and sixty marks of

gold were used in the preparation of the Coöpertoria Librorum Evangelii.
[147]

The Earlier Monastery Schools.—At the time when neither local
nor national governments had assumed any responsibilities in connection
with elementary education, and when the municipalities were too ignorant,
and in many cases too poor, to make provision for the education of the
children, the monks took up the task as a part of the regular routine of their
duty. The Rule of S. Benedict had in fact made express provision for the
education of pupils.
An exception to the general statement concerning the neglect of the rulers
to make provision for education should, however, be made in the case of
Charlemagne, whose reign covered the period 790 to 830. It was the aim of
Charlemagne to correct or at least to lessen the provincial differences and
local barbarities of style, expression, pression, orthography, etc., in the
rendering of Latin, and it was with this end in view that he planned out his
great scheme of an imperial series of schools, through which should be
established an imperial or academic standard of style and expression. This
appears to have been the first attempt since the time of the Academy of
Alexandria to secure a scholarly uniformity of the standard throughout the
civilised world, and the school at Tours may be considered as a precursor of
the French Academy of modern times. For such a scheme the Emperor was
dependent upon the monks, as it was only in the monasteries that could be
found the scholarship that was required for the work. He entrusted to
Alcuin, a scholarly English Benedictine, the task of organising the imperial
schools. The first schools instituted by Alcuin in Aachen and Tours, and
later in Milan, were placed in charge of Benedictine monks, and formed the
models for a long series of monastic schools during the succeeding
centuries. Alcuin had been trained in the cathedral schools founded in York
by Egbert, and Egbert had been brought up by Benedict Biscop in the
monastery of Yarrow, where he had for friend and fellow pupil the
chronicler Bede. The results of the toilsome journeys taken by Biscop to
collect books for his beloved monasteries of Wearmouth and Yarrow[148]
were far-reaching. The training secured by Alcuin as a scribe and as a
student of the Scriptures, the classics, and the “seven liberal arts” was more
immediately due to his master Ælbert, who afterward succeeded Egbert as
archbishop.

The script which was accepted as the standard for the imperial schools,
and which, transmitted through successive Benedictine scriptoria, served
seven centuries later as a model for the first type-founders of Italy and
France, can be traced directly to the school at York.
Alcuin commemorated his school and its master in a descriptive poem
On the Saints of the Church at York, which is quoted in full by West.[149] In
780, Alcuin succeeded Ælbert as master of the school, and later, was placed
in charge of the cathedral library, which was at the time one of the most
important collections in Christendom. In one of his poems he gives a kind
of metrical summary of the chief contents of this library. The lines are
worth quoting because of the information presented as to the authors at that
time to be looked for in a really great monastic library. The list includes a
distinctive though very restricted group of Latin writers, but, as West points
out, the works “by glorious Greece transferred to Rome” form but a meagre
group. The catalogue omits Isidore, although previous references make
clear that the writings of the great Spanish bishop were important works of
reference in York as in all the British schools. It is West’s opinion that the
Aristotle and other Greek authors referred to were probably present only in
Latin versions. These manuscripts in the York library were undoubtedly for
the most part transcripts of the parchments collected for Wearmouth and
Yarrow by Biscop.
The Library of York Cathedral.

There shalt thou find the volumes that contain
All of the ancient Fathers who remain;
There all the Latin writers make their home
With those that glorious Greece transferred to Rome,
The Hebrews draw from their celestial stream,
And Africa is bright with learning’s beam.

Here shines what Jerome, Ambrose, Hilary thought,
Or Athanasius and Augustine wrought.
Orosius, Leo, Gregory the Great,
Near Basil and Fulgentius coruscate.

Grave Cassiodorus and John Chrysostom

Next Master Bede and learned Aldhelm come,
While Victorinus and Boëthius stand
With Pliny and Pompeius close at hand.

Wise Aristotle looks on Tully near,
Sedulius and Juvencus next appear.
Then come Albinus, Clement, Prosper too,
Paulinus and Arator. Next we view
Lactantius, Fortunatus. Ranged in line
Virgilius Maro, Statius, Lucan, shine.

Donatus, Priscian, Phobus, Phocas, start
The roll of masters in grammatic art.
Entychius, Servius, Pompey, each extend
The list. Comminian brings it to an end.

There shalt thou find, O reader, many more
Famed for their style, the masters of old lore,
Whose many volumes singly to rehearse
Were far too tedious for our present verse.[150]
Alcuin’s work on the Continent began in 782, when, resigning his place
as master of the cathedral school in York, he took charge of the imperial or
palace school at Tours. His work in the palace school included not only the
organisation of classes for the younger students, but the personal charge of
a class which comprised the Emperor himself, his wife Luitgard, and other
members of the royal or imperial family. Whether for the younger or for the
older students, however, the instruction given had to be of a very
elementary character. The distinctive value of the work was, it is to be
borne in mind, not in the extent of the instruction given to the immediate
pupils, but in making clear to the Emperor and to his sons who were to
succeed him, the importance of securing a certain uniformity of script and
of educational work throughout the Empire.
It is very probable that not a few of the earlier copyists who completed in
the scriptoria the tasks set for them by the instructors trained in Tours and
in Aachen, transcribed texts the purport of which they had not mastered. It
was through their work, however, that the texts themselves were preserved

and were made available for later scribes and students who were competent
to comprehend the spirit as well as the letter of their contents.
Mabillon is in accord with later authorities such as Compayré and West,
as to the deplorable condition of learning at this time throughout the Empire
ruled by Charles. Says West: “The plight of learning in Frankland at this
time was deplorable. Whatever traditions had found their way from the
early Gallic schools into the education of the Franks had long since been
scattered and obliterated in the wild disorders which characterised the times
of the Merovingian kings.... The copying of books had almost ceased, and
all that can be found that pretends to the name of literature in this time is
the dull chronicle or ignorantly conceived legend.”[151]
A description such as this emphasises the importance of the work
initiated by Alcuin, work the value of which the ruler of Europe was
fortunately able to appreciate and ready to support. In his relation to
scholarly interests in Europe and to the preservation of the literature of the
past, Alcuin may fairly be considered as the successor of Cassiodorus. He
was able in the eighth century to render a service hardly less distinctive than
that credited to Cassiodorus three hundred years earlier. There is the further
parallel that, like Cassiodorus, he possessed a very keen and intelligent
interest in the form given to literary expression, and in all the details of the
work given to the copyists. The instructions given in Alcuin’s treatise on
orthography for the work of the scribes, follow very closely in principle,
and differ, in fact, but slightly in detail from, the instructions given by
Cassiodorus in his own treatise on the same subject. A couplet which stands
at the head of the first page reads as follows: “Let him who would publish
the sayings of the ancients read me, for he who follows me not will speak
without regard to law.”[152] Alcuin’s care in regard to the consistency of
punctuation and orthography and his intelligent selection of a clearer and
neater form of script than had heretofore been employed, have impressed a
special character on the series of manuscripts dating from the early portion
of the ninth century and written in what is termed the Caroline minuscule.
In a letter written to Charles from Tours in 799, Alcuin mentions that he has
copied out on some blank parchment which the King had sent him a short
treatise on correct diction, with illustrations from Bede. He goes on to speak
of the special value to literature of the distinctions and subdistinctions of
punctuation, the knowledge of which has, he complains, almost

disappeared: “But even as the glory of all learning and the ornaments of
wholesome erudition begin to be seen again by reason of your noble
exertions, so also it seems most fitting that the use of punctuation should
also be resumed by scribes.... Let your authority so instruct the youths at the
palace that they may be able to utter with perfect elegance whatsoever the
clear eloquence of your thought may dictate, so that whatsoever may go to
the parchment bearing the royal name it may display the excellence of the
royal learning.”[153] A very delicate hint, remarks West, for Charles to mind
his commas and his colons.
Up to the time of Charlemagne there appears to have been so little
facility in writing and so few scribes were available, that government
records were not kept even at the Courts. The schools established by Alcuin
at Tours, under the direction of Charlemagne, were in fact the first schools
for writers which had existed in Western Europe for centuries. One of the
earlier applications made of the knowledge gained in the imperial schools
was for the critical analysis of certain historical documents which had
heretofore been accepted as final authorities. In the earlier centuries of the
Middle Ages, anything that was in writing appears to have been accepted as
necessarily trustworthy and valuable, very much as in the earlier times of
printing the fact that a statement was in print caused it to be accepted as
something not to be contradicted. The critical faculty, combined with the
scholarly knowledge necessary and properly applied, was, however, of slow
growth, and centuries must still have passed before, in this work of
differentiating the value of documents, the authority of scholars secured its
full recognition.
After this work of Alcuin began, that is to say, after the beginning of the
ninth century, it became the rule of each properly organised monastery to
include, in addition to the scriptorium, an armarium, or writing-chamber,
which was utilised as a class-room for instruction in writing and in Latin. In
a letter of Canonicus Geoffrey, of St.-Barbe-en-Auge, dated 1170, occurs
the expression, Claustrum sine armario est quasi castrum sine
armamentario,[154] (a monastery without a writing-chamber is like a camp
without a storehouse of munitions or an armory.)
The Capitular of Charlemagne, issued in the year 789, addressed itself to
the correction of the ignorance and carelessness of the monks, and to the

necessity of preserving a standard of correctness for the work of
transcribing holy writings. It contains the phrase:
Et pueros vestros non sinite eos vel legendo vel scribendo corrumpere. Et
si opus est evangelium, psalterium et missale scribere, perfectæ ætatis
homines scribant cum omni diligentia.
(Do not permit your pupils, either in reading or writing, to garble the text;
—and when you are preparing copies of the gospel, the psalter, or the
missal, see that the work is confided to men of mature age, who will write
with due care.)
The following lines were written by Alcuin as an injunction to pious
scribes:
AD MUSÆUM LIBROS SCRIBENTIUM.

Hic sedeant sacræ scribentes famina legis,
Nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata patrum.
His interserere caveant sua frivola verbis,
Frivola ne propter erret et ipsa manus,
Correctosque sibi quærant studiose libellos,
Tramite quo recto penna volantis eat.
Per cola distinguant proprios et commata sensus.
Et punctos ponant ordine quosque suo,
Ne vel falsa legat taceat vel forte repente,
Ante pios fratres lector in ecclesia.
.....

(Quoted from the Vienna Codex, 743. Denis, i., 313.)
Wattenbach is of opinion that these lines stood over the door of the
scriptorium of S. Martin’s Monastery.
West says that the lines were written as an injunction to the scribes of the
school at Tours. He gives the following version, which takes in certain
further lines of the original than those cited by Wattenbach:
“Here let the scribes sit who copy out the words of the Divine Law, and
likewise the hallowed sayings of the holy Fathers. Let them beware of
interspersing their own frivolities in the words they copy, nor let a trifler’s

hand make mistakes through haste. Let them earnestly seek out for
themselves correctly written books to transcribe, that the flying pen may
speed along the right path. Let them distinguish the proper sense by colons
and commas, and let them set the points each one in its due place, and let
not him who reads the words to them either read falsely or pause suddenly.
It is a noble work to write out holy books, nor shall the scribe fail of his due
reward. Writing books is better than planting vines, for he who plants a vine
serves his belly, but he who writes a book serves his soul.”[155]
In a manuscript which was written in S. Jacob’s Monastery in Liége,
occurred the following lines:

Jacob Rebeccæ dilexit simplicitatem,
Altus mens Jacobi scribendi sedulitatem.
Ille pecus pascens se divitiis cumulavit,
Iste libros scribens meritum sibi multiplicavit.
Ille Rachel typicam præ cunctis duxit amatam,
Hic habeat vitam justis super astra paratam.[156]

[(The Hebrew) Jacob loved the simplicity of Rebecca,
The lofty soul of (the monk) Jacob (loved) the work of the scribe.
The former accumulated riches in pasturing his flocks,
The latter increased his fame through the writing of books.
The former won his Rachel, loved beyond all others.
May the scribe have the eternal life which is prepared above the
stars for the just.]

The most important of the works of Alcuin that can be called original
were his educational writings, comprising treatises On Grammar, On
Orthography, On Rhetoric and the Virtues, On Dialectics, A Disputation
with Pepin, and a study of astronomy entitled De Cursu et Saltu Lunæ ac
Bissexto. West mentions three other treatises which have been ascribed to
him: On the Seven Arts, A Disputation for Boys, and the Propositions of
Alcuin.[157] Alcuin was more fortunate than his great predecessor
Cassiodorus in respect to the preservation of his writings. Manuscripts of all
of these remained in existence until the time came when the complete set of
works could be issued in printed form, and the work of the old instructor

could be appreciated by a generation living a thousand years after his life
had closed. He died at Tours in 804, in his seventieth year. Mabillon speaks
of Alcuin as “the most learned man of his age.” Laurie is disposed to lay
stress upon the monastic limitations of his intellect, and thinks that his
principal ability was that of an administrator; West emphasises the “pure
unselfishness of his character,” and adds, with discriminating appreciation:
“We must also credit him with a certain largeness of view, in spite of his
circumscribed horizon. He had some notion of the continuity of the
intellectual life of man, of the perils that beset the transmission of learning
from age to age, and of the disgrace which attached to those who would
allow those noble arts to perish which the wisest of men among the ancients
had discovered.... Perceiving that the precious treasure of knowledge was
then hidden in a few books, he made it his care to transmit to future ages
copies undisfigured by slips of the pen or mistakes of the understanding.
Thus in every way that lay within his power, he endeavoured to put the
fortunes of learning for the times that should succeed him in a position of
advantage, safeguarded by an abundance of truthfully transcribed books,
interpreted by teachers of his own training, sheltered within the Church and
defended by the civil power.”[158] Professor West’s appreciative summary
does full justice to the work and the ideals of Charlemagne’s great
schoolmaster. I should only add that in the special service he was in a
position to render in the preservation, transmission, and publication of the
world’s literature, Alcuin must be accorded a very high place in the series of
literary workers which, beginning with Cassiodorus, includes such names as
Columba, Biscop, Aurispa, Gutenberg, Aldus, Estienne, and Froben.
The most noteworthy of the successors of Alcuin in the palace school at
Tours was John Scotus Erigena, who in 845 was appointed master by
Charles the Bold. The influence of the Irish monk widened the range of
study and gave to it an active-minded and speculative tendency that brought
about a wide departure from the settled conservatism which had always
characterised the teaching of Alcuin. The list of books given to the scribe
for copying was increased, and now included, for instance, works of such
doubtful orthodoxy as the Satyricon of Martianus Capella, a voluminous
compilation constituting a kind of cyclopædia of the seven liberal arts. Its
composition dates from about 500.[159]

In a treatise, De Instituto Clericorum, written in 819 (that is, during the
reign of Louis I.), by Rabanus Maurus, who was Abbot of Fulda and later,
Archbishop of Mayence, is cited the following regulation: “The canons and
the decrees of Pope Zosimus have decided that a clerk proceeding to holy
orders shall continue five years among the readers ... and after that shall for
four years serve as an acolyte or sub-deacon.” (The Zosimus referred to was
Pope for but one year, 417-418.) Rabanus had just before remarked,
“Lectores are so called a legendo.” He goes on to say that “he who would
rightly and properly perform the duty of a reader must be imbued with
learning and conversant with books, and must further be instructed in the
meaning of words and in the knowledge of the words themselves,” etc.[160]
Rabanus follows this with a series of very practical instructions and
suggestions for effective education on the part of the readers. These were
based upon the treatise on elocution written nearly two hundred years
earlier by the learned Bishop Isidore of Seville, and they were again copied
three years after the time of Rabanus by Ibo, Bishop of Chartres, in the
treatise De Rebus Ecclesiasticis. Maitland, to whom I am indebted for this
citation, finds cause for indignant criticism of the historian Robertson for
the superficial and misleading references made by the historian to the dense
ignorance of the Church in the Middle Ages. Maitland suggests that if
Robertson had applied for holy orders to the Archbishop of Seville in the
seventh century, the Archbishop of Mayence in the ninth, or the Bishop of
Chartres in the eleventh, he would have found the examination rather more
of a task than he expected. West speaks of Rabanus as “Alcuin’s greatest
pupil,” and as intellectually “a greater man than his master.”[161] He wrote a
long series of theological and educational treatises.
From the Constitutions of Reculfus, who became Bishop of Soissons in
879, it is evident that he expected the clergy to be able both to read and to
write. The Bishop says: “We admonish that each one of you should be
careful to have a Missal, a Lectionary, a Book of the Gospels, a
Martyrology, an Antiphonary, a Psalter, and a copy of the Forty Homilies of
S. Gregory, corrected and pointed by our copies which we use in the holy
mother Church; and also fail not to have as many sacred and ecclesiastical
books as you can get, for from these you shall receive food and condiment
for your souls.... If, however, any one of you is not able to obtain all the
books of the Old Testament, at least let him diligently take pains to

transcribe for himself correctly the first book of the whole sacred history,
that is, Genesis, by reading which he may come to understand the creation
of the world.”[162] The counsel was good, even although a perfectly clear
understanding of the creation might after all not have been secured.
By the close of the ninth century, a large proportion of the monasteries of
the Continent and of England carried on schools which were open to the
children of as large a district as could be reached. In many cases, the
elementary classes were succeeded by classes in advanced instruction,
while from these were selected favourites or exceptionally capable pupils,
who enjoyed in still higher studies the advantage of the guidance and
service of the best scholars in the monastery. West, in summing up the later
influence of Alcuin, speaks of the stream of learning as having flowed from
York to Tours and from Tours (through Rabanus) to Fulda, thence to
Auxerre, Ferrières, Corbies (old and new), Reichenau, St. Gall, and Rheims,
one branch of it finally reaching Paris.[163] Mabillon speaks of the abbey
schools of Fleury as containing during the tenth and eleventh centuries as
many as five thousand scholars.
In Italy, the most important schools were those instituted at Monte
Cassino, Pomposa, and Classe. Giesebrecht is, however, of opinion that the
educational work of the Italian monasteries was less important than that
carried on by the monasteries in Germany, France, or England. In Germany,
the monasteries which have already been mentioned as centres of
intellectual activity were also those which had instituted the most important
and effective of the schools, the list including St. Gall, Fulda, Reichenau,
Hirschau, Wissembourg, Hersfeld, and many others.
In France and Belgium, the names of the conspicuous abbey schools
include those of Marmoutier, Fontenelle, Fleury, Corbie, Ferrières, Bec,
Clugni. In England, the most noteworthy of the abbey schools were St.
Albans, Glastonbury, Malmesbury, Croyland, and S. Peter’s of Canterbury.
From the epoch of Charlemagne to that of S. Louis, the great abbeys of
Christian Europe served in fact not only as its schools but as its universities.
The more intelligent of the nobility and the kings themselves were
interested in securing for their children the educational advantages of the
monastery schools. Among the French kings who were brought up in this
way are to be named Pepin the Little, Robert the Pious, and Louis the Fat.

In Spain, Sancho the Great, King of Navarre and of Castile, was a graduate
of the monastery of Leyre.
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]

CHAPTER II.
SOME LIBRARIES OF THE MANUSCRIPT PERIOD.

T HE following are some of the more important collections referred to in
the records of the Middle Ages. In Constantinople the Patriarch had a
library in Thomaïtes which was said to be of considerable importance, and
the works in it are referred to very often in the transactions of the Synods.
This collection was destroyed by fire in 780, but was speedily replaced.
Many of the monasteries of the Greek Church possessed libraries, and in
some of these libraries were preserved the oldest manuscripts known to the
world. Among the most important of these collections was that contained in
the monastery of Mt. Athos, some of the treasures of which have been
preserved to the present day. During the time of Basilius Macedo (867-886),
much work was said to have been done by the scribes of this monastery.[212]
In Egypt it is claimed that until the conquest by the Arab, there was a
good deal of literary activity in the monasteries, and in the monastery of S.
Catherine of the Sinai range were preserved some specimens of the earlier
manuscripts, of which the Testament discovered by Tischendorf is the most
important example.
The Library of S. Giovanni in Naples, from which many valuable Greek
manuscripts were secured for the Royal Library in Vienna, was not an old
monastery collection, but had its origin, according to Blume, with Janus
Parrhasius.[213] The Augustin monks presented the collection in 1729 to the
Emperor Charles VI., in order that they might not be disturbed in their
seclusion by the visits of zealous scholars.[214]
The earliest of ecclesiastical libraries was probably that collected by
Bishop Alexander, in Jerusalem, at the beginning of the third century. Fifty
years later a library was founded at Cesarea by Origen, which is described
as extensive and important.[215] Collections were also made at an early date
at Hippo, at Cirta, at Constantinople, and at S. Peter’s and the Lateran in
Rome. All these earlier libraries were apparently connected with the
churches, and in most cases places had been found for them within the
church walls. Clark quotes from a narrative of the persecution of 303-304 a

paragraph saying that the officers “went to the church where the Christians
used to assemble, and spoiled it of chalices, lamps, etc., but when they
came to the library (bibliothecam), the presses (armaria) were found
empty.”[216] From this reference we may conclude that the several vessels
and the books were in different parts of the same building.
The library of S. Augustine was bequeathed to the church of Hippo, and
the collection was preserved within the church building.
The regulations of the libraries in all the Benedictine monasteries were
based upon the Rule of S. Benedict (see ante, p. 28). As Order after Order
was founded, there came to be a steady development of feeling in regard to
books, and an ever increasing care for their safe-keeping. S. Benedict had
contented himself with general directions for study; the Cluniacs prescribe
the selection of a special officer to take charge of the books, with an annual
audit of the collection, and the assignment to each Brother of a single
volume for his year’s study. The Cistercians and Carthusians provide for the
loan of books to outsiders under certain conditions, and the practice was
later adopted by the Benedictines. The Augustinians prescribe the kind of
press (armarium) in which the books are to be kept, and both they and the
Premonstratensians permit their books to be lent on receipt of pledges of
sufficient value. Even the Mendicant Friars, who, under the original Rule of
their Order, had restrained themselves from holding possessions of any
kind, found before long that books were indispensable, so that their libraries
came to excel those of most other Orders. Richard de Bury, in his
Philobiblon, says of the Mendicants: “These men are as ants, ever preparing
their meat in the summer, or as ingenious bees continually fabricating cells
of honey ... although they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the
Lord’s vineyard, they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of
sacred books than all the other vine-dressers.”
Clark points out that the word Library was used by the Benedictines long
before any special room was assigned in the Benedictine House as a storage
place for the books. He is of opinion that until the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries the books were for the most part kept in the cloisters, the only
portions of the monastery buildings, except the refectory and occasionally
the califactorium (warming-house), in which the monks were allowed to
congregate. The books so stored in the cloisters were shut up in presses,
which secured for them a certain amount of protection. The term applied to

these presses, armaria, was that used by the Romans for their book-cases.
The monk charged with the care of the books took his name not from the
books themselves, as in later times, but from the presses which contained
them, and was generally styled armarius.
In some of the monasteries where literary studies were pursued with
special ardour, the more persistent readers and scribes were provided with
small wooden compartments or studies called carrells. In the book called
the Rites of Durham is given the following description of these carrells: “In
the north syde of the cloister, from the corner over againste the church dour
to the corner over againste the Dorter dour, was all fynely glased from the
hight to the sole within a little of the ground into the Cloister garth, and in
every window iij Pewes or Carrells, where every one of the old monks had
his carrell, several by himselfs, that, when they had dyned, they dyd resort
to that place of Cloister, and there studyed upon these books, every one in
his carrell, all the after nonne, unto evensong tyme. This was there exercise
every daie.... In every carrell was a deske to lye there books upon, and the
carrell was no greater than from one stanchell of the wyndowe to another,
and over againste the carrells againste the church wall, did stande certain
great almeries (or cupbords) of waynscott all full of bookes (with great
store of ancient manuscripts to help them in their study) wherein did lye as
well the old anncyent written Doctors of the Church as other prophane
authors, with dyverse other holie men’s wourks, so that every one did
studye what Doctor pleased them best, havinge the Librarie at all tymes to
goe studye in besydes there carrells.”[217]
In the Customs of the Augustinian priory of Barnwell, written towards
the end of the thirteenth century, the following passage occurs: “The press
in which the books are kept ought to be lined inside with wood, that the
damp of the walls may not moisten or stain the books. This press should be
divided vertically as well as horizontally by sundry partitions, on which the
books may be ranged so as to be separated from one another: for fear they
be packed so close as to injure each other, or to delay those who want
them.”
The catalogue of the House of the White Canons at Titchfield in
Hampshire, dated 1400, shows that the books were kept in a small room, on
shelves called columpnæ, and set against the walls. A closet of this kind was
evidently not a working place, but simply a place of storage. By the

beginning of the fifteenth century, the larger monasteries had accumulated
many hundred volumes, and it began to be customary to provide for the
collections separate quarters, rooms constructed for the purpose. The
presses in the cloisters were still utilised for books in daily reference.
In Christ Church, Canterbury, where as early as the fourteenth century,
the collection comprised as many as 698 books, a library at Durham was
built about 1425 by Archbishop Chichele: the library at Durham was built
about the same time by Prior Wessyngton. That at Citeaux, which was
placed over the scriptorium, dates from 1480, and that of St. Germain des
Prés from 1513. The collection of the latter foundation was one of the
earliest in France, and as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century,
there is record of its being consulted by strangers. At the time of the French
Revolution, it contained 7000 manuscripts and 4900 printed books.[218]
The Queen of Sicily, who in 1517 visited Clairvaux, one of the two great
Cistercian foundations in France, describes the library as follows: “On the
same side of the cloister are fourteen studies, where the monks do their
reading and writing, and over these studies, one mounts by a broad spiral
staircase to the new library. This library is 189 feet long by 17 feet wide. It
contains 48 seats (bancs) and in each banc four shelves (poulpitres)
furnished with books on all subjects, but chiefly theology; the greater
number of the said books are of vellum and are written by hand, richly
storied and illuminated.”
The phrase “written by hand,” indicates that the Queen was already
acquainted with books produced from type, some of which had in fact been
produced in Italy as early as 1464.
Another description, written in 1723 by the author of the Voyage
Littéraire, speaks of “the fifteen little cells, all in a row, where the Brethren
formerly used to write books, for which reason they are still called the
writing rooms. Over these cells is the library, the building for which is
large, vaulted, well lighted, and stocked with a large number of
manuscripts, fastened by chains to desks; but there are not many printed
books.”
The provisions of the statutes affecting the library imposed upon the
colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, were evidently borrowed directly from
the customs of the monasteries. The statutes of Oriel College, Oxford, dated

1329, present an example: “The common books (libri communes) of the
House are to be brought out and inspected once a year, on the feast of the
Commemoration of Souls (November 2d) in the presence of the Provost or
his deputy, and of the scholars (Fellows). Each one of the scholars, in the
order of seniority, may select a single book which either treats of the
science to which he is devoting himself, or which he requires for his use.
This he may keep until the same festival in the succeeding year, when a
similar selection of books is to take place, and so on, from year to year. If
there should happen to be more books than persons, those that remain are to
be selected in the same manner.”
A statute of Archbishop Lanfranc, for the English Benedictines, dated
1070, and based, as he tells us, on the general monastic practice of his time,
gives the following regulation: “On the Monday after the first Sunday in
Lent, before Brethren come into the Chapter House, the librarian [here
called not armarius but custos librorum] shall have a carpet laid down and
all the books got together upon it, except those which the year previous had
been assigned for reading. These the Brethren are to bring with them, when
they come into the Chapter House, each his book in his hand. Then the
librarian shall read a statement as to the manner in which Brethren have had
books during the past year. As each Brother hears his name pronounced, he
is to give back the book which had been entrusted to him for reading; and
he whose conscience accuses him of not having read through the book
which he had received, is to fall on his face, confess his fault, and entreat
forgiveness. The librarian shall then make a fresh distribution of books,
namely a different volume to each Brother for his reading.”
It would appear from this reference as if Lanfranc’s monks were under
obligations to read through but one book each year, which was certainly a
very moderate allowance. It is also to be noted that the books appear not to
have been distributed according to the preferences of the readers, but to
have been assigned at the will of the librarian. There must certainly have
been no little difference in the character and extent of the duty imposed of
reading through one book (even with so long an allowance of time)
according to the particular volume which the custos saw fit to assign. The
worthy Archbishop writes, however, as if a book were a book and one as
good for edification or as fitting for penance as another.

It is evident that there were two classes of volumes, one utilised for
distribution for separate reading, and the other reserved for reference and
placed in a separate room (first called armarium and later bibliotheca)
where they were fastened with irons chains to lecterns or reading-desks.
In the various details concerning the distribution of books, the
arrangement of the lecterns for the chained books, etc., the practice in the
early colleges was evidently modelled on that of the monasteries. The
system of chaining, as adopted in England, would allow of the books being
readily taken down from the shelves and placed on the lectern for reading.
One end of the chain was attached to the middle of the upper edge of the
right-hand board or cover; the other to a ring which played on a bar which
set in front of the shelf on which the book stood. The fore-edge of the
books, not the back, was turned to the front. A swivel, usually in the middle
of the chain, prevented tangling. The chains varied in length according to
the distance of the shelf from the desk.[219]
In a copy of Locke’s Treatise on the Epistles, printed in 1711, Maitland
found inscribed the following “advertisement”: “Since, to the great
reproach of the nations and a much greater one of our Holy Religion, the
thievish disposition of some that enter into libraries to learn there no good,
hath made it necessary to secure the innocent books, and even the sacred
volumes themselves, with chains (which are better deserved by those ill
persons who have too much learning to be hanged and too little to be
honest), care should be taken hereafter that as additions shall be made to
this library (of which there is a hopeful expectation), the chains should
neither be longer nor more clumsy than the use of them requires, and that
the loops whereby they are fastened to the books may be rivetted on such a
part of the cover and so smoothly as not to gall or raze the books while
these are removed from or to their respective places.”[220]
Isidore, Bishop of Seville (c. 560-636), possessed probably the largest
collection of books at that time in Europe. It was contained in fourteen
presses or armaria, each of which was ornamented with a bust and
inscribed with verses. The series of verses concludes with the following
notice addressed ad interventorem, a term which may be interpreted a
talkative intruder:

Non patitur quemquam coram se scriba loquentem;

Non est hic quod agas, garrule, perge foras.
(The scribe allows no one to speak in his presence; there is nothing for
you to do here, chatterbox; you had better go outside)—a motto which
would serve very well for a reading-room of to-day.
In Rome the Church had, from an early date, preserved a collection of
manuscripts which related more particularly to church matters, but which
included also some specimens of the Roman Classics. In 855, Lupus, of
Ferrières, writes to Pope Benedict III., begging for the loan of certain texts
from which to make transcripts. He specifies the Commentary of S. Jerome
on Jeremiah, Cicero de Oratore, Quintilian, and Terence.[221]
In the centuries following, however, as the Roman Church sank into a
condition of ignorance and strife, and Italy was continuously upset by
invasions, the library in Rome and the collections which had been instituted
in certain churches outside of Rome were either seriously lessened or
entirely destroyed. As late, however, as 1276, a few valuable manuscripts
were still to be found in the church collections. Wattenbach speaks of the
collection in Verona, in the library of the Town Hall, as one of the most
important of those in Italy in which old manuscripts have been preserved to
the present time. Next in importance among the older collections, he
mentions that of Hexham in England, which had been originally collected
by Bishop Acca in the year 700, and which is referred to by Bede.[222]
With this is to be mentioned the library of York, which is first described
by Alcuin.[223]
Among the earlier important library collections was that of the monastery
of Vivaria, which had been founded by Cassiodorus; the writings were
classified according to their contents, and were arranged in a series of
armaria.
After the beginning of the seventh century, the most noteworthy
collection was that of Bobbio, a portion of which remained as late as 1618,
and was taken by Paul V. for the Vatican Library. Another portion found its
way to Turin.
The literary activity of the monastery of Corbie has already been
mentioned, and the library there continued in existence during the entire
lifetime of the monastery. After 1350 the monks appear to have themselves

given up the work of writing. Étienne de Conty is recorded as one of the
special benefactors of the library. He collected books for it, and he
employed special scribes to add to the collection.[224]
In Germany, the monastery of Reichenau was noted as early as 821 for its
excellent collection of manuscripts. The librarian Reginbert prepared in 821
an exhaustive catalogue of the collection. Not a few of the manuscripts
were, as appeared by the notes in the catalogue, the work of his own hands.
Of these manuscripts, which he had prepared with so great zeal and labour,
there have remained but five sheets of one book, with a portion of the
catalogue.
Of nearly as early a date is the first catalogue of the library of St. Gall,
previously referred to; in the catalogue of this there are beneath the titles
various critical notes. There is record of the loan of books to the Emperor
Charles III., to Frau Rickert, and to Liutward, Bishop of Vercelli.[225]
In the monastery of Pomposa, in Lombardy, Abbot Jerome brought
together in the eleventh century (in spite of certain grumblings on the part
of the monks, the ground for which is not clearly explained) a great
collection of manuscripts.[226] A certain Henricus Clericus, writing in 1093,
describing this collection to a friend, says that in no church, not even in
Rome, could so wonderful a group of books be found. Henricus prepared a
catalogue of the library, and at the close of the catalogue he finds it
necessary, as a matter of consistency, to apologise for the abbot who had
ventured to include in the collection heathen books. The presence of such
books, known at the time as libri scholastici, was, however, by no means
exceptional in monastery collections, and in many of these were to be found
copies of Virgil, Ovid, and particularly Cicero. While this was more
frequently the case in Italy, it occurred also in Germany. An inventory made
in 1233 of the monastery of Neumünster, near Wurzburg, includes in a
special list the titles of a number of the Classics.
A similar separate catalogue of libri scholastici was made in 1297 for the
collection in the cathedral library of Lübeck.
While the principal increase in the monastery libraries had been secured
through the work of scribes and through exchanges, and occasionally
through purchases, a considerable proportion of the books came to them

through gifts or bequests. The gift that it was customary for a novice to
make on entering a monastery very frequently took the form of books.
In 1055, the priest Richlof, in placing his son with the Benedictines, gave
as an accompanying present a farm and some books, and his mother gave a
copy of a treatise of S. Ambrose.[227]
Léon Maitre says that in Fleury, each new scholar was expected to
present at least two codices. Towards the end of the eleventh century, a
noble cleric, who entered as a monk the monastery at Tegernsee, brought
with him so many books that, according to the account, when placed by the
principal altar they covered this from top to bottom.[228]
In what was known as the Scottish Monastery, near Vienna, there was
kept in the thirteenth century a record of gifts, which record includes a long
list of presents of books. In the latter part of the century, the monastery
appears to have degenerated, the library fell into disuse, and the presents of
books ceased. In 1418 the so-called Scottish monks were driven out, and
the foundation was taken possession of by Germans. From this date the
record of gifts of books again began.
In 1453, the monastery received as a bequest from Dr. Johannes
Polzmacher his entire library. The library came to include a considerable list
of works on jurisprudence together with a series of classics, including
several copies of Ovid. The latter appears to have been a special favourite in
the monastic collections. The books on jurisprudence were utilised for the
profit of the monastery by being loaned out to the jurisprudence Faculty of
the university. They were, it appears, also occasionally loaned to the
students for transcribing. In the chance of the manuscripts suffering damage
while out on hire, the borrower was compelled to deposit an adequate
pledge in the shape either of money or other valuable property.[229]
The monastery in Bobbio received books from wandering Irishmen, as is
indicated by the following inscription:

Sancte Columba, tibi Scotto tuus incola Dungal,
Tradidit hunc librum, quo fratrum corda beentur.
Qui legis ergo, Deus pretium sit muneris ora.[230]

(Holy Columba of Scotland, thy votary Dungal has bestowed upon thee
this book, whereby the hearts of the brothers may be gladdened. Do thou
who readest it pray that God may be the reward of thy labour.)
In the monastery of St. Père-de-Chartres the Abbot Alveus, who died in
955, presented to S. Peter a book Pro Vita Æterna.[231]
Dietrich Schreiber, a citizen of Halle, who, notwithstanding his name, is
said not to have been a scribe, gave, in 1239, for the good of his soul, to the
preaching Brothers of Leipzig, a canonistic manuscript, with the condition
that either of his sons should have the privilege of redeeming the same for
the sum of five marks, in case he might require it in connection with his
study of the law.[232] Robert of Lille, who died in 1339, left in his will to his
daughters a certain illuminated calendar, with the condition attached that
after their death the calendar was to be given to the nuns of Chikessaund.
[233]

It is also the case that bequests securing an annual income were
occasionally given with the specific purpose of founding or endowing
monastery scriptoria and libraries. The Abbot of St. Père-de-Chartres
ordered, in 1145, that the tenants or others recognising the authority of the
monastery must take up each year for the support of the library the sum of
eighty-six solidos.[234]
His successor, Fulbert, instituted a new room for the collection and kept
the monks themselves at work, so that in 1367 a catalogue, inscribed in four
rolls, gives the titles of 201 volumes.[235]
Also in Evesham, in Worcestershire, England, a statute enacted in 1215
provides that certain tenths coming into the priory should be reserved for
the purpose of buying parchment and for the increase of the library. During
the following year the amount available for this purpose was five solidos,
eighteen deniers.[236]
The account books of the monks of Ely showed that in the year 1300 they
purchased five dozen sheets of parchment, four pounds of ink, eight calf-
skins, four sheep-skins, five dozen sheets of vellum, and six pairs of book
clasps. In the same year they paid six shillings for a Decretal and two
shillings for a Speculum Gregor. In 1329, the Precentor received six
shillings and seven pence with which he was instructed to go to Balsham to

purchase books. In the same year, four shillings were paid for twelve iron
chains (used, of course, for fastening the books safely to the reading-desks).
Between 1350 and 1356, the purchases appear to have included no less than
seventy dozen sheets of parchment and thirty dozen sheets of vellum.[237]
Prince Borwin, of Rostock, in 1240 presented the monastery of Dargun
with a hide of land, the proceeds of which were to be used for the repairing
and preservation of the books in the library.[238] Adam, treasurer of the
Chapter of Rennes, in 1231, presented his library to the abbey of Penfont,
with the condition that the books were never to be diverted from the abbey,
and that copies were to be lent only against adequate pledges.
In 1345, a library was founded in the House of the German Brothers of
Beuggen, near Rheinfelden, through the exertions of Wulfram of
Nellenberg. He directed that all books left by deceased Brothers throughout
Elsass were to be brought to this library, and the living Brothers were also
earnestly urged to present their own books to the same collection.[239]
The great library of the monastery of Admunt was catalogued in 1380 by
Brother Peter of Arbonne. The Chapter of S. Pancras, in Leyden, received in
1380, through a bequest of Philip of Leyden, a collection of eighty
manuscripts, the catalogue of which has been preserved.[240]
As before indicated, the Monastery Reform, which was instituted with
the beginning of the fifteenth century, exercised a very decided influence
upon the interest in books and upon the development of libraries. In
Tegernsee, where the once noted library had fallen into ruins, the Abbot
Casper (1426-1461) reorganised it, restored such of the old manuscripts as
were still in existence, bought new codices, and put to work a number of
hired scribes. His successor, Conrad V., carried on the work actively and
purchased for the sum of eleven hundred pounds heller no less than 450
volumes, in addition to which he secured a number of gifts or devout
presents.[241]
In Salzburg, the Archbishop Johann II. (1429-1441) caused a new library
building to be erected, and collected for it many beautiful manuscripts. In
the monastery of Bergen, near Magdeburg, the Abbot Bursfelder (1450-
1478) organised a library, and utilised for his books an old chapel. In 1477,
the Prior Martin instituted a library in Bordesholm, and Brother Liborius,

who was a professor in Rostock, gave over, in 1405, to this library, for the
good of his soul, his works on jurisprudence, with the provision that they
were to be placed in chains and to remain forever in the reading-room. A
catalogue of this collection, which was prepared in 1498, and which
contains more than five hundred titles, has been preserved.[242] The library
of the Benedictine monastery of St. Ulrich, near Augsburg, retained its early
importance until the invention of printing, and in 1472, as before
mentioned, a printing office was instituted in connection with the
monastery, by the Abbot and the Chapter, in which active work was carried
on. Abbot Trithemius presented to the monastery of Sponheim, in 1480, the
sum of fifteen hundred ducats for the enlargement of its library.
As before stated, the Brothers of Common Life planned their collections
of books expressly with reference to the service of the students in their
schools, and these libraries contained, therefore, a much larger proportion
of books in the vernacular than were to be found in other monasteries. In
some of the Brotherhood Homes, the library was divided into the collection
for the Brothers and the collection for the students. It was ordered that at
least once a year all books that were not out on loan should be called in and
should be inspected in the presence of the Brothers.
Public Libraries.—Of the libraries of antiquity, only a single one, and
that the latest in foundation, the Imperial Library of Constantinople,
continued in existence as late as the Middle Ages. This library, founded in
354 by the Emperor Constantius, was largely added to by Julian the
Philosopher. Under the Emperor Basiliscus, the original library, which at
that time was said to have contained no less than 120,000 volumes, was
destroyed by fire. It was afterwards reinstituted by the Emperor Zeno, the
prefect of the city, Julian, having given to the work his personal
supervision. References are made to this library in 1276, and again early in
the fourteenth century, when John Palæologus was able to present from it
certain manuscripts (probably duplicates) to the well known manuscript
dealer Aurispa of Venice. It is probable that the manuscripts of the imperial
collection had been to some extent scattered before the fall of the city in
1453. Such manuscripts as had escaped destruction during the confusion of
the siege of the city were hidden away by the scholars interested, in various
monasteries and in out-of-the-way corners, from which they were brought
out by degrees during the following two or three centuries.

Large quantities of these manuscripts found their way, however, very
promptly to Italy, chiefly through Venice, and, as is described in another
chapter, not a few of the Greek scholars who were driven from the
Byzantine territories, or who refused to live under the rule of the Turk,
brought with them into Italy, as their sole valuable possessions, collections
of manuscripts, more or less important, which they used either as texts for
their lectures or for transcribing for sale.
The collections in the monasteries of the West, brought together in the
first place simply for the requirements of the monks and restricted (at least
in theory) to devotional or doctrinal books, were, in large measure at least,
placed at the disposal of scholars and readers outside of the monasteries, as
the interest in literature came to extend beyond the class of ecclesiastics.
With this extension of the use of the libraries, there came a natural
development in the range of the books collected.
Long after the monks or ecclesiastics had ceased to exercise any control
over the books or to be themselves the only readers interested in their
preservation and use, the most convenient space for the collection was to be
found in the church buildings. Many of the collections came, in fact, to be
known as cathedral libraries.
In certain cases, books or money for the purchase of books was
bequeathed in trust to ecclesiastical authorities with the direct purpose of
providing a library for the use of the general public. The cathedral Prior of
Vercelli (in Piedmont), Jacob Carnarius, who died in 1234, left his books to
the Dominicans of S. Paul. He made it, however, a condition of the bequest
that under proper security of deposit or pledge, the books should be placed
at the disposal of any scholars desiring their use, and particularly of
instructors in the Theological Faculty of the University of Vercelli.
Petrarch’s library was bequeathed in 1362 to the Church of S. Mark in
Venice, with the condition that the collection was to be for the use of the
general public. The books were neglected, and for some time disappeared
altogether, and it was only in 1635 that a portion of them were recovered.
The famous library of S. Mark dates from 1468, when Cardinal Bessarion
presented to the city eight hundred manuscripts, assigning as his reason for
the gift the generous hospitality extended by Venice to the refugees from
Constantinople. These books were to be for the use of any qualified citizens

of the city, a pledge of double the value being deposited for any manuscript
borrowed. The library of Boccaccio, who died in 1375, was bequeathed to
the monks of the Holy Ghost in Florence. This library was afterwards added
to by the collection of the famous theologian, Luigi Marsigli, and that of
Niccolo Niccoli.[243]
To Florence, which stood at the front of the intellectual development of
Italy, belongs the credit of instituting the largest and most important of the
earlier public libraries of Italy. Niccolo Niccoli, one of the most energetic of
the scholarly book collectors, specified in his will, made in 1430, that his
manuscripts should be placed in the Camal-dulensian monastery of S.
Maria, where his friend Traversari was prior, and that these manuscripts
were to be available for public use. In 1437, however, the day before his
death, he added a codicil to his will, under which the decision as to the
abiding-place for his manuscripts was left to sixteen trustees.
He died in debt, however, and the books would have been seized by his
creditors if they had not been redeemed by Cosimo de’ Medici. Cosimo
placed them in the Dominican monastery of S. Mark, the collection in
which, in 1444, comprised four hundred Latin and Greek manuscripts.
Cosimo gave much care to the further development of this collection. As
has already been mentioned, he used for the purpose the services of the
great manuscript dealer, Vespasiano. After the earthquake of 1453, he
caused the library building to be restored with greater magnificence than
before. The care of the library was continued, after the death of Cosimo, by
his son Pietro, and the collection finally became the foundation of the
famous Laurentian library, which is in existence to-day.
Pietro took pains to send the Greek grammarian, Laskaris, twice to the
Orient to collect further manuscripts. From his first journey, Laskaris
brought back no less than two hundred works, of which eighty had not
heretofore been known in Italy. On his second journey, Laskaris died.
The library suffered much during the invasion of Charles VIII., but a
large proportion of the books were redeemed from the French invaders by
the Dominican monks, who paid for them three thousand gulden.
Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici (later Pope Leo X.) took the collection
from the monastery with him to Rome, but it was afterwards returned to
Florence by Pope Clemens VII.

Clemens gave to Michel Angelo the commission to build a hall for the
library, but both Pope and architect died before the work was completed,
and the building took shape only finally in 1571, the plan of Michel Angelo
having been carried out in substance.
The library of the Vatican passed through various vicissitudes according
to the interest or the lack of interest of the successive popes, but under Pope
Nicholas V. (1447-1455) it became one of the most important collections in
the world for the use of scholars. In 1471, Sixtus IV. completed the library
building and the rooms for the archives and added many works, and it was
under this Pope that the use of the books was thrown open (under certain
conditions) to the general public.
Frederick, Duke of Urbino, is reported to have spent as much as 40,000
ducats on the ducal collection in Urbino, and Vespasiano rendered
important services in the selection and development of this library. The
books were, in 1657, under the papacy of Alexander VII., transferred to the
Vatican.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there was very considerable
interest in literary work in Hungary and some noteworthy collections of
manuscripts were there brought together. The collectors in Italy found in
fact some of their richest treasures, particularly in manuscripts in Greek, in
the monasteries of Hungary and of Transylvania. The cause of literature was
much furthered by King Matthias Corvinus, who brought together a very
valuable collection in Ofen. He kept four scribes in Florence preparing
works for the Ofen library, and thirty were continually at work in Ofen
itself. His wife, Beatrix, who was a daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples,
and a grand-daughter of Alfonso the Good, is said to have exercised no little
influence upon the literary culture of the Hungarian Court. At her instance,
many Italian scholars were brought to Hungary, and their aid utilised in
completing the library. The codices Budences came to be well known in the
scholarly world, and secured fame both for the beauty of their script and the
richness of their adornment. Wattenbach says of these, however, that their
text is very largely inaccurate, giving the impression that the transcripts had
been prepared hurriedly and to order. After the death of King Matthias, a
number of his books came into the possession of Emperor Maximilian, who
used them for the foundation of the Court Library of Vienna. This was the

only portion of the original Hungarian collection which escaped destruction
at the hands of the Turks.
Among the public libraries in France is to be noted that of Louis IX.,
which was open for the use of scholars, but which, being limited almost
entirely to devotional books, could not have been of any great scholarly
service. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard de Furnival,
chancellor of the Cathedral of Amiens, instituted a public library, and
himself wrote, as a guide for the same, a work entitled Biblionomia.
The libraries of S. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg have already been
referred to.[244]
According to Savigny, there were before the time of printing no
university libraries in Italy. The stationarii provided both instructors and
students with such books as were prescribed in the courses, and the demand
for others appears not to have been great. In Paris, on the other hand, a
collection of books for the use of the students was instituted as early as
1270, the first benefactor being Stephen, Archdeacon of Canterbury.
Stephen gave his books to the church of Notre Dame to be loaned to poor
students of theology. In 1297, Peter of Joigny, in continuation of the same
work, gave a collection of books in trust to the university directly for the
use of these poor students of theology. The famous College of the Sorbonne
probably dates from 1253. The librarium of the college was instituted in
1289, and it was specified that the books were for the common use of the
instructors and students. The catalogue of this collection, prepared in the
following year, is still in existence and contains 1017 titles.[245]
Each socius of the college had a key to the library rooms and was
permitted to take guests in with him. The books were all fastened to the
wall or to the reading-desks by chains, so that the risk of abstraction was
not a serious one. The statutes of 1321 prescribed that of every work issued,
one copy in the best form must be preserved for the Sorbonne collection.
This is probably the first statute of the kind having in view the preservation,
in a public collection, of copies of all works produced. It is to be borne in
mind, however, in the first place, that it could have had reference only to
books produced under the direct supervision of the college, and secondly,
that there was here no question of original literary production, but merely of
copies of the older works accepted as possessing doctrinal authority. The

books in this library (and probably in other similar libraries) which were not
protected by chains were called libri vagantes, and these could, under
certain restrictions, be loaned out. Wattenbach is of opinion, however, that
no books other than duplicates were placed in this class.
Another library of importance was contained in the College of Narbonne,
which had been founded in 1316, and which was itself a continuation of an
earlier foundation instituted in 1238 by the Archbishop Peter, at the time he
was about to take part in the Crusade. The books were to be open for the
use of students as well in Paris as of Narbonne.[246]
In the College of Plessis, the statutes of 1455 described that all books,
with the exception of the Missals, must be chained, and that no unchaining
should be permitted except with the authorisation of the master of all the
bursars. In the College of the Scots, the loaning of books outside of the
building was absolutely forbidden.
To the College of the Sorbonne belongs the credit of taking the initiative
step in inviting the first printers to Paris. In 1469, the prior and the librarian
made themselves responsible for finding work and support for two printers,
called to Paris from Mayence. The fact that the Prior Johann Heynlin was
himself a German was doubtless of influence in bringing to the college
early information concerning the importance of the new art.[247] The first
book which was printed in Paris was the letters of Gasparin of Bergamo,
which appeared in 1470 (twenty years after the perfecting of the Gutenberg
press), and bore the imprint in ædibus Sorbonnæ.
In England, the foundation of the Franciscans in Oxford took, early in the
thirteenth century, active part in furthering library facilities for the clerics
and the students. They appear to have had two collections, one called
libraria conventus, doubtless restricted to theological and religious books,
and one described as libraria scholarium or studentium, which contained a
number of examples of the classics. It was to the Franciscans that Bishop
Grosseteste, who died in 1253, bequeathed all his books.
The interest in literature of Richard de Bury, the friend of Petrarch, has
already been referred to. He was the instructor of King Edward III., and
exercised later, important official responsibilities. He served as a foreign
representative more than once, and was for a time chancellor of the
kingdom. At the time of his death in 1345, he was Bishop of Durham. He

had a passion for the collecting of books, and with the exceptional
advantages of wealth, official station, and knowledge of distant countries,
he had advantages in this pursuit possessed by no other Englishman of the
time. It is said that the other rooms in his house having already been
crowded with books, these were massed in his bedroom also in such
quantities that he could get to his bed only by stepping upon them. His
library was bequeathed to Durham College in Oxford, which had been
founded by himself. The college was discontinued by Henry VIII., and the
books were scattered, not even the catalogue, which Bury had himself
prepared, having been preserved. In confiding his books to Oxford for the
use of the students, Richard gives various earnest injunctions as to the
proper respect in which they should be held and the care with which they
should be handled. A reader who should handle the books with dirty hands
or while eating or drinking, could, in Bury’s opinion, be fitly punished with
nothing less than banishment. The collection of Durham College was to be
open not only to the use of the members of the college itself, but of all
masters and students in Oxford, but no books of which there were no
duplicates were to be taken out of the building.
The earliest university library of Germany was that of the College
Carolinum in Prague, instituted by Charles IV. The next in date appears to
have been that of Heidelberg, where as early as 1386 the Faculty of Arts
had a library for itself in addition to the general collection belonging to the
university. As before stated, there was also a collection in the Castle which
was open for the use of all readers, students, citizens, or strangers. The
university library in Vienna dates from 1415, and that in Erfurt from 1433.
The town library in Leipzig had for its origin a collection possessed by the
Augustinian monks in the monastery of S. Thomas, which collection was
thrown open for the use of the public in 1445. Additions to the library were
to be made only under the inspection and supervision of the monastery
authorities.
The most noteworthy library which had no connection with any
university was instituted at Alzei (in Hesse Cassel) in 1409. Its founders
were Johannes of Kirchdorf, Prebendary of the Cathedral of Worms and
chaplain of King Rupert.
The books were given in order that the clerics and other scholarly people
who belonged to the city of Alzei “could use the same for entertainment and

instruction, and could spread among the community at large the learning
contained therein.”[248]
In Hamburg there was, as early as 1469, a collection comprising forty
volumes of medical books, for the use more particularly of the city
physician and his assistant, and also for general reference. In 1480 the
burgermeister Neuermeister left a considerable legacy for the foundation of
a city library. In Frankfort, the library of the Carmelite monastery was taken
over in 1477 for the use of the city, in order that the “books could be made
of service for the enlightenment of the community to the greater glory of
God and of the Mother of God.”
Collections by Individuals.—Among the laity (outside, at least, of
Italy) it was particularly the kings who from time to time interested
themselves in collecting books. Pepin received from Pope Paul I., at his
own urgent request, a collection of books which included certain Greek
manuscripts. The latter could, however, hardly have been of any particular
service either to the King or to any members of his Court.[249]
The collection formed by Charlemagne has already been referred to, and
also the provision of his will, under which, after his death, the books were
to be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Charles the Bald, with whose
name it is not easy to associate intellectual activity, appears to have been a
great collector of books. After his death his library was, under his
directions, divided between St. Denis, Compiègne, and his son.[250] It is
recorded of William the Great of Aquitaine, who died in 1030, and who was
the father of the Empress Agnes, that “he had many books and read
zealously therein.”[251] Count Baldwin of Guines, who died in 1205,
brought together a collection of books which he had translated into the
Romance tongue. Louis IX. of France was interested in the idea of bringing
together a collection of devout books, and, although he did not live to carry
out his plan, the manuscripts which were left by him served for the scholar
Vincennes of Beauvais in the preparation of his great encyclopedia.
Louis heard, during his crusade, of some sultan who had caused to be
prepared transcripts of all the noted works of philosophy. This example
incited the zeal of Louis, who gave directions that all the “authentic, useful,
and devout books” which were to be found within his realm were to be
transcribed, and the transcripts placed in the Royal Library. The collection

was, however, not allowed to remain complete, as in his will Louis directed
that the books should be divided between the preacher monks and the
Minorites of Paris, the Abbey Royaumont, and the Dominican monks of
Compiègne.[252]
John, Duke of Berry, son of the Good King John, and brother of King
Charles V., found opportunity, even during the troublous times which
culminated with the battle of Poitiers and the imprisonment of his father, to
bring together a noteworthy collection of books. It was this collection that
made the beginning of the library of the Louvre, instituted by Charles V., a
library for which Gilles Mallet prepared in 1373 a very complete catalogue.
Barrois published in 1830, in Paris, a work devoted entirely to a description
of the books collected by Prince John and his brother Charles.
David Aubert, whose translation of the History of the Emperors was
published[253] in 1457, makes, in the preface to this history, special mention
of the literary tastes of Philip, Duke of Burgundy. He says that Philip made
a daily practice of having read to him ancient histories and that he kept
employed a great number of skilled translators, learned historians, and
capable scribes who were busied in adding to his great library. This
collection of Philip appears later to have been scattered as there is no record
of its preservation.
The Duke of Bedford found time, between his frequent campaigns, to
interest himself in the collection of manuscripts, and more particularly of
works which were beautifully illuminated. He purchased, for 1200 francs, a
portion of the library of Charles V., which had been captured, and, these
books being taken to Oxford, finally found place in the Bodleian collection.
Philip of Cleves, who died in 1528 and who was connected with the
Burgundy House, shared the passion of his relatives for magnificent
manuscripts.
An inventory of Margaret, Duchess of Brittany, contains the descriptive
titles of eleven books of devotion and four romances, “all bound in
satin.”[254]
The name of Anne of Brittany, the wife of King Charles VIII., and later
of Louis XII., has long been famous in connection with her fondness for
books of devotion and with the great collection which she succeeded in

making of these. An inventory of 1498 gives the titles of 1140 books as
belonging to Anne’s collection.[255]
In Italy, it was not until the time of Petrarch that there came to be any
general interest in the collection of books. This interest was naturally
associated with the great Humanistic movement of which it may be
considered as partly the cause and partly the effect. The development of
literary interests in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries will be
considered in the chapter on the Renaissance.
In Germany, the collections outside of the monasteries appear to have
been less important than in Burgundy and in France, the difference being
probably in part due to the narrower cultivation of the German noblemen,
and probably also in part to their smaller resources. In fact, the more
important collections do not appear to have been in the possession of the
nobility at all, but to have come into existence through the public spirit of
citizens of lower degree. The library of two hundred volumes brought
together as early as 1260 by Hugo Trimberg, a schoolmaster of St. Gangolf,
has already been referred to.
Duke Ludwig of Brieg is described as having had as early as 1360 a
considerable collection of books, and as having had written, in 1353, by
some scribe whose name has not been preserved, the Hedwig legends.
The Electors of the Palatinate interested themselves in the formation of
libraries, having possibly been influenced to some extent by their relations
with their neighbours on the other side of the Rhine. Authors such as
Matthias of Kemnat and Michel Behaim worked at the instance of the
Electors and under pay from them. The books of Kemnat and Behaim were
either originally written in German, or were promptly translated into
German for the use of the Electors and of their wives. A number of books in
this series are also ornamented with pictures, but, according to the
descriptions, the art work in these illustrations was much inferior to that
done at the same time in Burgundy.
The most important group of the Heidelberg manuscripts was collected
by Ludwig III., who died in 1437.[256] His daughter Mechthild, whose first
husband was the Count Ludwig of Wurtemberg, and whose second, the
Archduke Albrich, retained in her widowhood in her castle at Rotenburg a
collection of ninety-four volumes of the mediæval poets, whose works were

written in the vernacular.[257] Ulbrich of Rappoldstein kept two scribes
engaged for five years in transcribing the Parsival, and the cost of the work
amounted to £200.
It is apparent from the preceding sketch that the development of literature
and the circulation of books during the Middle Ages were considerable,
notwithstanding the serious difficulties there were to contend with during
the ten centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire of the West and the
time of the invention of printing.
Under the “Peace of the World” secured by the imperial rule, there had
come to be an active literary production and a development of literary
interests throughout the community which called for a wide distribution and
a general use of books. There was available for the use of publishers a great
list of accepted classics, Greek and Latin, and there were also various
epochs during which there came into existence works by contemporary
writers of distinctive importance, many of which have been preserved as
classics for future generations.
The publishers of this period had a convenient and inexpensive material
to use for the making of books, and they had available for book production
the labour of skilled and inexpensive scribes,—chiefly slaves. The well
established means of communication throughout the Empire enabled the
publishers of Rome and Massilia and other literary centres to keep open
connections with cities in the farthest districts of the realm, and there is
adequate evidence of a well organised trade in the distribution of books
over almost the entire civilised world, a trade which continued active until
the latter part of the fourth century.
With the fall of the Empire of the West and with the destruction of so
much of the civilised organisation and machinery which had been
dependent upon Roman rule, the book trade, or, at least, the trade outside of
Italy, practically disappeared. There remained, however, with certain classes
a knowledge of the classics and an interest in their preservation, and there
remained also in the monasteries the knowledge and practice of writing and
the collections of the works of the early Church Fathers, the multiplication
of which, for the use of the increasing number of priests, called for
continued labour on the part of the clerical scribes.

When the work of writing came to be instituted, particularly in the
Benedictine Order, as a part of the regular routine of the life of a properly
ordered monastery, and when such work came to be accepted as a part of
the daily or weekly services rendered by the monks, the preservation of the
art of writing and the preservation of the manuscripts, the existence of
which depended upon this continued knowledge, were assured.
For centuries after 476, such literary vitality as there was depended
practically upon these Benedictine monasteries. After the tenth century, we
find a wider literary interest throughout the community, and in certain
Courts and circles of nobility, literature began to be accepted as fashionable,
and an interest in literature to be accepted as part of the proper outfit of a
gentleman.
The second stage, therefore, in the development of the interest in books
which secured the multiplication of enough copies of many of the older
books to prevent them from passing out of existence, was in the formation
of the collections by princes and nobles, collections which were, as we have
noted, usually under the charge of clerical scribes.
The third and more important stage of development came with the
recognition, on the part of the newly founded universities of Bologna, Paris,
Prague, Heidelberg, and Oxford, of the fact that the work of higher
education required the use of collections of books for the reference of
instructors and for the direct use of the students. With the instituting in the
universities of a class of scribes (stationarii, librarii) recognised as
university officials, a recognition which carried with it certain privileges
and protection, and which went far to offset the hampering restrictions of
university and ecclesiastical supervision, the book production of Europe
took a more assured form.
The fourth step in the extension of literary interests was taken by the
towns-people, partly at the instance of priests who were themselves sprung
from the people, and partly under the influence of students returning from
university work to their native towns; and collections of books were made
for the use of the towns-people, while libraries, originally planned only for
the work of the monasteries and for the use of clerics, were thrown open to
students generally. There appear to have been in the manuscript period and
in the earlier ages of printing a larger number of such town libraries and a

larger extent of literary interest among the citizen class in Germany than in
either France or England.
In Italy, the development of literary interests and of literary production
worked from an early date much more outside of church organisations than
was the case either in Germany or in France.
In such centres of literary activity as Florence, Milan, Padua, Rome, and
later, Venice, the production of the classics and the multiplying of the books
of the Italian writers themselves was carried on at the instance and to a large
extent with the money of the wealthier citizens, citizens who in many cases
held no official positions whatever. The intellectual life of Italy was,
however, from an early date, very largely influenced by the thought and the
learning that came to it from the Greeks of Constantinople, an influence
which was increasing in importance for a quarter of a century before the fall
of the Greek Empire, and which, after 1453, was naturally still more
extended and emphasised by the large immigration of Greek scholars flying
from Turkish rule and bringing with them the literary treasures of the East.
It was this invasion of Greek thought and the restoration of the knowledge
of the poetry and philosophy of classic Greece, which gave the immediate
impetus to the great intellectual movement known as the Renaissance.
As the Renaissance movement took hold of the imagination of Italian
scholars, it found ready for its use the new invention of printing, and
through the presses of Aldus and his associates, the thought of the Old
World, reshaped with the knowledge of the fifteenth century, gave a fresh
inspiration to the intellectual life of Europe.
In Germany, where the Renaissance movement also influenced the
intellectual life of the time, a more important impetus to the intellectual
activity came with the work of the Reformation. The printing-press made
the teachings of Luther and his associates available for the widest popular
distribution, and the towns-people and villagers who bought from the book
peddlers the tracts containing the vigorous statements of the Reformers, and
who bought also the answering arguments of the defenders of the Roman
Church, were not merely wrestling with a religious or theological issue, but
were furthering the general education of the community and were helping to
lay the foundation of the book trade of the future. From the earliest date of
the printing-press, it was the case that there was in Germany a larger

distribution of books, printed in the vernacular, among what one may call
(for purposes of classification) the lower orders of the community, than was
the case in either Italy, France, or Germany. The development of the relation
between literature and the community, which came after the establishment
of the new art of printing, belongs, however, to a later chapter.

CHAPTER III.
THE MAKING OF BOOKS IN THE EARLY UNIVERSITIES.

T HE first revival of the long slumbering trade in manuscripts took place
in Italy, the cradle of the universities. Although after the breaking
down of the old civilisation of the Western Empire, Italy had suffered more
through invasions and devastations than any other country of Europe, it had
nevertheless succeeded in preserving a certain continuity of cultivation and
some remnants of learning or germs of intellectual life, from which germs
there came again into growth an intellectual development for Europe. For
the purposes of this study, I am concerned with the history of the early
universities of Europe only in connection with their relations to the
production of books. I propose, therefore, to give a brief description of the
organisation and the character of the book-trade that came into existence in
one or two of the representative university towns, with some reference to
the general influence of the first universities upon the development and the
distribution of literature.
As has been indicated in the introductory chapter, it is my understanding
that, with the beginning of the thirteenth century, the responsibility for the
preservation and the development of the intellectual life of Europe, for the
mental training of the increasing proportion of the community which was
conscious of intellectual existence, and for the transmission to the existing
generations of what had been preserved of the thought and learning of the
past, was transferred from the monasteries and the ecclesiastical schools to
the newly organised universities.
This change meant among other things that the control and direction of
education no longer rested with the ecclesiastics, that the class of scholars
was no longer limited to the clerics, and that there were other directions in
which scholarly achievement was to be sought than those heretofore
marked out by the Church. I do not mean to say that after the beginning of
the thirteenth century, when the schools of Bologna and Paris had
developed into universities, the Church consciously abandoned the control
of education, a control which had rested in its hands for eight centuries. The
representatives of the Church authority themselves took an important part in

bringing into existence not a few of the universities, and in connection with
the organisation of the theological Faculties and in other ways, the popes
and the bishops retained for a long series of years an important and abiding
influence over much of the university work. Heretical doctrines, or what
Rome believed to be heretical doctrines, were taught not infrequently in
university lecture-rooms, but the authority on the part of the Church to
interfere with such teaching, and to secure the withdrawal of the license
from the lecturer, was continually claimed and was frequently enforced.
The fact remained, however, that the general direction and control of the
work of higher education rested no longer with ecclesiastics but with
laymen. Of the four great divisions of university instruction, Theology,
Philosophy (or Art), Law, and Medicine, the first remained of necessity
under the direction of the Church, while in the supervision of the second the
Church undertook to exercise an influence which of necessity varied greatly
from time to time according to the institution and according also to the
character of the particular popes and bishops. The third and fourth Faculties
were, however, entirely independent of ecclesiastical influence, and the
mere fact of the existence outside of the Church of an important division of
learning and of a great body of scholars must have had a powerful effect on
the imagination of communities which had for so many generations been
accustomed to look to the Church as the source or as the interpreter of all
knowledge.
The principal authorities on the rise and the general history of the earlier
universities are Denifle, Laurie, Mullinger, and Compayré. The titles of
their several works, on which have in the main been based such statements
or conclusions as are expressed in the following pages, are given in full in
the bibliography. The details concerning the work of the university scribes
and the manuscript dealers are chiefly derived from the works of
Wattenbach and Kirchhoff.[258]
It is to be noted that several centuries before the institution in Christian
Europe of the first of the universities, and at a time when, outside of a few
monastic scriptoria, the interest in literature in Christian states was almost
non-existent, in the countries which had accepted the faith of Mahomet a
system of higher education had been effectively organised, and in
connection with the intellectual activity of the universities and libraries of
Bagdad, Alexandria, Cairo, and Cordova, there had been a very

considerable production of literature in the departments of jurisprudence,
philosophy, and science. In fact, the first knowledge that came to the
Europe of the Middle Ages concerning Greek thought and Greek literature
was brought to it through Arabian scholars, and it was by means of the
lecturers of Cordova that the doctrines of Aristotle were made known to the
philosophers of Paris. The list of the scholarly writers who were associated
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries with the great Arabian schools is a
long one, and the books produced by them included not a few works which
had an abiding influence on the thought of Europe. I have, however, no
information concerning the methods employed for the manifolding and
distribution of the books, and a consideration of them does not properly find
place in this study. The names of Avicenna (d. 1027) and Averrhoes (d.
1198) will be recognised as representative of the class of authors referred to,
the men who, by their translations of Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, and
other Greek classics, recalled what Laurie calls the university life of the
Greeks.[259]
In explaining how the universities are to be distinguished from the
cathedral schools or the Benedictine schools out of which they were
developed, Laurie gives the following definition of the first universities:
“They were specialised schools, as opposed to the schools of Arts, and they
were open to all, without restriction, as studia publica or generalia, as
opposed to the more restricted ecclesiastical schools, which were under a
Rule.”[260]
For the older institutions, it is not practicable to fix with any precision the
date of their beginning, and no year can be named in which they first
exercised the functions of a university. The first university that was
formally founded was that of Prague, which dates from April, 1348.
Bologna, Paris, Padua, Oxford, and Cambridge were not founded but grew,
that is, were developed under special influences out of pre-existing schools.
The first European school which, while never developing into a university,
did do specialised university work, was that of Salerno, which may be said
to have initiated for Europe systematised and scientific instruction in
medicine. Fons Medicinæ was the name given to it by Petrarch. The school
of Salerno has one special claim to commemoration in any general sketch
of the intellectual life of Europe. Its foundation and early development were
due to the famous Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, the monastery

which had been established by S. Benedict (in 529), and the scriptorium in
which was the creation of Cassiodorus. Salerno, which was later affiliated
with the University of Naples, fills, therefore, the place of a connecting link
between the educational work of the old-time Benedictine scriptorium and
the scientific activities and intellectual life of the new university system of
Europe. Indeed, through that wonderful old man, Cassiodorus, at once
Greek, Roman, and Goth, statesman, author, and monk, the chain of
continuity is borne directly back to the classic world of imperial Rome.
The study of letters in Monte Cassino had come to include medicine, and
the writings of Galen and Hippocrates were transcribed in the scriptorium,
and were later made the first text-books in the medical school established
by the monks at Salerno. Charlemagne is said to have interested himself in
the school and in 802 to have ordered certain Greek medical treatises to be
translated for its use from the Arabic into Latin.[261] The man who finally
developed the monks’ medical school (then known as the civitas
Hippocratica) into a great and specialised studium publicum was, however,
Constantine, a Carthaginian Christian. His work was done between the
years of 1065 and 1087, under the special favour and patronage of Robert
Guiscard, who was at that time ruler of Apulia. In the time of Robert the
school contained some women students, probably the earliest in Europe.
There are references also at this period to several female writers on medical
subjects. Salerno dates as a privileged school from 1100. The University of
Naples, with which the medical college of Salerno was later affiliated, was
instituted by Frederick II. (the “Wonder of the World”) in 1224.
Notwithstanding the brilliancy of the Court of Frederick and the feverish
energy of the monarch himself, the literary work done in his university was
not of abiding importance, and it is Bologna which serves as the type of the
earlier universities of Europe, and which divides with the University of
Paris the honour of having served as a general model for later foundations.
The University of Bologna lays claim to be the oldest in Europe.
According to one tradition it was founded by Charlemagne about 800, but
the celebration in 1890 of its thousandth anniversary indicates that its
modern historians have contented themselves with a somewhat later date.
The jurist Irnerius, who gave instruction in civil law in Bologna between
1100 and 1135, was able to do for the school of law a very similar work to
that done by Constantine a century earlier for the school of medicine at

Salerno, and under his direction the school became a studium publicum or
generale. Bologna dates as a privileged studium from 1158, when the
Universitas secured a formal recognition from Frederick I. Tiraboschi
speaks of the university as having been in a flourishing condition as early as
the twelfth century, and in 1224, when the Emperor Frederick II., in his zeal
on behalf of his newly founded university at Naples, undertook to suppress
that of Bologna, the latter is reported to have had no less than 10,000
students. Its great jurist of that time was Azo or Azolinus. The edict was
revoked in 1227, and the schools of the university were, in fact, never
closed. The University of Padua dates from about 1215, and that of Vercelli
(in Piedmont) from 1228. In 1248, Innocent IV. established the University
of Piacenza, with privileges similar to those enjoyed by Paris and Bologna.
Pisa dates from about 1340, Florence from 1321, and Pavia from 1362.
Galeazzo Visconti secured for Pavia from Charles IV. a charter with the
privileges of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford. Notwithstanding the competition
of so many rival institutions, and the special favour shown from time to
time to certain of these by one prince or another (as in the case of the
Emperor Frederick to Naples), Bologna not only retained its pre-eminence
among the universities of Italy, but secured for itself a great reputation
throughout Europe, attracting students of every nationality. In Bologna,
Padua, and Pavia special attention was given to jurisprudence, while the
school of Florence was noted for the liberal remuneration granted to its
instructors in rhetoric and in belles-lettres. In this respect, however,
Florence stood almost alone. The instructors in literature, classed as
Humanists, were obliged for the most part to seek appreciation and
remuneration not in the universities, but at the Courts of the cultivated
princes and in the palaces of the more intellectual of the noblemen, and,
fortunately for the literary life of Italy, literature had, during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, a popularity and acceptance among princes and
nobles to an extent not known elsewhere in Europe.
While the university life of Italy dates from the close of the twelfth
century, it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that we find
any trace of regulations concerning the production and distribution of
manuscripts. It appears that for a term of perhaps a quarter of a century
there had been in Bologna and in the other older university towns a certain
amount of interest in the production, hiring, and selling of manuscripts, a
trade which had been carried on without any supervision or restriction on

the part of the university authorities, and the same was the case with the
work of the earlier manuscript dealers in Paris.
The term stationarii, which first appears in Bologna in 1259 and in Paris
some years later, indicates at once a change in the method of work of these
university scribes as compared with previous writers who had been ready to
do work in one place or another as opportunity offered. For a number of
years there was, in connection with this university work, practically no
selling of books. The special responsibility of the stationarii was to keep in
stock a sufficient number of authorised and verified transcripts or copies of
the books ordered or recommended in the educational courses of the
university, and to rent these to the students or to the instructors at rates
which were prescribed by university regulations. The stationarii also took
over the books of the students who died while in the university, or of
departing students, as in most of the universities it was a misdemeanour to
carry any books at all out of the university town.
In Bologna, Padua, and probably other Italian universities, the Jews were
forbidden to carry on any trade in books. If, therefore, Jews coming into a
town had manuscripts which they wished to dispose of, it was necessary for
them to place these manuscripts in the hands of the stationarii, and they
would make sale of them on commission. As before specified, however, the
buyers of books in a university town could purchase only the use of the
books during their sojourn in such town. On leaving the town, it was
necessary that the books should be placed again with the stationarii for sale
to others connected with the university. It is probable, however, that this
regulation applied only to the special list of text-books or reference books
authorised and prescribed by the university. A certain Heinrichs of
Kirchberg relates that on leaving Padua in 1256, he had managed to bring
away with him a considerable package of books. He had accomplished this
by hiding the books in a load of hay which he took with him through the
town gates without being discovered.[262] In 1334, the university regulation
was modified so that after having secured the special permission of the
authorities, a student could take with him from the university books which
he had purchased.
Until the time when the manuscript traders were replaced by the dealers
in printed books, the most important function of the university dealers was
not in the sale, but in the hiring out of manuscripts, and the term

stationarius came from a very early date to be limited to the functionary
who, under the regulations of the university, provided, for hire, the students,
and in some cases the instructors, with the material required for their work.
In order to facilitate the manifolding and prompt distribution of the texts
needed, and in order also to lessen for the students the cost of securing these
texts, the practice obtained from the beginning of dividing the manuscripts
into portions, to which portions were given the name peciæ or petiæ—or in
the Italian form, pezze. At first, the extent of these divisions must have been
more or less arbitrary, but later, the number of pages or sheets to be
contained in them was made a matter of specific university regulation.
According to the regulation, the pecia was to contain sixteen columns, each
with sixty-two lines, and each line with thirty-two letters, and the material
was to be written on sheets comprising together a form, quaterne.
The pecia served as the unit of the calculation for the charge for the
rental. The older manuscripts had been written in a much larger format than
that found convenient for university work, and the above specified form
was now arrived at as, on the whole, best meeting the requirements of the
students and the convenience of the scribes.
For some years after the formal recognition by the university statutes of
the stationarii, the number of these was naturally limited, a limitation which
had a service for the university authorities in facilitating the supervision
considered important, and which was, of course, of business value for the
stationarii themselves. A certain amount not only of scholarly knowledge
but also of capital must have been requisite on the part of the stationarii in
order to bring together for manifolding authentic codices or texts, and also
to keep themselves supplied with writing materials, which during the
thirteenth century continued to be costly. There is evidence that in certain
cases, particularly in Padua, a salary was paid from the university chest to
the stationarii, which was an admission on the part of the university
authorities that the prices prescribed for the rent of the peciæ were not in
themselves adequate to secure a living income for the scribes.
The stationarii were occasionally known in the Italian universities by the
name of bedelli, or bidelli. The bedelli were originally university officials,
whose functions probably covered some such disciplinary work as that
which is to-day in the hands of the Oxford proctors. The name suggests also

the English term beadle, applied to the English parish official who was
charged with the duty of keeping the peace, and I find that the
lexicographers derive the word beadle directly from the earlier term bedel,
the name given to the English university functionary who had to do with
matters of discipline and particularly with the direction of public functions,
processions, etc. The name is derived from pedum, a stick, the allusion
being probably to the baton or staff of office. The use in Italy of the term
bidellus for the scribes hiring out manuscripts, was evidently due to the fact
that the privileges of this business were in certain cases given to the
university officials, in addition, probably, to their other duties.
The name of peciarii was sometimes applied to the officials whose duty
it was to supervise the work of the stationarii. In 1300, there is reference to
six peciarii in Bologna.
The earliest Italian reference to university scribes dates from 1228, and
concerns not the University of Bologna, but the smaller institution of
Vercelli in Piedmont. The Vercelli regulations order the employment of two
exemplatores, who were to be charged with the duty of providing the texts
required for the use of the instructors and students in the Faculties of
jurisprudence and theology. The prices to be paid for these manuscripts
were to be fixed by the rector of the university. As this is the earliest
regulation of which there is record concerning bookselling in the
universities, I think it worth while to cite the text itself:
Item habebit Commune Vercellarum duos exemplatores, quibus taliter
providebit, quod eos scholares habere possint, qui habeant exemplantia in
utroque jure et in Theologia competentia et correcta tam in textu quam in
glossa; ita quod solutio fiat a scholaribus pro exemplis secundum quod
convenit, ad taxationem Rectoris.[263]
[The University of Vercelli shall also employ two exemplatores, for
whom suitable provision shall be made, so that they may be at the service of
the scholars who require manuscripts authoritative and correct both as to the
text and in the commentaries, either in the department of law or in that of
theology, and in return for the copies (or for the use of the copies) received
from the exemplatores, the students shall pay a fitting price (or rental) to be
fixed by the Rector of the university.]

In similar fashion, the statutes of the University of Padua of the year
1283 provide that two stationarii or bidelli should be employed, one of
whom should be at the service of the Faculty of jurisprudence, and the other
should serve those of arts and of medicine. The theological Faculty was not
instituted in Padua until much later. The two bidelli drew salaries, the first
of eight ducats per year, and the second of two ducats, forty sols. They were
charged with the duty of keeping a supply of peciæ of the texts prescribed
in the lists and of placing these supplies at the disposal of the students and
scholars calling for the same. In the year 1420, the statutes of the High
School of Modena prescribed that the stationarius (there appears to have
been question of but one official for the entire institution) must keep a
supply of the texts of the Roman and Canonical law, the summa notaria, the
speculum, the Lectures of Cinus and of Innocentius.
The stationarius was to charge for the rent of a pecia of the prescribed
texts four denarii, of the glossarii five denarii, and of other texts six denarii.
I do not find in the regulations any specification of the term covered by this
rental. The city was to assure the stationarius of freedom from military
service, and was to give him “the yearly compensation of ten lire.”[264]
A reference by the Italian scholar Filelfo indicates that from this
university arrangement the term bidellus came to be applied to scribes
outside of university towns. Filelfo speaks of a librarius publicus, “who, in
the ordinary speech, is called bidellus.”
With the increase in the larger universities, such as Bologna and Padua,
of the number of students and instructors requiring literary material, the
practice gradually took shape of purchasing instead of hiring the texts
required, and the stationarii developed into librarii. In its original
signification, the term librarius stood for librarian; and as late as the
fourteenth century the French word librairie was used for a library or a
collection of books. It seems to have been only after the introduction of
printing that the use of the term librairie finally came to be restricted in
France to a collection of books held for sale, that is to say, to a book-shop.
The book-dealers, who in the earlier years of the manuscript period
devoted themselves to keeping collections of manuscripts, filled, in fact,
rather the rôle of librarians than of booksellers. They were ready to rent out
their manuscripts for a consideration, or to permit customers to consult the

texts without taking them from the shop. The practice of making from their
original stock of texts authenticated copies for general sale, was a matter of
comparatively slow development.
Bologna had become the most important school in Europe for the study
of Roman and Canonical law, and it was in Bologna that the undertakings
of the university bookseller first became important. The booksellers were
not only subject to the supervision of the university, but were also brought
under the regulations of the town, and the town authorities undertook to
prescribe prices as well for the renting as for the selling of the manuscripts,
and also to prescribe penalties for the renting or selling of incorrect or
incomplete texts.
The university regulations specified that there must be on the part of the
booksellers no modification of the text under which new readings or glosses
should be inserted to replace those accepted as authoritative, and a penalty
was attached to the selling or renting of the texts in any other form than that
in which they were prescribed by the instructors of the Faculty to which the
study belonged. In 1289, the penalty for the contravention of this
regulation, previously fixed at ten lire, was raised to one hundred lire.[265]
A few years later, a university regulation specified that the stationarii
peciarum who undertook to rent out the authoritative texts, must keep in
stock sufficient supplies of 117 specified works. In the year 1300, there
were in the university six official stationarii, of whom three were Italians
and three, foreigners. They had to be appointed each year, but it seems
probable that when their work proved satisfactory they were re-appointed
from year to year.
The responsibility for the general supervision of the texts and for their
correctness and completeness rested with the bidellus generalis. Any reader
who should discover blemishes or omissions in the peciæ was under
obligation to report the same to the bidellus generalis, and the stationarius
who was responsible for the preparation of the defective text was fined five
solidos, one half of the fine going to the university chest, one quarter to the
bidellus, and one quarter to the informant.
The stationarii were ordered to post up in a conspicuous place in their
shops all the regulations having to do with their trade, in order that all
buyers could know what they were entitled to receive. They were not at

liberty to decline to rent to university members any peciæ on the official
list. On the other hand, if they rented out peciæ to students who had been
expelled or who were under suspension, they were themselves liable to fine.
The usual rental at this time, that is to say, the beginning of the thirteenth
century, was four denarii for a quaterne (four sheets) and two denarii for a
pecia. The denarius was the equivalent of about ten cents.
The rental for works not on the official list was somewhat higher, as
these would not be called for so continuously and as the preparation of
supplies of the same must, therefore, be more of a speculation. In renting
manuscripts outside of Bologna (which could be done only under special
permission of the university authorities and which occurred as a rule only
with members of other universities) an additional two denarii for a quaterne
could be demanded. Students renting the peciæ were obliged to deposit a
pledge of sufficient value to secure the stationarii against loss. Between the
regulations applying to the stationarii peciarum, and those controlling the
general stationarii, who had authority to sell as well as to rent and whose
business lay outside of the university, there were various differences. The
general stationarius appeared to have undertaken from time to time the sale
of books on commission, which to the university stationarius was
forbidden.
One of the earlier university regulations prohibited students from
purchasing manuscripts with a view of selling them again for a profit, but
this, according to Savigny, fell into disuse in the course of the fourteenth
century. As late as 1334, the regulations of Bologna strictly prohibited
students from taking with them, on leaving the universities, any books
whatsoever, without a special authorisation on the part of the heads of their
respective Faculties. Regulations of this kind naturally interfered with the
normal development of the book trade in a city so largely dependent upon
its university as was Bologna, and formed one cause for the greater activity
of the general book trade in cities like Venice, where the regulations of the
commune were not supplemented by those of university authorities.
The city statutes of Bologna of 1259, prohibited the stationarii librarii
from taking a higher commission on the sale of manuscripts than two and a
half per cent. It was also specified that no sale of a work left on commission
should be made without the direct knowledge of the owner. The stationarius
peciarum belonged at the outset to the membership of the university, and, in

accepting the authority of its supervision and its regulations, enjoyed also
the university privileges, which included freedom from certain municipal
obligations. Many of the university stationarii belonged, as mentioned, to
the class of bidelli.
It was forbidden for any member of the university to promise or to
engage, either directly or indirectly, to pay to the stationarius a higher
commission or compensation than that prescribed in the regulations. The
penalty for an infraction of this rule, a penalty imposed upon both the
parties concerned, was a fine of five livres. The student was also under
obligations to denounce to the rector any attempt on the part of the dealer to
secure an additional compensation.[266] The very severity of these
prohibitions gives indication of difficulty in securing enforcement of the
system.
The statutes of Padua and of the other Italian universities of the
manuscript trade, were similar to, and were probably in the main based
upon, those of Bologna. In Padua, the earliest regulations which have been
preserved bear date as late as 1465, which is one year later than the
introduction into Italy of the printing-press. The regulations of 1465
prescribed the size of the peciæ and confirmed the rental prices to the
schedule of those of Bologna. The renting of manuscripts could, however,
have continued but for a short period after the issue of these regulations. In
Padua, as in Bologna, the stationarii peciarum had to make a deposit, in
entering upon their business, of four hundred lire. They had also to go
through with an examination at the hands of the university authorities, and
they then had to take an oath of loyalty to the university. This entitled them
to their formal appointment, which needed, however, as stated, to be
confirmed from year to year.
In Padua, as in Bologna, there were fixed commissions for the sale of
manuscripts, and these commissions, in themselves quite moderate, were to
be paid half by the buyer and half by the seller. It appears, however, that the
prices were probably not fully controlled by these regulations, as there are
examples of so-called “presents” being given by buyers to the sellers after
the sale of manuscripts on the commission basis specified in the regulations
had been duly recorded.

In Padua, as in Bologna, it was strictly forbidden for Jews to take any
part in the buying and selling of manuscripts. The only way in which a Jew
could secure a manuscript desired by him was through the intervention of
the university authorities, who might make purchase of the same on his
behalf. The bidellus was the official usually employed for the purpose. It
may be assumed that some additional commission was here required, and
that the Jews had to pay more dearly for their university texts than the
Christians.
There does not appear to be record of the loaning of manuscripts to
students for their own transcribing, although in Paris this evidently formed
an important portion of the manuscript business. In Bologna, as in Padua,
the trade in bookbinding was directly associated with that of manuscript
selling, and the ligatori librorum carried on their work in the shops of the
librarii. In Bologna, the manuscripts were in the main devoted to the
subjects of the law and scholastic theology, while in Padua the more
important division was medicine.
The literary requirements, however, for doctors of law as for doctors of
medicine, must have been at best but moderate. Savigny states that in the
thirteenth century the collection of books belonging to a doctor of the law in
Bologna rarely comprised more than from four to six volumes, and the
medical collections were hardly as large. It is with the beginning of the
fifteenth century that there comes to be a larger understanding of the
relations of literature to education and a material increase in the demand in
the university towns for supplies of books outside of the texts actually in
use in the lecture room.
Compayré gives the following list of the books required in the ordinary
and in the extraordinary courses of law in Bologna, a list which was, he
says, practically the same at Montpellier: The several works of the Corpus
Juris of Justinian, comprising the Codex (which dates from 529), the
Digestum Vetus, the Infortiatum, the Digestum Novum. These were identical
with the three parts which the pupils of Irnerius distinguished as the
Pandects or Digest, the Institutes, the Authenticum. To these sources of the
Roman law were later added the Constitutiones of Frederick I. and
Frederick II., and in Montpellier the Usus Feudorum, a collection of feudal
laws.

The statutes of the universities fixed the time within which the reading of
the prescribed books must be completed. Professors were obliged, in
entering upon their duties, to take the following oath: “I swear to read and
to finish reading within the time fixed by the statutes, the books or parts of
books which have been assigned for my lectures.” Severe penalties were
inflicted on those whose courses had not been completed within the
required time.[267] There ought, as a rule, to have been no difficulty in
completing the task assigned, for each Faculty had, as a rule, only a single
work or at most a single author assigned for its consideration. The Faculty
of Arts had Aristotle, that of Civil Law the Corpus Juris of Justinian, that of
Common Law the Decretals of Gratian. Compayré suggests that, according
to the maxim of Seneca, timeo hominem unius libri, the Faculties of the
Middle Ages might well have been awe-inspiring.
The list of the texts of the medical Faculties was, however, somewhat
more considerable. The course in Montpellier, where medicine became still
more important than law, followed in the main that of Salerno. The first
place was given to Hippocrates and Galen. It is somewhat surprising that as
late as 1250 the teachings of these old-time practitioners (whose work was
done respectively in the fourth century b.c. and the second century a.d.)
should still have remained the chief authorities in medical science.
Compayré refers to them as the Aristotles of Medicine. In the program of
the Faculty of Paris of 1270, however, the names of Hippocrates and Galen
do not appear.
With the two Greeks were associated the original works of Constantine
and his translations from Rhazes Hali-Abbas, Ysaac, Avicenna, Johannicus,
and other Arabic and Persian writers, and finally the treatise of John of St.
Amand, and of Nicholas of Salerno. The Antidotarium, or Book of
Antidotes, known also as the Book of Medicaments, was for some centuries
a work of standard reference and of popular sale. The influence of the Arabs
in the instructional literature of medicine seems to have been almost as
controlling as that of the Greeks in philosophy and of the Romans in law.
Rabelais, who studied medicine in Montpellier between 1520 and 1530,
is said to have been the first among the students who was able to read his
Greek authors in the original instead of in Latin translations.[268] Rabelais
found time while in college not only for Greek and medicine, but for

literature. The first part of the Pantagruel was written before he had secured
his final diploma.
By the middle of the thirteenth century, the number of the books required
for use in the university courses had increased to such an extent that four
catalogues were issued, one for each of the four Faculties—Law, Medicine,
Theology, and Arts. The lectures and the instruction were given entirely in
Latin, which was the only language that could have been understood by all
of the various nationalities represented, or even by the representatives of the
different Italian dialects.
In Spain, the earliest university was that of Palencia, which was founded
in 1212. Salamanca, founded a few years later, soon exceeded Palencia in
importance, and, particularly in connection with the work of its medical
Faculty, secured for itself, before the close of the thirteenth century, a repute
throughout Europe. Compayré is of opinion that the instruction given in
Salamanca, not only in medicine but in science generally and in philosophy,
was very largely influenced by the presence in the peninsula of Moorish
scholars. “The philosophy of Averrhoes and the medicine of Avicenna
exerted a manifest influence on the development of studies at
Salamanca.”[269] It seems probable, if this belief is well founded, that the
Arabian literature, produced and manifolded in Cordova, found its way to
Salamanca, and through Salamanca to Salerno, Bologna, and Paris.
The formal constitution of the University of Paris dates from 1202.
Certain of its historians, however, claim for its first work as an educational
institution a much earlier date. Crévier, for instance, says: “The University
of Paris as a school goes back to Alcuin ... Charlemagne was its
founder.”[270] Charlemagne’s practical interest in education has caused his
name to be associated with the schools of Tours, Aachen, Milan, Salerno,
Bologna, and Paris. The most recent writer on the subject, Compayré, is of
opinion that this is an exaggerated statement. He finds evidence of an
unbroken succession of Benedictine schools, such as those of Rheims,
Tours, Angers, Laon, Bec, and others, which had preserved a continuity of
educational work from the time of Charlemagne to that of Louis VIII., and
which, under such leaders as Lanfranc (1005-1089), and S. Anselm (1033-
1109), had developed and maintained a high degree of intellectual activity.
He considers these to have constituted the direct succession to the schools
of the palace of Charlemagne, but he fails to find in them the prototype of

the university system. For Compayré, the actual founder of the University
of Paris was Abelard, who died sixty years before the university secured its
organisation. It is his contention that it was Abelard who, by his learning,
his independence of thought, his eloquence, and his mastery over the minds
of men, is to be credited with the initiation of the great movement from
which was to proceed not only the University of Paris, but the long series of
universities for which Paris served as an incentive and the type. It was
Abelard, says Compayré, who, if not first, at least with the most direct and
far-reaching influence, introduced dialectics into theology and reason into
authority, breaking away from the mere passive transmission of the beliefs
and timid dialectics accepted by the schools of theology, and thus making
possible the development of a true university spirit. “The method of
Abelard is the soul of scholastic philosophy,”[271] the philosophy which,
until the Renaissance, reigned supreme in the University of Paris. Abelard’s
method, says Père Denifle, is presented in the book which during several
centuries served as the text for theological instruction, the Sentences of
Peter Lombard, and its influence is also to be noted in that other noteworthy
work which became the authority for the schools of common law, the
Decretals of Gratian.
Abelard may be called the first professor of superior instruction. His
work was certainly begun with éclat, for his classes are said to have
numbered at times no less than five thousand pupils. “First of the French
philosophers ... he may justly be considered as the precursor of Ramus and
Descartes, in other words, of the Renaissance and of the modern
spirit.”[272] Apart from this more far-reaching influence, he was able to do
for the school of Paris what the jurist Irnerius was, during nearly the same
years, accomplishing for the school of Bologna, making possible, namely,
its development into the university. It was through the work done by
Abelard that “the theological school of Paris became the seminary of
Christian Europe.”[273] This influence continued through the succeeding
centuries in which Paris still remained the centre of theological instruction,
a result which necessarily had later an important effect in shaping the
character of the earlier issues of the Paris Press.
The term University is not a synonym of the university of science, but
simply of the university of teachers and students who composed a group
and who instituted association of studies. “In the language of the Civil

Law,” says Malden, “all corporations were called Universitates, as forming
one whole out of many individuals.”[274]
The organisation of the University of Paris, while differing in certain
important details from that of Bologna, was substantially identical with the
Italian institutions in respect to the privileges conceded to instructors and
students. In successive enactments or crown edicts, the members of the
universities of Paris, Montpellier, and Poitiers were exempted, not only
from the regular national taxes and from the town dues (octroi), but also
from special war taxes. In 1295, Philip the Fair decreed that under no
pretext could the goods of the members of the universities be taken or their
revenues attached.[275] The following statute of the University of Padua
represented fairly enough the status of students in all the universities of
France and of Italy: “Students must be considered as citizens in what
concerns the advantages, but not in that which constitutes the burdens of
citizens.” Under this same principle, members of the universities were also
exempt from military service.
The authorities of the University of Paris exercised a very direct control
from the outset over all the details of the business of making, renting, and
selling books. This authority became in Paris a matter of much more
immediate importance and abiding influence than in Bologna. In the latter,
as we have seen, the business of the book-dealers was very closely limited
to the production of the texts immediately required for the work of the
class-room. In Paris, however, in the manuscript period, two and a half
centuries before the introduction of the printing-press, the book-trade of the
university had become in great measure the book-trade of the city. During a
large part of this time, moreover, Paris shared with Florence the position of
the centre of the intellectual activities of Europe. The scribes and their
masters who were manifolding manuscripts in the Latin quarter, were not
only supplying text-books to the students of the university, but were
preparing literature for the scholarly readers of Paris, of France, and of
Europe. The book-dealers of Paris constituted, however, for several
centuries, with a few exceptions, a guild organised within the university.
The members of this guild, the libraires jurés, were members of the
university, and the operations of the guild were under the direct control of
the university authorities. This arrangement gave to the book-dealers
material advantages in the possession of university privileges and in the

control of a practical monopoly of the business of producing books. It
involved, however, certain corresponding disadvantages. University control
meant supervision, censorship, restriction, regulation of prices, interference
with trade facilities, and various hampering conditions which delayed very
seriously, both before and after the introduction of printing, the
development of the business of making and of circulating books, and, as a
result of this, placed not a few obstacles in the way of the literary and the
intellectual development of the community. Chevillier says: “The book-
trade of Paris owes its origin to the university, by which, under the approval
of the king, it was organised into an association of masters. This association
was, from the outset, controlled directly by the university, from the
authorities of which it received its statutes and regulations, and by which
the master libraires were licensed, jurés.”[276]
“The reproduction of a work of scholarship (to which class belonged of
necessity the text-books prescribed for the work of the university,)” remarks
Delalain, “called for on the part of the scribe a considerable measure of
scholarly knowledge and also for a detailed and careful supervision. It was
held, therefore, by the university authorities that the responsibility properly
belonged to them to supervise the series of operations by means of which
these university texts were prepared and were circulated. It was essential
that the completeness and the correctness of each copy should be verified,
and that these copies should be confided to trustworthy persons for their
sale or their hire, in order that there should be no risk of inaccuracies in the
texts themselves or of any unnecessary enhancement of the cost to
instructors or to students of their purchase or their hire. On this ground, the
university of Paris asserted from the beginning of its history the right to
control the book-trade of the city, a contention which was confirmed and
maintained by all the kings of France after Philip Augustus.”[277]
The “book-trade” was held to include all the dealers and artisans who
were concerned with the production and distribution of manuscripts; that is,
the copyists and their employers, the binders, the illuminators, the sellers of
parchment, and, later, the manufacturers of paper. While the control of the
university was exercised over the entire book-trade, the interest of the
authorities was naturally much keener in regard to the divisions having to
do with the production of books than in the work of the booksellers. The
matter of chief importance, in fact, according to the accepted theory, the

sole purpose for the existence of the book-trade, was to secure for the
members of the university a sufficient supply, at a fixed and moderate
charge, of correct and complete texts of the prescribed works; while it was
also essential to protect those members from the contamination of heretical
writings or of heretical comments on books of accepted orthodoxy.
A regulation of December, 1316, prescribes that no stationarius shall
employ a copyist until such employee shall have been duly sworn before
the university, or before the Rector and four procureurs, to execute his
functions faithfully, and, having been accepted as a trustworthy scribe, shall
have had his name inscribed on the official register.
As a partial offset to the series of restrictions and limitations under which
was carried on the work of these early publishers, it is in order to specify
certain privileges and exemptions enjoyed by them as members of the
university. These included exemption from taxes; exemption from service
on the watch or on the city guard; and the privilege of jurisdiction,
commonly known as committimus. Under this last, they were empowered in
suits or cases, civil or personal, and whether engaged as plaintiffs or
defendants, to bring witnesses or other principals before the Juges
Conservateurs, functionaries charged with the maintenance or protection of
privileges.[278]
Issues concerning personal rights arising between the members of the
university were decided before the tribunal or court of the Rector. Cases
affecting realty, and all cases between the members and outsiders, were
tried before the Conservateurs des Priviléges, an authority of necessity
favourably disposed to the members of the university. The ground assigned
for this privilege was that instructors and pupils, and those engaged in
aiding their work (i. e. the makers of books), should not be exposed to loss
of valuable time by being called away from their work to distant parts.[279]
An edict of Philip Augustus, in 1200, confirmed by S. Louis in 1229, and
by Philip the Fair in 1302, directed that the cases of university members be
brought before the Bishop of Paris. The university found disadvantages in
being under the jurisdiction of the Bishop (whose censorship later proved
particularly troublesome for the publishers), and applications were made to
replace the authority of the ecclesiastical courts with that of the royal
courts. In 1334, letters-patent of Philip of Valois directed the provost of
Paris, who was at that time conservateur of the royal privileges, to take the

university under his special protection, and in 1341 the members of the
university were forbidden to enter proceedings before any other authority.
In 1361, under an edict of King John, the members of the university were
again declared exempt from taxes and assessments of all kinds (portes,
gabelles, impositions, aides, et subsides). The repetition from reign to reign
of certain edicts and regulations such as the above does not imply that the
earlier ones had been recalled, but that they had to some extent fallen into
desuetude, or that attempts had been made to override them.
By letters-patent issued in 1369, Charles V. declared that all dealers in
books and makers of books required for the use of “our scholars” should be
exempt from all taxes, etc. The exemption included binders, illuminators,
parchment-makers, etc. It appears that some abuses had crept in under this
exemption, as in 1384 it was ordered that no book-dealers should be freed
from taxes if they carried on for gain any other occupation.[280]
The policy of favouring the production and sale of books by freeing the
publishers and dealers from taxes and other burdens was continued and
even developed after the introduction of printing. The kings, impressed with
the possibilities of this great discovery, recognised that it was for the
interest of the realm to free books, printed or written, not only from octroi
or city duties, but from customs or importation charges. Letters-patent of
Henry II., dated 1553, read as follows: Avons ordonné et ordonnons lesdits
livres, escrits ou imprimez, reliez ou non reliez, estre et demeurer exempts
desdits droits de traicte foraine, Domaine forain et haut passage.[281] This
was a more liberal policy than at that time prevailed in Italy or in England,
or, in fact, than has as yet been accepted in the nineteenth century by the
United States. In order to obtain the advantage of such exemption, the
publishers had to secure from the Rector of the university a passport or
certificate for their packages.
One of the earlier regulations of the university affecting the book-trade
was that under which the supervision of the sale of parchment was left in
the hands of the Rector. This sale was usually authorised only at the annual
Lendit fair. The dealers, bringing their parchment, exposed this for
inspection. Before any other purchases were permitted, the Rector selected
the quantity needed for the university, for which payment was made at a
price fixed in advance. He then received from the parchment-dealers, for

the treasury of the university, or for the special fund of the book guild, a
gratuity which amounted to from two thousand to three thousand francs.
In Paris, as in Bologna, during the whole of the thirteenth century and the
first portion of the fourteenth, the principal work of the university book-
dealers was not the selling but the renting of books. The regulations
concerning the division of manuscripts into chapters or peciæ were,
however, not carried out with the same precision in Paris as in the Italian
universities, nor was it practicable to exercise in the larger city, or even
within the confines of the Latin Quarter, as close a supervision as in
Bologna or Padua over the rates for renting and over the stock of copies
kept by the stationarii. The general purpose of the regulations was,
however, the same, and the routine of renting prices and the general rate of
commission on the books sold were, as said, matters of university
regulation. With a community of students ranging in number from ten
thousand to (in the most prosperous days of the university) as high as thirty
thousand, the monopoly of supplying text-books, whether through sale or
through renting, must have constituted an important business. It was not
until some time after the introduction of printing that the importance and
prospect of profit of publishing done outside of the university limits, and
freed from a portion of the university restrictions, came to be sufficient to
make it worth while for certain of the more enterprising of the printers to
give up the trade in text-books and their privileges as libraires jurés and to
establish themselves as independent dealers.
In the University of Paris we find in use in the twelfth century, in
addition to the terms librarii, stationarii, and petiarii, the term mangones.
The word mango originally designated a merchant or dealer, but appears to
have carried an implication of untrustworthiness or slipperiness. It is
satisfactory, therefore, to understand that mangones very speedily went out
of use as a name for dealers in books.[282] The petiarii are not mentioned in
the statutes of the university, where they appear to be replaced by the
parcheminii.[283]
Guérard interprets the term stationarius as standing first for a scribe with
a fixed location (un écrivain sédentaire), as opposed to a copyist who was
prepared to accept work in any place where it could be secured. Later, the
term was understood to designate a master scribe who directed the work of
a bureau of copyists; and still later, the stationarius, sometimes then called

stationarius librorum, possessed a complete book-making establishment,
where were employed, in addition to the copyists, the illuminators, binders,
and other artisans. At this stage of his development, the stationarius has
become the equivalent of the printer-publisher of a later generation.
Guérard is inclined to limit the earlier use in Paris of the term librarius to
the keeper of a shop in which books were kept for sale, but in which no
book-production was carried on.[284] It is evident, however, that in France,
as in Italy, there was no very definite or consistent use of the several terms,
and that before the introduction of printing, librarius and stationarius were
applied almost indifferently to dealers having to do either with the
production or with the sale of books. Chassant is authority for the statement
that at the time of the introduction of printing into France there were in the
two cities of Paris and Orleans more than ten thousand individual scribes or
copyists who gained their living with their pens.[285] It is not surprising that
the first printers, whose diabolical invention took the bread away from these
workers, had their lives threatened and their work interrupted.
The letters-patent of Charles V., dated November 5, 1368, specify
fourteen libraires and eleven écrivains (employing stationarii) as at that
time registered in Paris. No one was admitted to the profession of librarius
or stationarius who was not a man of approved standing and character, and
who had not also given evidence of an adequate and scholarly knowledge of
manuscript interpretation and of the subject to which he proposed to give
attention. The examination was made before the four chief publishers (les
quatre grands libraires). Having secured the approval of the board of
publishers, the applicant was obliged to secure also acceptance from the
representatives of the Rector, and to submit certain guarantees for the
satisfactory performance of his responsibilities. He was called upon to
submit, for himself and heirs, all his property as well as his person to the
control of the court of Paris as a pledge for the execution of his trust. As late
as 1618, in the reign of Charles IX., the master printers (i. e., printer-
publishers) were obliged to hold certificates from the Rector and the
university, to the effect that they were skilled in the art of printing, and that
they possessed full knowledge of Latin and of Greek.
The libraires jurés comprised two classes, the libraires grands (officium
magni librariatus), and the libraires petits (officium parvi librariatus).[286]
The immediate responsibility for the government of the body rested with

the four chief libraires (les quatre grands libraires). It was they who fixed
the prices for the sale or hire of manuscripts, and who supervised the
examination of manuscripts with reference, first, as to their admission into
the official list of the university texts, and, secondly, as to the completeness
and accuracy of the particular parchment submitted. They also inspected the
book-shops and the workrooms of the copyists, and verified from time to
time the accuracy and the quality of the copies prepared from these
accepted texts; they passed upon the qualifications of applicants for the
position of libraire juré; and, finally, they exercised a general supervision
over the enforcement of all the university regulations affecting the book-
trade, and gave special attention to those prohibiting any interference with
this trade by an outside dealer, one who was not a libraire juré. These four
chief libraires were each under a bond or “caution” for the amount of 200
livres. In addition to the exemption from general taxes and guard duty
conceded to all the libraires jurés, these four enjoyed from time to time
certain special privileges. In October, 1418, by a regulation of Charles VI.,
the four chief libraires are exempted by name from certain special duties on
wine, etc., which had been imposed for the purpose of securing funds pour
la recouvrance de nos Villes et Chastel de Monstreau ou Faut-Yonne.[287] It
was also necessary for him to find two responsible bondsmen for an amount
of not less than 100 livres each.[288][289] In Bologna in 1400 the bond was
also fixed at 200 livres, the equivalent of 5065 francs.[290]
The special obligations imposed upon and accepted by the librarii and
stationarii, as specified in documents between the years 1250 and 1350, can
be summarised as follows:
I. To accept faithfully and loyally all the regulations of the university
concerning the production and the sale of books.
II. Not to make within the term of one month any agreement, real or
nominal, transferring to themselves the ownership of books which had been
placed in their hands for sale.
III. Not to permit the loss or disappearance of any book so consigned for
the purpose later of acquiring ownership of the same.
IV. To declare conscientiously and exactly the just and proper price of
each book offered for sale, and to specify such price, together with the
name of the owner, in some conspicuous place in the work itself.

V. To make no disposition of a consigned book without having in the first
place informed the owner or his representative of the price to be secured for
the same, and to make immediate report and accounting of such price when
received.
VI. To charge as commission for the service of selling such book not
more than four deniers to a member of the university and not more than six
deniers to an outsider. This commission was to be paid by the purchaser,
who seems to have been considered the obliged party in the transaction.[291]
VII. To place conspicuously in the windows of their shops a price list of
all works kept on sale.
The stationarii on their part were also held:
I. To employ no scribes for the production of manuscripts other than
those who had been accepted and certified before the Rector.
II. To offer for sale or for hire no manuscripts that had not been passed
upon and “taxed” by the appointed authority.
III. To refuse to no applicant who was a member of the university the
loan for hire of a manuscript, even though the applicant should require the
same for the purpose of producing copies.
It is evident that a regulation of this character would, in the case of an
original work by a contemporary author, have operated as a denial of any
author’s rights. Such original work constituted, however, at this time the
very rare exception, and their authors were evidently obliged to content
themselves with the prestige of securing circulation. The case of a
manuscript representing outlay and skilled labour on the part of the dealer,
who might have had to make a toilsome journey to secure it, and who had
later paid for the service of one or more editors for its collation and
revision, was, of course, of much more frequent occurrence. It is difficult to
understand why this class of effort and enterprise should not have been
encouraged by the university authorities instead of being so largely nullified
by regulations which made of such a manuscript common property. This
regulation is, however, identical with that of Bologna. The penalty there for
refusing to place a manuscript at the service of a member of the university
was five livres.[292]

IV. To offer for rent no texts that were not complete and correct.
V. In the event of a work being brought to Paris by a stranger, to give
immediate information to the authorities in order that before such work
could be copied for hire or for sale it should be passed upon by the
authorities as orthodox and as suitable for the use of the members of the
university, and as being complete and correct in its own text.
Any libraire who, having been duly sworn, should be convicted of
violation of these regulations, forfeited his office, and all the rights and
privileges thereto appertaining; and all members of the university,
instructors or students, were strictly prohibited (under penalty of forfeiture
of their own membership) from having further dealings with such a
delinquent.[293]
These various regulations, while possibly required in connection with the
general interests of the university, were certainly exacting and must have
interfered not a little with any natural development of the book-trade. It is
nevertheless the case that the makers of books and the book-dealers in Paris
occupied a more independent and a more dignified position than had been
accorded to their brethren in Bologna. The latter appear to have risen hardly
above the grade of clerks or lower-class functionaries, while these earlier
Parisian publishers secured from the outset recognition as belonging to the
higher educational work of the university, work in the shaping of which
they themselves took an important part.
In 1316 (the year of the accession of Philip V.) the association of libraires
jurés (authorised or certified book-dealers) comprised but thirteen
members.[294] A year earlier there had been twenty-two, and I can only
assume that the war troubles had had their natural influence in depressing
and breaking up the book business. In 1323, the list comprises twenty-nine
names, including the widow of De Peronne. In 1368, the number had again
fallen to twenty-five. In 1488, the university list gives the names of twenty-
four libraires, in addition to whom were registered two illuminators, two
binders, and two écrivains.[295] The écrivains specified were undoubtedly
master scribes, the register here quoted apparently not including the names
of the copyists employed. At this date, however, the work of the printers
had been going on in Paris for fourteen years, and the business of those
concerned with the production of books in manuscript form must have been

very largely reduced. The work of the master scribes continued, however, in
the sixteenth century, but by the close of the fifteenth had become limited to
the production, for collectors, of manuscripts as works of art.
While the majority of libraires jurés were naturally Frenchmen, there
was no regulation to prevent the holding of such a post by a foreigner, and
the list always, as a matter of fact, included several foreign names. The
presence in the university of large groups of foreign students made it quite
in order, and probably necessary, that they should find among the book-
dealers some who could speak their home language and who could make
clear to them the requirements concerning the university texts. The presence
of these foreign book-dealers also facilitated the arrangements for the
exchange of manuscripts between Paris and foreign universities. These
foreign book-dealers, while obliged in ordinary routine to take an oath of
fealty to the university, were not called upon to become citizens of France.
The list includes from time to time the names of women libraires, these
women being usually widows of libraires who had duly qualified
themselves. The women must themselves, however, in order to secure such
appointments, have been able to pass the examination in Latin, in
palæography, and in the technicalities of manuscript book-making. In
respect as well to the admission of foreigners as to that of women, the Paris
guild of the university book-dealers practised a more liberal policy than that
followed by the university authorities of Bologna or the Stationers’ Hall of
London. Later, this liberal policy was restricted, and in 1686 it was ordered
that no foreigners should be admitted to the lists of the master libraires of
the university.
The purchase of a manuscript during the fourteenth century was attended
with almost as many formalities and precautions as are to-day considered
necessary for the transfer of a piece of real estate. The dealer making the
sale was obliged to give to the purchaser guarantees to the effect, first, that
he was himself the owner or the duly authorised representative of the owner
of the work; and, secondly, that the text of this was complete and correct,
and as security for these guarantees he pledged his goods, and sometimes
even his person. As a single example of a transaction illustrating this
practice, I quote a contract cited by Du Breuil. This bears date November,
1332, and sets forth that a certain Geoffrey de Saint Léger, a duly qualified
clerc libraire, acknowledges and confesses that he has sold, ceded, and

transferred to the noble gentleman Messire Gérard de Montagu, Avocat du
Roi au Parlement (counsellor at the royal court), all right, title, and interest
in a work entitled Speculum Historiale in consuetudines Parisienses,
contained in four volumes bound in red leather. The consideration named is
forty livres Parisian, the equivalent, according to the tables of de Wailly, of
1013 francs. The vendor pledges as security for the obligation under the
contract all his worldly goods, together with his own person (tous et chacun
de ses biens, et guarantie de son corps même), and the contract is attested
before two notaries.[296]
While the university assumed the strictest kind of control and supervision
over the work of the book-dealers, it conceded, as an offset, to the
association of these dealers a very substantial monopoly of the trade of
making and selling books. It was prohibited, under severe penalties, for a
person not a libraire juré to do business in a book-shop or at any fixed
stand; that is to say, he could not sell as a stationnaire, but had to carry on
his trade as a pedlar or chap-man, from a pack or a cart. The value of the
manuscript that such pedlar was permitted to offer for sale was restricted to
ten sous, the equivalent of half a franc. At the price at which manuscripts
were held during the fourteenth century, this limitation restricted the trade
of the peripatetic vendors to single sheets, or broadsides, containing usually
a Pater, an Ave, or a Credo, or a brief calendar or astrological table.
Successive edicts were issued from reign to reign, renewing the prohibition
upon the selling of books, whether in French or Latin (excepting only of
such maximum value), by any drapers, grocers, pedlars, or dealers of any
kind.[297]
In all the official references of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to
the book-dealers, the ground is taken that they formed a class apart from
mechanics or from traders in ordinary merchandise. They were considered
to be engaged in an intellectual pursuit, and were treated as members of a
profession upon whose service the work of the university and that of the
Church were largely dependent. Thus in 1649 the Recueil makes use of
these words:
Les Marchands-Libraires, Imprimeurs et Relieurs seront toujours censés
du corps de nostre bien aymée fille aisnée l’Université; du tout séparés des
arts méchaniques, et autres Corps de Mestiers ou marchandises; et come
tels, conservés en la jouissance de tous les droicts; priviléges, franchises,

libertez, préséances et prérogatives attribuées à ladite université et à eux
par les Royes nos prédécesseux et par nous.[298]
It was, therefore, not permitted to the libraire to bring discredit upon his
profession by also engaging in any “sordid pursuits” (viles occupations),
and in so doing he rendered himself liable to being deposed from his high
post (declaré déchu de son noble office). He could, however, unite with his
work as libraire that of a notary, or that of a royal counsellor or practitioner
in the higher court (avocat du roi au Parlement).
Notwithstanding the personal prestige and the substantial advantages
which were thus enjoyed by the book-dealers of the university, there were
from time to time instances of protest, amounting occasionally to
insubordination, on the part of the libraires, who, as their business aims and
possibilities developed, became restive under the long series of trammels
and restrictions, and particularly in connection with those imposed by the
ecclesiastical division of the university authorities. The dread, however, of
losing any portion of their privileges, and particularly the risk of any
impairment of their monopoly of the book-trade of the university and of
Paris, operated always as a sufficient consideration to prevent the
insubordination from going to extremes. Throughout the entire period of the
Middle Ages the control of the university continued, therefore, practically
absolute over the book-trade of Paris, the influence of the Church and the
(more or less spasmodic) authority of the Crown being exercised by means
of the university machinery.
This state of affairs continued for some period of years after the
introduction of printing. The university still insisted upon its responsibility
for the correctness and the completeness of the texts issued from the Paris
press, although it gave up of necessity the routine of examining individual
copies of the printed editions. On the other hand, the censorship control on
the part of the theological Faculty over the moral character and orthodoxy
of the works printed was insisted upon more strenuously than ever as the
Church began to recognise the enormous importance of the influence upon
public opinion of the widely distributed printed volumes. The effect of this
ecclesiastical control upon the business of printing books is set forth with
some detail in the chapter on the early printers of Paris. It is sufficient to say
here that the contention on the part of the university to control, as a portion
of the work of higher education, the business of the makers and sellers of

books, while sharply attacked and materially undermined after the middle
of the seventeenth century, was not formally abandoned until the beginning
of the eighteenth. At this time the Crown took over to itself all authority to
regulate the press, an authority which disappeared only with the revolution
of 1789.
For six centuries the book-trade of Paris and of France, whether it
consisted in the production of manuscripts for the exclusive use of members
of the university, or of printed books for the enlightenment of the general
public, had been obliged to do its work under the hampering and
burdensome regulations and restrictions of a varying series of authorities.
The rectors of the university, the theologians of the Sorbonne, the lawyers
of the Parliament of Paris, the chancellors of the Crown, the kings
themselves, had all taken a hand, sometimes in turn, not infrequently in
conflict with each other, in the task of “regulating” the trade in books. The
burden of the restrictions was, in pretence at least, offset by various
privileges and exemptions, but they remained burdens notwithstanding. It
may well be a cause of surprise that in the face of such a long series of
hampering difficulties, difficulties more serious than those with which any
publishers in the world, outside of Rome, had to contend, the manuscript
publishers and the later printer-publishers of Paris should have been able to
do so much to make Paris a literary and a publishing centre. As has been
already indicated, it was certainly the case that during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries Paris shared with Florence the position of being the
centre of the manuscript trade of Europe. It was also the case, as will be set
forth in a later chapter, that the first printer-publishers of Paris did most
noteworthy work in furthering the development of scholarly publishing and
the production of scholarly books. It required, however, the revolution of
1789 to establish the principle that the business of producing and
distributing books could secure its legitimate development only when freed
from censorship restrictions and regulations, and that it was a business the
control of which belonged properly not to the university, the Courts of
Parliament, or the Crown, but to the people themselves.
Considering the scarcity and the costliness of books in the Middle Ages,
it is somewhat surprising that the work of instruction rested so directly upon
books, that is, depended upon the mastery of a text. Thurot says: “It is the
distinctive character of instruction in the Middle Ages that the science was

not taught directly and in itself, but by the explanation of books which
derived their authority solely from their writers.”[299] Roger Bacon
formulates it: “When one knows the text, one knows all that concerns the
science which is the object of the text.”[300] Instead of taking a course of
logic or of ethics, says Compayré, the phrase was reading a book on logic
or ethics, legere or audire librum. This close adherence to the text secured,
of course, an assured demand in the university towns first for the hired
pecias and later for the purchased manuscripts.
The foundation of the College of the Sorbonne dates from 1257. It was
organised by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to Louis IX. The college was at
once affiliated with the University of Paris, of which it became the
theological Faculty, and in the general direction of which it exercised at
times a controlling influence. The college is connected with my subject on
the ground of its assumption of the theological censorship of the Paris
book-trade and of its frequent attempts to exercise a general censorship over
all the productions of the Paris printing-press.
As we shall note later in the history of the Paris book-trade, various
complications arose between the publishers and booksellers possessing a
university license (the libraires jurés) and certain unlicensed dealers who
undertook to come into competition with them. The locality occupied by
these unlicensed booksellers was on the Island of the Cité, immediately by
the precincts of Notre Dame. In fact it was the case with the book-trade
generally north of the Alps that its business was very largely carried on in
the portals of a church if not under the immediate shadow of the cathedral.
While in Italy the Church furthered but slightly the early production of
books and, later, did not a little to hamper the undertakings of the
publishers, it was the case in France and quite largely also in South
Germany, that the publishers found themselves very largely dependent upon
the scholarly interests and the scholarly co-operation of the clerics, and the
association of the Church with the book-trade was, for a large proportion at
least of the fifteenth century, an important one.
In Paris, the booksellers licensed by the university were all in the Latin
Quarter, and in the same region were to be found the sellers of parchment,
the illuminators, the scribes, binders, etc., who also carried university
licenses and were under university supervision. It is probable that the

specification in the Tax Roll of 1292 of eight librarii in Paris refers only to
the booksellers licensed by the university and carrying on their business in
the Latin Quarter.
In Bayeux, in 1250, certain clerics were exempted from taxation if they
dealt in parchment or if they were engaged in the copying of manuscripts,
and the book-shops along the walls of the cathedral were also exempt from
taxation. It is not clear to me in looking up this record, whether the tax
mentioned was a town tax or a general tax, or whether it was one of the
ecclesiastical levies.[301]
Roger Bacon’s reference to the scribes of Paris has already been
mentioned. He could not secure from the Brothers of his Order a transcript
of his work which he desired to present to Pope Clement, because they were
too ignorant to write the same out intelligently, while he was afraid to
confide the work to the public scribes of France lest they might make
improper use of the material.[302] It is Wattenbach’s opinion that the
wrongful use of his production dreaded by Bacon was the sale of
unauthorised copies of it by the scribes to whom the preparation of the
authorised copies should be confided.
In 1292, Wenzel, King of Bohemia, presented to the monastery of
Königsaal, 200 marks in silver for the purchase of books, and the purchases
were made from the book-sellers in Paris. Richard de Bury extols Paris as
the great centre of the book-trade. Of the value of the book collections in
Rome and the possibility there of securing literary treasures, he had already
spoken, but the treasures of Paris appear to have impressed him still more
keenly. There he found occasion to open his purse freely and took in
exchange for base gold, books of inestimable value. Joh. Gerson, in his
treatise De Laude Scriptorum expresses the dread lest the persistent
carrying away from Florence of his books by wealthy visitors may not too
seriously diminish its literary treasures.
The Paris publishers appear to have sent out travelling salesmen or
representatives to take orders for their wares. As early as 1480, a publisher
named Guillaume Tousé, of Paris, made complaint to the chancellor of
Brittany to the effect that he had entrusted a commission to a certain
Guillaume de l’Espine to carry books into Lower Brittany and to make sale
of the same during a period of six months. He had taken with him books to

the value of five hundred livres and was to have a salary of ten crowns for
the six months’ work. He had, however, failed to return or to make report of
his commission. Tousé secured a judgment against his delinquent traveller,
but the record does not show whether he ever succeeded in getting hold of
him again.[303]
In the universities of Oxford and of Cambridge, the stationarii began
their work some years later than in Paris or Bologna. They had the
advantage, however, of freedom from the greater portion of the restrictions
and special supervision which hampered the work of the scribes in the
Italian and French universities, and as a result their business developed
more promptly and more actively, and in the course of a few years, they
became the booksellers of the university towns. It was, of course, from this
university term stationarii that the name of stationers came at the outset to
be applied to the organised book-dealers of Great Britain. The Guild of the
British book-dealers completed its organisation in 1403, nearly sixty years
before the introduction into England of the printing-press.[304]
The art work put into the manuscripts produced in the Low Countries,
particularly in Belgium, was more highly developed and was a more
important part of the industry than was the case in any other portion of the
world.
In the earlier German universities, the stationarii also found place and
found work, but this work seems to have been of less importance and the
scribes appear to have secured for themselves a less definite university
recognition than in Italy or in France. The explanation given by Wattenbach
is that the German students, being better informed and more industrious, did
for themselves a larger portion of the transcribing required and were,
therefore, freed from the necessity of hiring their hefts.
The statutes of the universities of Prague and of Vienna permitted the
masters and the baccalaureates to secure from the university archives, under
certain pledges, the loan of the books authorised as text-books or of works
of reference, for the purpose of making trustworthy copies of the same. The
copyists were enjoined as follows:
Fideliter et correcte, tractim et distincte, assignando paragraphos,
capitales literas, virgulas et puncta, prout sententia requirit.[305] The
practice also obtained in these universities of having texts dictated to the

students by the magisters or the Bachelors of Arts. This was described as
librum pronuntiare, and also as ad pennam dare.
In this phrase, Karoch sent word to Erfurt that ad pennam dabit his
treatise Arenga.[306]
The text-books utilised in the German universities in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries were as limited in range and in number as those of
Bologna and of Padua. The instruction in the medical departments of
Prague and Vienna was based in the main on the works of Hippocrates and
Galen, with some of the later commentaries, principally from Arabian
writers. In philosophy the chief authority was Aristotle, in mathematics
Euclid, and in astronomy Ptolemy. A few works of later date were utilised,
such as the Summula of Petrus Hispanus and the De Sphæra Mundi of
Johannes de Sacro Bosco. Bosco is otherwise known as John Holywood or
Halifax. He held the chair of mathematics in the University of Paris about
the middle of the thirteenth century. The use of his treatise for classes in
Prague is evidence of a certain interchange between the universities of
books in manuscript.
An important reason for the very large membership of the universities of
the Middle Ages as compared with their successors of to-day, is to be found
in the fact that they undertook to supply not only the higher education
which belongs to the present university curriculum, but also the training
now furnished by the gymnasia or High Schools, which were at that time
not in existence. We find, therefore, in their membership, thousands of
students who were little more than boys either in their years or in their
mental development.
The universities also, on the other hand, attracted to their membership
very many students of mature age, who came sometimes for special
purposes, but more frequently because it was only in the university towns
that circles of scholars could be found, that books were available, and that
any large measure of intellectual activity was to be experienced. As Savigny
puts it: “The universities were, during the Middle Ages, practically the only
places where men could study or could exercise their minds with any
degree of freedom.” It was inevitable therefore, that, with the generations
succeeding the discovery of printing, there should be a decrease in the
influence and in the relative importance for the community of the

universities. With the establishment of secondary schools, the training of
the boys was cared for to better purpose elsewhere; and with the increasing
circulation of printed books, it became possible for men to come into
relations with literature in other places than in the lecture room. The
universities were no longer the sole depositories of learning or the sole
sources of intellectual activity. This lessening of the influence of the
universities represented, or was at least coincident with, a wider
development of intellectual activity and of interest in literature on the part
of the masses of the people. The universities alone would never have been
in a position so to direct the thought of the community as to render the
masses of citizens competent to arrive at conclusions for themselves and
sufficiently assured in such conclusions to be prepared to make them the
basis of action. This was, of course, partly because, notwithstanding the
large membership and the fact that this membership represented nearly all
the classes in the community, the universities could at best come into direct
relations but with a small proportion of the people. A more important cause
for such lack of intellectual leadership is to be found in the fact that the
standard of thought and of instruction in the universities concerned itself
very little with the intellectual life or issues of the immediate time. As Biot
puts it (speaking, to be sure, of a later century): “The universities were
several centuries in arrears with all that concerned the sciences and the arts.
Peripatetics, when all the world had renounced with Descartes the
philosophy of Aristotle, they became Cartesians when the rest were
Newtonians. That is the way with learned bodies which do not make
discoveries.”
It was the dissemination of literature through the new art of printing
rather than the diffusion of education through the university lecture rooms,
which brought to the masses of the people the consciousness of mental
existence and of individual responsibility for arriving at sound conclusions.
Prior to the printing-press, this responsibility had been left by the people
with their “spiritual advisers,” who were charged with the duty of doing the
thinking for their flocks. It was this change in the mental status of the
people which was the precursor (although at a considerable space of years)
of the Reformation.
With the beginning in Germany of the movement known as Humanism,
the representatives of the new thought of the time were not to be found in

the university circles, and had not received their inspiration from the lecture
rooms. Says Paulsen: “The entire traditional conduct of the universities, and
in particular of the instruction in arts and theology, was rejected with the
utmost scorn by the new culture through its representatives, the poets and
orators, to whom form and substance alike of this teaching seemed the most
outrageous barbarism, which they never wearied of denouncing.” In the
Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, which were issued about 1516 from the
band of youthful poets gathered about Mutianus at Erfurt, the hatred and
detestation felt by the Humanists for the ancient university system raised to
itself a lasting monument.
Within a few years from the publication of the Epistolæ, the influence of
the Humanists had so far extended itself as to have effected a large
modification in the systems of study in all the larger universities. “The old
ecclesiastical Latin was replaced by classical Latin; Roman authors,
particularly the poets, were made the subject of lectures, and the old
translations of Aristotelian texts were driven out by new translations on
principles advocated by the Humanists. Greek was taken up in the Faculty
of arts and courses in the language and literature were established in all
universities.”[307]
An immediate result of these changes and extensions was an active
demand for printed texts. The Humanistic movement, itself in a measure the
result of the printing-press, was a most important fact in providing business
for the German printers during the earlier years of the sixteenth century.
The strifes and contentions of the Reformation checked the development in
the universities of the studies connected with the intellectual movement of
the Renaissance and lessened the demand for the literature of these studies.
The active-minded were absorbed in theological controversies, and those
who could not understand the questions at issue could still shout the
shibboleths of the leaders. As Erasmus put it, rather bitterly, ubi regnat
Lutheranismus, ibi interitus litterarum. The literature of the Reformation,
however, itself did much to make good for the printing-presses the lessened
demand for the classics, while a few years later, the organisation of the
Protestant schools and universities aroused intellectual activities in new
regions, and created fresh requirements for printed books. Within half a
century, in fact, of the Diet of Worms, the centre of the book-absorbing
population of Germany had been transferred from the Catholic states of the

south to the Protestant territories of the north, and the literary
preponderance of the latter has continued to increase during the succeeding
generations.

CHAPTER IV.
THE BOOK-TRADE IN THE MANUSCRIPT PERIOD.

Italy.—It seems probable that the book-trade which had been introduced
into Gaul from Rome still existed during the sixth century. F. J. Mone finds
references to such trade in the chronicles of Cæsarius of Arles.[308] In the
code of laws of the Visigoths, it is provided that copies of the volume
containing the laws shall be sold at not more than six sols.[309]
Wattenbach is of opinion that not only in Rome but in other Italian
centres some fragments of the classic book-trade survived the fall of the
Empire and the later invasions and changes of rulers, and he finds
references to book-dealers in Italy as late as the sixth century.[310] He takes
the ground that, notwithstanding the destruction of buildings, library
collections, and in fact of whole cities, during the various contests, first
with the Barbarian invaders and later between these invaders themselves,
there still remained scholarly people who retained their interest in Latin
literature; and he points out that, notwithstanding the many changes in the
rulers of Italy between the year 476 and the beginning of the eleventh
century, Latin never ceased to remain the official language and, as he
maintains, the language of literature.
In the Tetralogus of Wipo are the following lines which have a bearing
upon this belief in the continuation of some literary interests in Italy:

Hoc servant Itali post prima crepundia cuncti,
Et sudare scholis mandatur tota juventus.
Solis Teutonicis vacuum vel turpe videtur,
Ut doceant aliquem, nisi clericus accipiatur. [311]

(From their cradle up all Italians pay heed to learning, and their children
are kept at work in the schools. It is only among the Germans that it is held
to be futile and wrong to give instruction to one who is not to become a
cleric.)

Giesebrecht, in his treatise De Litterarum Studiis apud Italos, confirms
this view. He refers to a manuscript of Orosius which was written in the
seventh century and which contains an inscription stating that this copy of
the manuscript was prepared by the scribe in the Statione Magistri Viliaric
Antiquarii.
This is one of the earlier examples of the use of the term statio, from
which is derived the term stationarii, indicating scribes whose work was
done in a specific workshop or headquarters, as contrasted with writers who
were called upon to do work at the homes of their clients. As is specified in
the chapter on the universities, this term came to be used to designate
booksellers (that is to say, producers of books) who had fixed work-shops.
In the Acts of the Council of Constantinople, the scribe who wrote out the
record of the fifth Synod is described as Theodorus librarius qui habuit
stationem ad S. Johannem Phocam.[312]
In such work-shops, while the chief undertaking was the production of
books, the scribes were ready to prepare announcements and to write letters,
as is even to-day the practice of similar scribes in not a few Italian cities
and villages.
From the beginning of the seventh century, Rome was for a considerable
period practically the only book market in the world, that is to say, the only
place in which books could be obtained on order and in which the
machinery for their production continued to exist. In 658, S. Gertrude
ordered for the newly founded monastery at Nivelle certain sacred volumes
to be prepared in the city of Rome.[313] Beda reports that the Abbot
Benedict of Wearmouth, in 671, secured from Rome a number of learned
and sacred works, non paucos vel placito pretio emtos vel amicorum dono
largitos retulit. (He brought back a number of books, some of which he had
purchased at the prices demanded, while others he had received as gifts
from his friends.) Later, the Abbot repeated his journeys, and in 678, and
again in 685, brought back fresh collections. The collections secured on his
last journey included even certain examples of the profane writers.[314]
A similar instance is noted in the chronicles of the monastery of St.
Wandrille. The Abbot Wandregisil sent his nephew Godo to Rome in 657,
and Godo brought back with him as a present from the Pope Vitalian, not
only valuable relics, but many volumes of the sacred Scriptures containing

both the New and the Old Testament.[315] During the time of the Abbot
Austrulf (747-753) a chest was thrown up by the sea on the shore. It
contained relics and also a codicem pulcherrimum, or beautiful manuscript,
containing the four gospels, Romana Littera Optime Scriptum.
This term Romana Littera has been previously referred to as indicating a
special script which had been adopted in Rome by the earlier instructors for
sacred writings.
Alcuin relates of the Archbishop Ælbert of York (766-780):

Non semel externas peregrino tramite terras,
Jam peragravit ovans, Sophiæ deductus amore,
Si quid forte novi librorum seu studiorum,
Quod secum ferret, terris reperiret in illis.
Hic quoque Romuleam venit devotus ad urbem.[316]

(More than once he has travelled joyfully through remote regions and by
strange roads, led on by his zeal for knowledge, and seeking to discover in
foreign lands novelties in books or in studies which he could take back with
him. And this zealous student journeyed to the city of Romulus.)
During the Italian expeditions of the German Emperors, books were from
time to time brought back to Germany. Certain volumes referred to by Pez
as having been in the Library at Passau, in 1395, contain the inscription isti
sunt libri quos Roma detulimus.
Wattenbach finds record of an organised manuscript business in Verona
as early as 1338,[317] and of a more important trade in manuscripts being
carried on in Milan at the same time. In the fourteenth century, Richard de
Bury speaks of buying books for his library from Rome. The references to
this early manuscript business in Italy are, however, so fragmentary that it is
difficult to determine how far the works secured were the remnants of old
libraries or collections, or how far they were the productions of scribe
work-shops engaged in manifolding copies for sale.
It seems evident, however, that while a scattered trade in manuscripts was
carried on both by the scribes in the towns and between the monastery
scriptoria, the facilities for the production and manifolding of manuscript

copies were hardly adequate to meet the demand or requirements of readers
and students. As early as 250, Origen, writing in Cappadocia, was
complaining that he found difficulty in getting his teachings distributed. A
zealous disciple, named Ambrosius, secured for the purpose a group of
scribes whose transcripts were afterwards submitted to Origen for revision
before being sent out through the churches. It is further related that Origen
became so absorbed in the work of correcting these manuscripts that he
could not be called from his desk either for exercise or for meals.[318] S.
Jerome, a century later, when he was sojourning in Bethlehem, found
similar difficulty. He had among his monks some zealous scribes, but he
complained that their work was untrustworthy.[319]
Abbot Lupus of Ferrières was obliged (in the ninth century) to apply to
monks in York in order to secure the transcribing work that he required.
In connection with this difficulty in securing books, it became customary,
when copies were loaned from libraries, to secure from the borrower a
pledge or security of equal or greater value. The correspondence of the time
gives frequent instances of the difficulty in getting back books that had been
loaned, notwithstanding the risk of the forfeiture of the pledges. In 1020,
Notker writes from St. Gall to the Bishop of Sitten that certain books
belonging to the Bishop, for which the Bishop was making demand, had
been borrowed by the Abbot Aregia, and that, notwithstanding many
applications, he had not succeeded in getting even a promise of their return.
[320]
In Vercelli, a beautiful mass book which had been loaned by the Abbot
Erkenbald of Fulda (997-1011) to the Bishop Henry of Wurzburg, was to
have been retained for the term of the Bishop’s life. After the death of the
Bishop, reclamation was made from Fulda for the return of the volume, but
without success. During the years 1461-1463, the Legate Marinus de
Fregeno travelled through Sweden and Norway and collected there certain
manuscripts which he claimed were those that had been taken away from
Rome at the time of its plunder by the Goths. He evidently took the ground
that where books were concerned, a term of one thousand years was not
sufficient to constitute a “statute of limitations.”
Louis IX. of France is quoted as having taken the ground that books
should be transcribed rather than borrowed, because in that way the number
would be increased and the community would be benefited. In many cases,

however, there could, of course, be no choice. The King, for instance,
desired to possess the great encyclopedia of Vincenzo of Beauvais. He sent
gold to Vincenzo, in consideration of which a transcript of the encyclopedia
was prepared. The exact cost is not stated.[321]
In 1375, a sum equivalent to 825 francs of to-day was paid for
transcribing the commentary of Heinrich Bohic on the Decretals of 1375. In
the cost of such work was usually included a price for the loan or use of the
manuscript. A fee or rental was, in fact, always charged by the manuscript-
dealers. Up to the close of the fourteenth century, the larger proportion of
transcripts were prepared for individual buyers and under special orders,
one of the evidences of this being the fact that upon the titles of the
manuscripts were designed or illuminated the arms or crests of the
purchasers. After the beginning of the fifteenth century, there is to be found
a large number of manuscripts in which a place has been left blank on the
title-pages for the subsequent insertion of the crest or coat-of-arms,
indicating that in these instances the manuscript had been prepared for
general use instead of under special order.[322]
As already mentioned, Charlemagne interested himself, not only in the
training of scribes, but in the collection of books, but he does not appear to
have considered it important that the works secured by him should be
retained for the use of his descendants, as he gave instructions in his will
that after his death the books should be sold.
One of the oldest illuminated Irish manuscripts is that of S. Ceaddæ. This
was purchased, at what date is not specified, by some holy man in exchange
for his best steed, and was then presented by him to the church at Llandaff.
The manuscript finally made its way to Madrid and thence to Stockholm;
according to the record, it had, before the purchase above mentioned, been
saved out of the hands of Norman pirates.[323] It is certain that very many of
the monasteries which were within reach of the incursions of the Normans
were bereft by them of such books as had been collected, although it is not
probable that, as a rule, the pirates had any personal interest in, or
commercial appreciation for, the manuscripts that fell into their hands.
Gerbert, whose literary interests have been previously referred to, and
who is described as the most zealous book collector of his time, tells us that
he made purchases for his library in Italy, in South Germany, and in the

Low Countries, but he does not mention whether he was purchasing from
dealers or individuals. He was a native of Auvergne, and in 999 became
Pope (under the name of Gregory V.). Abbot Albert of Gembloux, who died
in 1048, states that he brought together, at great cost, as many as one
hundred and fifty manuscripts.[324]
A certain Deopert records that he purchased for the monastery of St.
Emmeran, from Vichelm, the chaplain of Count Regimpert, for a large sum
of money (the price is not specified), the writings of Alcuin.[325]
Notwithstanding the very strict regulations to the contrary, it not
unfrequently happened that monasteries and churches, when in special
stress for money, pledged or sold their books to Jews. As the greater
proportion at least of the sacred writings of the monasteries would have had
no personal interest for their Hebrew purchasers, it is fair to assume that
these were taken for re-sale, and that, in fact, there came to be a certain
trade in books on the part of financiers acting in the capacity of pawn-
brokers. In 1320, the monastery of S. Ulrich was in need of funds, and the
Abbot Marquard, of Hagel, pawned to the mendicant monks a great
collection of valuable books, among which were certain volumes that had
been prepared as early as 1175 under the directions of the Abbot Heinrich.
The successor of Marquard, Conrad Winkler, in 1344, succeeded in getting
back a portion of the books, by the payment of 27 pounds heller, and 15
pfennigs.[326] Instances like these give evidence that a certain trade in
manuscript books, in Northern Europe at least, preceded by a number of
years the organisation of any systematised book-trade.
Kirchhoff speaks of usurers, dealers in old clothes, and pedlars, carrying
on the trade in the buying and selling of books during the first half of the
fifteenth century. In Milan, a dealer in perfumery, Paolino Suordo, included
in his stock (in 1470) manuscripts for sale, and later announced himself as a
dealer in printed books. Both in England and France at this time
manuscripts were dealt in by grocers and by the mercers. The monastery of
Neuzelle, in 1409, pawned several hundred manuscripts for 130 gulden, and
the monastery at Dobrilugk, in 1420, sold to the Prebendary of Brandenburg
1441 volumes.
In 1455, the Faculty of Arts of the University of Heidelberg bought
valuable books from the estate of the Prior of Worms. In 1402, the cathedral

at Breslau rented a number of books from Burgermeister Johann Kyner, for
which the Chapter was to pay during the lifetime of said Kyner a yearly
rental of eight marks, ten groschens.[327]
The Bishop of Speier rented to the precentor of the cathedral in 1447
some separately written divisions of the Bible, which were to be held by the
precentor during his lifetime only, and were then to be returned to the
Bishop’s heirs. The rental is not mentioned. The Chapter of the Cathedral of
Basel arranged to take over certain books from the owner or donor, whose
name is not given, and to pay as consideration for the use of the same, each
year on the anniversary of the gift, 16 sols.[328]
Richard de Bury makes a reference to the book-trade of Europe, as it
existed in the fourteenth century, as follows:
Stationariorum ac librariorum notitiam non solum intra natalis soli
provinciam, sed per regnum Franciæ, Teutoniæ et Italiæ comparavimus
dispersorum faciliter pecunia prævolante, nec eos ullatenus impedivit
distantia neque furor maris absterruit, nec eis æs pro expensa defecit, quin
ad nos optatos libros transmitterent vel afferrent.[329]
(By means of advance payments, we have easily come into relations with
the stationarii and librarii who are scattered through our native province,
and also with those who are to be found in the kingdoms of France,
Germany, and Italy; and neither the great distances, nor the fury of the sea,
nor lack of money for their expenses has been permitted to prevent them
from bringing or sending to us the books that we desired.)
In the same work, De Bury uses the term bibliator, which he afterwards
explained as being identical with bibliopole,—a seller of books.
The record of the production of books that was carried on in the earlier
universities, such as Bologna and Padua, is presented in the chapter on the
universities.
In connection with the very special requirements of the earlier Italian
universities, and with the close control exercised by them over the scribes,
it is evident that a book-trade in the larger sense of the term could not easily
come into existence. The first records of producers and dealers of books of
a general character were to be found, not in the university towns, but in
Milan, Florence, and particularly in Venice. In 1444, a copy of Macrobius

was stolen from the scholar Filelfi, or Philelphus, which copy he recovered,
as he tells us, in the shop of a public scribe in Vincenza.
Blume mentions that in Venice the Camaldulensers of S. Michael in
Murano carried on during the earlier part of the fifteenth century an
important trade in manuscripts, including with the older texts verified
copies which had been prepared under their own direction.[330] The
headquarters, not only for Italy but for Europe, of the trade of Greek
manuscripts, was for a number of years in Venice, the close relations of
Venice with Constantinople and with the East having given it an early
interest in this particular class of Eastern productions.
Joh. Arretinus was busied in Florence between the years 1375 and 1417
in the sale of manuscripts, but he appears to have secured these mainly not
by production in Florence, but by sending scribes to the libraries in the
monasteries and elsewhere to produce the copies required.
A reference in a letter of Leonardo Bruni, written in 1416, gives
indication of an organised book-trade in Florence at that time:
Priscianum quem postulas omnes tabernas librarias perscrutatus
reperire nondum potui.[331] (I have hunted through all the book-shops, but
have not been able to find the Priscian for which you asked.)
Bruni writes again concerning a certain Italian translation of the Bible
that he had been trying to get hold of:
Jam Bibliothecas omnes et bibliopolas requisivi ut si qua veniant ad
manus eligam quæque optima mihi significent. (I have already searched all
the libraries and book-shops in order to select from the material at hand the
manuscripts which are for me the most important.)
Ambrogio Traversari wrote in 1418 in Florence:
Oro ut convenias bibliopolas civitatis et inquiri facias diligenter, an
inveniamus decretales in parvo volumine.[332] (I beg you to make search
among the booksellers of the city and ascertain whether it is possible to
secure in a small volume a copy of the Decretals.)
The use for book-dealers of the old classic term bibliopola in place of the
more usual stationarius is to be noted.

From these references, we have a right to conclude that there were during
the first quarter of the fifteenth century in Florence a number of dealers in
books who handled various classes of literature.
The great publisher of the fifteenth century, Philippi Vespasianus, or
Vespasiano, who was not only a producer and dealer in manuscripts, but a
man possessed of a wide range of scholarship, called himself librarius
florentinus. He held the post for a time of bidellus of the University of
Florence. His work will be referred to more fully in a later division of this
chapter.
Kirchhoff points out that the dealers of this time, among others
Vespasiano himself, were sometimes termed chartularii, a term indicating
that dealers in books were interested also in the sale of paper and probably
of other writing materials. The Italian word cartolajo specifies a paper-
dealer or perhaps more nearly a stationer in the modern signification of the
term.
The influx of Greek scholars into Italy began some years before the fall
of Constantinople. Some of these scholars came from towns in Asia Minor,
which had fallen under the rule of the Turks before the capture of
Constantinople. When the Turkish armies crossed the Bosphorus, a number
of the Greeks seem to have lost hope at a comparatively early date of being
able to defend the Byzantine territory, and had betaken themselves with
such property as they could save to various places of refuge in the south of
Europe, and particularly in Italy. As described in other chapters, many of
these exiles brought with them Greek manuscripts, and in some cases these
codices were not only important as being the first copies of the texts
brought to the knowledge of European scholars, but were of distinctive
interest and value as being the oldest examples of such texts in existence.
The larger number of the exiles who selected Italy as their place of refuge
found homes and in many cases scholarly occupation, not in the university
towns so much as in the great commercial centres, such as Venice and
Florence. Many of these Greeks were accepted as instructors in the families
of nobles or of wealthy merchants, while others made use of their
manuscripts either through direct sale, through making transcripts for sale,
or through the loan of the originals to the manuscript-dealers.

A little later these manuscripts served as material and as “copy” for the
editions of the Greek classics issued by Aldus and his associates, the first
thoroughly edited and carefully printed Greek books that the world had
known. It was partly as a cause and partly as an effect of the presence of so
many scholarly Greeks, that the study of Greek language, literature, and
philosophy became fashionable among the so-called higher circles of Italian
society during the last half of the fifteenth century.
The interest in Greek literature had, however, as pointed out, begun
nearly twenty-five years earlier. As there came to be some knowledge of the
extent of the literary treasures of classic Greece which had been preserved
in the Byzantine cities, not a few of the more enterprising dealers in
manuscripts, and many also of the wealthier and more enterprising of the
scholarly noblemen and merchants, themselves sent emissaries to search the
monasteries and cities of the East for further manuscripts which could be
purchased.
One reason, apparently, for the preference given by the Greeks to Venice
and Florence over Bologna and Padua was the fact that the two great
universities were devoted, as we have seen, more particularly to the subjects
of law, theology, and medicine, subjects in which the learning of the Greeks
could be of little direct service.[333] The philosophy and the poetry which
formed the texts of the lectures given by the Greek scholars attracted many
zealous and earnest students, but these students came, as stated, largely
outside of the university circles. The doctors of law and the doctors of
theology were among the last of the Italian scholars to be interested in
Homeric poetry or in the theories of the Greek metaphysicians.
Towards the middle of the fifteenth century and a few years before the
introduction of printing, a new term came to be used for dealers in
manuscripts. The scribes had in many cases naturally associated their
business interests with those of the makers of paper,—cartolaji, and the
latter name came to be applied not only to the paper manufacturers, but to
the purchasers of the paper upon which books were inscribed. In some cases
the paper-makers, or cartolaji, appear themselves to have organised staffs
of scribes through whose labour their own raw material could be utilised,
while the name of paper-maker,—cartolajo, came to be used to describe the
entire concern.

After the introduction into Italy of printing, the association of the paper-
makers with books became still more important, and not a few of the
original printer-publishers were formerly paper manufacturers, and
continued this branch of trade while adding to it the work of manufacturing
books. Among such paper-making publishers is to be noted Francesco
Cartolajo, who was in business in Florence in 1507, and whose surname
was, of course, derived from the trade in which his family had for some
generations been engaged. Bonaccorsi turned his paper-making
establishment in Florence into a printing-office and book manufactory as
early as 1472, and Montali, in Parma, took the same course in 1482; Di
Sasso who, in 1481, came into association with the Brothers Brushi, united
his printing-office with their paper factory.
Fillippo Giunta, one of the earlier publishers in Florence, calls himself
librarius et cartolajus. It is possible that he reversed the business routine
above referred to, and united a paper factory with his printing-office.
One result of the influx of Greek scholars, many of whom were
themselves skilled scribes while others brought with them scribes, was the
multiplying of the number of writers available for work and a
corresponding reduction in the cost of such work.
The effect of this change in the business conditions was to lessen the
practice of hiring manuscripts for a term of days or weeks, or of dividing
manuscripts into pecias, and to increase the actual sale of works in
manuscripts.
The university regulations, however, controlling the loaning of
manuscripts and of the pecias appear to have been continued and renewed
through the latter half of the fifteenth century, that is to say, not only after
the trade in manuscripts, at popular prices, had largely developed in cities
like Florence, Venice, and Milan, but even after the introduction of printing.
It would almost seem as if in regard to books in manuscript, the system
which had been put into shape by the university authorities had had the
effect of delaying for a quarter of a century or so the introduction into
Bologna and Padua of the methods of book production and book
distribution which were already in vogue in other cities of Italy. I do not
overlook the fact that there was in Florence also a university, but it is
evident that the book-trade in that city had never been under the control of

the university authorities, and that the methods of the dealers took shape
rather from the general, common-sense commercial routine of the great
centre of Italian trade than from the narrow scholastic theories of the
professors of law or of theology.
During the twenty-five years before the art of printing, introduced into
Italy in 1464, had become generally diffused, the years in which the trade in
manuscripts was at its highest development, Florence succeeded Venice as
the centre of this trade, both for Italy and for Europe.
The activity of the intellectual life of the city, and the fact that its citizens
were cultivated and that its scholars were so largely themselves men of
wealth, the convenient location of the city for trade communications with
the other cities of Italy and with the great marts in the East, in the West, and
in the North, and the accumulation in such libraries as those of the Medici
of collections, nowhere else to be rivalled, of manuscripts, both ancient and
modern, united in securing for Florence the pre-eminence for literary
production and for literary interests.
Scholars, not only from the other Italian cities, but from France,
Germany, and Hungary, came to Florence to consult manuscripts which in
many cases could be found only in Florence, or to purchase transcripts of
these manuscripts, which could be produced with greater correctness,
greater beauty, and smaller expense by the librarii of Florence than by
producers of books in any other city. After the Greek refugees began their
lecture courses, there was an additional attraction for scholars from the
outer world to visit the Tuscan capital.
The wealthy scholars and merchant princes of Florence, whose
collections of manuscripts were given to the city during their lifetime, or
who left such collections after their death to the Florentine libraries, made
it, as a rule, a condition of such gifts and such bequests that the books
should be placed freely at the disposal of visitors desiring to make
transcripts of the same. Such a condition appears in the will of Bonaccorsi,
[334]
while a similar condition was quoted by Poggio[335] in his funeral
oration upon Niccolo d’ Niccoli, as having been the intention of Niccolo for
the books bequeathed by him to his Florentine fellow-citizens.
Foreign collectors who did not find it convenient themselves to visit
Florence, such as the Duke of Burgundy, and Matthias Corvinus of

Hungary, kept employed in the city for a number of years scribes engaged
in the work of preparing copies of these Florentine literary treasures for the
libraries of Nancy and of Buda-Pesth.
Matthias was, it seems, not content with ordering the transcripts of the
works desired by him, but employed a scholarly editor, resident in Florence,
to supervise the work and to collate the transcripts with the originals, and
who certified to the correctness of the copies forwarded to Buda.[336] At the
death of Matthias, there appear to have been left in Florence a number of
codices ordered by him which had not yet been paid for, and these were
taken over by the Medici.[337]
In a parchment manuscript of the Philippian orations is inscribed a note
by a previous owner, a certain Dominicus Venetus, to the effect that he had
bought the same in Rome from a Florentine bookseller for five ducats in
gold in 1460.[338] Dominicus goes on to say that he had used this
manuscript in connection with the lectures of the learned Brother Patrus
Thomasius.
During the thirteenth century, there was a considerable development in
the art of preparing and of illuminating and illustrating manuscripts. One
author is quoted by Tiraboschi as saying that the work on a manuscript now
required the services not of a scribe, but of an artist. For the transcribing of
a missal and illuminating the same with original designs, a monk in
Bologna is quoted as having received in 1260 two hundred florins gold, the
equivalent of about one hundred dollars. For copying the text of the Bible,
without designs, another scribe received in the same year eighty lire, about
sixteen dollars.[339]
The work of the manuscript-dealers in Florence was carried on not only
for the citizens and sojourners in the city itself, but for the benefit of other
Italian cities in which there was no adequate machinery for the manifolding
of manuscripts. Bartholomæus Facius, writing from Naples in 1448, speaks
of the serious inadequacy of the scribes in that city. There were but few men
engaged in the business, and these were poorly educated and badly
equipped.[340] Facius was, therefore, asking a correspondent in Florence to
have certain work done for him which could not be completed in Naples.
Poggio writes from Rome about the same date to Niccolo in Florence to

somewhat similar effect. He speaks with envy of the larger literary facilities
possessed by his Florentine friends.[341]
Next to Florence, the most important centre for the manuscript trade of
North Italy was Milan. As early as the middle of the fourteenth century,
there is record of no less than forty professional scribes being at work in the
city. Such literary work as was required by Genoa and other Italian towns
within reach of the Lombardy capital came to Milan. At the beginning of
the thirteenth century, when the population of the city was about 200,000,
there had been in the city but two registered copyists. More important,
however, than that of either Florence or Milan, was the manuscript trade of
Venice, the position of which city gave it exceptional advantages as well for
the collection of codices from the East as for securing the services of skilled
scribes from Athens or from Constantinople. One of the more noteworthy of
the Venetian importers of manuscripts was Johannes Galeotti, a Genoese by
birth, who made various journeys to Constantinople, and whose special
trade is referred to in an inscription on a manuscript dating from 1450 and
containing the speeches of Demosthenes.[342]
Reference has already been made to Aurispa, who appears to have been
the most important manuscript-dealer of his time, not only in Venice, but
possibly in the world. Aurispa sent various agents to Greece and to the
farther East to collect manuscripts and kept scribes busied in his work-shop
in Venice in preparing authentic copies of these texts. One of his travellers
was Plantinerus, who was sent to the Peloponnesus in 1415, and who
succeeded in securing there some valuable codices.[343] Plantinerus found,
in executing his commissions, that he had to come into competition with a
traveller sent out by Cosimo de’ Medici on a similar errand.
Venice possessed an advantage over the other Italian cities, not only in
the collection of texts, and in its facilities for manifolding these, but in its
position for securing wide sales for the same in the cities outside of Italy,
with which it was, in connection with its active commerce, in regular
relations. The lines of the Oxford printers, Theo. Rood and Thomas Hunt,
printed in their edition of the Letters of Phalaris, give an indication of the
relations of the English university in the early part of the fifteenth century
with the literary marts of Southern Europe.

Celatos, Veneti, nobis transmittere libros
Cedite, nos aliis vendimus, O Veneti—[344]

(If you Venetians will send over to us the books which have been hidden (i.
e. difficult or rare books, or possibly books unearthed from far off Eastern
regions) we will find sale for the same.)
There is evidence in fact of a very active book-trade between Venice and
England for many years before the introduction into Italy of the printing-
press. The work of Aldus and of those who were associated with him in
carrying on printing and publishing undertakings in Venice naturally very
largely extended these relations with the English scholars, but the channels
for the same had already been opened. The manuscript-dealers in Venice
fixed their place of business in the most frequented parts of the city—the
Bridge of the Rialto, and the Plaza of S. Mark.
The trade of the Italian dealers in manuscripts was not brought to an
immediate close by the introduction of printing. The older scholars still
preferred the manuscript form for their books, and found it difficult to
divest themselves of the impression that the less costly printed volumes
were suited only for the requirements of the vulgar herd. There are even, as
Kirchhoff points out,[345] instances of scribes preparing their manuscripts
from printed “copy,” and there are examples of these manuscript copies of
printed books being made with such literalness as to include the imprint of
the printer.
The work of Aldus (continued with scholarly enterprise later by such men
as Froben of Basel and Estienne of Paris) in the printing of Greek texts,
although begun as early as 1495, and although exercising a very wide
influence upon the distribution of Greek literature, was insufficient to
supply the eager demand of the scholars, while not many other printers
were, in the early years of the exercise of the art, prepared to incur the very
considerable risk and expense required for the production of Greek fonts of
type. The risk was, of course, by no means limited to the cost of the type;
the printers of the earlier Greek books had themselves but slight familiarity
with the literature of Greece, and they were obliged in many cases to
confide the selection and the editing of their texts to editors to whom this
literature was very largely still a novelty. The printers hardly knew what

books to select and they had no adequate data upon which to base business
calculations as to the extent of the demand that could be looked for for any
particular book. The feeling that they were working in the dark was,
therefore, a very natural one.
It was on this ground that, while printing-presses were, during the
century after 1450, multiplying rapidly through Europe, the printing of
Greek books continued to be for a large portion of the period an exceptional
class of undertakings, and work was still found for scribes who could be
trusted to make accurate transcripts of Greek codices.
Kirchhoff gives the names of the following Italian manuscript-dealers
and scribes whose scholarly activity during the latter half of the fifteenth
century was especially important: Antonius Dazilas, Cæsar Strategus,
Constantius Librarius, Andreas Vergetius, and Antonius Eparchus. The latter
made various journeys to the East in search of manuscripts. The fact that the
dealers in manuscripts very rarely placed their own names on the copies of
the texts sent out from their work-shops has, in a large number of cases,
prevented these names from being preserved for future record. The names
that have come into record are in the main such as have been referred to in
the correspondence of their scholarly friends and clients. I quote a few of
these references from the lists given by Kirchhoff:
In Bologna the oldest librarius whose work is referred to is Viliaric, who
was called an antiquarius, and whose shop was open in the beginning of the
thirteenth century. In a manuscript, previously referred to, containing a
treatise of Paul Orosius, originally written in the seventh century, and from
which this copy was transcribed early in the thirteenth, there is at the end an
inscription, as follows:

Confectus codex in statione magistri Viliaric antiquarii,
Ora pro me scriptore, sic dominum habeas protectorem.[346]

(This codex was completed in the stall of Master Viliaric, bookseller;
pray for (the soul of) me, the scribe, and you shall have the Lord for your
protector.)
This codex seems to have been prepared, according to the usual
university practice, for hire, as on the sixteenth page there is noted the

memorandum, “this quaternio has five sheets.”
In 1247, Nicolaus is recorded as being the stationarius universitatis, and
in the same year a certain Johannes Cambii is recorded as a stationarius
librorum; and Minghinus as a stationarius peciarum. Here we have in one
year record of three classes of scribes being at work. They were all noted as
being doctors of the law, and they all appear on the list of persons exempt
from military service.
Later in the same century, a certain Cervotti, who had inherited from a
deceased brother a collection of books, undertook to use these for profit by
offering them for hire. The list of the books, drawn up by the notary
Noscimpax, has been preserved, and includes twenty different works.
Certain of these are collections of the university lectures in the Faculty of
law, and the others have also, in the main, to do with the subject of
jurisprudence. The first book on the list is Diversitates Dominorum, and the
last Margarita Gallacerti, which latter does not appear properly to belong
to the subject of jurisprudence.
In the year 1400, there is reference to a scribe named Moses and
specified as a Jew, which, in view of the university regulations previously
referred to prohibiting the sale of books by Jews or to Jews, is noteworthy.
The entry appears at the close of a manuscript of Bartholomæus
Brixiensis:
Emi hunc librum anno domini MCCCC die XXI. Mensis novembris a
Moysi Judeo pro viii. florenes.
Kirchhoff is of opinion that Moses must have been a travelling pedlar, as
it is difficult to believe that a Jew could have at that time secured the post of
a licensed university scribe.[347]
In Verona, there is reference to a certain Bonaventura, who is recorded as
a scriptor, and who seems to have occasionally utilised for his manuscript
work the hand of a woman. An inscription on one of the manuscripts by
Bonaventura, quoted by Endlicher, reads as follows:

Dextra scriptoris careat gravitate doloris.
Detur pro penna scriptori pulchra puella.[348]

In Florence, the earliest librarius of note was probably Johannes
Aretinus, whose work continued during the years between 1375-1417.
Ambrosius Camaldulensis, who had so much to do with books and with
literature, takes pains, in a letter written in 1391, to send a cordial greeting
to the librarius Aretinus.[349] Bandini prints a letter of Petrarch’s in which
the latter refers to Aretinus as a friend for whom he has a high regard and as
a man of exceptional knowledge and clearness of insight, and specifies, as
works that he valued highly, nine manuscripts which had been written by
the hand of Aretinus. These included Aristotle’s treatise on Ethics, several
Essays of Cicero, the Histories of Livy, Cicero’s Orations, Barbari on
Marriage, etc.
Kirchhoff gives a list of fourteen other Florentine librarii, whose work
extended over the years between 1410 and 1480. The latter date is sixteen
years later than the introduction of the printing-press into Italy.
The most noteworthy by far of these manuscript-dealers of Florence was
Philippi Vespasiano, who has been previously referred to, and who is to be
ranked not only as the most important publisher of the manuscript period,
but as one of the great scholars of his time, and as a man whose friendship
was cherished by not a few of the leaders of thought during the earlier
period of the Renaissance. In one of the Florentine collections has been
preserved a number of letters written to Vespasiano by his scholarly friends
between the years 1446 and 1463, and these letters show how honoured a
position he held in the generation of his time. He was, in fact, in character
and in ambition, as well as in the nature of his work, a worthy predecessor
of Aldus, and he lived long enough himself to have seen some of the
productions of the Aldine Press.
In his earlier years, Vespasiano was for a time secretary to Cardinal
Branda in Rome, and it is during this time that he devoted himself earnestly
to classic studies. It was while he was in Rome that he began work upon a
literary undertaking of his own, which comprised a series of Memoirs of the
noteworthy men of his time with whom he had come into relations. The
Medici, Duke Borso of Ferrara, and other of the scholarly nobles made
large use of Vespasiano’s collections of manuscripts and facilities for
producing authentic transcripts.

He was one of the Italian dealers whose agents were actively at work in
Greece and in Asia Minor in the collecting of manuscripts, and the clients to
whom he supplied such manuscripts included correspondents in Paris,
Basel, Vienna, and Oxford.
In the Bodleian Library in Oxford is a codex containing certain works of
Cyprian, on the first sheet of which is inscribed:
Vespasianus librarius Florentinus hunc librum Florentiæ transcribendum
curavit. (Vespasian, a Florentine librarius, had this book transcribed at
Florence.)
Another manuscript in the same collection, containing a commentary on
some comedies of Terence, is inscribed as follows:
Vespasianus librarius Florentinus fecit scribi Florentiæ. (Vespasian, a
Florentine librarius, had this book written in Florence.)
Both codices are beautiful examples of the best manuscript work of the
period.[350]
There are various references of the time showing that manuscripts which
bore the stamp of Vespasiano were not only beautiful in their form, but
possessed probably a higher authority than the work of any other
manuscript-dealer of the age for completeness and for accuracy. He took
contracts for the production of great libraries, and it is recorded that, in
preparing for Cosimo de’ Medici a collection of two hundred works, he
employed forty-five scribes for a term of twenty-two months.[351]
Vespasiano died in 1496, one year later than the establishment in Venice of
the Aldine Press.
Agnolo da Sandro is described as a bidellus, a manuscript-dealer, in
Florence as late as 1498, at which time the trade in manuscripts must
already have begun very seriously to diminish. Niccolo di Giunta, who was
active in the manuscript trade in Florence towards the end of the fifteenth
century, is famous as having been the founder of the family of Giunta or
Junta, which later took such an important part in printing and publishing
undertakings in Italy.
In Perugia, the first record of a manuscript-publisher bears date as late as
1430. The name is Bontempo, and his inscription appears on a parchment

copy of an Infortiatum.
While there are various references to manuscript-dealers in Milan of an
early date, the first inscription bears date as late as 1452. The name is
Melchoir, who is described as a “dealer of note.” Filelfo speaks of Melchoir
as having copies of Cicero’s Letters for sale at ten ducats each.[352]
Paolo Soardo, who was in business between 1470 and 1480, is described
as an apothecary and also as a dealer in delicatessen, but he seems to have
added to his employment that of a manifolder and seller of manuscripts.
Jacobus Antiquarius speaks of having purchased from Paolo in 1480 a
Roman history for the sum of one aureus. In Padua, Jacob, a Jew,
succeeded, notwithstanding the university regulations against dealing in
manuscripts by Jews, in carrying on between 1455 and 1460 a business in
the sale of manuscripts. His inscription appears on a number of classical
codices of the time, and in a manuscript of Horace, dating from the twelfth
century, the owner makes reference that he purchased the same in 1458
from Jacob, the Hebrew librarius.[353]
The records of Ferrara give the names of Carnerio, bibliopola, and of
several others as doing business in manuscripts between 1440 and 1490.
In Rome the records of 1454 speak of Giovanni and Francisco as
cartolaji and librarii, that is to say, dealers in paper and also in manuscripts.
In that year these dealers had for sale among their things, Letters of Cicero
(without which work no well regulated manuscript-dealer’s collection
appears to have been complete) and the works of Celsus. A copy of the
latter was bought for Vespasiano for the sum of twenty ducats. There is
record during the same year of a certain Spannocchia who also had Cicero’s
Letters for sale.
In Genoa there were at this time one or two manuscript-dealers, but, as
before stated, the readers and scholars of Genoa appear for the most part to
have supplied themselves from Florence.
The most important trade in manuscripts during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, as was the case during the fifteenth century with the
trade in printed books, was carried on in Venice and Florence. As early as
1390 the inscription of Gabriel Ravenna, librarius, appears in a copy of
Seneca’s Tragedies.[354] Kirchhoff is of opinion that Gabriel conducted,

during the last fifteen years of the fourteenth century, an important work-
shop for the production of manuscripts.
A year or two later, occurs the name of Michael, a German librarius, but
it is possible that Michael’s work was more nearly that of a secretary than
of a manuscript-dealer. As Kirchhoff points out, it is not always easy at this
stage of the trade in manuscripts, to distinguish between the inscriptions of
the manuscript-dealers certifying to the correctness of the copy sent out
from their shops, and the inscriptions of the scribes or secretaries who,
having completed for this or that employer specific copies of the works
required, added their names as a record on the final sheet.
Reference has already been made to Johannes Aurispa, by far the most
important of the manuscript-dealers of his time and possibly of the entire
Middle Ages. Aurispa was born in 1369 in Sicily. The earlier years of his
life were passed in Constantinople, where he appears to have held a position
of some importance in connection with the Court. While in Constantinople,
he began to make collections of manuscripts, and he organised there a staff
of skilled scribes. In 1423, at the invitation of his friends, Ambrosius
Camaldulensis and Niccolo de’ Niccoli, he came to Florence, bringing with
him an invaluable collection of 238 manuscripts.
To this store he afterwards added, while in Florence, a further lot of
codices which he had had sent from Constantinople to Messina. At this
time, his interest in the collection of manuscripts appears to have been a
matter of scholarship merely and of sympathy with the efforts of certain
Florentine scholars whom he came to know, to secure the material for their
classical studies.
Later, however, in connection, doubtless, with the many applications that
came to him for transcripts of his codices, he decided to organise a business
as a bookseller and publisher. Before taking this course, he had, it appears,
sought a position as instructor, first in Florence and afterwards in Bologna
and in Ferrara, but had not succeeded in finding the kind of a post that
suited him.
Part of the evidence of his change of mind comes to us through letters
from Filelfo, whose keen scholarly interest brought him into close relations
with men having to do with literary production. Filelfo writes to Aurispa, in
1440:

Totus es in librorum mercatura, sed in lectura mallem. Quid enim prodest
libros quotidie, nunc emere, nunc vendere, legere vere nunquam! (You are
completely absorbed in the occupation of trading books, but I should
choose that of reading them. For what does it profit you to buy and sell
books every day if you never have time for their perusal.)
And again in 1441:
Sed ex tua ista taberna libraria nullus unquam prodit codex, nisi cum
quæstu.[355] (No book ever leaves your book-shop, except at a profit to
you.)
The publishing undertakings of Aurispa were devoted almost entirely to
works of classical literature. Among the authors whose names appear either
in the lists of books offered by him or in the correspondence of his friends
and clients, are as follows:
Philo Judæus, Strabo, Theophrastus, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Proculus,
Homer, Aristarchus, Athenæus, Sophocles, Æschylus, Pindar, Oppian,
Proclus, Eusebius, Gregory, Aristotle, Plutarch, Plotinus, Lucian, Dio
Cassio, Diodorus, and other Greek authors. The Latin writers included
Cicero (of necessity), Virgil, Pliny, Quintilian, Macrobius, Apicius, and
Antonius.
Aurispa seems to have enjoyed the confidence and friendship of all the
noted Italian scholars of his time, and the letters of his correspondents speak
with very cordial appreciation as well of the importance of his services to
literature, as of the extent of the accuracy of his own scholarship. The only
correspondent with whom he appears to have had any trouble was Filelfi,
but if Filelfi had not managed to have friction with Aurispa, the bookseller
would have been an exception among the contemporaries of this irritable
and self-sufficient scholar.
In 1450, being then well advanced in years, Aurispa gave up his business
undertakings, took priestly orders, and lived thereafter as a scriba
apostolicus, dividing his time between Ferrara and Rome. He declined
tempting offers, made through his friend Panormita, to join the literary
circle of King Alphonso which had been brought together about the Court
in Naples.

After Aurispa’s death, Filelfo gave to his son-in-law, Sabbatinus, a very
cordial word of appreciation of the services and of the character of the
publisher. A portion of the manuscripts belonging to Aurispa’s collection
was purchased in 1461 by Duke Borso of Ferrara for two hundred ducats.
A large collection of manuscripts was, however, in Aurispa’s possession
at the time of his death, and these were taken charge of by Bartholomæus
Facius, and, after various vicissitudes, many of them have since found place
in existing collections of Florence, Venice, Vienna, Paris, and London. A
selection of the letters between Aurispa and his near friend Camaldulensis
has also been preserved.
Books in Spain.—At the time when the great manuscript-dealers of
Venice and Florence were carrying on business with the literary centres of
France, Germany, and England, they had some dealings also with Spain; but
their correspondence was practically limited to the University of
Salamanca, which had been founded about 1220. The literary activities of
Spain during the fifteenth century were certainly much less important than
those of either Italy or France. They were of necessity seriously hampered
by the long series of wars with the Moors, while the final overthrow in 1492
of the Moorish kingdom of Granada doubtless had, as one of many results,
a decidedly unfavourable influence upon the intellectual development and
the literary possibilities of the Peninsula. For two centuries or more the
scholars of the Moorish kingdom had busied themselves in making
collections of Arabic literature, while of not a few of the more noteworthy
works they caused to be prepared versions in Latin, by means of which the
books were made available for the use of instructors and students in
Salerno, Bologna, Padua, and Paris. It was the case also that the first
knowledge of certain Greek authors came to the scholars of Europe through
the Latin translations which were produced in Cordova from the Arabic
versions. The Moorish scholars thus became a connecting link for the
transmission to the Western world of the philosophy and learning of the
East. Until its conquest and practical destruction by the Spaniards in 1236,
Cordova had been not only the political capital but the centre of the
intellectual life of the Moorish kingdom, so that it was spoken of as the
Athens of the West. At the close of the tenth century it is said to have
contained nearly one million inhabitants. In connection with the work of its
university and of the great library, a large body of skilled scribes were

busied with the manifolding of manuscripts, and there appears to have been
a regular exchange of manuscripts between Cordova and Baghdad.
In the year 995, Thafar Al-baghdádé, the chief of the scribes of his time,
came from Baghdad and settled in Cordova. The Khalif Al-hakem took him
into his service and employed him in transcribing books. The Khalif
surpassed every one of his predecessors in the love of literature and of the
sciences, which he himself cultivated with success and fostered in his
dominions. Through his influence, Andalusia became a great market to
which the literary productions of every clime were immediately brought for
sale. He employed merchants and agents to collect books for him in distant
countries, remitting for the purpose large sums of money from the treasury,
until, says the chronicler, “the number of books in Andalusia exceeded all
calculation.” The Khalif sent presents of money to celebrated authors in the
East with a view to encourage the publication of works or to secure the first
copies of these. Hearing, for instance, that Abú-l-faraj of Ispahán had
written a book entitled Kitábu-l-aghani (The Book of Songs), he sent him a
thousand dinars of pure gold, in consideration of which he received a copy
of the work before it had been published in Persia. He did the same thing
with Abú Bekr Al-abhari, who had published a commentary on the
Mokhtassar.
Al-hakem also collected and employed in his own palace the most skilful
men of his time in the arts of transcribing, binding and illuminating books.
The great library that he brought together remained in the palace of
Cordova, until, during a siege of the city by the Berbers, Hájib Wadheh, a
freedman of Al-mansúr, ordered portions of the books to be sold, the
remainder being shortly afterwards plundered and destroyed on the taking
of the city. The extent of the collection is indicated by the description of the
catalogue. In the Tekmílah, Ibun-l-abbáns is quoted by Al-Makkari as
saying that the catalogue comprised forty-four volumes, each volume
containing twenty sheets. Makkari estimates that the library contained no
less that four hundred thousand volumes. It is possible that this number was
over-estimated, at least, if we are to believe the statement of Ibun-l-abbar
that the Khalif Al-hakem had himself read every book in the collection,
writing on the fly-leaf the dates of his perusal and details concerning the
author.

Makkari gives a long list of famous authors who flourished in Andalusia
during the reign of Al-hakem, their productions including works in law,
medicine, history, topography, language, and poetry. One of the historians,
Al-tári-khí, was a paper merchant, and was accordingly known by the name
of Al-Warrak. I do not find record of the names of any dealers in books or
any account of the means employed for their distribution.[356]
The Manuscript Trade in France.—While, in Italy, the more
important part of the trade in manuscripts was carried on outside of the
university circles, in France the university retained in the hands of its own
authorities the control and supervision of the work of the manuscript-
dealers; and the book-trade of the country, not only during the manuscript
period, but for many years after the introduction of printing, was very
directly associated with the university organisation. The record of the
production and of the trade in books carried on by the stationarii, librarii,
and the printer-publishers of the university is presented in the chapter on the
Making of Books in the Universities.
During its earlier years, the trade in manuscripts was limited practically
to the city of Paris. The work of the official university scribes in Paris was
very similar to that which has already been referred to for Bologna. It
appears, however, that, in accordance with the Parisian methods, there was
less insistence upon the practice of hiring manuscripts, either complete or in
divisions, and there was an earlier development of the practice of making an
absolute sale of the texts required.
Kirchhoff traces the beginning of the manuscript-trade back to the second
half of the eleventh century. He says that it is not clear whether the earlier
dealers were able to devote themselves exclusively to the business of selling
books, or whether, as he thinks it more probable, they associated this
business with some other occupation. Jean de Garland, who compiled a
kind of technological directory or list of industries carried on in Paris in
1060, says: Paravisus est locus ubi libri scholarium vendentur.[357] He is
apparently referring to the Place near the Cathedral Church, which later
became the centre of the Parisian book-trade. Peter of Blois, writing, in the
middle of the twelfth century, to an instructor in jurisprudence in Paris,
makes a more definite reference to the Parisian manuscript-dealers. He
speaks of the great collections of valuable books which the Parisian dealers

have for sale, and laments the narrowness of his purse which prevents him
from purchasing many things which have tempted him.[358]
Bulæus, in his History of the University of Paris, published in 1665,
maintains that as early as 1174, the manuscript-dealers of Paris formed a
part of the organisation of the university, and that their work had been
brought fully under the regulation of the university authorities. The
university statistics, before the thirteenth century, do not, however, appear
fully to bear out this contention. The first statutes which give detailed
regulations concerning the book-trade bear date as late as 1275. These
statutes specify what texts and what number of copies of each text the
licensed booksellers should keep in stock, and give a schedule, as was done
in Bologna and Padua, of the prices at which the loans and sales should be
made.
Kirchhoff is of opinion that, prior to the middle of the thirteenth century,
the book-trade connected with the university, while it had already assumed
considerable proportions, had not been brought thoroughly under university
control. With this control came also as an effect, the privileges which
attached to the dealers as members of the university body, and there is no
evidence that the booksellers enjoyed these privileges before 1250. Depping
takes the ground, that during the fifteenth century the sale of books in Paris
was not sufficient to constitute a business in itself, and that all dealers in
books had some other occupation or means of support, and interested
themselves in the sale of manuscripts only as an additional occupation.[359]
It appears hardly likely, however, that manuscript-dealers should be able
to secure immunity from the general tax, which fell upon nearly all other
classes of dealers, on the ground of the importance of their trade for
education, unless they were able to show that they were actively engaged in
such trade. The regulation quoted by Depping specifies among the free
citizens of the city of Paris who were not liable to the King’s tax,—libraires
parcheminiers, enlumineurs, escriipveins. It was evidently the intention of
the framers of the law to include under the exemption all dealers upon
whose trade the preparation and sale of manuscripts was directly dependent.
Under this heading were included, of necessity, the scribes, the illuminators
(who added to the text of the scribes the artistic decorations and initial
letters), and (most important of the three) the dealers in parchment.