Ernest Albert Savage

“ Here then would come the flower of Oxford scholarship to study, any time after eight in the morning. Every student is welcome if he does not enter in wet clothing, or bring in ink, or a knife, or dagger. We like to picture this small room, fitted with solid, rude furniture, monastic in its austerity of appearance; full of{137} students working eagerly in their quest for knowledge—making extracts in pencil, or with styles on their tablets, amid a silence broken only by the crackle of vellum leaves, and the rattle of a chain. ”

“ Our right special Lord and mighty Prince the Duke of Gloucester, late passed out of this world,—whose soul God assoil for his high mercy,—not long before his decease, being in our said University among all the doctors and masters of the same assembled together, granted unto us all his Latin books, to the loving of God, increase of clergy and cunning men, to the good governance and prosperity of the realm of England without end ... ”

“ You do not know what it is to write. It is excessive drudgery: it crooks your back, dims your sight, twists your stomach and sides. Pray then, my brother, you who read this book, pray for poor Raoul, God’s servant, who has copied it entirely with his own hand in the cloister of St. Aignan.” Another inscription, in a manuscript at Worcester Cathedral, suggests that books were not read: why, argues this monk, write them?—nobody is profited; books are for the edification of readers, not of scribes. ”

“ To get far beyond the influence of a barbaric society, utterly antagonistic to peaceful religious observance, was clearly the surest means of achieving personal holiness. Monachism was a system designed for these ends. Throughout the Middle Ages it was the refuge—the only refuge—for the man who desired to flee from sin. Such, at any rate, was the truly religious man’s view. And if monkish retreats sheltered some ignorant fanatics, they also attracted many{2} representatives of the culture and learning of the time. ”

“ The chaplain was to pray for the souls of Cobham and of University benefactors; and to have the charge of the bishop’s books, of the books in the chests, and of any books coming to the University afterwards. [343]
We can easily imagine what the library was like. The chamber over the Congregation House is small, scarcely larger than the average class-room of to-day; lighted by seven windows on each side. Between some, if not all, of the windows bookcases would stand at right angles to the wall, forming little alcoves, fit for the quiet pursuit of knowledge. Learning itself was shackled. ”

“ CATHEDRAL AND CHURCH LIBRARIES §I TO the books of the monastery some human interest clings: we can at once conjure up a picture of the cloister and the scribe at his work; the handling of an old manuscript, the turning over of finely-written and quaintly-illuminated yellow pages, throws the mind flashing back centuries to the silent writer in his carrell. But the church library is not rich in associations. It was a small “working” collection: one part for the use of the clergy, the other part—consisting of a few chained books—for the use of the people. ”

“ For their value in teaching grammar and as models of literary style, however, certain classic authors—especially Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, and Statius—were regarded as supplementary to the grammatical works of Donatus, Victorinus, Macrobius, and Priscian, and were studied by the religious throughout the Middle Ages. They were grammatical text-books, as indeed they are still; but then they were very little else. A man would call himself Virgil, not from inordinate vanity, but from a naive pride in his profession of grammarian: to his way of thinking the great poet was no more. ”

“ At all times solitude has been pleasant to the student and thinker, or to the moody lover of books.
By great good fortune, then, the studious occupations which did so much to soften monkish austerities in the Middle Ages, were recognised early as needful to the system. Even the ascetics by the Red Sea and in Nitria did not deprive themselves of all literary solace, although the more fanatical would abjure it, and many would be too poor to have it. The Rule of Pachomius, founder of the settlements of Tabenna, required the brethren’s books to be kept in a cupboard and regulated lending them. ”

“ One member of the society named John Erghome was a remarkable man. He was a doctor of Oxford, where he had studied logic, natural philosophy, and theology. More than 220 books were his contribution to this splendid library, and he it was who added the Psalter and Canticles in Greek and a Hebrew book,—rarities indeed at that date. Classical literature is fairly well represented in the collection as a whole, but theology, and especially logic and philosophy, make up the bulk. ”

“ The first books reserved for common use had their home in St. Mary’s Church: some lay in chests, and were lent in exchange for a suitable pledge; others were chained to desks so that students could readily refer to them. These books were almost certainly theological in character, and all were no doubt given by benefactors, now unknown. Such a gift was received early in the thirteenth century from Roger de L’Isle, Dean of York, who gave a Bible, divided into four parts for the convenience of copyists, and the Book of Exodus, glossed, but old and of little value. ”

“ From the sixth to the eighth century Ireland enjoyed an eminent place in the world of learning; and the lives and works of her scholars imply book-culture of good character. St. Columba was famed for his studious occupations. Educated first by Finnian of Moville, then by another tutor of the same name at the famous school of Clonard, he journeyed to other centres for further instruction after his ordination. From youth he loved books and studies. He is represented as reading out of doors at the moment when the murderer of a young girl is struck dead. ”

“ Many of them are very scantily clothed, and all have their attention rivetted on the chest, each with curious eye watching for his pledge, his book or his cup, brought from some country village, perhaps an old treasure of his family, and now pledged in his extremity, for last term he could not pay the principal of his hall the rent of his miserable garret, nor the manciple for his battels, but now he is in funds again, and pulls from his leathern money-pouch at his girdle the coin which is to repossess him of his property. ”

“ Bede amply proves its efficiency as a school. And forasmuch as both Theodore and Hadrian were “fully instructed both in sacred and in secular letters, they gathered a crowd of disciples, and rivers of wholesome knowledge daily flowed from them to water the hearts of their hearers; and, together with the books of Holy Scripture, they also taught them the metrical art, astronomy, and ecclesiastical arithmetic. A testimony whereof is, that there are still living at this day some of their scholars, who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as in their own, in which they were born.” ”

“ Such progress in providing scholars’ armouries is remarkable, the greater part of it being accomplished during a period of great social and religious unrest—not the unrest of a wind-fretted surface, but of a grim and far-sweeping underswell—a period when pestilence, violent tempests and earthquakes, seemed bodeful of Divine displeasure; not a time surely when the studious life would be attractive, or when much care would be taken to establish libraries, unless indeed controversy made recourse to books more necessary or the signs of the times gave birth to a greater number of benefactors. ”

“ Whether the story is worth telling is another matter. Surely it is. To be able to follow the history of the Middle Ages, to become acquainted with the people, their mode of life and customs and manners, is of profound interest and great utility; and it is by no means the least important part of such study to discover what books they had, how extensively the books were read, and what section of the people read them.
Let us here sum up the information given in detail in the foregoing pages; adding thereto some other facts of interest. And first, what of the character of the medieval library? ”

“ It was copied once and again; became very slowly but very surely known to a few, then to many; and all the time waxed more and more influential in its teaching. The growth was slow, but then the lifetime was long. Now the chance of a good book going astray is much greater. What watcher of the great procession of modern books does not fear that something supremely fine and great has passed unobserved in the huge, motley crowd? ”

“ Others eke out their means by begging at street corners. All get their teaching by gathering round masters whose rostrum is the church doorstep or the threshold of the lodging-house. Amid the manifold distractions of this queerly-ordered life the maker and seller of books earns what living he can; his chief patrons being indigent masters, who often must starve themselves to get books, and students so poor that pawning becomes a custom regulated by the University itself.
Not till the University became firmly established as a corporate body could a common library be formed. ”

“ Pawnbroking was an important part of a bookseller’s business. Lending books on hire was usual among both booksellers and tutors, for it was the exception, rather than the rule, for university students to own books, while in the college libraries there were sometimes not enough books to go round. For example, the statutes of St. Mary’s College, founded in 1446, forbade a scholar to occupy a book in the library above an hour, or at most two hours, so that others should not be hindered from the use of them. ”

“ A glance at the monastic and academic library catalogues of later date than mid-thirteenth century will prove more clearly than a shelf full of books how enormous was the influence of Aristotle. If such a collocation as the Bible and Shakspere sums up the present-day Englishman’s ideals of spiritual sustenance and literary power, a similar collocation of the Bible and Aristotle would sum up, with a greater approach to truth, the ideals of the medieval schoolman. Popularity fell to Piers Plowman. ”

“ The monks then had plenty of books; wealthy clergy also had small collections. An ecclesiastic or a layman who had done a monastery some service, or whose favour it was politic to cultivate, could borrow books from the monastic library, under certain strict conditions. Some people availed themselves of this privilege; but not at any time during the manuscript period to a great extent. [558]
Outside this small circle the people were almost bookless: nearly the whole of the literary wealth of the Middle Ages belonged to the monks and the church. Books were extremely costly. ”

“ Floral work is also rare. But in geometrical ornament, beautifully symmetrical—diagonal patterns, zigzags, waves, lozenges, divergent spirals, intertwisted and interwoven ribbon and cord work—and in grotesque zoological forms,—lizards, snakes, hounds, birds, and dragons’ heads,—the Irish school attained their highest artistic development. Their art is striking, not for originality, not for its beauty, which is nevertheless great, but for painstaking. ”

“ Sunlight and shadow follow one another rapidly across England’s early history. The migration of York’s renowned scholar took place six years before the Viking irruptions began, and about twelve years before a heavy blow was struck at Northumbrian learning by the ravaging and destruction of the monasteries of Lindisfarne, and Wearmouth and Jarrow. ”

“ Not till the fifteenth century do we find that a few books were commonly in the possession of well-to-do and cultivated people; suggesting an advance in culture upon the previous age. But before 1400 several book collectors were sharp aberrations from the general rule. Richard de Gravesend, Bishop of London, owned nearly a hundred books, almost all theological, and each worth on an average more than a sovereign a volume, or in all about £1740 of our money. A certain Abbot Thomas of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, gave to his house over one hundred volumes. ”