Old English libraries

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

Early university studies were in two parts, the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium—music, astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic. These were the seven liberal arts. A fresco in a chapel in the Church of S. Maria Novella at Florence illustrates these arts. On the right of the cartoon is the figure of grammar; beneath is Priscian. For the study of this subject John Garland recommended Priscian and Donatus. Priscian was a leading text-book on the subject, and it was supported by a short manual compiled from Donatus. At Oxford extracts from these authors were thrown into the form of logical quaestiones to afford subjects of argument at the disputations held once a week before the masters of grammar.[542] To these books should be added a dictionary, with some peculiar and quaint etymologies, by Papias the Lombard; grammatical works by John Garland; Bishop Hugutio’s etymological dictionary (c. 1192); a dreary hexameter poem by Alexander Gallus, the Breton Friar (d. 1240)—“the olde Doctrinall, with his diffuse and unperfite brevitie”; Eberhard’s similar poem (c. 1212), called Graecismus, because it includes a chapter on derivations from the Greek; and a very large book, the Catholicon (c. 1286), partly a grammar and partly a dictionary, with copious quotations from Latin classics, which had been compiled with some skill and care by John Balbi, a Genoese Black Friar. Papias and Hugutio were sharply condemned by Friar Bacon, but they remained in use long after his time, and Balbi owed much to both of them. Many copies of the Catholicon seem to have been made, although the transcription of so large a book was costly: even before it was printed (1460), copies for reference were sometimes chained up in English churches, and after it was printed this practice became more general, at any rate in France. By the fourteenth century Priscian was almost superseded by Alexander and Eberhard, whose versified grammars came into common use; a jingle, whether it be—

in the fourteenth century, or

in the twentieth century, seems to help the harassed student along the linguistic path. The reading of Virgil and Statius and some other writers put flesh upon these grammatical dry bones. But as the masters of grammar at Oxford were expected to be guardians of morals as well, they were expressly forbidden to read and expound to their pupils Ovid’s Ars amandi, the Elegies of Pamphilus, and other indecent books.[543]

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

The first figure in the representation of the quadrivium is Music, with Tubal Cain beneath. In this subject, for which few books were necessary, Boëthius was the guide. With Astronomy is associated Ptolemy. The Cosmographia and Almagest of Ptolemy, and the works of some Arabian authors, with books of tables, were the student’s manuals. In our cartoon Geometry has Euclid for companion. Arithmetic is associated with Pythagoras in the picture: for this subject Boëthius was the text-book.[544]

Besides the seven liberal arts, natural, metaphysical, and moral philosophy, or the three philosophies, were added in the thirteenth century. For these studies Aristotle and his commentators were the chief guides. The medical authorities of the middle ages have been catalogued for us by Chaucer in his description of a doctor of “phisyk”—

Of these names eight are included in Duke Humfrey’s gifts to Oxford in 1439 and 1443; and ten of them are represented in the catalogue of Peterhouse Library in 1418. Besides the writers mentioned by Chaucer, works on fevers by Isaac the Arab, the Antidotarium of Nicholas, and the Isagoge of Johannicius were in general use.

Next to theology—in which class the chief books were the same as in the claustral library, although liturgical books are more rarely found—the largest section of an academic collection was that of civil and canon law. It comprised the various digests, the works of Cinus of Pistoia and Azo; texts of decrees, decretals, Liber Sextus Decretalium, Liber Clementinae, with many commentaries, the Constitutions of Ottobon and Otho, the book compiled by Henry of Susa, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, called Summa Ostiensis, the Rosarium of Archdeacon Guido de Baysio, and Durand’s Speculum Judiciale. The last three books are frequently met with, and were highly esteemed by medieval jurists.[545]

In a previous chapter we have noted the somewhat fresher character of the library given to Oxford University by the Duke of Gloucester. We have two later records which may be referred to now to indicate the change wrought by the Renascence. A catalogue of William Grocyn’s books was drawn up soon after his death in 1519. This collection proves its owner to have been conservative in his tastes, as the medieval favourites are well represented. Of Greek books there are only Aristotle, Plutarch in a Latin translation, and a Greek and Latin Testament—a curiously small collection in view of his interest in Greek, and in view of the fact that many of the chief Greek authors had been printed before his death. It seems likely that his Greek books had been dispersed. But the change is apparent in the excellent series of Latin classics, which included Tacitus and Lucretius, and in the number of books by Italian writers, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ficino, Filelfo, Lorenzo della Valle, Æneas Sylvius, and Perotti.

Still more significant of the change are the references to the course of study in the statutes of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1517). The approved prose writers are Cicero—an apology is offered for the use of barbarous words not known to Cicero—Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, Pliny, Livy, and Quintilian. Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence and Plautus are approved as poets. Suitable books to study during the vacations are the works of Lorenzo della Valle, Aulus Gellius, and Poliziano. In Greek the writings—most of them quite new to the age—of Isocrates, Lucian, Philostratus, Aristophanes, Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Plutarch are recommended. Such a list bears few resemblances to the academic library we have attempted to describe.[546]

§ IV

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries romances began to creep into all libraries, save the academic, in which they are rarely found. As soon as romance literature took a firm hold upon public favour the monks added some of it to their collections. Probably romances were first bought to be copied and sold to augment the monastic income; and more perhaps were sold than preserved. Ascham avers that “in our fathers tyme nothing was red, but bookes of fayned cheualrie, wherein a man by redinge, shuld be led to none other ende, but onely to manslaughter and baudrye.... These bokes (as I haue heard say) were made the moste parte in Abbayes and Monasteries, a very lickely and fit fruite of suche an ydle and blynde kinde of lyuyne.”[547] Thomas Nashe, in his story of The Unfortunate Traveller, describes romances as “the fantasticall dreams of those exiled Abbie lubbers,” that is, the monks.[548] These writers were but echoing such charges as that in Piers Plowman, which declares that a friar was much better acquainted with the Rimes of Robin Hood and Randal Erle of Chester than with his Paternoster. A number of romances are indeed found in monastic catalogues. The library at Glastonbury included four romances (1248); that at Christ Church, Canterbury, contained a few in late thirteenth century. Guy de Beauchamp bequeathed romances to Bordesley Abbey (1315). In the first year of the fifteenth century Peterborough had some romances. At the end of the same century St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, had in its library of over eighteen hundred books only a few romances; while in Leicester Abbey, among a library of about three hundred and fifty books, we find only the Troy book, Drian and Madok, Beves of Hamtoun, all in French, Gesta Alexandri Magni, and one or two others. Edward III bought a book of romance from a nun of Amesbury in 1331—a work of such interest that he kept it in his room. There are plenty of other instances. But in no case have we found an excessive number of romances in monastic libraries, and the charges—if they can worthily be called charges—so often made against monks on this score fall to the ground.[549]

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

Again, many “speak of men who read romances—

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

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

§ V

The medieval collector of books sometimes, and the monastic librarian nearly always, took care that his library was strong in hagiology and history. He felt the need of books which would tell him of the past history of his church and of the lives of her greatest teachers. When collected these books were an incentive to the more cultivated of the monks to begin the history of his country or his house, or to write or re-write the lives of saints. The fruit is preserved for us in a long line of monkish historians and hagiographers. As a rule the histories they wrote were of little value; but when they had brought the tale down to their own times they continued it with the help of records to their hand, narrated events within their own memory, and maintained the narrative in the form of annals. The method of annalising was simple. At the end of the incomplete manuscript a loose or easily detachable sheet was kept, whereon events of importance to the nation and the monastery and locality of the annalist were written in pencil from time to time during the year. At the end of the year the historian welded these jottings into a narrative. When this was done another leaf for notes was placed after the manuscript. The value of the work so accomplished is incalculable. Without these records it would now be impossible for us to realise what the Middle Ages were like. This service, added to the enormously greater service which monachism did for us in preserving ancient literature, will always breed kind thoughts of a system so repugnant to our modern view of human endeavour.

§ VI

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

After the Conquest the state of affairs was the same. The period of the greatest literary activity in the monasteries now began, and large claustral libraries were soon formed. The monks then had plenty of books; wealthy clergy also had small collections. An ecclesiastic or a layman who had done a monastery some service, or whose favour it was politic to cultivate, could borrow books from the monastic library, under certain strict conditions. Some people availed themselves of this privilege; but not at any time during the manuscript period to a great extent.[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. The medieval book-buyer paid more for his book on an average than does the modern collector of first editions and editions de luxe, who pays in addition several guineas a volume for handsome bindings. The prices we have tabulated will fully bear out this statement. But even more striking evidence of the high value set upon books is the care taken in selling or bequeathing them. To-day a line or two in a wealthy man’s will disposes of all his books. He commonly throws them in with the “residue,” unmentioned. In the manuscript age a testator distributed his little hoard book by book. Often he not only bequeaths a volume to a friend, but determines its fate after his friend’s death. For example, a daughter is to have a copy of the Golden Legend, “and to occupye to hir

owne use and at hir owne liberte durynge hir lyfe, and after hir decesse to remayne to the prioress and the convent of Halywelle for evermore, they to pray for the said John Burton and Johne his wife and alle crystene soyles (1460).”[559] A manuscript now in Worcester Cathedral Library bears an inscription telling us that, likewise, one Thomas Jolyffe left it to Dr. Isack, a monk of Worcester, for his lifetime, and after his death to Worcester Priory. A manuscript now in the British Museum was bought in 1473 at Oxford by Clement of Canterbury, monk and scholar, from a bookseller named Hunt for twenty shillings, in the presence of Will. Westgate, monk.[560] In a manuscript of the Sentences is a note telling us that it was the property of Roger, archdeacon of Lincoln: he bought it from Geoffrey the chaplain, the brother of Henry, vicar of North Elkington, the witnesses being master Robert de Luda, clerk, Richard the almoner, the said Henry the vicar, his clerk, and others.[561] An instance of a different kind will suffice. When, after a good deal of rioting at Oxford, many of the more studious masters and scholars went to Stamford, the king threatened that if they did not return to Oxford they would lose their goods, and especially their books. The warning was disregarded, but the threatened forfeiture of their books was evidently thought to be a strong measure.[562]

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

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

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

Mr. Anstey points out that a very large number, probably the majority of scholars, were not well provided for. They eked out their precarious allowances by begging, by learning handicrafts, and by “picking up the various doles at funerals and commemoration masses, where such needy miserables were always to be found.”[564] Such students would not be likely to have many or perhaps any books. “The stock of books possessed by the younger scholars seems to have been almost nil. The inventories of goods, which we possess, in the case of non-graduates contain hardly any books. The fact is that they mostly could not afford to buy them.... The chief source of supplying books was by purchase from the University sworn stationers, who had to a great extent a monopoly, the object of which was to prevent the sale and removal from Oxford of valuable books. Of such books there were plainly very large numbers constantly changing hands; they were the pledges so continually deposited on borrowing from chests, and seem, from scattered hints, to have been a very fruitful source of litigation and dispute.”[565] Most of these books were in the hands of seniors. Truly enough many a poor clerk would as lief have twenty “bokes” to his name as anything else treble the value. But he would undergo much sharp self-denial and receive much “wher-with to scoleye” ere he got together so considerable a collection of “bokes grete and smale,” to say nothing of instruments. As such a large proportion of the scholars were poor, and unable to acquire books, nearly all the instruction given was oral. Well-to-do scholars would not find, therefore, books of very great service; and indeed they were as ill-equipped in this respect as their poorer brethren. The accounts of the La Fytes, two scholars whose expenses were paid by Edward I himself, contain records of the purchase of two copies of only the Institutions of Quintilian (c. 1290).[566] Is not Chaucer describing his own room in both passages—the room he loved to seek after his day’s work at the desk? Here at the bedhead are his books, including the astronomical treatise of Ptolemy called Almagest. Beside them is the astrolabe, an instrument about which he wrote; and trimly arranged apart his augrim-stones, or counters for making calculations. Such an outfit we might expect him to have: just such a library, neither smaller nor larger.

This supposition calls to mind another argument sometimes used to prove how easy it was to make a small collection of books. Chaucer’s poems display his acquaintance, more or less thoroughly, with many authors. Surely, it is urged, his library was a good one for the time: then how was it possible for a man of his means to own such? He was not wealthy. As a courtier and a public officer the calls upon his purse must have been heavy: little indeed could be left for books. The explanation is probably simple. Books were freely lent, more freely than nowadays; and Chaucer would be able to eke out his library in this way. Another point is important. Professor Lounsbury, who has spent years in an exhaustive study of Chaucer, points out a curious circumstance. “It must be confessed,” he says—a shade of disparagement lurks in the phrase—“it must be confessed that Chaucer’s quotations from writers exhibit a familiarity with prologues and first books and early chapters which contrasts ominously with the comparative infrequency with which he makes citations from the middle and latter parts of most of the works he mentions.”[567] Surely the implication is unjust. Stationers used to let out on hire parts of books or quires. Manuscript volumes were also often made up of parts of works by several authors. Books being scarce, it was preferable to make some volumes select miscellanies, little libraries in themselves. Hear Chaucer himself—

In composite volumes often only the earlier parts of authors’ works were included. If Chaucer owned a few books of this kind, his familiarity with parts of authors—and oftenest with the earlier parts—is accounted for satisfactorily; so also is the range and variety of his reading. Examine the Christ Church Canterbury catalogue in Henry Eastry’s time, and note what a remarkable variety of subjects is comprised in what we nowadays consider rather a paltry number of books. There is another point worth bearing in mind. Speaking of Bishop Shirwood’s books, a writer in the English Historical Review says: “Many of the books bear his mark, Nota, scattered over the margins, or a hand with a long pointing finger. These notes occur usually at the beginnings. In the days when chapters and sections were unknown and division into books rare, when headlines were not and pages sometimes had no signatures even, not to speak of numbers, a reader had to go solidly through a book, and could not lightly turn up a passage he wished for, by the aid of a reference. But except in Cicero and in Plutarch—which is read almost from beginning to end—the marks do not often go far. Shirwood was doubtless too busy to find much time for reading, and before he had made much way with a book a new purchase had come to arouse his interest.”[569]

But to the general rule of scarcity of books some exceptions are known. When a book won a reputation, the cost of producing copies was not wholly restrictive of circulation. Copies of some works of the Fathers were produced in great numbers. The Bible, whole or in part, was copied with such industry that it became the commonest of manuscripts, as it now is the commonest of printed books. Peter Lombard’s Sentences became a famous book: the standard of the schools; everywhere to be found side by side with the Bible, everywhere discussed and commented upon. A twelfth century author of quite different character had a good hold upon the people; the number of copies of Geoffrey of Monmouth must have been considerable, for the British Museum now has thirty-five copies and Bodley’s Library sixteen. “Possibly, no work before the age of printed books attained such immediate and astonishing popularity ... translations, adaptations, and continuations of it formed one of the staple exercises of a host of medieval scribes.”[570] A glance at the monastic and academic library catalogues of later date than mid-thirteenth century will prove more clearly than a shelf full of books how enormous was the influence of Aristotle. If such a collocation as the Bible and Shakspere sums up the present-day Englishman’s ideals of spiritual sustenance and literary power, a similar collocation of the Bible and Aristotle would sum up, with a greater approach to truth, the ideals of the medieval schoolman. Popularity fell to Piers Plowman. Apart from the large currency given to it by ballad singers, many manuscripts were in existence, for even now forty-five of them, more or less complete, remain. As M. Jusserand aptly remarks: “This figure is the more remarkable when we consider that, contrary to works written in Latin or in French, Langland’s book was not copied and preserved outside his own country.”[571] Again, but a few years after the writing of the Canterbury Tales, a copy of it was bequeathed, among other books, by a clerk named Richard Sotheworth of East Hendred, Berks (1417).[572] The impression is left upon one’s mind that this work had found its way quickly and in many copies into country places.

But as only a few books had a comparatively large circulation, these few had a disproportionately powerful influence. The Bible was paramount. Aristotle dominated the whole mental horizon of the schoolmen. Alfred of Beverley tells us that Geoffrey of Monmouth’s book “was so universally talked of that to confess ignorance of its stories was the mark of a clown.”[573] So great was the influence of Piers Plowman, that from it were taken watchwords at the great rising of the peasants.[574] The power of such works could not be wholly hemmed in by the barrier of manuscript: like a spring torrent it would burst forth and carry all before it. In the manuscript period a book of great originality and power, or a work which reproduced the thought of the time accurately and with spirit, ran no great risk of being passed over and forgotten; too little was produced for much that was good to be lost. It was copied once and again; became very slowly but very surely known to a few, then to many; and all the time waxed more and more influential in its teaching. The growth was slow, but then the lifetime was long. Now the chance of a good book going astray is much greater. What watcher of the great procession of modern books does not fear that something supremely fine and great has passed unobserved in the huge, motley crowd?

APPENDIX A

PRICES OF BOOKS AND MATERIALS FOR BOOKMAKING