by Gertrude Burford Rawlings
New York D.Appleton and Company 1901
compiled at a very early period. Of the library of St. Gall, founded by the Abbe Gozbert in 816, a
contemporary catalogue still exists. The St. Gall library contained four hundred volumes, a large number
for those days, and, moreover, was provided with a special room, a chamber over the scriptorium. It is
not easy to see why in this and other cases of the coexistence of a library and a scriptorium one room
was not made to do duty for both. But to return to the catalogues.
Another early example is that of the Abbey of Clugni, in France, made in 831, and forming part of an
inventory of the Abbey property. The Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau, on the Rhine, had four catalogues
compiled in the ninth century-two of the books in the library, one of certain transcriptions made and
added thereto, and one of additions to the library from other sources. Among English monastic
book-lists, there is one of Whitby Abbey, which appears to ha ve been made in I 180, and the library of
Glastonbury Abbey, which excited the wonder and admiration of Leland, and which was started by St.
Dunstan round a nucleus of a few books formerly brought to the Abbey by Irish missionaries, was
catalogued in 1247 or 1248. Catalogues of the books at Canterbury (Christ Church and St. Augustine's
monastery), Peterborough, Durham, Leicester, Ramsey, and other foundations are also known, and
these, with the notices of Leland, form our only sources of information as to these various literary
store-houses.
As regards their contents, the Scriptures, missals, service-books, and similar manuscripts formed the
larger part of the monastic libraries, but besides these they included copies of patristic and classical
works, devotional and moral writings, lives of saints, chronicles, books on medicine, grammar,
philosophy, logic, and, later, romances and fiction were admitted into this somewhat austere company.
The catalogue of the "bochouse" of the monastery of St. Augustine at Canterbury, written towards the
close of the fifteenth century, names many romantic works, including the Four Sons of Aymon, Guy of
Warwick, The Book of Lancelot, The Story of the Graal, Sir Perceval de Galois, The Seven Sages, and
others, and of some of these there is more than one copy.
Books were frequently lent to other monasteries, or to poor clerks and students. It was considered a
sacred duty thus to share the benefits of the books with others; but sometimes the custodians of the
precious volumes, aware of the failures of memory to which book-borrowers have ever been peculiarly
liable, were so averse from running the risk of lending that the libraries were placed under anathema, and
could not be lent under pain of excommunication. But the selfishness and injustice of such a practice
being recognized, it was formally condemned by the Council of Paris in 1212, and the anathemas
annulled. Anathemas were also pronounced against any who should steal or otherwise alienate a book
from its lawful owners.
But as even in medieval days there were those who loved books better than honesty, the loan of a
volume was accompanied by legal forms and ceremonies, and the borrower, whatever his station or
character, had to sign a bond for the due return of the work, and often to deposit security as well. Thus,
when about 1225 the Dean of York presented several Bibles for the use of the students of Oxford, he
did so on condition that those who used them should deposit a cautionary pledge. Again, in 1299, John
de Pontissara, Bishop of Winchester, borrowed from the convent of St. Swithun the Bibliam bene
glossatum, i. e. the Bible with annotations, and gave a bond for its return. And in 147 I, when books had
become much more common, no less a person than the King of France, desiring to borrow some Arabian
medical works from the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, had not only to deposit some costly plate as security,
but to find a nobleman to act as surety with him for the return of the books, under pain of a heavy
forfeit.
Many of the great monastic libraries owed their origin to the liberality of one donor, usually an
ecclesiastic. Among other libraries destroyed by the Danes was the fine collection of books at Wearmouth
monastery, made by Benedict Biscop, the first English book collector, who was so eager in the cause of
books that he is said to have made no less than five journeys to Rome in order to search for them. Part
of his library was given to the Abbey at Jarrow, and shared the same fate as the books at Wearmouth.
One of the earliest English libraries was that of Christ Church, i.e.the Cathedral, at Canterbury.
On the authority of the Canterbury Book, a fifteenth century manuscript preserved at Cambridge, this
library began with the nine books said to have been brought from Rome by St. Augustine. These nine
books were a Bible in two volumes, a Psalter, a Book of Gospels, the Lives of the Apostles, the Lives of
the Martyrs, and an Exposition of the Gospels and Epistles. This collection was enriched by the
magnificent scriptural and classical volumes brought from the continent by Archbishop Theodore in the
seventh century. Under Archbishop Chicheley, in the fifteenth century, this library was provided with a
dwelling of its own, built over the Prior's Chapel, and containing sixteen bookcases of four shelves each.
At this time a catalogue was already in existence, made by Prior Eastry at the end of the thirteenth or
beginning of the fourteenth century, and records about three thousand volumes.
The monastery of St. Mary's at York owned a library which was founded by Archbishop Egbert. Egbert's
pupil Alcuin, whom Charlemagne charged with the care of the educational interests of his empire, soon
after taking up his residence at St. Martin's at Tours, desired the emperor to send to Britain for "those
books which we so much need; thus transplanting into France the flowers of Britain, that the garden of
Paradise may not be confined to York, but may send some of its scions to Tours."