PLATE XXXI A SCRIBE (ST. MARK WRITING HIS GOSPEL) FROM THE BEDFORD HOURSPLATE XXXIA SCRIBE (ST. MARK WRITING HIS GOSPEL)FROM THE BEDFORD HOURS
Gaza, of whose Illumination he gives him a very particular description, which answer’d so exactly in every part to that here set forth, that he [Wanley] was fully perswaded it was this very Book, and ytthe Θεοδωρος at the bottom of 1st page order’d to be placed there by Gaza as his own name, gave occasion to Abp. Parker to imagine it might have belonged to Theodore of Canterbury, which however Hody was of opinion could not be of that age.’ Th. Gaza,” continues Dr. James, “died in 1478; the suggestion here made is quite compatible with the hypothesis that Sellinge was the means of conveying the Homer to England, and does supply a rather welcome interpretation of the Θεοδωρος inscription.” This reasonable hypothesis may be strengthened if we point out that Gaza was in Rome from 1464 to 1472, and Selling visited that city between 1464 and 1467 and again in 1469. Selling may have got the manuscript from Gaza on one of these occasions.
There is evidence of Greek studies at other monasteries,—at Westminster after 1465, when Millyng, an “able graecian,” became prior at Reading in 1499 and 1500, and at Glastonbury during the time of Abbot Bere.[487]
But Canterbury’s share was greatest. Selling seems to have taught Greek at Christ Church. In the monastic school there Thomas Linacre was instructed, and probably got the rudiments of Greek from Selling himself. Thence Linacre went to Oxford, where he pursued Greek under Cornelius Vitelli, an Italian visitor acting as prælector in New College.[488]In 1485-6 Linacre went with his old master to Italy—hisSancta Mater Studiorum—where Selling seems to have introduced him to Poliziano. Linacre perfected his Greek pursuits under Chalcondylas, andbecame acquainted with Aldo Manuzio the famous printer, and Hermolaus Barbarus. A little story is told of his meeting with Hermolaus. He was reading a copy of Plato’sPhaedoin the Vatican Library when the great humanist came up to him and said “the youth had no claim, as he had himself, to the title Barbarus, if it were lawful to judge from his choice of a book”—an incident which led to a great friendship between the two. Grocyn and Latimer were with Linacre in Rome. The former was the first to carry on effectively the teaching of Greek begun at Oxford possibly by Vitelli; but he was nevertheless a conservative scholar, well read in the medieval schoolmen, as his library clearly proves. This library is of interest because one hundred and five of the one hundred and twenty-one books in it were printed. The manuscript age is well past, and the costliness of books, the chief obstacle to the dissemination of thought, was soon to give no cause for remark.
SECULAR makers of books have plied their trade in Europe since classic times, but during the early age of monachism their numbers were very small and they must have come nigh extinction altogether. In and after the eleventh century they increased in numbers and importance; their ranks being recruited not only by seculars trained in the monastic schools, but by monks who for various reasons had been ejected from their order. These traders were divided into several classes: parchment-makers, scribes, rubrishers or illuminators, bookbinders, and stationers or booksellers. The stationer usually controlled the operations of the other craftsmen; he was the middleman. Scribes were either ordinary scriveners calledlibrarii, or writers who drew up legal documents, known asnotarii. But thelibrariusandnotariusoften trenched upon each other’s work, and consequently a good deal of ill-feeling usually existed between them.
Bookbinders, and booksellers orstationarii, probably first plied their trade most prosperously in England at Oxford and Cambridge. By about 1180 quite a number of such tradesmen were living in Oxford; a single document transferring property in Cat Street bears the names of three illuminators, a bookbinder, a scribe, and two parchmenters.[489]Half a century later a bookbinder is mentionedin a deed as a former owner of property in the parish of St. Peter’s in the East; another bookbinder is witness to the deed (c.1232-40).[490]After this bookbinders and others of the craft are frequently mentioned. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Schydyerd Street and Cat Street, the centre of University life, were the homes of many people engaged in bookmaking and selling; the former street especially was frequented by parchment makers and sellers. In this street, too, “a tenement called Bokbynder’s is mentioned in a charter of 1363-4; and although bookbinding may not have been carried on there at that date, the fact of the name having been attached to the place seems sufficient to justify the assumption that a binder or guild of binders had formerly been established there. In Cat Street a Tenementum Bokbyndere, owned by Osney Abbey, was rented in 1402 by Henry the lymner, at a somewhat later date by Richard the parchment-seller, and in 1453 by All Souls’ College.”[491]
Stationers had transcripts made, bought, sold and hired out books and received them in pawn. They acted as agents when books and other goods were sold; in 1389, for example, a stationer received twenty pence for his services in buying two books, one costing £4 and the other five marks.[492]They attended the fair at St. Giles near Oxford to sell books. This was not their only interest, for they dealt in goods of many kinds. They were in fact general tradesmen: sellers, valuers, and agents; liable to be called upon to have a book copied, to buy or sell a book, to set a value upon a pledge, to make an inventory and valuation of a scholar’s goods and chattels after his death. Their office was such an important one for the well-being ofthe scholars that it was found convenient to extend to them the privileges and protection of the University, and in return to exact an oath of fairdealing from them.[493]
Before the end of the thirteenth century the University’s privileges had been extended toservientesknown as parchment-makers, scribes, and illuminators; in 1290 the privileges were confirmed.[494]Certain stationers were then undoubtedly within the University asservientes, but in 1356 they are recorded positively as being so with parchmenters, illuminators, and writers: and again in 1459 “alle stacioners” and “alle bokebynders” enjoyed the privileges of the University, with “lympners, wryters, and pergemeners.”[495]These privileges took them out of the jurisdiction of the city, although they still had to pay taxes, which were collected by the University and paid over to the city treasurer.
Stationers regarded as the University’s servants were sworn, as we have already indicated. The document giving the form of their oath is undated, but most likely the rules laid down were observed from the time the stationers were first attached to the University. The oath was strict. A part of their duties was the valuation of books and other articles which were pledged by scholars in return for money from the University chests. These chests or hutches were expressly founded by wealthy men for the assistance of poor scholars. By the end of the fifteenth century there were at Oxford twenty-four such chests, valued at two thousand marks; a large pawnbroking fund, but probably by no means too large.[496]Mr. Anstey, the editor ofMunimenta Academica, has drawn a vivid picture of the inspection of one of these chests and of the businessconducted round them, and we cannot do better than reproduce it. Master T. Parys, principal of St. Mary Hall, and Master Lowson are visiting the chest of W. de Seltone. We enter St. Mary’s Church with them, “and there we see ranged on either side several ponderous iron chests, eight or ten feet in length and about half that width, for they have to contain perhaps as many as a hundred or more large volumes, besides other valuables deposited as pledges by those who have borrowed from the chest. Each draws from beneath his cape a huge key, which one after the other are applied to the two locks; a system of bolts, which radiate from the centre of the lid and shoot into the iron sides in a dozen different places, slide back, and the lid is opened. At the top lies the register of the contents, containing the particulars;—dates, names, and amounts—of the loans granted. This they remove and begin to compare its statements with the contents of the chest. There are a large number of manuscript volumes, many of great value, beautifully illuminated and carefully kept, for each is almost the sole valuable possession perhaps of its owner! Then the money remaining in one corner of the chest is carefully counted and compared with the account in the register. If we look in we can see also here and there among the books other valuables of less peaceful character. There lie two or three daggers of more than ordinary workmanship, and by them a silver cup or two, and again more than one hood lined with minever. By this time a number of persons has collected around the chest, and the business begins. That man in an ordinary civilian’s dress who stands beside Master Parys is John More, the University stationer, and it is his office to fix the value of the pledges offered, and to take care that none are sold at less than their real value. It is a motley group that stands around; there are several
PLATE XXXII A SCRIBE AT WORKPLATE XXXIIA SCRIBE AT WORK
masters and bachelors, ... but the larger proportion is of boys or quite young men in every variety of coloured dress, blue and red, medley, and the like, but without any academical dress. 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.”[497]Naturally their duty as valuers of much-prized property invested the stationers with some importance. Their work was thought to be so laborious and anxious that about 1400 every new graduate was expected to give clothes to one of them; such method of rewarding services with livery or clothing being common in the middle ages.[498]The form of their oath was especially designed to make them protect the chests from loss. All monies received by them for the sale of pledges were to be paid into the chests within eight days. The sale of a pledge was not to be deferred longer than three weeks. Without special leave they could not themselves buy the pledges, directly or indirectly: a wholesome and no doubt very necessary provision. Pledges were not to be lent for more than ten days. All pledges were to be honestly appraised. When a pledge was sold, the buyer’s name was to be written in the stationer’s indenture. No stationer could refuse to sell a pledge; nor could he take it away from Oxford and sell it elsewhere. He was bound to mark all books exposed for sale, as pledges, in the usual way, by quoting the beginning of the second folio. All personslending books, whether stationers or other people, were bound to lend perfect copies. This oath was sworn afresh every year.[499]
Many stationers were not sworn. They speedily became serious competitors with the privileged traders. By 1373 their number had increased largely, and restrictions were imposed upon them. Books of great value were sold through their agency, and carried away from Oxford. Owners were cheated. All unsworn booksellers living within the jurisdiction of the University were forbidden, therefore, to sell any book, either their own property, or belonging to others, exceeding half a mark in value. If disobedient they were liable to suffer pain of imprisonment for the first offence, a fine of half a mark for the second—a curious example of graduated punishment—and a prohibition to ply their trade within the precincts of the University for the third.[500]
At this time bookselling was a thriving trade. De Bury tells us: “We secured the acquaintance of stationers and scribes, not only within our own country, but of those spread over the realms of France, Germany and Italy, money flying forth in abundance to anticipate their demands: nor were they hindered by any distance, or by the fury of the seas, or by the lack of means for their expenses, from sending or bringing to us the books that we required.”[501]
Records of various transactions are extant, of which the following may serve as examples. In 1445, a stationer and a lymner in his employ had a dispute, and as the two arbiters to whom the matter was referred failed to reach a settlement in due time, the Chancellor of the University stepped in and determined the quarrel. The judgment was as follows: the lymner, or illuminator, was to serve the stationer,in liminando bene et fideliter libros suos, for oneyear, and meantime was to work for nobody else. His wage was to be four marks ten shillings of good English money. The lymner in person was to fetch the materials from his master’s house, and to bring back the work when finished. He was to take care not to use the colours wastefully. The work was to be done well and faithfully, without fraud or deception. For the purpose of superintending the work the stationer could visit the place where the lymner wrought, at any convenient time.[502]The yearly wage for this lymner was nearly fifty pounds of our money.
An inscription in one codex tells us it was pawned to a bookseller in 1480 for thirty-eight shillings. 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.[503]
At Cambridge the trade was not less flourishing. From time to time it was found necessary to determine whether the booksellers and the allied craftsmen were within the University’s jurisdiction or not. In 1276 it was desired to settle their position as between the regents and scholars of the University and the Archdeacon of Ely. Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, when called in as arbiter, decided that writers, illuminators, and stationers, who exercise offices peculiarly for the behoof of the scholars, were answerable tothe Chancellor; but their wives to the Archdeacon. Nearly a century later, in 1353-54, we find EdwardIIIissuing a writ commanding justices of the peace of the county of Cambridge to allow the Chancellor of the University the conusance and punishment of all trespasses and excesses, except mayheim and felony, committed by stationers, writers, bookbinders, and illuminators, as had been the custom. But the question was again in debate in 1393-94, when the Chancellor and scholars petitioned Parliament to declare and adjudge stationers and bookbinders scholars’ servants, as had been done in the case of Oxford. This petition does not seem to have been answered. But by the Barnwell Process of 1430, it was decided that “transcribers, illuminators, bookbinders, and stationers have been, and are wont and ought to be—as well by ancient usage from time immemorial undisturbedly exercised, as by concession of the Apostolic See—the persons belong and are subject to the ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction of the Chancellor of the University for the time being.” Again in 1503 was it agreed, this time between the University and the Mayor and burgesses of Cambridge, that “stacioners, lymners, schryveners, parchment-makers, boke-bynders,” were common ministers and servants of the University and were to enjoy its privileges.[504]
Fairs were so important a means of bringing together buyers and sellers that we should expect books to be sold at them. And in fact they were. The preamble of an Act of Parliament reads as follows: “Ther be meny feyers for the comen welle of your seid lege people as at Salusbury, Brystowe, Oxenforth, Cambrigge, Notyngham, Ely, Coventre, and at many other places, where lordes spirituall and temporall, abbotes, Prioures, Knyghtes, Squerys, Gentilmen, and your seid Comens of every Countrey,hath their comen resorte to by and purvey many thinges that be gode and profytable, as ornaments of holy church chaleis, bokes, vestmentes [etc.] ... also for howsold, as vytell for the tyme of Lent, and other Stuff, as Lynen Cloth, wolen Cloth, brasse, pewter, beddyng, osmonde, Iren, Flax and Wax and many other necessary thinges.”[505]The chief fairs for the sale of books were those of St. Giles at Oxford, at Stourbridge, Cambridge, and St. Bartholomew’s Fair in London.
London, however, speedily asserted its right to be regarded as England’s publishing centre. The booksellers with illuminators and other allied craftsmen established themselves in a small colony in “Paternoster Rewe,” and they attended St. Bartholomew’s Fair to sell books. By 1403 the Stationers’ Company, which had long been in existence, was chartered; its headquarters were in London, at a hall in Milk Street. This guild did not confine its attention to the book-trade; nor did the booksellers sell only books. Often, indeed, this was but a small part of general mercantile operations. For example, William Praat, a London mercer, obtained manuscripts for Caxton. Grocers also sold manuscripts, parchment, paper and ink. King John of France, while a prisoner in England in 1360, bought from three grocers of Lincoln four “quaires” of paper, a main of paper and a skin of parchment, and three “quaires” of paper. From a scribe of Lincoln named John he also bought books, some of which are now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.[506]
We have a record of an interesting transaction which took place at the end of the manuscript period (1469). One William Ebesham wrote to his most worshipful andspecial master, Sir John Paston, asking, in a hesitating, cringing sort of way, for the payment of his little bill, which seems to have been a good deal overdue, as is the way with bills. All this service most lowly he recommends unto his good mastership, beseeching him most tenderly to see the writer somewhat rewarded for his labour in the “Grete Boke” which he wrote unto his said good mastership. And he winds up his letter with a request for alms in the shape of one of Sir John’s own gowns; and beseeches God to preserve his patron from all adversity, with which the writer declares himself to be somewhat acquainted. He heads his bill: Following appeareth, parcelly, divers and sundry manner of writings, which I William Ebesham have written for my good and worshipful master, Sir John Paston, and what money I have received, and what is unpaid. For writing a “litill booke of Pheesyk” he was paid twenty pence. Other writing he did for twopence a leaf. Hoccleve’sde Regimine Principumhe wrote for one penny a leaf, “which is right wele worth.” Evidently Ebesham did not find scrivening a too profitable occupation.[507]
“Some ther be that do defyeAll that is newe, and ever do cryeThe olde is better, away with the newBecause it is false, and the olde is true.Let them this booke reade and beholde,For it preferreth the learning most olde.”A Comparison betwene the old learnynge and the newe(1537).[508]
“Some ther be that do defyeAll that is newe, and ever do cryeThe olde is better, away with the newBecause it is false, and the olde is true.Let them this booke reade and beholde,For it preferreth the learning most olde.”A Comparison betwene the old learnynge and the newe(1537).[508]
“Some ther be that do defyeAll that is newe, and ever do cryeThe olde is better, away with the newBecause it is false, and the olde is true.Let them this booke reade and beholde,For it preferreth the learning most olde.”A Comparison betwene the old learnynge and the newe(1537).[508]
AFTER a storm a fringe of weed and driftwood stretches a serried line along the sands, and now and then—too often on the flat shores of one of our northern estuaries, whence can be seen the white teeth of the sea biting at the shoals flanking the fairway—are mingled with the flotsam sodden relics of life aboard ship and driftwood of tell-tale shape, which silently point to a tragedy of the sea. Usually the daily paper completes the tale; but on some rare occasion these poor bits of drift remain the only evidence of the vain struggle, and from them we must piece together the narrative as best we can. And as the sea does not give up everything, nor all at once, some wreckage sinking, or perishing, or floating upon the water a long time before finding a well-concealed hiding-place upon some unfrequented shore, so the past yields but a fraction of its records, and thatfraction slowly and grudgingly. So far this book has been a gathering of the flotsam of a past age: odd relics and scattered records, a sign here and a hint there; often unrelated, sometimes contradictory. In more skilful hands possibly a coherent story might be wrought out of thesepièces justificatives; but the author is too well aware of the difficulty of arranging and selecting from the mass of material, remembers too well the tale of mistakes thankfully avoided, and is too apprehensive that other errors lurk undiscovered, to be confident that he has succeeded in his aim. Whether the story is worth telling is another matter. Surely it is. To be able to follow the history of the Middle Ages, to become acquainted with the people, their mode of life and customs and manners, is of profound interest and great utility; and it is by no means the least important part of such study to discover what books they had, how extensively the books were read, and what section of the people read them.
Let us here sum up the information given in detail in the foregoing pages; adding thereto some other facts of interest. And first, what of the character of the medieval library?
During the earlier centuries monastic libraries contained books which were deemed necessary for grammatical study in the claustral schools, and other books, chiefly the Fathers, as we have seen, which were regarded as proper literature for the monk. The books used in the cathedral schools were similar. Such schools and such libraries were for the glory of God and the increase of clergy and religious. At first, especially, the ideal of the monks was high, if narrow. It is epitomised in the untranslatable epigram—Claustrum sine armario (est) quasi castrum sine armamentario.[509]“The library is themonastery’s true treasure,” writes Thomas à Kempis;[510]“without which the monastery is like ... a well without water ... an unwatched tower.” Again: “Let not the toil and fatigue pain you. They who read the books formerly written beautifully by you will pray for you when you are dead. And if he who gives a cup of cold water shall not lack his guerdon, still less shall he who gives the living water of wisdom lose his reward in heaven.”[511]St. Bernard wrote in like terms. Books were their tools, “the silent preachers of the divine word,” or the weapons of their armoury. “Thence it is,” writes a sub-prior to his friend, “that we bring forth the sentences of the divine law, like sharp arrows, to attack the enemy. Thence we take the armour of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.”[512]With such an end in view Reculfus of Soissons required his clergy to have a missal, a lectionary, the Gospels, a martyrology, an antiphonary, a psalter, a book of forty homilies of Gregory, and as many Christian books as they could get (879). With this end in view were chosen for reading in the Refectory at Durham (1395) such books as the Bible, homilies, Legends of the Saints, lives of Gregory, Martin, Nicholas, Dunstan, Augustine, Cuthbert, King Oswald, Aidan, Thomas of Canterbury, and other saints.[513]With this end in view the monastic libraries contained a very large proportion of Bibles, books of the Bible, and commentaries—a proportion suggesting the Scriptures were studied with a closeness and assiduity for which the monks have not always received due credit.[514]A great deal of room wasgiven up to the works of the Fathers—their confessions, retractations, and letters, their polemics against heresies, their dogmatic and doctrinal treatises, and their sermons and ethical discourses. Of all these writings those of Hilary, Basil, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, and the great Augustine were most popular. John Cassian, Leo, Prosper, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, Aldhelm, Bede, Anselm, and Bernard, and the two encyclopædists, Martianus Capella and Isidore of Seville, were the church’s great teachers, and their works and the sacred poetry and hymns of Juvencus the Spanish priest, of Prudentius, of Sedulius, the author of a widely-read and influential poem on the life of Christ, and of Fortunatus, were nearly always well represented in the monastic catalogues, as may be seen on a cursory examination of those of Christ Church and St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, of Durham, of Glastonbury in 1248, of Peterborough in 1400, and of Syon in the sixteenth century. In the earlier libraries the greater part of the books were Scriptural and theological; to these were added later a mass of books on canon and civil law; so that the monastic collection may be characterised as almost entirely special and fit for Christian service, as this service was conceived by the religious.
And classical literature was received into the fold for a like purpose. From the earliest days of Christendom prejudice against the classics was widespread among Christians. Such books, it was urged, had no connexion with the Church or the Gospel; Ciceronianism was not the road to God; Plato and Aristotle could not show the way to happiness; Ovid, above all, was to be avoided.[515]In dreams the poets took the form of demons; they must be exorcised, for the soul did not profit by them. The precepts—and for these the Christian sought—in the poems werelike serpents, born of the evil one; the characters, devils. Some Christians sighed as they thrust the tempting books away. Jerome frankly confesses he cared little for the homely Latin of the Psalms, and much for Plautus and Cicero. For a time he renounced them with other vanities of the world; yet when going through the catacombs at Rome, where the Apostles and Martyrs had their graves, a fine line of Virgil thrills him; and later he instructed boys at Bethlehem in Plautus, Terence, and Virgil, much to the horror of Rufinus. Even in the eleventh century this feeling existed. Lanfranc wrote to Dumnoaldus to say it was unbefitting he should study such books, but he confessed that although he now renounced them, he had read them a good deal in his youth. Somewhat later Herbert “Losinga,” abbot of Ramsey, had a dream which led him to cease reading and imitating Virgil and Ovid; but elsewhere he recommends his pupils to accept Ovid as a model in Latin verse, while he quotes theTristia.[516]The rules of some orders, as those of Isidore, St. Francis, and St. Dominic, forbade the reading of the classics, save by permission. For their value in teaching grammar and as models of literary style, however, certain classic authors—especially Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, and Statius—were regarded as supplementary to the grammatical works of Donatus, Victorinus, 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.[517]“As decade followed decade,” writes Mr. H. O. Taylor, “and century followed century, there was no falling off in the study of theÆneid. Virgil’sfame towered, his authority became absolute. But how? In what respect? As a supreme master of grammatical correctness and rhetorical excellence and of all learning. With increasing emptiness of soul, the grammarians—the ‘Virgils’—of the succeeding centuries put the great poet to ever baser uses.”[518]
From time to time the use of the classics even for grammatical purposes was condemned, though unavailingly. They were necessary in the schools; evils, doubtless, but unavoidable. Then, again, some of the classics were looked upon as allegorical: from the sixth century to the Renascence theÆneidwas often interpreted in this way; and Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue was thought to be a prophecy of Christ’s coming. Ovid allegorised contained profound truths; hisArt of Love, so treated, was not unfit for nuns.[519]Other writers, as Lucan, were appreciated for their didacticism; Juvenal, Cato and Seneca the younger as moralists. And some of the religious fell a prey to these evils, inasmuch as they assessed them at their true value as literature.
The classics therefore were accepted. Anselm recommended Virgil. Horace, in his most amorous moods, was sung by the monks. Ovid, either adapted or in his natural state, was a great favourite. In an appendix we have scheduled the chief classics found in English monastic catalogues to indicate roughly the extent to which they were collected and used. A glance at Becker’s sheaf of catalogues will show us that Aristotle, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Persius, Plato, Pliny the elder, Porphyry, Sallust, Statius, Terence, and especially Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, and Virgil are well represented. But it must not be supposed that they were in monastic libraries in excessive numbers. On the contrary. An inspection of almost any catalogue of
PLATE XXXIII ENGLISH ILLUMINATED WORK UNDER FRENCH INFLUENCE THIRTEENTH CENTURY FROM “TENISON PSALTER,” BRIT. MUS. ADD. MS. 24686, F. 12PLATE XXXIIIENGLISH ILLUMINATED WORK UNDER FRENCH INFLUENCETHIRTEENTH CENTURYFROM “TENISON PSALTER,” BRIT. MUS. ADD. MS. 24686, F. 12
such a library will prove that only a small proportion of it consisted of classical writings, especially in those catalogues compiled prior to the time when Aristotle’s works dominated the whole of medieval scholarship. The monastic library was throughout the Middle Ages the armoury of the religious against evil, and the few slight changes of character which it underwent at one time and another do not alter the fact that on the whole it was a fit and proper collection for its purpose.[520]
After the twelfth century broadening influences were at work. The education given in the cathedral and monastic schools was found to be too restricted; the monasteries, moreover, now began to refuse assistance to secular students.[521]To some extent the catechetic method of the theologians was forced to give place to the dialectic method, equally dogmatic, but more exciting and stimulating. Hence was compiled such a book as Peter Lombard’sSentences(1145-50), a cyclopædia of disputation, wherein theological questions were collected under heads, together with Scriptural passages and statements of the Fathers bearing on these questions. By the thirteenth century Lombard was the standard text-book of the schools: a work of such reputation that it was studied in preference to the Scriptures, as Bacon complained.
A demand also arose for instruction in civil and canon law, which the existing schools did not supply. This broader learning was provided in the early universities, at first to the dislike of the Church, and sometimes to theannoyance of royal heads. Particular objection was taken to the study of law. An Italian named Vicario (Vacarius) lectured on Justinian at Oxford in 1149. Then he abridged theCodeandDigestfor his students there. King Stephen forbade him to proceed with his lectures, and prohibited the use of treatises on foreign law, many manuscripts of which were consequently destroyed. But these measures were not very effectual. Within a short time civil law became recognised in the University as a proper subject of study. By 1275, when another Italian jurist named Francesco d’Accorso, a distinguished teacher at Bologna, came to Oxford to lecture, the study of civil law was pursued with the royal favour.[522]
The searcher among old wills cannot fail to be struck with the number of law books in the small private libraries. Sometimes the whole of one of these little collections consists of law books; often there are more books of this kind than of any other. For example, of eighty books bequeathed by Prior Eastry to Christ Church, Canterbury, forty-three were on canon and civil law: of eighty-four books given to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, by the founder, exactly one-half were juridical. A wealthy canon of York left but half a dozen books, all on law. The books bequeathed to Peterborough Abbey by successive abbots were chiefly on law. Many other examples could be recited. There was a reason for this. Friar Bacon, writing in 1271, complained that jurists got all rewards and benefices, while students of theology and philosophy lacked the means of livelihood, could not obtain books, and were unable to pursue their scientific studies. Canonists, even, were only rewarded because of their previous knowledge of civil law: at Oxford three years had to be devoted to the study of civil law before a student could be admitted as bachelor of canonlaw. Consequently a man of parts, with a leaning towards theological and philosophical learning, took up the study of civil law, with the hope of more easily winning preferment.[523]“Compared with such [legal] lore,” writes Mr. Mullinger, “theological learning became but a sorry recommendation to ecclesiastical preferment; most of the Popes at Avignon had been distinguished by their attainments in a subject which so nearly concerned the temporal interests of the Church; and the civilian and the canonist alike looked down with contempt on the theologian, even as Hagar, to use the comparison of Holcot, despised her barren mistress.”[524]The most casual glance through some pages of monastic records will show how frequent and endless was the litigation in which the Church was engaged, and consequently how useful a knowledge of civil law would be.
But these changes were trifling compared with the stimulus given to medieval learning by the influx of Greek books and of Arabic versions of them. In the second half of the eleventh century the works of Galen and Hippocrates were re-introduced into Italy from the Arabian empire by a North African named Constantine, who translated them at the famous monastery of Monte Cassino. These translations, with the numerous Arabian commentaries, and the conflict of the physicians of the new school with those of the old and famous school of Salerno, constitute the revival of medical studies which occurred at that time.[525]It would seem that this revival was felt quickly in England, as in the twelfth century four books by Galen and two by Hippocrates, with some Arabian works, were to be found in the monastic library of Durham; a number significant of the liberal feeling of the monks of this house, inasmuch as in all the catalogues transcribed by Becker appear onlyten books by Galen and nine by Hippocrates.[526]Before 1150 the whole of theOrganonof Aristotle was known to scholars;[527]but not till about that time did the other works begin to be exported from Arabic Spain. Then Latin versions of Arabic translations of thePhysicsandMetaphysicswere first made.
Daniel of Morley (fl.1170-90) brought into this country manuscripts of Aristotle, and commentaries upon him got in the Arab schools of Toledo, then the centre of Mohammedan learning. Michael the Scot (c.1175-1234), “wondrous wizard, of dreaded fame,” was another agent of the Arab influence. He received his education perhaps at Oxford, certainly at Paris and Toledo. From manuscripts obtained at the last place he translated two abstracts of theHistoria animalium, and some commentaries of Averroës on Aristotle (1215-30).[528]A third pilgrim from these islands, Alfred the Englishman, also made use of Arabic versions; and most likely both he and Michael brought home with them manuscripts from Toledo and Paris. Of the renderings made by these men and by some foreign workers in the same field, Friar Bacon speaks with the utmost contempt. Their writings were utterly false. They did not know the sciences they dealt with. The Jews, the Arabs, and the Greeks, who had good manuscripts, destroyed and corrupted them, rather than let them fall into the hands of unlettered and ignorant Christians.[529]Aristotle should be read in the original, he also says; it would be better if all translations were burnt. The criticism is acrid; but the men he contemns served scholarship well by quickening the interest in Greek books,and they succeeded so well because they gave to the schoolmen not only versions of Aristotle’s text, but commentaries and elucidations written by Arabs and Jews who had carefully studied the text, and could explain the meaning of obscure passages in it.[530]
When these translations were coming to England, travellers were bringing Greek books directly from the East. A doctor of medicine named William returned to Paris from Constantinople in 1167, carrying with him “many precious Greek codices.”[531]About 1209 a Latin translation of Aristotle’sPhysicsorMetaphysicswas made from a Greek manuscript brought straight from Constantinople. Some of these few importations were certainly destroyed at once, probably all were, for Aristotle was proscribed in Paris in the following year, and again in 1215, at the very time when Michael the Scot was procuring versions in another direction, at Toledo.[532]Not until mid-thirteenth century was the ban wholly removed.
For a time, owing to the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders, intercourse between East and West had become far freer than it had been for centuries (1203-61). Certain Greek philosophers of learned mien came to England about 1202, but did not stay; and some Armenians, among them a bishop, visited St. Albans. Whether they or Nicholas the Greek, clerk to the abbot of that monastery, brought books with them we do not know; Nicholas, at any rate, seems to have assisted Grosseteste in his Greek studies.[533]John of Basingstoke,Grosseteste’s archdeacon, carried Greek manuscripts—many valuable manuscripts, we are told—from Athens, whither Grosseteste had sent him. The bishop himself imported books to this country, probably from Sicily and South Italy.[534]He had a copy of Suidas’Lexicon, possibly the earliest copy brought to the West. TheTestaments of the Twelve Patriarchswas also in Grosseteste’s possession: the manuscript was brought home by John of Basingstoke, and still exists in the Cambridge University Library.[535]These forgedTestamentswere translated by Nicholas the Greek, and as no fewer than thirty-one copies of the Latin version still remain they must have had a good circulation.[536]Possibly the Greek Octateuch (Genesis to Ruth), now in the Bodleian Library, was imported into this country by Grosseteste or by somebody for him; at one time the manuscript was in the library of Christ Church, Canterbury.[537]Among other Greek books which Grosseteste used and translated, or had translated under his direction, were the Epistles of St. Ignatius, a Greek romance of Asenath, the Egyptian wife of the patriarch Joseph, and some writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. At Ramsey, where the bishop’s influence may be suspected, Prior Gregory (fl.1290) owned a Græco-Latin psalter, still extant.[538]Possibly all the importations were of similar character, and the number of them cannot have been great or we should have heard more of them.
Friar Bacon, writing about 1270, complains that he could not get all the books he wanted, nor were the versions of the books he had satisfactory. Parts of the Scriptures were untranslated, as, for example, two books of Maccabees,which he knew existed in Greek, and books of the Prophets referred to in the books of Kings and Chronicles; the chronology of theAntiquitiesof Josephus was incorrectly rendered, and biblical history could not be usefully studied without a true version of this book. Books of the Hebrew and Greek expositors were almost wanting to the Latins: Origen, Basil, Gregory, Nazianzene, John of Damascus, Dionysius, Chrysostom, and others, both in Hebrew and Greek.[539]The scientific books of Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Seneca, and other ancients could only be had at great cost. Their principal works had not been translated into Latin. “The admirable books of CiceroDe Republicaare not to be found anywhere, as far as I can hear, although I have made anxious inquiry for them in different parts of the world and by various messengers.”[540]
The period during which the intellectual life of the Middle Ages was broadened by the introduction of new knowledge and ideas originally from Greek sources, began, as we have said, with the influx of translations from the Arabic. The movement culminated with the work of William of Moerbeke, Greek Secretary at the Council of Lyons (1274), who, between 1270 and 1281, translated several of Aristotle’s works from the Greek, including theRhetoricaand thePolitica. Fortunately we have a record belonging to this time of a collection of books which shows admirably the character of the change. A certain John of London (c.1270-1330), believed to have been Bacon’s pupil, probably became a monk of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, and in due course bequeathed a library of books to his house. This collection amounted to nearly eighty books, of which twenty-three were on mathematics and astronomy, a like number on medicine, ten on philosophy, six on logic, four historical, three on grammar,one poetry, and the rest collections.[541]Such a collection is remarkable not only for its character, but on account of its size, which was very large for anybody to own privately in that age.
On one occasion, after spending much time in searching wills and in examining catalogues without finding a reference to an interesting book—to either an ancient or a medieval classic—the writer well remembers the little shock of pleasure he felt when, in a single half-hour, he notedPiers Plowmanin one brief unpromising will, and six English books among the relics of a mason. Nearly all the libraries of private persons and of academies are depressing in character. Rarely can be found a bright human book gleaming like a diamond in the dust. Score after score of decreta, decretales, Sextuses, and Clementines, and chestsful of the dreariest theological disquisition impress upon the weary searcher the fact that academic libraries were usually even more dryasdust than monastic collections, and he begins to understand how prosperous law may be as a calling, and to have an inkling of what is known, in classic phrase, as a good plain Scotch education.
Between an academic library and a monastic collection there were differences of character and in the beauty and value of the manuscripts. As a general rule a large proportion of the monks’ books were more or less richly ornamented: they were the treasures as well as the tools of the community. The books of the colleges were usually for practical purposes: they were tools, treasured, doubtless, for their contents, not for the beauty of the writing or because they were decorated. The difference in character of the collections as a whole was one of proportion in the