admitted that to the labours of the monastic transcribers we are indebted for the preservation of Latin literature.
The subject of the evolution of the arrangement of library
rooms and fittings as gradually developed throughout medieval
Europe should not be passed over.[1] The real origin
of library organization in the Christian world, one may
almost say the origin of modern library methods,
The development
of library arrangements.
began with the rule of St Benedict early in the 6th
century. In the 48th chapter the monks were ordered
to borrow a book apiece and to read it straight through.
There was no special apartment for the books in the primitive
Benedictine house. After the books became too numerous to
be kept in the church they were preserved in armaria, or chests,
in the cloister; hence the word armarius, the Benedictine
librarian, who at first joined with it the office of precentor.
The Benedictine regulations were developed in the stricter
observances of the Cluniacs, which provided for a kind of annual report
and stocktaking. The Carthusians were perhaps the first to lend
books away from the convent; and the Cistercians to possess a
separate library official as well as a room specially devoted to
books. The observances of the Augustinians contained rules for
the binding, repairing, cataloguing and arranging the books by
the librarian, as well as a prescription of the exact kind of chest
to be used. Among the Premonstratensians or Reformed
Augustinians, it was one of the duties of the librarian to provide
for the borrowing of books elsewhere for the use of the monks.
The Mendicant Friars found books so necessary that at last
Richard de Bury tells us with some exaggeration that their
libraries exceeded all others. Many volumes still exist which
belonged to the library at Assisi, the parent house of the Franciscans,
of which a catalogue was drawn up in 1381. No authentic
monastic bookcase can now be found; the doubtful example
shown at Bayeux probably contained ecclesiastical utensils.
At the Augustinian priory at Barnwell the presses were lined
with wood to keep out the damp and were partitioned off both
vertically and horizontally. Sometimes there were recesses in
the walls of the cloisters fitted with shelves and closed with a
door. These recesses developed into a small windowless room
in the Cistercian houses. At Clairvaux, Kirkstall, Fountains,
Tintern, Netley and elsewhere this small chamber was placed
between the chapter-house and the transept of the church. At
Meaux in Holderness the books were lodged on shelves against
the walls and even over the door of such a chamber. In many
houses the treasury or spendiment contained two classes of books—one
for the monks generally, others more closely guarded. A
press near the infirmary contained books used by the reader in
the refectory. By the end of the 15th century the larger
monasteries became possessed of many volumes and found
themselves obliged to store the books, hitherto placed in various
parts of the building, in a separate apartment. We now find
libraries being specially built at Canterbury, Durham, Citeaux,
Clairvaux and elsewhere, and with this specialization there grew
up increased liberality in the use of books and learned strangers
were admitted. Even at an early date students were permitted
to borrow from the Benedictines at St Germain-des-Prés at Paris,
of which a later foundation owned in 1513 a noble library
erected over the south wall of the cloister, and enlarged and made
very accessible to the outer world in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The methods and fittings of college libraries of early foundation
closely resembled those of the monastic libraries. There was
in both the annual giving out and inspection of what we would
now call the lending department for students; while the books,
fastened by chains—a kind of reference department kept in the
library chamber for the common use of the fellows—followed a
similar system in monastic institutions. By the 15th century
collegiate and monastic libraries were on the same plan, with
the separate room containing books placed on their sides on
desks or lecterns, to which they were attached by chains to a
horizontal bar. As the books increased the accommodation was
augmented by one or two shelves erected above the desks. The
library at Cesena in North Italy may still be seen in its original
condition. The Laurentian library at Florence was designed by
Michelangelo on the monastic model. Another good example
of the old form may be seen in the library of Merton College at
Oxford, a long narrow room with bookcases standing between
the windows at right angles to the walls. In the chaining
system one end was attached to the wooden cover of the book
while the other ran freely on a bar fixed by a method of double
locks to the front of the shelf or desk on which the book rested.
The fore edges of the volumes faced the reader. The seat and
shelf were sometimes combined. Low cases were subsequently
introduced between the higher cases, and the seat replaced by a
step. Shelf lists were placed at the end of each case. There
were no chains in the library of the Escorial, erected in 1584,
which showed for the first time bookcases placed against the
walls. Although chains were no longer part of the appliances
in the newly erected libraries they continued to be used and
were ordered in bequests in England down to the early part of
the 18th century. Triple desks and revolving lecterns, raised
by a wooden screw, formed part of the library furniture. The
English cathedral libraries were fashioned after the same principle.
The old methods were fully reproduced in the fittings at
Westminster, erected at a late date. Here we may see books on shelves
against the walls as well as in cases at right angles to the walls;
the desk-like shelves for the chained volumes (no longer in
existence) have a slot in which the chains could be suspended,
and are hinged to allow access to shelves below. An ornamental
wooden tablet at the end of each case is a survival of the old
shelf list. By the end of the 17th century the type of the public
library developed from collegiate and monastic prototypes,
became fixed as it were throughout Europe (H. R. Tedder,
“Evolution of the Public Library,” in Trans. of 2nd Int. Library
Conference, 1897, 1898).
The first conquests of the Arabians, as we have already seen, threatened hostility to literature. But, as soon as their conquests were secured, the caliphs became the patrons of learning and science. Greek manuscripts were eagerly sought for and translated into Arabic, and colleges Arabians. and libraries everywhere arose. Baghdad in the east and Cordova in the west became the seats of a rich development of letters and science during the age when the civilization of Europe was most obscured. Cairo and Tripoli were also distinguished for their libraries. The royal library of the Fatimites in Africa is said to have numbered 100,000 manuscripts, while that collected by the Omayyads of Spain is reported to have contained six times as many. It is said that there were no less than seventy libraries opened in the cities of Andalusia. Whether these figures be exaggerated or not—and they are much below those given by some Arabian writers, which are undoubtedly so—it is certain that the libraries of the Arabians and the Moors of Spain offer a very remarkable contrast to those of the Christian nations during the same period.[2]
The literary and scientific activity of the Arabians appears to have been the cause of a revival of letters amongst the Greeks of the Byzantine empire in the 9th century. Under Leo the Philosopher and Constantine Porphyrogenitus Renaissance. the libraries of Constantinople awoke into renewed life. The compilations of such writers as Stobaeus, Photius and Suidas, as well as the labours of innumerable critics and commentators, bear witness to the activity, if not to the lofty character of the pursuits, of the Byzantine scholars. The labours of transcription were industriously pursued in the libraries and in the monasteries of Mount Athos and the Aegean, and it was from these quarters that the restorers of learning brought into Italy so many Greek manuscripts. In this way many of the treasures of ancient literature had been already
- ↑ This subject has been specially treated by J. Willis Clark in several works, of which the chief is a masterly volume, The Care of Books (1901). See also Dom Gasquet, “On Medieval Monastic Libraries,” in his Old English Bible (1897).
- ↑ Among the Arabs, however, as among the Christians, theological bigotry did not always approve of non-theological literature, and the great library of Cordova was sacrificed by Almanzor to his reputation for orthodoxy, 978 A.D.
