Part 15 (1/2)
In a similar strain a writer or copyist entreats readers to be careful of his work--work which has cost him an amount of pains that they cannot realise. It is impossible to translate the original exactly, but I hope that I have given the meaning with tolerable clearness:
I beseech you, my friend, when you are reading my book to keep your hands behind its back, for fear you should do mischief to the text by some sudden movement; for a man who knows nothing about writing thinks that it is no concern of his. Whereas to a writer the last line is as sweet as port is to a sailor. Three fingers hold the pen, but the whole body toils. Thanks be to G.o.d. I Warembert wrote this book in G.o.d's name. Thanks be to G.o.d. Amen[158].
Entreaties so gentle and so pathetic as these are seldom met with; but curses--in the same strain probably as those to which the Council of Paris took exception--are extremely common. In fact, in some Houses, a ma.n.u.script invariably ended with an imprecation--more or less severe, according to the writer's taste[159]. I will append a few specimens.
This book belongs to S. Maximin at his monastery of Micy, which abbat Peter caused to be written, and with his own labour corrected and punctuated, and on Holy Thursday dedicated to G.o.d and S. Maximin on the altar of S. Stephen, with this imprecation that he who should take it away from thence by what device soever, with the intention of not restoring it, should incur d.a.m.nation with the traitor Judas, with Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate. Amen[160].
Should anyone by craft or any device whatever abstract this book from this place [Jumieges] may his soul suffer, in retribution for what he has done, and may his name be erased from the book of the living and not be recorded among the Blessed[161].
A simpler form of imprecation occurs very frequently in ma.n.u.scripts belonging to S. Alban's:
This book belongs to S. Alban. May whosoever steals it from him or destroys its t.i.tle be anathema. Amen[162].
A similar form of words occurs at the Cistercian House of Clairvaux, a great school of writing like S. Alban's, but whether it habitually protected its ma.n.u.scripts in this manner I am unable to say:
May whoever steals or alienates this ma.n.u.script, or scratches out its t.i.tle, be anathema. Amen[163].
A very curious form of curse occurs in one of the ma.n.u.scripts of Christ Church, Canterbury. The writer repents of his severity in the last sentence.
May whoever destroys this t.i.tle, or by gift or sale or loan or exchange or theft or by any other device knowingly alienates this book from the aforesaid Christ Church, incur in this life the malediction of Jesus Christ and of the most glorious Virgin His Mother, and of Blessed Thomas, Martyr. Should however it please Christ, who is patron of Christ Church, may his soul be saved in the Day of Judgment[164].
Lastly, I will quote a specimen in verse, from a breviary now in the library of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge:
Wher so ever y be come over all I belonge to the Chapell of gunvylle hall: He shal be cursed by the grate sentens That felonsly faryth and berith me thens.
And whether he bere me in pooke or sekke, For me he shall be hanged by the nekke, (I am so well beknown of dyverse men) But I be restored theder agen[165].
On the other hand, the gift of books to a monastery was gratefully recorded and enumerated among the good deeds of their donors. Among the Augustinians such gifts, and the labour expended upon books in general, was the subject of a special service[166].
It is not uncommon to find a monastic library regularly endowed with part of the annual revenue of the House. For instance, at Corbie, the librarian received 10 sous from each of the higher, and 5 sous from each of the inferior officers, together with a certain number of bushels of corn from lands specially set apart for the purpose. This was confirmed by a bull of Pope Alexander III. (1166-1179)[167]. A similar arrangement was made at the library of S. Martin des Champs, Paris, in 1261[168]. At the Benedictine Abbey of Fleury, near Orleans, in 1146, it was agreed in chapter on the proposition of the abbat, that in each year on S.
Benedict's winter festival (21 March), he and the priors subordinate to him, together with the officers of the House, should all contribute ”to the repair of our books, the preparation of new ones, and the purchase of parchment.” The name of each contributor, and the sum that he was to give, are recorded[169]. At the Benedictine Monastery of Ely Bishop Nigel (1133-1174) granted the t.i.the of certain churches in the diocese ”as a perpetual alms to the _scriptorium_ of the church of Ely for the purpose of making and repairing the books of the said church[170].” The books referred to were probably, in the first instance, service-books; but the number required of these could hardly have been sufficient to occupy the whole time of the scribes, and the library would doubtless derive benefit from their labours. The _scriptorium_ at S. Alban's was also specially endowed.
We must next consider the answer to the following questions: In what part of their Houses did the Monastic Orders bestow their books? and what pieces of furniture did they use? The answer to the first of these questions is a very curious one, when we consider what our climate is, and indeed what the climate of the whole of Europe is, during the winter months. The centre of the monastic life was the cloister. Brethren were not allowed to congregate in any other part of the conventual buildings, except when they went into the frater, or dining-hall, for their meals, or at certain hours in certain seasons into the warming-house (_calefactorium_). In the cloister accordingly they kept their books; and there they wrote and studied, or conducted the schooling of the novices and choir-boys, in winter and in summer alike.
It is obvious that their work must have been at the mercy of the elements during many months of the year, and some important proofs that such was the case can be quoted. Cuthbert, Abbat of Wearmouth and Jarrow in the second half of the eighth century, excuses himself to a correspondent for not having sent him all the works of Bede which he had asked for, on the ground that the intense cold of the previous winter had paralysed the hands of his scribes[171]; Ordericus Vitalis, who wrote in the first half of the twelfth century, closes the fourth book of his Ecclesiastical History with a lament that he must lay aside his work for the winter[172]; and a monk of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdons.h.i.+re has recorded his discomforts in a Latin couplet which seems to imply that in a place so inconvenient as a cloister all seasons were equally destructive of serious work:
In vento minime pluvia nive sole sedere Possumus in claustro nec scribere neque studere[173].
As we sit here in tempest in rain snow and sun Nor writing nor reading in cloister is done.
But, when circ.u.mstances were more propitious, plenty of good work that was of permanent value could be done in a cloister. A charming picture has come down to us of the literary activity that prevailed in the Abbey of S.
Martin at Tournai at the end of the eleventh century, when Abbat Odo was giving an impulse to the writing of MSS. ”When you entered the cloister,”
says his chronicler, ”you could generally see a dozen young monks seated on chairs, and silently writing at desks of careful and artistic design.
With their help, he got accurate copies made of all Jerome's commentaries on the Prophets, of the works of Blessed Gregory, and of all the treatises he could find of Augustine, Ambrose, Isidore, and Anselm; so that the like of his library was not to be found in any of the neighbouring churches; and those attached to them used generally to ask for our copies for the correction of their own[174].”
The second question cannot be answered so readily. We must begin by examining, in some detail, the expressions used to denote furniture in the various doc.u.ments that deal with conventual libraries.
S. Pachomius places his books in a cupboard (_fenestra_); S. Benedict uses only the general term, library (_bibliotheca_), which may mean either a room or a piece of furniture; and the word press (_armarium_), with which we become so familiar afterwards, does not make its appearance till near the end of the eleventh century. Lanfranc does not use it, but as I have shewn that he based his statutes, at least to some extent, on the Cluniac Customs, and as they identify the library (_bibliotheca_) with the press (_armarium_), and call the librarian, termed by Lanfranc the keeper of the books, the keeper of the press (_armarius_), we may safely a.s.sume that the books to which Lanfranc refers were housed in a similar piece of furniture. Moreover, in Benedictine houses of later date, as for instance at Abingdon and Evesham, the word is constantly employed.