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diff --git a/28187.txt b/28187.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8f9eb36 --- /dev/null +++ b/28187.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2695 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts, by M. R. James + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts + Helps for Students of History, No. 17. + +Author: M. R. James + +Release Date: February 25, 2009 [EBook #28187] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDERINGS, HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS *** + + + + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski and the Booksmiths at +http://www.eBookForge.net + + + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY + +THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS + +M. R. JAMES] + + + + +HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY. No. 17 + + +EDITED BY C. JOHNSON, M.A., AND J. P. WHITNEY, D.D., D.C.L. + +THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS + +BY + +M. R. JAMES, LITT.D., F.B.A. + + PROVOST OF ETON + SOMETIME PROVOST OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE + + + LONDON + + SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING + CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE + + NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + + 1919 + + + + +THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS + + +THE Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts is the title of this book. To +have called it the survival and transmission of ancient literature would +have been pretentious, but not wholly untruthful. Manuscripts, we all +know, are the chief means by which the records and imaginings of twenty +centuries have been preserved. It is my purpose to tell where +manuscripts were made, and how and in what centres they have been +collected, and, incidentally, to suggest some helps for tracing out +their history. Naturally the few pages into which the story has to be +packed will not give room for any one episode to be treated +exhaustively. Enough if I succeed in rousing curiosity and setting some +student to work in a field in which an immense amount still remains to +be discovered. + +In treating of so large a subject as this--for it is a large one--it is +not a bad plan to begin with the particular and get gradually to the +general. + + +SOME SPECIMEN PEDIGREES OF MSS. + +I take my stand before the moderate-sized bookcase which contains the +collection of MSS. belonging to the College of Eton, and with due care +draw from the shelves a few of the books which have reposed there since +the room was built in 1729. + +The first shelf I lay hands upon contains some ten large folios. Four of +them are a single great compilation, beginning with a survey of the +history of the world and of the Roman Empire, and merging into the +heraldry of the German _noblesse_. It was made, we find, in 1541, and is +dedicated to Henry VIII. Large folding pictures on vellum and portraits +of all the Roman Emperors adorn the first volume. It is a sumptuous +book, supposed to be a present from the Emperor Ferdinand to the King. +How did it come here? A printed label tells us that it was given to the +college by Henry Temple, Viscount Palmerston, in 1750 (he had previously +given it to Sir Richard Ellys on whose death Lady Ellys returned it: so +much in parenthesis). Then, more by luck than anything else, I find +mention of it in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary; his +friend Thomas Jett, F.R.S., owned it and told him about it in 1722: he +had been offered L100 a volume for it; it was his by purchase from one +Mr. Stebbing. It was sold, perhaps to Palmerston, at Jett's auction in +1731. The gap between Henry VIII. and Stebbing remains for the present +unfilled. So much for the first draw. + +Next, a yet larger and more ponderous volume, _Decreta Romanorum +Pontificum_--the Papal decretals and the Acts of the Councils. It is +spotlessly clean and magnificently written in a hand of the early part +of the twelfth century, a hand which very much resembles that in use at +Christchurch, Canterbury. I am indeed, tempted to call it a Canterbury +book; only it bears none of the marks which it ought to have if it was +ever in the library of the Cathedral Priory. Was it perhaps written +there and sold or given to a daughter-house, or to some abbey which had +a less skilful school of writers? Not to Rochester, at any rate, though +Rochester did get many books written at Christchurch. If it had belonged +to Rochester there would have been some trace, I think, of an +inscription on the lower margin of the first leaf. No; the only clue to +the history is a title written on the fly-leaf in the fifteenth century, +which says: "The book of the decrees of the Pope of Rome," and it begins +on the second leaf "_tes viii_." That does not tell us much; I do not +recognize the handwriting of the title, though I guess it to have been +written when the book came to Eton College. All I can say is that here +is an example of a large class, duplicates of indispensable and common +works, which the abbey libraries possessed in great numbers, and often +parted with, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to colleges and +private purchasers. + +Next we take out a thin folio written on paper. This time it is a Greek +book which we open; it has the works of the Christian apologists +Athenagoras and Tatian, and a spurious epistle of Justin Martyr, copied +in 1534 by Valeriano of Forli. A single MS. now at Paris, written in +914, is the ancestor of all our copies of these texts; but it has been +shown that this Eton book is not an immediate copy of that, but of one +now at Bologna. Obviously it was written in Italy. How does it come to +be here? Sir Henry Wotton, Provost of the college, spent the best part +of twenty years in Italy, mainly as Ambassador to the Court of Venice +for James I., and left all his MSS. to the college at his death in 1639. +There are numbers of MSS. from Italy in this bookcase, and, though +hardly any of them have Wotton's name in them, it is not to be doubted +that they came from him. A good proportion of them, too, can be traced +back a step farther, for they have in them the name or the arms or the +handwriting of Bernardo Bembo of Venice, the father of the more famous +Cardinal Pietro Bembo. This Justin volume is not of that number, but we +have a clue to its history which may be deemed sufficient. + +I turn to another shelf and open a large book written somewhere about +the year 1150, which was given to the college in 1713 by one of the +Fellows; in 1594 it belonged to John Rogers (if I read the name right). +It contains St. Jerome's Commentary on Daniel and the Minor Prophets, +followed by a tract of St. Ambrose, and another ascribed to Jerome +(subject, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart), which was in reality, we +are now told, written by a Pelagian. It is a very uncommon text. After +that we have Jerome's (so-called) prophecy of the fifteen signs which +are to precede the last judgment--of which signs, let it be said in +passing, there is a fine representation in an ancient window in the +Church of All Saints, North Street, at York. Can we trace this volume +any farther back than 1594? I think so; the Ambrose and the two spurious +tracts of Jerome (one, as I said, being of very rare occurrence) are +entered, in that order, in the catalogue of the library of Peterborough +Abbey. The library has long been dispersed, but the catalogue remains, +and was printed by Gunton in his History of the Abbey. But the said +catalogue makes no mention of the Commentary of Jerome, which fills 323 +out of the 358 leaves of our book. A serious obstacle, it will be said, +to an identification; yet a long series of observations, too long to be +set out here, has led me to the conclusion that our Peterborough +catalogue makes a practice of not entering the main contents of the +volumes, but only the short subsidiary tracts, which might else escape +notice. And without much hesitation I put down the book before me as a +relic of the Peterborough Library. + +Somewhat higher up stands a very stout book bound in old patterned +paper. The material of it is paper too, the language is Greek, and the +contents, for the most part, Canons of Councils. There are two hands in +it; one is perhaps of the fourteenth century, the other is of the early +part of the fifteenth. This latter is the writing of one Michael Doukas, +who tells us that he was employed as a scribe by Brother John of Ragusa, +who held some position at a Church Council, unnamed. There were two +Johns of Ragusa, it seems, both Dominicans, one of whom figured at the +Council of Constance in 1413, the other at that of Basle in 1433. The +latter must be the right one, for there are still Greek MSS. at Basle +which belonged to the Dominicans of that city, and were bequeathed by +the second John at his death in 1442. + +The book is important, because the first thing in it is the only copy of +a treatise ascribed to St. Athanasius, called a Synopsis of Holy +Scripture. This treatise was printed first in 1600 by an editor named +Felckmann, and no MS. of it has been used or known since. Where did +Felckmann find it? In a MS. which belonged to Pierre Nevelet, procured +for him (the editor) by Bongars, a distinguished scholar of Orleans. +Now, the Eton book has in it a whole series of names of owners, some +erased, but decipherable. The earliest seems to be Joannes Gastius, who +in 1550 gave it to Johannes Hernogius (as I doubtfully read it). Then +come Petrus Neveletus and his son, I(saac) N(icolas) Neveletus. +Evidently, then, we have here the MS. which Felckmann used, and we +arrive at some date after 1600. In 1665 or 1685 Daniel Mauclerc, Doctor +of Law, living at Vitry le Francois, is the owner. He leaves France (the +family were Huguenots), and brings the book to Holland. His son Jacques, +Doctor of Medicine, has it in 1700, in England; his nephew, John Henry +Mauclerc, also M.D., succeeds to it and enters his name in 1748, and +gives it to Mr. Roger Huggett, Conduct and Librarian of the College, who +died in 1769. + +This is an unusually full and clear pedigree. One more, and I have done. + +This time it is a copy of the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden, monk of +Chester; it was the popular history of the world and of England for +anyone who could read Latin in the fifteenth century. No abbey library +could be without it, just as no gentleman's library could be without a +copy of the English Chronicle called the Brut. Here is a case in which +we know the beginning and end of the book's wanderings, but not the +middle of the story. The arms of Eton adorn the beginning of each of the +seven "books" of the Chronicle, so we may take it that it was owned from +the first by a member of the foundation. An inscription tells us that +within the fifteenth century it belonged to the Carthusians of Witham in +Somerset, and was given to them by Master John Blacman. Here is light. +John Blacman was Fellow and Chanter of Eton, then Head of a House +(King's Hall) in Cambridge, and lastly a Carthusian monk. He was also +confessor to Henry VI., and wrote a book about him. In a MS. at Oxford +there is a list of the books he gave to Witham, and among them is this +Polychronicon. More: he has prefixed to the text a pedigree of the Kings +of England from Egbert, illustrated with drawings, the last of which is +the earliest known representation of Windsor Castle. We have not, then, +to complain of lack of information about the early stages of the +history; but then comes a gap, and between the Dissolution and the early +part of the nineteenth century, when Rodd of London had it and sold it +to the fourth Earl of Ashburnham, I can (at present) hear nothing of the +book. In quite recent years it passed from the Ashburnham family to Mr. +H. Y. Thompson, from him to Mr. George Dunn, and at his death was bought +back for its first home. + +There, then, are half a dozen histories of MSS., fairly typical and +fairly diverse. Naturally I have picked out books which have some +traceable story. Very many have none. We can only say of them that they +were written in such a century and such a country, and acquired at such +a date: and there an end. Rebinding and loss of leaves, especially of +fly-leaves, have carried off names of owners and library-marks, and +apart from that there are but very few cases in which we are warranted +in proclaiming from the aspect and character of the script that a book +was written at one particular place and nowhere else. + +I think it will be seen, from what has been said, that my subject is one +which depends for its actuality upon the accumulation of a great number +of small facts. There is, of course, a broad historical background: no +less than the whole history of Western Europe since the period of the +Barbarian invasions. That cannot be looked for here, of course; but +there are certain _data_ of capital importance which cannot be spared, +and some plotting out of the whole field is indispensable. + + +THE LIMITS OF THE SUBJECT + +Greek and Latin MSS. are the main subject. Oriental books we do not even +touch upon, and vernacular books in English or French have to take a +secondary place; and we may treat first of the Greek, for it is by far +the most compact division. In the case of both Greek and Latin books we +shall ask where and when they were chiefly made, when and how they left +their early homes, and where they are to be found now. + +We shall rule out the whole of what may be called the classical +period--the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamon, the bookshops of +Martial's time--yes, and even the fourth-century library of Caesarea--for +of these we have no relics. Our concern is with what exists to-day, or +what did exist until the nation, which has contributed so largely to +learning and history in the past, turned apostate, and to its lasting +shame destroyed and dispersed what more ignorant men had spared. The +mischief Germany has done--and it will be long before we learn the full +extent of it--she has done with open eyes. + +We think primarily of Belgium and North-Eastern France as the scenes of +her worst devastations, but she has not confined her work of spoliation +to them. The Balkan provinces and Russia held great masses of Greek and +Slavonic MSS. as yet very incompletely known. The actual invasions of +German troops, and the wars and revolutions which Germany has fostered +in those regions, can hardly have been less mischievous than her +operations in the West. + + +GREEK MSS.: PRODUCTION AND DISPERSION + +The area in which Greek MSS. were produced in the medieval period was +(with negligible exceptions) confined to Greece proper, "Turkey in +Europe," the Levant, and South Italy. In the monastic centres, +particularly Mount Athos, there were and are large stores of Greek +books, the vast majority of which are theological or liturgical; and the +theological authors most in vogue are those of the fourth and later +centuries. Copies of primitive Christian authors or classical ones are +comparative rarities. True, one or two of surpassing interest have been +found in such libraries; a famous Plato was brought by Dr. E. D. Clarke +from Patmos, and is at Oxford now; the treatise of Hippolytus against +heresies came in the forties from a monastery to the Paris library. But +these are exceptions. We have to look at Constantinople as by far the +most important centre of learning and of book-production. The city was +full of libraries, public and private, and of readers. The culture of +the place was, no doubt, self-contained; it did not aim at enriching the +outer world, which it despised; its literary productions were imitative, +the work of _dilettanti_ and decadents. Nevertheless, it preserved for +us wellnigh all that we now have of the best literature of Greece, and, +but for a few catastrophes, it would have handed on much more. Of +thirty-two historical writings read and excerpted by Photius in his +_Bibliotheca_, late in the ninth century, nineteen are lost; of several +of the Attic orators, Lysias, Lycurgus, Hyperides, Dinarchus, he +possessed many more speeches than we have seen. Michael Psellus, who +died about 1084, is credited (I must allow that the evidence is not of +the best) with writing notes on twenty-four comedies of Menander, of +which, as is well known, we have not one complete. In the twelfth +century John Tzetzes and Eustathius apparently had access still to very +many lost authors. In short, before the Latin occupation of +Constantinople in 1204, the remains of ancient Greek literature very +notably exceeded their present bulk. Much of it, no doubt, was preserved +in single copies, and only a narrow selection of authors was in constant +use for educational purposes. Only three plays out of seven of AEschylus, +for example, were read in the schools. The rest, with Sophocles and +Apollonius Rhodius, practically depended for their survival on the +famous copy now at Florence. Instances might be multiplied. The threads +of transmission to which we owe most of the Euripidean plays, the +Anthology, the History of Polybius, the works of Clement of Alexandria, +the Christian Apologists, the commentary of Origen upon St. John, are +equally slender. We cannot doubt that the sack of Constantinople by the +Crusaders was, in its obliteration of works of art and of literature, +far more disastrous than the capture of the city by the Turks in 1453. +For the best part of a century before the latter date, the export of +precious MSS. to Italy had been going on, and many of our greatest +treasures were already safe in the hands of scholars when the crash +came. Nor is it possible, I believe, to show that between 1204 and 1453 +many authors whose works no longer exist were read in Byzantine circles. +That there was destruction of books in 1453 is no doubt true; but within +a very few years the Turks had learned that money was to be made of +them, and the sale and export went on at a great rate. + + +EUROPEAN CENTRES FOR GREEK MSS.: CONTINENTAL + +Thus the drafting of Greek MSS. into the libraries of Western Europe has +been a long and gradual process. Many of the best, that were secured by +individual scholars such as Giannozzo Manetti, Aurispa, and Niccolo +Niccoli, found their way into the Laurentian Library at Florence; +others, collected by Nicholas V. (d. 1455), are the nucleus of the +Vatican collection; a third set was the gift of the Greek Cardinal +Bessarion (d. 1468) to Venice. But probably in quality, and certainly in +quantity, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris excels even the Italian +storehouses of Greek MSS. The premier Greek MS. of France is a copy of +the works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, which the Greek +Emperor Michael the Stammerer sent to Louis the Pious in the year 827. +It was long at the Royal Abbey of St. Denis, but strayed away somehow; +then, bought by Henri de Mesmes in the sixteenth century, it came into +the Royal Library in 1706, and has been there ever since. Its present +number is Bib. Nat. Grec 437. Another treasure of ancient times which +was once at St. Denis is the sixth-century uncial Greek MS. of the +Prophets known as Codex Marchalianus, now in the Vatican; but when it +came to France is not clearly made out. Coming to later times, the not +inconsiderable collection made by Francis I. received a notable increase +in that of Catherine de' Medici, once the property of Cardinal Ridolfi, +and the reigns of Louis XIV. and XV. were for it an epoch of rapid +growth. Between 1645 and 1740 the number of volumes swelled from 1,255 +to 3,197. The Revolution period added the collection of Coislin, or +rather of Seguier--400 more. At the present day Paris must possess 5,000 +Greek MSS. + +In Central Europe Vienna may be reckoned the chief repository. It +contains the remarkable collection of the traveller Augier de Busbecq, +made in the East about 1570, which was once at Augsburg. Spain--I think +principally of the Escurial Library--has suffered from depredation and +from fire, and is poorer than the prominence of its early contributions +to the cause of learning deserves. + + +GREEK MSS. IN ENGLAND + +It is a temptation, when one turns to England, to enlarge upon the early +history of Greek scholarship in the country, but it is a temptation +which must be resisted. We had a share in preparing for the revival of +learning. Roger Bacon and Grosseteste (I say nothing of the earlier age, +of Theodore of Tarsus and Bede) were men whose work in this direction +has hardly met with full appreciation as yet; and later on we gave +Erasmus a welcome and a home. But we did not rival Italy or France in +the early scramble for Greek books. Such classical MSS. of first-class +value as we possess have been importations of the seventeenth and later +centuries. Let me, however, speak somewhat more in detail. + +There was a turbulent person called George Neville, who died Archbishop +of York in 1476. It is evident, though not, I think, from anything that +he wrote, that he was interested in Greek learning, and not only +theological learning. A MS. of some orations of Demosthenes now at +Leyden contains a statement by the scribe that he wrote it for +Archbishop Neville in 1472. This is our starting-point. Now, the scribe +in question--Emmanuel of Constantinople--generally writes a hand (ugly +enough) which no one who has once seen it can fail to recognize. This +hand appears in a not inconsiderable group of books: in a Plato and an +Aristotle now at Durham, in a Suidas given by the Chapter of Durham to +Lord Oxford (Brit. Mus., MS., Harl. 3,100), in a rather famous New +Testament at Leicester, in three Psalters at Oxford and Cambridge, and +in half of another copy of Suidas at Oxford. In this second Suidas +Emmanuel's hand is associated with another, equally easy to +recognize--that of Joannes Serbopoulos. Serbopoulos lived, I know not +how long, in the abbey at Reading, and transcribed several Greek MSS. +now in Oxford and Cambridge libraries; he was still at work in the first +years of the sixteenth century. This little episode is one that +demonstrates, in a rather pleasing way, the value of the study of +handwritings and of the inscriptions written by scribes; the light it +throws on the history of scholarship is unexpected, and is worth having. + +Two Biblical MSS. of high importance came to England as gifts to our +Sovereigns. One was the well-known Codex Alexandrinus (A), given to +Charles I. in 1628 by Cyril Lucar, the reforming Patriarch of +Constantinople. Of the other I shall take leave to say more. It was that +known as the Cottonian Genesis, which was brought over by two Greek +Bishops "from Philippi" and presented to Henry VIII. It was a +sixth-century copy of the Book of Genesis, written in uncial letters and +illustrated, we are told, with 250 pictures. Queen Elizabeth passed it +on to her tutor, Sir John Fortescue, and he to Sir Robert Cotton, the +collector of a library of which we shall hear more in the sequel, and in +that library it remained (when not out on loan) till Saturday, October +23, 1731. On that day a fire broke out in Ashburnham House in +Westminster (where the Cotton and Royal Libraries were then kept), and +the bookcase in which the Genesis was suffered horribly. The Cotton +MSS.--for I may as well explain this matter now as later--were kept in +presses, each of which had a bust of a Roman Emperor on the top. They +ran from Julius to Domitian, and were supplemented by Cleopatra and +Faustina. Augustus and Domitian had but one shelf each (Augustus +contained charters, drawings, and the like; Domitian was originally, +perhaps, a small case over a doorway); the others had usually six +shelves, lettered from A to F, and the books in each shelf were numbered +from i. onwards in Roman figures. The Genesis was Otho, B vi., and the +three presses of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius were those in which the fire +did most mischief. No complete leaf is left of Genesis; there are bits +of blackened text and pictures, a few of which strayed to the library of +the Baptist College at Bristol. The text had been examined by competent +scholars for editions of the Greek Old Testament, and we are able to +judge of its value; but of the pictures, alas! no list or description +had been made. Still, something is known. An eminent French polymath, +the Sieur de Peiresc (whose life by P. Gassendi is well worth reading), +borrowed the book from Cotton, and had careful copies of one or two of +the illustrations made for him, and these exist. And a further +interesting fact has come out: by the help of our scanty relics a +student of art, Professor Tikkanen, of Helsingfors, in Finland, was able +to show that the designers of a long series of mosaic pictures from +Genesis in St. Mark's at Venice must have had before them either the +Cotton Genesis or its twin sister, so closely do the mosaics follow the +compositions in the MS. + +In somewhat similar fashion, by gift from the reformer Theodore de Beze, +the University of Cambridge acquired its greatest Greek treasure, the +Codex Bezae (D) of the Gospels and Acts in Elizabeth's reign. The riddles +which its text presents have exercised many brains, and I do not know +who would allow that they are finally solved. Another famous MS., the +unique Lexicon of Photius, was acquired by Thomas Gale, Dean of York, +early in the eighteenth century--one would like to know where. To my eye +it bears signs of having been long in Western Europe, if not in England. +Roger Gale gave it, with his own and his father's other MSS., to Trinity +College, Cambridge, in 1738. On the whole, however, Cambridge has not +been nearly so fortunate as Oxford in accumulating Greek books. Oxford +had a magnificent present in 1629 from its Chancellor, the Earl of +Pembroke, of 240 MSS. purchased in block from the Venetian Barocci, and +in 1817 made a great and wise purchase of 128 more, contained in the +collection of another Venetian, the Abate Canonici. In the interval such +diverse benefactors as Laud and Cromwell had enriched it with some very +notable gifts. The pedigree of one of Laud's MSS. may be familiar, but +is too illuminating to be omitted. It is a seventh-century copy of the +Acts of the Apostles in Greek and Latin. The earliest home to which we +can trace it is Sardinia; a document connected with that island is +written on a fly-leaf. Then we find indisputable evidence that Bede, +writing early in the eighth century, had access to it; he quotes in his +_Retractations_ on the Acts readings which are characteristic of it; and +as he never left his monastery in the North, we may be sure that the +book was at Jarrow or Wearmouth in his time. After that it disappears +until Laud buys it. Like many of his books, it came to him from Germany, +a spoil of the Thirty Years' War. These various _data_ are best linked +up if we suppose (1) that the MS. was brought from Italy to England by +Theodore of Tarsus or his companion Abbot Hadrian in 668; (2) that it +was taken from England to Germany after Bede's death by one of the +companions of St. Boniface, the apostle of that country, and remained +there, in or near Fulda, perhaps, until the convulsion which threw it +back upon our shores. + +Take another illustration. When John Leland, in Henry VIII.'s reign, +visited the library of Canterbury Cathedral, he saw there part of the +Old Testament in Greek--chiefly the poetical books and the Psalter. He +does not mention the Pentateuch. Nevertheless, it can be shown that that +was also there, for among the Canonici MSS. in the Bodleian is one of +the thirteenth century containing Genesis to Ruth in Greek, which has on +a margin the inscription, legible though erased: "liber ecclesie Christi +Cantuarie." How it left England at the Dissolution one may guess easily +enough, but what its fortunes were before it came to light again at +Venice I believe there is nothing to show. + + * * * * * + +Speaking broadly, then, of the destinies of Greek MSS., I may repeat +that they were produced in a comparatively small area, that a great many +of the most precious ones were concentrated in one place, and that from +the fourteenth century onwards they became objects of desire to the +great ones of the earth, who vied with each other in sending special +emissaries to collect them. As a result, the greatest treasures were +soon locked up in the libraries of princes and prelates, and became less +commonly exposed to dispersion and sale than Latin books. We must +remember, too, that as a rule the monasteries of Western Europe did not +collect Greek MSS.; they possessed a chance one here and there, as we +have seen, but rather as curiosities than as books to be used.[A] To +the noble and the scholar there was a flavour of distinction about a +Greek MS. which was wanting to all but the most venerable and beautiful +of the Latin ones. + +There is still much to be done in the investigation of the history and +relationships of Greek MSS. In spite of the numberless editions of the +great authors, and the labour that has been lavished upon them, I +believe that scholars would agree that in very few cases, if any, is the +transmission of the text at all perfectly known. For some writings we +have too little MS. evidence, for some so much as to be embarrassing. In +no case can we afford to neglect and to leave unrecorded anything that a +MS. can tell us as to its place of origin, its scribe, or its owners. +Names and scribblings on fly-leaves, which to one student suggest +nothing, may combine in the memory of another into a coherent piece of +history, and show him the home of the book at a particular date, and by +consequence unveil a whole section of the story of its wanderings. With +one little instance of this kind I will bring to an end my remarks on +this first and shorter portion of my subject. In the library of Corpus +Christi College at Cambridge is a Greek Psalter written in the middle +of the twelfth century. On one of its last pages is scribbled in Greek +letters by a later hand the name of John Farley ("[Greek: Hiohannes +pharlehi]"). Only about five-and-twenty volumes away from this stands a +MS. containing letters written by the University of Oxford on public +occasions. One of these is signed by J. Farley. A little enquiry elicits +the fact that John Farley was official scribe of that University near +the end of the fifteenth century. The Greek Psalter, then, was pretty +certainly at Oxford in Farley's time. What do we know of Greek MSS. then +at Oxford? We know that Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln owned such +things, and that he bequeathed his books to the Franciscans of Oxford at +his death in 1254; and when we examine the Psalter again, we find that +it is full of notes in a hand which occurs in other Greek MSS. known to +have belonged to Grosseteste, and which I take to be Grosseteste's +autograph. So the mere occurrence of John Farley's name helps us to +write the history of the book from within a hundred years of its making +until the present day. Procured by Grosseteste some time before 1254, it +passes to Oxford, and remains there till the Grey Friar's Convent is +dissolved by Henry VIII. Then there is a gap of a generation at most. +Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, acquires it (believing it, +absurdly enough, to have belonged to Archbishop Theodore in the seventh +century), and bequeaths it to his college of Corpus Christi in 1574. + + +LATIN MSS. + +We turn to the Latin division, and here the difficulty of selecting +lines of procedure is very great. A paragraph of historical preface, at +any rate, must be attempted. + +At the period of the Barbarian invasions--the fifth century--the learned +countries were Italy, France (especially Southern France) and Spain. Of +these three, Italy may be described as stationary or even decadent, but +she possessed greater accumulations of books than either of the other +two. The result of the invasions was, no doubt, that libraries were +destroyed and education dislocated; but there was another result, as we +have lately begun to realize--namely, that in the case of France there +was a transplanting of culture to another soil. A number of teachers +fled the country, and some at least came to Ireland. This, as far as we +can now see, was the beginning of that Irish learning which has been so +widely, yet so vaguely, extolled. Ireland, then, in the late fifth +century and the sixth, holds the lamp. Its light passes to England in +the middle of the seventh century, and from thence, near the end of the +eighth, to the Court of Charlemagne, where it initiates the Carolingian +Renaissance. In the ninth century, when England is a prey to the Danes, +the Carolingian Court and the great abbeys of Germany are enjoying a +vigorous intellectual life, stimulated and enriched by scholars from +Italy and from Ireland. In a general view the tenth and eleventh +centuries must figure as a period of degeneration; the twelfth as one of +immense intellectual and artistic vigour, culminating in the thirteenth. +In the fourteenth the foundations of what we call the Renaissance are +already being laid, and we have hardly passed the middle of the +fifteenth before the MS. has received its death-blow in the publication +of the first printed Bible. + +This absurdly condensed review of ten centuries has, I believe, some +truth in it, in spite of the fact that every clause needs qualification. +We shall have to go over the same ground again a little more slowly. At +present we will devote a little time to the beginnings of our period. + +A few relics of the days before the Barbarian invasion have reached us. +I am not thinking of the library of rolls found at Herculaneum in the +eighteenth century, the unrolling and decipherment of which still goes +on slowly at Naples, nor of the many precious fragments of rolls and +books which have come in our own generation from Egypt, but rather of +those which have been preserved above ground in libraries. Such are the +Virgils of the Vatican, of St. Gall, and of Florence. + +Perhaps a word about these ancient Virgils will not be unwelcome. They +are cited in all the textbooks, it is true, but I think they are apt to +be confused; at any rate it is easy to confuse them. + +They are five in number: three very fragmentary, two more or less +complete. The surnames they go by are _Sangallensis_, _Augusteus_, +_Vaticanus_, _Romanus_, _Mediceus_. + +_Sangallensis_ and _Augusteus_ are practically the only pieces of books +we have which are written in the old square capitals, like those of the +Roman inscriptions. _Sangallensis_ consists of a few leaves which were +found by Von Arx, a librarian of St. Gall, in the bindings of books in +that abbey's library. Of _Augusteus_ there are four leaves at Rome +(_Vaticanus latinus_ 3,256) and three at Berlin; and somewhere, perhaps +in a private library in France, is or was another bit which was known to +scholars in the seventeenth century. This copy was once at the Royal +Abbey of St. Denis. Both of these are fourth-century books at latest. + +_Vaticanus_ (_lat._ 3,225) is a more complete copy, illustrated with +fifty paintings in good classical style, and is also assigned to the +fourth century. + +_Romanus_ (_Vat. lat._ 3,867), once at St. Denis, is a pictured copy +too, but not nearly so good in style. + +_Mediceus_, written before A.D. 494, is at Florence (a single leaf of it +is bound up with _Vaticanus_). It was formerly in the abbey library of +Bobbio. + +These three books are written in "rustic capitals." + +A larger, but still small, group of books of "classical" date are the +palimpsests, the most famous of which are at Milan and Rome. There was a +time, early in the nineteenth century, when Angelo Mai, afterwards +Cardinal, and Prefect of the Vatican Library, was constantly launching +fresh surprises upon scholars, the results of his work in what was then +an almost untouched field. Large fragments of Cicero's _Republic_, of +lost orations of Cicero, of the works of the rhetorician Fronto, were +issued at short intervals: and all the most important of these were +recovered from palimpsests in the Ambrosian or the Vatican Library. They +had all come, too, from one place, the same Bobbio which has been +already named. Bobbio was founded by the Irishman St. Columban (d. 615). +The list of the early and valuable MSS. which can be traced to it would +take up a large share of my available space; but among the precious +things it owned was a number of quite ancient volumes, the Cicero and +Fronto and others--books sumptuously written in uncial letters in the +fourth century, which, sad to say, the Bobbio monks themselves broke up, +washed out the earlier writing, and covered the pages with texts more +immediately useful to them. Whence did they come? An answer to that +question has been offered recently which finds favour among experts. +They are the relics, it is said, of the library formed by Cassiodorus at +his monastery of Vivarium or Squillace, in South Italy. Cassiodorus is +a great figure in the history of his own time, and in his influence upon +the general course of learning. He was private secretary to Theodoric +King of the Goths; in his old age he retired from public to monastic +life, and his last years were devoted to equipping the monks he had +gathered about him for study--first and foremost the study of the +Scriptures, but also, as leading up to that, the study of languages, of +history and geography, and, as conducing to the general welfare, of +medicine, botany, and other useful arts. It had been a cherished project +of his to found an academy at Rome where all such learning might be +fostered, but that plan failed, and Cassiodorus took into his retreat at +Vivarium all the store of books he had accumulated, and wrote a little +manual to guide his monks to the right use of them. His _Institutes_ (as +the book is called) do not give a set catalogue of his library, but +there are many and striking coincidences between the manual and the +literary works which can be traced to Bobbio. A specimen may be given: +he recommends a writer on gardening called Gargilius Martialis. Hardly +anyone else mentions this person, and his work had disappeared until Mai +found pieces of it in a palimpsest at Naples which had come from Bobbio. +We owe much to Cassiodorus in any case, for it was he who commended +secular learning to monks, and the fact that monks were the great +preservers of ancient literature cannot be dissociated from his +influence. I shall be glad if the theory I have stated (it is that of +the late Dr. Rudolf Beer) proves sound; to have some of the very volumes +which Cassiodorus handled would be worth much. + +There is a link between the library of Cassiodorus and our own country. +A famous Latin Bible now at Florence, the _Codex Amiatinus_, is known to +have been once in England, at Wearmouth or Jarrow, and to have been +taken abroad by Ceolfrid, Abbot of those monasteries, in 716 as a +present to the Pope, whom it never reached, for Ceolfrid died at Langres +on his way to Rome. The story has often been told, and needs not to be +dwelt upon here; but a view has been broached, and is stoutly maintained +by Sir Henry Howorth, which does deserve mention and is not yet +familiar. It is that the first quire in the Amiatine Bible, which +contains pictures and lists of Biblical books, is actually a portion of +a Bible written for Cassiodorus. There is much to be said for this, and +at the least we may be sure that it is a direct copy from such a Bible. +Sir Henry would go farther, and claim the whole book as Cassiodorian. I +do not know that expert opinion is prepared to endorse this. + +The mention of Cassiodorus has led us below the date of the "classical" +period, for he died in 583. For one moment I revert to the earlier time +to record an interesting example of wandering. Illustrated books of the +early centuries are the greatest of rarities. The two Virgils, the +Vienna and the Cotton Genesis, the Homer at Milan, the Gospels of +Rossano in Calabria and those of Sinope now at Paris, the Dioscorides at +Vienna, the Pentateuch of Tours, the Joshua-roll at the Vatican--these +are the most famous, and there are very few beside them. Among those few +are some pieces of a Latin Bible written in the fourth century, and +containing parts of Samuel and Kings, with paintings which, when fresh, +must have been of high excellence. They have unhappily suffered grievous +damage, for they were used in the seventeenth century to make covers for +municipal documents at the royal and ancient abbatial town of +Quedlinburg (the scene of Canning's _Rovers_). The painted leaves are +now at Berlin; a leaf of plain text remains at Quedlinburg. No one +doubts that the book to which they belonged was made in Italy, and the +likeliest history that can be imagined for it is that it was brought as +a gift to the abbey by a German prince, say in the tenth century. It is +hard to explain the neglect and mutilation of so noble a book, in whose +contents there was nothing to offend Protestant or other religious +susceptibilities. Only we find, by numerous examples, that the MSS. we +should most prize now, those written in capitals or uncials with the +words undivided, or in Irish or English scripts which became +unfamiliar, were uniformly despised and neglected by the readers of +later centuries. We meet with notes of this kind in monastic catalogues: +"It cannot be read," "Old and useless," and the like. Still, one would +have thought that the pictures of the Quedlinburg book would have saved +it, even in a German nunnery. + + +CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY + +Since this little book is not a treatise on palaeography, a manual of +art, or a history of learning, and yet has to touch upon all three +provinces, it is important to keep it from straying too far into any of +them, and this is one of the most difficult tasks that I have ever +enterprised. The temptation to dilate upon the beauty and intrinsic +interest of the MSS. and upon the characteristic scripts of different +ages and countries is hard to resist. And, indeed, without some slight +elucidation of such matters my readers may be very much at fault. + +I had begun a geographical survey of the field, taking countries as the +units, and had written upon Italy and Spain, and attempted France. But I +found that when the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were reached my +tract was becoming a disquisition upon palaeography, art, and learning, +and, of course, was failing to do justice either to any one of them or +to what it had promised in its title. I now think that a chronological +survey will be more practicable, and that it will be best to take first +the subject of book-production, looking at each country in turn in a +single period, instead of following the course taken by each, from the +sixth century to the fifteenth. + +_Sixth and Seventh Centuries._--Italy, France, and Spain are the main +centres. Ireland is active in learning, and in the second half of the +seventh century England, under Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian, +produces schools which rival the Irish, and, in the person of Bede, has +the greatest scholar of the time. Some of the great Irish monasteries, +such as Bobbio, Luxeuil, St. Gall, are founded on the Continent. + +Books are produced in considerable numbers in Italy, France, Spain; and +from Italy they are exported, especially by English pilgrims, such as +Benedict Biscop. The Gospel harmony written in 546 by or for Bishop +Victor of Capua comes to England, and goes abroad again, with St. +Boniface, perhaps, and now rests at Fulda, where also his body lies. A +copy of St. Jerome on Ecclesiastes, written in Italy in the sixth or +seventh century, has in it the Anglo-Saxon inscription, "The book of +Cuthsuuitha the Abbess." The only Abbess Cuthsuuitha we know of presided +over a nunnery in or near Worcester about 690-700. Her book travelled to +Germany with some British or English missionary, and is at Wuerzburg. +Wuerzburg is an Irish foundation; its apostle and patron, St. Kilian, is +said to have been assassinated in 689. From Italy, too, came (most +likely) the illustrated Gospels now at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge +(286), which belonged once to Christchurch, Canterbury; and the +beautiful little copy of St. John's Gospel at Stonyhurst College, which +was found in the coffin of St. Cuthbert (d. 687) when it was opened in +1104. And St. Gall must have acquired its ancient Virgil from Italy +also--when, we do not know. + +Spain kept her books very much to herself, one would guess, judging from +the very few Spanish MSS. of this age which are to be met with in the +rest of Europe. The guess, however, would not be quite correct. There +was one great Spanish scholar in the seventh century, Isidore of Seville +(636), and his encyclopaedia (The _Etymologies_ or _Origins_), which fed +many later centuries with learning, made its way all over educated +Europe very quickly. Not only so, but we find English scholars (Aldhelm +and Bede) quoting Spanish writers on grammar and Spanish poets who were +almost their own contemporaries. + +_Eighth Century._--This sees the last part of Bede's career (d. +734)--the zenith of English scholarship, the mission of St. Boniface (d. +758) to Germany, the meeting of Alcuin with Charlemagne (781), and the +beginning of the Carolingian Renaissance. But, on the other hand, Spain +is overrun by the Moors, Italy is inert, England begins to be harried +by the Northmen. On the whole, if there really was a Dark Age, the +middle of the eighth century seems to answer the description best. But, +of course, there were points of light. The great centres of Northern +France, such as Corbie and Laon, particularly Corbie, were beginning +their activities of collecting and copying books. Ireland was capable of +producing such a work as the Book of Kells--whether it actually falls +within the century or not I will not be positive, but work of the same +amazing beauty was carried out before 800. Nor was the export of +treasures from Italy to England quite stopped, in spite of difficulties. +At the Plantin Museum at Antwerp is a copy of the writings of the +Christian poet Sedulius, which has pictures of the old Italian sort, +such as we find in the frescoes of the Roman catacombs. In it is a note +connecting it with a Bishop of the name of Cuthwin, who held the East +Anglian see and died about 754. Another MS., at Paris, has a note +describing an elaborately illustrated life of St. Paul, which, it says, +the same Bishop Cuthwin brought with him from Rome. + +_Ninth Century._--There is immense activity, literary and artistic, +afoot at the Court of Charlemagne (d. 814) and of his successors. The +German abbeys--_e.g._, Lorsch, Fulda--and cathedral schools (Mainz, +Bamberg, etc.) are full of scribes and teachers. Irishmen who know +Greek flock to the Continent, driven from home by Danish invasion: such +are Johannes Scottus Eriugena and Sedulius Scottus. They haunt Liege, +Laon, Aix-la-Chapelle, and penetrate to Italy. Not less prolific are the +French houses: at Tours the handwriting called the Carolingian +minuscule, the parent of our modern "Roman" printing, is developed, +though not at Tours alone. At Corbie, Fleury on the Loire, (now called +St. Benoit sur Loire), St. Riquier by Abbeville, Rheims, and many +another centre in Northern and Eastern France, libraries are accumulated +and ancient books copied. Of St. Gall and Reichenau the same may be +said. In Italy, Verona is conspicuous. The archdeacon Pacificus (d. 846) +gave over 200 books to the cathedral, where many of them still are; and +at Monte Cassino, the head house of the Benedictine Order, books were +written in the difficult "Beneventane" hand (which used to be called +Lombardic, and was never popular outside Italy). Spain has its own +special script at this time, the Visigothic, as troublesome to read as +the Beneventane; its _a_'s are like _u_'s and its _t_'s like _a_'s. +England is still overrun by the Danes, and does nothing before the very +end of the century, when King Alfred exerts himself to revive education, +and starts a vernacular literature. + +An enormous proportion of the earliest copies we have of classical Latin +authors come from this century, when old copies of them were actively +sought out and transcribed. Often great liberties in the way of revision +and even abridgment of the text were taken by the scholars of the time, +and, once transcribed, the old archetypes were neglected or even +destroyed. + +Books of very great beauty--Bibles, Gospels, Psalters--were produced for +the Emperors and the great nobles and prelates. In these there is a +marked effort to imitate and continue the traditions of classical art. + +_Tenth Century._--The tradition of study and scholarship lives on, but +the impulse from Britain and Ireland has worked itself out, and few +geniuses are born on the Continent. There is a period of splendour and +vigour in England under the Kings Athelstan and Edgar and the +Archbishops Odo and Dunstan. The calligraphic school of Winchester +achieves magnificent results. At the end of the century the great +teacher and scholar Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II.) is a prominent figure +at the Imperial Court. The Ottos emulate Charlemagne in their zeal for +literature and for fine works of art, but their attainment is slighter. + +_Eleventh Century._--Men still live on the traditions of the Carolingian +Revival in the early part: there is later an awakening, principally, +perhaps, in France and Italy. Great names like those of Anselm, Abelard, +Bernard, come forward. Monastic reform is active; great schools, as at +Chartres, take their rise; there is a preparation for the wonderful +vigour of the next century. The First Crusade brings East and West +together in a new fashion. + +_Twelfth Century._--The strength and energy of Europe is now tremendous +in every department, and not least in that with which we are concerned. +Our libraries are crammed to-day with twelfth-century MSS. The +Gregories, Augustines, Jeromes, Anselms, are numbered by the hundred. It +is the age of great Bibles and of "glosses"--single books or groups of +books of the Bible equipped with a marginal and interlinear comment +(very many of which, by the way, seem to have been produced in North +Italy). Immense, too, is the output of the writers of the time; Bernard, +Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, Peter Comestor, Peter Lombard. The two +last are the authors of two of the most popular of medieval +textbooks--Peter Lombard of the _Sentences_ (a body of doctrine), Peter +Comestor of the _Historia Scholastica_ (a manual of Scripture history). +The Cistercian Order, now founding houses everywhere, is, I think, +specially active in filling its libraries with fine but austerely plain +copies of standard works, eschewing figured decoration in its books, as +in its buildings, and caring little for secular learning. The University +of Paris is the centre of intellectual vigour. + +_Thirteenth Century._--This is commonly regarded as the greatest of all +in medieval history; and truly, when we think of achievements such as +Westminster, Amiens, and Chartres, and of men such as St. Louis, St. +Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis, Dante, Edward I., Roger Bacon, we must +agree that the popular estimate is sound. Certainly we see in France and +in England the fine flower of art in buildings and in books. + +Paris is still the centre. The "Gothic" spirit is concentrated there. +The book trade is enormous. It is passing--under the influence of the +University, most likely--out of the hands of the monastic scribes into +those of the professional "stationers"; while great individual artists, +such as Honore, arise to provide for Royal and noble persons examples of +art which stand as high to-day as when they were first produced. + +It is now that we find a large multiplication of textbooks. If the +twelfth century was the age of great Bibles, the thirteenth is the age +of small ones. Thousands of these exist, written with amazing minuteness +and uniformity. Only less common are the Aristotles, the _Sentences_, +the _Summae_, and the other works of the golden age of scholasticism. The +Orders of Friars, Franciscan and Dominican, form libraries--partly of +duplicates procured from older foundations, partly of new copies to +which they were helped by charitable friends. + +Towards the end of the century Italy comes forward as the great purveyor +of books of a special sort. The University of Bologna becomes the great +law school of Europe, and exports in numbers copies of the immense texts +and commentaries of and upon the Church (Canon) and Roman (Civil) law +which were indispensable to the unfortunate student. These books become +common at the end of the thirteenth century, and run over well into the +fourteenth. They are prettily (but often very carelessly) written in a +round Gothic hand, sometimes christened "Bolognese." Some were not only +written but decorated (with poorish ornament) on the spot, but very many +were exported in sheets and provided, in France or England, with such +decoration as the purchaser could afford. A leading example is a copy of +the Decretals in the British Museum (Royal 10, E. iv.) which belonged to +St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield. It is in Italian script, but on each of +the spacious lower margins of its many pages is a picture by an English +artist; these pictures run in sets, illustrating Bible stories, legends, +and romances. + +As the centuries go on, the material they have left increases in bulk, +and the complication of the threads is proportionately greater. I cannot +hope in a survey like this to give prominence to every factor; but we +shall not be wrong in fixing upon Northern France and England as the +areas of greatest productiveness and the sources of the best art in the +thirteenth century. + +Before we pass to the next century a word must be devoted to a not +unimportant class of books which seem to have been manufactured chiefly +in Picardy and Artois, the illustrated Romances--_e.g._ the Grail and +Lancelot--of great bulk, usually in prose, which served to pass the +winter evenings of persons of quality. A few of these, and a book of +devotions to take to church (oftenest a Psalter at this time; later on a +book of Hours), were the staple books owned by the upper classes. + +_Fourteenth Century._--If the thirteenth century gives us on the whole +the noblest books, the early part of the fourteenth affords the +loveliest. They come from England, France, and the Netherlands. A +noticeable element in their art is that of the grotesque and burlesque, +never, of course, quite absent even from early books, but now most +prominent and most delightful. The defect of the art of this time is +lack of strength and austerity; its delicacy is above praise. + +The middle of the century sees Petrarch, and with him the Renaissance +begins. Italy has been producing great men in every field, but the work +of Petrarch reached farther and was more enduring than that of any +other. + +France, tortured by wars, put forth little in the middle years, but then +came Charles V., a King who was really interested in books, and the +library he formed at the Louvre gave a stimulus to book-production which +spread wide and lasted long. Under Richard II. and through his Queen, +Anne of Bohemia, a foreign influence makes itself felt in England, and +some lovely results are achieved; but on the whole English art is +waning. + +The Universities, and to some extent the monasteries, were throughout +this century great customers for the bulky books of scholastic divinity +(Duns Scotus, Albertus, and the like) and the later generation of +commentators on the Bible, such as Nicolas de Lyra and Hugo de S. Caro. +Many shelves are filled with these. + +_Fifteenth Century._--The fifteenth century is our last; it ends the MS. +period. Under the influence of the Renaissance, now enormously potent, +every Italian noble forms a library. The scholars are seeking out the +ninth-century copies of the classics, and they discard the Gothic +(black-letter) hands of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in +favour of the Carolingian minuscule (or, some say that of the twelfth +century). As early as 1426 we find books written in a script adapted and +refined from this; we call it a Roman hand, though the great centre of +its propagation seems to have been Florence. In all essentials it is the +parent of the type in which this page will be printed. + +Italy, then, is the hub of the universe for books; and in Italy, +Florence, Naples, and Rome are the most active _nuclei_. We have a +record written by a Florentine bookseller, Vespasiano Bisticci, in the +form of short biographies of great persons, many of whom had dealt with +him. For some he provided whole libraries, as for Frederick, Duke of +Urbino, whose books are now mostly in the Vatican. Such a man as this +would not look at a printed book--which in Vespasiano's mind is, of +course, very greatly to his credit; for the press was bound to put an +end to his particular industry. We still find, by the way, this +prejudice against print in the very last years of the century. Some rich +persons had MS. copies actually made from printed editions and +elaborately illustrated. Such a one was Raphael de Marcatellis, natural +son of Philip the Good of Burgundy and titular Bishop of Rhossus, near +Antioch.[B] Part of his library may be found at Ghent, part at Holkham, +and stray volumes at Cambridge (Peterhouse) and in the Arundel +collection at the British Museum. They are very handsome books, and many +have full-page paintings by capable artists, but the resulting +impression is on the whole that of decadence. + +Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary (d. 1490), is a name famous among old +bibliophiles. He got together a library of fine books, mostly recent +copies made for him, and it was dispersed and sacked by the Turks in +1526. It is spoken of with bated breath by the old writers, as if it had +contained priceless treasures. I am sceptical. + +Ferdinand of Aragon and Calabria was a collector of the same kind, whose +beautiful books, adorned with his arms in the lower margin of the first +page, are many of them at Valencia, having passed to the University +there by way of the Abbey of St. Miguel de Los Reyes. These are of +Italian and not of Spanish manufacture, and very fine they are. + +These last-mentioned libraries have been scattered, but there are still +some of the Renaissance period which survive in their original homes. +The Laurentian at Florence and the Vatican at Rome stand at the head of +all. With regard to the latter it may be said that though earlier Popes, +of course, had libraries (that of Avignon was quite considerable), yet +Nicholas V. (d. 1455) must be regarded as the founder of the Vatican +library in its present state. So, too, the Marciana at Venice and the +Malatestiana at Cesena must rank as genuine Renaissance collections. + +It was not only the great men who loved to have books. The tribe of +scholars, foreign as well as native, who coveted them was numerous. +Every library now has its quota of humbler copies of the classics, often +on paper, in the Roman or the more cursive Italic hand, not written by a +professional scribe. Often these are of infinitesimal value, +transcripts of extant copies of no greater age; but there is always the +possibility that they may be a competent scholar's own careful apograph +of some ancient MS. which a Poggio had unearthed at St. Gall, and which +has since vanished. A glance at the _apparatus criticus_ of a few +editions of classics will show that often a fifteenth-century MS. ranks +high among the authorities for the text. Pedigree is what matters, not +beauty of hand, nor, necessarily, date. + +It has been the fate of these scholars' books, as it is the fate of all +MSS., to be absorbed into great libraries, and many of them lurk there +still unexamined and their origin undetermined. Discoveries, no doubt, +yet remain to be made among them. + +Whether or not a breath of influence from Italy was the cause, it is +plain that library-making was popular in countries and circles which +were not obviously affected by the Renaissance. The monasteries of +England were certainly not so affected, yet we find many of them setting +their books in order and building special rooms to contain them. +Christchurch at Canterbury and Bury St. Edmunds are leading instances. +Now, too, Universities and colleges made fresh catalogues, and received +large accessions of books. + +If the Renaissance did not touch the English public as a whole in this +century, it made some proselytes. Among Englishmen who dealt with our +Florentine Vespasiano were John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, Humphrey, +Duke of Gloucester, William Gray, Bishop of Ely, Andrew Holes, of Wells. +Others who resorted to Italy were John Free, Thomas Linacre, John +Gunthorpe, Dean of Wells, William Flemming, Dean of Lincoln, William +Tilley of Sellinge, Prior of Christchurch, Canterbury. We shall see +later on what traces some of these have left on our libraries. + +In places to which the Italian influence did not penetrate the humdrum +trade of copying went on. Anselm, Bernard, and Augustine; sermon-books +by the score; Burley on Aristotle, etc. Then, in another class, the +production of books for use in church was very large. There were few +Bibles, but Missals, Breviaries, large choir-books to be laid on the +lectern, Graduals and Processionals, are legion. Then, again, every +well-to-do person must have his or her Book of Hours, illuminated if +possible. Such things were common wedding-presents, it seems. Upon the +best of them really great artists were employed, like Foucquet of Tours +and Gerard David; we even find Perugino painting a page in one, but the +average are shop work made for the Italian market at Naples or Florence, +for the French at Paris, Tours, or Rouen, for the English very often at +Bruges, where also many sumptuous chronicle books and French versions +of secular history and romances were turned out. Edward IV. had a +considerable number of such in his library. + +These private Prayer Books are, of course, incomparably the commonest of +all illuminated manuscripts. They vary from loveliness to +contemptibility. Perversely, they figure in catalogues, and are lettered +on their backs, as Missals; our ancestors of the eighteenth and +nineteenth centuries forgot that a Missal must contain the service of +the Mass, and that none of these books do. + +There, then, is a second survey of our ground, somewhat more detailed +than the first, but woefully sketchy. Everyone who has studied MSS. of +any class or period would detect omissions in it which for him would +vitiate the whole story. The best I can hope is that the assertions in +it are not incorrect, and that it gives a true notion of the general +course of book-production in medieval times. + + +WANDERINGS OF LATIN MSS.: THE CONTINENT + +We are now to concern ourselves with the later destinies of the books +which we have seen in the making. Here generalities will be less in +place; nevertheless, I must begin with some. + +There are two main classes of persons interested in MSS.: those who care +for their literary contents, and those who prize them for their artistic +beauty. Roughly speaking--very roughly--the precious literary things of +ancient times were preserved in monastic and cathedral libraries, and +the beautiful things in palaces and castles and church treasuries. I do +not forget that poetry and romance in the vernacular were chiefly in the +hands of the laity, nor do I depreciate their value as literature. + +The ancient books, pagan and Christian, are perhaps to be regarded as +the backbone of the subject, and therefore the first part of my enquiry +shall be devoted to the ecclesiastical libraries, and considerations of +space shall rule me on the other head. + +The monastic and cathedral libraries can be best treated by countries. +France, Germany, and England will serve as specimens. Of Italy perhaps +enough has been said incidentally to attract attention to the most +important centres, such as Bobbio, Monte Cassino, and Verona, and upon +the whole I do not think that in Italy this class of library played so +great a part in the later Middle Ages as it did in the rest of Europe. + +France is full of Latin MSS. Every considerable town, besides many that +are inconsiderable, has its public library, into which at the Revolution +were collected the remains of the libraries of the religious houses of +the district. France's Dissolution came at a time when many eyes were +open to the possible value of ancient books, and strings could be +pulled and influence exercised to stem the unreasoning fury that said: + + We'll pull all arts and learning down, + And hey, then, up go we! + +It is easier, also, to rescue books than buildings. The Revolutionists +tore down a cathedral, and it is gone; but books are portable and, +moreover, do not burn or tear or drown easily, especially vellum MSS.; +and when the first hurricane of idiocy had blown over they were very +likely found, rather dustier than before, still on their shelves. + +Nowadays our methods are more effective, of course; but I have said as +much about that as I can bear. + +If, then, one took a map of France and marked down the principal abbeys, +one would have a fair _prima-facie_ indication where to look for their +MSS. From Corbie, you would say, they went to Amiens, from Citeaux to +Dijon, from Bec and Mont St. Michel to Avranches, and so on. This would +be right, but there are exceptions. Corbie, a specially important +library, is one. + +When in 1636 the French under Louis XIII. regained that territory from +the Spaniards, the precarious situation of its treasures was recognized, +and 400 select MSS. were taken to Paris. The Reformed Benedictines of +the Congregation of St. Maur had done much at Corbie for the +preservation of the books, and they now petitioned that the Corbie MSS. +might not be alienated from the Order, "n' ayant personne qui soit si +jaloux de conserver l'heritage de leurs peres que les propres enfants." +The petition was successful, and the MSS. were placed in the Abbey of +St. Germain des Pres at Paris. This was in 1638. In 1791, during the +Revolutionary troubles, there was a fire at the abbey, and in the +confusion a batch of early books was stolen. These came into the hands +of a Russian envoy, Dubrowsky, and most of them, if not all, are (or +were until a more recent Revolution) in the Imperial Library at +Petrograd. The rest, still a great collection, were drafted out of St. +Germain into the National Library in 1795-96. Meanwhile a large number +(including some very important books) had remained at Corbie, and these +did go to Amiens in or about 1791. + +But before 1636 Corbie MSS. had begun to stray from home. One fairly +clear case seems to be that of the Harley MS. 3,063, which was once in +the library founded late in the fifteenth century at Cues, on the +Moselle, by Cardinal Nicholas of Cues (_Cusanus_). It is one of two +copies of the Latin version of Theodore of Mopsuestia's Commentary on +the Pauline Epistles. The other is a Corbie book at Amiens. Both show +the same gaps and blanks in the text, but the one is not believed to be +a direct copy of the other. Both go back to a common original. + +Other Corbie books are at Montpellier. They had a long roundabout +journey to get there. Part of a magnificent collection formed by +successive Bouhiers (seven of whom were Presidents of the Parlement de +Bourgogne, and lived at Dijon), they were bought in 1781 from the heir +of the last Bouhier by the last Abbot but one of Clairvaux. Then, when +Clairvaux was suppressed at the Revolution, its library went to Troyes. +Government commissioners were sent round to look through the +departmental libraries and note the most valuable MSS. and printed +books. One of those who visited Troyes was a Montpellier professor, Dr. +Prunelle. The 300 and odd MSS. which he put aside would, if precedent +had been followed, have gone to Paris, but they did in fact go to the +famous old school of medicine at Montpellier, and there they are at this +day. + +One at least of the remarkable collection given by Archbishop Parker to +Corpus Christi College at Cambridge (193), is a Corbie book--a product +evidently of the Corbie _scriptorium_, though it bears on its first leaf +the traces of an inscription of ownership which, illegible as it is, +does seem to be that of another monastery. Parker's is, on the whole, so +English a collection that the presence of this early French book arrests +attention. It does not, however, stand quite alone; there is a rather +similar one (334) which Professor Lindsay tells me is a Laon book of +about the same (eighth-century) date. + +Corbie has occupied a considerable space, but it is entitled to do so on +several accounts. The number of early MSS. traceable to it is very +large, their intrinsic interest is high, and for a third reason I may +again quote Professor Lindsay as having decided, from a minute study of +the abbreviations used by Corbie scribes, that Anglo-Saxon influences +were at work in the formation of its peculiar hand. + +Corbie was, as I have hinted before, but one of many venerable centres +of learning in the northern half of France. I shall not attempt a list +of them, but go on to note one salient fact, that the southern half of +the country is noticeably the poorer in MSS. + +At Autun and Lyons, both of them magnificent cities in Roman times, some +very ancient books did linger, and here is room for a digression. Lyons +had a Pentateuch in Latin which was a great rarity, for not only was it +in uncials of the fifth century, but it was of the Old Latin version, +that made from the Greek before St. Jerome made his version from the +Hebrew, which we call the Vulgate. + +Rather before the middle of the nineteenth century an Italian adventurer +of some learning and little virtue, the Chevalier Guglielmo (etc.) +Libri, obtained employment under the French Government in the Department +of Public Instruction, and was sent on a tour of inspection among +provincial libraries. He made this the occasion for increasing a +collection of MSS. which he had already begun for his private uses. +Where he found that the town librarian was a good easy man, he removed +(silently) from his keeping a selection of the most precious volumes, +or, if it seemed unsafe to take the whole of a MS., he detached some few +quires. Now and then he left a less valuable book in the place of the +other. His best hunting-grounds were Tours, Orleans, and Lyons. At Lyons +he conveyed away the Book of Leviticus and part of Numbers out of the +Pentateuch. He had skilled workmen in his pay at Paris, who wrote names +of other (generally Italian) monasteries and former owners on the first +page of the stolen books, and otherwise disguised them; when he had made +up a selection of a suitable bulk and attractiveness, he looked about +for a wealthy purchaser, and found one in the Earl of Ashburnham, who +bought _en bloc_, and whose manuscripts were not readily made accessible +to the public. So the Lyons Leviticus and an illustrated sixth-century +Pentateuch from Tours and many other precious things from Fleury (near +Orleans) and elsewhere reposed in England until the early eighties, when +M. Leopold Delisle made public the result of a most patient and most +subtle investigation of the whole fraud, and a selection of the best of +the plunder was got back for France. Sad to say, the municipalities +which had been most negligent in keeping their MSS. refused to +contribute to the recovery of them. They are still at Paris, to the +advantage of students, but to the discredit of the provinces. + +Meanwhile Libri's reputation had been thoroughly blown upon, and he +retired from France, and was dead in Italy or elsewhere before his +crimes had been atoned for. A great mass of his accumulations was bought +from the Ashburnhams by the Italians and is now at Florence. Madame +Libri survived, like Madame Fosco, to defend his memory. + +To return. In spite of the long history and great wealth of Bordeaux, +Marseilles, Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, you will not trace many famous +books to those places. The city which, on the whole, has preserved its +early manuscripts best is Albi, but it was never a great centre of +learning, and its library, though extremely interesting, is not large. + +However, we need not be surprised at the poverty of a region which has +had to undergo Albigensian crusades, English occupation, wars of +religion, and a revolution. + +Some of the great early libraries of Germany were mentioned in our +historical survey. Fulda and Lorsch were as remarkable as any. At the +present day Fulda retains only the few Bonifacian MSS. which rank as +relics of the saint--the blood-stained volume of Ambrose which was on +Boniface when the pagans killed him, his pocket copy of the Gospels, +the MS. written for Victor of Capua. The bulk of its abbey library, +which remained together until the close of the sixteenth century, is +dispersed and gone, no one knows where. Some books are at Cassel in the +ducal library. Lorsch has nothing _in situ_, but a good deal in the +Vatican. Both houses were instrumental in preserving the classics; we +owe to them Suetonius, Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus, and part of Livy. + +The Thirty Years' War was responsible for a good deal of dispersion. +Cargoes of books made their way to England, and Archbishop Laud bought +and gave to the Bodleian many from Wuerzburg and Erfuert; in the Arundel +collection at the British Museum the German contingent is large. Sweden +also profited at this time, and got its lovely _Codex Aureus_ (once at +Canterbury), its _Codex Argenteus_ (the Gothic Gospels at Upsala), and +its _Gigas_, or Devil's Bible, which came from Prague. + +In the Revolutionary period there was extensive secularization of +abbeys, and whole libraries passed into central depots, as at Munich, +which has the MSS. of St. Emmeram of Ratisbon and of Tegernsee, +Benedictbeuern, Schaeftlarn, and many other houses. Those of the old and +rich foundation of Reichenau passed to Carlsruhe. Precious books, like +the gold-covered Gospels of Lindau, were exported. This particular gem +was bought by Lord Ashburnham, and in recent years has gone to America. +Fine Gospels and other service-books from Weingarten are at Holkham; +they appeal to the Englishman, for they contain pictures of our sainted +King Oswald, of whom Weingarten owned a relic. + +North Germany's contribution is far inferior to that of Bavaria and the +Rhine provinces. The inhabitants of large regions were pagans till a +late date (some might say they were so still), and have never, we +conceive, been really civilized. Few books were made there before the +fourteenth century, and I know of no good libraries that existed there +in the medieval period. A good part of the contents of one at Elbing, +near Dantzic, came somehow to Cambridge (Corpus Christi) in the +seventeenth century; it is a dreary collection, mostly on paper, of +scholastic theology, sermons, meditations, and a little medicine. + +In Austria the abbeys were let alone till 1918. Such houses as Melk on +the Danube, St. Florian, St. Paul in Carinthia, Admont in Styria, still +owned their estates, their revenues, and their libraries. That of Melk +is noticeable, and at St. Paul is, oddly enough, one of the very +earliest Irish vernacular MSS. I believe it came thither in fairly +recent times from St. Blasien in the Black Forest. But, on the whole, +these places were too remote from the main stream to accumulate many +treasures of the very first quality. + + +LATIN MSS. IN ENGLAND + +Let me now turn to England, and treat in greater detail of the monastic +and cathedral libraries there, and what happened to them. The +Dissolution, as we know, occurred here near on 400 years ago, which +makes the task of tracing the books at once harder and more fascinating +than in the case of France or Germany, where a whole library may be +found practically intact in a town near its old home. Of course, what +was done there ought to have been done here. Leland, the King's +antiquary, the abusive Protestant, John Bale, and the foolish but +learned Dr. John Dee, begged that it might be done. Yet, whatever Henry +VIII's or Mary's or Elizabeth's intentions may have been at times as to +the foundation of a "solempne library" where the ancient books of the +realm might be stored, they got but a very little way. Leland did secure +some MSS. for the Royal Library, perhaps most from Rochester, but upon +the whole the work was left in Elizabeth's days to individual +enthusiasts--Sir Robert Cotton, Archbishop Parker, and Dee and Bale +themselves. Others who did good work were Henry Fitzalan, Earl of +Arundel; Lord William Howard; Long Harry Savile of Bank; Laurence +Nowell, who rescued Anglo-Saxon books; Nicholas Brigam, who was +interested in English literature and built Chaucer's tomb in the Abbey; +the Theyers of Brockworth, near Gloucester. These are names to some of +which we shall return; it would be well at this moment to take a few +libraries one by one and see what can be said of them. + + +CATALOGUES OF MSS. + +But, first, what are our means for pursuing such an investigation? We +are best off if we have a catalogue of our abbey library, and preferably +a late one; for in that case not only will the library be at its +fullest, but probably the cataloguer will have set down, after the title +of each book, the first words of its second leaf. Does this need +explanation? Perhaps. In MSS., unlike printed books, the first words of +the second leaf will be different in any two copies, say, of the Bible; +the scribes did not make a page for page or line for line copy of their +archetype--in fact, they may probably have avoided doing so purposely. +By the help of such a catalogue we can search through collections of +MSS., noting the second leaves in each case, and, it may be, identifying +a considerable number of books. It is a laborious but an interesting +process. + +But, alas! such catalogues are very few; we have them for Durham, St. +Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury (and partly also for Christchurch), St. +Paul's Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, Dover Priory, the Austin Friars of +York (all now in print), and for not many more. + +Next best it is to have a catalogue enumerating the contents of each +volume; and next, and commonest, one which gives usually but a single +title to each. Among the most useful I reckon those of Christchurch, +Canterbury, Peterborough (an anomalous one), Glastonbury, Bury St. +Edmunds, Rochester, Dover, Lincoln, Leicester Abbey (not yet printed in +full), Ramsey, Rievaulx, Lanthony-by-Gloucester, Titchfield. There are a +good many short catalogues for smaller houses, written on the fly-leaves +of books, which do not, as a rule, help us much. The list of monastic +catalogues, however, is dreadfully defective. We have none for St. +Albans or Norwich or Crowland or Westminster, for Gloucester or +Worcester, St. Mary's, York, or Fountains. What do we do in such cases? + + +THE EVIDENCE OF MSS. THEMSELVES + +We have to depend, of course, on the evidence of the MSS. themselves. It +was happily a common practice to write on the fly-leaf or first leaf +_Liber (Sancte Marie) de (tali loco)_. This is decisive. Then, again, +some libraries devised a system of press-marks, such as "N. lxviii.," +let us say. You find this in conjunction with the inscription of +ownership; it is a Norwich book, you discover, that you have in hand, +and all books showing press-marks of that form are consequently Norwich +books too. Or you will find the name of a donor. "This book was the gift +of John Danyell, Prior." Search in Dugdale's _Monasticon_ will reveal, +perhaps, that John Danyell was Prior of St. Augustine's, Bristol, in +1459. A clue to locality will often be given in such a case by the +monk's surname, for it was their custom to call themselves by the name +of their native village. Thus, a monk named John Melford or William +Livermere will be a Suffolk man, and the abbey in which he was professed +is likely to be Bury. Coming to later times, it is apparent that at the +Dissolution groups of books from a single abbey came into the hands of a +single man. If I find Dakcombe on the fly-leaf of a MS., I am almost +entitled to assume that it is a Winchester book: John Stonor got his +books from Reading Abbey, John Young drew from Fountains, and so forth. +Lastly, and most rarely, you are justified in saying that the +handwriting and decoration of this or that book shows it to have been +written at St. Albans or at Canterbury. Hitherto the instances where +this is possible are few, but I do not doubt that multiplication of +observations will add to their number. + +In questioning a MS. for any of these indications (except the last) you +must be on the look-out for signs of erasures, especially on the margins +of the first leaf and on the fly-leaves at either end. Here the owner's +name was usually written. Often it was accompanied by a curse on the +wrongful possessor, and at the Dissolution there were many wrongful +possessors, who, whether disliking the curse or anticipating trouble +from possible buyers, thought it well to erase name, and curse, and all. +They seldom did it so thoroughly that the surface of the vellum does not +betray where it was, and it can be revived by the dabbing (_not_ +painting) upon it of ammonium bisulphide, which, unlike the +old-fashioned galls, does not stain the page. Dabbed on the surface with +a soft paint-brush, and dried off at once with clean blotting paper, it +makes the old record leap to light, sometimes with astonishing +clearness, sometimes slowly, so that the letters cannot be read till +next day. It is not always successful; it is of no use to apply it to +writing in red, and its smell is overpowering, but it is the elixir of +palaeographers. + +Yet, when all has been done, there is a sadly large percentage of MSS. +which preserve an obstinate silence. They have been rebound (that is +common), and have lost their fly-leaves in the process, or, worse than +that, they have lain tossing about without a binding and their first and +last quires have dropped away. In such cases we can only tell, from our +previous experience in ancient handwritings, the date and country of +their origin. + + +ENGLISH LIBRARIES + +And now to turn to some individual libraries. Some of the most venerable +have practically disappeared--that of Glastonbury, for instance, the +premier abbey of England, the only one which lived through from British +to Saxon times.[C] To it we might reasonably look to trace many an +ancient book belonging to the days of the old British Church. Leland, +who visited the library not long before the Dissolution, represents +himself as overawed by its antiquity. But almost the only record he +quotes is one by "Melkinus," which most modern writers think was a late +forgery. However, there is in the Bodleian one British book from +Glastonbury, written, at least in part, in Cornwall, and preserving +remnants of the learning of the British clergy. It has portions of Ovid +and of Latin grammar, and passages of the Bible in Greek and Latin. The +catalogue, too, shows that there were in fact a good number of old MSS., +and also that the monks of the fourteenth century did not care much +about them, for they are marked as "Old and useless," "Old and in bad +condition" (_debilis_), and so on. The actual extant books which we can +trace to this foundation are few and for the most part late. + +St. Albans, founded by King Offa in the eighth century, has left us, as +I said, no catalogue, but there are many of its books in our libraries. +Two groups of them stand out. First are those procured by Abbot Simon +(1166-1188) and Prior Mathias. These are very finely written. A typical +and very interesting specimen is a Bible at Eton (26) which has three +columns to a page--a rare distinction in the twelfth century, pointing, +perhaps, to its having been copied from a very early and venerable +model. It has a sister book at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and another--a +New Testament--at Trinity College, Dublin. Then we have a large and +important group of histories. The historiographers of St. Albans form a +series reaching from Roger of Wendover (d. 1236) to Thomas Walsingham +(d. 1422). The greatest of them was Matthew Paris (d. 1259). We have +authentic and even autograph copies of many of these works, and +especially of Paris's (at Corpus Christi, Cambridge (26 and 16), and in +the British Museum, Royal 14, C. vii., Cotton Nero D. 1, etc.). And we +have not only Paris's writing, but many of his drawings, for he was an +accomplished artist. All these books furnish us with material for +judging of the handwriting used at St. Albans in the twelfth and +thirteenth centuries, and we can speak with fair confidence of St. +Albans books of that period. + +As in other cases, I believe that many books were written there for +other monasteries, either as gifts or as a matter of business. Not every +one of the little priories scattered all over the country had its own +scriptorium; it was only natural that they should apply to the big +establishments when they wanted a Bible or service-book or commentary of +really good quality. This practice explains the fact that we quite often +find books which we could make oath are products of St. Albans or of +Canterbury, and which yet have inscriptions, written when they were new +books, showing that they were owned by some small house. Let me here +note two other ways in which books wandered from the great abbeys. +_One_: all the abbey libraries were full of duplicates; read any +catalogue, and you will realize that. When the Orders of Friars were +collecting libraries of their own, and when the colleges in the two +Universities were doing the same, they found that the monks were often +willing to part with one of their eight or nine sets of Gregory's +_Moralia_ or Augustine _On the Trinity_ for a consideration. _Two_: most +of the large abbeys maintained hostels at the Universities, singly or +jointly, in which some of their younger members studied for degrees. +These hostels were equipped with libraries, and the libraries were +furnished from the shelves of the mother-houses. We have at least two +lists of books so used: one of those which Durham sent to what is now +Trinity College, Oxford; the other of those which Christchurch, +Canterbury, deported to Canterbury College, Oxford, which stood on the +site of Canterbury Quad, in Christ Church. + +There was some compensation, by the way: the abbeys were not invariably +the losers. A group of books (at Lambeth) was procured to be written by +a Canon of Lanthony when he was studying at Oxford (about 1415), and +given to the library of his priory. + +We have digressed from the particular to the general. Returning to +individual libraries, let us glance at the Norwich Cathedral Priory. Of +this, again, we have no catalogue; it is a case in which press-marks and +names of owners are our guides. Norwich has a system of press-marks +consisting of a letter of the alphabet plus a Roman numeral: "N. +lxviii." The press-marks of several other houses consist of just the +same elements, but we can pick out that of Norwich by its size (not +large) and its position (top of the first leaf of text); also there is +usually added to it the name of the monk who procured it for the house, +Henry de Lakenham or W. Catton--someone whose surname is the name of a +Norfolk village. Over a hundred MSS. from Norwich are known to me, but +they are a very small fraction of the library, as is shown by the +numerals attached to the several class letters. Very few of them are as +old as the twelfth century; late twelfth and particularly early +fourteenth make up the bulk. I attribute this to the great fire of 1286, +and I take it that then the greater part of the priory books were +spoiled, and that energetic steps to refill the library were taken in +the years that followed. There are more Norwich books in the University +Library at Cambridge than anywhere else; it has not been proved, but I +do not much doubt, that most of them were given by the chapter to +Cambridge about 1574, at the suggestion of Dr. Andrew Perne, Master of +Peterhouse, who was a member of the cathedral body and an enthusiast for +the University Library. + +Not very dissimilar was the action of Exeter Chapter, who in 1602 gave +over eighty of their MSS. to Sir Thomas Bodley's new library in Oxford, +Bodley's brother being then a Canon of Exeter; and not long after the +Canons of Worcester picked out a score of their MSS., for Dean +Williams's new library at Westminster Abbey. These, however, I believe +were never actually sent off. It is just as well, for the Westminster +MSS. were burnt in 1694. Of Bury St. Edmunds I have attempted to write +the history elsewhere, but it is not likely that many readers of this +book will be familiar with my former publication. The only catalogue we +have for this abbey is an early one (eleventh to twelfth century) +written on the fly-leaves of a copy of Genesis (glossed) at Pembroke +College, Cambridge. Thus it contains no fourteenth or fifteenth century +books, nor, indeed, has it many entries of extant books of earlier date +which we are sure belonged to Bury; but it is not to be despised, though +we depend more upon press-marks than upon it for guidance. Bury +press-marks were an introduction of the late fourteenth or early +fifteenth century. Soon after 1400 Abbot Curteys built a library, and it +was under the care of the monk, John Boston, who, I think, is +responsible for the press-marks, as he certainly is for the copious +bibliographical notices which occurred in some of the books. The +press-marks consist of a capital letter and an _arabic_ numeral (A. +130). Here, again, one has to be familiar with the handwriting of the +marks and their position (top of first leaf and fly-leaf) in order to +distinguish them from those of Exeter (often on last fly-leaf and large) +or of the Hereford Franciscans (large, on first fly-leaf). However, in +most cases they are backed up by the older inscription _Liber S. AEdmundi +regis et martiris_. Bury library has, on the whole, fared well; an +Alderman of Ipswich, William Smart, procured over 100 of its MSS., which +he gave to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1599, and about 150 others +are scattered up and down the country. One Bury book of extreme +interest--not a library book, but a register--was taken across the +Channel in the sixteenth century by a Bury monk to the settlement of +the Benedictine refugees at Douai. Since the Revolution it has been +(_perhaps_ still is) in the town library there. Its importance is that +it contains a list of the benefactors of the abbey, and among other +things records the burial-places of the Abbots, including the famous +Samson. In recent years it has guided excavators to the discovery of his +bones. With it is a Psalter of extraordinary beauty, one of a group of +marvellous books done in East Anglia--some say at Gorleston--soon after +1300. I grieve to hear that it has been severely damaged by damp. It has +in it the name of an Abbot, John, who, I wish to believe, was of Bury, +but doubt is thrown on this. + + +ENGLISH MSS. ON THE CONTINENT + +A digression is allowable here as to English books that have passed to +the Continent. According to Bale and Dee, there was a great expatriation +of them at the Dissolution. In Archbishop Parker's correspondence there +is talk of the negotiations of a German scholar, Flacius Illyricus, who +wanted to buy Bale's MSS. after his death. At an earlier time Poggio +visited England in the hope of unearthing classical authors, but writes +as if he had been unsuccessful. Then, again, Sigismund Gelenius in 1550 +edits at Basel treatises of Tertullian from a MS. belonging to the Abbey +of "Masbury" (which I take to be Malmesbury), lent to him by Leland. +More instances could no doubt be collected, but not, I think, very many +more. When we come to enquire what English books are to be found now in +Continental libraries, the results are not very impressive. I exclude +the very early exportations, some of which have been mentioned, and +confine myself to the books which were taken over at and after the +Dissolution. There is a Bury Psalter with drawings at the Vatican, a St. +Albans Psalter at Hildesheim, a fine Book of Hours at Nuremberg, a +Winchester Pontifical at Rouen, a Sherborne Book at Paris, a Ramsey +Psalter at an Austrian abbey, another English Psalter at the Escurial. +The Canterbury _Codex Aureus_ is at Stockholm. The famous Utrecht +Psalter, written, perhaps, in the Rheims district, strayed from the +Cotton collection to its present home in Holland, we do not know how. +All these, and some other remarkable illuminated books that could be +named (I ought not to omit a Peterborough Psalter at Brussels), are not +library books, but rather properties of great ecclesiastics or nobles. +The largest collections have never yet been thoroughly searched. I +myself have made many enquiries and some examinations with small result. +One case there is, however, brought to light by the late Rev. H. M. +Bannister, which gives hope of better things when a systematic search is +carried out. He found that in the Vatican Library there are quite a +large number of MSS. from the libraries of the Friars at Cambridge. They +are late and not very important books, but no matter for that: the point +is that they are there. Other instances known to me are--one at least of +Sir Kenelm Digby's MSS. and one of Lord Burleigh's (a fourteenth-century +volume of English historians) at Paris; the Greek Demosthenes already +noticed at Leyden, and a MS. from Pembroke College (Seneca), also there. +The Vossian collection at the same place has other books which I suspect +were once in England; most notable is its Suidas, which is said by M. +Bidez to be the parent of the English copies I mentioned, and which I +think must be Grosseteste's own copy. This, however, is a Greek MS. A +volume containing poems of Milo of St. Amand is most likely a Canterbury +book. But the early books in Irish script, of which there are several, +were probably written on the Continent. + +At Wolfenbuettel is a "Wycliffe" Bible, large and handsome, which +belonged to Lord Lumley (d. 1609), and also a copy of Gervase of Tilbury +(that from which the text was first printed by Leibnitz) from the +library of St. Augustine of Canterbury. There, too, are many MSS. +collected by Flacius Illyricus, who made purchases in England. He +printed many of the rhyming Latin poems attributed to Walter Map; for a +good many his edition is the only authority, his MSS. having +disappeared. I had hoped to find some of them at Wolfenbuettel, but they +do not seem to be there. What I did find was a small group of MSS. from +St. Andrews in Scotland, containing rhyming poems set to music; they are +books of the thirteenth century, well written and decorated. Scotch +monastic MSS. are of rare occurrence. There are few enough in Scotland +itself, not many in England, and, of course, still fewer anywhere else. +At Upsala is a book written by Clement Maydestone of Sion for Wadstena, +the Swedish mother-house of the Brigittine Order to which he belonged. + +There were probably some English books at Turin, which was a mixed +collection, but the fire of 1904 has made away with them. The old +catalogue by Pasini notices at least one service-book with English +saints. But it is time to bring this excursus to an end. Let me only add +that the most famous English book on the Continent--the Vercelli MS. of +Anglo-Saxon poems and homilies--seems to have been where it is now since +the thirteenth or fourteenth century. + + +REMAINS OF MEDIEVAL LIBRARIES + +Once again we return to these shores, and now we will enquire what +medieval libraries, besides those we have glanced at, have left really +considerable remains. Some few have kept their books _in situ_--the +monastic cathedrals of Durham and Worcester best of all; each has some +hundreds of MSS. The secular cathedrals, Lincoln, Hereford, Salisbury, +come next. Rochester has nothing on the spot, but a great many MSS. in +the old Royal Library in the British Museum. The two great libraries of +Canterbury (Christchurch and St. Augustine's) are well represented, but +their books are much scattered. Winchester, York, Exeter, have few but +precious books. + +There are important MSS. from Thorney at the Advocates Library, +Edinburgh; from St. Mary's York, at Dublin; not a few from Cirencester +at Jesus College, Oxford, and at Hereford; St. John's, Oxford, has many +from Reading and from Southwick (Hants). There must, I am sure, be many +Peterborough books to be found, but they are rarely marked as such, and +the character of the catalogue makes identification very hard. + +Of all minor libraries, that of Lanthony, near Gloucester, has, I +believe, been best preserved. A great block of it was retained by the +last Prior of the house, John Hart, who retired to a country house near +by, and whose sister married a man of good position, Theyer, in the +neighbourhood. He kept the books together, and had descendants who +valued them and added largely to their number. At the end of the +sixteenth century Archbishop Bancroft conceived the idea of founding a +library at Lambeth for his successors, and he seems to have bought +about 150 Lanthony MSS. from Theyer,[D] which are now at Lambeth. Other +Lanthony books are at Trinity and Corpus Christi, Oxford. A +fourteenth-century catalogue of the books among the Harley MSS. shows +that we possess at least a third of the whole collection. + +Examples of the press-marks used by the various houses have been +collected by the New Palaeographical Society, and may be seen in their +publications. They are, of course, most useful in cases where the +inscription of ownership has not been inserted or has disappeared. The +second case may be that of any book; the first is common to the +Canterbury libraries, to Dover, the London Dominicans, St. Mary's York, +Fountains, Titchfield, Ely. To the press-marks figured by the Society +more will doubtless be added. I can instance one, that of the +Franciscans of Lincoln, which is of this form: [Illustration: Symbol]. + + +DISAPPEARANCE OF CLASSICAL AND OTHER MSS. + +Passing over the painful subject of the wholesale destruction of MSS. +which must have followed the Dissolution, I will give a few lines to an +interesting question little mooted as yet. Is there evidence that +England possessed many ancient writings which have since disappeared, or +which have survived only in a few copies in other parts of Europe? Take +the classics first. Poggio, as I have said, writes in a disappointed +tone of his researches here, but these were neither long nor exhaustive. +We have better testimony from John of Salisbury, who in the twelfth +century quotes parts of the _Saturnalia_ of Macrobius which have dropped +out of all the MSS. we now have. He also read a tract attributed to +Plutarch, called the _Instruction of Trajan_; it was probably not by +Plutarch, but it was an ancient work, and is now lost. Petronius Arbiter +was known to him, even that longest and most interesting piece of +Petronius called the _Supper of Trimalchio_, for which our only +authority is the late paper MS. at Paris that was found in Dalmatia in +the seventeenth century. But no medieval English scholar can be shown to +have read Tacitus, or the lost parts of Livy, or Catullus, Tibullus, +Propertius, or others of the rarer Latin authors. Next for Christian +antiquity. The Vercelli MS. gives a poetical version in Anglo-Saxon of +the Acts of St. Andrew in the land of the Anthropophagi which have +ceased to exist in Latin (so, too, AElfric knew, and rejected, a poem on +the adventures of St. Thomas in India). In one of its Homilies the same +Vercelli MS. presents us with a translation of the Apocalypse of St. +Thomas, a book of which until recently only the name was known. Two +early MSS. contain short quotations in Latin from Cosmas Indicopleustes, +a traveller of Justinian's time whose work remains only in a few +copies, and is in Greek. Another has a fragment of the lost _Book of +Jannes and Jambres_; another a chapter of the _Book of Enoch_, valuable +as one of our few indications that a Latin version of it was current. +John of Salisbury quotes a story about St. Paul which seems to come from +the ancient apocryphal Acts of that Apostle. First on the list (twelfth +century) of the library of Lincoln Minster (but lined through as if +subsequently lost) is a title _Proverbia Grecorum_. What this book was +is obscure; probably it was a translation from Greek by an Irish +scholar. It is quoted extensively by Sedulius, the Irishman, and also in +a collection of treatises by an unknown York writer (the Germans call +him the _Yorker anonymus_) of the eleventh to twelfth centuries. The +work of Irenaeus _Against Heresies_ (we only have it complete in Latin) +was always rare, but there were at least two copies of it in England, +one in the Carmelites' Library at Oxford, the other given by Archbishop +Mepham to Christchurch, Canterbury. The latter, I believe, we still have +in the Arundel collection in the British Museum. The MS. of Tertullian +which Gelenius got from England is gone, and our knowledge of the +treatise _On Baptism_ which it contained depends wholly on his printed +text. + +I cannot doubt that among the books imported in the seventh century from +Italy by Benedict Biscop and Theodore and Hadrian, and in the great +library of York, which Alcuin panegyrizes in his poem on the saints of +York, there were texts now lost. But the Danes made a clean sweep of all +those treasures, as they did of the whole vernacular literature of +Northumbria, undoubtedly a rich one. The scattered indications I have +collected in the preceding paragraphs point to the fact that some +strange and rare books did lurk here and there in English libraries. It +is almost a relief that catalogues do not tell us of supremely desirable +things, such as Papias on the Oracles of the Lord, or the complete +Histories or Annals of Tacitus. + +Another word on a topic akin to the last. I have said more than once +that the men of the later Middle Ages did not value early books as such; +they were difficult to read, and often in bad condition. At first they +were apt to be made into palimpsests; but when good new parchment became +abundant and comparatively cheap, this practice was dropped. I +conjecture that there is no important palimpsest whose upper writing is +later than the eleventh century. The fate of the early books is rather +obscure to me, but I see that bits of them were not uncommonly used for +lining covers and fly-leaves for MSS. of the thirteenth to fifteenth +centuries, and perhaps still oftener as wrappers for documents. Binders +of the sixteenth century, and especially those who lived after the +Dissolution, used up service-books and scholastic theology and Canon law +to a vast extent, but early books not so lavishly. There are cases in +which one is left doubtful as to whether the binder or his employer did +not insert the old leaves with the definite wish to preserve them. I +think of the leaves of a Gospel book bound at the end of the Utrecht +Psalter, of a fragment of another fine Gospels in an Arundel MS. at the +College of Arms, of some splendid Canons of the Gospels in the Royal MS. +7. C. xii; but in the cases that follow I think that accident and not +design has been at work, viz.: the fragments of several venerable +volumes at Worcester, admirably edited of late by Mr. C. H. Turner; the +leaves of a great sixth-century Bible found by Mr. W. H. Stevenson +wrapping up Lord Middleton's documents at Wollaton; uncial fragments of +Eucherius in the Cambridge University Library; other uncial leaves at +Winchester College; bits of AElfric's Grammar at All Souls'; of a +Gallican Missal at Gonville and Caius; of an early Orosius (from +Stavelot) in the British Museum and elsewhere; of an Orosius and +Fortunatus at Pembroke College, Cambridge; and so on. My examples are +set down almost at random. + + +COLLECTORS OF BOOKS + +We pass now from the monastic circle to that of the learned book +collectors before and after the Dissolution. Many of the best medieval +book-buyers were Abbots or Priors, and the history of their collections +is merged in that of their abbeys. Leaving them aside, we find in +fourteenth-century England one name which everyone has heard--that of +Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and author of the _Philobiblion_. I +am inclined to think that he was a humbug; his book is of the kind that +it is proper to translate, print on hand-made paper, and bind in a +vellum wrapper, but it tells us just nothing of what books De Bury had +or read, and I could not point to a single work of any importance which +he was instrumental in bringing to light or preserving. Persons who take +pains to advertise themselves as book-lovers or bibliomaniacs are rarely +those who render great services to literature. + +Perhaps the libraries of the pre-Reformation colleges of Oxford and +Cambridge are the best hunting-grounds for traces of the early +collectors. At Peterhouse, Cambridge is a large bequest from John +Warkworth, Master late in the fifteenth century; another from J. +Dyngley, Fellow, whose books were written expressly for him; yet another +from H. Deynman, Master, who was interested in medicine. Here, too, we +come upon the tracks of Roger Marchall, who must rank, on the whole, as +a student of natural science. Books with his name and his carefully +written tables of contents are at Peterhouse, Gonville and Caius, +Lambeth, the British Museum, King's College; one at Magdalene College +(Pepys Library) came thither from Peterhouse via Dr. John Dee. Walter +Crome was another fifteenth-century benefactor of the University Library +and of Gonville Hall, who, like Dyngley, had books written to his +order. These are Cambridge _data_. Just such another list could be made +out for some Oxford colleges, particularly Merton, Balliol, and New +College. In this Bishops William Rede of Chichester, and John Trillek of +Hereford, and William Gray of Ely, would figure prominently. The mention +of this last name will serve as a pretext for introducing the +Renaissance scholars. Gray, we saw, was one of those who dealt with +Vespasiano Bisticci of Florence, though not nearly all of the many MSS. +of his giving which are at Balliol are Italian-written; a good number +are by Flemish and German scribes. The other men to whom I alluded in +the same connection were for the most part benefactors of Oxford. John +Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, beheaded in 1470 for treason, promised a +large gift of books to the University, but they never reached it, nor do +I know a single MS. to-day that was Tiptoft's property, though there can +be no doubt that he was a considerable book-buyer. Humphrey, Duke of +Gloucester (whom we are now forbidden to call "the Good"), did give the +University what was then a large library; his name is inseparably +associated with the great room of the Bodleian, but his books were swept +away in Edward VI.'s days. Some few have come back to their old home, +and others are in London and in Paris: twenty-nine is said to be the +total. He intended further gifts, but he was cut off in 1444, and it is +thought that one collection, perhaps his travelling library, was +diverted to King's College, Cambridge. It is certain that soon after +1450 that college possessed some 174 MSS., among which such titles as +Plato's _Republic_ in Latin and a Greek-English dictionary betray a +humanistic influence which is not likely to have been that of our +founder, Henry VI. Moreover, the only one of those MSS. that remains is +a Latin version of some orations of St. Athanasius, made by a secretary +of the Duke, and dedicated _to_ the Duke; and in the British Museum is +another volume of Athanasius translated by the same man, which actually +has Duke Humphrey's inscription in it. This is respectable evidence in +support of the King's College story. + +William Flemming, Dean of Lincoln, and founder of Lincoln College, +Oxford, gave a number of books to that society which show him to have +been interested in the revival of learning; Greek MSS. are among them. + +John Gunthorpe, Dean of Wells (d. 1498), is said by Leland to have +bequeathed the large collection he brought from Italy to Jesus College, +Cambridge. It is scattered and gone from there, but books of Gunthorpe's +survive in a good many libraries. One deserves special mention--a Latin +prose version of the Odyssey, which he picked up (not in Italy, though +it is an Italian book, but at Westminster) in 1475. Probably it was the +first copy of the Odyssey in any form that had come to this country +since Roman times, unless, indeed, Archbishop Theodore brought one over +in the seventh century. Archbishop Parker thought that he had, and the +MS. which he fondly believed to be Theodore's was in his view the pearl +of the collection he left to Corpus Christi. Certainly it has the name +_Theodorus_ in it in letters of gold; but, as certainly, it is a +fifteenth-century book, and the Theodore for whom it was written was I +believe Theodore Gaza, a humanist who lived in Italy. + +An instance of a man interested in books and not unaffected by the +Renaissance, though not himself a collector, may be introduced here. +William Wyrcestre (or Botoner, or Worcester) is the man, and he deserves +a special study. Some have called him the father of English antiquaries, +in virtue of one of his notebooks which has been preserved, and which +contains jottings about his travels in England; it is a sort of rude +elementary Leland's _Itinerary_. It is by no means the only book of his +compiling, nor the only one owned by him that we have. There are +historical and literary collections of his, and not a few MSS. with his +name in them. He knew John Free, the translator (reputed) of Diodorus +Siculus, and he had read Cristoforo Buondelmonte's book on the islands +of the Greek archipelago. + +A long list of the Elizabethan book-collectors could be made, but I +shall not attempt one here. Two libraries of the time, Sir Robert +Cotton's and Archbishop Parker's, stand out. The main object of both men +was to preserve English antiquities, and it is no exaggeration to say +that if these two collections, which together number less than 1,500 +volumes, had been wiped out, the best things in our vernacular +literature and the pick of our chronicles would be unknown to us now. We +should have no _Beowulf_ or _Judith_, only inferior copies of the +Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and of Matthew Paris, no Layamon, no _Pearl_--not +to speak of the mass of invaluable State-papers gathered by Cotton, and +the Reformation documents and letters stored up by Parker. One touch of +blame rests on Sir Robert Cotton. He had a vicious habit of breaking up +MSS. and binding together sections from different volumes. This +disguises the provenance of the books, and by consequence obscures the +history of their contents. + +Enough information about the Cotton and Parker MSS. is easily accessible +to absolve me from writing much about them here. Less is generally known +of two dispersed collections, those of John Bale and John Dee. + +Bale must, I fear, have been an unamiable man--certainly a very queer +Christian. But his controversial works, on which he doubtless prided +himself most, are dead and very rotten, while those devoted to the more +peaceful science of bibliography are of abiding value. In his larger +one, _Scriptorum Britannicorum Centuriae_, he inserts a list of the MSS. +he had once owned; they were no longer in his hands, but, it is to be +supposed, in Ireland, left there when he fled from his bishopric of +Ossory on Mary's accession. It is not a very scientific list, not one +that gives the contents of each volume, but merely names of treatises, +groups of which no doubt went to make up volumes, and this makes it +difficult to determine how much of his library is in existence now. +After his death it was in England, and a syndicate of Germans, +including, as was said above, Flacius Illyricus, were negotiating for +the purchase of it. Archbishop Parker also had an eye upon it; he had +received books as gifts or loans from Bale in former years. I have not +been able to make sure whether any of the books did actually go to the +Continent; I doubt it, in fact. Many distinguished by Bale's curious +small, "flat" handwriting are traceable among Cotton's and Parker's +books, at Lambeth, at Cambridge, and doubtless also at Oxford (where +there is at least the MS. of his _Index Scriptorum_, admirably edited by +Mr. R. L. Poole and Miss Bateson). Bale was a Carmelite in his youth and +interested in the history of his Order, and there is an _a priori_ +probability that any book dealing with Carmelite affairs will contain +marks of his ownership. + +Dr. John Dee's history has often been written, and the catalogue of the +MSS. he owned has long been in print in a Camden society volume (_Diary +of Dr. John Dee_) edited by Halliwell. The main facts of his life that +concern us are that he lived at Mortlake, and in 1584 went on a wild +journey to Poland. In his absence his house and collections were +plundered by a mob, who, not without excuse, thought him a warlock. When +he returned in 1589 he set himself to recover his scattered property, +and to a great extent succeeded. He moved from Mortlake to Manchester, +being made Warden of the college there in 1595; later on he returned, +and died at Mortlake, much in debt, I think, in 1608. I find from +Archbishop Ussher's printed correspondence that his books were still +unsold in 1624; litigation may have prevented their being dealt with +earlier. The lists we have of his MSS. date from before his foreign +tour; that which is in print was made on the eve of his departure, and +contains a little over 200 entries. + +After the vicissitudes which his collection suffered it is remarkable +that one should still be able to identify as extant well over half of +it. I have been helped in my searches by certain marks--a little ladder, +or the astrological sign of Jupiter, or a [Greek: Delta]--which occur on +the first page of many. His handwriting, too, in notes, and certain +names of owners (particularly P. Saunders) are guides. Some of his MSS. +were bought by Ussher, and are at Trinity College, Dublin, and a few +were bought by Cotton. But the largest group of them is at Corpus +Christi College, Oxford. These were acquired by the great Oxford +antiquary, Brian Twyne, who hoped that his college would buy them from +him, but this they would not do. Happily Twyne was not too much hurt by +the refusal to leave them to the college at his death. I guess that one +reason for his buying them was that some (perhaps many) of them had once +belonged to his grandfather, John Twyne, a Canterbury man of some slight +eminence, who in his turn had secured a considerable "lot" of MSS. from +the library of St. Augustine's Abbey. In searching out the relics of +that great library I found the combination, or pedigree, St. +Augustine's--John Twyne--Dee--Brian Twyne--Corpus Christi, to be a +frequent one, and this set me upon a general investigation of Dee's MSS. +A little notebook of his at Corpus Christi showed that in early life he +had borrowed a number of MSS. from Peterhouse and from Queen's College, +Oxford. I did not find that these ever got back to their sources, but I +do not think that Dee was dishonest in the matter; I believe he was +allowed to keep them for some consideration received. Some of the +Peterhouse books are traceable in the Ashmole collection, the Pepys +Library, and the British Museum; of those of Queen's College I can say +nothing. Dee was specially interested in mathematics, alchemy, and, as +everyone knows, converse with spirits, but his library was not confined +to books on these subjects; he had some excellent historical, literary, +and theological MSS. One of them was the best copy of Alfred's +translation of Orosius. + +Another library of the sixteenth century deserves to be singled out from +the many which offer themselves for notice. It is that of Lord Lumley +(d. 1609); he inherited the books from Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel +(d. 1580). This collection had again been largely recruited from that of +Archbishop Cranmer: the combination T(homae) C(ranmeri) +C(antuar)--Arundel--Lumley, is often found written on the lower margin +of the first leaf of the MSS. concerned. These Arundel MSS., by the way, +must not be confounded with the Arundel collection in the British +Museum, nor with that remnant of the same collection which is owned by +the College of Arms. The Arundel MSS., so-called, were collected largely +by Lord William Howard (Belted Will) of Naworth, passed on to Thomas, +Earl of Arundel (d. 1644), and devised by Henry Howard to the Royal +Society, 1681; they were eventually transferred by the Society to the +British Museum in 1831. The Arundel-Lumley books had a different +destiny. Most of them also came to the Museum, but by another path. They +were bought after Lumley's death by or for Prince Henry, eldest son of +James I., and added to the Royal Library, and that became national +property by the gift of George II. in 1757. We have a catalogue, made +about 1609, of the whole library, which is among the Gale MSS. at +Trinity College, Cambridge. It bears no name of owner, but is easily +seen to be Lumley's. Not all the MSS. that we find bearing Lumley's name +are in it, and not all the MSS. in it are in the old Royal Library. To +the second class belong the English Bible at Wolfenbuettel, the Bible of +Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester (a fine but plain book which is at +Cheltenham in the Phillipps collection), and the Bosworth Psalter bought +not long ago from a private owner by the British Museum. The first class +is more numerous; about twenty MSS. at Lambeth alone have Lumley's name, +but are not in his catalogue. I conjecture that they were presented by +Lumley (who was a generous giver of printed books to the Universities) +to Archbishop Bancroft when he was forming his collection. + +So one might go on through Ussher, Laud, Selden, Rawlinson, Harley, +Askew, Drury, Heber, etc., to Sir Thomas Phillipps, whose 30,000 MSS., +good and bad, must be the largest mass of such things ever owned by a +single collector. But I think I have said enough of the public and +private accumulations of this country to give an adequate idea of the +kind of results that attend research, and of the ways in which large +blocks of MSS. have been handed on to us. The epoch of the sale-room I +have not really touched; it demands special tools and a special +historian, and it concerns individual books. Nor, I will confess, do I +feel quite at ease in touching upon the private collections of the +present day. There is less objection to surveying such things when they +have passed as wholes into public institutions. + +For example, the MSS. collected by the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres +were acquired in 1892 for the John Rylands Library at Manchester. The +Latin section of these I have had occasion to examine. It consists of +nearly 120 items. The earliest and most remarkable of these almost all +own the pedigree of Libri-Bateman-Crawford. Of Libri enough has been +said to make it necessary to note here that none of the Crawford MSS. +owned by him were pilfered from French libraries. The library of Bateman +of Youlgrave was dispersed in 1893; the Libri purchases in it are mostly +traceable in the Libri sale catalogue of 1859. Three tenth-century +Spanish MSS., two from the Abbey of S. Pedro de Cardena, one from Silos, +happen, by an odd and lucky accident, to be elaborately described in +Berganza's _Espana Sagrada_; how it was that exactly these books came +into Libri's hands it is not likely that we shall discover. For the +rest, Lord Crawford's purchases at the Howell Wills sale of 1894 were +considerable in quantity, and he acquired three fine books at that of +Ambroise Firmin Didot in 1878. Three others came from the Bollandist +Fathers' Library at Brussels. One of these had for some years formed +part of the very choice collection of the Fountaines at Narford, in +Norfolk, scattered in 1894. + +Of less choice quality, but of extreme usefulness to the student, are +the 200 MSS. bequeathed by Frank McClean in 1904 to the Fitzwilliam +Museum at Cambridge, and collected by him in the ten or fifteen years +before that. Here we have few coherent groups of books, unless we reckon +as such a certain number of volumes from the Cistercian Abbey of +Morimund in North Italy, acquired singly, perhaps, by Mr. McClean from +Hoepli of Milan. The Phillipps sales account for a good many, the +Barrois and Ashburnham Appendix (1901 and 1897) for a few more, but most +of the books were picked up one by one in auction-rooms or from dealers' +catalogues. + +In both these cases examples of illumination and calligraphy have been +primary objects in the collectors' eyes, and that is the ruling passion +with most of those who buy MSS. nowadays. At the beginning of the +nineteenth century what was more coveted was the accumulation of copies +of the classics. It had hardly been realized that few of the Renaissance +classical MSS. made in Italy have independent textual value, and +collectors like Askew, Drury, Canonici, Burney, thought that the more of +them they had the better. Lord Fitzwilliam (d. 1816), who devoted +himself to buying French Books of Hours for the sake of the pictures, +was something of a pioneer (at least in England) in this respect. +Francis Douce (d. 1834) was another; his treasures are in the Bodleian. +As for Sir Thomas Phillipps, he must have bought by the cart-load: +_Nihil manu scriptum a se alienum putabat_. In spite of the large amount +of rubbish among his 30,000 odd volumes, I can never hear without a +bitter pang the tale that the University of Oxford many years ago shied +at his offer of them, accompanied as it was by some tiresome conditions; +their fate has been gradual dispersion to every part of Europe and to +America. + +I have said that I cannot embark here upon the history of sales of MSS. +in the last hundred years. But my abstention, due to considerations of +space, must not be imitated by my readers. Those who deal with modern +collections or make collections of their own--a thing still possible for +quite modest purses, in spite of the inflated prices which the great +books command--are not absolved from the study of sale catalogues; that +they will pay attention to book-plates, bindings, and names of owners, I +need not repeat. The list of such catalogues issued by the British +Museum they will find invaluable; the catalogues themselves, alike those +of dealers and of sales, will often enable them to trace a particular +MS. back through a whole century to some Italian palace or Flemish +abbey, sold up or secularized under the stress of revolution. This +period of MS. history has been less well worked than the earlier ones; +it is but just ripening, in fact; but to anyone who is bitten with the +passion for the books it will prove just as fascinating as the others. + + +CURIOSITIES OF RESEARCH + +By way of conclusion let me come back from generalities to particulars, +and attempt to kindle interest and stir the imagination by a few words +on waifs and strays--the curiosities of MS. research. Some few leading +instances have been mentioned, but in thinking over the collections I +have examined and the documents I have had to copy or edit, others, less +immediately showy, occur to my memory. + +What has become of the Red Book of Eye in Suffolk? It was a copy of the +Gospels which St. Felix of Burgundy, the apostle of the East Angles, +brought with him in the seventh century. It was after his death in a +monastery at Dunwich. Then it passed to a little priory at Eye, where +Leland saw it. After the Dissolution it remained with the Corporation of +Eye--now extinct--and people took oaths upon it. It is traceable in the +records down to a comparatively late date--within the nineteenth +century. Can there be truth in the tale I have heard that it was sent +for safe keeping to a mansion not far off, and there cut up for game +labels? I cannot believe it. + +No doubt MSS. were cut up for game labels. I have seen--years ago--in a +London shop one that had turned up in a billiard-room, and its blank +margins had been many of them removed for that purpose. But there was a +fashion equally reprehensible a hundred years ago of cutting out +illuminations from MSS. and making scrap-books of them. It was +especially common in the case of the great antiphoners and other huge +service-books which stood on the lecterns in Italian churches. The +remainder of the books went to the gold-beaters, perhaps (they used +parchment, and in England bought MSS. sometimes to cut up), or to a like +destination. Occasionally books so mutilated have been reconstituted. A +leading example is that of a Josephus, illuminated in part by the great +Tours artist Jean Foucquet. This the late King Edward VII. and Mr. H. Y. +Thompson were able to combine in restoring. The King had a number of the +pictures, cut out, in his library at Windsor; Mr. Thompson had the +mutilated text and a pictured leaf or so. The fragments were brought +together and presented to the Paris Library, which already possessed the +first volume of the set. + +A miniature, cut, no one knows how long ago, from a fine twelfth-century +Bible, was shaken out of a pile of printed copies of a funeral sermon at +a country house. The book to which it belonged I believe to be one at +Lambeth. + +In 1890 Mr. Samuel Sandars bought at a London sale a scrap-book +containing two leaves of a beautiful and very early Book of Hours. He +gave them to the Fitzwilliam Museum. In 1894 came the Fountaine sale, +and then Mr. William Morris bought the MS. from which these leaves had +come. An arrangement was made between him and the museum that he should +possess the leaves, replaced in the book, for his life, and then the +museum should acquire the whole at an agreed price. Alas! he did not +live to enjoy the ownership of them long. + +To find, as the late Mr. Greenwell of Durham found, a leaf of a +sixth-century Latin Bible from Wearmouth or Jarrow (or perhaps even from +Cassiodorus's library) in a curiosity shop, is a chance that comes to +few. But I have always lamented that I did not pass through the streets +of Orleans at the time (not many years back) when an illustrated Greek +MS. of the Gospels on purple vellum and in gold and silver uncials was +exposed for sale in a shop window. A French officer had picked it up at +Sinope, and used it to keep dried plants in. However, it went to its +rightful and proper home, the Bibliotheque Nationale. + +It is getting on for thirty years now since a small parish library in +Suffolk, founded in 1700, gave to the world the book of the Gospels +owned by St. Margaret of Scotland (at Oxford), and the unique life of +St. William, the boy martyr of Norwich, and Nicholas Roscarrock's +Register of British Saints (both at Cambridge). Not as long since, in a +private library in Italy, some leaves were found of the early MS. (from +Hersfeld Abbey in Germany) of the minor writings of Tacitus from which +all our extant fifteenth-century copies descend. Still more recently, +among a collection of scraps of MSS., a half leaf of an eleventh or +twelfth century MS. in Welsh was detected (a very great rarity); its +generous finder (the late Mr. A. G. W. Murray, librarian of Trinity +College) gave it to the Cambridge University Library, and thus added one +more to the already remarkable collection of bits of early Welsh which +Cambridge owns. It deals with the dry topic of finding Easter, but +linguistically it is above price. + +And now for an example which shows the odd wanderings of _texts_. There +is a volume at Vienna, from Bobbio, made up of palimpsest leaves from +many MSS., Biblical and classical. Two of these, apparently from one +book, stand next to each other. They have only recently been deciphered; +they are in Latin uncials of the fifth century. One of them is from the +Apocalypse of Thomas, a book named in an old list of Apocryphal +writings, but thought until a few years ago to be hopelessly lost. We +now know complete MSS. of it at Munich and a fragment at Verona, as well +as an Anglo-Saxon version in the Vercelli MS. The other Vienna leaf is +from an equally apocryphal "epistle of the Apostles," never mentioned by +old writers, but seemingly of the second century. It gives a dialogue +between our Lord and the Apostles after the Resurrection. About 1897 Dr. +Carl Schmidt, a leading Coptic scholar, published an account of a Coptic +MS. of the greater part of the book (the MS. is at Berlin, and some time +will be edited); and about 1913 a French scholar, Abbe Guerrier, +published a complete version of it from Ethiopic MSS. which had been in +Europe for half a century. It is about the last book I should have +expected to find in a Latin version, and current in Italy in the fifth +century. The combination of Egypt and Abyssinia is common enough; but +that Bobbio should be added to that, and Asia Minor and Greece omitted, +is indeed a strange thing. Perhaps Africa was the parent of the Latin +version. + + +THE MORAL + +So texts and books wander, and so do discoveries sometimes lie near our +hands. The moral is: Be inquisitive. See books for yourself; do not +trust that the cataloguer has told you everything. I am a cataloguer +myself, and I know that, try as he may, a worker of that class cannot +hope to know or to see every detail that is of importance. The creature +is human, and on some days his mind is less alert than on others. Nor is +he interested in everything alike: an apocryphal fragment or an obscure +saint will excite me, while a letter of St. Bernard which may be +unpublished leaves me calm. But in spite of the imperfections of +cataloguers, catalogues must be used, and they must be read and not only +referred to. The mere juxtaposition of treatises in a volume will often +reveal its provenance or its pedigree; besides, there is always the +chance I have suggested, that the describer of any MS. may have failed +through ignorance or want of attention to see that some article in it +is of extreme interest and rarity. So it was that in reading Lambecius's +(eighteenth-century) catalogue of the Greek MSS. at Vienna I noted down +an entry that seemed unusual; and some years after, when I had an +opportunity of getting a friend at Vienna to look at the tract in +question, it was found to be the unique copy of the very most heretical +(and therefore interesting) episode of the apocryphal Acts of St. John, +written in the second century, and copied, to our lasting astonishment +and perplexity, by some honest orthodox cleric in the fourteenth. + +May discoveries infinitely more pleasing fall to the lot of many of my +patient readers! + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + +The student may consult the following works: + + J. W. CLARK: The Care of Books. Cambridge, 1901. + + E. A. SAVAGE: Old English Libraries. London, 1911. + Containing a useful bibliography. + + M. R. JAMES: The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury + and Dover (Cambridge, 1903); the Abbey of St. + Edmund at Bury, (1895) and the Catalogues of the + MSS. of the Libraries at Eton and at Cambridge, by + the same author. + + M. BATESON: Catalogue of the Library of Syon + Monastery, Isleworth. 1898. + + List of Catalogues of English Book Sales, + 1676-1906, now in the British Museum. London, + 1915. + + E. A. LOEW: The Beneventan Script. Oxford, 1914. + + TH. GOTTLIEB: Ueber Mittelalterliche Bibliotheken. + Leipzig, 1890. + + T. DUFFUS HARDY: Descriptive Catalogue of + Materials relating to the History of Great + Britain. Rolls Series, 1862-71. + + * * * * * + + BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] Let not the 400 MSS. given by Coislin to the Abbey of St. Germain +des Pres at Paris be quoted against me. They were the collection of a +great noble, the Chancellor Seguier, and the library to which they were +presented was practically a public one, whose permanence was seemingly +assured. + +[B] _See_ Eubel, _Hierarchia Catholica Medii AEvi_, ii. 248. + +[C] We have its catalogue admirably reproduced by Thomas Hearne, at a +time (early in the eighteenth century) when it was rare to find anyone +who would take the trouble to make a faithful copy of such a record, +with all its erasures and alterations. + +[D] Subsequently Theyer, as I said, went on collecting MSS., and finally +Charles II. bought the whole lot for the Royal Library. + + + + + +HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY. + + + =No. 1. EPISCOPAL REGISTERS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.= + By R. C. FOWLER, B.A., F.S.A. 6d. net. + + =No. 2. MUNICIPAL RECORDS.= By F. J. C. HEARNSHAW, + M.A. 6d. net. + + =No. 3. MEDIEVAL RECKONINGS OF TIME.= By REGINALD L. + POOLE, LL.D., Litt.D. 6d. net. + + =No. 4. THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE.= By CHARLES + JOHNSON. 6d. net. + + =No. 5. THE CARE OF DOCUMENTS.= By CHARLES JOHNSON. + 6d. net. + + =No. 6. THE LOGIC OF HISTORY.= By C. G. CRUMP. 8d. + net. + + =No. 7. DOCUMENTS IN THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, + DUBLIN.= By R. H. MURRAY, Litt.D. 8d. net. + + =No. 8. THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION.= By ARTHUR A. + TILLEY, M.A. 6d. net. + + + _BY SIR A. W. WARD, Litt.D., F.B.A.:--_ + + =No. 9. THE PERIOD OF CONGRESSES, I. Introductory.= + 8d. net. + + =No. 10. THE PERIOD OF CONGRESSES, II.= Vienna and + the Second Peace of Paris, 1s. net. + + =No. 11. THE PERIOD OF CONGRESSES, III.= + Aix-la-Chapelle to Verona. 1s. net. (Nos. 9, 10, + and 11 in one volume, cloth 3s. 6d. net.) + + =No. 12. SECURITIES OF PEACE.= A Retrospect + (1848-1914). Paper 2s.; cloth 3s. net. + + =No. 13. THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE.= By ARTHUR A. + TILLEY, M.A. 8d. net. + + =No. 14. HINTS ON THE STUDY OF ENGLISH ECONOMIC + HISTORY.= By W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D., F.B.A., F.S.A. + 8d. net. + + =No. 15. PARISH HISTORY AND RECORDS.= By A. + HAMILTON THOMPSON, M.A., F.S.A. 8d. net. + + =No. 16. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF COLONIAL + HISTORY.= By A. P. NEWTON, M.A., D.Litt., B.Sc. + 6d. net. + + =No. 17. THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS.= + By M. R. JAMES, Litt.D., F.B.A. Paper cover, 2s.; + cloth boards, 3s. net. + + =No. 18. ECCLESIASTICAL RECORDS.= By the REV. + CLAUDE JENKINS, M.A., Librarian of Lambeth Palace. + + =No. 19. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF + AMERICAN DIPLOMACY.= By CARL RUSSELL FISH, Ph.D., + Professor of American History in the University of + Wisconsin. 1s. net. + + =No. 20. HINTS ON TRANSLATION FROM LATIN INTO + ENGLISH.= By ALEXANDER SOUTER, D.Litt. 6d. net. + + =No. 21. HINTS ON THE STUDY OF LATIN.= (A.D. + 125-750.) By ALEXANDER SOUTER, D.Litt. 8d. net. + + =No 22. REPORT OF THE HISTORICAL MSS. COMMISSION.= + By R. A. ROBERTS., F.R.H.S., Sometime Secretary of + the Commission. + + (_=Others to follow.=_) + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Obvious punctuation errors repaired. + +The original text had one page containing the list of Helps on the second +page and it was concluded on the last page. The first page was moved to +join the last. + +Page 96, M. Bateson was all-capped to match the rest of the format of +the Bibliography. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts, by +M. R. 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