The Story of Books Part 2

Then the books are made to utter their plaint because of the indignity to which they are subjected by the degenerate clergy. "We are expelled from the domiciles of the clergy, apportioned to us by hereditary right, in some interior chamber of which we had our peaceful cells; but, to their shame, in these nefarious times we are altogether banished to suffer opprobrium out of doors; our places, moreover, are occupied by hounds and hawks, and sometimes by a biped beast: woman, to wit ...; wherefore this beast, ever jealous of our studies, and at all times implacable, spying us at last in a corner, protected only by the web of some long-deceased spider, drawing her forehead into wrinkles, laughs us to scorn, abuses us in virulent speeches, points us out as the only superfluous furniture in the house, complains that we are useless for any purpose of domestic economy whatever, and recommends our being bartered away forthwith for costly head dresses, cambric, silk, twice-dipped purple garments, woollen, linen, and furs."

After this terrible picture of feminine ignorance and malevolence, it is refres.h.i.+ng to turn to the achievements of the pious Diemudis, by way of contrast. Diemudis was a nun of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, who lived in the eleventh century. Nuns are not often referred to as writers, but of this lady it is recorded that she wrote "in a most beautiful and legible character" no less than thirty-one books, some of which were in two, three, and even six volumes. These she transcribed "to the praise of G.o.d, and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the patrons of this monastery."

Although the greater part of the book-writing of this time was done in the monasteries and by monks and ecclesiastics, there were also secular professional writers, a cla.s.s who had followed this occupation from very early days. They consisted of antiquarii, librarii, and illuminators, though sometimes the functions of all three were performed by one person. They were employed chiefly by the religious houses, to a.s.sist in the transcription and restoration of their books, and by the lawyers, for whom they transcribed legal doc.u.ments. The antiquarii were the highest in rank, for their work did not consist merely of writing or copying, but included the restoration of faulty pages, the revision of texts, the repair of bindings, and other delicate tasks connected with the older and more valuable books which could not be entrusted to the librarii or common scribes. On the whole, the production of books was more of an industry in those days than we should believe possible, unless we admit that the Dark Ages were not quite as dark as they have been painted. "There was always about us in our halls," says Richard de Bury, who no doubt was a munificent patron of all scribes and book-workers, "no small a.s.semblage of antiquaries, scribes, bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and generally of all such persons as were qualified to labour in the service of books."

Books of a great size were frequently monuments of patience and industry, and sometimes half a lifetime was devoted to a single volume.

Books therefore fetched high prices, though they were not always paid for in money. In 1174 the Prior of St Swithun's, Winchester, gave the Canons of Dorchester in Oxfords.h.i.+re, for Bede's Homilies and St Augustine's Psalter, twelve measures of barley, and a pall on which was embroidered in silver the history of St Birinus' conversion of the Saxon King Cynegils. A hundred years later a Bible "fairly written," that is, finely written, was sold in this country for fifty marks, or about 33.

At this period a sheep cost one s.h.i.+lling. In the time of Richard de Bury a common scribe earned a halfpenny a day. About 1380 some of the expenses attending the production of an _Evangeliarium_, or book of the liturgical Gospels, included thirteen and fourpence for the writing, four and threepence for the illuminating, three and fourpence for the binding, and tenpence a day for eighteen weeks, in all fifteen s.h.i.+llings, for the writer's "commons," or food.

The book-writers or copyists became, later, the booksellers, very much as they did in old Rome. Sometimes they both wrote and sold the books, and sometimes the sellers employed the writers to write for them, or the writers employed the sellers to sell for them. Publishers as yet did not exist. Practically the only method of publication known consisted of the reading of a work on three days in succession before the heads of the University, or other public judges, and the sanctioning of its transcription and reproduction. The booksellers were called "stationers," either because they transacted their business at open stalls or stations, or perhaps from the fact that _statio_ is low Latin for _shop_; and since they were also the vendors of parchment and other writing-materials, the word "stationer" is still used to designate those who carry on a similar trade to-day. As early as 1403 there was already formed in London a society or brotherhood "of the Craft of Writers of Text-letter," and "those commonly called 'Limners,'" or Illuminators, for in that year they pet.i.tioned the Lord Mayor for permission to elect Wardens empowered to see that the trades were honourably pursued and to punish those of the craft who dealt disloyally or who rebelled against the Wardens' authority. This pet.i.tion was granted. By 1501 the Company of Stationers was established, and it is highly probable that this was only the Brotherhood of Text-writers and Limners under the more general designation.

The well-known names of Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, Ave Maria Lane, and Creed Lane still remain to show us where the London stationers who sold the common religious leaflets and devotional books of the day had their stalls, close to St Paul's Cathedral, and in some cases even against the walls of the Cathedral itself, and where, too, the makers of beads and paternosters plied their trade. And Londoners at least will not need to be reminded that at this very moment Paternoster Row is almost entirely inhabited by sellers of books, religious and otherwise.

There is also a queer open-air stall on the south side which serves to carry on the ancient tradition of the place.

Societies similar to that of the Text-Writers and Limners of London also existed on the Continent, and especially at Bruges, in which city literature and book-production flourished under the patronage of Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, who himself gave constant employment to numerous writers, copyists, translators, and illuminators in the work of building up his famous library. The members of the Guild of St John the Evangelist in Bruges represented no less than fifteen different trades or professions connected with books and writing. They included:

Booksellers, Printsellers, Painters of vignettes, Painters, Scriveners and copiers of books, Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, Illuminators, Printers, Bookbinders, Curriers, Cloth shearers, Parchment and vellum makers, Boss carvers, Letter engravers, Figure engravers.

Of course, the printers here mentioned would at first be block-printers only, as will be shown presently. And it is worth noticing that in all this long list, which cannot be called at all exclusive, there is no mention of authors.

The mediaeval booksellers were not all permitted to ply their trade in their own way. Since the supply of books for the students depended on them, the Universities of Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere deemed it their duty to keep them under control, having in view the maintenance of pure texts and the interests of the students, at whose expense the booksellers were not to be permitted to fatten. By the rules of the University of Paris the bookseller was required to be a man of wide learning and high character, and to bind himself to observe the laws regarding books laid down by the University. He was forbidden to offer any transcript for sale until it had been examined and found correct; and were any inaccuracy detected in it by the examiner, he was liable to a fine or the burning of the book, according to the magnitude of his error. The price of books was also fixed by the University, and the vendor forbidden to make more than a certain rate of profit on each volume. Again, the bookseller could not purchase any books without the sanction of the University, for fear that he might be the means of disseminating heretical or immoral literature. Later, it was made obligatory on him to lend out books on hire to those who could not afford to buy them, and to expose in his shop a list of these books and the charges at which they were to be had. The poor booksellers, thus hedged about with restrictions, often joined some other occupation to that of selling ma.n.u.scripts in order to make both ends meet, but when this practice came to the notice of the University they were censured for degrading their n.o.ble profession by mixing with it "vile trades."

But presumably no such rules as the above hampered the booksellers of non-university towns, such as London.

The control a.s.sumed by the Universities over the book trade presently extended to interference with original writings and a censors.h.i.+p of literature. With the introduction of printing and the consequent increase of books and of the facilities for reproducing them this censors.h.i.+p was taken up by the Church.

Ecclesiastical censors.h.i.+p, however, was not the outcome of the Universities' a.s.sumption of control over the book trade. It sprang from the jealousy of the clergy, who opposed the spread of knowledge among the people--some, perhaps, because they knew that knowledge in ignorant hands is dangerous, and others because they feared their own prestige might suffer. This feeling existed before printing, though printing brought it to a head. For instance, in 1415 the penalty in this country for reading the Scriptures in the vernacular was forfeiture of land, cattle, body, life, and goods by the offenders and their heirs for ever, and that they should be condemned for heretics to G.o.d, enemies to the Crown, and most errant traitors to the land. They were refused right of sanctuary, and if they persisted in the offence or relapsed after a pardon were first to be hanged for treason against the King and then burned for heresy against G.o.d. Thus the clergy upheld and encouraged a censors.h.i.+p of the press. As early as 1479 Conrad de Homborch, a Cologne printer, had issued a Bible accompanied by canons, etc., which was "allowed and approved by the University of Cologne," and in 1486 the Archbishop of Mentz issued a mandate forbidding the translation into the vulgar tongue of Greek, Latin, and other books, without the previous approbation of the University. Finally, in 1515, a bull of Leo X.

required Bishops and Inquisitors to examine all books before they came to be printed, and to suppress any heretical matter.

The Vicar of Croydon, preaching at St Paul's Cross about the time of the spread of the art of printing, is said to have declared that "we must root out printing or printing will root out us." But an ecclesiastical censors.h.i.+p over the English press was not established until 1559, when an Injunction issued by Queen Elizabeth provides that, because of the publication of unfruitful, vain, and infamous books and papers, "no manner of person shall print any manner of boke or paper ... except the same be first licenced by her maiestie ... or by .vi. of her privy counsel, or be perused and licensed by the archbysshops of Cantorbury and Yorke, the bishop of London," etc. The Injunction extended also to "pampheletes, playes, and balletes," so that "nothinge therein should be either heretical, sedicious, or vnsemely for Christian eares." Cla.s.sical authors, however, and works. .h.i.therto commonly received in universities and schools were not touched by the Injunction.

CHAPTER V

LIBRARIES IN MEDIaeVAL TIMES

During the rule of the Arabs in Northern Africa and in Spain, thousands of ma.n.u.scripts were gathered together in their chief cities, such as Cairo and Cordova, and many Arabic-Spanish and Moorish writings have been preserved in the Escurial Library, though a large part of this library was burnt in 1671. With these exceptions, the collections of books belonging to the various religious houses were practically the only libraries of early mediaeval times. These collections, to begin with, were very small; so small, indeed, that there was no need to set apart a special room for them. Library buildings were not erected till the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, when the acc.u.mulation of books rendered them necessary, and those which are found in connection with old foundations will always prove to have been added later. It is said, however, that Gozbert, abbot of St Gall in the ninth century, who founded the library there by collecting what was then the large number of four hundred books, allotted them a special room over the scriptorium. But as a rule the books were kept in the church, and then, as the number increased, in the cloisters. The cloister was the common living-room of the monks, where they read and studied, and carried out most of their daily duties. The books were either stored in presses, though no such press remains to show us upon what pattern they were built, or in recesses in the wall, probably closed by doors. Two of these recesses may be seen in the cloisters at Worcester. In Cistercian houses, says Mr J. W. Clark, to whose Rede Lecture (1894) I am indebted for these details, this recess developed "into a small square room without a window, and but little larger than an ordinary cupboard. In the plans of Clairvaux and Kirkstall this room is placed between the chapter-house and the transept of the church; and similar rooms, in similar situations, have been found at Fountains, Beaulieu, Tintern, Netley, etc." The books were placed on shelves round the walls. When the cloister windows came to be glazed, so as to afford better protection from the weather for the persons and things within the cloister, they were occasionally decorated with allusions to the authors of the books in the adjacent presses.

Sometimes _carrells_ were set up in the cloister, a carrell being a sort of pew, in which study could be conducted with more privacy than in the open cloister. The carrell was placed so that it was closed at one end by one of the cloister windows and remained open at the other. Examples still survive at Gloucester.

The arrangement of the libraries which were subsequently added to most of the larger monasteries in the fifteenth century is unknown, as none of the furniture or fittings seem to have come down to the present day either in this country or in France or Italy. But Mr Clark thinks that the collegiate libraries will give us the key to the plan of the monastic libraries, since the rules relating to the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge were framed on those which obtained in the "book-houses"

of the religious foundations. From these collegiate libraries we gather that it was customary to chain the books, so that they might be accessible to all and yet secure from those who might wish to appropriate them temporarily or otherwise. The shelf to which the volumes were fastened took the form or an "elongated lectern or desk,"

at which the reader might sit. Pembroke College and Queens' College, Cambridge, had desks of this type, which was also in use on the Continent. In some places the desks were modified by the addition of shelves above or below.

Mr Falconer Madan, in his _Books in Ma.n.u.script_, quotes the following account, which he translates from the Latin register of t.i.tchfield Abbey, written at the end of the fourteenth century, and which shows the care and method with which the books were kept: "The arrangement of the library of the monastery of Tychefeld is this:--There are in the library of Tychefeld four cases (_columnae_) in which to place books, of which two, the first and second, are in the eastern face; on the southern face is the third, and on the northern face the fourth. And each of them has eight shelves (_gradus_), marked with a letter and number affixed on the front of each shelf.... So all and singular the volumes of the said library are fully marked on the first leaf and elsewhere on the shelf belonging to the book, with certain numbered letters. And in order that what is in the library may be more quickly found, the marking of the shelves of the said library, the inscriptions in the books, and the reference in the register, in all points agree with each other. Anno domini, MCCCC." Then is shown the order in which the books lie on the shelves. Briefly, the sequence of subjects and books is as follows:--Bibles, Bibles with commentary, theology, lives of saints, sermons, canon law, commentaries on canon law, civil law, medicine, arts, grammar, miscellaneous volumes, logic and philosophy, English law, eighteen French volumes, and a hundred and two liturgical volumes.

t.i.tchfield Abbey owned altogether over a thousand volumes.

The monastic librarian, as we should call him, was known as the _armarius_, since he had charge of the _armaria_ or book-presses. He frequently united this office to that of precentor or leader of the choir, for at first the service-books were his chief care. It was his business to make the catalogue, to examine the volumes from time to time to see that mould or book-worms or other dangers were not threatening them, to give out books for transcription, and to distribute the various writing-materials used in the scriptorium or writing-room. He had also to collate such works as were bound to follow one text, such as Bibles, missals, monastic rules, etc. To these duties he often added that of secretary to the abbot and to the monastery generally.

Many catalogues of monastic libraries are extant, and several belonging to continental foundations were compiled at a very early period. Of the library of St Gall, founded by the Abbe Gozbert in 816, a contemporary catalogue still exists. The St Gall library contained four hundred volumes, a large number for those days, and, moreover, was provided with a special room, a chamber over the scriptorium. It is not easy to see why in this and other cases of the co-existence of a library and a scriptorium one room was not made to do duty for both. But to return to the catalogues. Another early example is that of the Abbey of Clugni, in France, made in 831, and forming part of an inventory of the Abbey property. The Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau, on the Rhine, had four catalogues compiled in the ninth century--two of the books in the library, one of certain transcriptions made and added thereto, and one of additions to the library from other sources. Among English monastic book-lists, there is one of Whitby Abbey, which appears to have been made in 1180, and the library of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey, which excited the wonder and admiration of Leland, and which was started by St Dunstan round a nucleus of a few books formerly brought to the Abbey by Irish missionaries, was catalogued in 1247 or 1248. Catalogues of the books at Canterbury (Christ Church and St Augustine's monastery), Peterborough, Durham, Leicester, Ramsey, and other foundations are also known, and these, with the notices of Leland, form our only sources of information as to these various literary storehouses.

As regards their contents, the Scriptures, missals, service-books, and similar ma.n.u.scripts formed the larger part of the monastic libraries, but besides these they included copies of patristic and cla.s.sical works, devotional and moral writings, lives of saints, chronicles, books on medicine, grammar, philosophy, logic, and, later, romances and fiction were admitted into this somewhat austere company. The catalogue of the "boc-house" of the monastery of St Augustine at Canterbury, written towards the close of the fifteenth century, names many romantic works, including the _Four Sons of Aymon_, _Guy of Warwick_, _The Book of Lancelot_, _The Story of the Graal_, _Sir Perceval de Galois_, _The Seven Sages_, and others, and of some of these there is more than one copy.

Books were frequently lent to other monasteries, or to poor clerks and students. It was considered a sacred duty thus to share the benefits of the books with others; but sometimes the custodians of the precious volumes, aware of the failures of memory to which book-borrowers have ever been peculiarly liable, were so averse from running the risk of lending that the libraries were placed under anathema, and could not be lent under pain of excommunication. But the selfishness and injustice of such a practice being recognised, it was formally condemned by the Council of Paris in 1212, and the anathemas annulled. Anathemas were also p.r.o.nounced against any who should steal or otherwise alienate a book from its lawful owners.

But as even in mediaeval days there were those who loved books better than honesty, the loan of a volume was accompanied by legal forms and ceremonies, and the borrower, whatever his station or character, had to sign a bond for the due return of the work, and often to deposit security as well. Thus, when about 1225 the Dean of York presented several Bibles for the use of the students of Oxford, he did so on condition that those who used them should deposit a cautionary pledge.

Again, in 1299, John de Pontissara, Bishop of Winchester, borrowed from the convent of St Swithun the _Bibliam bene glossatum_, i.e. the Bible with annotations, and gave a bond for its return. And in 1471, when books had become much more common, no less a person than the King of France, desiring to borrow some Arabian medical works from the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, had not only to deposit some costly plate as security, but to find a n.o.bleman to act as surety with him for the return of the books, under pain of a heavy forfeit.

Many of the great monastic libraries owed their origin to the liberality of one donor, usually an ecclesiastic. Among other libraries destroyed by the Danes was the fine collection of books at Wearmouth monastery, made by Benedict Biscop, the first English book collector, who was so eager in the cause of books that he is said to have made no less than five journeys to Rome in order to search for them. Part of his library was given to the Abbey at Jarrow, and shared the same fate as the books at Wearmouth.

One of the earliest English libraries was that of Christ Church, _i.e._ the Cathedral, at Canterbury. On the authority of the Canterbury Book, a fifteenth century ma.n.u.script preserved at Cambridge, this library began with the nine books said to have been brought from Rome by St Augustine.

These nine books were a Bible in two volumes, a Psalter, a Book of Gospels, the Lives of the Apostles, the Lives of the Martyrs, and an Exposition of the Gospels and Epistles. This collection was enriched by the magnificent scriptural and cla.s.sical volumes brought from the continent by Archbishop Theodore in the seventh century. Under Archbishop Chicheley, in the fifteenth century, this library was provided with a dwelling of its own, built over the Prior's Chapel, and containing sixteen bookcases of four shelves each. At this time a catalogue was already in existence, made by Prior Eastry at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, and records about three thousand volumes.

The monastery of St Mary's at York owned a library which was founded by Archbishop Egbert. Egbert's pupil Alcuin, whom Charlemagne charged with the care of the educational interests of his empire, soon after taking up his residence at St Martin's at Tours, desired the emperor to send to Britain for "those books which we so much need; thus transplanting into France the flowers of Britain, that the garden of Paradise may not be confined to York, but may send some of its scions to Tours."

Richard de Bury, the famous old book collector or bibliomaniac to whom reference has already been made, bequeathed his books, which outnumbered all other collections in this country, to the University of Oxford, where they were housed in Durham College, which he had endowed. He has left an interesting account of how he gathered his treasures, which may fitly be quoted here. Aided by royal favour, he tells us, "we acquired a most ample facility of visiting at pleasure and of hunting as it were some of the most delightful coverts, the public and private libraries both of the regulars and the seculars.... Then the cabinets of the most notable monasteries were opened, cases were unlocked, caskets were unclasped, and astonished volumes which had slumbered for long ages in their sepulchres were roused up, and those that lay hid in dark places were overwhelmed with a new light.... Thus the sacred vessels of science came into the power of our disposal, some being given, some sold, and not a few lent for a time." The emba.s.sies with which he was charged by Edward III. gave him opportunity for hunting continental coverts also.

"What a rush of the flood of pleasure rejoiced our hearts as often as we visited Paris, the paradise of the world!... There, in very deed, with an open treasury and untied purse-strings, we scattered money with a light heart, and redeemed inestimable books with dirt and dust."

Richard de Bury also furthered his collection by making friends of the mendicant friars, and "allured them with the most familiar affability into a devotion to his person, and having allured, cherished them for the love of G.o.d with munificent liberality." The affability and liberality of the good bishop attained their object, and the devoted friars went about everywhere, searching and finding, and whenever he visited them, placed the treasures of their houses at his disposal.

Although the mendicant orders were originally forbidden property of any kind, this rule was afterwards greatly relaxed, especially as regards books, and in Richard de Bury's time the friars had ama.s.sed large libraries and were well-known as keen collectors.

In France it was not an uncommon practice for a monastery to levy a tax on its members or its dependent houses for the increase of its library, and in several houses it was customary for a novice to present writing materials at his entry and a book at the conclusion of his novitiate. As early as the close of the eleventh century Marchwart, Abbot of Corvey in North Germany, made it a rule that every novice on making his profession should add a book to the library.

The monastic libraries met their doom at the time of the Reformation and of the suppression of the religious houses. Nearly all the books at Oxford, including the gifts of Richard de Bury, were burnt by the mob, and under Elizabeth the royal commissioners ordered the destruction of all "capes, vestments, albes, missals, books, crosses, and such other idolatrous and superst.i.tious monuments whatsoever." Since those who ought to have been more enlightened cla.s.sed missals and books among idolatrous and superst.i.tious monuments, it is not to be wondered at that the ignorant and undiscriminating mob should glory in their wanton destruction. Books that escaped the fire or the fury of the mob were put to various uses as waste paper. They were employed for "scouring candlesticks and cleaning boots," for the wrapping up of the wares of "grocers and soap-sellers," and were exported by s.h.i.+ploads for the use of continental bookbinders. On the continent, too, fire, wars, plunder, and suppression dispersed or destroyed many of the monastic collections.

A comparatively recent instance of book destruction caused by the fury of the rabble is afforded by the great losses undergone by Bristol Cathedral library in the riots which took place in connection with the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill. The palace was set on fire, and the library, which was lodged in the Chapter-house, was brought out and most of the volumes hurled into the flames. Others were thrown into the river, into ditches, and about the streets, and although about eleven hundred were subsequently recovered from second-hand clothes dealers and marine stores, only two copies and one set remained intact.

As a natural consequence of the revival of learning in the fourteenth century, private libraries began to increase in size and in number, and the collection of books was no longer left to monks and priests. King John of France gathered a little library, some say of only twenty volumes, which laid the foundation of the great Royal Library, now the Bibliotheque Nationale. These he bequeathed to his son, Charles V., who increased the number to nine hundred, for his known fondness for books and reading obtained for him presentation volumes from many of his subjects. His books included works of devotion, astrology, medicine, law, history, and romance, with a few cla.s.sical authors. Most of them were finely written on vellum, and sumptuously bound in jewelled and gold-bedecked covers. They were lodged in three rooms in the Louvre, in a tower called "La Tour de la libraire." These rooms had wainscots of Irish [bog?] oak, and ceilings of cypress "curiously carved." According to Henault, the library of the Louvre was sent to England by the Duke of Bedford while Regent of France, and only a few volumes afterwards found their way back to Paris.

One of the finest libraries of this period was possessed by Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy. It contained nearly two thousand volumes, mostly magnificent folios clothed in silk and satin, and ornamented with gold and precious stones. Books were now the fas.h.i.+on, the fas.h.i.+onable possessions, the fas.h.i.+onable gifts, among those who were wealthy enough to afford them. Louis de Bruges, Seigneur de la Gruthyse, was another famous collector, whose books were no less splendid in their size, beauty and costliness, than those of the Duke of Burgundy. His collection was afterwards added to the Royal Library, and some of its treasures still exist in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

The rich and cultured of Italy were also busily collecting books and forming libraries. A library was made by Cardinal Bessarion at a cost of thirty thousand sequins, and afterwards became the property of the church of St Mark at Venice. Venice already possessed a small collection of books given to it by Petrarch, but the gift was so little thought of that it lay neglected in the Palazzo Molina until some of the volumes had crumbled to powder, and others had petrified, as it were, through the damp.

Of English collectors of this period Richard de Bury was the most famous. As has already been stated, he possessed the largest number of books in the country, and these he bequeathed to the University of Oxford. The Aungervyle Library, as it was called, was destroyed at the Reformation. Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, also had a very fine collection. He preferred romances, however, to theology or law, and his library contained many such works. At his death he bequeathed it to the Abbey of Bordesley, in Worcesters.h.i.+re.

The English kings had not as yet paid much attention to books. Eleven are mentioned in the wardrobe accounts as belonging to Edward I., and not until the time of Henry VII. was any serious consideration given to the formation of the Royal Library.

Among the more famous continental book collectors of a later period were Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and Frederick, Duke of Urbino. The library of the King of Hungary perhaps excelled all others in its size and splendour. It is said to have contained nearly fifty thousand volumes, but only a comparatively small number survived the barbarous attack of the Turks, who stole the jewels from the bindings and destroyed the books themselves. The Duke of Urbino's library was scarcely less magnificent, and was distinguished by its completeness.

All obtainable works were represented, and no imperfect copies admitted.

The duke had thirty-four transcribers in his service.

After the monastic libraries had been destroyed, and when old ideas were beginning to give place to new, the restrictions formerly placed on the reading of the Scriptures by the people at large were withdrawn. In an Injunction, dated 1559, Elizabeth ordered that the people were to be exhorted to read the Bible, not discouraged, and she directed the clergy to provide at the parish expense a book of the whole Bible in English within three months, and within twelve months a copy of Erasmus'

Paraphrases upon the Gospels, also in English. These books were to be set up in the church for the use and reading of the paris.h.i.+oners. The chain is not mentioned in the Injunction, but was probably adopted as a matter of course. Chained books in churches thus became common, and besides the Bible, very generally included copies of Fox's _Book of Martyrs_ and Jewel's _Apology for the Church of England_. The chained books at St Luke's, Chelsea, consist of a Vinegar Bible, a Prayer Book, the Homilies, and two copies of the _Book of Martyrs_.

The custom of chaining books, as we have seen, was followed in the college libraries, and obtained also in church libraries in England and on the continent. Among the still existing libraries whose books are thus secured are those of Hereford Cathedral and Wimborne Minster in England, and the church of St Wallberg at Zutphen, in Holland. The last, however, was not always chained, and thereby hangs a tale. Once upon a time the Devil, having a spite against the good books of which it was composed, despoiled it of some of its best volumes. The mark of his cloven hoof upon the flagged floor gave the clue to the ident.i.ty of the thief, whereupon the custodians of the books had them secured by chains sprinkled with holy water, by which means the malice of the Evil One was made of none effect.