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use of the monks in their devotions. This summary of the first
contents of the library is taken by Hardy from the Gesta Abbatum, a
chronicle of St. Albans.
The literary interests of Paul were, it appears, continued by a large
proportion at least of his successors, and many of these made
important contributions to the library. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbot,
gave to the scriptorium a missal bound in gold, and another missal in
two volumes, both incomparably illuminated in gold and written in an
open and legible script. He also gave a precious illuminated psalter,
a book containing the benediction and sacraments, a book of
exorcism, and a collectory. (The description is taken from the Gesta.)
Ralph, the seventeenth abbot, was said to have become a lover of
books after having heard Wodo of Italy expound the Scriptures. He
collected with diligence a large number of valuable manuscripts.
Robert de Gorham, who was called the reformer of the liberty of the
Church of St. Albans, after becoming prior, gave many books to the
scriptorium, more than could be mentioned by the author of the
Gesta. Simon, who became abbot in 1166, caused to be created the
office of historiographer. Simon had been educated in the abbey, and
did not a little to add to its fame as a centre of literature. He repaired
and enlarged the scriptorium, and he kept two or three scribes
constantly employed in it. The previous literary abbots had for the
most part brought from without the books added to the collection, but
it was under Simon that the abbey became a place of literary
production as well as of literary reproduction. He had an ordinance
enacted to the effect that every abbot must support out of his
personal funds one adequate scribe. Simon presented to the abbey
a considerable group of books that he had himself been collecting
before his appointment as abbot, together with a very beautiful copy
of the Old and New Testaments.
The next literary abbot was John de Cell, who had been educated
in the schools of Paris, and who was profoundly learned in grammar,
poetry, and physics. On being elected abbot, he gave over the
management of the temporal affairs of the abbey to his prior,
Reymond, and devoted himself to religious duties and to study.
Reymond himself was a zealous collector, and it was through him
that was secured for the library, among many other books, a copy of
the Historica Scholastica cum Allegoriis, of Peter Comester. The
exertions of these scholarly abbots and priors won for St. Albans a
special distinction among the monasteries of Britain, and naturally
led to the compilation of the historic annals which gave to the abbey
a continued literary fame. Hardy is of opinion that these historic
annals date from the administration of Simon, between the years
1166 and 1183.
Richard of Wendover, who succeeded Walter as historiographer,
compiled, between the years 1230 and 1236, the Flores Historiarum,
one of the most important of the earlier chronicles of England. Hardy
points out that it could have been possible to complete so great a
work within the term of six years, only on the assumption that
Richard found available much material collected by Walter, and it is
also probable that other compilations were utilised by Richard for the
work bearing his name. It is to be borne in mind that the monastic
chronicles were but seldom the production of a single hand, as was
the case with the chronicles of Malmesbury and of Beda. The greater
number of such chronicles grew up from period to period, fresh
material being added in succeeding generations, while in every
monastic house in which there were transcribers, fresh local
information was interpolated until the tributary streams had grown
more important than the original current. In this manner, the
monastic annals were at one time a transcript, at another time an
abridgment, and at another an original work. “With the chronicler,
plagiarism was no crime and no degradation. He epitomised or
curtailed or adapted the words of his predecessors in the same path
with or without alteration (and usually without acknowledgment),
whichever best suited his purpose or that of his monastery. He did
not work for himself but at the command of others, and thus it was
that a monastery chronicle grew, like a monastery house, at different
times, and by the labour of different hands.”
Of the heads that planned such chronicles or of the hands that
executed them, or of the exact proportion contributed by the several
writers, no satisfactory record has been preserved. The individual is
lost in the community.
 In the earlier divisions of Wendover’s chronicle, covering the
centuries from 231 down to about 1000, Wendover certainly relied,
says Hardy, upon some previous compilation. About the year 1014,
that narrative, down to the death of Stephen, showed a marked
change in style, giving evidence that after this period some other
authority had been adopted, while there was also a larger
introduction of legendary matter. From the accession of Henry II., in
1235, when the Flores Historiarum ends, Wendover may be said to
assume the character of an original author. On the death of Richard,
the work of historiographer was taken up by Matthew Paris. His
Lives of the Two Offas and his famous Chronicles were produced
between the years 1236 and 1259.
In certain of the more literary of the English monasteries, the
divine offices were moderated in order to allow time for study, and,
under the regulations of some foundations, “lettered” persons were
entitled to special exemption from the performance of certain daily
services, and from church duty.[145]
At a visitation of the treasury of St. Pauls, made in the year 1295,
by Ralph de Baudoke, the Dean (afterwards Bishop of London),
there were found twelve copies of the Gospels adorned, some with
silver, and others with pearls and gems, and a thirteenth, the case
(capsa) containing which was decorated not merely with gilding but
with relics.[146] The treasury also contained a number of other
divisions of the Scriptures, together with a Commentary of Thomas
Aquinas. Maitland says that the use of relics as a decoration was an
unusual feature. He goes on to point out that the practice of using for
manuscripts a decorated case, caused the case, not infrequently, to
be more valuable than the manuscript itself, so that it would be
mentioned among the treasures of the church, when the book
contained in it was not sufficiently important to be even specified.
The binding of the books which were in general use in the English
monasteries for reference was usually in parchment or in plain
leather. The use of jewels, gold, or silver for the covers, or for the
capsæ, was, with rare exceptions, limited to the special copies
retained in the church treasury. William of Malmesbury in the
account which he gives of the chapel made at Glastonbury by King
Ina, mentions that twenty pounds and sixty marks of gold were used
in the preparation of the Coöpertoria Librorum Evangelii.[147]
The Earlier Monastery Schools.—At the time when
neither local nor national governments had assumed any
responsibilities in connection with elementary education, and when
the municipalities were too ignorant, and in many cases too poor, to
make provision for the education of the children, the monks took up
the task as a part of the regular routine of their duty. The Rule of S.
Benedict had in fact made express provision for the education of
pupils.
An exception to the general statement concerning the neglect of
the rulers to make provision for education should, however, be made
in the case of Charlemagne, whose reign covered the period 790 to
830. It was the aim of Charlemagne to correct or at least to lessen
the provincial differences and local barbarities of style, expression,
pression, orthography, etc., in the rendering of Latin, and it was with
this end in view that he planned out his great scheme of an imperial
series of schools, through which should be established an imperial or
academic standard of style and expression. This appears to have
been the first attempt since the time of the Academy of Alexandria to
secure a scholarly uniformity of the standard throughout the civilised
world, and the school at Tours may be considered as a precursor of
the French Academy of modern times. For such a scheme the
Emperor was dependent upon the monks, as it was only in the
monasteries that could be found the scholarship that was required
for the work. He entrusted to Alcuin, a scholarly English Benedictine,
the task of organising the imperial schools. The first schools
instituted by Alcuin in Aachen and Tours, and later in Milan, were
placed in charge of Benedictine monks, and formed the models for a
long series of monastic schools during the succeeding centuries.
Alcuin had been trained in the cathedral schools founded in York by
Egbert, and Egbert had been brought up by Benedict Biscop in the
monastery of Yarrow, where he had for friend and fellow pupil the
chronicler Bede. The results of the toilsome journeys taken by
Biscop to collect books for his beloved monasteries of Wearmouth
and Yarrow[148] were far-reaching. The training secured by Alcuin as
a scribe and as a student of the Scriptures, the classics, and the
“seven liberal arts” was more immediately due to his master Ælbert,
who afterward succeeded Egbert as archbishop.
The script which was accepted as the standard for the imperial
schools, and which, transmitted through successive Benedictine
scriptoria, served seven centuries later as a model for the first type-
founders of Italy and France, can be traced directly to the school at
York.
Alcuin commemorated his school and its master in a descriptive
poem On the Saints of the Church at York, which is quoted in full by
West.[149] In 780, Alcuin succeeded Ælbert as master of the school,
and later, was placed in charge of the cathedral library, which was at
the time one of the most important collections in Christendom. In one
of his poems he gives a kind of metrical summary of the chief
contents of this library. The lines are worth quoting because of the
information presented as to the authors at that time to be looked for
in a really great monastic library. The list includes a distinctive
though very restricted group of Latin writers, but, as West points out,
the works “by glorious Greece transferred to Rome” form but a
meagre group. The catalogue omits Isidore, although previous
references make clear that the writings of the great Spanish bishop
were important works of reference in York as in all the British
schools. It is West’s opinion that the Aristotle and other Greek
authors referred to were probably present only in Latin versions.
These manuscripts in the York library were undoubtedly for the most
part transcripts of the parchments collected for Wearmouth and
Yarrow by Biscop.
The Library of York Cathedral.

There shalt thou find the volumes that contain

All of the ancient Fathers who remain;
There all the Latin writers make their home
With those that glorious Greece transferred to Rome,
The Hebrews draw from their celestial stream,
And Africa is bright with learning’s beam.
 Here shines what Jerome, Ambrose, Hilary thought,
Or Athanasius and Augustine wrought.
Orosius, Leo, Gregory the Great,
Near Basil and Fulgentius coruscate.

Grave Cassiodorus and John Chrysostom

Next Master Bede and learned Aldhelm come,
While Victorinus and Boëthius stand
With Pliny and Pompeius close at hand.

Wise Aristotle looks on Tully near,

Sedulius and Juvencus next appear.
Then come Albinus, Clement, Prosper too,
Paulinus and Arator. Next we view
Lactantius, Fortunatus. Ranged in line
Virgilius Maro, Statius, Lucan, shine.

Donatus, Priscian, Phobus, Phocas, start

The roll of masters in grammatic art.
Entychius, Servius, Pompey, each extend
The list. Comminian brings it to an end.

There shalt thou find, O reader, many more

Famed for their style, the masters of old lore,
Whose many volumes singly to rehearse
Were far too tedious for our present verse.[150]

Alcuin’s work on the Continent began in 782, when, resigning his

place as master of the cathedral school in York, he took charge of
the imperial or palace school at Tours. His work in the palace school
included not only the organisation of classes for the younger
students, but the personal charge of a class which comprised the
Emperor himself, his wife Luitgard, and other members of the royal
or imperial family. Whether for the younger or for the older students,
however, the instruction given had to be of a very elementary
character. The distinctive value of the work was, it is to be borne in
mind, not in the extent of the instruction given to the immediate
pupils, but in making clear to the Emperor and to his sons who were
to succeed him, the importance of securing a certain uniformity of
script and of educational work throughout the Empire.
It is very probable that not a few of the earlier copyists who
completed in the scriptoria the tasks set for them by the instructors
trained in Tours and in Aachen, transcribed texts the purport of which
they had not mastered. It was through their work, however, that the
texts themselves were preserved and were made available for later
scribes and students who were competent to comprehend the spirit
as well as the letter of their contents.
Mabillon is in accord with later authorities such as Compayré and
West, as to the deplorable condition of learning at this time
throughout the Empire ruled by Charles. Says West: “The plight of
learning in Frankland at this time was deplorable. Whatever
traditions had found their way from the early Gallic schools into the
education of the Franks had long since been scattered and
obliterated in the wild disorders which characterised the times of the
Merovingian kings.... The copying of books had almost ceased, and
all that can be found that pretends to the name of literature in this
time is the dull chronicle or ignorantly conceived legend.”[151]
A description such as this emphasises the importance of the work
initiated by Alcuin, work the value of which the ruler of Europe was
fortunately able to appreciate and ready to support. In his relation to
scholarly interests in Europe and to the preservation of the literature
of the past, Alcuin may fairly be considered as the successor of
Cassiodorus. He was able in the eighth century to render a service
hardly less distinctive than that credited to Cassiodorus three
hundred years earlier. There is the further parallel that, like
Cassiodorus, he possessed a very keen and intelligent interest in the
form given to literary expression, and in all the details of the work
given to the copyists. The instructions given in Alcuin’s treatise on
orthography for the work of the scribes, follow very closely in
principle, and differ, in fact, but slightly in detail from, the instructions
given by Cassiodorus in his own treatise on the same subject. A
couplet which stands at the head of the first page reads as follows:
“Let him who would publish the sayings of the ancients read me, for
he who follows me not will speak without regard to law.”[152] Alcuin’s
care in regard to the consistency of punctuation and orthography and
his intelligent selection of a clearer and neater form of script than
had heretofore been employed, have impressed a special character
on the series of manuscripts dating from the early portion of the ninth
century and written in what is termed the Caroline minuscule. In a
letter written to Charles from Tours in 799, Alcuin mentions that he
has copied out on some blank parchment which the King had sent
him a short treatise on correct diction, with illustrations from Bede.
He goes on to speak of the special value to literature of the
distinctions and subdistinctions of punctuation, the knowledge of
which has, he complains, almost disappeared: “But even as the glory
of all learning and the ornaments of wholesome erudition begin to be
seen again by reason of your noble exertions, so also it seems most
fitting that the use of punctuation should also be resumed by
scribes.... Let your authority so instruct the youths at the palace that
they may be able to utter with perfect elegance whatsoever the clear
eloquence of your thought may dictate, so that whatsoever may go
to the parchment bearing the royal name it may display the
excellence of the royal learning.”[153] A very delicate hint, remarks
West, for Charles to mind his commas and his colons.
Up to the time of Charlemagne there appears to have been so little
facility in writing and so few scribes were available, that government
records were not kept even at the Courts. The schools established
by Alcuin at Tours, under the direction of Charlemagne, were in fact
the first schools for writers which had existed in Western Europe for
centuries. One of the earlier applications made of the knowledge
gained in the imperial schools was for the critical analysis of certain
historical documents which had heretofore been accepted as final
authorities. In the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, anything that
was in writing appears to have been accepted as necessarily
trustworthy and valuable, very much as in the earlier times of printing
the fact that a statement was in print caused it to be accepted as
something not to be contradicted. The critical faculty, combined with
the scholarly knowledge necessary and properly applied, was,
however, of slow growth, and centuries must still have passed
before, in this work of differentiating the value of documents, the
authority of scholars secured its full recognition.
After this work of Alcuin began, that is to say, after the beginning
of the ninth century, it became the rule of each properly organised
monastery to include, in addition to the scriptorium, an armarium, or
writing-chamber, which was utilised as a class-room for instruction in
writing and in Latin. In a letter of Canonicus Geoffrey, of St.-Barbe-
en-Auge, dated 1170, occurs the expression, Claustrum sine armario
est quasi castrum sine armamentario,[154] (a monastery without a
writing-chamber is like a camp without a storehouse of munitions or
an armory.)
The Capitular of Charlemagne, issued in the year 789, addressed
itself to the correction of the ignorance and carelessness of the
monks, and to the necessity of preserving a standard of correctness
for the work of transcribing holy writings. It contains the phrase:
Et pueros vestros non sinite eos vel legendo vel scribendo
corrumpere. Et si opus est evangelium, psalterium et missale
scribere, perfectæ ætatis homines scribant cum omni diligentia.
(Do not permit your pupils, either in reading or writing, to garble
the text;—and when you are preparing copies of the gospel, the
psalter, or the missal, see that the work is confided to men of mature
age, who will write with due care.)
The following lines were written by Alcuin as an injunction to pious
scribes:
AD MUSÆUM LIBROS SCRIBENTIUM.

Hic sedeant sacræ scribentes famina legis,

Nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata patrum.
His interserere caveant sua frivola verbis,
Frivola ne propter erret et ipsa manus,
Correctosque sibi quærant studiose libellos,
Tramite quo recto penna volantis eat.
Per cola distinguant proprios et commata sensus.
Et punctos ponant ordine quosque suo,
 Ne vel falsa legat taceat vel forte repente,
Ante pios fratres lector in ecclesia.
.....

(Quoted from the Vienna Codex, 743. Denis, i., 313.)

Wattenbach is of opinion that these lines stood over the door of
the scriptorium of S. Martin’s Monastery.
West says that the lines were written as an injunction to the
scribes of the school at Tours. He gives the following version, which
takes in certain further lines of the original than those cited by
Wattenbach:
“Here let the scribes sit who copy out the words of the Divine Law,
and likewise the hallowed sayings of the holy Fathers. Let them
beware of interspersing their own frivolities in the words they copy,
nor let a trifler’s hand make mistakes through haste. Let them
earnestly seek out for themselves correctly written books to
transcribe, that the flying pen may speed along the right path. Let
them distinguish the proper sense by colons and commas, and let
them set the points each one in its due place, and let not him who
reads the words to them either read falsely or pause suddenly. It is a
noble work to write out holy books, nor shall the scribe fail of his due
reward. Writing books is better than planting vines, for he who plants
a vine serves his belly, but he who writes a book serves his
soul.”[155]
In a manuscript which was written in S. Jacob’s Monastery in
Liége, occurred the following lines:

Jacob Rebeccæ dilexit simplicitatem,

Altus mens Jacobi scribendi sedulitatem.
Ille pecus pascens se divitiis cumulavit,
Iste libros scribens meritum sibi multiplicavit.
Ille Rachel typicam præ cunctis duxit amatam,
Hic habeat vitam justis super astra paratam.[156]

[(The Hebrew) Jacob loved the simplicity of Rebecca,

 The lofty soul of (the monk) Jacob (loved) the work of the
scribe.
The former accumulated riches in pasturing his flocks,
The latter increased his fame through the writing of books.
The former won his Rachel, loved beyond all others.
May the scribe have the eternal life which is prepared above
the stars for the just.]

The most important of the works of Alcuin that can be called

original were his educational writings, comprising treatises On
Grammar, On Orthography, On Rhetoric and the Virtues, On
Dialectics, A Disputation with Pepin, and a study of astronomy
entitled De Cursu et Saltu Lunæ ac Bissexto. West mentions three
other treatises which have been ascribed to him: On the Seven Arts,
A Disputation for Boys, and the Propositions of Alcuin.[157] Alcuin
was more fortunate than his great predecessor Cassiodorus in
respect to the preservation of his writings. Manuscripts of all of these
remained in existence until the time came when the complete set of
works could be issued in printed form, and the work of the old
instructor could be appreciated by a generation living a thousand
years after his life had closed. He died at Tours in 804, in his
seventieth year. Mabillon speaks of Alcuin as “the most learned man
of his age.” Laurie is disposed to lay stress upon the monastic
limitations of his intellect, and thinks that his principal ability was that
of an administrator; West emphasises the “pure unselfishness of his
character,” and adds, with discriminating appreciation: “We must also
credit him with a certain largeness of view, in spite of his
circumscribed horizon. He had some notion of the continuity of the
intellectual life of man, of the perils that beset the transmission of
learning from age to age, and of the disgrace which attached to
those who would allow those noble arts to perish which the wisest of
men among the ancients had discovered.... Perceiving that the
precious treasure of knowledge was then hidden in a few books, he
made it his care to transmit to future ages copies undisfigured by
slips of the pen or mistakes of the understanding. Thus in every way
that lay within his power, he endeavoured to put the fortunes of
learning for the times that should succeed him in a position of
advantage, safeguarded by an abundance of truthfully transcribed
books, interpreted by teachers of his own training, sheltered within
the Church and defended by the civil power.”[158] Professor West’s
appreciative summary does full justice to the work and the ideals of
Charlemagne’s great schoolmaster. I should only add that in the
special service he was in a position to render in the preservation,
transmission, and publication of the world’s literature, Alcuin must be
accorded a very high place in the series of literary workers which,
beginning with Cassiodorus, includes such names as Columba,
Biscop, Aurispa, Gutenberg, Aldus, Estienne, and Froben.
The most noteworthy of the successors of Alcuin in the palace
school at Tours was John Scotus Erigena, who in 845 was appointed
master by Charles the Bold. The influence of the Irish monk widened
the range of study and gave to it an active-minded and speculative
tendency that brought about a wide departure from the settled
conservatism which had always characterised the teaching of Alcuin.
The list of books given to the scribe for copying was increased, and
now included, for instance, works of such doubtful orthodoxy as the
Satyricon of Martianus Capella, a voluminous compilation
constituting a kind of cyclopædia of the seven liberal arts. Its
composition dates from about 500.[159]
In a treatise, De Instituto Clericorum, written in 819 (that is, during
the reign of Louis I.), by Rabanus Maurus, who was Abbot of Fulda
and later, Archbishop of Mayence, is cited the following regulation:
“The canons and the decrees of Pope Zosimus have decided that a
clerk proceeding to holy orders shall continue five years among the
readers ... and after that shall for four years serve as an acolyte or
sub-deacon.” (The Zosimus referred to was Pope for but one year,
417-418.) Rabanus had just before remarked, “Lectores are so
called a legendo.” He goes on to say that “he who would rightly and
properly perform the duty of a reader must be imbued with learning
and conversant with books, and must further be instructed in the
meaning of words and in the knowledge of the words themselves,”
etc.[160] Rabanus follows this with a series of very practical
instructions and suggestions for effective education on the part of the
readers. These were based upon the treatise on elocution written
nearly two hundred years earlier by the learned Bishop Isidore of
Seville, and they were again copied three years after the time of
Rabanus by Ibo, Bishop of Chartres, in the treatise De Rebus
Ecclesiasticis. Maitland, to whom I am indebted for this citation, finds
cause for indignant criticism of the historian Robertson for the
superficial and misleading references made by the historian to the
dense ignorance of the Church in the Middle Ages. Maitland
suggests that if Robertson had applied for holy orders to the
Archbishop of Seville in the seventh century, the Archbishop of
Mayence in the ninth, or the Bishop of Chartres in the eleventh, he
would have found the examination rather more of a task than he
expected. West speaks of Rabanus as “Alcuin’s greatest pupil,” and
as intellectually “a greater man than his master.”[161] He wrote a long
series of theological and educational treatises.
From the Constitutions of Reculfus, who became Bishop of
Soissons in 879, it is evident that he expected the clergy to be able
both to read and to write. The Bishop says: “We admonish that each
one of you should be careful to have a Missal, a Lectionary, a Book
of the Gospels, a Martyrology, an Antiphonary, a Psalter, and a copy
of the Forty Homilies of S. Gregory, corrected and pointed by our
copies which we use in the holy mother Church; and also fail not to
have as many sacred and ecclesiastical books as you can get, for
from these you shall receive food and condiment for your souls.... If,
however, any one of you is not able to obtain all the books of the Old
Testament, at least let him diligently take pains to transcribe for
himself correctly the first book of the whole sacred history, that is,
Genesis, by reading which he may come to understand the creation
of the world.”[162] The counsel was good, even although a perfectly
clear understanding of the creation might after all not have been
secured.
By the close of the ninth century, a large proportion of the
monasteries of the Continent and of England carried on schools
which were open to the children of as large a district as could be
reached. In many cases, the elementary classes were succeeded by
classes in advanced instruction, while from these were selected
favourites or exceptionally capable pupils, who enjoyed in still higher
studies the advantage of the guidance and service of the best
scholars in the monastery. West, in summing up the later influence of
Alcuin, speaks of the stream of learning as having flowed from York
to Tours and from Tours (through Rabanus) to Fulda, thence to
Auxerre, Ferrières, Corbies (old and new), Reichenau, St. Gall, and
Rheims, one branch of it finally reaching Paris.[163] Mabillon speaks
of the abbey schools of Fleury as containing during the tenth and
eleventh centuries as many as five thousand scholars.
In Italy, the most important schools were those instituted at Monte
Cassino, Pomposa, and Classe. Giesebrecht is, however, of opinion
that the educational work of the Italian monasteries was less
important than that carried on by the monasteries in Germany,
France, or England. In Germany, the monasteries which have
already been mentioned as centres of intellectual activity were also
those which had instituted the most important and effective of the
schools, the list including St. Gall, Fulda, Reichenau, Hirschau,
Wissembourg, Hersfeld, and many others.
In France and Belgium, the names of the conspicuous abbey
schools include those of Marmoutier, Fontenelle, Fleury, Corbie,
Ferrières, Bec, Clugni. In England, the most noteworthy of the abbey
schools were St. Albans, Glastonbury, Malmesbury, Croyland, and S.
Peter’s of Canterbury. From the epoch of Charlemagne to that of S.
Louis, the great abbeys of Christian Europe served in fact not only
as its schools but as its universities. The more intelligent of the
nobility and the kings themselves were interested in securing for
their children the educational advantages of the monastery schools.
Among the French kings who were brought up in this way are to be
named Pepin the Little, Robert the Pious, and Louis the Fat. In
Spain, Sancho the Great, King of Navarre and of Castile, was a
graduate of the monastery of Leyre.
In England, we have the noteworthy example of Alfred, who was
not ashamed, after having reached mature years, to repair his
imperfect education by attending the school established in Oxford by
the Benedictines, where he is said to have studied grammar,
philosophy, rhetoric, history, music, and versification.[164]
A large number of the convents, following the example of the
abbeys, contained schools in which were trained not only the future
novices, but also numbers of young girls destined for the life of the
Courts or of the world.
Mabillon finds occasion to correct the impression on the part of
some writers of the sixteenth century, that the monasteries had been
established solely for the purpose of carrying on educational work.
He writes: C’est une illusion de certains gens qui ont écrit dans le
siècle précédent que les monastères n’avaient esté d’abord établis
que pour servir d’écoles faisantes profession d’enseigner les
sciences humaines.
De Rancé, who wrote a Traité de la saincteté et du devoir de la vie
monastique, took the ground that the pursuit of literature was
inconsistent with the monastic profession, and that the reading of the
monks ought to be confined to the Scriptures and a few books of
devotion. The treatise was understood to be an attack upon the
Benedictine monks of St. Maur, for that they were learned was a
matter of general knowledge, and the monks of La Trappe, the Order
with which De Rancé had associated himself, had an old-time
antagonism to their scholarly neighbours. It may be considered as a
good service for literature and for monastic history that the treatise of
De Rancé, narrow and unimportant in itself as it was, should have
been published. Nine years later, in the year 1691, was issued the
reply of the Benedictines, the learned and valuable Traité des Études
Monastiques of Dom Mabillon, which will be referred to more
particularly in the following chapter.
The historians of these monastic schools have laid stress upon the
limited conceptions possessed by their founders and by the
instructors, of the purpose and possibilities of education, conceptions
which of necessity affected not only the work done in the school-
room, but the character of the literature produced in the scriptoria.
Laurie, for instance, writes as follows: “The Christian conception of
education was, unfortunately (like that of old Cato), narrow. It tended
steadily to concentrate and to contract men’s intellectual interests.
The Christian did not think of the culture of the whole man. He could
not consistently do so. His whole purpose was the salvation of the
soul.... Salvation was to be obtained through abnegation of the world
and through faith.... Christianity, accordingly, found itself necessarily
placed in mortal antagonism to ‘Humanitas’ and to Hellenism, and
had to go through the troublous experiences of nearly 1400 years
before the possibility of the union of reason with authority, of religion
with Hellenism, could be conserved.... As was indeed inevitable,
theological discussion more and more occupied the active intellect of
the time, to the subordination, if not total neglect of humane letters
and philosophy. The Latin and Greek classics were ultimately
denounced. As the offspring of the pagan world, if not indeed
inspired by demons, they were dangerous to the faith.”[165]
From the Apostolic Constitutions, ascribed to the middle of the
fourth century, Mr. Bass Mullinger quotes the injunction: “Refrain
from all the writings of the heathen: for what hast thou to do with
strange discourses, laws, or false prophets, which, in truth, turn
aside from the faith those who are weak in the understanding ...
wherefore abstain scrupulously from all strange and devilish
books.”[166]
It was S. Augustine who said Indocti cœlum rapiunt—“It is the
ignorant who take the kingdom of heaven,”—and Gregory the Great
who asserted that he would blush to have Holy Scripture subjected
to the rules of grammar.[167] West speaks of the conceptions of
grammar and of rhetoric taught by Alcuin as “crude” and “puerile,”
and of his theories of language as “childish.”
It is, of course, a truism to point out that the educational work done
by Alcuin and the other great instructors of the monastic schools is
not to be judged by the standard of later ages. The students for
whose training they were responsible, whether children or adults,
princes or peasants, must have been, with hardly an exception, in a
very elementary condition of mental development, and it was
necessary for the instruction to be in like manner elementary. In this
study, I am, however, not undertaking to consider the history of
education in early Europe, a subject which has been so ably
presented in the works of Mullinger, Laurie, Compayré, and West. I
am concerned with the work of these early schoolmasters simply
because to their persistent efforts was due the preservation of
literature in Europe. If Alcuin and his successors had done nothing
else than to secure a substantially uniform system of writing
throughout the great schools in which were trained abbots and
scribes for hundreds of monasteries, they would have conferred an
inestimable service upon Europe. But their work did go much further.
Notwithstanding the various injunctions and warnings of
ecclesiastical leaders against “pagan” literature, it proved
impracticable to prevent this literature from being preserved and
manifolded in numberless scriptoria. The record of the opposition
has been preserved in a series of edicts and injunctions. But the fact
that the interest in the writings of the ancients proved strong enough
to withstand all the fulminations and censures is evidenced by the
long series of manuscripts of the classics produced in the
monasteries during the tenth and eleventh centuries. The writers of
these manuscripts were the product of the schools instituted by
Charlemagne and Alcuin.
The Benedictines of the Continent.—The two writers
who have given the largest attention to the record of the literary and
scholarly work of the Benedictines during the seven centuries
between 500 and 1200 a.d., are Mabillon and Ziegelbauer. Dom
Mabillon was himself a Benedictine monk and had a full inheritance
of the literary spirit and scholarly devotion which characterised the
Order. He was born in Rheims in 1632, and his treatise on monastic
studies, Traité des Études Monastiques, which has remained the
chief authority on its subject, was published in Paris in 1691.
Ziegelbauer’s Observationes Literariæ S. Benedicti appeared a
century later.[168]
Mabillon’s work forms a magnificent monument not only to the
learning, diligence, and literary skill of its writer, but to the enormous
value of the services rendered, during a number of centuries, by the
monks of his Order, in the preservation of literature from the ravages
of barbarism and in the development of scholarship. Mabillon also
makes clear the lasting importance of the original initiative given to
the literary labour of the Benedictines by the Rule of their founder.
An important portion of the material upon which Mabillon’s treatise
was based, was collected during a series of journeys made by him in
company with his brother under the instructions first of the great
minister Colbert, and later, of Le Tellier, Archbishop of Rheims, for
the purpose of examining or of searching for documents relating to
the royal family and of procuring books for the royal library. The first
of these journeys, undertaken in the year 1682, was completed
entirely within French territory and was entitled Iter Burgundicum.
The second covered a considerable portion of South Germany and
Switzerland, and is known as the Iter Germanicum. The third was
devoted to Italy, and is described under the title of Iter Italicum; while
the fourth investigation was made in Alsace and Lorraine, and the
record is entitled Iter Literarium in Alsatiam et Lotharingiam.
The plan of the journeys involved a thorough ransacking of as
many libraries as they could secure admission to, the libraries being,
with but few exceptions, contained in the monasteries. The
immediate result of these journeys was the addition to the royal
library of some three thousand volumes, chiefly collected in Italy, and
the later result, the publication of the records above specified, which
form a most valuable presentation of the condition of the monastic
collections in the seventeenth century, and which give in their lists
the titles of a considerable number of valuable works which have
since entirely disappeared.
A century later than S. Benedict, an unknown hermit called “the
Master” prepared a Rule under which monks were required to study
until they reached the age of fifty.[169] The Rule of S. Aurelian and S.
Ferreol rendered this regulation universal, and that of Grimlaïcus
identified the character of the hermit with that of “doctor.”[170] In all
countries where the Benedictine Orders flourished, literature and
scholarship exercised an abiding influence. It is impossible, contends
Montalembert, to name an abbey famed for the number and holiness
of its monks which is not also noted for learning and for its school of
literature. The Benedictine monks during the four or five centuries
after the foundation of the Order certainly appear to have held
themselves faithful to the precept of S. Jerome, “A book always in
your hand or under your eyes.” (Nunquam de manu necque oculis
recedat liber.[171]) They also accepted very generally the example of
Bede, who said that it had been for him always delightful either to
learn, to teach, or to write.[172] Warton is authority for the statement
that in the year 790 Charlemagne granted to the abbot and monks of
Sithiu an unlimited right of hunting, in order that they might procure
from the skins of the deer killed, gloves, girdles, and covers for their
books. He goes on to say: “We may imagine that these religious
were more fond of hunting than of reading. It is certain that they were
obliged to hunt before they could read, and it seems probable that
under these circumstances they did not manufacture many
volumes.”[173] Maitland, in referring to the original text of the
concession, finds, however, that this has been misread by Warton.
The permission to hunt, for the useful purpose specified, was given
not for the monks but for the servants of the monastery.
With all the great Benedictine monasteries, it was the routine to
institute first a library, then a scriptorium for the manifolding of books,
and finally schools, open, not only to students who were preparing
for the Church, but to all in the neighbourhood who had need of or
desire for instruction. The copies prepared in the scriptorium of the
texts from the library were utilised in the first place for the duplicates
needed of the works in most frequent reference, but more
particularly for securing by exchange copies of texts not already in
the library, and, in many instances, also for adding either to the direct
wealth of the monastery (by exchange for lands or cattle) or to its
income by making sale of the works through travelling monks or by
correspondence with other monasteries.
The list of monasteries which became in this manner literary and
publishing centres would include nearly all the great Benedictine
foundations of both Britain and the Continent. There was probably,
however, a greater activity during the period between 600 and 1200,
in the matter at least of collecting and circulating books, in the
monasteries of France than in those of Italy, Germany, or Britain; but
more important even than Clugni, Marmoutier, or Corbie, in France,
was the great Swiss abbey of St. Gall, an abbey the realm of which
reached almost to the proportions of a small municipality. In the
shade of its walls, there dwelt a whole nation, divided into two
branches, the familia intus, which comprised the labourers,
shepherds, and workmen of all trades, and the familia foris,
composed of serfs, who were bound to do three days’ work in each
week.
Within the monastery itself, there were, in the latter half of the
tenth century, no less than five hundred monks, together with a great
group of students. In Germany, the most noted of what might be
called the literary monasteries during the ninth and tenth centuries
were those of Fulda, Reichenau, Lorsch, Hirschau, and
Gandersheim. It was in the latter that the nun Hroswitha composed
her famous dramas. In France, in addition to those already specified,
should be mentioned Fleury, St. Remy, St. Denis, Luxeuil, S. Vincent
at Toul, and Aurillac. In Belgium, S. Peter’s at Ghent was, during the
tenth century, the most important of the scholarly monasteries. In
England, in addition to the earlier foundations, already referred to, of
Wearmouth and Yarrow, St. Albans and Glastonbury became the
most famous. Before the eleventh century, the literature that came
into existence from contemporary writers or reproductions of the
works of classic writers outside of the monasteries must have been
very trifling indeed. One of the most noteworthy publications which
emanated from St. Gall was the great dictionary or Vocabulary
bearing the name of Solomon (Abbot of St. Gall and later, Bishop of
Constance), a work which was in fact a kind of literary and scientific
encyclopædia. This manuscript, comprising in all 1070 pages, was
put into print in the latter part of the fifteenth century.[174] The
records of the famous library of the monastery have been brought
together by later scholars, and it is their testimony that the
manuscripts contained in it were among the most beautiful and
accurate specimens of caligraphy known. These St. Gall
manuscripts were also noted for their exquisite miniatures and
illuminations. The parchment used for them was prepared by the
hands of the monks, and they also did their own binding.[175] The
fame of Sintram, one of the most noteworthy of the copyists, was