In support of his contention concerning the general disappearance of literature during the Middle Ages, Robertson quotes the authority of Muratori to the effect that, “even monasteries of considerable note had only one missal.”[205] Maitland has no difficulty in showing that the passage cited has been wrongly understood, and that the generalisation based upon it is absurd. Muratori was referring to a letter of a certain Bonus, who was for thirty years (1018-1048) Abbot of the monastery of S. Michael, in Pisa. In this letter, Bonus gives an account of the founding of the monastery, and says that when he came to Pisa he found there, not a monastery, but simply a chapel, which was in a most deplorable and destitute condition, wanting vessels, vestments, bells, and nearly all the requisites for the performance of divine service, and having no service-books but a missal (_nisi unum missale_). The statement so worded is of course no evidence that there may not have been several copies of the missal. It simply shows that there were no other books (such as texts of the Epistles or Gospels) for use in the service. Bonus goes on to say, with commendable pride, that in fifteen years’ time “the little hut,” as he calls it, had expanded into a monastery, with suitable offices and with a considerable estate in land, the single tin cup had been exchanged for gold and silver chalices, and in place of one “missal,” the monks rejoiced in the possession of a library of thirty-four volumes. It is difficult to understand how Robertson could have justified himself in basing, on a careless version of a statement concerning a missal in a single half-ruined chapel, a broad and misleading generalisation concerning the general absence of books from monasteries. The list of the library later secured by the abbot includes copies of the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Epistles, the Rule of S. Benedict, the Book of Job, the Book of Ezekiel, five Diurnals, eight _Antiphonarii_, three Nocturnals, a tractate by S. Augustine on Genesis, a book of Dialogues, a Glossary, a Pastoral, a book of Canons, a book entitled _Summum Bonum_, five Missals, a book entitled _Passionarum unum novum ubi sunt omnes passiones ecclesiasticæ_ (I give the wording from the catalogue), and the _Liber Bibliotheca_. “Bibliotheca” is the term very generally applied at this period to the Bible, and often used for a collection comprising but a few books of the Bible. The catalogue shows that the good Abbot had made a very fair beginning towards a monastic library.