The earliest of ecclesiastical libraries was probably that collected by Bishop Alexander, in Jerusalem, at the beginning of the third century. Fifty years later a library was founded at Cesarea by Origen, which is described as extensive and important.[215] Collections were also made at an early date at Hippo, at Cirta, at Constantinople, and at S. Peter’s and the Lateran in Rome. All these earlier libraries were apparently connected with the churches, and in most cases places had been found for them within the church walls. Clark quotes from a narrative of the persecution of 303-304 a paragraph saying that the officers “went to the church where the Christians used to assemble, and spoiled it of chalices, lamps, etc., but when they came to the library (_bibliothecam_), the presses (_armaria_) were found empty.”[216] From this reference we may conclude that the several vessels and the books were in different parts of the same building. The library of S. Augustine was bequeathed to the church of Hippo, and the collection was preserved within the church building. The regulations of the libraries in all the Benedictine monasteries were based upon the Rule of S. Benedict (see _ante_, p. 28). As Order after Order was founded, there came to be a steady development of feeling in regard to books, and an ever increasing care for their safe-keeping. S. Benedict had contented himself with general directions for study; the Cluniacs prescribe the selection of a special officer to take charge of the books, with an annual audit of the collection, and the assignment to each Brother of a single volume for his year’s study. The Cistercians and Carthusians provide for the loan of books to outsiders under certain conditions, and the practice was later adopted by the Benedictines. The Augustinians prescribe the kind of press (_armarium_) in which the books are to be kept, and both they and the Premonstratensians permit their books to be lent on receipt of pledges of sufficient value. Even the Mendicant Friars, who, under the original Rule of their Order, had restrained themselves from holding possessions of any kind, found before long that books were indispensable, so that their libraries came to excel those of most other Orders. Richard de Bury, in his _Philobiblon_, says of the Mendicants: “These men are as ants, ever preparing their meat in the summer, or as ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey ... although they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the Lord’s vineyard, they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of sacred books than all the other vine-dressers.”