Large quantities of these manuscripts found their way, however, very promptly to Italy, chiefly through Venice, and, as is described in another chapter, not a few of the Greek scholars who were driven from the Byzantine territories, or who refused to live under the rule of the Turk, brought with them into Italy, as their sole valuable possessions, collections of manuscripts, more or less important, which they used either as texts for their lectures or for transcribing for sale. The collections in the monasteries of the West, brought together in the first place simply for the requirements of the monks and restricted (at least in theory) to devotional or doctrinal books, were, in large measure at least, placed at the disposal of scholars and readers outside of the monasteries, as the interest in literature came to extend beyond the class of ecclesiastics. With this extension of the use of the libraries, there came a natural development in the range of the books collected. Long after the monks or ecclesiastics had ceased to exercise any control over the books or to be themselves the only readers interested in their preservation and use, the most convenient space for the collection was to be found in the church buildings. Many of the collections came, in fact, to be known as cathedral libraries. In certain cases, books or money for the purchase of books was bequeathed in trust to ecclesiastical authorities with the direct purpose of providing a library for the use of the general public. The cathedral Prior of Vercelli (in Piedmont), Jacob Carnarius, who died in 1234, left his books to the Dominicans of S. Paul. He made it, however, a condition of the bequest that under proper security of deposit or pledge, the books should be placed at the disposal of any scholars desiring their use, and particularly of instructors in the Theological Faculty of the University of Vercelli. Petrarch’s library was bequeathed in 1362 to the Church of S. Mark in Venice, with the condition that the collection was to be for the use of the general public. The books were neglected, and for some time disappeared altogether, and it was only in 1635 that a portion of them were recovered. The famous library of S. Mark dates from 1468, when Cardinal Bessarion presented to the city eight hundred manuscripts, assigning as his reason for the gift the generous hospitality extended by Venice to the refugees from Constantinople. These books were to be for the use of any qualified citizens of the city, a pledge of double the value being deposited for any manuscript borrowed. The library of Boccaccio, who died in 1375, was bequeathed to the monks of the Holy Ghost in Florence. This library was afterwards added to by the collection of the famous theologian, Luigi Marsigli, and that of Niccolo Niccoli.[243]