The _scriptorium_ of earlier times was, however, as previously described, an apartment specially set aside as a general workroom and capable of containing many workers, and in which many persons did, in fact, work together, usually under the direction of a _librarius_ or chief scribe, in a very business-like manner, in the transcription of books. Maitland quotes from a document, which is, he states, one of the very few existing specimens of French Visigothic manuscripts in the uncial character, and which dates from the eighth century, the following form of consecration or benediction, entitled (in monastic Latin) _Orationem in scriptorio_: “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to bless this _scriptorium_ of Thy servants and all that work therein: that whatsoever sacred writings shall be here read or written by them, they may receive with understanding and may bring the same to good effect.”[115] (see also page 61). In the more carefully constructed monasteries, the _scriptorium_ was placed to adjoin the calefactory, which simplified the problem of the introduction of hot air. A further evidence, if such were needed, that the larger literary undertakings were carried on in a _scriptorium_ common room and not in separate cells, is given by the regulation of the general Chapter of the Cistercian Order in 1134, which directs that the same silence should be maintained in the _scriptorium_ as in the cloister: _In omnibus scriptoriis ubicunque ex consuetudine monachi scribunt, silentium teneatur sicut in claustro_.[116] Odo, who in 1093 became Abbot of S. Martin at Tournai, writes that he confided the management of the outside work of the monastery to Ralph, the prior. This left the abbot free to devote himself to reading and to supervising the work in his _scriptorium_. Odo exulted in the number of writers whom the Lord had given to him. “If you had gone into the cloister during the working hours, you would have seen a dozen scribes writing, in perfect silence, at tables constructed for the purpose.” Odo caused to be transcribed all of Jerome’s _Commentaries on the Prophets_, all the works of S. Gregory, and all the works that he could find of S. Augustine, S. Ambrose, Bishop Isidore, the Venerable Bede, and Anselm, then Abbot of Bec and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Odo’s successor, Heriman, who gives this account, says with pride that such a library as Odo brought together in S. Martin could hardly be paralleled in any monastery in the country, and that other monasteries were begging for texts from S. Martin’s with which to collate and correct their own copies.[117] Maitland mentions that certain of the manuscripts written in Odo’s _scriptorium_, including the fourth volume of the _Gregorialis_ of Alulfus, were (in 1845) in the library of Dr. Todd, of Trinity College, Dublin.[118]