Under these circumstances the monasteries naturally built up libraries. Originally these libraries began with copies of the scriptures or of books containing portions of them, such as the Gospels and the Psalms. To these were added Mass books, collections of the writings of the fathers of the church and the sermons of famous preachers, volumes of commentaries on the scriptures and the works of the fathers, and lives of the saints, and, in course of time, treatises on theological subjects. Even the life of a monastic community, however, is not all religious. Consequently we find the monks writing chronicles which were the beginnings of history. These chronicles originally were merely dry statements of the events which happened in the monastery, the community in which it was located, or even the country. At first dry notebooks without historical perspective and with very little detail, they gradually developed into something like a historical narrative of occurrences with estimates of character and statements as to the causes and effects, as well as the mere occurrence, of events. Then came works on natural history, medicine, music, grammar, in fact all the matters in which men are interested. Poetry struggled for expression and the romantic adventures of the real men and women of the time stimulated imagination to the production of tales and romances. For historical information and for literary models the writers looked to the great authors of a previous age, and attention was given to the copying of such remains of ancient literature as had survived the fall of the old civilization. Practically every manuscript that we have of the ancient authors is the salvage from some old library of a mediaeval monastery. Every religious house came to have its library, or scriptorium, which was at once the place for the making and the keeping of books. Some brother especially suited for the task, sometimes even the abbot himself, was in charge of the library and of the brothers who worked there. Sometimes the entire work on a manuscript would be done by a single man. At other times there was a division of labor. One brother, for example, would pick out the vellum, see to the condition of the skins, arrange the quires, and rule them with compass and stylus. Another, or a group of others, would write the plain text. In the case of a large book, a certain number of quires might be given to each one of a group of copyists. A third would put in the illuminated capitals and the pictures, or either of them, while still another would examine the completed manuscript, comparing it with the original and correcting any errors which might be discovered.