The second question cannot be answered so readily. We must begin by examining, in some detail, the expressions used to denote furniture in the various documents that deal with conventual libraries. S. Pachomius places his books in a cupboard (_fenestra_); S. Benedict uses only the general term, library (_bibliotheca_), which may mean either a room or a piece of furniture; and the word press (_armarium_), with which we become so familiar afterwards, does not make its appearance till near the end of the eleventh century. Lanfranc does not use it, but as I have shewn that he based his statutes, at least to some extent, on the Cluniac Customs, and as they identify the library (_bibliotheca_) with the press (_armarium_), and call the librarian, termed by Lanfranc the keeper of the books, the keeper of the press (_armarius_), we may safely assume that the books to which Lanfranc refers were housed in a similar piece of furniture. Moreover, in Benedictine houses of later date, as for instance at Abingdon and Evesham, the word is constantly employed. I pointed out in the first chapter that the word press (_armarium_) was used by the Romans to signify both a detached piece of furniture and a recess in a wall into which such a contrivance might be inserted[175]. The same use obtained in medieval times[176], and the passage quoted above from the Augustinian customs[177] shews that the book-press there contemplated was a recess lined with wood and subdivided so as to keep the books separate. The books to be accommodated in a monastery, even of large size, could not at its origin have been numerous[178], and would easily have been contained in a single receptacle. This, I conceive, was that recess in the wall which is so frequently found between the Chapter-House and the door into the church at the end of the east pane of the cloister. In many monastic ruins this recess is still open, and, by a slight effort of imagination, can be restored to its pristine use. Elsewhere it is filled in, having been abandoned by the monks themselves in favour of a fresh contrivance. The recess I am speaking of was called the common press (_armarium commune_), or common cloister-press (_commune armarium claustri_); and it contained the books appointed for the general use of the community (_communes libri_).