It must not be supposed that an extensive collection of books was regarded as indispensable in all monastic establishments. In many Houses, partly from lack of funds, partly from an indisposition to study, the books were probably limited to those required for the services and for the daily life of the brethren. In other places, on the contrary, where the fashion of book-collecting had been set from very early days, by some abbat or prior more learned or more active than his fellows; and where brethren in consequence had learnt to take a pride in their books, whether they read them or not, a large collection was got together at a date when even a royal library could be contained in a single chest of very modest dimensions. For instance, when an inventory of the possessions of the Benedictine House of S. Riquier near Abbeville was made at the request of Louis le Debonnaire in 831 A.D., it was found that the library contained 250 volumes; and a note at the end of the catalogue informs us that if the different treatises had been entered separately, the number of entries would have exceeded five hundred, as many books were frequently bound in a single volume. The works in this library are roughly sorted under the headings Divinity, Grammar, History and Geography, Sermons, Service-books[208]. A similar collection existed at S. Gall at the same period[209]. In the next century we find nearly seven hundred manuscripts in a Benedictine monastery at Bobbio in north Italy[210]; and nearly six hundred in a House belonging to the same order at Lorsch in Germany[211]. At Durham, also a Benedictine House, a catalogue made early in the twelfth century contains three hundred and sixty-six titles[212]; but, as at S. Riquier, the number of works probably exceeded six or seven hundred. These instances, which I have purposely selected from different parts of Europe, and which could easily have been increased, are sufficient to indicate the rapidity with which books could be, and in fact were accumulated, when the taste for such collections had once been set. Year by year, slowly yet surely, by purchase, by gift, by bequest, by the zeal of the staff of writers whom the precentor drilled and kept at work, the number grew, till in certain Houses it reached dimensions which must have embarrassed those responsible for its bestowal. At Christ Church, Canterbury, for instance, the catalogue made by Henry de Estria, Prior 1285-1331, enumerates about 1850 manuscripts[213].