The arrangement of the libraries which were subsequently added to most
of the larger monasteries in the fifteenth century is unknown, as none
of the furniture or fittings seem to have come down to the present day
either in this country or in France or Italy. But Mr Clark thinks that
the collegiate libraries will give us the key to the plan of the
monastic libraries, since the rules relating to the libraries of Oxford
and Cambridge were framed on those which obtained in the "book-houses"
of the religious foundations. From these collegiate libraries we gather
that it was customary to chain the books, so that they might be
accessible to all and yet secure from those who might wish to
appropriate them temporarily or otherwise. The shelf to which the
volumes were fastened took the form or an "elongated lectern or desk,"
at which the reader might sit. Pembroke College and Queens' College,
Cambridge, had desks of this type, which was also in use on the
Continent. In some places the desks were modified by the addition of
shelves above or below.
Mr Falconer Madan, in his _Books in Manuscript_, quotes the following
account, which he translates from the Latin register of Titchfield
Abbey, written at the end of the fourteenth century, and which shows the
care and method with which the books were kept: "The arrangement of the
library of the monastery of Tychefeld is this:--There are in the library
of Tychefeld four cases (_columnæ_) in which to place books, of which
two, the first and second, are in the eastern face; on the southern face
is the third, and on the northern face the fourth. And each of them has
eight shelves (_gradus_), marked with a letter and number affixed on the
front of each shelf.... So all and singular the volumes of the said
library are fully marked on the first leaf and elsewhere on the shelf
belonging to the book, with certain numbered letters. And in order that
what is in the library may be more quickly found, the marking of the
shelves of the said library, the inscriptions in the books, and the
reference in the register, in all points agree with each other. Anno
domini, MCCCC." Then is shown the order in which the books lie on the
shelves. Briefly, the sequence of subjects and books is as
follows:--Bibles, Bibles with commentary, theology, lives of saints,
sermons, canon law, commentaries on canon law, civil law, medicine,
arts, grammar, miscellaneous volumes, logic and philosophy, English law,
eighteen French volumes, and a hundred and two liturgical volumes.
Titchfield Abbey owned altogether over a thousand volumes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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