As regards their contents, the Scriptures, missals, service-books, and similar manuscripts formed the larger part of the monastic libraries, but besides these they included copies of patristic and classical works, devotional and moral writings, lives of saints, chronicles, books on medicine, grammar, philosophy, logic, and, later, romances and fiction were admitted into this somewhat austere company. The catalogue of the "boc-house" of the monastery of St Augustine at Canterbury, written towards the close of the fifteenth century, names many romantic works, including the _Four Sons of Aymon_, _Guy of Warwick_, _The Book of Lancelot_, _The Story of the Graal_, _Sir Perceval de Galois_, _The Seven Sages_, and others, and of some of these there is more than one copy. Books were frequently lent to other monasteries, or to poor clerks and students. It was considered a sacred duty thus to share the benefits of the books with others; but sometimes the custodians of the precious volumes, aware of the failures of memory to which book-borrowers have ever been peculiarly liable, were so averse from running the risk of lending that the libraries were placed under anathema, and could not be lent under pain of excommunication. But the selfishness and injustice of such a practice being recognised, it was formally condemned by the Council of Paris in 1212, and the anathemas annulled. Anathemas were also pronounced against any who should steal or otherwise alienate a book from its lawful owners. But as even in mediæval days there were those who loved books better than honesty, the loan of a volume was accompanied by legal forms and ceremonies, and the borrower, whatever his station or character, had to sign a bond for the due return of the work, and often to deposit security as well. Thus, when about 1225 the Dean of York presented several Bibles for the use of the students of Oxford, he did so on condition that those who used them should deposit a cautionary pledge. Again, in 1299, John de Pontissara, Bishop of Winchester, borrowed from the convent of St Swithun the _Bibliam bene glossatum_, i.e. the Bible with annotations, and gave a bond for its return. And in 1471, when books had become much more common, no less a person than the King of France, desiring to borrow some Arabian medical works from the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, had not only to deposit some costly plate as security, but to find a nobleman to act as surety with him for the return of the books, under pain of a heavy forfeit.