Bibliomania in the Middle Ages | Page 7

they solde to the
grossers and sope sellers, and some they sent over see to the
bokebynders,[9] not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shippes ful. I
know a merchant man, whyche shall at thys tyme be nameless, that
boughte the contents of two noble lybraryes for xl shyllyngs pryce, a
shame is it to be spoken. Thys stuffe hathe he occupyed in the stide of
graye paper for the space of more than these ten years, and yet hath
store ynough for as many years to come. A prodyguose example is this,
and to be abhorred of all men who love theyr natyon as they shoulde
do."[10]
However pernicious the Roman religion might have been in its practice,
it argues little to the honor of the reformers to have used such means as

this to effect its cure; had they merely destroyed those productions
connected with the controversies of the day, we might perhaps have
excused it, on the score of party feeling; but those who were
commissioned to visit the public libraries of the kingdom were often
men of prejudiced intellects and shortsighted wisdom, and it frequently
happened that an ignorant and excited mob became the executioners of
whole collections.[11] It would be impossible now to estimate the loss.
Manuscripts of ancient and classic date would in their hands receive no
more respect than some dry husky folio on ecclesiastical policy; indeed,
they often destroyed the works of their own party through sheer
ignorance. In a letter sent by Dr. Cox to William Paget, Secretary, he
writes that the proclamation for burning books had been the occasion of
much hurt. "For New Testaments and Bibles (not condemned by
proclamation) have been burned, and that, out of parish churches and
good men's houses. They have burned innumerable of the king's
majesties books concerning our religion lately set forth."[12] The
ignorant thus delighted to destroy that which they did not understand,
and the factional spirit of the more enlightened would not allow them to
make one effort for the preservation of those valuable relics of early
English literature, which crowded the shelves of the monastic libraries;
the sign of the cross, the use of red letters on the title page, the
illuminations representing saints, or the diagrams and circles of a
mathematical nature, were at all times deemed sufficient evidence of
their popish origin and fitness for the flames.[13]
When we consider the immense number of MSS. thus destroyed, we
cannot help suspecting that, if they had been carefully preserved and
examined, many valuable and original records would have been
discovered. The catalogues of old monastic establishments, although
containing a great proportion of works on divine and ecclesiastical
learning, testify that the monks did not confine their studies exclusively
to legendary tales or superstitious missals, but that they also cultivated
a taste for classical and general learning. Doubtless, in the ruin of the
sixteenth century, many original works of monkish authors perished,
and the splendor of the transcript rendered it still more liable to
destruction; but I confess, as old Fuller quaintly says, that "there were
many volumes full fraught with superstition which, notwithstanding,

might be useful to learned men, except any will deny apothecaries the
privilege of keeping poison in their shops, when they can make
antidotes of them. But besides this, what beautiful bibles! Rare fathers!
Subtle schoolmen! Useful historians! Ancient! Middle! Modern! What
painful comments were here amongst them! What monuments of
mathematics all massacred together!"[14]
More than a cart load of manuscripts were taken away from Merton
College and destroyed, and a vast number from the Baliol and New
Colleges, Oxford;[15] but these instances might be infinitely multiplied,
so terrible were those intemperate outrages. All this tends to enforce
upon us the necessity of using considerable caution in forming an
opinion of the nature and extent of learning prevalent during those ages
which preceded the discovery of the art of printing.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The sad page in the Annals of Literary History recording the
destruction of books and MSS. fully prove this assertion. In France, in
the year 1790, 4,194,000 volumes were burnt belonging to the
suppressed monasteries, about 25,000 of these were manuscripts.
[8] "About this time (Feb. 25, 1550) the Council book mentions the
king's sending a letter for the purging his library at Westminster. The
persons are not named, but the business was to cull out all superstitious
books, as missals, legends, and such like, and to deliver the garniture of
the books, being either gold or silver, to Sir Anthony Aucher. These
books were many of them plated with gold and silver and curiously
embossed. This, as far as we can collect, was the superstition that
destroyed them. Here avarice had a very thin disguise, and the courtiers
discovered of what spirit they