Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods | Page 4

established on the principle of holding no possessions of any kind, soon found that books were indispensable; that, in the words of a Norman Bishop, Claustrum sine armario, castrum sine armamentario. So, by a strange irony, it came to pass that their libraries excelled those of most other Orders, as Richard de Bury testifies in the Philobiblon.
Whenever we turned aside to the cities and places where the Mendicants had their convents ... we found heaped up amidst the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom....
These men are as ants ever preparing their meat in the summer, and ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey.... And to pay due regard to truth, although they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the Lord's vineyard ..., they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the other vine-dressers; following in the footsteps of Paul, the last to be called but the first in preaching, who spread the gospel of Christ more widely than all others.
It might have been expected, from the use of the word library in the Rule of S. Benedict, that a special room assigned to books would have been one of the primitive component parts of every Benedictine House. This, however, is not the case. Such a room does usually occur in these Houses, but it will be found, on examination, that it was added to some previously existing structure in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Its absence from the primitive plan brings out two points very clearly: (1) how few books even a wealthy community could afford to possess for several centuries after the foundation of the Order; (2) how strictly the Order adhered to prescribed arrangements in laying out its Houses, for even those built, or rebuilt, after books had become plentiful, do not admit a Library as an indispensable item in their ground-plan.
How then did they bestow their books after they had become too numerous to be kept in the church? The answer to this question is a very curious one, when we consider what our climate is, and indeed what the climate of the whole of Europe is, during the winter months. The centre of the monastic life was the cloister. Brethren were not allowed to congregate in any other part of the conventual buildings, except when they went into the frater, or dining-hall, for their meals, or at certain hours in certain seasons into the warming-house (calefactorium). In the cloister accordingly they kept their books; and there they sat and studied, or conducted the schooling of the novices and choir-boys in winter and in summer alike.
Such a locality as this could not have been very favourable to the preservation of the books themselves. They, however, had a certain amount of protection which was denied to their readers, for they were shut up in presses. The word used for these, armarium, is the same as that which was applied by the Romans to their bookcases; and probably the idea of such a piece of furniture was due to a far-off echo of ancient usage. The official who had charge of the books did not derive his name from them, as in modern times, but from the presses which contained them--for he was uniformly styled armarius.
As time went on, greater comfort was introduced. The windows of the walk of the cloister where the presses stood, usually the walk next the Church, were glazed--and sometimes not merely with white glass, but with mottoes alluding to the authors whose works were near at hand; while in some monasteries the elder monks were provided with small wooden studies, called "carrells." A description of the whole system has been preserved for us in that curious book The Rites of Durham; but it must be remembered that this represents the customs of the convent just before the suppression, and therefore gives no idea of the rigour of an earlier time.
Part of the north walk of the cloister, Durham.
In the north syde of the Cloister, from the corner over against the Church dour to the corner over againste the Dorter dour, was all fynely glased from the hight to the sole within a litle of the grownd into the Cloister garth. And in every wyndowe iij Pewes or Carrells, where every one of the old Monks had his carrell, severall by himselfe, that, when they had dyned, they dyd resort to that place of Cloister, and there studyed upon there books, every one in his carrell, all the after nonne, unto evensong tyme. This was there exercise every daie.
All there pewes or carrells was all fynely wainscotted and verie close, all but the forepart, which had carved wourke that gave light in at ther carrell doures of wainscott. And in every carrell was a