Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods | Page 9

could be accommodated on a single desk. As books accumulated therefore some other form of case had to be devised, which would accommodate more volumes than could be consulted at once. The desk could not be dispensed with so long as books were chained, but one or more shelves were added to it. This addition was effected in two ways, according as the books were to stand on their ends, or to lie on their sides.
As an illustration of the former plan I will take the library of Merton College, Oxford, attributed by tradition to William Reade, Bishop of Chichester 1368-85; and it has been so little altered that it may be taken as a type of a medieval collegiate or monastic library. It is a long narrow room, as all medieval libraries were, with equidistant windows, and the bookcases stand at right angles to the walls in the spaces between each pair of windows, in front of which is the seat for the reader. Each bookcase had originally two shelves only above the desk. I will shew you, first, a general view of the interior of this library, and then a single bookcase and seat.
Merton College, Oxford: (1) general view of the interior of the Library; (2) a single bookcase as at present.
The system of chaining, as adopted in this country, would allow of the books being readily taken down from the shelves, and laid on the desk for reading. One end of the chain was attached to the middle of the upper edge of the right-hand board; the other to a ring which played on a bar set in front of the shelf on which the book stood. The fore-edge of the books, not the back, was turned forwards. A swivel, usually in the middle of the chain, prevented tangling. The chains varied in length according to the distance of the shelf from the desk. The bar was kept in place by a rather elaborate system of iron-work attached to the end of the bookcase, and secured by a lock which often required two keys--that is, the presence of two officials--to open it. To illustrate this I will shew you a sketch of one of the bookcases in Hereford Cathedral (fig. 4).
[Illustration: FIG. 4. Bookcase in Hereford Cathedral. (Lent by the Syndics of the University Press.)]
Having said thus much about chaining, I return to the Merton bookcases. Cases similar to these were evidently in use in the library of Christ Church, Canterbury, where the memoranda I mentioned record four shelves--that is, two on each side--in each bookcase, and also at Clairvaux, where a similar feature was observed. The design was evidently much admired, for we find cases on a similar plan, but larger, elsewhere in Oxford, as at the Colleges of Corpus Christi, S. John's, Trinity, Jesus, and in the Bodleian Library.
Bookcase in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Another device for combining desk with shelf is to be seen at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and, as these cases were set up after 1626, we have here a curious instance of a deliberate return to ancient forms. There is evidence that there once existed below the shelf a second desk, which could be drawn in and out as required, so that a reader could stand or sit as he pleased, as you will see from the next illustration.
Bookcase in the Library of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
The University of Leiden in Holland adopted a modification of this design, for there the shelf is above the desk, and readers could only stand to use the books (fig. 5).
[Illustration: FIG. 5. Bookcases in the library of the University of Leiden: from a print by J.C. Woudanus, dated 1610. (Lent by the Syndics of the University Press.)]
An arrangement analogous to this was adopted at Citeaux, as we may gather from the catalogue, drawn up in 1480. I will not trouble you with details, but merely say that there was evidently a shelf below the desk as well as one above it. The cases therefore resembled those at Leiden, with this difference; and they were also probably of such a height that a reader could conveniently sit at them.
On the continent, where elaborate bindings came early into fashion, sometimes protected by equally elaborate bosses at their corners, it would have been impossible to arrange the volumes as we did side by side on the shelves. It therefore became the fashion to place a shelf below the desk, and to lay the books upon it on their sides. The earliest library fitted in this manner that I have been able to discover is at Cesena in North Italy. It was built in 1452, by Domenico Malatesta Novello, for the convent of S. Francesco. It is possible, therefore, that the parent house of S. Francesco at Assisi,