Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods | Page 9

any one else
who might be reading or writing in another place by talking or by any other interruption,
unless the other student wished it, or paid attention to any question that might be put to
him. It was required, by the ancient rules of the library, that reading, writing, and
handling of books should go forward in complete silence.
This system must have been very wasteful as regards space; for only a few volumes, say
a couple of dozen, 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