Our gaze is now transferred from Africa to Europe. As Alexander had
given his name to the City on the delta of the Nile, so Constantine
has given his to the City on the Bosphorus. Constantinople stood as
the capital and metropolis of the East for a thousand years, or from
329 A. D. (the date at which he removed his throne thereunto) on until
near the middle of the fifteenth century, when the proud City fell into
the hands of the Mohammedans and became in consequence the seat of the
Ottoman Empire. When Constantine removed the capital of the Empire
from the West he took many elements of intellectual life which had
been the proud boast of the City of Augustus with him unto Byzantium;
and, in process of time, the pomp, power, and learning of Rome and
Alexandria were transferred to Constantinople--supreme in beauty and
convenience of location. Constantinople seemed to occupy for more than
a millennium of years both a charming and a charmed position. While
Rome--for centuries a center and source of literature, having, after
the time of Augustus, numerous libraries--together with the capitols
of provinces and countries of Europe had been successively occupied by
contending armies, Constantinople had remained safe in her commanding
position at the portal of two continents and had continued "unconquered
and even unassailed." At the fall of the Capital in the East, however,
Rome became again the head of the Empire, and its imperial Seat was
transferred from the Bosphorus to the Tiber.
Under the favor shown by Constantine at his accession to the ranks
of the Christian faith, whatever his motive, distinctively Christian
literature was given an honored place in the imperial library; and
through his coöperation, at a time when books were relatively scarce
and difficult to obtain, several thousand volumes were collected. This
collection, made up largely it is claimed of Christian literature, was
augmented under some of his successors to the dimensions of a hundred
thousand volumes. Furthermore, an efficient librarian had charge of
these archives and directed the staff of copyists which were employed
therein somewhat as had been the distinction of the Alexandrian
Library. A new impulse was added in collecting and copying books by
the personal favor of the Emperor--he himself, ordering from Eusebius,
the church historian of the time, fifty copies of the Scriptures to be
written on "artificially wrought skins by skillful calligraphists" for
the use of the churches in and about Constantinople. And it is deemed
possible and even not improbable that the Sinaitic manuscript--one of
the oldest and best of existing Greek manuscripts--may be a survivor
of this number. The library at Constantinople, like all libraries, was
exposed to the wastings of time and change but was replenished and
renewed through that measure of intellectual vitality which survived in
the city on the Bosphorus for a millennium of years.
Besides the imperial library, the churches and religious houses of
Constantinople were enriched with collections of manuscripts more or
less extensive. And not only in the favored City but in the regions
adjacent--in the islands of the Ægean, on Cyprus, and in many other
quarters--manuscripts were collected, transcribed, and preserved.
(Isaac Taylor.)
Constantinople, while it continued to be the center of learning and
literature, was by no means the exclusive center; for the enterprise
of collecting and treasuring books was widely disseminated. "No spot,"
says Isaac Taylor, "was more famed for the production of books than
Mount Athos--the lofty promontory which stretches from the Macedonian
coast far into the Ægean Sea." And the churches, too, in wide areas,
became depositories of books, especially of the Bible or parts
thereof, liturgical volumes, and works of devotion. There were also
church libraries at Jerusalem, at Rome, and in many other localities.
One at Cæsarea is said to have contained, as augmented by Eusebius,
the historian, about thirty thousand volumes. Gradually into all
these regions--into Crete, Italy, western Europe; and even into the
British Isles; into Palestine, Arabia, and northern Africa--numerous
monasteries with their collections of books were established and
maintained. These religious houses were everywhere peopled by recluses,
among whose principal duties was the care for and the transcription of
books.
For long periods of time, however, and universally throughout Europe
during the Middle Ages, there was, as has already been noted, a great
decline in learning and but little interest in books--the exception
to this condition being almost wholly limited to the occupants of
the religious institutions. It is the record of history that, as
civilization lost its energy in wide areas--especially throughout
Gaul--intellectual darkness spread over all the country, so much so
that there was hardly a layman and only a few among the clergy who
could even read. Mighty leaders of state shared in this intellectual
desuetude. Even Charlemagne, that great ruler who welded divergent
peoples into one body to resist Saracen and savage, and who did much
to institute and promote educational movements, lived and died with
modicum attainments of technical learning. It is recorded of him in
witness of his meager achievements in this direction that "He could
read and understand Latin--but how well, perhaps, we had better not
too closely inquire; he tried late in life to learn to write, but his
progress in that direction did not greatly impress his biographer."
Macaulay asserts it of the twelfth century that "There was then,
through the greater part of Europe, very little knowledge, and that
little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five hundred could
have spelled his way through a psalm. Books were few and costly. The
art of printing was unknown."
A number of factors and forces combined to keep alive the feeble and
smouldering sparks of learning amidst the wide-spread intellectual
gloom of the age. Early and prominent among these was the establishment
and subsequent development of the abbeys and cathedral institutions
in various parts of the continent and in Britain. Then came the
founding of the Benedictines (which flourished from the sixth century
on, spreading from Italy westward into France and England and in
other directions, and gathering unnumbered devotees--under the
threefold vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience--into thousands of
establishments) together with the various Orders that arose from the
tenth century on--in all of which there were greater or lesser attempts
at study, learning, and literature, along with their other and more
distinguishing ideals. [The orders and the dates of their respective
beginnings were as follows: Carthusians, 1084; Cistercians, 1098;
Carmelites, 1156; Dominicans, 1170-1221; Franciscans, 1209-1226. "The
two orders," Franciscans and Dominicans, says Thatcher, "furnished
all the great scholars of the later Middle Ages."] And toward the
close of the "Dark Ages" the movement toward enlightenment, known
as the Renaissance, was accelerated in the beginnings of the great
universities, the roots of which run down into the soil of the
thirteenth century. Prominent among the great universities that date
to the thirteenth century and which were located in widely separated
regions and among divergent peoples, in England, Italy, Spain, France,
Germany, and the North, were those at Cambridge, Oxford, Naples,
Salamanca, Lisbon, Paris, Orleans, and Upsal. In all these there were
nascent movements in the direction of literature manifested in the
establishment of libraries as well as in the development of learning.
As indicating the extent and the importance of the specific movement
toward the establishment of libraries, promoting thus the revival of
learning after the long night of the "Dark Ages," we desire to condense
the following paragraph from a recent and valuable work: A number
of libraries were established in Paris and were available, not only
for professors, scholars, and students of the schools, but for those
interested in books and literature and duly accredited strangers who
came from elsewhere and who would accept the easy conditions of the
libraries' protected use. There were libraries also connected with
the numerous abbeys of these and of previous and subsequent times. A
score or more of these abbeys came, in time, to be located in England,
as those at Wearmouth and Jarrow--places forever distinguished for
the life labors of the Venerable Bede--in a dozen of which there were
fine libraries with large writing rooms wherein books were constantly
copied and treasured. In France important collections of books were
to be found at Cluny and in many other abbeys. The number of books in
all these libraries was constantly enlarged and the libraries enriched
from various sources: By the exchange of duplicate books with other
libraries; by borrowing from neighboring libraries for the purpose of
copying; and by donations of books from private sources and individual
donors. As an example of this last mentioned source of increase and
enrichment, the library of La St. Chapelle of Paris, founded by Louis
IX., was constantly augmented by his donations of the books that had
been given to him and which he passed on for the advantage of the
library's patrons. Moreover, the constant "wear and tear" of books even
when written on parchment or vellum, and notwithstanding the stringent
regulations safeguarding their use to legitimate channels, constantly
called for the re-writing of worn-out volumes that were passed along
from one generation to another.[70]
The Arabian conquests, too--notwithstanding the sore disasters which
they at first seemed to threaten--turned rather, through the caliphs'
subsequent patronage of learning and science, to the preservation and
extension of literature. The Greek manuscripts came to be eagerly
sought for by the Arabians and were translated into their own language.
Colleges, schools, and libraries, in numerous places, were the tangible
and assuring tokens of the subsequent favor of the Arabians toward
literature. Bagdad in the far East and Cordova in the far West, with
Cairo and Tripoli lying between, became seats of rich developments of
science and letters and the depositories of books during the age when
Europe was deeply enshrouded in intellectual darkness.[71]