C. I. CÆCILII HERMIÆ SIGNUM.
_Caii Julii Cæcilii Hermiæ Signum._
This seal of Hermias was intended for stamping parchment with ink,
as is shown by the fact that the roughness of the surface below the
letters unfits it for stamping any soft substance into which it would
sink, as into wax. If rubbed with printer’s ink and pressed upon paper,
it prints very well. Thus the seed of this noble art was among the
Romans. With a block of wood covered with raised letters, they might
have printed a page, as well as a single name. But they were suffered
to grope their way from age to age blindfolded to the art of which they
had the clew. They almost grasped the great discovery, unconscious of
the prize.
Quintilian, speaking of the education of youth, says, “When the boy has
begun to trace the forms of the letters, it will be useful for him to
have the letters of the tablet engraved, that through them, as through
furrows, he may draw his style. For thus he will neither make mistakes,
being prevented by the edges on both sides, nor will he be able to go
beyond the proper bound; and by tracing quickly and frequently certain
forms, he will strengthen his joints, and will not need the assistance
of some one to put his hand above his own, and guide it.” Here we find
that the old Romans knew something of the art of stenciling.
The Emperor Justin, who lived in the sixth century, could not write,
and, to avoid the shame of making only a mark for his name, caused
holes to be bored through a tablet in the shape of the first four
letters of his name. Through these holes he traced the letters in red
ink. Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, it is said, wrote his name
through a gold plate, in the same manner.
Tablets, or little tables of wood, as well as of metal, came at
length to take the place of stone tables. The thin wooden tables were
sometimes covered with wax, which was written upon with a style, or
ivory pencil. These were so much like tracing in the sand, as soon to
be laid aside, and the smooth, inner bark of trees, called _liber_ in
the Latin, was used instead; also the leaves of the palm-tree, cloths
of cotton and linen, the intestines and skins of animals, and the backs
of tortoises. We derive our name _book_ from the Danish _bog_, the
beech-tree, since that was used to engrave on in Denmark, because of
its abundance.
The Egyptians very early employed a broad-leafed rush growing on the
banks of the Nile, as a material upon which to write. This was the
_papyrus_, a word which has given its name to our modern paper. Large
bundles of papyrus manuscripts, covered with hieroglyphics, have been
found in the ancient tombs and temples of that country, some of which
are capable of being deciphered at the present day.
Parchment, which is the prepared skins of animals, came into use B. C.
250. It was so called from Pergamus (_membrana pergamea_), whose king,
Eumenes, seeking to collect a library which should vie with that of
Alexandria, and being debarred a supply of papyrus by the jealousy
of the Ptolemies, had recourse to this substitute. After the eighth
century, parchment generally took the place of papyrus.
Ancient books were not commonly disposed in a square form, as with us,
but were _rolled_ up. Hence the word _volume_, signifying a roll.
Paper from cotton and linen rags began, it is thought, to be made
as early as the ninth century. For several centuries, however, the
manufacture was so scanty as to increase very little the facilities for
copying. Gradually, it became more plentiful, and writing material of
small cost laid the foundation for that cheap and expeditious mode of
copying which we call printing.
In the age when parchment was used, it was often difficult to be
obtained; and it became common to erase the original writing from a
manuscript and trace another upon it. A parchment thus used was called
_palimpsest_, which means “twice prepared for writing.” Thus, many
valuable works were destroyed to make way for newer, and, in some
cases, less important ones. Happily we live in a time when we have no
occasion to destroy one library to produce another.
It seems strange, too, that a transcriber familiar with the labor of
copying would not be deterred by his love of learning from putting even
one book out of existence. But necessity knew no law; and the writer,
deeming his own work to possess greater utility, sacrificed another to
make room for it,--to such straits were the scribes sometimes brought
for the lack of writing material. Struggling to express thought,
there was no room to put it down. Written language, scarcely second
to spoken language, had almost perished; and had the art of printing
been invented before paper was known, it would have been comparatively
useless.
The writing and rewriting on parchment, as it was often done two
or three times, has recently led learned men to make these ancient
parchments a study; and they have thus deciphered or read the last
writing, then, effacing that, have deciphered the second, and, effacing
that, have read the first,--often the most valuable,--and in this way
have brought to light lost works, and found out many important facts of
history.
The books of those early days were written out by hand, _manuscripta_;
and the profession of the copyist was one of the most numerous,
honorable, and lucrative. Some booksellers employed great numbers of
copyists, paying them salaries, and made their own livelihood on the
profits of selling the works thus copied. There were in Rome, and in
some of the great cities of Greece and of Asia, particular places where
such works were sold. The rich also sometimes had slaves, prized more
highly and treated more familiarly than other slaves, who were devoted
by them to copying the works of antiquity and of their time, for their
libraries. Government, too, employed a great many copyists for its
edicts, and orators employed them in transcribing their discourses.
Later, the eunuchs copied at Byzantium the chief works of Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew antiquity. Finally, there were the monks, who, in
the retirement of the monasteries, gave their time very much to the
multiplication of books by the slow process of writing.
In every great religious house, or abbey, there was an apartment
called the scriptorium, or writing-room, where boys and young men were
employed from morning till night in copying the singing-books of the
choir, and the less valuable books of the library. Only a few of the
monks copied in this large apartment, enough to give directions, and
keep order among the boys and novices. Most of the “Holy Fathers,” as
they chose to be styled, spent their time in the cells, transcribing
Bibles and other valuable works.
[Illustration]
A monk copying. He has a cowl on his head, and wears the priest’s long
gown with flowing sleeves. His waist is girt with a belt; and he sits
bolt upright, or slightly leans forward in the most perpendicular of
arm-chairs, which seems to be joined to the desk of his cell. How
curiously he holds his quill and pointed ferule! His prior is cautious
and methodical; for he has chained the manuscript from which the monk
is copying to the wall, as if experience had taught him that he cannot
overmuch trust the brothers.
An author of those times would make a similar appearance, save that
there would be no book before him, unless for reference.
Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, in his “Philobiblion,” a treatise
on the love of books, written by him in Latin in 1344, gives a good
picture of the transcriber, or copyist of the monastery. He says: “As
it is necessary for a State to provide military arms, and prepare
plentiful stores of provisions for soldiers who are about to fight, so
it is evidently worth the labor of the Church to fortify itself against
the attacks of pagans and heretics with a multitude of sound books.
But, because everything that is of use to mortals decays through lapse
of time, it is necessary for volumes corroded by age to be restored
by new successors, that books may not cease to exist. Hence it is
that Ecclesiastes truly says, in the 12th chapter, ‘There is no end
of making many books.’ For, as the bodies of books decay, so a remedy
is found out by the prudence of clerks, by which a holy book paying
the debt of nature [_i. e._, dying] may have one succeed it, and a
seed may be raised up like to the most holy deceased, and that saying
of Ecclesiastes, chapter thirtieth, be verified: ‘The father is dead,
and as it were not dead, for he hath left behind him a son like unto
himself.’”
Then he goes on to upbraid the priests for soiling books, giving us
rather an unfavorable impression concerning the habits of the monks.
One would suppose that they could command the leisure to keep clean.
The Bishop just quoted deplores “the unwashed hands, the dirty nails,
the greasy elbows leaning upon the volume, the munching of fruit and
cheese over the open leaves, which were the marks of careless and idle
readers,” and suggestive also, some would say, of lack of culture and
refinement, and even that their religion was of a low type; else would
it not, at least, have produced the virtue which is next to godliness?
Then follow sound and sensible directions how to use books. “Let there
be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may
neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after use
without being duly closed.”
Says an English writer: “When a volume was at last produced in fair
parchment, or vellum, after the arduous labor of years, it was covered
with immensely thick lids of wood and leather, studded with large
nails, and curiously clasped, and was studiously preserved from the
common gaze on the shelves of the monastic library.
“The splendid volumes thus made, bore evidence, however, not only
of persevering industry, but of great ingenuity; the letters at the
beginning of each chapter or section being adorned with curious
devices. Frequently, too, a painting called an illumination was
introduced radiant with gold, crimson, and azure. But no vulgar or
unpriestly eyes looked on their contents, unless, indeed, we except
kings and princes; they were only unclasped on days of solemnity, by
the abbot or the prior, and then restored, like the jewels of the
priesthood, to their dusty cases.”
Montgomery says, “The readers of those days were rather gluttons than
epicures in their taste for literature,” canonizing all books because
they were books, as children eulogize their toys without noticing the
quality. “To say all that could be said on any theme, whether in verse
or prose, was the fashion of the times; and as few read but those who
were devoted to reading by an irresistible passion or professional
necessity, and few wrote but those who were equally impelled by an
inveterate instinct, great books were the natural produce of the
latter, who knew not how to make little ones; and great books only
could appease the voracity of the former. Great books, therefore,
were both the fruits and the proofs of the ignorance of the age. They
were mostly composed in the gloom and torpor of the cloister, and it
almost required a human life to read the works of an author of this
description, because it was nearly as easy to compound as to digest
such crudities.” These labors of the learned could not of course
interest the common people, as they could neither understand nor buy
them. These were books without meaning,--with so little logic and
connection that the more one read, the deeper he got into the maze or
tangled mass of words. “And the lucubrations through a thousand years,
of many a noble, many a lovely mind, which only wanted better direction
how to unfold its energies or display its graces to benefit or delight
mankind, were but passing meteors, that made visible the darkness out
of which they rose, and into which they sank again to be hid forever.”
Nevertheless, we owe it to the monks to say that there were many
good and learned men among them, and for much that is valuable in
our libraries we can not thank them enough. We can never consult a
concordance of the Bible without calling to mind that they first
conceived the idea of such a work, and numbers of them, jointly
laboring long and incessantly, nobly laid its foundations, on which
others who came after raised the structure and reaped the glory.
It will be readily inferred from what has been said that books in
those times were scarce and costly. Only the rich could afford to have
them, and they had but very few. The monasteries and universities
had libraries, and occasionally one was found in the castles of the
nobility. The Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, in Strasbourg, was famed for
its splendid collection of five hundred volumes. The Countess of Anjou
bought a book of Homilies, paying for it two hundred sheep, five
quarters of wheat, and the same quantity of rye and millet. Henry V.,
King of England, borrowed a book from the Countess of Westmoreland; and
not having returned it at his death, the Countess petitioned the Privy
Council that it might be restored to her by an order under the privy
seal, which was done with all formality.
Richard de Bury, whom we have already mentioned, had gathered in his
life-time, by copying with his own hand and by purchase, a valuable
library. In his will he bestowed a portion of it upon “a company
of scholars residing in a hall at Oxford,” and one of his chapters
is headed “A Provident Arrangement by which Books may be lent to
Strangers,” meaning, by strangers, students of Oxford not belonging to
that hall.
This library, from which a book could not be borrowed without giving
ample security, was finally given to Durham, now Trinity College, and
contained more books than all the bishops of England had then in their
possession. For many years after they were received they were kept in
chests, under the custody of several scholars chosen for that purpose.
It was not till the reign of Henry IV. that a library was built in
that college; and then the books were taken out of the old sepulchral
chests, and “were put into pews or studies and chained to them.” In
1300, the library of Oxford consisted of a few tracts kept in a chest.
[Illustration: Chained Bible.]
The statutes of St. Mary’s College, Oxford, in the reign of Henry VI.,
furnish striking proof of the obstacles to study caused by a scarcity
of books. “Let no scholar occupy a book in the library above one hour,
or two hours at most, so that others shall be hindered from the use of
the same.” This reveals quite a famine of books, but not so great as
at a still earlier period of the Church, when one book was given out
by the librarian to each of a religious fraternity at the beginning of
Lent, to be read diligently during the year, and to be returned the
following Lent.
The old way of shutting up books in chests shows that they could not
be often changed, for whenever one was wanted the whole pile must be
disturbed. The next plan was to allow the books the privilege of light
and air, but to chain them to desks and in cages, as if their keepers
looked upon them literally as riches with wings ready to fly away.
The following passage, malediction of some grim friar perhaps, was
often written on the first leaf of a book: “Cursed be he who shall
steal or tear out the leaves, or in any way injure this book.”