OF THE NUMEROUS OPPORTUNITIES WE HAVE HAD OF COLLECTING A STORE OF BOOKS
Since to everything there is a season and an opportunity, as the wise
Ecclesiastes witnesseth, let us now proceed to relate the manifold
opportunities through which we have been assisted by the divine
goodness in the acquisition of books.
Although from our youth upwards we had always delighted in holding
social commune with learned men and lovers of books, yet when we
prospered in the world and made acquaintance with the King's majesty
and were received into his household, we obtained ampler facilities for
visiting everywhere as we would, and of hunting as it were certain most
choice preserves, libraries private as well as public, and of the
regular as well as of the secular clergy. And indeed while we filled
various offices to the victorious Prince and splendidly triumphant King
of England, Edward the Third from the Conquest--whose reign may the
Almighty long and peacefully continue--first those about his court, but
then those concerning the public affairs of his kingdom, namely the
offices of Chancellor and Treasurer, there was afforded to us, in
consideration of the royal favour, easy access for the purpose of
freely searching the retreats of books. In fact, the fame of our love
of them had been soon winged abroad everywhere, and we were reported to
burn with such desire for books, and especially old ones, that it was
more easy for any man to gain our favour by means of books than of
money. Wherefore, since supported by the goodness of the aforesaid
prince of worthy memory, we were able to requite a man well or ill, to
benefit or injure mightily great as well as small, there flowed in,
instead of presents and guerdons, and instead of gifts and jewels,
soiled tracts and battered codices, gladsome alike to our eye and
heart. Then the aumbries of the most famous monasteries were thrown
open, cases were unlocked and caskets were undone, and volumes that had
slumbered through long ages in their tombs wake up and are astonished,
and those that had lain hidden in dark places are bathed in the ray of
unwonted light. These long lifeless books, once most dainty, but now
become corrupt and loathsome, covered with litters of mice and pierced
with the gnawings of the worms, and who were once clothed in purple and
fine linen, now lying in sackcloth and ashes, given up to oblivion,
seemed to have become habitations of the moth. Natheless among these,
seizing the opportunity, we would sit down with more delight than a
fastidious physician among his stores of gums and spices, and there we
found the object and the stimulus of our affections. Thus the sacred
vessels of learning came into our control and stewardship; some by
gift, others by purchase, and some lent to us for a season.
No wonder that when people saw that we were contented with gifts of
this kind, they were anxious of their own accord to minister to our
needs with those things that they were more willing to dispense with
than the things they secured by ministering to our service. And in
good will we strove so to forward their affairs that gain accrued to
them, while justice suffered no disparagement. Indeed, if we had loved
gold and silver goblets, high-bred horses, or no small sums of money,
we might in those days have furnished forth a rich treasury. But in
truth we wanted manuscripts not moneyscripts; we loved codices more
than florins, and preferred slender pamphlets to pampered palfreys.
Besides all this, we were frequently made ambassador of this most
illustrious Prince of everlasting memory, and were sent on the most
various affairs of state, now to the Holy See, now to the Court of
France, and again to various powers of the world, on tedious embassies
and in times of danger, always carrying with us, however, that love of
books which many waters could not quench. For this like a delicious
draught sweetened the bitterness of our journeyings and after the
perplexing intricacies and troublesome difficulties of causes, and the
all but inextricable labyrinths of public affairs afforded us a little
breathing space to enjoy a balmier atmosphere.
O Holy God of gods in Sion, what a mighty stream of pleasure made glad
our hearts whenever we had leisure to visit Paris, the Paradise of the
world, and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few for the
greatness of our love! There are delightful libraries, more aromatic
than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of
volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars;
there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of
Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of
all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most
excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary
world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the
nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the
mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes the
hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin characters
all that Cadmus collected in Phoenician letters; there indeed opening
our treasuries and unfastening our purse-strings we scattered money
with joyous heart and purchased inestimable books with mud and sand.
It is naught, it is naught, saith every buyer. But in vain; for behold
how good and how pleasant it is to gather together the arms of the
clerical warfare, that we may have the means to crush the attacks of
heretics, if they arise.
Further, we are aware that we obtained most excellent opportunities of
collecting in the following way. From our early years we attached to
our society with the most exquisite solicitude and discarding all
partiality all such masters and scholars and professors in the several
faculties as had become most distinguished by their subtlety of mind
and the fame of their learning. Deriving consolation from their
sympathetic conversation, we were delightfully entertained, now by
demonstrative chains of reasoning, now by the recital of physical
processes and the treatises of the doctors of the Church, now by
stimulating discourses on the allegorical meanings of things, as by a
rich and well-varied intellectual feast. Such men we chose as comrades
in our years of learning, as companions in our chamber, as associates
on our journeys, as guests at our table, and, in short, as helpmates in
all the vicissitudes of life. But as no happiness is permitted to
endure for long, we were sometimes deprived of the bodily companionship
of some of these shining lights, when justice looking down from heaven,
the ecclesiastical preferments and dignities that they deserved fell to
their portion. And thus it happened, as was only right, that in
attending to their own cures they were obliged to absent themselves
from attendance upon us.
We will add yet another very convenient way by which a great multitude
of books old as well as new came into our hands. For we never regarded
with disdain or disgust the poverty of the mendicant orders, adopted
for the sake of Christ; but in all parts of the world took them into
the kindly arms of our compassion, allured them by the most friendly
familiarity into devotion to ourselves, and having so allured them
cherished them with munificent liberality of beneficence for the sake
of God, becoming benefactors of all of them in general in such wise
that we seemed none the less to have adopted certain individuals with a
special fatherly affection. To these men we were as a refuge in every
case of need, and never refused to them the shelter of our favour,
wherefore we deserved to find them most special furtherers of our
wishes and promoters thereof in act and deed, who compassing land and
sea, traversing the circuit of the world, and ransacking the
universities and high schools of various provinces, were zealous in
combatting for our desires, in the sure and certain hope of reward.
What leveret could escape amidst so many keen-sighted hunters? What
little fish could evade in turn their hooks and nets and snares? From
the body of the Sacred Law down to the booklet containing the fallacies
of yesterday, nothing could escape these searchers. Was some devout
discourse uttered at the fountain-head of Christian faith, the holy
Roman Curia, or was some strange question ventilated with novel
arguments; did the solidity of Paris, which is now more zealous in the
study of antiquity than in the subtle investigation of truth, did
English subtlety, which illumined by the lights of former times is
always sending forth fresh rays of truth, produce anything to the
advancement of science or the declaration of the faith, this was
instantly poured still fresh into our ears, ungarbled by any babbler,
unmutilated by any trifler, but passing straight from the purest of
wine-presses into the vats of our memory to be clarified.
But whenever it happened that we turned aside to the cities and places
where the mendicants we have mentioned had their convents, we did not
disdain to visit their libraries and any other repositories of books;
nay, there we found heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches
of wisdom. We discovered in their fardels and baskets not only crumbs
falling from the masters' table for the dogs, but the shewbread without
leaven and the bread of angels having in it all that is delicious; and
indeed the garners of Joseph full of corn, and all the spoil of the
Egyptians, and the very precious gifts which Queen Sheba brought to
Solomon.
These men are as ants ever preparing their meat in the summer, and
ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey. They are
successors of Bezaleel in devising all manner of workmanship in silver
and gold and precious stones for decorating the temple of the Church.
They are cunning embroiderers, who fashion the breastplate and ephod of
the high priest and all the various vestments of the priests. They
fashion the curtains of linen and hair and coverings of ram's skins
dyed red with which to adorn the tabernacle of the Church militant.
They are husbandmen that sow, oxen treading out corn, sounding
trumpets, shining Pleiades and stars remaining in their courses, which
cease not to fight against Sisera. And to pay due regard to truth,
without prejudice to the judgment of any, although they lately at the
eleventh hour have entered the lord's vineyard, as the books that are
so fond of us eagerly declared in our sixth chapter, 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. Of these men, when we were raised to the
episcopate we had several of both orders, viz., the Preachers and
Minors, as personal attendants and companions at our board, men
distinguished no less in letters than in morals, who devoted themselves
with unwearied zeal to the correction, exposition, tabulation, and
compilation of various volumes. But although we have acquired a very
numerous store of ancient as well as modern works by the manifold
intermediation of the religious, yet we must laud the Preachers with
special praise, in that we have found them above all the religious most
freely communicative of their stores without jealousy, and proved them
to be imbued with an almost Divine liberality, not greedy but fitting
possessors of luminous wisdom.
Besides all the opportunities mentioned above, we secured the
acquaintance of stationers and booksellers, not only within our own
country, but of those spread over the realms of France, Germany, and
Italy, money flying forth in abundance to anticipate their demands; nor
were they hindered by any distance or by the fury of the seas, or by
the lack of means for their expenses, from sending or bringing to us
the books that we required. For they well knew that their expectations
of our bounty would not be defrauded, but that ample repayment with
usury was to be found with us.
Nor, finally, did our good fellowship, which aimed to captivate the
affection of all, overlook the rectors of schools and the instructors
of rude boys. But rather, when we had an opportunity, we entered their
little plots and gardens and gathered sweet-smelling flowers from the
surface and dug up their roots, obsolete indeed, but still useful to
the student, which might, when their rank barbarism was digested heal
the pectoral arteries with the gift of eloquence. Amongst the mass of
these things we found some greatly meriting to be restored, which when
skilfully cleansed and freed from the disfiguring rust of age, deserved
to be renovated into comeliness of aspect. And applying in full
measure the necessary means, as a type of the resurrection to come, we
resuscitated them and restored them again to new life and health.
Moreover, we had always in our different manors no small multitude of
copyists and scribes, of binders, correctors, illuminators, and
generally of all who could usefully labour in the service of books.
Finally, all of both sexes and of every rank or position who had any
kind of association with books, could most easily open by their
knocking the door of our heart, and find a fit resting-place in our
affection and favour. In so much did we receive those who brought
books, that the multitude of those who had preceded them did not lessen
the welcome of the after-comers, nor were the favours we had awarded
yesterday prejudicial to those of to-day. Wherefore, ever using all
the persons we have named as a kind of magnets to attract books, we had
the desired accession of the vessels of science and a multitudinous
flight of the finest volumes.
And this is what we undertook to narrate in the present chapter.