



Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.








THE LOVE OF BOOKS

THE PHILOBIBLON OF RICHARD DE BURY


TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

BY

E. C. THOMAS



"TAKE THOU A BOOK INTO THINE HANDS AS SIMON THE JUST TOOK THE CHILD
JESUS INTO HIS ARMS TO CARRY HIM AND KISS HIM.  AND WHEN THOU HAST
FINISHED READING, CLOSE THE BOOK AND GIVE THANKS FOR EVERY WORD OUT OF
THE MOUTH OF GOD; BECAUSE IN THE LORD'S FIELD THOU HAST FOUND A HIDDEN
TREASURE."

THOMAS A KEMPIS: Doctrinale Juvenum




PREFACE

The Author of the Book.

Richard de Bury (1281-1345), so called from being born near Bury St.
Edmunds, was the son of Sir Richard Aungerville. He studied at Oxford;
and was subsequently chosen to be tutor to Prince Edward of Windsor,
afterwards Edward III.  His loyalty to the cause of Queen Isabella and
the Prince involved him in danger.  On the accession of his pupil he
was made successively Cofferer, Treasurer of the Wardrobe, Archdeacon
of Northampton, Prebendary of Lincoln, Sarum, and Lichfield, Keeper of
the Privy Purse, Ambassador on two occasions to Pope John XXII, who
appointed him a chaplain of the papal chapel, Dean of Wells, and
ultimately, at the end of the year 1333, Bishop of Durham; the King and
Queen, the King of Scots, and all the magnates north of the Trent,
together with a multitude of nobles and many others, were present at
his enthronization.  It is noteworthy that during his stay at Avignon,
probably in 1330, he made the acquaintance of Petrarch, who has left us
a brief account of their intercourse.  In 1332 Richard visited
Cambridge, as one of the King's commissioners, to inquire into the
state of the King's Scholars there, and perhaps then became a member of
the Gild of St. Mary--one of the two gilds which founded Corpus Christi
College.

In 1334 he became High Chancellor of England, and Treasurer in 1336,
resigning the former office in 1335, so that he might help the King in
dealing with affairs abroad and in Scotland, and took a most
distinguished part in diplomatic negociations between England and
France.  In 1339 he was again in his bishopric.  Thereafter his name
occurs often among those appointed to treat of peace with Philip of
France, and with Bruce of Scotland.  It appears that he was not in
Parliament in 1344.  Wasted by long sickness--longa infirmitate
decoctus--on the 14th of April, 1345, Richard de Bury died at Auckland,
and was buried in Durham Cathedral.

Dominus Ricardus de Bury migravit ad Dominum.



The Bishop as Booklover.

According to the concluding note, the Philobiblon was completed on the
bishop's fifty-eighth birthday, the 24th of January, 1345, so that even
though weakened by illness, Richard must have been actively engaged in
his literary efforts to the very end of his generous and noble life.
His enthusiastic devoted biographer Chambre[1] gives a vivid account of
the bishop's bookloving propensities, supplementary to what can be
gathered from the Philobiblon itself.  Iste summe delectabatur in
multitudine librorum; he had more books, as was commonly reported, than
all the other English bishops put together.  He had a separate library
in each of his residences, and wherever he was residing, so many books
lay about his bed-chamber, that it was hardly possible to stand or move
without treading upon them.  All the time he could spare from business
was devoted either to religious offices or to his books.  Every day
while at table he would have a book read to him, unless some special
guest were present, and afterwards would engage in discussion on the
subject of the reading.  The haughty Anthony Bec delighted in the
appendages of royalty--to be addressed by nobles kneeling, and to be
waited on in his presence-chamber and at his table by Knights
bare-headed and standing; but De Bury loved to surround himself with
learned scholars.  Among these were such men as Thomas Bradwardine,
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and author of the De Causa Dei;
Richard Fitzralph, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, and famous for his
hostility to the mendicant orders; Walter Burley, who dedicated to him
a translation of the Politics of Aristotle made at his suggestion; John
Mauduit, the astronomer; Robert Holkot, author of many books; Richard
de Kilvington; Richard Benworth, afterwards Bishop of London; and
Walter Seagrave, who became Dean of Chichester."[2]



[1] Cp. Surtees Society's edition of Scriptores Tres; also Wharton's
Anglia Sacra.

[2] An unsuccessful attempt has been made to transfer the authorship of
the book to Robert Holkot.  Various theories have been advanced against
Richard's claims.  It is noteworthy that his contemporary Adam Murimuth
disparages him as "mediocriter literatus, volens tamen magnus clericus
reputari," but such disparagement must be taken with the utmost
caution. The really difficult fact to be accounted for is the omission
on the part of Chambre to mention the book.



The Bishop's Books.

In the Philobiblon, Richard de Bury frankly and clearly describes his
means and method of collecting books.  Anyhow his object was clearly
not selfish.  The treatise contains his rules for the library of the
new College at Oxford--Durham College (where Trinity College now
stands)--which he practically founded, though his successor, Bishop
Hatfield, carried the scheme into effect.  It is traditionally reported
that Richard's books were sent, in his lifetime or after his death, to
the house of the Durham Benedictines at Oxford, and there remained
until the dissolution of the College by Henry VIII., when they were
dispersed, some going into Duke Humphrey's (the University) library,
others to Balliol College, and the remainder passing into the hands of
Dr. George Owen, who purchased the site of the dissolved College.[3]

[3] Mr. J. W. Clark puts the matter as follows:--"Durham College,
maintained by the Benedictines of Durham, was supplied with books from
the mother-house, lists of which have been preserved; and subsequently
a library was built there to contain the collection bequeathed in 1345
by Richard de Bury" (The Care of Books, p.  142).  Mr. Thomas points
out that De Bury's executors sold at least some portion of his books;
and, moreover, his biographer says nothing of a library at Oxford.
Possibly the scheme was never carried out.  In the British Museum (Roy.
13 D. iv. 3) is a large folio MS. of the works of John of Salisbury,
which was one of the books bought back from the Bishop's executors.

Unfortunately, the "special catalogue" of his books prepared by Richard
has not come down to us; but "from his own book and from the books
cited in the works of his friends and housemates, who may reasonably be
supposed to have drawn largely from the bishop's collection, it would
be possible to restore a hypothetical but not improbable Bibliotheca
Ricardi de Bury.  The difficulty would be with that contemporary
literature, which they would think below the dignity of quotation, but
which we know the Bishop collected."



Early Editions of the Philobiblon.

The book was first printed at Cologne in 1473, at Spires in 1483, and
at Paris in 1500.  The first English edition appeared in 1598-9, edited
by Thomas James, Bodley's first librarian.  Other editions appeared in
Germany in 1610, 1614, 1674 and 1703; at Paris in 1856; at Albany in
1861.  The texts were, with the exception of those issued in 1483 and
1599, based on the 1473 edition; though the French edition and
translation of 1856, prepared by M. Cocheris, claimed to be a critical
version, it left the text untouched, and merely gave the various
readings of the three Paris manuscripts at the foot of the pages; these
readings are moreover badly chosen, and the faults of the version are
further to be referred to the use of the ill-printed 1703 edition as
copy.

In 1832 there appeared an anonymous English translation, now known to
have been by J. B. Inglis; it followed the edition of 1473, with all
its errors and inaccuracies.

Mr. E. C. Thomas' Text.--The first true text of the Philobiblon, the
result of a careful examination of twenty-eight MSS., and of the
various printed editions, appeared in the year 1888:

"The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, Treasurer and
Chancellor of Edward III, edited and translated by Ernest C.  Thomas,
Barrister-at-law, late Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, and
Librarian of the Oxford Union.  London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co."

For fifteen years the enthusiastic editor--an ideal Bibliophile--had
toiled at his labour of love, and his work was on all sides received
with the recognition due to his monumental achievement.  To the great
loss of English learning, he did not long survive the conclusion of his
labours.  The very limited edition of the work was soon exhausted, and
it is by the most generous permission of his father, Mr. John Thomas,
of Lower Broughton, Manchester, that the translation--the only
trustworthy rendering of Richard de Bury's precious treatise--is now,
for the first time, made accessible to the larger book-loving public,
and fittingly inaugurates the present series of English classics.  The
general Editor desires to express his best thanks to Mr. John Thomas,
as also to Messrs. Kegan Paul, for their kindness in allowing him to
avail himself of the materials included in the 1888 edition of the
work.  He has attempted, in the brief Preface and Notes, to condense
Mr. Thomas' labours in such a way as would have been acceptable to the
lamented scholar, and though he has made bold to explain some few
textual difficulties, and to add some few references, he would fain
hope that these additions have been made with modest caution--with the
reverence due to the unstinted toil of a Bibliophile after Richard de
Bury's own pattern.  Yet once again Richard de Bury's Philobiblon,
edited and translated into English by E. C. Thomas, is presented to new
generations of book-lovers:--"LIBRORUM DILECTORIBUS."



THE PHILOBIBLON NEWLY TRANSLATED


PROLOGUE

     I  That the treasure of wisdom is chiefly contained in books

    II  The degree of affection that is properly due to books

   III  What we are to think of the price in the buying of books

    IV  The complaint of books against the clergy already promoted

     V  The complaint of books against the possessioners

    VI  The complaint of books against the mendicants

   VII  The complaint of books against wars

  VIII  Of the numerous opportunities we have had of collecting a
        store of books

    IX  How, although we preferred the works of the ancients, we
        have not condemned the studies of the moderns

     X  Of the gradual perfecting of books

    XI  Why we have preferred books of liberal learning to books of law

   XII  Why we have caused books of grammar to be so diligently
        prepared

  XIII  Why we have not wholly neglected the fables of the poets

   XIV  Who ought to be special lovers of books

    XV  Of the advantages of the love of books

   XVI  That it is meritorious to write new books and to renew the old

  XVII  Of showing due propriety in the custody of books

 XVIII  Showeth that we have collected  so great store of books for
        the common benefit of scholars and not only for our own pleasure

   XIX  Of the manner of lending all our books to students

    XX  An exhortation to scholars to requite us by pious prayers



PROLOGUE

To all the faithful of Christ to whom the tenor of these presents may
come, Richard de Bury, by the divine mercy Bishop of Durham, wisheth
everlasting salvation in the Lord and to present continually a pious
memorial of himself before God, alike in his lifetime and after his
death.

What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits towards me? asks
the most devout Psalmist, an invincible King and first among the
prophets; in which most grateful question he approves himself a willing
thank-offerer, a multifarious debtor, and one who wishes for a holier
counsellor than himself: agreeing with Aristotle, the chief of
philosophers, who shows (in the 3rd and 6th books of his Ethics) that
all action depends upon counsel.

And indeed if so wonderful a prophet, having a fore-knowledge of divine
secrets, wished so anxiously to consider how he might gratefully repay
the blessings graciously bestowed, what can we fitly do, who are but
rude thanksgivers and most greedy receivers, laden with infinite divine
benefits?  Assuredly we ought with anxious deliberation and abundant
consideration, having first invoked the Sevenfold Spirit, that it may
burn in our musings as an illuminating fire, fervently to prepare a way
without hinderance, that the bestower of all things may be cheerfully
worshipped in return for the gifts that He has bestowed, that our
neighbour may be relieved of his burden, and that the guilt contracted
by sinners every day may be redeemed by the atonement of almsgiving.

Forewarned therefore through the admonition of the Psalmist's devotion
by Him who alone prevents and perfects the goodwill of man, without
Whom we have no power even so much as to think, and Whose gift we doubt
not it is, if we have done anything good, we have diligently inquired
and considered in our own heart as well as with others, what among the
good offices of various works of piety would most please the Almighty,
and would be more beneficial to the Church Militant.  And lo! there
soon occurred to our contemplation a host of unhappy, nay, rather of
elect scholars, in whom God the Creator and Nature His handmaid planted
the roots of excellent morals and of famous sciences, but whom the
poverty of their circumstances so oppressed that before the frown of
adverse fortune the seeds of excellence, so fruitful in the cultivated
field of youth, not being watered by the rain that they require, are
forced to wither away. Thus it happens that "bright virtue lurks buried
in obscurity," to use the words of Boethius, and burning lights are not
put under a bushel, but for want of oil are utterly extinguished.  Thus
the field, so full of flower in Spring, has withered up before harvest
time; thus wheat degenerates to tares, and vines into the wild vines,
and thus olives run into the wild olive; the tender stems rot away
altogether, and those who might have grown up into strong pillars of
the Church, being endowed with the capacity of a subtle intellect,
abandon the schools of learning.  With poverty only as their
stepmother, they are repelled violently from the nectared cup of
philosophy as soon as they have tasted of it and have become more
fiercely thirsty by the very taste.  Though fit for the liberal arts
and disposed to study the sacred writings alone, being deprived of the
aid of their friends, by a kind of apostasy they return to the
mechanical arts solely to gain a livelihood, to the loss of the Church
and the degradation of the whole clergy.  Thus Mother Church conceiving
sons is compelled to miscarry, nay, some misshapen monster is born
untimely from her womb, and for lack of that little with which Nature
is contented, she loses excellent pupils, who might afterwards become
champions and athletes of the faith.  Alas, how suddenly the woof is
cut, while the hand of the weaver is beginning his work! Alas, how the
sun is eclipsed in the brightness of the dawn, and the planet in its
course is hurled backwards, and, while it bears the nature and likeness
of a star suddenly drops and becomes a meteor! What more piteous sight
can the pious man behold? What can more sharply stir the bowels of his
pity? What can more easily melt a heart hard as an anvil into hot
tears? On the other hand, let us recall from past experience how much
it has profited the whole Christian commonwealth, not indeed to
enervate students with the delights of a Sardanapalus or the riches of
a Croesus, but rather to support them in their poverty with the frugal
means that become the scholar.  How many have we seen with our eyes,
how many have we read of in books, who, distinguished by no pride of
birth, and rejoicing in no rich inheritance, but supported only by the
piety of the good, have made their way to apostolic chairs, have most
worthily presided over faithful subjects, have bent the necks of the
proud and lofty to the ecclesiastical yoke and have extended further
the liberties of the Church!

Accordingly, having taken a survey of human necessities in every
direction, with a view to bestow our charity upon them, our
compassionate inclinations have chosen to bear pious aid to this
calamitous class of men, in whom there is nevertheless such hope of
advantage to the Church, and to provide for them, not only in respect
of things necessary to their support, but much more in respect of the
books so useful to their studies.  To this end, most acceptable in the
sight of God, our attention has long been unweariedly devoted.  This
ecstatic love has carried us away so powerfully, that we have resigned
all thoughts of other earthly things, and have given ourselves up to a
passion for acquiring books.  That our intent and purpose, therefore,
may be known to posterity as well as to our contemporaries, and that we
may for ever stop the perverse tongues of gossipers as far as we are
concerned, we have published a little treatise written in the lightest
style of the moderns; for it is ridiculous to find a slight matter
treated of in a pompous style.  And this treatise (divided into twenty
chapters) will clear the love we have had for books from the charge of
excess, will expound the purpose of our intense devotion, and will
narrate more clearly than light all the circumstances of our
undertaking.  And because it principally treats of the love of books,
we have chosen, after the fashion of the ancient Romans, fondly to name
it by a Greek word, Philobiblon.



CHAPTER I

THAT THE TREASURE OF WISDOM IS CHIEFLY CONTAINED IN BOOKS

The desirable treasure of wisdom and science, which all men desire by
an instinct of nature, infinitely surpasses all the riches of the
world; in respect of which precious stones are worthless; in comparison
with which silver is as clay and pure gold is as a little sand; at
whose splendour the sun and moon are dark to look upon; compared with
whose marvellous sweetness honey and manna are bitter to the taste.  O
value of wisdom that fadeth not away with time, virtue ever
flourishing, that cleanseth its possessor from all venom!  O heavenly
gift of the divine bounty, descending from the Father of lights, that
thou mayest exalt the rational soul to the very heavens!  Thou art the
celestial nourishment of the intellect, which those who eat shall still
hunger and those who drink shall still thirst, and the gladdening
harmony of the languishing soul which he that hears shall never be
confounded.  Thou art the moderator and rule of morals, which he who
follows shall not sin.  By thee kings reign and princes decree justice.
By thee, rid of their native rudeness, their minds and tongues being
polished, the thorns of vice being torn up by the roots, those men
attain high places of honour, and become fathers of their country, and
companions of princes, who without thee would have melted their spears
into pruning-hooks and ploughshares, or would perhaps be feeding swine
with the prodigal.

Where dost thou chiefly lie hidden, O most elect treasure! and where
shall thirsting souls discover thee?

Certes, thou hast placed thy tabernacle in books, where the Most High,
the Light of lights, the Book of Life, has established thee.  There
everyone who asks receiveth thee, and everyone who seeks finds thee,
and to everyone that knocketh boldly it is speedily opened.  Therein
the cherubim spread out their wings, that the intellect of the students
may ascend and look from pole to pole, from the east and west, from the
north and from the south.  Therein the mighty and incomprehensible God
Himself is apprehensibly contained and worshipped; therein is revealed
the nature of things celestial, terrestrial, and infernal; therein are
discerned the laws by which every state is administered, the offices of
the celestial hierarchy are distinguished, and the tyrannies of demons
described, such as neither the ideas of Plato transcend, nor the chair
of Crato contained.

In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee
things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come
forth the laws of peace.  All things are corrupted and decay in time;
Saturn ceases not to devour the children that he generates; all the
glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided
mortals with the remedy of books.

Alexander, the conqueror of the earth, Julius, the invader of Rome and
of the world, who, the first in war and arts, assumed universal empire
under his single rule, faithful Fabricius and stern Cato, would now
have been unknown to fame, if the aid of books had been wanting.
Towers have been razed to the ground; cities have been overthrown;
triumphal arches have perished from decay; nor can either pope or king
find any means of more easily conferring the privilege of perpetuity
than by books.  The book that he has made renders its author this
service in return, that so long as the book survives its author remains
immortal and cannot die, as Ptolemy declares in the Prologue to his
Almagest: He is not dead, he says, who has given life to science.

Who therefore will limit by anything of another kind the price of the
infinite treasure of books, from which the scribe who is instructed
bringeth forth things new and old?  Truth that triumphs over all
things, which overcomes the king, wine, and women, which it is reckoned
holy to honour before friendship, which is the way without turning and
the life without end, which holy Boethius considers to be threefold in
thought, speech, and writing, seems to remain more usefully and to
fructify to greater profit in books.  For the meaning of the voice
perishes with the sound; truth latent in the mind is wisdom that is hid
and treasure that is not seen; but truth which shines forth in books
desires to manifest itself to every impressionable sense.  It commends
itself to the sight when it is read, to the hearing when it is heard,
and moreover in a manner to the touch, when it suffers itself to be
transcribed, bound, corrected, and preserved.   The undisclosed truth
of the mind, although it is the possession of the noble soul, yet
because it lacks a companion, is not certainly known to be delightful,
while neither sight nor hearing takes account of it.  Further the truth
of the voice is patent only to the ear and eludes the sight, which
reveals to us more of the qualities of things, and linked with the
subtlest of motions begins and perishes as it were in a breath.  But
the written truth of books, not transient but permanent, plainly offers
itself to be observed, and by means of the pervious spherules of the
eyes, passing through the vestibule of perception and the courts of
imagination, enters the chamber of intellect, taking its place in the
couch of memory, where it engenders the eternal truth of the mind.

Finally we must consider what pleasantness of teaching there is in
books, how easy, how secret! How safely we lay bare the poverty of
human ignorance to books without feeling any shame!  They are masters
who instruct us without rod or ferule, without angry words, without
clothes or money.  If you come to them they are not asleep; if you ask
and inquire of them they do not withdraw themselves; they do not chide
if you make mistakes; they do not laugh at you if you are ignorant.  O
books, who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you
and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully!  By how many thousand
types are ye commended to learned men in the Scriptures given us by
inspiration of God!  For ye are the minds of profoundest wisdom, to
which the wise man sends his son that he may dig out treasures: Prov.
ii.  Ye are the wells of living waters, which father Abraham first
digged, Isaac digged again, and which the Philistines strive to fill
up: Gen. xxvi.  Ye are indeed the most delightful ears of corn, full of
grain, to be rubbed only by apostolic hands, that the sweetest food may
be produced for hungry souls: Matt. xii.  Ye are the golden pots in
which manna is stored, and rocks flowing with honey, nay, combs of
honey, most plenteous udders of the milk of life, garners ever full; ye
are the tree of life and the fourfold river of Paradise, by which the
human mind is nourished, and the thirsty intellect is watered and
refreshed.  Ye are the ark of Noah and the ladder of Jacob, and the
troughs by which the young of those who look therein are coloured; ye
are the stones of testimony and the pitchers holding the lamps of
Gideon, the scrip of David, from which the smoothest stones are taken
for the slaying of Goliath.  Ye are the golden vessels of the temple,
the arms of the soldiers of the Church with which to quench all the
fiery darts of the wicked, fruitful olives, vines of Engadi, fig-trees
that are never barren, burning lamps always to be held in
readiness--and all the noblest comparisons of Scripture may be applied
to books, if we choose to speak in figures.



CHAPTER II

THE DEGREE OF AFFECTION THAT IS PROPERLY DUE TO BOOKS

Since the degree of affection a thing deserves depends upon the degree
of its value, and the previous chapter shows that the value of books is
unspeakable, it is quite clear to the reader what is the probable
conclusion from this.  I say probable, for in moral science we do not
insist upon demonstration, remembering that the educated man seeks such
degree of certainty as he perceives the subject-matter will bear, as
Aristotle testifies in the first book of his Ethics.  For Tully does
not appeal to Euclid, nor does Euclid rely upon Tully.  This at all
events we endeavour to prove, whether by logic or rhetoric, that all
riches and all delights whatsoever yield place to books in the
spiritual mind, wherein the Spirit which is charity ordereth charity.
Now in the first place, because wisdom is contained in books more than
all mortals understand, and wisdom thinks lightly of riches, as the
foregoing chapter declares.  Furthermore, Aristotle, in his Problems,
determines the question, why the ancients proposed prizes to the
stronger in gymnastic and corporeal contests, but never awarded any
prize for wisdom.  This question he solves as follows:  In gymnastic
exercises the prize is better and more desirable than that for which it
is bestowed; but it is certain that nothing is better than wisdom:
wherefore no prize could be assigned for wisdom.  And therefore neither
riches nor delights are more excellent than wisdom.  Again, only the
fool will deny that friendship is to be preferred to riches, since the
wisest of men testifies this; but the chief of philosophers honours
truth before friendship, and the truthful Zorobabel prefers it to all
things.  Riches, then, are less than truth.  Now truth is chiefly
maintained and contained in holy books--nay, they are written truth
itself, since by books we do not now mean the materials of which they
are made.  Wherefore riches are less than books, especially as the most
precious of all riches are friends, as Boethius testifies in the second
book of his Consolation; to whom the truth of books according to
Aristotle is to be preferred.  Moreover, since we know that riches
first and chiefly appertain to the support of the body only, while the
virtue of books is the perfection of reason, which is properly speaking
the happiness of man, it appears that books to the man who uses his
reason are dearer than riches.  Furthermore, that by which the faith is
more easily defended, more widely spread, more clearly preached, ought
to be more desirable to the faithful.  But this is the truth written in
books, which our Saviour plainly showed, when he was about to contend
stoutly against the Tempter, girding himself with the shield of truth
and indeed of written truth, declaring "it is written" of what he was
about to utter with his voice.

And, again, no one doubts that happiness is to be preferred to riches.
But happiness consists in the operation of the noblest and diviner of
the faculties that we possess--when the whole mind is occupied in
contemplating the truth of wisdom, which is the most delectable of all
our virtuous activities, as the prince of philosophers declares in the
tenth book of the Ethics, on which account it is that philosophy is
held to have wondrous pleasures in respect of purity and solidity, as
he goes on to say.  But the contemplation of truth is never more
perfect than in books, where the act of imagination perpetuated by
books does not suffer the operation of the intellect upon the truths
that it has seen to suffer interruption.  Wherefore books appear to be
the most immediate instruments of speculative delight, and therefore
Aristotle, the sun of philosophic truth, in considering the principles
of choice, teaches that in itself to philosophize is more desirable
than to be rich, although in certain cases, as where for instance one
is in need of necessaries, it may be more desirable to be rich than to
philosophize.

Moreover, since books are the aptest teachers, as the previous chapter
assumes, it is fitting to bestow on them the honour and the affection
that we owe to our teachers.  In fine, since all men naturally desire
to know, and since by means of books we can attain the knowledge of the
ancients, which is to be desired beyond all riches, what man living
according to nature would not feel the desire of books?  And although
we know that swine trample pearls under foot, the wise man will not
therefore be deterred from gathering the pearls that lie before him.  A
library of wisdom, then, is more precious than all wealth, and all
things that are desirable cannot be compared to it.  Whoever therefore
claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge,
aye, even of the faith, must needs become a lover of books.



CHAPTER III

WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE PRICE IN THE BUYING OF BOOKS

From what has been said we draw this corollary welcome to us, but (as
we believe) acceptable to few: namely, that no dearness of price ought
to hinder a man from the buying of books, if he has the money that is
demanded for them, unless it be to withstand the malice of the seller
or to await a more favourable opportunity of buying.  For if it is
wisdom only that makes the price of books, which is an infinite
treasure to mankind, and if the value of books is unspeakable, as the
premises show, how shall the bargain be shown to be dear where an
infinite good is being bought? Wherefore, that books are to be gladly
bought and unwillingly sold, Solomon, the sun of men, exhorts us in the
Proverbs: Buy the truth, he says, and sell not wisdom.  But what we are
trying to show by rhetoric or logic, let us prove by examples from
history.  The arch-philosopher Aristotle, whom Averroes regards as the
law of Nature, bought a few books of Speusippus straightway after his
death for 72,000 sesterces.  Plato, before him in time, but after him
in learning, bought the book of Philolaus the Pythagorean, from which
he is said to have taken the Timaeus, for 10,000 denaries, as Aulus
Gellius relates in the Noctes Atticae. Now Aulus Gellius relates this
that the foolish may consider how wise men despise money in comparison
with books.  And on the other hand, that we may know that folly and
pride go together, let us here relate the folly of Tarquin the Proud in
despising books, as also related by Aulus Gellius.  An old woman,
utterly unknown, is said to have come to Tarquin the Proud, the seventh
king of Rome, offering to sell nine books, in which (as she declared)
sacred oracles were contained, but she asked an immense sum for them,
insomuch that the king said she was mad.  In anger she flung three
books into the fire, and still asked the same sum for the rest.  When
the king refused it, again she flung three others into the fire and
still asked the same price for the three that were left.  At last,
astonished beyond measure, Tarquin was glad to pay for three books the
same price for which he might have bought nine.  The old woman
straightway disappeared, and was never seen before or after.  These
were the Sibylline books, which the Romans consulted as a divine oracle
by some one of the Quindecemvirs, and this is believed to have been the
origin of the Quindecemvirate.  What did this Sibyl teach the proud
king by this bold deed, except that the vessels of wisdom, holy books,
exceed all human estimation; and, as Gregory says of the kingdom of
Heaven:  They are worth all that thou hast?



CHAPTER IV

THE COMPLAINT OF BOOKS AGAINST THE CLERGY ALREADY PROMOTED

A generation of vipers destroying their own parent and base offspring
of the ungrateful cuckoo, who when he has grown strong slays his nurse,
the giver of his strength, are degenerate clerks with regard to books.
Bring it again to mind and consider faithfully what ye receive through
books, and ye will find that books are as it were the creators of your
distinction, without which other favourers would have been wanting.

In sooth, while still untrained and helpless ye crept up to us, ye
spake as children, ye thought as children, ye cried as children and
begged to be made partakers of our milk.  But we being straightway
moved by your tears gave you the breast of grammar to suck, which ye
plied continually with teeth and tongue, until ye lost your native
barbarousness and learned to speak with our tongues the mighty things
of God.  And next we clad you with the goodly garments of philosophy,
rhetoric and dialectic, of which we had and have a store, while ye were
naked as a tablet to be painted on.  For all the household of
philosophy are clothed with garments, that the nakedness and rawness of
the intellect may be covered. After this, providing you with the
fourfold wings of the quadrivials that ye might be winged like the
seraphs and so mount above the cherubim, we sent you to a friend at
whose door, if only ye importunately knocked, ye might borrow the three
loaves of the Knowledge of the Trinity, in which consists the final
felicity of every sojourner below.  Nay, if ye deny that ye had these
privileges, we boldly declare that ye either lost them by your
carelessness, or that through your sloth ye spurned them when offered
to you. If these things seem but a light matter to you, we will add yet
greater things.  Ye are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy
race, ye are a peculiar people chosen into the lot of God, ye are
priests and ministers of God, nay, ye are called the very Church of
God, as though the laity were not to be called churchmen.  Ye, being
preferred to the laity, sing psalms and hymns in the chancel, and,
serving the altar and living by the altar, make the true body of
Christ, wherein God Himself has honoured you not only above the laity,
but even a little higher than the angels.  For to whom of His angels
has He said at any time:  Thou art a priest for ever after the order of
Melchisedech?  Ye dispense the patrimony of the crucified one to the
poor, wherein it is required of stewards that a man be found faithful.
Ye are shepherds of the Lord's flock, as well in example of life as in
the word of doctrine, which is bound to repay you with milk and wool.

Who are the givers of all these things, O clerks?  Is it not books?  Do
ye remember therefore, we pray, how many and how great liberties and
privileges are bestowed upon the clergy through us?  In truth, taught
by us who are the vessels of wisdom and intellect, ye ascend the
teacher's chair and are called of men Rabbi.  By us ye become
marvellous in the eyes of the laity, like great lights in the world,
and possess the dignities of the Church according to your various
stations.  By us, while ye still lack the first down upon your cheeks,
ye are established in your early years and bear the tonsure on your
heads, while the dread sentence of the Church is heard: Touch not mine
anointed and do my prophets no harm, and he who has rashly touched them
let him forthwith by his own blow be smitten violently with the wound
of an anathema.  At length yielding your lives to wickedness, reaching
the two paths of Pythagoras, ye choose the left branch, and going
backward ye let go the lot of God which ye had first assumed, becoming
companions of thieves.  And thus ever going from bad to worse, dyed
with theft and murder and manifold impurities, your fame and conscience
stained by sins, at the bidding of justice ye are confined in manacles
and fetters, and are kept to be punished by a most shameful death.
Then your friend is put far away, nor is there any to mourn your lot.
Peter swears that he knows not the man: the people cry to the judge:
Crucify, crucify Him!  If thou let this man go, thou act not Caesar's
friend.  Now all refuge has perished, for ye must stand before the
judgment-seat, and there is no appeal, but only hanging is in store for
you. While the wretched man's heart is thus filled with woe and only
the sorrowing Muses bedew their cheeks with tears, in his strait is
heard on every side the wailing appeal to us, and to avoid the danger
of impending death he shows the slight sign of the ancient tonsure
which we bestowed upon him, begging that we may be called to his aid
and bear witness to the privilege bestowed upon him.  Then straightway
touched with pity we run to meet the prodigal son and snatch the
fugitive slave from the gates of death.  The book he has not forgotten
is handed to him to be read, and while with lips stammering with fear
he reads a few words, the power of the judge is loosed, the accuser is
withdrawn, and death is put to flight.  O marvellous virtue of an
empiric verse!  O saving antidote of dreadful ruin!  O precious reading
of the psalter, which for this alone deserves to be called the book of
life! Let the laity undergo the judgment of the secular arm, that
either sewn up in sacks they may be carried out to Neptune, or planted
in the earth may fructify for Pluto, or may be offered amid the flames
as a fattened holocaust to Vulcan, or at least may be hung up as a
victim to Juno: while our nursling at a single reading of the book of
life is handed over to the custody of the Bishop, and rigour is changed
to favour, and the forum being transferred from the laity, death is
routed by the clerk who is the nursling of books.

But now let us speak of the clerks who are vessels of virtue.  Which of
you about to preach ascends the pulpit or the rostrum without in some
way consulting us?  Which of you enters the schools to teach or to
dispute without relying upon our support?  First of all, it behoves you
to eat the book with Ezechiel, that the belly of your memory may be
sweetened within, and thus as with the panther refreshed, to whose
breath all beasts and cattle long to approach, the sweet savour of the
spices it has eaten may shed a perfume without.  Thus our nature
secretly working in our own, listeners hasten up gladly, as the
load-stone draws the iron nothing loth.  What an infinite host of books
lie at Paris or Athens, and at the same time resound in Britain and in
Rome! In truth, while resting they yet move, and while retaining their
own places they are carried about every way to the minds of listeners.
Finally, by the knowledge of literature, we establish Priests, Bishops,
Cardinals, and the Pope, that all things in the ecclesiastical
hierarchy may be fitly disposed.  For it is from books that everything
of good that befalls the clerical condition takes its origin.  But let
this suffice: for it pains us to recall what we have bestowed upon the
degenerate clergy, because whatever gifts are distributed to the
ungrateful seem to be lost rather than bestowed.

Let us next dwell a little on the recital of the wrongs with which they
requite us, the contempts and cruelties of which we cannot recite an
example in each kind, nay, scarcely the main classes of the several
wrongs.  In the first place, we are expelled by force and arms from the
homes of the clergy, which are ours by hereditary right, who were used
to have cells of quietness in the inner chamber, but, alas! in these
unhappy times we are altogether exiled, suffering poverty without the
gates.  For our places are seized now by dogs, now by hawks, now by
that biped beast whose cohabitation with the clergy was forbidden of
old, from which we have always taught our nurslings to flee more than
from the asp and the cockatrice; wherefore she, always jealous of the
love of us, and never to be appeased, at length seeing us in some
corner protected only by the web of some dead spider, with a frown
abuses and reviles us with bitter words, declaring us alone of all the
furniture in the house to be unnecessary, and complaining that we are
useless for any household purpose, and advises that we should speedily
be converted into rich caps, sendal and silk and twice-dyed purple,
robes and furs, wool and linen: and, indeed, not without reason, if she
could see our inmost hearts, if she had listened to our secret
counsels, if she had read the book of Theophrastus or Valerius, or only
heard the twenty-fifth chapter of Ecclesiasticus with understanding
ears.

And hence it is that we have to mourn for the homes of which we have
been unjustly robbed; and as to our coverings, not that they have not
been given to us, but that the coverings anciently given to us have
been torn by violent hands, insomuch that our soul is bowed down to the
dust, our belly cleaveth unto the earth.  We suffer from various
diseases, enduring pains in our backs and sides; we lie with our limbs
unstrung by palsy, and there is no man who layeth it to heart, and no
man who provides a mollifying plaster.  Our native whiteness that was
clear with light has turned to dun and yellow, so that no leech who
should see us would doubt that we are diseased with jaundice.  Some of
us are suffering from gout, as our twisted extremities plainly show.
The smoke and dust by which we are continuously plagued have dulled the
keenness of our visual rays, and are now infecting our bleared eyes
with ophthalmia.  Within we are devoured by the fierce gripings of our
entrails, which hungry worms cease not to gnaw, and we undergo the
corruption of the two Lazaruses, nor is there anyone to anoint us with
balm of cedar, nor to cry to us who have been four days dead and
already stink, Lazarus come forth!  No healing drug is bound around our
cruel wounds, which are so atrociously inflicted upon the innocent, and
there is none to put a plaster upon our ulcers; but ragged and
shivering we are flung away into dark corners, or in tears take our
place with holy Job upon his dunghill, or--too horrible to relate--are
buried in the depths of the common sewers.  The cushion is withdrawn
that should support our evangelical sides, which ought to have the
first claim upon the incomes of the clergy, and the common necessaries
of life thus be for ever provided for us, who are entrusted to their
charge.

Again, we complain of another sort of injury which is too often
unjustly inflicted upon our persons.  We are sold for bondmen and
bondwomen, and lie as hostages in taverns with no one to redeem us.  We
fall a prey to the cruel shambles, where we see sheep and cattle
slaughtered not without pious tears, and where we die a thousand times
from such terrors as might frighten even the brave.  We are handed over
to Jews, Saracens, heretics and infidels, whose poison we always dread
above everything, and by whom it is well known that some of our parents
have been infected with pestiferous venom.  In sooth, we who should be
treated as masters in the sciences, and bear rule over the mechanics
who should be subject to us, are instead handed over to the government
of subordinates, as though some supremely noble monarch should be
trodden under foot by rustic heels.  Any seamster or cobbler or tailor
or artificer of any trade keeps us shut up in prison for the luxurious
and wanton pleasures of the clergy.

Now we would pursue a new kind of injury by which we suffer alike in
person and in fame, the dearest thing we have.  Our purity of race is
diminished every day, while new authors' names are imposed upon us by
worthless compilers, translators, and transformers, and losing our
ancient nobility, while we are reborn in successive generations, we
become wholly degenerate; and thus against our will the name of some
wretched stepfather is affixed to us, and the sons are robbed of the
names of their true fathers.  The verses of Virgil, while he was yet
living, were claimed by an impostor; and a certain Fidentinus
mendaciously usurped the works of Martial, whom Martial thus deservedly
rebuked:

       "The book you read is, Fidentinus! mine,
  Though read so badly, 't well may pass for thine!"


What marvel, then, if when our authors are dead clerical apes use us to
make broad their phylacteries, since even while they are alive they try
to seize us as soon as we are published?  Ah! how often ye pretend that
we who are ancient are but lately born, and try to pass us off as sons
who are really fathers, calling us who have made you clerks the
production of your studies.  Indeed, we derived our origin from Athens,
though we are now supposed to be from Rome; for Carmentis was always
the pilferer of Cadmus, and we who were but lately born in England,
will to-morrow be born again in Paris; and thence being carried to
Bologna, will obtain an Italian origin, based upon no affinity of
blood.  Alas! how ye commit us to treacherous copyists to be written,
how corruptly ye read us and kill us by medication, while ye supposed
ye were correcting us with pious zeal.  Oftentimes we have to endure
barbarous interpreters, and those who are ignorant of foreign idioms
presume to translate us from one language into another; and thus all
propriety of speech is lost and our sense is shamefully mutilated
contrary to the meaning of the author!  Truly noble would have been the
condition of books if it had not been for the presumption of the tower
of Babel, if but one kind of speech had been transmitted by the whole
human race.

We will add the last clause of our long lament, though far too short
for the materials that we have. For in us the natural use is changed to
that which is against nature, while we who are the light of faithful
souls everywhere fall a prey to painters knowing nought of letters, and
are entrusted to goldsmiths to become, as though we were not sacred
vessels of wisdom, repositories of gold-leaf.  We fall undeservedly
into the power of laymen, which is more bitter to us than any death,
since they have sold our people for nought, and our enemies themselves
are our judges.

It is clear from what we have said what infinite invectives we could
hurl against the clergy, if we did not think of our own reputation.
For the soldier whose campaigns are over venerates his shield and arms,
and grateful Corydon shows regard for his decaying team, harrow, flail
and mattock, and every manual artificer for the instruments of his
craft; it is only the ungrateful cleric who despises and neglects those
things which have ever been the foundation of his honours.



CHAPTER V

THE COMPLAINT OF BOOKS AGAINST THE POSSESSIONERS

The venerable devotion of the religious orders is wont to be solicitous
in the care of books and to delight in their society, as if they were
the only riches.  For some used to write them with their own hands
between the hours of prayer, and gave to the making of books such
intervals as they could secure and the times appointed for the
recreation of the body.  By whose labours there are resplendent to-day
in most monasteries these sacred treasuries full of cherubic letters,
for giving the knowledge of salvation to the student and a delectable
light to the paths of the laity.  O manual toil, happier than any
agricultural task!  O devout solicitude, where neither Martha nor Mary
deserves to be rebuked!  O joyful house, in which the fruitful Leah
does not envy the beauteous Rachel, but action and contemplation share
each other's joys!  O happy charge, destined to benefit endless
generations of posterity, with which no planting of trees, no sowing of
seeds, no pastoral delight in herds, no building of fortified camps can
be compared!  Wherefore the memory of those fathers should be immortal,
who delighted only in the treasures of wisdom, who most laboriously
provided shining lamps against future darkness, and against hunger of
hearing the Word of God, most carefully prepared, not bread baked in
the ashes, nor of barley, nor musty, but unleavened loaves made of the
finest wheat of divine wisdom, with which hungry souls might be
joyfully fed These men were the stoutest champions of the Christian
army, who defended our weakness by their most valiant arms; they were
in their time the most cunning takers of foxes, who have left us their
nets, that we might catch the young foxes, who cease not to devour the
growing vines.  Of a truth, noble fathers, worthy of perpetual
benediction, ye would have been deservedly happy, if ye had been
allowed to beget offspring like yourselves, and to leave no degenerate
or doubtful progeny for the benefit of future times.

But, painful to relate, now slothful Thersites handles the arms of
Achilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy
asses, winking owls lord it in the eagle's nest, and the cowardly kite
sits upon the perch of the hawk.

  Liber Bacchus is ever loved,
  And is into their bellies shoved,
  By day and by night;
  Liber Codex is neglected,
  And with scornful hand rejected
  Far out of their sight.

And as if the simple monastic folk of modern times were deceived by a
confusion of names, while Liber Pater is preferred to Liber Patrum, the
study of the monks nowadays is in the emptying of cups and not the
emending of books; to which they do not hesitate to add the wanton
music of Timotheus, jealous of chastity, and thus the song of the
merry-maker and not the chant of the mourner is become the office of
the monks.  Flocks and fleeces, crops and granaries, leeks and
potherbs, drink and goblets, are nowadays the reading and study of the
monks, except a few elect ones, in whom lingers not the image but some
slight vestige of the fathers that preceded them.  And again, no
materials at all are furnished us to commend the canons regular for
their care or study of us, who though they bear their name of honour
from their twofold rule, yet have neglected the notable clause of
Augustine's rule, in which we are commended to his clergy in these
words:  Let books be asked for each day at a given hour; he who asks
for them after the hour is not to receive them.  Scarcely anyone
observes this devout rule of study after saying the prayers of the
Church, but to care for the things of this world and to look at the
plough that has been left is reckoned the highest wisdom.  They take up
bow and quiver, embrace arms and shield, devote the tribute of alms to
dogs and not to the poor, become the slaves of dice and draughts, and
of all such things as we are wont to forbid even to the secular clergy,
so that we need not marvel if they disdain to look upon us, whom they
see so much opposed to their mode of life.

Come then, reverend fathers, deign to recall your fathers and devote
yourselves more faithfully to the study of holy books, without which
all religion will stagger, without which the virtue of devotion will
dry up like a sherd, and without which ye can afford no light to the
world.



CHAPTER VI

THE COMPLAINT OF BOOKS AGAINST THE MENDICANTS

Poor in spirit, but most rich in faith, off-scourings of the world and
salt of the earth, despisers of the world and fishers of men, how happy
are ye, if suffering penury for Christ ye know how to possess your
souls in patience!  For it is not want the avenger of iniquity, nor the
adverse fortune of your parents, nor violent necessity that has thus
oppressed you with beggary, but a devout will and Christ-like election,
by which ye have chosen that life as the best, which God Almighty made
man as well by word as by example declared to be the best.  In truth,
ye are the latest offspring of the ever-fruitful Church, of late
divinely substituted for the Fathers and the Prophets, that your sound
may go forth into all the earth, and that instructed by our healthful
doctrines ye may preach before all kings and nations the invincible
faith of Christ.  Moreover, that the faith of the Fathers is chiefly
enshrined in books the second chapter has sufficiently shown, from
which it is clearer than light that ye ought to be zealous lovers of
books above all other Christians.  Ye are commanded to sow upon all
waters, because the Most High is no respecter of persons, nor does the
Most Holy desire the death of sinners, who offered Himself to die for
them, but desires to heal the contrite in heart, to raise the fallen,
and to correct the perverse in the spirit of lenity.  For which most
salutary purpose our kindly Mother Church has planted you freely, and
having planted has watered you with favours, and having watered you has
established you with privileges, that ye may be co-workers with pastors
and curates in procuring the salvation of faithful souls.  Wherefore,
that the order of Preachers was principally instituted for the study of
the Holy Scriptures and the salvation of their neighbours, is declared
by their constitutions, so that not only from the rule of Bishop
Augustine, which directs books to be asked for every day, but as soon
as they have read the prologue of the said constitutions they may know
from the very title of the same that they are pledged to the love of
books.

But alas! a threefold care of superfluities, viz., of the stomach, of
dress, and of houses, has seduced these men and others following their
example from the paternal care of books, and from their study.  For,
forgetting the providence of the Saviour (who is declared by the
Psalmist to think upon the poor and needy), they are occupied with the
wants of the perishing body, that their feasts may be splendid and
their garments luxurious, against the rule, and the fabrics of their
buildings, like the battlements of castles, carried to a height
incompatible with poverty.  Because of these three things, we books,
who have ever procured their advancement and have granted them to sit
among the powerful and noble, are put far from their heart's affection
and are reckoned as superfluities; except that they rely upon some
treatises of small value, from which they derive strange heresies and
apocryphal imbecilities, not for the refreshment of souls, but rather
for tickling the ears of the listeners.  The Holy Scripture is not
expounded, but is neglected and treated as though it were commonplace
and known to all, though very few have touched its hem, and though its
depth is such, as Holy Augustine declares, that it cannot be understood
by the human intellect, however long it may toil with the utmost
intensity of study.  From this he who devotes himself to it
assiduously, if only He will vouchsafe to open the door who has
established the spirit of piety, may unfold a thousand lessons of moral
teaching, which will flourish with the freshest novelty and will
cherish the intelligence of the listeners with the most delightful
savours. Wherefore the first professors of evangelical poverty, after
some slight homage paid to secular science, collecting all their force
of intellect, devoted themselves to labours upon the sacred scripture,
meditating day and night on the law of the Lord.  And whatever they
could steal from their famishing belly, or intercept from their
half-covered body, they thought it the highest gain to spend in buying
or correcting books.  Whose worldly contemporaries observing their
devotion and study bestowed upon them for the edification of the whole
Church the books which they had collected at great expense in the
various parts of the world.

In truth, in these days as ye are engaged with all diligence in pursuit
of gain, it may be reasonably believed, if we speak according to human
notions, that God thinks less upon those whom He perceives to distrust
His promises, putting their hope in human providence, not considering
the raven, nor the lilies, whom the Most High feeds and arrays.  Ye do
not think upon Daniel and the bearer of the mess of boiled pottage, nor
recollect Elijah who was delivered from hunger once in the desert by
angels, again in the torrent by ravens, and again in Sarepta by the
widow, through the divine bounty, which gives to all flesh their meat
in due season.  Ye descend (as we fear) by a wretched anticlimax,
distrust of the divine goodness producing reliance upon your own
prudence, and reliance upon your own prudence begetting anxiety about
worldly things, and excessive anxiety about worldly things taking away
the love as well as the study of books; and thus poverty in these days
is abused to the injury of the Word of God, which ye have chosen only
for profit's sake.

With summer fruit, as the people gossip, ye attract boys to religion,
whom when they have taken the vows ye do not instruct by fear and
force, as their age requires, but allow them to devote themselves to
begging expeditions, and suffer them to spend the time, in which they
might be learning, in procuring the favour of friends, to the annoyance
of their parents, the danger of the boys, and the detriment of the
order.  And thus no doubt it happens that those who were not compelled
to learn as unwilling boys, when they grow up presume to teach though
utterly unworthy and unlearned, and a small error in the beginning
becomes a very great one in the end.  For there grows up among your
promiscuous flock of laity a pestilent multitude of creatures, who
nevertheless the more shamelessly force themselves into the office of
preaching, the less they understand what they are saying, to the
contempt of the Divine Word and the injury of souls.  In truth, against
the law ye plough with an ox and an ass together, in committing the
cultivation of the Lord's field to learned and unlearned.  Side by
side, it is written, the oxen were ploughing and the asses feeding
beside them: since it is the duty of the discreet to preach, but of the
simple to feed themselves in silence by the hearing of sacred
eloquence.  How many stones ye fling upon the heap of Mercury nowadays!
How many marriages ye procure for the eunuchs of wisdom!  How many
blind watchmen ye bid go round about the walls of the Church!

O idle fishermen, using only the nets of others, which when torn it is
all ye can do to clumsily repair, but can net no new ones of your own!
ye enter on the labours of others, ye repeat the lessons of others, ye
mouth with theatric effort the superficially repeated wisdom of others.
As the silly parrot imitates the words that he has heard, so such men
are mere reciters of all, but authors of nothing, imitating Balaam's
ass, which, though senseless of itself, yet became eloquent of speech
and the teacher of its master though a prophet.  Recover yourselves, O
poor in Christ, and studiously regard us books, without which ye can
never be properly shod in the preparation of the Gospel of Peace.

Paul the Apostle, preacher of the truth and excellent teacher of the
nations, for all his gear bade three things to be brought to him by
Timothy, his cloak, books and parchments, affording an example to
ecclesiastics that they should wear dress in moderation, and should
have books for aid in study, and parchments, which the Apostle
especially esteems, for writing: AND ESPECIALLY, he says, the
parchments. And truly that clerk is crippled and maimed to his
disablement in many ways, who is entirely ignorant of the art of
writing.  He beats the air with words and edifies only those who are
present, but does nothing for the absent and for posterity.  The man
bore a writer's ink-horn upon his loins, who set a mark Tau upon the
foreheads of the men that sigh and cry, Ezechiel ix.; teaching in a
figure that if any lack skill in writing, he shall not undertake the
task of preaching repentance.

Finally, in conclusion of the present chapter, books implore of you:
make your young men who though ignorant are apt of intellect apply
themselves to study, furnishing them with necessaries, that ye may
teach them not only goodness but discipline and science, may terrify
them by blows, charm them by blandishments, mollify them by gifts, and
urge them on by painful rigour, so that they may become at once
Socratics in morals and Peripatetics in learning.  Yesterday, as it
were at the eleventh hour, the prudent householder introduced you into
his vineyard.  Repent of idleness before it is too late: would that
with the cunning steward ye might be ashamed of begging so shamelessly;
for then no doubt ye would devote yourselves more assiduously to us
books and to study.



CHAPTER VII

THE COMPLAINT OF BOOKS AGAINST WARS

Almighty Author and Lover of peace, scatter the nations that delight in
war, which is above all plagues injurious to books.  For wars being
without the control of reason make a wild assault on everything they
come across, and, lacking the check of reason they push on without
discretion or distinction to destroy the vessels of reason.  Then the
wise Apollo becomes the Python's prey, and Phronesis, the pious mother,
becomes subject to the power of Phrenzy.  Then winged Pegasus is shut
up in the stall of Corydon, and eloquent Mercury is strangled.  Then
wise Pallas is struck down by the dagger of error, and the charming
Pierides are smitten by the truculent tyranny of madness.  O cruel
spectacle!  where you may see the Phoebus of philosophers, the all-wise
Aristotle, whom God Himself made master of the master of the world,
enchained by wicked hands and borne in shameful irons on the shoulders
of gladiators from his sacred home.  There you may see him who was
worthy to be lawgiver to the lawgiver of the world and to hold empire
over its emperor, made the slave of vile buffoons by the most
unrighteous laws of war.  O most wicked power of darkness, which does
not fear to undo the approved divinity of Plato, who alone was worthy
to submit to the view of the Creator, before he assuaged the strife of
warring chaos, and before form had put on its garb of matter, the ideal
types, in order to demonstrate the archetypal universe to its author,
so that the world of sense might be modelled after the supernal
pattern.  O tearful sight! where the moral Socrates, whose acts were
virtue and whose discourse was science, who deduced political justice
from the principles of nature, is seen enslaved to some rascal robber.
We bemoan Pythagoras, the parent of harmony, as, brutally scourged by
the harrying furies of war, he utters not a song but the wailings of a
dove.  We mourn, too, for Zeno, who lest he should betray his secret
bit off his tongue and fearlessly spat it out at the tyrant, and now,
alas! is brayed and crushed to death in a mortar by Diomedon.

In sooth we cannot mourn with the grief that they deserve all the
various books that have perished by the fate of war in various parts of
the world.  Yet we must tearfully recount the dreadful ruin which was
caused in Egypt by the auxiliaries in the Alexandrian war, when seven
hundred thousand volumes were consumed by fire.  These volumes had been
collected by the royal Ptolemies through long periods of time, as Aulus
Gellius relates.  What an Atlantean progeny must be supposed to have
then perished: including the motions of the spheres, all the
conjunctions of the planets, the nature of the galaxy, and the
prognostic generations of comets, and all that exists in the heavens or
in the ether!  Who would not shudder at such a hapless holocaust, where
ink is offered up instead of blood, where the glowing ashes of
crackling parchment were encarnadined with blood, where the devouring
flames consumed so many thousands of innocents in whose mouth was no
guile, where the unsparing fire turned into stinking ashes so many
shrines of eternal truth!  A lesser crime than this is the sacrifice of
Jephthah or Agamemnon, where a pious daughter is slain by a father's
sword.  How many labours of the famous Hercules shall we suppose then
perished, who because of his knowledge of astronomy is said to have
sustained the heaven on his unyielding neck, when Hercules was now for
the second time cast into the flames.  The secrets of the heavens,
which Jonithus learnt not from man or through man but received by
divine inspiration; what his brother Zoroaster, the servant of unclean
spirits, taught the Bactrians; what holy Enoch, the prefect of
Paradise, prophesied before he was taken from the world, and finally,
what the first Adam taught his children of the things to come, which he
had seen when caught up in an ecstasy in the book of eternity, are
believed to have perished in those horrid flames.  The religion of the
Egyptians, which the book of the Perfect Word so commends; the
excellent polity of the older Athens, which preceded by nine thousand
years the Athens of Greece; the charms of the Chaldaeans; the
observations of the Arabs and Indians; the ceremonies of the Jews; the
architecture of the Babylonians; the agriculture of Noah the magic arts
of Moses; the geometry of Joshua; the enigmas of Samson; the problems
of Solomon from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop; the antidotes of
Aesculapius; the grammar of Cadmus; the poems of Parnassus; the oracles
of Apollo; the argonautics of Jason; the stratagems of Palamedes, and
infinite other secrets of science are believed to have perished at the
time of this conflagration.

Nay, Aristotle would not have missed the quadrature of the circle, if
only baleful conflicts had spared the books of the ancients, who knew
all the methods of nature.  He would not have left the problem of the
eternity of the world an open question, nor, as is credibly conceived,
would he have had any doubts of the plurality of human intellects and
of their eternity, if the perfect sciences of the ancients had not been
exposed to the calamities of hateful wars.  For by wars we are
scattered into foreign lands, are mutilated, wounded, and shamefully
disfigured, are buried under the earth and overwhelmed in the sea, are
devoured by the flames and destroyed by every kind of death. How much
of our blood was shed by warlike Scipio, when he was eagerly compassing
the overthrow of Carthage, the opponent and rival of the Roman empire!
How many thousands of thousands of us did the ten years' war of Troy
dismiss from the light of day! How many were driven by Anthony, after
the murder of Tully, to seek hiding places in foreign provinces! How
many of us were scattered by Theodoric, while Boethius was in exile,
into the different quarters of the world, like sheep whose shepherd has
been struck down!  How many, when Seneca fell a victim to the cruelty
of Nero, and willing yet unwilling passed the gates of death, took
leave of him and retired in tears, not even knowing in what quarter to
seek for shelter!

Happy was that translation of books which Xerxes is said to have made
to Persia from Athens, and which Seleucus brought back again from
Persia to Athens.  O glad and joyful return!  O wondrous joy, which you
might then see in Athens, when the mother went in triumph to meet her
progeny, and again showed the chambers in which they had been nursed to
her now aging children! Their old homes were restored to their former
inmates, and forthwith boards of cedar with shelves and beams of gopher
wood are most skilfully planed; inscriptions of gold and ivory are
designed for the several compartments, to which the volumes themselves
are reverently brought and pleasantly arranged, so that no one hinders
the entrance of another or injures its brother by excessive crowding.

But in truth infinite are the losses which have been inflicted upon the
race of books by wars and tumults.  And as it is by no means possible
to enumerate and survey infinity, we will here finally set up the Gades
of our complaint, and turn again to the prayers with which we began,
humbly imploring that the Ruler of Olympus and the Most High Governor
of all the world will establish peace and dispel wars and make our days
tranquil under His protection.



CHAPTER VIII

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.



CHAPTER IX

HOW, ALTHOUGH WE PREFERRED THE WORKS OF THE ANCIENTS, WE HAVE NOT
CONDEMNED THE STUDIES OF THE MODERNS

Although the novelties of the moderns were never disagreeable to our
desires, who have always cherished with grateful affection those who
devote themselves to study and who add anything either ingenious or
useful to the opinions of our forefathers, yet we have always desired
with more undoubting avidity to investigate the well-tested labours of
the ancients.  For whether they had by nature a greater vigour of
mental sagacity, or whether they perhaps indulged in closer application
to study, or whether they were assisted in their progress by both these
things, one thing we are perfectly clear about, that their successors
are barely capable of discussing the discoveries of their forerunners,
and of acquiring those things as pupils which the ancients dug out by
difficult efforts of discovery.  For as we read that the men of old
were of a more excellent degree of bodily development than modern times
are found to produce, it is by no means absurd to suppose that most of
the ancients were distinguished by brighter faculties, seeing that in
the labours they accomplished of both kinds they are inimitable by
posterity.   And so Phocas writes in the prologue to his Grammar:

     Since all things have been said by men of sense
     The only novelty is--to condense.

But in truth, if we speak of fervour of learning and diligence in
study, they gave up all their lives to philosophy; while nowadays our
contemporaries carelessly spend a few years of hot youth, alternating
with the excesses of vice, and when the passions have been calmed, and
they have attained the capacity of discerning truth so difficult to
discover, they soon become involved in worldly affairs and retire,
bidding farewell to the schools of philosophy.  They offer the fuming
must of their youthful intellect to the  difficulties of philosophy,
and bestow the clearer wine upon the money-making business of life.
Further, as Ovid in the first book of the De Vetula justly complains:

  The hearts of all men after gold aspire;
  Few study to be wise, more to acquire:
  Thus, Science! all thy virgin charms are sold,
  Whose chaste embraces should disdain their gold,
  Who seek not thee thyself, but pelf through thee,
  Longing for riches, not philosophy.

And further on:

  Thus Philosophy is seen
  Exiled, and Philopecuny is queen,

which is known to be the most violent poison of learning.

How the ancients indeed regarded life as the only limit of study, is
shown by Valerius, in his book addressed to Tiberius, by many examples.
Carneades, he says, was a laborious and lifelong soldier of wisdom:
after he had lived ninety years, the same day put an end to his life
and his philosophizing.  Isocrates in his ninety-fourth year wrote a
most noble work.  Sophocles did the same when nearly a hundred years
old.  Simonides wrote poems in his eightieth year.  Aulus Gellius did
not desire to live longer than he should be able to write, as he says
himself in the prologue to the Noctes Atticae.

The fervour of study which possessed Euclid the Socratic, Taurus the
philosopher used to relate to incite young men to study, as Gellius
tells in the book we have mentioned.  For the Athenians, hating the
people of Megara, decreed that if any of the Megarensians entered
Athens, he should be put to death.  Then Euclid, who was a Megarensian,
and had attended the lectures of Socrates before this decree,
disguising himself in a woman's dress, used to go from Megara to Athens
by night to hear Socrates, a distance of twenty miles and back.
Imprudent and excessive was the fervour of Archimedes, a lover of
geometry, who would not declare his name, nor lift his head from the
diagram he had drawn, by which he might have prolonged his life, but
thinking more of study than of life dyed with his life-blood the figure
he was studying.

There are very many such examples of our proposition, but the brevity
we aim at does not allow us to recall them.  But, painful to relate,
the clerks who are famous in these days pursue a very different course.
Afflicted with ambition in their tender years, and slightly fastening
to their untried arms the Icarian wings of presumption, they
prematurely snatch the master's cap; and mere boys become unworthy
professors of the several faculties, through which they do not make
their way step by step, but like goats ascend by leaps and bounds; and,
having slightly tasted of the mighty stream, they think that they have
drunk it dry, though their throats are hardly moistened.  And because
they are not grounded in the first rudiments at the fitting time, they
build a tottering edifice on an unstable foundation, and now that they
have grown up, they are ashamed to learn what they ought to have
learned while young, and thus they are compelled to suffer for ever for
too hastily jumping at dignities they have not deserved.  For these and
the like reasons the tyros in the schools do not attain to the solid
learning of the ancients in a few short hours of study, although they
may enjoy distinctions, may be accorded titles, be authorized by
official robes, and solemnly installed in the chairs of the elders.
Just snatched from the cradle and hastily weaned, they mouth the rules
of Priscian and Donatus; while still beardless boys they gabble with
childish stammering the Categorics and Peri Hermeneias, in the writing
of which the great Aristotle is said to have dipped his pen in his
heart's blood.  Passing through these faculties with baneful haste and
a harmful diploma, they lay violent hands upon Moses, and sprinkling
about their faces dark waters and thick clouds of the skies, they offer
their heads, unhonoured by the snows of age, for the mitre of the
pontificate. This pest is greatly encouraged, and they are helped to
attain this fantastic clericate with such nimble steps, by Papal
provisions obtained by insidious prayers, and also by the prayers,
which may not be rejected, of cardinals and great men, by the cupidity
of friends and relatives, who, building up Sion in blood, secure
ecclesiastical dignities for their nephews and pupils, before they are
seasoned by the course of nature or ripeness of learning.

Alas! by the same disease which we are deploring, we see that the
Palladium of Paris has been carried off in these sad times of ours,
wherein the zeal of that noble university, whose rays once shed light
into every corner of the world, has grown lukewarm, nay, is all but
frozen.  There the pen of every scribe is now at rest, generations of
books no longer succeed each other, and there is none who begins to
take place as a new author.  They wrap up their doctrines in unskilled
discourse, and are losing all propriety of logic, except that our
English subtleties, which they denounce in public, are the subject of
their furtive vigils.

Admirable Minerva seems to bend her course to all the nations of the
earth, and reacheth from end to end mightily, that she may reveal
herself to all mankind.  We see that she has already visited the
Indians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians and Greeks, the Arabs and the
Romans.  Now she has passed by Paris, and now has happily come to
Britain, the most noble of islands, nay, rather a microcosm in itself,
that she may show herself a debtor both to the Greeks and to the
Barbarians.  At which wondrous sight it is conceived by most men, that
as philosophy is now lukewarm in France, so her soldiery are unmanned
and languishing.



CHAPTER X

OF THE GRADUAL PERFECTING OF BOOKS

While assiduously seeking out the wisdom of the men of old, according
to the counsel of the Wise Man (Eccles. xxxix.):  The wise man, he
says, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, we have not thought
fit to be misled into the opinion that the first founders of the arts
have purged away all crudeness, knowing that the discoveries of each of
the faithful, when weighed in a faithful balance, makes a tiny portion
of science, but that by the anxious investigations of a multitude of
scholars, each as it were contributing his share, the mighty bodies of
the sciences have grown by successive augmentations to the immense bulk
that we now behold.  For the disciples, continually melting down the
doctrines of their masters, and passing them again through the furnace,
drove off the dross that had been previously overlooked, until there
came out refined gold tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times
to perfection, and stained by no admixture of error or doubt.

For not even Aristotle, although a man of gigantic intellect, in whom
it pleased Nature to try how much of reason she could bestow upon
mortality, and whom the Most High made only a little lower than the
angels, sucked from his own fingers those wonderful volumes which the
whole world can hardly contain.  But, on the contrary, with lynx-eyed
penetration he had seen through the sacred books of the Hebrews, the
Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, the Persians and the Medes,
all of which learned Greece had transferred into her treasuries.  Whose
true sayings he received, but smoothed away their crudities, pruned
their superfluities, supplied their deficiencies, and removed their
errors.  And he held that we should give thanks not only to those who
teach rightly, but even to those who err, as affording the way of more
easily investigating truth, as he plainly declares in the second book
of his Metaphysics.  Thus many learned lawyers contributed to the
Pandects, many physicians to the Tegni, and it was by this means that
Avicenna edited his Canon, and Pliny his great work on Natural History,
and Ptolemy the Almagest.

For as in the writers of annals it is not difficult to see that the
later writer always presupposes the earlier, without whom he could by
no means relate the former times, so too we are to think of the authors
of the sciences.  For no man by himself has brought forth any science,
since between the earliest students and those of the latter time we
find intermediaries, ancient if they be compared with our own age, but
modern if we think of the foundations of learning, and these men we
consider the most learned.  What would Virgil, the chief poet among the
Latins, have achieved, if he had not despoiled Theocritus, Lucretius,
and Homer, and had not ploughed with their heifer?  What, unless again
and again he had read somewhat of Parthenius and Pindar, whose
eloquence he could by no means imitate?  What could Sallust, Tully,
Boethius, Macrobius, Lactantius, Martianus, and in short the whole
troop of Latin writers have done, if they had not seen the productions
of Athens or the volumes of the Greeks?  Certes, little would Jerome,
master of three languages, Ambrosius, Augustine, though he confesses
that he hated Greek, or even Gregory, who is said to have been wholly
ignorant of it, have contributed to the doctrine of the Church, if more
learned Greece had not furnished them from its stores.  As Rome,
watered by the streams of Greece, had earlier brought forth
philosophers in the image of the Greeks, in like fashion afterwards it
produced doctors of the orthodox faith.  The creeds we chant are the
sweat of Grecian brows, promulgated by their Councils, and established
by the martyrdom of many.

Yet their natural slowness, as it happens, turns to the glory of the
Latins, since as they were less learned in their studies, so they were
less perverse in their errors.  In truth, the Arian heresy had all but
eclipsed the whole Church; the Nestorian wickedness presumed to rave
with blasphemous rage against the Virgin, for it would have robbed the
Queen of Heaven, not in open fight but in disputation, of her name and
character as Mother of God, unless the invincible champion Cyril, ready
to do single battle, with the help of the Council of Ephesus, had in
vehemence of spirit utterly extinguished it.  Innumerable are the forms
as well as the authors of Greek heresies; for as they were the original
cultivators of our holy faith, so too they were the first sowers of
tares, as is shown by veracious history.  And thus they went on from
bad to worse, because in endeavouring to part the seamless vesture of
the Lord, they totally destroyed primitive simplicity of doctrine, and
blinded by the darkness of novelty would fall into the bottomless pit,
unless He provide for them in His inscrutable prerogative, whose wisdom
is past reckoning.

Let this suffice; for here we reach the limit of our power of judgment.
One thing, however, we conclude from the premises, that the ignorance
of the Greek tongue is now a great hindrance to the study of the Latin
writers, since without it the doctrines of the ancient authors, whether
Christian or Gentile, cannot be understood.  And we must come to a like
judgment as to Arabic in numerous astronomical treatises, and as to
Hebrew as regards the text of the Holy Bible, which deficiencies,
indeed, Clement V.  provides for, if only the bishops would faithfully
observe what they so lightly decree.  Wherefore we have taken care to
provide a Greek as well as a Hebrew grammar for our scholars, with
certain other aids, by the help of which studious readers may greatly
inform themselves in the writing, reading, and understanding of the
said tongues, although only the hearing of them can teach correctness
of idiom.



CHAPTER XI

WHY WE HAVE PREFERRED BOOKS OF LIBERAL LEARNING TO BOOKS OF LAW

That lucrative practice of positive law, designed for the dispensation
of earthly things, the more useful it is found by the children of this
world, so much the less does it aid the children of light in
comprehending the mysteries of holy writ and the secret sacraments of
the faith, seeing that it disposes us peculiarly to the friendship of
the world, by which man, as S.  James testifies, is made the enemy of
God.  Law indeed encourages rather than extinguishes the contentions of
mankind, which are the result of unbounded greed, by complicated laws,
which can be turned either way; though we know that it was created by
jurisconsults and pious princes for the purpose of assuaging these
contentions.  But in truth, as the same science deals with contraries,
and the power of reason can be used to opposite ends, and at the same
the human mind is more inclined to evil, it happens with the practisers
of this science that they usually devote themselves to promoting
contention rather than peace, and instead of quoting laws according to
the intent of the legislator, violently strain the language thereof to
effect their own purposes.

Wherefore, although the over-mastering love of books has possessed our
mind from boyhood, and to rejoice in their delights has been our only
pleasure, yet the appetite for the books of the civil law took less
hold of our affections, and we have spent but little labour and expense
in acquiring volumes of this kind.  For they are useful only as the
scorpion in treacle, as Aristotle, the sun of science, has said of
logic in his book De Pomo.  We have noticed a certain manifest
difference of nature between law and science, in that every science is
delighted and desires to open its inward parts and display the very
heart of its principles, and to show forth the roots from which it buds
and flourishes, and that the emanation of its springs may be seen of
all men; for thus from the cognate and harmonious light of the truth of
conclusion  to principles, the whole body of science will be full of
light, having no part dark.  But laws, on the contrary, since they are
only human enactments for the regulation of social life, or the yokes
of princes thrown over the necks of their subjects, refuse to be
brought to the standard of synteresis, the origin of equity, because
they feel that they possess more of arbitrary will than rational
judgment.  Wherefore the judgment of the wise for the most part is that
the causes of laws are not a fit subject of discussion.  In truth, many
laws acquire force by mere custom, not by syllogistic necessity, like
the arts: as Aristotle, the Phoebus of the Schools, urges in the second
book of the Politics, where he confutes the policy of Hippodamus, which
holds out rewards to the inventors of new laws, because to abrogate old
laws and establish new ones is to weaken the force of those which
exist.  For whatever receives its stability from use alone must
necessarily be brought to nought by disuse.

From which it is seen clearly enough, that as laws are neither arts nor
sciences, so books of law cannot properly be called books of art or
science.  Nor is this faculty which we may call by a special term
geologia, or the earthly science, to be properly numbered among the
sciences.  Now the books of the liberal arts are so useful to the
divine writings, that without their aid the intellect would vainly
aspire to understand them.



CHAPTER XII

WHY WE HAVE CAUSED BOOKS OF GRAMMAR TO BE SO DILIGENTLY PREPARED

While we were constantly delighting ourselves with the reading of
books, which it was our custom to read or have read to us every day, we
noticed plainly how much the defective knowledge even of a single word
hinders the understanding, as the meaning of no sentence can be
apprehended, if any part of it be not understood.  Wherefore we ordered
the meanings of foreign words to be noted with particular care, and
studied the orthography, prosody, etymology, and syntax in ancient
grammarians with unrelaxing carefulness, and took pains to elucidate
terms that had grown too obscure by age with suitable explanations, in
order to make a smooth path for our students.

This is the whole reason why we took care to replace the antiquated
volumes of the grammarians by improved codices, that we might make
royal roads, by which our scholars in time to come might attain without
stumbling to any science.



CHAPTER XIII

WHY WE HAVE NOT WHOLLY NEGLECTED THE FABLES OF THE POETS

All the varieties of attack directed against the poets by the lovers of
naked truth may be repelled by a two-fold defence: either that even in
an unseemly subject-matter we may learn a charming fashion of speech,
or that where a fictitious but becoming subject is handled, natural or
historical truth is pursued under the guise of allegorical fiction.

Although it is true that all men naturally desire knowledge, yet they
do not all take the same pleasure in learning.  On the contrary, when
they have experienced the labour of study and find their senses
wearied, most men inconsiderately fling away the nut, before they have
broken the shell and reached the kernel.  For man is naturally fond of
two things, namely, freedom from control and some pleasure in his
activity; for which reason no one without reason submits himself to the
control of others, or willingly engages in any tedious task.  For
pleasure crowns activity, as beauty is a crown to youth, as Aristotle
truly asserts in the tenth book of the Ethics.  Accordingly the wisdom
of the ancients devised a remedy by which to entice the wanton minds of
men by a kind of pious fraud, the delicate Minerva secretly lurking
beneath the mask of pleasure.  We are wont to allure children by
rewards, that they may cheerfully learn what we force them to study
even though they are unwilling.  For our fallen nature does not tend to
virtue with the same enthusiasm with which it rushes into vice.  Horace
has expressed this for us in a brief verse of the Ars Poetica, where he
says:

  All poets sing to profit or delight.

And he has plainly intimated the same thing in another verse of the
same book, where he says:

     He hits the mark, who mingles joy with use.

How many students of Euclid have been repelled by the Pons Asinorum, as
by a lofty and precipitous rock, which no help of ladders could enable
them to scale!  THIS IS A HARD SAYING, they exclaim, AND WHO CAN
RECEIVE IT.  The child of inconstancy, who ended by wishing to be
transformed into an ass, would perhaps never have given up the study of
philosophy, if he had met him in friendly guise veiled under the cloak
of pleasure; but anon, astonished by Crato's chair and struck dumb by
his endless questions, as by a sudden thunderbolt, he saw no refuge but
in flight.

So much we have alleged in defence of the poets; and now we proceed to
show that those who study them with proper intent are not to be
condemned in regard to them.  For our ignorance of one single word
prevents the understanding of a whole long sentence, as was assumed in
the previous chapter.  As now the sayings of the saints frequently
allude to the inventions of the poets, it must needs happen that
through our not knowing the poem referred to, the whole meaning of the
author is completely obscured, and assuredly, as Cassiodorus says in
his book Of the Institutes of Sacred Literature:  Those things are not
to be considered trifles without which great things cannot come to
pass.  It follows therefore that through ignorance of poetry we do not
understand Jerome, Augustine, Boethius, Lactantius, Sidonius, and very
many others, a catalogue of whom would more than fill a long chapter.

The Venerable Bede has very clearly discussed and determined this
doubtful point, as is related by that great compiler Gratian, the
repeater of numerous authors, who is as confused in form as he was
eager in collecting matter for his compilation.  Now he writes in his
37th section:  Some read secular literature for pleasure, taking
delight in the inventions and elegant language of the poets; but others
study this literature for the sake of scholarship, that by their
reading they may learn to detest the errors of the Gentiles and may
devoutly apply what they find useful in them to the use of sacred
learning.  Such men study secular literature in a laudable manner. So
far Bede.

Taking this salutary instruction to heart, let the detractors of those
who study the poets henceforth hold their peace, and let not those who
are ignorant of these things require that others should be as ignorant
as themselves, for this is the consolation of the wretched.  And
therefore let every man see that his own intentions are upright, and he
may thus make of any subject, observing the limitations of virtue, a
study acceptable to God.  And if he have found profit in poetry, as the
great Virgil relates that he had done in Ennius, he will not have done
amiss.



CHAPTER XIV

WHO OUGHT TO BE SPECIAL LOVERS OF BOOKS

To him who recollects what has been said before, it is plain and
evident who ought to be the chief lovers of books.  For those who have
most need of wisdom in order to perform usefully the duties of their
position, they are without doubt most especially bound to show more
abundantly to the sacred vessels of wisdom the anxious affection of a
grateful heart.  Now it is the office of the wise man to order rightly
both himself and others, according to the Phoebus of philosophers,
Aristotle, who deceives not nor is deceived in human things.  Wherefore
princes and prelates, judges and doctors, and all other leaders of the
commonwealth, as more than others they have need of wisdom, so more
than others ought they to show zeal for the vessels of wisdom.

Boethius, indeed, beheld Philosophy bearing a sceptre in her left hand
and books in her right, by which it is evidently shown to all men that
no one can rightly rule a commonwealth without books. Thou, says
Boethius, speaking to Philosophy, hast sanctioned this saying by the
mouth of Plato, that states would be happy if they were ruled by
students of philosophy, or if their rulers would study philosophy.  And
again, we are taught by the very gesture of the figure that in so far
as the right hand is better than the left, so far the contemplative
life is more worthy than the active life; and at the same time we are
shown that the business of the wise man is to devote himself by turns,
now to the study of truth, and now to the dispensation of temporal
things.

We read that Philip thanked the Gods devoutly for having granted that
Alexander should be born in the time of Aristotle, so that educated
under his instruction he might be worthy to rule his father's empire.
While Phaeton unskilled in driving becomes the charioteer of his
father's car, he unhappily distributes to mankind the heat of Phoebus,
now by excessive nearness, and now by withdrawing it too far, and so,
lest all beneath him should be imperilled by the closeness of his
driving, justly deserved to be struck by the thunderbolt.

The history of the Greeks as well as Romans shows that there were no
famous princes among them who were devoid of literature.  The sacred
law of Moses in prescribing to the king a rule of government, enjoins
him to have a copy made of the book of Divine law (Deut. xvii.)
according to the copy shown by the priests, in which he was to read all
the days of his life.  Certes, God Himself, who hath made and who
fashioneth every day the hearts of every one of us, knows the
feebleness of human memory and the instability of virtuous intentions
in mankind.  Wherefore He has willed that books should be as it were an
antidote to all evil, the reading and use of which He has commanded to
be the healthful daily nourishment of the soul, so that by them the
intellect being refreshed and neither weak nor doubtful should never
hesitate in action.  This subject is elegantly handled by John of
Salisbury, in his Policraticon.  In conclusion, all classes of men who
are conspicuous by the tonsure or the sign of clerkship, against whom
books lifted up their voices in the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters,
are bound to serve books with perpetual veneration.



CHAPTER XV

OF THE ADVANTAGES OF THE LOVE OF BOOKS

It transcends the power of human intellect, however deeply it may have
drunk of the Pegasean fount, to develop fully the title of the present
chapter.  Though one should speak with the tongue of men and angels,
though he should become a Mercury or Tully, though he should grow sweet
with the milky eloquence of Livy, yet he will plead the stammering of
Moses, or with Jeremiah will confess that he is but a boy and cannot
speak, or will imitate Echo rebounding from the mountains.  For we know
that the love of books is the same thing as the love of wisdom, as was
proved in the second chapter.  Now this love is called by the Greek
word philosophy, the whole virtue of which no created intelligence can
comprehend; for she is believed to be the mother of all good things:
Wisdom vii.  She as a heavenly dew extinguishes the heats of fleshly
vices, the intense activity of the mental forces relaxing the vigour of
the animal forces, and slothfulness being wholly put to flight, which
being gone all the bows of Cupid are unstrung.

Hence Plato says in the Phaedo:  The philosopher is manifest in this,
that he dissevers the soul from communion with the body.  Love, says
Jerome, the knowledge of the scriptures, and thou wilt not love the
vices of the flesh.  The godlike Xenocrates showed this by the firmness
of his reason, who was declared by the famous hetaera Phryne to be a
statue and not a man, when all her blandishments could not shake his
resolve, as Valerius Maximus relates at length.  Our own Origen showed
this also, who chose rather to be unsexed by the mutilation of himself,
than to be made effeminate by the omnipotence of woman--though it was a
hasty remedy, repugnant alike to nature and to virtue, whose place it
is not to make men insensible to passion, but to slay with the dagger
of reason the passions that spring from instinct.

Again, all who are smitten with the love of books think cheaply of the
world and wealth; as Jerome says to Vigilantius:  The same man cannot
love both gold and books.  And thus it has been said in verse:

  No iron-stained hand is fit to handle books,
  Nor he whose heart on gold so gladly looks:
  The same men love not books and money both,
  And books thy herd, O Epicurus, loathe;
  Misers and bookmen make poor company,
  Nor dwell in peace beneath the same roof-tree.
  No man, therefore, can serve both books and Mammon.


The hideousness of vice is greatly reprobated in books, so that he who
loves to commune with books is led to detest all manner of vice.  The
demon, who derives his name from knowledge, is most effectually
defeated by the knowledge of books, and through books his multitudinous
deceits and the endless labyrinths of his guile are laid bare to those
who read, lest he be transformed into an angel of light and circumvent
the innocent by his wiles.  The reverence of God is revealed to us by
books, the virtues by which He is worshipped are more expressly
manifested, and the rewards are described that are promised by the
truth, which deceives not, neither is deceived.  The truest likeness of
the beatitude to come is the contemplation of the sacred writings, in
which we behold in turn the Creator and the creature, and draw from
streams of perpetual gladness.  Faith is established by the power of
books; hope is strengthened by their solace, insomuch that by patience
and the consolation of scripture we are in good hope.  Charity is not
puffed up, but is edified by the knowledge of true learning, and,
indeed, it is clearer than light that the Church is established upon
the sacred writings.

Books delight us, when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us
inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us.  They lend validity to
human compacts, and no serious judgments are propounded without their
help.  Arts and sciences, all the advantages of which no mind can
enumerate, consist in books.  How highly must we estimate the wondrous
power of books, since through them we survey the utmost bounds of the
world and time, and contemplate the things that are as well as those
that are not, as it were in the mirror of eternity.  In books we climb
mountains and scan the deepest gulfs of the abyss; in books we behold
the finny tribes that may not exist outside their native waters,
distinguish the properties of streams and springs and of various lands;
from books we dig out gems and metals and the materials of every kind
of mineral, and learn the virtues of herbs and trees and plants, and
survey at will the whole progeny of Neptune, Ceres, and Pluto.

But if we please to visit the heavenly inhabitants, Taurus, Caucasus,
and Olympus are at hand, from which we pass beyond the realms of Juno
and mark out the territories of the seven planets by lines and circles.
And finally we traverse the loftiest firmament of all, adorned with
signs, degrees, and figures in the utmost variety.  There we inspect
the antarctic pole, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; we admire
the luminous Milky Way and the Zodiac, marvellously and delightfully
pictured with celestial animals.  Thence by books we pass on to
separate substances, that the intellect may greet kindred
intelligences, and with the mind's eye may discern the First Cause of
all things and the Unmoved Mover of infinite virtue, and may immerse
itself in love without end.  See how with the aid of books we attain
the reward of our beatitude, while we are yet sojourners below.

Why need we say more?  Certes, just as we have learnt on the authority
of Seneca, leisure without letters is death and the sepulture of the
living, so contrariwise we conclude that occupation with letters or
books is the life of man.

Again, by means of books we communicate to friends as well as foes what
we cannot safely entrust to messengers; since the book is generally
allowed access to the chambers of princes, from which the voice of its
author would be rigidly excluded, as Tertullian observes at the
beginning of his Apologeticus.  When shut up in prison and in bonds,
and utterly deprived of bodily liberty, we use books as ambassadors to
our friends, and entrust them with the conduct of our cause, and send
them where to go ourselves would incur the penalty of death.  By the
aid of books we remember things that are past, and even prophesy as to
the future; and things present, which shift and flow, we perpetuate by
committing them to writing.

The felicitous studiousness and the studious felicity of the
all-powerful eunuch, of whom we are told in the Acts, who had been so
mightily kindled by the love of the prophetic writings that he ceased
not from his reading by reason of his journey, had banished all thought
of the populous palace of Queen Candace, and had forgotten even the
treasures of which he was the keeper, and had neglected alike his
journey and the chariot in which he rode.  Love of his book alone had
wholly engrossed this domicile of chastity, under whose guidance he
soon deserved to enter the gate of faith.  O gracious love of books,
which by the grace of baptism transformed the child of Gehenna and
nursling of Tartarus into a Son of the Kingdom!

Let the feeble pen now cease from the tenor of an infinite task, lest
it seem foolishly to undertake what in the beginning it confessed to be
impossible to any.



CHAPTER XVI

THAT IT IS MERITORIOUS TO WRITE NEW BOOKS AND TO RENEW THE OLD

Just as it is necessary for the state to prepare arms and to provide
abundant stores of victuals for the soldiers who are to fight for it,
so it is fitting for the Church Militant to fortify itself against the
assaults of pagans and heretics with a multitude of sound writings.

But because all the appliances of mortal men with the lapse of time
suffer the decay of mortality, it is needful to replace the volumes
that are worn out with age by fresh successors, that the perpetuity of
which the individual is by its nature incapable may be secured to the
species; and hence it is that the Preacher says: Of making many books
there is no end.  For as the bodies of books, seeing that they are
formed of a combination of contrary elements, undergo a continual
dissolution of their structure, so by the forethought of the clergy a
remedy should be found, by means of which the sacred book paying the
debt of nature may obtain a natural heir and may raise up like seed to
its dead brother, and thus may be verified that saying of
Ecclesiasticus: His father is dead, and he is as if he were not dead;
for he hath left one behind him that is like himself.  And thus the
transcription of ancient books is as it were the begetting of fresh
sons, on whom the office of the father may devolve, lest it suffer
detriment.  Now such transcribers are called antiquarii, whose
occupations Cassiodorus confesses please him above all the tasks of
bodily labour, adding: "Happy effort," he says, "laudable industry, to
preach to men with the hand, to let loose tongues with the fingers,
silently to give salvation to mortals, and to fight with pen and ink
against the illicit wiles of the Evil One."  So far Cassiodorus.
Moreover, our Saviour exercised the office of the scribe when He
stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground (John viii.), that
no one, however exalted, may think it unworthy of him to do what he
sees the wisdom of God the Father did.

O singular serenity of writing, to practise which the Artificer of the
world stoops down, at whose dread name every knee doth bow!  O
venerable handicraft pre-eminent above all other crafts that are
practised by the hand of man, to which our Lord humbly inclines His
breast, to which the finger of God is applied, performing the office of
a pen!  We do not read of the Son of God that He sowed or ploughed,
wove or digged; nor did any other of the mechanic arts befit the divine
wisdom incarnate except to trace letters in writing, that every
gentleman and sciolist may know that fingers are given by God to men
for the task of writing rather than for war.  Wherefore we entirely
approve the judgment of books, wherein they declared in our sixth
chapter the clerk who cannot write to be as it were disabled.

God himself inscribes the just in the book of the living; Moses
received the tables of stone written with the finger of God.  Job
desires that he himself that judgeth would write a book.  Belshazzar
trembled when he saw the fingers of a man's hand writing upon the wall,
Mene tekel phares.  I wrote, says Jeremiah, with ink in the book.
Christ bids his beloved disciple John, What thou seest write in a book.
So the office of the writer is enjoined on Isaiah and on Joshua, that
the act and skill of writing may be commended to future generations.
Christ Himself has written on His vesture and on His thigh King of
Kings and Lord of Lords, so that without writing the royal ornaments of
the Omnipotent cannot be made perfect.  Being dead they cease not to
teach, who write books of sacred learning.  Paul did more for building
up the fabric of the Church by writing his holy epistles, than by
preaching by word of mouth to Jews and Gentiles.  He who has attained
the prize continues daily by books, what he long ago began while a
sojourner upon the earth; and thus is fulfilled in the doctors writing
books the saying of the Prophet:  They that turn many to righteousness
shall be as the stars for ever and ever.

Moreover, it has been determined by the doctors of the Church that the
longevity of the ancients, before God destroyed the original world by
the Deluge, is to be ascribed to a miracle and not to nature; as though
God granted to them such length of days as was required for finding out
the sciences and writing them in books; amongst which the wonderful
variety of astronomy required, according to Josephus, a period of six
hundred years, to submit it to ocular observation.  Nor, indeed, do
they deny that the fruits of the earth in that primitive age afforded a
more nutritious aliment to men than in our modern times, and thus they
had not only a livelier energy of body, but also a more lengthened
period of vigour; to which it contributed not a little that they lived
according to virtue and denied themselves all luxurious delights.
Whoever therefore is by the good gift of God endowed with gift of
science, let him, according to the counsel of the Holy Spirit, write
wisdom in his time of leisure (Eccles.  xxxviii.), that his reward may
be with the blessed and his days may be lengthened in this present
world.

And further, if we turn our discourse to the princes of the world, we
find that famous emperors not only attained excellent skill in the art
of writing, but indulged greatly in its practice.  Julius Caesar, the
first and greatest of them all, has left us Commentaries on the Gallic
and the Civil Wars written by himself; he wrote also two books De
Analogia, and two books of Anticatones, and a poem called Iter; and
many other works.  Julius and Augustus devised means of writing one
letter for another, and so concealing what they wrote.  For Julius put
the fourth letter for the first, and so on through the alphabet; whilst
Augustus used the second for the first, the third for the second, and
so throughout.  He is said in the greatest difficulties of affairs
during the Mutinensian War to have read and written and even declaimed
every day.  Tiberius wrote a lyric poem and some Greek verses.
Claudius likewise was skilled in both Greek and Latin, and wrote
several books.  But Titus was skilled above all men in the art of
writing, and easily imitated any hand he chose; so that he used to say
that if he had wished it he might have become a most skilful forger.
All these things are noted by Suetonius in his Lives of the XII.
Caesars.



CHAPTER XVII

OF SHOWING DUE PROPRIETY IN THE CUSTODY OF BOOKS

We are not only rendering service to God in preparing volumes of new
books, but also exercising an office of sacred piety when we treat
books carefully, and again when we restore them to their proper places
and commend them to inviolable custody; that they may rejoice in purity
while we have them in our hands, and rest securely when they are put
back in their repositories.  And surely next to the vestments and
vessels dedicated to the Lord's body, holy books deserve to be rightly
treated by the clergy, to which great injury is done so often as they
are touched by unclean hands.  Wherefore we deem it expedient to warn
our students of various negligences, which might always be easily
avoided and do wonderful harm to books.

And in the first place as to the opening and closing of books, let
there be due moderation, that they be not unclasped in precipitate
haste, nor when we have finished our inspection be put away without
being duly closed.  For it behoves us to guard a book much more
carefully than a boot.

But the race of scholars is commonly badly brought up, and unless they
are bridled in by the rules of their elders they indulge in infinite
puerilities.  They behave with petulance, and are puffed up with
presumption, judging of everything as if they were certain, though they
are altogether inexperienced.

You may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily lounging over his
studies, and when the winter's frost is sharp, his nose running from
the nipping cold drips down, nor does he think of wiping it with his
pocket-handkerchief until he has bedewed the book before him with the
ugly moisture.  Would that he had before him no book, but a cobbler's
apron!  His nails are stuffed with fetid filth as black as jet, with
which he marks any passage that pleases him.  He distributes a
multitude of straws, which he inserts to stick out in different places,
so that the halm may remind him of what his memory cannot retain.
These straws, because the book has no stomach to digest them, and no
one takes them out, first distend the book from its wonted closing, and
at length, being carelessly abandoned to oblivion, go to decay.  He
does not fear to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or carelessly
to carry a cup to and from his mouth; and because he has no wallet at
hand he drops into books the fragments that are left.  Continually
chattering, he is never weary of disputing with his companions, and
while he alleges a crowd of senseless arguments, he wets the book lying
half open in his lap with sputtering showers.  Aye, and then hastily
folding his arms he leans forward on the book, and by a brief spell of
study invites a prolonged nap; and then, by way of mending the
wrinkles, he folds back the margin of the leaves, to the no small
injury of the book.  Now the rain is over and gone, and the flowers
have appeared in our land.  Then the scholar we are speaking of, a
neglecter rather than an inspecter of books, will stuff his volume with
violets, and primroses, with roses and quatrefoil.  Then he will use
his wet and perspiring hands to turn over the volumes; then he will
thump the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of dust, and
with his finger clad in long-used leather will hunt line by line
through the page; then at the sting of the biting flea the sacred book
is flung aside, and is hardly shut for another month, until it is so
full of the dust that has found its way within, that it resists the
effort to close it.

But the handling of books is specially to be forbidden to those
shameless youths, who as soon as they have learned to form the shapes
of letters, straightway, if they have the opportunity, become unhappy
commentators, and wherever they find an extra margin about the text,
furnish it with monstrous alphabets, or if any other frivolity strikes
their fancy, at once their pen begins to write it.  There the Latinist
and sophister and every unlearned writer tries the fitness of his pen,
a practice that we have frequently seen injuring the usefulness and
value of the most beautiful books.

Again, there is a class of thieves shamefully mutilating books, who cut
away the margins from the sides to use as material for letters, leaving
only the text, or employ the leaves from the ends, inserted for the
protection of the book, for various uses and abuses--a kind of
sacrilege which should be prohibited by the threat of anathema.

Again, it is part of the decency of scholars that whenever they return
from meals to their study, washing should invariably precede reading,
and that no grease-stained finger should unfasten the clasps, or turn
the leaves of a book.  Nor let a crying child admire the pictures in
the capital letters, lest he soil the parchment with wet fingers; for a
child instantly touches whatever he sees.  Moreover, the laity, who
look at a book turned upside down just as if it were open in the right
way, are utterly unworthy of any communion with books.  Let the clerk
take care also that the smutty scullion reeking from his stewpots does
not touch the lily leaves of books, all unwashed, but he who walketh
without blemish shall minister to the precious volumes.  And, again,
the cleanliness of decent hands would be of great benefit to books as
well as scholars, if it were not that the itch and pimples are
characteristic of the clergy.

Whenever defects are noticed in books, they should be promptly
repaired, since nothing spreads more quickly than a tear and a rent
which is neglected at the time will have to be repaired afterwards with
usury.

Moses, the gentlest of men, teaches us to make bookcases most neatly,
wherein they may be protected from any injury: Take, he says, this book
of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the
Lord your God.   O fitting place and appropriate for a library, which
was made of imperishable shittim-wood, and was all covered within and
without with gold!  But the Saviour also has warned us by His example
against all unbecoming carelessness in the handling of books, as we
read in S.  Luke.  For when He had read the scriptural prophecy of
Himself in the book that was delivered to Him, He did not give it again
to the minister, until He had closed it with his own most sacred hands.
By which students are most clearly taught that in the care of books the
merest trifles ought not to be neglected.



CHAPTER XVIII

SHOWETH THAT WE HAVE COLLECTED SO GREAT STORE OF BOOKS FOR THE COMMON
BENEFIT OF SCHOLARS AND NOT ONLY FOR OUR OWN PLEASURE

Nothing in human affairs is more unjust than that those things which
are most righteously done, should be perverted by the slanders of
malicious men, and that one should bear the reproach of sin where he
has rather deserved the hope of honour.  Many things are done with
singleness of eye, the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doth,
the lump is uncorrupted by leaven, nor is the garment woven of wool and
linen; and yet by the trickery of perverse men a pious work is
mendaciously transformed into some monstrous act.  Certes, such is the
unhappy condition of sinful nature, that not merely in acts that are
morally doubtful it adopts the worse conclusion; but often it depraves
by iniquitous subversion those which have the appearance of rectitude.

For although the love of books from the nature of its object bears the
aspect of goodness, yet, wonderful to say, it has rendered us obnoxious
to the censures of many, by whose astonishment we were disparaged and
censured, now for excess of curiosity, now for the exhibition of
vanity, now for intemperance of delight in literature; though indeed we
were no more disturbed by their vituperation than by the barking of so
many dogs, satisfied with the testimony of Him to whom it appertaineth
to try the hearts and reins.  For as the aim and purpose of our inmost
will is inscrutable to men and is seen of God alone, the searcher of
hearts, they deserve to be rebuked for their pernicious temerity, who
so eagerly set a mark of condemnation upon human acts, the ultimate
springs of which they cannot see.  For the final end in matters of
conduct holds the same position as first principles in speculative
science or axioms in mathematics, as the chief of philosophers,
Aristotle, points out in the seventh book of the Ethics.  And
therefore, just as the truth of our conclusions depends upon the
correctness of our premises, so in matters of action the stamp of moral
rectitude is given by the honesty of aim and purpose, in cases where
the act itself would otherwise be held to be morally indifferent.

Now we have long cherished in our heart of hearts the fixed resolve,
when Providence should grant a favourable opportunity, to found in
perpetual charity a Hall in the reverend university of Oxford, the
chief nursing mother of all liberal arts, and to endow it with the
necessary revenues, for the maintenance of a number of scholars; and
moreover to enrich the Hall with the treasures of our books, that all
and every of them should be in common as regards their use and study,
not only to the scholars of the said Hall, but by their means to all
the students of the before-named university for ever, in the form and
manner which the following chapter shall declare.  Wherefore the
sincere love of study and zeal for the strengthening of the orthodox
faith to the edifying of the Church, have begotten in us that
solicitude so marvellous to the lovers of pelf, of collecting books
wherever they were to be purchased, regardless of expense, and of
having those that could not he bought fairly transcribed.

For as the favourite occupations of men are variously distinguished
according to the disposition of the heavenly bodies, which frequently
control our natural composition, so that some men choose to devote
themselves to architecture, others to agriculture, others to hunting,
others to navigation, others to war, others to games, we have under the
aspect of Mercury entertained a blameless pleasure in books, which
under the rule of right reason, over which no stars are dominant, we
have ordered to the glory of the Supreme Being, that where our minds
found tranquillity and peace, thence also might spring a most devout
service of God.  And therefore let our detractors cease, who are as
blind men judging of colours; let not bats venture to speak of light;
and let not those who carry beams in their own eyes presume to pull the
mote out of their brother's eye. Let them cease to jeer with satirical
taunts at things of which they are ignorant, and to discuss hidden
things that are not revealed to the eyes of men; who perchance would
have praised and commended us, if we had spent our time in hunting,
dice-playing, or courting the smiles of ladies.



CHAPTER XIX

OF THE MANNER OF LENDING ALL OUR BOOKS TO STUDENTS

It has ever been difficult so to restrain men by the laws of rectitude,
that the astuteness of successors might not strive to transgress the
bounds of their predecessors, and to infringe established rules in
insolence of licence.  Accordingly, with the advice of prudent men, we
have prescribed the manner in which we desire that the communication
and use of our books should be permitted for the benefit of students.

Imprimis, we give and grant all and singular the books, of which we
have made a special catalogue, in consideration of affection, to the
community of scholars living in ---- Hall at Oxford, as a perpetual
gift, for our soul and the souls of our parents, and also for the soul
of the most illustrious King Edward the Third from the Conquest, and of
the most pious Queen Philippa, his consort: to the intent that the same
books may be lent from time to time to all and singular the scholars
and masters of the said place, as well regular as secular, for the
advancement and use of study, in the manner immediately following, that
is to say:

Five of the scholars sojourning in the Hall aforesaid shall be
appointed by the Master thereof, who shall have the charge of all the
books, of which five persons three and not fewer may lend any book or
books for inspection and study; but for copying or transcribing we
direct that no book shall be allowed outside the walls of the house.
Therefore, when any scholar secular or religious, whom for this purpose
we regard with equal favour, shall seek to borrow any book, let the
keepers diligently consider if they have a duplicate of the said book,
and if so, let them lend him the book, taking such pledge as in their
judgment exceeds the value of the book delivered, and let a record be
made forthwith of the pledge and of the book lent, containing the names
of the persons delivering the book and of the person who receives it,
together with the day and year when the loan is made.

But if the keepers find that the book asked for is not in duplicate,
they shall not lend such book to any one whomsoever, unless he shall
belong to the community of scholars of the said Hall, unless perhaps
for inspection within the walls of the aforesaid house or Hall, but not
to be carried beyond it.

But to any of the scholars of the said Hall, any book may be lent by
three of the aforesaid keepers, after first recording, however, his
name, with the day on which he receives the book.  Nevertheless, the
borrower may not lend the book entrusted to him to another, except with
the permission of three of the aforesaid keepers, and then the name of
the first borrower being erased, the name of the second with the time
of delivery is to be recorded.

Each keeper shall take an oath to observe all these regulations when
they enter upon the charge of the books.  And the recipients of any
book or books shall thereupon swear that they will not use the book or
books for any other purpose but that of inspection or study, and that
they will not take or permit to be taken it or them beyond the town and
suburbs of Oxford.

Moreover, every year the aforesaid keepers shall render an account to
the Master of the House and two of his scholars whom he shall associate
with himself, or if he shall not be at leisure, he shall appoint three
inspectors, other than the keepers, who shall peruse the catalogue of
books, and see that they have them all, either in the volumes
themselves or at least as represented by deposits.  And the more
fitting season for rendering this account we believe to be from the
First of July until the festival of the Translation of the Glorious
Martyr S.  Thomas next following.

We add this further provision, that anyone to whom a book has been
lent, shall once a year exhibit it to the keepers, and shall, if he
wishes it, see his pledge.  Moreover, if it chances that a book is lost
by death, theft, fraud, or carelessness, he who has lost it or his
representative or executor shall pay the value of the book and receive
back his deposit.  But if in any wise any profit shall accrue to the
keepers, it shall not be applied to any purpose but the repair and
maintenance of the books.



CHAPTER XX

AN EXHORTATION TO SCHOLARS TO REQUITE US BY PIOUS PRAYERS

Time now clamours for us to terminate this treatise which we have
composed concerning the love of books; in which we have endeavoured to
give the astonishment of our contemporaries the reason why we have
loved books so greatly.  But because it is hardly granted to mortals to
accomplish aught that is not rolled in the dust of vanity, we do not
venture entirely to justify the zealous love which we have so long had
for books, or to deny that it may perchance sometimes have been the
occasion of some venial negligence, albeit the object of our love is
honourable and our intention upright.  For if when we have done
everything, we are bound to call ourselves unprofitable servants; if
the most holy Job was afraid of all his works; if according to Isaiah
all our righteousness is as filthy rags, who shall presume to boast
himself of the perfection of any virtue, or deny that from some
circumstance a thing may deserve to be reprehended, which in itself
perhaps was not reprehensible.  For good springs from one selfsame
source, but evil arises in many ways, as Dionysius informs us.
Wherefore to make amends for our iniquities, by which we acknowledge
ourselves to have frequently offended the Creator of all things, in
asking the assistance of their prayers, we have thought fit to exhort
our future students to show their gratitude as well to us as to their
other benefactors in time to come by requiting our forethought for
their benefit by spiritual retribution.  Let us live when dead in their
memories, who have lived in our benevolence before they were born, and
live now sustained by our beneficence.  Let them implore the mercy of
the Redeemer with unwearied prayer, that the pious Judge may excuse our
negligences, may pardon the wickedness of our sins, may cover the
lapses of our feebleness with the cloak of piety, and remit by His
divine goodness the offences of which we are ashamed and penitent.
That He may preserve to us for a due season of repentance the gifts of
His good grace, steadfastness of faith, loftiness of hope, and the
widest charity to all men.  That He may turn our haughty will to lament
its faults, that it may deplore its past most vain elations, may
retract its most bitter indignations, and detest its most insane
delectations.  That His virtue may abound in us, when our own is found
wanting, and that He who freely consecrated our beginning by the
sacrament of baptism, and advanced our progress to the seat of the
Apostles without any desert of ours, may deign to fortify our outgoing
by the fitting sacraments.  That we may be delivered from the lust of
the flesh, that the fear of death may utterly vanish and our spirit may
desire to be dissolved and be with Christ, and existing upon earth in
body only, in thought and longing our conversation may be in Heaven.
That the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation may
graciously come to meet the prodigal returning from the husks; that He
may receive the piece of silver that has been lately found and transmit
it by His holy angels into His eternal treasury.  That He may rebuke
with His terrible countenance, at the hour of our departure, the
spirits of darkness, lest Leviathan, that old serpent, lying hid at the
gate of death, should spread unforeseen snares for our feet.  But when
we shall be summoned to the awful judgment-seat to give an account on
the testimony of conscience of all things we have done in the body, the
God-Man may consider the price of the holy blood that He has shed, and
that the Incarnate Deity may note the frame of our carnal nature, that
our weakness may pass unpunished where infinite loving-kindness is to
be found, and that the soul of the wretched sinner may breathe again
where the peculiar office of the Judge is to show mercy.  And further,
let our students be always diligent in invoking the refuge of our hope
after God, the Virgin Mother of God and Blessed Queen of Heaven, that
we who for our manifold sins and wickednesses have deserved the anger
of the Judge, by the aid of her ever-acceptable supplications may merit
His forgiveness; that her pious hand may depress the scale of the
balance in which our small and few good deeds shall be weighed, lest
the heaviness of our sins preponderate and cast us down to the
bottomless pit of perdition.  Moreover, let them ever venerate with due
observance the most deserving Confessor Cuthbert, the care of whose
flock we have unworthily undertaken, ever devoutly praying that he may
deign to excuse by his prayers his all-unworthy vicar, and may procure
him whom he hath admitted as his successor upon earth to be made his
assessor in Heaven.  Finally, let them pray God with holy prayers as
well of body as of soul, that He will restore the spirit created in the
image of the Trinity, after its sojourn in this miserable world, to its
primordial prototype, and grant to it for ever to enjoy the sight of
His countenance: through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

  THE END OF THE PHILOBIBLON OF MASTER RICHARD DE
  AUNGERVILLE, SURNAMED DE BURY, LATE BISHOP OF
  DURHAM THIS TREATISE WAS FINISHED IN OUR
  MANORHOUSE OF AUCKLAND ON THE 24TH
  DAY OF JANUARY, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD
  ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND
  FORTY-FOUR, THE FIFTY-EIGHTH
  YEAR OF OUR AGE BEING EXACTLY
  COMPLETED, AND THE ELEVENTH
  YEAR OF OUR PONTIFICATE
  DRAWING TO AN END;
  TO THE GLORY
  OF GOD.
  AMEN.









End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, by 
Richard de Bury

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