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 CHILDJESUS INTO HIS ARMS TO CARRY HIM AND KISS HIM. AND WHEN THOU HASTFINISHED READING, CLOSE THE BOOK AND GIVE THANKS FOR EVERY WORD OUT OFTHE MOUTH OF GOD; BECAUSE IN THE LORD'S FIELD THOU HAST FOUND A HIDDENTREASURE. "

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 andthe Prince involved him in danger. On the accession of his pupil hewas made successively Cofferer, Treasurer of the Wardrobe, Archdeaconof Northampton, Prebendary of Lincoln, Sarum, and Lichfield, Keeper ofthe Privy Purse, Ambassador on two occasions to Pope John XXII, whoappointed him a chaplain of the papal chapel, Dean of Wells, andultimately, at the end of the year 1333, Bishop of Durham; the King andQueen, the King of Scots, and all the magnates north of the Trent, together with a multitude of nobles and many others, were present athis enthronization. It is noteworthy that during his stay at Avignon, probably in 1330, he made the acquaintance of Petrarch, who has left usa brief account of their intercourse. In 1332 Richard visitedCambridge, as one of the King's commissioners, to inquire into thestate of the King's Scholars there, and perhaps then became a member ofthe Gild of St. Mary--one of the two gilds which founded Corpus ChristiCollege. 

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 indealing with affairs abroad and in Scotland, and took a mostdistinguished part in diplomatic negociations between England andFrance. In 1339 he was again in his bishopric. Thereafter his nameoccurs often among those appointed to treat of peace with Philip ofFrance, and with Bruce of Scotland. It appears that he was not inParliament in 1344. Wasted by long sickness--longa infirmitatedecoctus--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 thebishop's fifty-eighth birthday, the 24th of January, 1345, so that eventhough weakened by illness, Richard must have been actively engaged inhis literary efforts to the very end of his generous and noble life. His enthusiastic devoted biographer Chambre[1] gives a vivid account ofthe bishop's bookloving propensities, supplementary to what can begathered from the Philobiblon itself. Iste summe delectabatur inmultitudine librorum; he had more books, as was commonly reported, thanall the other English bishops put together. He had a separate libraryin each of his residences, and wherever he was residing, so many bookslay about his bed-chamber, that it was hardly possible to stand or movewithout treading upon them. All the time he could spare from businesswas devoted either to religious offices or to his books. Every daywhile at table he would have a book read to him, unless some specialguest were present, and afterwards would engage in discussion on thesubject of the reading. The haughty Anthony Bec delighted in theappendages of royalty--to be addressed by nobles kneeling, and to bewaited on in his presence-chamber and at his table by Knightsbare-headed and standing; but De Bury loved to surround himself withlearned 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 hishostility to the mendicant orders; Walter Burley, who dedicated to hima translation of the Politics of Aristotle made at his suggestion; JohnMauduit, the astronomer; Robert Holkot, author of many books; Richardde Kilvington; Richard Benworth, afterwards Bishop of London; andWalter Seagrave, who became Dean of Chichester. "[2]

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

[2] An unsuccessful attempt has been made to transfer the authorship ofthe book to Robert Holkot. Various theories have been advanced againstRichard's claims. It is noteworthy that his contemporary Adam Murimuthdisparages him as "mediocriter literatus, volens tamen magnus clericusreputari, " but such disparagement must be taken with the utmostcaution. The really difficult fact to be accounted for is the omissionon the part of Chambre to mention the book. 

The Bishop's Books. 

In the Philobiblon, Richard de Bury frankly and clearly describes hismeans and method of collecting books. Anyhow his object was clearlynot selfish. The treatise contains his rules for the library of thenew College at Oxford--Durham College (where Trinity College nowstands)--which he practically founded, though his successor, BishopHatfield, carried the scheme into effect. It is traditionally reportedthat Richard's books were sent, in his lifetime or after his death, tothe house of the Durham Benedictines at Oxford, and there remaineduntil the dissolution of the College by Henry VIII. , when they weredispersed, some going into Duke Humphrey's (the University) library, others to Balliol College, and the remainder passing into the hands ofDr. 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 fromthe mother-house, lists of which have been preserved; and subsequentlya library was built there to contain the collection bequeathed in 1345by Richard de Bury" (The Care of Books, p. 142). Mr. Thomas pointsout 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 Richardhas not come down to us; but "from his own book and from the bookscited in the works of his friends and housemates, who may reasonably besupposed to have drawn largely from the bishop's collection, it wouldbe possible to restore a hypothetical but not improbable BibliothecaRicardi de Bury. The difficulty would be with that contemporaryliterature, which they would think below the dignity of quotation, butwhich we know the Bishop collected. "

Early Editions of the Philobiblon. 

The book was first printed at Cologne in 1473, at Spires in 1483, andat Paris in 1500. The first English edition appeared in 1598-9, editedby Thomas James, Bodley's first librarian. Other editions appeared inGermany in 1610, 1614, 1674 and 1703; at Paris in 1856; at Albany in1861. The texts were, with the exception of those issued in 1483 and1599, based on the 1473 edition; though the French edition andtranslation of 1856, prepared by M. Cocheris, claimed to be a criticalversion, it left the text untouched, and merely gave the variousreadings of the three Paris manuscripts at the foot of the pages; thesereadings are moreover badly chosen, and the faults of the version arefurther to be referred to the use of the ill-printed 1703 edition ascopy. 

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

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

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

For fifteen years the enthusiastic editor--an ideal Bibliophile--hadtoiled at his labour of love, and his work was on all sides receivedwith the recognition due to his monumental achievement. To the greatloss of English learning, he did not long survive the conclusion of hislabours. The very limited edition of the work was soon exhausted, andit is by the most generous permission of his father, Mr. John Thomas, of Lower Broughton, Manchester, that the translation--the onlytrustworthy 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. Thegeneral Editor desires to express his best thanks to Mr. John Thomas, as also to Messrs. Kegan Paul, for their kindness in allowing him toavail himself of the materials included in the 1888 edition of thework. He has attempted, in the brief Preface and Notes, to condenseMr. Thomas' labours in such a way as would have been acceptable to thelamented scholar, and though he has made bold to explain some fewtextual difficulties, and to add some few references, he would fainhope that these additions have been made with modest caution--with thereverence due to the unstinted toil of a Bibliophile after Richard deBury's own pattern. Yet once again Richard de Bury's Philobiblon, edited and translated into English by E. C. Thomas, is presented to newgenerations 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 maycome, Richard de Bury, by the divine mercy Bishop of Durham, wishetheverlasting salvation in the Lord and to present continually a piousmemorial of himself before God, alike in his lifetime and after hisdeath. 

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

And indeed if so wonderful a prophet, having a fore-knowledge of divinesecrets, wished so anxiously to consider how he might gratefully repaythe blessings graciously bestowed, what can we fitly do, who are butrude thanksgivers and most greedy receivers, laden with infinite divinebenefits? Assuredly we ought with anxious deliberation and abundantconsideration, having first invoked the Sevenfold Spirit, that it mayburn in our musings as an illuminating fire, fervently to prepare a waywithout hinderance, that the bestower of all things may be cheerfullyworshipped in return for the gifts that He has bestowed, that ourneighbour may be relieved of his burden, and that the guilt contractedby sinners every day may be redeemed by the atonement of almsgiving. 

Forewarned therefore through the admonition of the Psalmist's devotionby Him who alone prevents and perfects the goodwill of man, withoutWhom we have no power even so much as to think, and Whose gift we doubtnot it is, if we have done anything good, we have diligently inquiredand considered in our own heart as well as with others, what among thegood offices of various works of piety would most please the Almighty, and would be more beneficial to the Church Militant. And lo! theresoon occurred to our contemplation a host of unhappy, nay, rather ofelect scholars, in whom God the Creator and Nature His handmaid plantedthe roots of excellent morals and of famous sciences, but whom thepoverty of their circumstances so oppressed that before the frown ofadverse fortune the seeds of excellence, so fruitful in the cultivatedfield of youth, not being watered by the rain that they require, areforced to wither away. Thus it happens that "bright virtue lurks buriedin obscurity, " to use the words of Boethius, and burning lights are notput under a bushel, but for want of oil are utterly extinguished. Thusthe field, so full of flower in Spring, has withered up before harvesttime; thus wheat degenerates to tares, and vines into the wild vines, and thus olives run into the wild olive; the tender stems rot awayaltogether, and those who might have grown up into strong pillars ofthe Church, being endowed with the capacity of a subtle intellect, abandon the schools of learning. With poverty only as theirstepmother, they are repelled violently from the nectared cup ofphilosophy as soon as they have tasted of it and have become morefiercely thirsty by the very taste. Though fit for the liberal artsand disposed to study the sacred writings alone, being deprived of theaid of their friends, by a kind of apostasy they return to themechanical arts solely to gain a livelihood, to the loss of the Churchand the degradation of the whole clergy. Thus Mother Church conceivingsons is compelled to miscarry, nay, some misshapen monster is bornuntimely from her womb, and for lack of that little with which Natureis contented, she loses excellent pupils, who might afterwards becomechampions and athletes of the faith. Alas, how suddenly the woof iscut, while the hand of the weaver is beginning his work! Alas, how thesun is eclipsed in the brightness of the dawn, and the planet in itscourse is hurled backwards, and, while it bears the nature and likenessof a star suddenly drops and becomes a meteor! What more piteous sightcan the pious man behold? What can more sharply stir the bowels of hispity? What can more easily melt a heart hard as an anvil into hottears? On the other hand, let us recall from past experience how muchit has profited the whole Christian commonwealth, not indeed toenervate students with the delights of a Sardanapalus or the riches ofa Croesus, but rather to support them in their poverty with the frugalmeans 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 ofbirth, and rejoicing in no rich inheritance, but supported only by thepiety of the good, have made their way to apostolic chairs, have mostworthily presided over faithful subjects, have bent the necks of theproud and lofty to the ecclesiastical yoke and have extended furtherthe liberties of the Church!

Accordingly, having taken a survey of human necessities in everydirection, with a view to bestow our charity upon them, ourcompassionate inclinations have chosen to bear pious aid to thiscalamitous class of men, in whom there is nevertheless such hope ofadvantage to the Church, and to provide for them, not only in respectof things necessary to their support, but much more in respect of thebooks so useful to their studies. To this end, most acceptable in thesight of God, our attention has long been unweariedly devoted. Thisecstatic love has carried us away so powerfully, that we have resignedall thoughts of other earthly things, and have given ourselves up to apassion for acquiring books. That our intent and purpose, therefore, may be known to posterity as well as to our contemporaries, and that wemay for ever stop the perverse tongues of gossipers as far as we areconcerned, we have published a little treatise written in the lighteststyle of the moderns; for it is ridiculous to find a slight mattertreated of in a pompous style. And this treatise (divided into twentychapters) will clear the love we have had for books from the charge ofexcess, will expound the purpose of our intense devotion, and willnarrate more clearly than light all the circumstances of ourundertaking. And because it principally treats of the love of books, we have chosen, after the fashion of the ancient Romans, fondly to nameit 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 byan instinct of nature, infinitely surpasses all the riches of theworld; in respect of which precious stones are worthless; in comparisonwith which silver is as clay and pure gold is as a little sand; atwhose splendour the sun and moon are dark to look upon; compared withwhose marvellous sweetness honey and manna are bitter to the taste. Ovalue of wisdom that fadeth not away with time, virtue everflourishing, that cleanseth its possessor from all venom! O heavenlygift of the divine bounty, descending from the Father of lights, thatthou mayest exalt the rational soul to the very heavens! Thou art thecelestial nourishment of the intellect, which those who eat shall stillhunger and those who drink shall still thirst, and the gladdeningharmony of the languishing soul which he that hears shall never beconfounded. Thou art the moderator and rule of morals, which he whofollows shall not sin. By thee kings reign and princes decree justice. By thee, rid of their native rudeness, their minds and tongues beingpolished, the thorns of vice being torn up by the roots, those menattain high places of honour, and become fathers of their country, andcompanions of princes, who without thee would have melted their spearsinto pruning-hooks and ploughshares, or would perhaps be feeding swinewith the prodigal. 

Where dost thou chiefly lie hidden, O most elect treasure! and whereshall 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. Thereeveryone who asks receiveth thee, and everyone who seeks finds thee, and to everyone that knocketh boldly it is speedily opened. Thereinthe cherubim spread out their wings, that the intellect of the studentsmay ascend and look from pole to pole, from the east and west, from thenorth and from the south. Therein the mighty and incomprehensible GodHimself is apprehensibly contained and worshipped; therein is revealedthe nature of things celestial, terrestrial, and infernal; therein arediscerned the laws by which every state is administered, the offices ofthe celestial hierarchy are distinguished, and the tyrannies of demonsdescribed, such as neither the ideas of Plato transcend, nor the chairof Crato contained. 

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

Alexander, the conqueror of the earth, Julius, the invader of Rome andof the world, who, the first in war and arts, assumed universal empireunder his single rule, faithful Fabricius and stern Cato, would nowhave 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 kingfind any means of more easily conferring the privilege of perpetuitythan by books. The book that he has made renders its author thisservice in return, that so long as the book survives its author remainsimmortal and cannot die, as Ptolemy declares in the Prologue to hisAlmagest: He is not dead, he says, who has given life to science. 

Who therefore will limit by anything of another kind the price of theinfinite treasure of books, from which the scribe who is instructedbringeth forth things new and old? Truth that triumphs over allthings, which overcomes the king, wine, and women, which it is reckonedholy to honour before friendship, which is the way without turning andthe life without end, which holy Boethius considers to be threefold inthought, speech, and writing, seems to remain more usefully and tofructify to greater profit in books. For the meaning of the voiceperishes with the sound; truth latent in the mind is wisdom that is hidand treasure that is not seen; but truth which shines forth in booksdesires to manifest itself to every impressionable sense. It commendsitself 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 betranscribed, bound, corrected, and preserved. The undisclosed truthof the mind, although it is the possession of the noble soul, yetbecause it lacks a companion, is not certainly known to be delightful, while neither sight nor hearing takes account of it. Further the truthof the voice is patent only to the ear and eludes the sight, whichreveals to us more of the qualities of things, and linked with thesubtlest of motions begins and perishes as it were in a breath. Butthe written truth of books, not transient but permanent, plainly offersitself to be observed, and by means of the pervious spherules of theeyes, passing through the vestibule of perception and the courts ofimagination, enters the chamber of intellect, taking its place in thecouch of memory, where it engenders the eternal truth of the mind. 

Finally we must consider what pleasantness of teaching there is inbooks, how easy, how secret! How safely we lay bare the poverty ofhuman ignorance to books without feeling any shame! They are masterswho instruct us without rod or ferule, without angry words, withoutclothes or money. If you come to them they are not asleep; if you askand inquire of them they do not withdraw themselves; they do not chideif you make mistakes; they do not laugh at you if you are ignorant. Obooks, who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of youand enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! By how many thousandtypes are ye commended to learned men in the Scriptures given us byinspiration of God! For ye are the minds of profoundest wisdom, towhich the wise man sends his son that he may dig out treasures: Prov. Ii. Ye are the wells of living waters, which father Abraham firstdigged, Isaac digged again, and which the Philistines strive to fillup: Gen. Xxvi. Ye are indeed the most delightful ears of corn, full ofgrain, to be rubbed only by apostolic hands, that the sweetest food maybe produced for hungry souls: Matt. Xii. Ye are the golden pots inwhich manna is stored, and rocks flowing with honey, nay, combs ofhoney, most plenteous udders of the milk of life, garners ever full; yeare the tree of life and the fourfold river of Paradise, by which thehuman mind is nourished, and the thirsty intellect is watered andrefreshed. Ye are the ark of Noah and the ladder of Jacob, and thetroughs by which the young of those who look therein are coloured; yeare the stones of testimony and the pitchers holding the lamps ofGideon, the scrip of David, from which the smoothest stones are takenfor 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 thefiery darts of the wicked, fruitful olives, vines of Engadi, fig-treesthat are never barren, burning lamps always to be held inreadiness--and all the noblest comparisons of Scripture may be appliedto 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 degreeof its value, and the previous chapter shows that the value of books isunspeakable, it is quite clear to the reader what is the probableconclusion from this. I say probable, for in moral science we do notinsist upon demonstration, remembering that the educated man seeks suchdegree of certainty as he perceives the subject-matter will bear, asAristotle testifies in the first book of his Ethics. For Tully doesnot appeal to Euclid, nor does Euclid rely upon Tully. This at allevents we endeavour to prove, whether by logic or rhetoric, that allriches and all delights whatsoever yield place to books in thespiritual mind, wherein the Spirit which is charity ordereth charity. Now in the first place, because wisdom is contained in books more thanall mortals understand, and wisdom thinks lightly of riches, as theforegoing chapter declares. Furthermore, Aristotle, in his Problems, determines the question, why the ancients proposed prizes to thestronger in gymnastic and corporeal contests, but never awarded anyprize for wisdom. This question he solves as follows: In gymnasticexercises the prize is better and more desirable than that for which itis bestowed; but it is certain that nothing is better than wisdom:wherefore no prize could be assigned for wisdom. And therefore neitherriches nor delights are more excellent than wisdom. Again, only thefool will deny that friendship is to be preferred to riches, since thewisest of men testifies this; but the chief of philosophers honourstruth before friendship, and the truthful Zorobabel prefers it to allthings. Riches, then, are less than truth. Now truth is chieflymaintained and contained in holy books--nay, they are written truthitself, since by books we do not now mean the materials of which theyare made. Wherefore riches are less than books, especially as the mostprecious of all riches are friends, as Boethius testifies in the secondbook of his Consolation; to whom the truth of books according toAristotle is to be preferred. Moreover, since we know that richesfirst and chiefly appertain to the support of the body only, while thevirtue of books is the perfection of reason, which is properly speakingthe happiness of man, it appears that books to the man who uses hisreason are dearer than riches. Furthermore, that by which the faith ismore easily defended, more widely spread, more clearly preached, oughtto be more desirable to the faithful. But this is the truth written inbooks, which our Saviour plainly showed, when he was about to contendstoutly against the Tempter, girding himself with the shield of truthand indeed of written truth, declaring "it is written" of what he wasabout 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 ofthe faculties that we possess--when the whole mind is occupied incontemplating the truth of wisdom, which is the most delectable of allour virtuous activities, as the prince of philosophers declares in thetenth book of the Ethics, on which account it is that philosophy isheld to have wondrous pleasures in respect of purity and solidity, ashe goes on to say. But the contemplation of truth is never moreperfect than in books, where the act of imagination perpetuated bybooks does not suffer the operation of the intellect upon the truthsthat it has seen to suffer interruption. Wherefore books appear to bethe most immediate instruments of speculative delight, and thereforeAristotle, the sun of philosophic truth, in considering the principlesof choice, teaches that in itself to philosophize is more desirablethan to be rich, although in certain cases, as where for instance oneis in need of necessaries, it may be more desirable to be rich than tophilosophize. 

Moreover, since books are the aptest teachers, as the previous chapterassumes, it is fitting to bestow on them the honour and the affectionthat we owe to our teachers. In fine, since all men naturally desireto know, and since by means of books we can attain the knowledge of theancients, which is to be desired beyond all riches, what man livingaccording to nature would not feel the desire of books? And althoughwe know that swine trample pearls under foot, the wise man will nottherefore be deterred from gathering the pearls that lie before him. Alibrary of wisdom, then, is more precious than all wealth, and allthings that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever thereforeclaims 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 (aswe believe) acceptable to few: namely, that no dearness of price oughtto hinder a man from the buying of books, if he has the money that isdemanded for them, unless it be to withstand the malice of the selleror to await a more favourable opportunity of buying. For if it iswisdom only that makes the price of books, which is an infinitetreasure to mankind, and if the value of books is unspeakable, as thepremises show, how shall the bargain be shown to be dear where aninfinite good is being bought? Wherefore, that books are to be gladlybought and unwillingly sold, Solomon, the sun of men, exhorts us in theProverbs: Buy the truth, he says, and sell not wisdom. But what we aretrying to show by rhetoric or logic, let us prove by examples fromhistory. The arch-philosopher Aristotle, whom Averroes regards as thelaw of Nature, bought a few books of Speusippus straightway after hisdeath for 72, 000 sesterces. Plato, before him in time, but after himin learning, bought the book of Philolaus the Pythagorean, from whichhe is said to have taken the Timaeus, for 10, 000 denaries, as AulusGellius relates in the Noctes Atticae. Now Aulus Gellius relates thisthat the foolish may consider how wise men despise money in comparisonwith books. And on the other hand, that we may know that folly andpride go together, let us here relate the folly of Tarquin the Proud indespising books, as also related by Aulus Gellius. An old woman, utterly unknown, is said to have come to Tarquin the Proud, the seventhking 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 threebooks into the fire, and still asked the same sum for the rest. Whenthe king refused it, again she flung three others into the fire andstill asked the same price for the three that were left. At last, astonished beyond measure, Tarquin was glad to pay for three books thesame price for which he might have bought nine. The old womanstraightway disappeared, and was never seen before or after. Thesewere the Sibylline books, which the Romans consulted as a divine oracleby some one of the Quindecemvirs, and this is believed to have been theorigin of the Quindecemvirate. What did this Sibyl teach the proudking by this bold deed, except that the vessels of wisdom, holy books, exceed all human estimation; and, as Gregory says of the kingdom ofHeaven: 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 offspringof 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 throughbooks, and ye will find that books are as it were the creators of yourdistinction, without which other favourers would have been wanting. 

In sooth, while still untrained and helpless ye crept up to us, yespake as children, ye thought as children, ye cried as children andbegged to be made partakers of our milk. But we being straightwaymoved by your tears gave you the breast of grammar to suck, which yeplied continually with teeth and tongue, until ye lost your nativebarbarousness and learned to speak with our tongues the mighty thingsof 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 werenaked as a tablet to be painted on. For all the household ofphilosophy are clothed with garments, that the nakedness and rawness ofthe intellect may be covered. After this, providing you with thefourfold wings of the quadrivials that ye might be winged like theseraphs and so mount above the cherubim, we sent you to a friend atwhose door, if only ye importunately knocked, ye might borrow the threeloaves of the Knowledge of the Trinity, in which consists the finalfelicity of every sojourner below. Nay, if ye deny that ye had theseprivileges, we boldly declare that ye either lost them by yourcarelessness, or that through your sloth ye spurned them when offeredto you. If these things seem but a light matter to you, we will add yetgreater things. Ye are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holyrace, ye are a peculiar people chosen into the lot of God, ye arepriests and ministers of God, nay, ye are called the very Church ofGod, as though the laity were not to be called churchmen. Ye, beingpreferred to the laity, sing psalms and hymns in the chancel, and, serving the altar and living by the altar, make the true body ofChrist, wherein God Himself has honoured you not only above the laity, but even a little higher than the angels. For to whom of His angelshas He said at any time: Thou art a priest for ever after the order ofMelchisedech? Ye dispense the patrimony of the crucified one to thepoor, 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 inthe 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? Doye remember therefore, we pray, how many and how great liberties andprivileges are bestowed upon the clergy through us? In truth, taughtby us who are the vessels of wisdom and intellect, ye ascend theteacher's chair and are called of men Rabbi. By us ye becomemarvellous in the eyes of the laity, like great lights in the world, and possess the dignities of the Church according to your variousstations. By us, while ye still lack the first down upon your cheeks, ye are established in your early years and bear the tonsure on yourheads, while the dread sentence of the Church is heard: Touch not mineanointed and do my prophets no harm, and he who has rashly touched themlet him forthwith by his own blow be smitten violently with the woundof an anathema. At length yielding your lives to wickedness, reachingthe two paths of Pythagoras, ye choose the left branch, and goingbackward ye let go the lot of God which ye had first assumed, becomingcompanions of thieves. And thus ever going from bad to worse, dyedwith theft and murder and manifold impurities, your fame and consciencestained by sins, at the bidding of justice ye are confined in manaclesand 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'sfriend. Now all refuge has perished, for ye must stand before thejudgment-seat, and there is no appeal, but only hanging is in store foryou. While the wretched man's heart is thus filled with woe and onlythe sorrowing Muses bedew their cheeks with tears, in his strait isheard on every side the wailing appeal to us, and to avoid the dangerof impending death he shows the slight sign of the ancient tonsurewhich we bestowed upon him, begging that we may be called to his aidand bear witness to the privilege bestowed upon him. Then straightwaytouched with pity we run to meet the prodigal son and snatch thefugitive slave from the gates of death. The book he has not forgottenis handed to him to be read, and while with lips stammering with fearhe reads a few words, the power of the judge is loosed, the accuser iswithdrawn, and death is put to flight. O marvellous virtue of anempiric verse! O saving antidote of dreadful ruin! O precious readingof the psalter, which for this alone deserves to be called the book oflife! Let the laity undergo the judgment of the secular arm, thateither sewn up in sacks they may be carried out to Neptune, or plantedin the earth may fructify for Pluto, or may be offered amid the flamesas a fattened holocaust to Vulcan, or at least may be hung up as avictim to Juno: while our nursling at a single reading of the book oflife is handed over to the custody of the Bishop, and rigour is changedto favour, and the forum being transferred from the laity, death isrouted by the clerk who is the nursling of books. 

But now let us speak of the clerks who are vessels of virtue. Which ofyou about to preach ascends the pulpit or the rostrum without in someway consulting us? Which of you enters the schools to teach or todispute without relying upon our support? First of all, it behoves youto eat the book with Ezechiel, that the belly of your memory may besweetened within, and thus as with the panther refreshed, to whosebreath all beasts and cattle long to approach, the sweet savour of thespices it has eaten may shed a perfume without. Thus our naturesecretly working in our own, listeners hasten up gladly, as theload-stone draws the iron nothing loth. What an infinite host of bookslie at Paris or Athens, and at the same time resound in Britain and inRome! In truth, while resting they yet move, and while retaining theirown 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 ecclesiasticalhierarchy may be fitly disposed. For it is from books that everythingof good that befalls the clerical condition takes its origin. But letthis suffice: for it pains us to recall what we have bestowed upon thedegenerate clergy, because whatever gifts are distributed to theungrateful seem to be lost rather than bestowed. 

Let us next dwell a little on the recital of the wrongs with which theyrequite us, the contempts and cruelties of which we cannot recite anexample in each kind, nay, scarcely the main classes of the severalwrongs. In the first place, we are expelled by force and arms from thehomes of the clergy, which are ours by hereditary right, who were usedto have cells of quietness in the inner chamber, but, alas! in theseunhappy times we are altogether exiled, suffering poverty without thegates. For our places are seized now by dogs, now by hawks, now bythat biped beast whose cohabitation with the clergy was forbidden ofold, from which we have always taught our nurslings to flee more thanfrom the asp and the cockatrice; wherefore she, always jealous of thelove of us, and never to be appeased, at length seeing us in somecorner protected only by the web of some dead spider, with a frownabuses and reviles us with bitter words, declaring us alone of all thefurniture in the house to be unnecessary, and complaining that we areuseless for any household purpose, and advises that we should speedilybe converted into rich caps, sendal and silk and twice-dyed purple, robes and furs, wool and linen: and, indeed, not without reason, if shecould see our inmost hearts, if she had listened to our secretcounsels, if she had read the book of Theophrastus or Valerius, or onlyheard the twenty-fifth chapter of Ecclesiasticus with understandingears. 

And hence it is that we have to mourn for the homes of which we havebeen unjustly robbed; and as to our coverings, not that they have notbeen given to us, but that the coverings anciently given to us havebeen torn by violent hands, insomuch that our soul is bowed down to thedust, our belly cleaveth unto the earth. We suffer from variousdiseases, enduring pains in our backs and sides; we lie with our limbsunstrung by palsy, and there is no man who layeth it to heart, and noman who provides a mollifying plaster. Our native whiteness that wasclear with light has turned to dun and yellow, so that no leech whoshould see us would doubt that we are diseased with jaundice. Some ofus are suffering from gout, as our twisted extremities plainly show. The smoke and dust by which we are continuously plagued have dulled thekeenness of our visual rays, and are now infecting our bleared eyeswith ophthalmia. Within we are devoured by the fierce gripings of ourentrails, which hungry worms cease not to gnaw, and we undergo thecorruption of the two Lazaruses, nor is there anyone to anoint us withbalm of cedar, nor to cry to us who have been four days dead andalready stink, Lazarus come forth! No healing drug is bound around ourcruel wounds, which are so atrociously inflicted upon the innocent, andthere is none to put a plaster upon our ulcers; but ragged andshivering we are flung away into dark corners, or in tears take ourplace with holy Job upon his dunghill, or--too horrible to relate--areburied in the depths of the common sewers. The cushion is withdrawnthat should support our evangelical sides, which ought to have thefirst claim upon the incomes of the clergy, and the common necessariesof life thus be for ever provided for us, who are entrusted to theircharge. 

Again, we complain of another sort of injury which is too oftenunjustly inflicted upon our persons. We are sold for bondmen andbondwomen, and lie as hostages in taverns with no one to redeem us. Wefall a prey to the cruel shambles, where we see sheep and cattleslaughtered not without pious tears, and where we die a thousand timesfrom such terrors as might frighten even the brave. We are handed overto Jews, Saracens, heretics and infidels, whose poison we always dreadabove everything, and by whom it is well known that some of our parentshave been infected with pestiferous venom. In sooth, we who should betreated as masters in the sciences, and bear rule over the mechanicswho should be subject to us, are instead handed over to the governmentof subordinates, as though some supremely noble monarch should betrodden under foot by rustic heels. Any seamster or cobbler or tailoror artificer of any trade keeps us shut up in prison for the luxuriousand wanton pleasures of the clergy. 

Now we would pursue a new kind of injury by which we suffer alike inperson and in fame, the dearest thing we have. Our purity of race isdiminished every day, while new authors' names are imposed upon us byworthless compilers, translators, and transformers, and losing ourancient nobility, while we are reborn in successive generations, webecome wholly degenerate; and thus against our will the name of somewretched stepfather is affixed to us, and the sons are robbed of thenames of their true fathers. The verses of Virgil, while he was yetliving, were claimed by an impostor; and a certain Fidentinusmendaciously usurped the works of Martial, whom Martial thus deservedlyrebuked:

 "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 tomake broad their phylacteries, since even while they are alive they tryto seize us as soon as we are published? Ah! how often ye pretend thatwe who are ancient are but lately born, and try to pass us off as sonswho are really fathers, calling us who have made you clerks theproduction of your studies. Indeed, we derived our origin from Athens, though we are now supposed to be from Rome; for Carmentis was alwaysthe pilferer of Cadmus, and we who were but lately born in England, will to-morrow be born again in Paris; and thence being carried toBologna, will obtain an Italian origin, based upon no affinity ofblood. Alas! how ye commit us to treacherous copyists to be written, how corruptly ye read us and kill us by medication, while ye supposedye were correcting us with pious zeal. Oftentimes we have to endurebarbarous interpreters, and those who are ignorant of foreign idiomspresume to translate us from one language into another; and thus allpropriety of speech is lost and our sense is shamefully mutilatedcontrary to the meaning of the author! Truly noble would have been thecondition of books if it had not been for the presumption of the towerof Babel, if but one kind of speech had been transmitted by the wholehuman race. 

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

It is clear from what we have said what infinite invectives we couldhurl 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, flailand mattock, and every manual artificer for the instruments of hiscraft; it is only the ungrateful cleric who despises and neglects thosethings 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 solicitousin the care of books and to delight in their society, as if they werethe only riches. For some used to write them with their own handsbetween the hours of prayer, and gave to the making of books suchintervals as they could secure and the times appointed for therecreation of the body. By whose labours there are resplendent to-dayin most monasteries these sacred treasuries full of cherubic letters, for giving the knowledge of salvation to the student and a delectablelight to the paths of the laity. O manual toil, happier than anyagricultural task! O devout solicitude, where neither Martha nor Marydeserves to be rebuked! O joyful house, in which the fruitful Leahdoes not envy the beauteous Rachel, but action and contemplation shareeach other's joys! O happy charge, destined to benefit endlessgenerations of posterity, with which no planting of trees, no sowing ofseeds, no pastoral delight in herds, no building of fortified camps canbe compared! Wherefore the memory of those fathers should be immortal, who delighted only in the treasures of wisdom, who most laboriouslyprovided shining lamps against future darkness, and against hunger ofhearing the Word of God, most carefully prepared, not bread baked inthe ashes, nor of barley, nor musty, but unleavened loaves made of thefinest wheat of divine wisdom, with which hungry souls might bejoyfully fed These men were the stoutest champions of the Christianarmy, who defended our weakness by their most valiant arms; they werein their time the most cunning takers of foxes, who have left us theirnets, that we might catch the young foxes, who cease not to devour thegrowing vines. Of a truth, noble fathers, worthy of perpetualbenediction, ye would have been deservedly happy, if ye had beenallowed to beget offspring like yourselves, and to leave no degenerateor doubtful progeny for the benefit of future times. 

But, painful to relate, now slothful Thersites handles the arms ofAchilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazyasses, winking owls lord it in the eagle's nest, and the cowardly kitesits 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 aconfusion of names, while Liber Pater is preferred to Liber Patrum, thestudy of the monks nowadays is in the emptying of cups and not theemending of books; to which they do not hesitate to add the wantonmusic of Timotheus, jealous of chastity, and thus the song of themerry-maker and not the chant of the mourner is become the office ofthe monks. Flocks and fleeces, crops and granaries, leeks andpotherbs, drink and goblets, are nowadays the reading and study of themonks, except a few elect ones, in whom lingers not the image but someslight vestige of the fathers that preceded them. And again, nomaterials at all are furnished us to commend the canons regular fortheir care or study of us, who though they bear their name of honourfrom their twofold rule, yet have neglected the notable clause ofAugustine's rule, in which we are commended to his clergy in thesewords: Let books be asked for each day at a given hour; he who asksfor them after the hour is not to receive them. Scarcely anyoneobserves this devout rule of study after saying the prayers of theChurch, but to care for the things of this world and to look at theplough that has been left is reckoned the highest wisdom. They take upbow and quiver, embrace arms and shield, devote the tribute of alms todogs and not to the poor, become the slaves of dice and draughts, andof 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 theysee so much opposed to their mode of life. 

Come then, reverend fathers, deign to recall your fathers and devoteyourselves more faithfully to the study of holy books, without whichall religion will stagger, without which the virtue of devotion willdry up like a sherd, and without which ye can afford no light to theworld. 

CHAPTER VI

THE COMPLAINT OF BOOKS AGAINST THE MENDICANTS

Poor in spirit, but most rich in faith, off-scourings of the world andsalt of the earth, despisers of the world and fishers of men, how happyare ye, if suffering penury for Christ ye know how to possess yoursouls in patience! For it is not want the avenger of iniquity, nor theadverse fortune of your parents, nor violent necessity that has thusoppressed you with beggary, but a devout will and Christ-like election, by which ye have chosen that life as the best, which God Almighty mademan 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 latedivinely substituted for the Fathers and the Prophets, that your soundmay go forth into all the earth, and that instructed by our healthfuldoctrines ye may preach before all kings and nations the invinciblefaith of Christ. Moreover, that the faith of the Fathers is chieflyenshrined in books the second chapter has sufficiently shown, fromwhich it is clearer than light that ye ought to be zealous lovers ofbooks above all other Christians. Ye are commanded to sow upon allwaters, because the Most High is no respecter of persons, nor does theMost Holy desire the death of sinners, who offered Himself to die forthem, but desires to heal the contrite in heart, to raise the fallen, and to correct the perverse in the spirit of lenity. For which mostsalutary purpose our kindly Mother Church has planted you freely, andhaving planted has watered you with favours, and having watered you hasestablished you with privileges, that ye may be co-workers with pastorsand curates in procuring the salvation of faithful souls. Wherefore, that the order of Preachers was principally instituted for the study ofthe Holy Scriptures and the salvation of their neighbours, is declaredby their constitutions, so that not only from the rule of BishopAugustine, which directs books to be asked for every day, but as soonas they have read the prologue of the said constitutions they may knowfrom the very title of the same that they are pledged to the love ofbooks. 

But alas! a threefold care of superfluities, viz. , of the stomach, ofdress, and of houses, has seduced these men and others following theirexample from the paternal care of books, and from their study. For, forgetting the providence of the Saviour (who is declared by thePsalmist to think upon the poor and needy), they are occupied with thewants of the perishing body, that their feasts may be splendid andtheir garments luxurious, against the rule, and the fabrics of theirbuildings, like the battlements of castles, carried to a heightincompatible with poverty. Because of these three things, we books, who have ever procured their advancement and have granted them to sitamong the powerful and noble, are put far from their heart's affectionand are reckoned as superfluities; except that they rely upon sometreatises of small value, from which they derive strange heresies andapocryphal imbecilities, not for the refreshment of souls, but ratherfor tickling the ears of the listeners. The Holy Scripture is notexpounded, but is neglected and treated as though it were commonplaceand known to all, though very few have touched its hem, and though itsdepth is such, as Holy Augustine declares, that it cannot be understoodby the human intellect, however long it may toil with the utmostintensity of study. From this he who devotes himself to itassiduously, if only He will vouchsafe to open the door who hasestablished the spirit of piety, may unfold a thousand lessons of moralteaching, which will flourish with the freshest novelty and willcherish the intelligence of the listeners with the most delightfulsavours. Wherefore the first professors of evangelical poverty, aftersome slight homage paid to secular science, collecting all their forceof intellect, devoted themselves to labours upon the sacred scripture, meditating day and night on the law of the Lord. And whatever theycould steal from their famishing belly, or intercept from theirhalf-covered body, they thought it the highest gain to spend in buyingor correcting books. Whose worldly contemporaries observing theirdevotion and study bestowed upon them for the edification of the wholeChurch the books which they had collected at great expense in thevarious parts of the world. 

In truth, in these days as ye are engaged with all diligence in pursuitof gain, it may be reasonably believed, if we speak according to humannotions, that God thinks less upon those whom He perceives to distrustHis promises, putting their hope in human providence, not consideringthe raven, nor the lilies, whom the Most High feeds and arrays. Ye donot think upon Daniel and the bearer of the mess of boiled pottage, norrecollect Elijah who was delivered from hunger once in the desert byangels, again in the torrent by ravens, and again in Sarepta by thewidow, through the divine bounty, which gives to all flesh their meatin due season. Ye descend (as we fear) by a wretched anticlimax, distrust of the divine goodness producing reliance upon your ownprudence, and reliance upon your own prudence begetting anxiety aboutworldly things, and excessive anxiety about worldly things taking awaythe love as well as the study of books; and thus poverty in these daysis abused to the injury of the Word of God, which ye have chosen onlyfor 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 andforce, as their age requires, but allow them to devote themselves tobegging expeditions, and suffer them to spend the time, in which theymight be learning, in procuring the favour of friends, to the annoyanceof their parents, the danger of the boys, and the detriment of theorder. And thus no doubt it happens that those who were not compelledto learn as unwilling boys, when they grow up presume to teach thoughutterly unworthy and unlearned, and a small error in the beginningbecomes a very great one in the end. For there grows up among yourpromiscuous flock of laity a pestilent multitude of creatures, whonevertheless the more shamelessly force themselves into the office ofpreaching, the less they understand what they are saying, to thecontempt of the Divine Word and the injury of souls. In truth, againstthe law ye plough with an ox and an ass together, in committing thecultivation of the Lord's field to learned and unlearned. Side byside, it is written, the oxen were ploughing and the asses feedingbeside them: since it is the duty of the discreet to preach, but of thesimple to feed themselves in silence by the hearing of sacredeloquence. How many stones ye fling upon the heap of Mercury nowadays!How many marriages ye procure for the eunuchs of wisdom! How manyblind watchmen ye bid go round about the walls of the Church!

O idle fishermen, using only the nets of others, which when torn it isall 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, yemouth with theatric effort the superficially repeated wisdom of others. As the silly parrot imitates the words that he has heard, so such menare mere reciters of all, but authors of nothing, imitating Balaam'sass, which, though senseless of itself, yet became eloquent of speechand the teacher of its master though a prophet. Recover yourselves, Opoor in Christ, and studiously regard us books, without which ye cannever be properly shod in the preparation of the Gospel of Peace. 

Paul the Apostle, preacher of the truth and excellent teacher of thenations, for all his gear bade three things to be brought to him byTimothy, his cloak, books and parchments, affording an example toecclesiastics that they should wear dress in moderation, and shouldhave books for aid in study, and parchments, which the Apostleespecially esteems, for writing: AND ESPECIALLY, he says, theparchments. And truly that clerk is crippled and maimed to hisdisablement in many ways, who is entirely ignorant of the art ofwriting. He beats the air with words and edifies only those who arepresent, but does nothing for the absent and for posterity. The manbore a writer's ink-horn upon his loins, who set a mark Tau upon theforeheads of the men that sigh and cry, Ezechiel ix. ; teaching in afigure that if any lack skill in writing, he shall not undertake thetask 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 applythemselves to study, furnishing them with necessaries, that ye mayteach them not only goodness but discipline and science, may terrifythem by blows, charm them by blandishments, mollify them by gifts, andurge them on by painful rigour, so that they may become at onceSocratics in morals and Peripatetics in learning. Yesterday, as itwere at the eleventh hour, the prudent householder introduced you intohis vineyard. Repent of idleness before it is too late: would thatwith the cunning steward ye might be ashamed of begging so shamelessly;for then no doubt ye would devote yourselves more assiduously to usbooks and to study. 

CHAPTER VII

THE COMPLAINT OF BOOKS AGAINST WARS

Almighty Author and Lover of peace, scatter the nations that delight inwar, which is above all plagues injurious to books. For wars beingwithout the control of reason make a wild assault on everything theycome across, and, lacking the check of reason they push on withoutdiscretion or distinction to destroy the vessels of reason. Then thewise Apollo becomes the Python's prey, and Phronesis, the pious mother, becomes subject to the power of Phrenzy. Then winged Pegasus is shutup in the stall of Corydon, and eloquent Mercury is strangled. Thenwise Pallas is struck down by the dagger of error, and the charmingPierides are smitten by the truculent tyranny of madness. O cruelspectacle! where you may see the Phoebus of philosophers, the all-wiseAristotle, whom God Himself made master of the master of the world, enchained by wicked hands and borne in shameful irons on the shouldersof gladiators from his sacred home. There you may see him who wasworthy to be lawgiver to the lawgiver of the world and to hold empireover its emperor, made the slave of vile buffoons by the mostunrighteous laws of war. O most wicked power of darkness, which doesnot fear to undo the approved divinity of Plato, who alone was worthyto submit to the view of the Creator, before he assuaged the strife ofwarring chaos, and before form had put on its garb of matter, the idealtypes, in order to demonstrate the archetypal universe to its author, so that the world of sense might be modelled after the supernalpattern. O tearful sight! where the moral Socrates, whose acts werevirtue and whose discourse was science, who deduced political justicefrom the principles of nature, is seen enslaved to some rascal robber. We bemoan Pythagoras, the parent of harmony, as, brutally scourged bythe harrying furies of war, he utters not a song but the wailings of adove. We mourn, too, for Zeno, who lest he should betray his secretbit 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 thevarious books that have perished by the fate of war in various parts ofthe world. Yet we must tearfully recount the dreadful ruin which wascaused in Egypt by the auxiliaries in the Alexandrian war, when sevenhundred thousand volumes were consumed by fire. These volumes had beencollected by the royal Ptolemies through long periods of time, as AulusGellius relates. What an Atlantean progeny must be supposed to havethen perished: including the motions of the spheres, all theconjunctions of the planets, the nature of the galaxy, and theprognostic generations of comets, and all that exists in the heavens orin the ether! Who would not shudder at such a hapless holocaust, whereink is offered up instead of blood, where the glowing ashes ofcrackling parchment were encarnadined with blood, where the devouringflames consumed so many thousands of innocents in whose mouth was noguile, where the unsparing fire turned into stinking ashes so manyshrines of eternal truth! A lesser crime than this is the sacrifice ofJephthah or Agamemnon, where a pious daughter is slain by a father'ssword. How many labours of the famous Hercules shall we suppose thenperished, who because of his knowledge of astronomy is said to havesustained the heaven on his unyielding neck, when Hercules was now forthe second time cast into the flames. The secrets of the heavens, which Jonithus learnt not from man or through man but received bydivine inspiration; what his brother Zoroaster, the servant of uncleanspirits, taught the Bactrians; what holy Enoch, the prefect ofParadise, prophesied before he was taken from the world, and finally, what the first Adam taught his children of the things to come, which hehad seen when caught up in an ecstasy in the book of eternity, arebelieved to have perished in those horrid flames. The religion of theEgyptians, which the book of the Perfect Word so commends; theexcellent polity of the older Athens, which preceded by nine thousandyears the Athens of Greece; the charms of the Chaldaeans; theobservations of the Arabs and Indians; the ceremonies of the Jews; thearchitecture of the Babylonians; the agriculture of Noah the magic artsof Moses; the geometry of Joshua; the enigmas of Samson; the problemsof Solomon from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop; the antidotes ofAesculapius; the grammar of Cadmus; the poems of Parnassus; the oraclesof Apollo; the argonautics of Jason; the stratagems of Palamedes, andinfinite other secrets of science are believed to have perished at thetime of this conflagration. 

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

Happy was that translation of books which Xerxes is said to have madeto Persia from Athens, and which Seleucus brought back again fromPersia to Athens. O glad and joyful return! O wondrous joy, which youmight then see in Athens, when the mother went in triumph to meet herprogeny, and again showed the chambers in which they had been nursed toher now aging children! Their old homes were restored to their formerinmates, and forthwith boards of cedar with shelves and beams of gopherwood are most skilfully planed; inscriptions of gold and ivory aredesigned for the several compartments, to which the volumes themselvesare reverently brought and pleasantly arranged, so that no one hindersthe entrance of another or injures its brother by excessive crowding. 

But in truth infinite are the losses which have been inflicted upon therace of books by wars and tumults. And as it is by no means possibleto enumerate and survey infinity, we will here finally set up the Gadesof our complaint, and turn again to the prayers with which we began, humbly imploring that the Ruler of Olympus and the Most High Governorof all the world will establish peace and dispel wars and make our daystranquil 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 wiseEcclesiastes witnesseth, let us now proceed to relate the manifoldopportunities through which we have been assisted by the divinegoodness in the acquisition of books. 

Although from our youth upwards we had always delighted in holdingsocial commune with learned men and lovers of books, yet when weprospered in the world and made acquaintance with the King's majestyand were received into his household, we obtained ampler facilities forvisiting everywhere as we would, and of hunting as it were certain mostchoice preserves, libraries private as well as public, and of theregular as well as of the secular clergy. And indeed while we filledvarious offices to the victorious Prince and splendidly triumphant Kingof England, Edward the Third from the Conquest--whose reign may theAlmighty long and peacefully continue--first those about his court, butthen those concerning the public affairs of his kingdom, namely theoffices of Chancellor and Treasurer, there was afforded to us, inconsideration of the royal favour, easy access for the purpose offreely searching the retreats of books. In fact, the fame of our loveof them had been soon winged abroad everywhere, and we were reported toburn with such desire for books, and especially old ones, that it wasmore easy for any man to gain our favour by means of books than ofmoney. Wherefore, since supported by the goodness of the aforesaidprince of worthy memory, we were able to requite a man well or ill, tobenefit 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 andheart. Then the aumbries of the most famous monasteries were thrownopen, cases were unlocked and caskets were undone, and volumes that hadslumbered 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 ofunwonted light. These long lifeless books, once most dainty, but nowbecome corrupt and loathsome, covered with litters of mice and piercedwith the gnawings of the worms, and who were once clothed in purple andfine 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 afastidious physician among his stores of gums and spices, and there wefound the object and the stimulus of our affections. Thus the sacredvessels of learning came into our control and stewardship; some bygift, others by purchase, and some lent to us for a season. 

No wonder that when people saw that we were contented with gifts ofthis kind, they were anxious of their own accord to minister to ourneeds with those things that they were more willing to dispense withthan the things they secured by ministering to our service. And ingood will we strove so to forward their affairs that gain accrued tothem, while justice suffered no disparagement. Indeed, if we had lovedgold and silver goblets, high-bred horses, or no small sums of money, we might in those days have furnished forth a rich treasury. But intruth we wanted manuscripts not moneyscripts; we loved codices morethan florins, and preferred slender pamphlets to pampered palfreys. 

Besides all this, we were frequently made ambassador of this mostillustrious Prince of everlasting memory, and were sent on the mostvarious affairs of state, now to the Holy See, now to the Court ofFrance, and again to various powers of the world, on tedious embassiesand in times of danger, always carrying with us, however, that love ofbooks which many waters could not quench. For this like a deliciousdraught sweetened the bitterness of our journeyings and after theperplexing intricacies and troublesome difficulties of causes, and theall but inextricable labyrinths of public affairs afforded us a littlebreathing space to enjoy a balmier atmosphere. 

O Holy God of gods in Sion, what a mighty stream of pleasure made gladour hearts whenever we had leisure to visit Paris, the Paradise of theworld, and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few for thegreatness of our love! There are delightful libraries, more aromaticthan stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner ofvolumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars;there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks ofParnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor ofall arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is mostexcellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunaryworld; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and thenodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals themysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes thehierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin charactersall that Cadmus collected in Phoenician letters; there indeed openingour treasuries and unfastening our purse-strings we scattered moneywith joyous heart and purchased inestimable books with mud and sand. It is naught, it is naught, saith every buyer. But in vain; for beholdhow good and how pleasant it is to gather together the arms of theclerical warfare, that we may have the means to crush the attacks ofheretics, if they arise. 

Further, we are aware that we obtained most excellent opportunities ofcollecting in the following way. From our early years we attached toour society with the most exquisite solicitude and discarding allpartiality all such masters and scholars and professors in the severalfaculties as had become most distinguished by their subtlety of mindand the fame of their learning. Deriving consolation from theirsympathetic conversation, we were delightfully entertained, now bydemonstrative chains of reasoning, now by the recital of physicalprocesses and the treatises of the doctors of the Church, now bystimulating discourses on the allegorical meanings of things, as by arich and well-varied intellectual feast. Such men we chose as comradesin our years of learning, as companions in our chamber, as associateson our journeys, as guests at our table, and, in short, as helpmates inall the vicissitudes of life. But as no happiness is permitted toendure for long, we were sometimes deprived of the bodily companionshipof some of these shining lights, when justice looking down from heaven, the ecclesiastical preferments and dignities that they deserved fell totheir portion. And thus it happened, as was only right, that inattending to their own cures they were obliged to absent themselvesfrom attendance upon us. 

We will add yet another very convenient way by which a great multitudeof books old as well as new came into our hands. For we never regardedwith disdain or disgust the poverty of the mendicant orders, adoptedfor the sake of Christ; but in all parts of the world took them intothe kindly arms of our compassion, allured them by the most friendlyfamiliarity into devotion to ourselves, and having so allured themcherished them with munificent liberality of beneficence for the sakeof God, becoming benefactors of all of them in general in such wisethat we seemed none the less to have adopted certain individuals with aspecial fatherly affection. To these men we were as a refuge in everycase of need, and never refused to them the shelter of our favour, wherefore we deserved to find them most special furtherers of ourwishes and promoters thereof in act and deed, who compassing land andsea, traversing the circuit of the world, and ransacking theuniversities and high schools of various provinces, were zealous incombatting for our desires, in the sure and certain hope of reward. What leveret could escape amidst so many keen-sighted hunters? Whatlittle fish could evade in turn their hooks and nets and snares? Fromthe body of the Sacred Law down to the booklet containing the fallaciesof yesterday, nothing could escape these searchers. Was some devoutdiscourse uttered at the fountain-head of Christian faith, the holyRoman Curia, or was some strange question ventilated with novelarguments; did the solidity of Paris, which is now more zealous in thestudy of antiquity than in the subtle investigation of truth, didEnglish subtlety, which illumined by the lights of former times isalways sending forth fresh rays of truth, produce anything to theadvancement of science or the declaration of the faith, this wasinstantly poured still fresh into our ears, ungarbled by any babbler, unmutilated by any trifler, but passing straight from the purest ofwine-presses into the vats of our memory to be clarified. 

But whenever it happened that we turned aside to the cities and placeswhere the mendicants we have mentioned had their convents, we did notdisdain to visit their libraries and any other repositories of books;nay, there we found heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost richesof wisdom. We discovered in their fardels and baskets not only crumbsfalling from the masters' table for the dogs, but the shewbread withoutleaven and the bread of angels having in it all that is delicious; andindeed the garners of Joseph full of corn, and all the spoil of theEgyptians, and the very precious gifts which Queen Sheba brought toSolomon. 

These men are as ants ever preparing their meat in the summer, andingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey. They aresuccessors of Bezaleel in devising all manner of workmanship in silverand gold and precious stones for decorating the temple of the Church. They are cunning embroiderers, who fashion the breastplate and ephod ofthe high priest and all the various vestments of the priests. Theyfashion the curtains of linen and hair and coverings of ram's skinsdyed red with which to adorn the tabernacle of the Church militant. They are husbandmen that sow, oxen treading out corn, soundingtrumpets, shining Pleiades and stars remaining in their courses, whichcease not to fight against Sisera. And to pay due regard to truth, without prejudice to the judgment of any, although they lately at theeleventh hour have entered the lord's vineyard, as the books that areso fond of us eagerly declared in our sixth chapter, they have addedmore in this brief hour to the stock of the sacred books than all theother vine-dressers; following in the footsteps of Paul, the last to becalled but the first in preaching, who spread the gospel of Christ morewidely than all others. Of these men, when we were raised to theepiscopate we had several of both orders, viz. , the Preachers andMinors, as personal attendants and companions at our board, mendistinguished no less in letters than in morals, who devoted themselveswith unwearied zeal to the correction, exposition, tabulation, andcompilation of various volumes. But although we have acquired a verynumerous store of ancient as well as modern works by the manifoldintermediation of the religious, yet we must laud the Preachers withspecial praise, in that we have found them above all the religious mostfreely communicative of their stores without jealousy, and proved themto be imbued with an almost Divine liberality, not greedy but fittingpossessors of luminous wisdom. 

Besides all the opportunities mentioned above, we secured theacquaintance of stationers and booksellers, not only within our owncountry, but of those spread over the realms of France, Germany, andItaly, money flying forth in abundance to anticipate their demands; norwere they hindered by any distance or by the fury of the seas, or bythe lack of means for their expenses, from sending or bringing to usthe books that we required. For they well knew that their expectationsof our bounty would not be defrauded, but that ample repayment withusury was to be found with us. 

Nor, finally, did our good fellowship, which aimed to captivate theaffection of all, overlook the rectors of schools and the instructorsof rude boys. But rather, when we had an opportunity, we entered theirlittle plots and gardens and gathered sweet-smelling flowers from thesurface and dug up their roots, obsolete indeed, but still useful tothe student, which might, when their rank barbarism was digested healthe pectoral arteries with the gift of eloquence. Amongst the mass ofthese things we found some greatly meriting to be restored, which whenskilfully cleansed and freed from the disfiguring rust of age, deservedto be renovated into comeliness of aspect. And applying in fullmeasure the necessary means, as a type of the resurrection to come, weresuscitated them and restored them again to new life and health. 

Moreover, we had always in our different manors no small multitude ofcopyists and scribes, of binders, correctors, illuminators, andgenerally of all who could usefully labour in the service of books. Finally, all of both sexes and of every rank or position who had anykind of association with books, could most easily open by theirknocking the door of our heart, and find a fit resting-place in ouraffection and favour. In so much did we receive those who broughtbooks, that the multitude of those who had preceded them did not lessenthe welcome of the after-comers, nor were the favours we had awardedyesterday prejudicial to those of to-day. Wherefore, ever using allthe persons we have named as a kind of magnets to attract books, we hadthe desired accession of the vessels of science and a multitudinousflight 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 NOTCONDEMNED THE STUDIES OF THE MODERNS

Although the novelties of the moderns were never disagreeable to ourdesires, who have always cherished with grateful affection those whodevote themselves to study and who add anything either ingenious oruseful to the opinions of our forefathers, yet we have always desiredwith more undoubting avidity to investigate the well-tested labours ofthe ancients. For whether they had by nature a greater vigour ofmental sagacity, or whether they perhaps indulged in closer applicationto study, or whether they were assisted in their progress by both thesethings, one thing we are perfectly clear about, that their successorsare barely capable of discussing the discoveries of their forerunners, and of acquiring those things as pupils which the ancients dug out bydifficult efforts of discovery. For as we read that the men of oldwere of a more excellent degree of bodily development than modern timesare found to produce, it is by no means absurd to suppose that most ofthe ancients were distinguished by brighter faculties, seeing that inthe labours they accomplished of both kinds they are inimitable byposterity. 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 instudy, they gave up all their lives to philosophy; while nowadays ourcontemporaries carelessly spend a few years of hot youth, alternatingwith the excesses of vice, and when the passions have been calmed, andthey have attained the capacity of discerning truth so difficult todiscover, they soon become involved in worldly affairs and retire, bidding farewell to the schools of philosophy. They offer the fumingmust 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, isshown 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 lifeand his philosophizing. Isocrates in his ninety-fourth year wrote amost noble work. Sophocles did the same when nearly a hundred yearsold. Simonides wrote poems in his eightieth year. Aulus Gellius didnot desire to live longer than he should be able to write, as he sayshimself in the prologue to the Noctes Atticae. 

The fervour of study which possessed Euclid the Socratic, Taurus thephilosopher used to relate to incite young men to study, as Gelliustells in the book we have mentioned. For the Athenians, hating thepeople of Megara, decreed that if any of the Megarensians enteredAthens, 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 Athensby night to hear Socrates, a distance of twenty miles and back. Imprudent and excessive was the fervour of Archimedes, a lover ofgeometry, who would not declare his name, nor lift his head from thediagram he had drawn, by which he might have prolonged his life, butthinking more of study than of life dyed with his life-blood the figurehe was studying. 

There are very many such examples of our proposition, but the brevitywe 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 fasteningto their untried arms the Icarian wings of presumption, theyprematurely snatch the master's cap; and mere boys become unworthyprofessors of the several faculties, through which they do not maketheir way step by step, but like goats ascend by leaps and bounds; and, having slightly tasted of the mighty stream, they think that they havedrunk it dry, though their throats are hardly moistened. And becausethey are not grounded in the first rudiments at the fitting time, theybuild a tottering edifice on an unstable foundation, and now that theyhave grown up, they are ashamed to learn what they ought to havelearned while young, and thus they are compelled to suffer for ever fortoo hastily jumping at dignities they have not deserved. For these andthe like reasons the tyros in the schools do not attain to the solidlearning of the ancients in a few short hours of study, although theymay enjoy distinctions, may be accorded titles, be authorized byofficial robes, and solemnly installed in the chairs of the elders. Just snatched from the cradle and hastily weaned, they mouth the rulesof Priscian and Donatus; while still beardless boys they gabble withchildish stammering the Categorics and Peri Hermeneias, in the writingof which the great Aristotle is said to have dipped his pen in hisheart's blood. Passing through these faculties with baneful haste anda harmful diploma, they lay violent hands upon Moses, and sprinklingabout their faces dark waters and thick clouds of the skies, they offertheir heads, unhonoured by the snows of age, for the mitre of thepontificate. This pest is greatly encouraged, and they are helped toattain this fantastic clericate with such nimble steps, by Papalprovisions obtained by insidious prayers, and also by the prayers, which may not be rejected, of cardinals and great men, by the cupidityof friends and relatives, who, building up Sion in blood, secureecclesiastical dignities for their nephews and pupils, before they areseasoned by the course of nature or ripeness of learning. 

Alas! by the same disease which we are deploring, we see that thePalladium of Paris has been carried off in these sad times of ours, wherein the zeal of that noble university, whose rays once shed lightinto every corner of the world, has grown lukewarm, nay, is all butfrozen. There the pen of every scribe is now at rest, generations ofbooks no longer succeed each other, and there is none who begins totake place as a new author. They wrap up their doctrines in unskilleddiscourse, and are losing all propriety of logic, except that ourEnglish subtleties, which they denounce in public, are the subject oftheir furtive vigils. 

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

CHAPTER X

OF THE GRADUAL PERFECTING OF BOOKS

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

For not even Aristotle, although a man of gigantic intellect, in whomit pleased Nature to try how much of reason she could bestow uponmortality, and whom the Most High made only a little lower than theangels, sucked from his own fingers those wonderful volumes which thewhole world can hardly contain. But, on the contrary, with lynx-eyedpenetration he had seen through the sacred books of the Hebrews, theBabylonians, the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, the Persians and the Medes, all of which learned Greece had transferred into her treasuries. Whosetrue sayings he received, but smoothed away their crudities, prunedtheir superfluities, supplied their deficiencies, and removed theirerrors. And he held that we should give thanks not only to those whoteach rightly, but even to those who err, as affording the way of moreeasily investigating truth, as he plainly declares in the second bookof his Metaphysics. Thus many learned lawyers contributed to thePandects, many physicians to the Tegni, and it was by this means thatAvicenna 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 thelater writer always presupposes the earlier, without whom he could byno means relate the former times, so too we are to think of the authorsof the sciences. For no man by himself has brought forth any science, since between the earliest students and those of the latter time wefind intermediaries, ancient if they be compared with our own age, butmodern if we think of the foundations of learning, and these men weconsider the most learned. What would Virgil, the chief poet among theLatins, have achieved, if he had not despoiled Theocritus, Lucretius, and Homer, and had not ploughed with their heifer? What, unless againand again he had read somewhat of Parthenius and Pindar, whoseeloquence he could by no means imitate? What could Sallust, Tully, Boethius, Macrobius, Lactantius, Martianus, and in short the wholetroop of Latin writers have done, if they had not seen the productionsof Athens or the volumes of the Greeks? Certes, little would Jerome, master of three languages, Ambrosius, Augustine, though he confessesthat he hated Greek, or even Gregory, who is said to have been whollyignorant of it, have contributed to the doctrine of the Church, if morelearned Greece had not furnished them from its stores. As Rome, watered by the streams of Greece, had earlier brought forthphilosophers in the image of the Greeks, in like fashion afterwards itproduced doctors of the orthodox faith. The creeds we chant are thesweat of Grecian brows, promulgated by their Councils, and establishedby the martyrdom of many. 

Yet their natural slowness, as it happens, turns to the glory of theLatins, since as they were less learned in their studies, so they wereless perverse in their errors. In truth, the Arian heresy had all buteclipsed the whole Church; the Nestorian wickedness presumed to ravewith blasphemous rage against the Virgin, for it would have robbed theQueen of Heaven, not in open fight but in disputation, of her name andcharacter as Mother of God, unless the invincible champion Cyril, readyto do single battle, with the help of the Council of Ephesus, had invehemence of spirit utterly extinguished it. Innumerable are the formsas well as the authors of Greek heresies; for as they were the originalcultivators of our holy faith, so too they were the first sowers oftares, as is shown by veracious history. And thus they went on frombad to worse, because in endeavouring to part the seamless vesture ofthe Lord, they totally destroyed primitive simplicity of doctrine, andblinded by the darkness of novelty would fall into the bottomless pit, unless He provide for them in His inscrutable prerogative, whose wisdomis 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 ignoranceof the Greek tongue is now a great hindrance to the study of the Latinwriters, since without it the doctrines of the ancient authors, whetherChristian or Gentile, cannot be understood. And we must come to a likejudgment as to Arabic in numerous astronomical treatises, and as toHebrew as regards the text of the Holy Bible, which deficiencies, indeed, Clement V. Provides for, if only the bishops would faithfullyobserve what they so lightly decree. Wherefore we have taken care toprovide a Greek as well as a Hebrew grammar for our scholars, withcertain other aids, by the help of which studious readers may greatlyinform themselves in the writing, reading, and understanding of thesaid tongues, although only the hearing of them can teach correctnessof idiom. 

CHAPTER XI

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

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

Wherefore, although the over-mastering love of books has possessed ourmind from boyhood, and to rejoice in their delights has been our onlypleasure, yet the appetite for the books of the civil law took lesshold of our affections, and we have spent but little labour and expensein acquiring volumes of this kind. For they are useful only as thescorpion in treacle, as Aristotle, the sun of science, has said oflogic in his book De Pomo. We have noticed a certain manifestdifference of nature between law and science, in that every science isdelighted and desires to open its inward parts and display the veryheart of its principles, and to show forth the roots from which it budsand flourishes, and that the emanation of its springs may be seen ofall men; for thus from the cognate and harmonious light of the truth ofconclusion to principles, the whole body of science will be full oflight, having no part dark. But laws, on the contrary, since they areonly human enactments for the regulation of social life, or the yokesof princes thrown over the necks of their subjects, refuse to bebrought to the standard of synteresis, the origin of equity, becausethey feel that they possess more of arbitrary will than rationaljudgment. Wherefore the judgment of the wise for the most part is thatthe causes of laws are not a fit subject of discussion. In truth, manylaws acquire force by mere custom, not by syllogistic necessity, likethe arts: as Aristotle, the Phoebus of the Schools, urges in the secondbook of the Politics, where he confutes the policy of Hippodamus, whichholds out rewards to the inventors of new laws, because to abrogate oldlaws and establish new ones is to weaken the force of those whichexist. For whatever receives its stability from use alone mustnecessarily be brought to nought by disuse. 

From which it is seen clearly enough, that as laws are neither arts norsciences, so books of law cannot properly be called books of art orscience. Nor is this faculty which we may call by a special termgeologia, or the earthly science, to be properly numbered among thesciences. Now the books of the liberal arts are so useful to thedivine writings, that without their aid the intellect would vainlyaspire 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 ofbooks, which it was our custom to read or have read to us every day, wenoticed plainly how much the defective knowledge even of a single wordhinders the understanding, as the meaning of no sentence can beapprehended, if any part of it be not understood. Wherefore we orderedthe meanings of foreign words to be noted with particular care, andstudied the orthography, prosody, etymology, and syntax in ancientgrammarians with unrelaxing carefulness, and took pains to elucidateterms that had grown too obscure by age with suitable explanations, inorder to make a smooth path for our students. 

This is the whole reason why we took care to replace the antiquatedvolumes of the grammarians by improved codices, that we might makeroyal roads, by which our scholars in time to come might attain withoutstumbling 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 ofnaked truth may be repelled by a two-fold defence: either that even inan unseemly subject-matter we may learn a charming fashion of speech, or that where a fictitious but becoming subject is handled, natural orhistorical truth is pursued under the guise of allegorical fiction. 

Although it is true that all men naturally desire knowledge, yet theydo not all take the same pleasure in learning. On the contrary, whenthey have experienced the labour of study and find their senseswearied, most men inconsiderately fling away the nut, before they havebroken the shell and reached the kernel. For man is naturally fond oftwo things, namely, freedom from control and some pleasure in hisactivity; for which reason no one without reason submits himself to thecontrol of others, or willingly engages in any tedious task. Forpleasure crowns activity, as beauty is a crown to youth, as Aristotletruly asserts in the tenth book of the Ethics. Accordingly the wisdomof the ancients devised a remedy by which to entice the wanton minds ofmen by a kind of pious fraud, the delicate Minerva secretly lurkingbeneath the mask of pleasure. We are wont to allure children byrewards, that they may cheerfully learn what we force them to studyeven though they are unwilling. For our fallen nature does not tend tovirtue with the same enthusiasm with which it rushes into vice. Horacehas expressed this for us in a brief verse of the Ars Poetica, where hesays:

 All poets sing to profit or delight. 

And he has plainly intimated the same thing in another verse of thesame 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, asby a lofty and precipitous rock, which no help of ladders could enablethem to scale! THIS IS A HARD SAYING, they exclaim, AND WHO CANRECEIVE IT. The child of inconstancy, who ended by wishing to betransformed into an ass, would perhaps never have given up the study ofphilosophy, if he had met him in friendly guise veiled under the cloakof pleasure; but anon, astonished by Crato's chair and struck dumb byhis endless questions, as by a sudden thunderbolt, he saw no refuge butin flight. 

So much we have alleged in defence of the poets; and now we proceed toshow that those who study them with proper intent are not to becondemned in regard to them. For our ignorance of one single wordprevents the understanding of a whole long sentence, as was assumed inthe previous chapter. As now the sayings of the saints frequentlyallude to the inventions of the poets, it must needs happen thatthrough our not knowing the poem referred to, the whole meaning of theauthor is completely obscured, and assuredly, as Cassiodorus says inhis book Of the Institutes of Sacred Literature: Those things are notto be considered trifles without which great things cannot come topass. It follows therefore that through ignorance of poetry we do notunderstand Jerome, Augustine, Boethius, Lactantius, Sidonius, and verymany others, a catalogue of whom would more than fill a long chapter. 

The Venerable Bede has very clearly discussed and determined thisdoubtful point, as is related by that great compiler Gratian, therepeater of numerous authors, who is as confused in form as he waseager in collecting matter for his compilation. Now he writes in his37th section: Some read secular literature for pleasure, takingdelight in the inventions and elegant language of the poets; but othersstudy this literature for the sake of scholarship, that by theirreading they may learn to detest the errors of the Gentiles and maydevoutly apply what they find useful in them to the use of sacredlearning. Such men study secular literature in a laudable manner. Sofar Bede. 

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

CHAPTER XIV

WHO OUGHT TO BE SPECIAL LOVERS OF BOOKS

To him who recollects what has been said before, it is plain andevident who ought to be the chief lovers of books. For those who havemost need of wisdom in order to perform usefully the duties of theirposition, they are without doubt most especially bound to show moreabundantly to the sacred vessels of wisdom the anxious affection of agrateful heart. Now it is the office of the wise man to order rightlyboth himself and others, according to the Phoebus of philosophers, Aristotle, who deceives not nor is deceived in human things. Whereforeprinces and prelates, judges and doctors, and all other leaders of thecommonwealth, as more than others they have need of wisdom, so morethan others ought they to show zeal for the vessels of wisdom. 

Boethius, indeed, beheld Philosophy bearing a sceptre in her left handand books in her right, by which it is evidently shown to all men thatno one can rightly rule a commonwealth without books. Thou, saysBoethius, speaking to Philosophy, hast sanctioned this saying by themouth of Plato, that states would be happy if they were ruled bystudents of philosophy, or if their rulers would study philosophy. Andagain, we are taught by the very gesture of the figure that in so faras the right hand is better than the left, so far the contemplativelife is more worthy than the active life; and at the same time we areshown 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 temporalthings. 

We read that Philip thanked the Gods devoutly for having granted thatAlexander should be born in the time of Aristotle, so that educatedunder his instruction he might be worthy to rule his father's empire. While Phaeton unskilled in driving becomes the charioteer of hisfather'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 hisdriving, justly deserved to be struck by the thunderbolt. 

The history of the Greeks as well as Romans shows that there were nofamous princes among them who were devoid of literature. The sacredlaw of Moses in prescribing to the king a rule of government, enjoinshim 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 allthe days of his life. Certes, God Himself, who hath made and whofashioneth every day the hearts of every one of us, knows thefeebleness of human memory and the instability of virtuous intentionsin mankind. Wherefore He has willed that books should be as it were anantidote to all evil, the reading and use of which He has commanded tobe the healthful daily nourishment of the soul, so that by them theintellect being refreshed and neither weak nor doubtful should neverhesitate in action. This subject is elegantly handled by John ofSalisbury, in his Policraticon. In conclusion, all classes of men whoare conspicuous by the tonsure or the sign of clerkship, against whombooks 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 havedrunk of the Pegasean fount, to develop fully the title of the presentchapter. Though one should speak with the tongue of men and angels, though he should become a Mercury or Tully, though he should grow sweetwith the milky eloquence of Livy, yet he will plead the stammering ofMoses, or with Jeremiah will confess that he is but a boy and cannotspeak, or will imitate Echo rebounding from the mountains. For we knowthat the love of books is the same thing as the love of wisdom, as wasproved in the second chapter. Now this love is called by the Greekword philosophy, the whole virtue of which no created intelligence cancomprehend; for she is believed to be the mother of all good things:Wisdom vii. She as a heavenly dew extinguishes the heats of fleshlyvices, the intense activity of the mental forces relaxing the vigour ofthe animal forces, and slothfulness being wholly put to flight, whichbeing 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, saysJerome, the knowledge of the scriptures, and thou wilt not love thevices of the flesh. The godlike Xenocrates showed this by the firmnessof his reason, who was declared by the famous hetaera Phryne to be astatue and not a man, when all her blandishments could not shake hisresolve, as Valerius Maximus relates at length. Our own Origen showedthis 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 ahasty remedy, repugnant alike to nature and to virtue, whose place itis not to make men insensible to passion, but to slay with the daggerof reason the passions that spring from instinct. 

Again, all who are smitten with the love of books think cheaply of theworld and wealth; as Jerome says to Vigilantius: The same man cannotlove 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 wholoves to commune with books is led to detest all manner of vice. Thedemon, who derives his name from knowledge, is most effectuallydefeated by the knowledge of books, and through books his multitudinousdeceits and the endless labyrinths of his guile are laid bare to thosewho read, lest he be transformed into an angel of light and circumventthe innocent by his wiles. The reverence of God is revealed to us bybooks, the virtues by which He is worshipped are more expresslymanifested, and the rewards are described that are promised by thetruth, which deceives not, neither is deceived. The truest likeness ofthe beatitude to come is the contemplation of the sacred writings, inwhich we behold in turn the Creator and the creature, and draw fromstreams of perpetual gladness. Faith is established by the power ofbooks; hope is strengthened by their solace, insomuch that by patienceand the consolation of scripture we are in good hope. Charity is notpuffed up, but is edified by the knowledge of true learning, and, indeed, it is clearer than light that the Church is established uponthe sacred writings. 

Books delight us, when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort usinseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us. They lend validity tohuman compacts, and no serious judgments are propounded without theirhelp. Arts and sciences, all the advantages of which no mind canenumerate, consist in books. How highly must we estimate the wondrouspower of books, since through them we survey the utmost bounds of theworld and time, and contemplate the things that are as well as thosethat are not, as it were in the mirror of eternity. In books we climbmountains and scan the deepest gulfs of the abyss; in books we beholdthe 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 kindof mineral, and learn the virtues of herbs and trees and plants, andsurvey 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 Junoand mark out the territories of the seven planets by lines and circles. And finally we traverse the loftiest firmament of all, adorned withsigns, degrees, and figures in the utmost variety. There we inspectthe antarctic pole, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; we admirethe luminous Milky Way and the Zodiac, marvellously and delightfullypictured with celestial animals. Thence by books we pass on toseparate substances, that the intellect may greet kindredintelligences, and with the mind's eye may discern the First Cause ofall things and the Unmoved Mover of infinite virtue, and may immerseitself in love without end. See how with the aid of books we attainthe reward of our beatitude, while we are yet sojourners below. 

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

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

The felicitous studiousness and the studious felicity of theall-powerful eunuch, of whom we are told in the Acts, who had been somightily kindled by the love of the prophetic writings that he ceasednot from his reading by reason of his journey, had banished all thoughtof the populous palace of Queen Candace, and had forgotten even thetreasures of which he was the keeper, and had neglected alike hisjourney and the chariot in which he rode. Love of his book alone hadwholly engrossed this domicile of chastity, under whose guidance hesoon deserved to enter the gate of faith. O gracious love of books, which by the grace of baptism transformed the child of Gehenna andnursling of Tartarus into a Son of the Kingdom!

Let the feeble pen now cease from the tenor of an infinite task, lestit seem foolishly to undertake what in the beginning it confessed to beimpossible 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 provideabundant stores of victuals for the soldiers who are to fight for it, so it is fitting for the Church Militant to fortify itself against theassaults of pagans and heretics with a multitude of sound writings. 

But because all the appliances of mortal men with the lapse of timesuffer the decay of mortality, it is needful to replace the volumesthat are worn out with age by fresh successors, that the perpetuity ofwhich the individual is by its nature incapable may be secured to thespecies; and hence it is that the Preacher says: Of making many booksthere is no end. For as the bodies of books, seeing that they areformed of a combination of contrary elements, undergo a continualdissolution of their structure, so by the forethought of the clergy aremedy should be found, by means of which the sacred book paying thedebt of nature may obtain a natural heir and may raise up like seed toits dead brother, and thus may be verified that saying ofEcclesiasticus: 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 thetranscription of ancient books is as it were the begetting of freshsons, on whom the office of the father may devolve, lest it sufferdetriment. Now such transcribers are called antiquarii, whoseoccupations Cassiodorus confesses please him above all the tasks ofbodily labour, adding: "Happy effort, " he says, "laudable industry, topreach to men with the hand, to let loose tongues with the fingers, silently to give salvation to mortals, and to fight with pen and inkagainst the illicit wiles of the Evil One. " So far Cassiodorus. Moreover, our Saviour exercised the office of the scribe when Hestooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground (John viii. ), thatno one, however exalted, may think it unworthy of him to do what hesees the wisdom of God the Father did. 

O singular serenity of writing, to practise which the Artificer of theworld stoops down, at whose dread name every knee doth bow! Ovenerable handicraft pre-eminent above all other crafts that arepractised by the hand of man, to which our Lord humbly inclines Hisbreast, to which the finger of God is applied, performing the office ofa 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 divinewisdom incarnate except to trace letters in writing, that everygentleman and sciolist may know that fingers are given by God to menfor the task of writing rather than for war. Wherefore we entirelyapprove the judgment of books, wherein they declared in our sixthchapter the clerk who cannot write to be as it were disabled. 

God himself inscribes the just in the book of the living; Mosesreceived the tables of stone written with the finger of God. Jobdesires that he himself that judgeth would write a book. Belshazzartrembled 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, thatthe act and skill of writing may be commended to future generations. Christ Himself has written on His vesture and on His thigh King ofKings and Lord of Lords, so that without writing the royal ornaments ofthe Omnipotent cannot be made perfect. Being dead they cease not toteach, who write books of sacred learning. Paul did more for buildingup the fabric of the Church by writing his holy epistles, than bypreaching by word of mouth to Jews and Gentiles. He who has attainedthe prize continues daily by books, what he long ago began while asojourner upon the earth; and thus is fulfilled in the doctors writingbooks the saying of the Prophet: They that turn many to righteousnessshall be as the stars for ever and ever. 

Moreover, it has been determined by the doctors of the Church that thelongevity of the ancients, before God destroyed the original world bythe Deluge, is to be ascribed to a miracle and not to nature; as thoughGod granted to them such length of days as was required for finding outthe sciences and writing them in books; amongst which the wonderfulvariety of astronomy required, according to Josephus, a period of sixhundred years, to submit it to ocular observation. Nor, indeed, dothey deny that the fruits of the earth in that primitive age afforded amore nutritious aliment to men than in our modern times, and thus theyhad not only a livelier energy of body, but also a more lengthenedperiod of vigour; to which it contributed not a little that they livedaccording to virtue and denied themselves all luxurious delights. Whoever therefore is by the good gift of God endowed with gift ofscience, let him, according to the counsel of the Holy Spirit, writewisdom in his time of leisure (Eccles. Xxxviii. ), that his reward maybe with the blessed and his days may be lengthened in this presentworld. 

And further, if we turn our discourse to the princes of the world, wefind that famous emperors not only attained excellent skill in the artof writing, but indulged greatly in its practice. Julius Caesar, thefirst and greatest of them all, has left us Commentaries on the Gallicand the Civil Wars written by himself; he wrote also two books DeAnalogia, and two books of Anticatones, and a poem called Iter; andmany other works. Julius and Augustus devised means of writing oneletter for another, and so concealing what they wrote. For Julius putthe fourth letter for the first, and so on through the alphabet; whilstAugustus used the second for the first, the third for the second, andso throughout. He is said in the greatest difficulties of affairsduring the Mutinensian War to have read and written and even declaimedevery day. Tiberius wrote a lyric poem and some Greek verses. Claudius likewise was skilled in both Greek and Latin, and wroteseveral books. But Titus was skilled above all men in the art ofwriting, and easily imitated any hand he chose; so that he used to saythat 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 newbooks, but also exercising an office of sacred piety when we treatbooks carefully, and again when we restore them to their proper placesand commend them to inviolable custody; that they may rejoice in puritywhile we have them in our hands, and rest securely when they are putback in their repositories. And surely next to the vestments andvessels dedicated to the Lord's body, holy books deserve to be rightlytreated by the clergy, to which great injury is done so often as theyare touched by unclean hands. Wherefore we deem it expedient to warnour students of various negligences, which might always be easilyavoided and do wonderful harm to books. 

And in the first place as to the opening and closing of books, letthere be due moderation, that they be not unclasped in precipitatehaste, nor when we have finished our inspection be put away withoutbeing duly closed. For it behoves us to guard a book much morecarefully than a boot. 

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

You may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily lounging over hisstudies, and when the winter's frost is sharp, his nose running fromthe nipping cold drips down, nor does he think of wiping it with hispocket-handkerchief until he has bedewed the book before him with theugly moisture. Would that he had before him no book, but a cobbler'sapron! His nails are stuffed with fetid filth as black as jet, withwhich he marks any passage that pleases him. He distributes amultitude 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 noone takes them out, first distend the book from its wonted closing, andat length, being carelessly abandoned to oblivion, go to decay. Hedoes not fear to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or carelesslyto carry a cup to and from his mouth; and because he has no wallet athand he drops into books the fragments that are left. Continuallychattering, he is never weary of disputing with his companions, andwhile he alleges a crowd of senseless arguments, he wets the book lyinghalf open in his lap with sputtering showers. Aye, and then hastilyfolding his arms he leans forward on the book, and by a brief spell ofstudy invites a prolonged nap; and then, by way of mending thewrinkles, he folds back the margin of the leaves, to the no smallinjury of the book. Now the rain is over and gone, and the flowershave appeared in our land. Then the scholar we are speaking of, aneglecter rather than an inspecter of books, will stuff his volume withviolets, and primroses, with roses and quatrefoil. Then he will usehis wet and perspiring hands to turn over the volumes; then he willthump the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of dust, andwith his finger clad in long-used leather will hunt line by linethrough the page; then at the sting of the biting flea the sacred bookis flung aside, and is hardly shut for another month, until it is sofull of the dust that has found its way within, that it resists theeffort to close it. 

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

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

Again, it is part of the decency of scholars that whenever they returnfrom meals to their study, washing should invariably precede reading, and that no grease-stained finger should unfasten the clasps, or turnthe leaves of a book. Nor let a crying child admire the pictures inthe capital letters, lest he soil the parchment with wet fingers; for achild instantly touches whatever he sees. Moreover, the laity, wholook at a book turned upside down just as if it were open in the rightway, are utterly unworthy of any communion with books. Let the clerktake care also that the smutty scullion reeking from his stewpots doesnot touch the lily leaves of books, all unwashed, but he who walkethwithout blemish shall minister to the precious volumes. And, again, the cleanliness of decent hands would be of great benefit to books aswell as scholars, if it were not that the itch and pimples arecharacteristic of the clergy. 

Whenever defects are noticed in books, they should be promptlyrepaired, since nothing spreads more quickly than a tear and a rentwhich is neglected at the time will have to be repaired afterwards withusury. 

Moses, the gentlest of men, teaches us to make bookcases most neatly, wherein they may be protected from any injury: Take, he says, this bookof the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of theLord your God. O fitting place and appropriate for a library, whichwas made of imperishable shittim-wood, and was all covered within andwithout with gold! But the Saviour also has warned us by His exampleagainst all unbecoming carelessness in the handling of books, as weread in S. Luke. For when He had read the scriptural prophecy ofHimself in the book that was delivered to Him, He did not give it againto 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 themerest trifles ought not to be neglected. 

CHAPTER XVIII

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

Nothing in human affairs is more unjust than that those things whichare most righteously done, should be perverted by the slanders ofmalicious men, and that one should bear the reproach of sin where hehas rather deserved the hope of honour. Many things are done withsingleness 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 andlinen; and yet by the trickery of perverse men a pious work ismendaciously transformed into some monstrous act. Certes, such is theunhappy condition of sinful nature, that not merely in acts that aremorally doubtful it adopts the worse conclusion; but often it depravesby iniquitous subversion those which have the appearance of rectitude. 

For although the love of books from the nature of its object bears theaspect of goodness, yet, wonderful to say, it has rendered us obnoxiousto the censures of many, by whose astonishment we were disparaged andcensured, now for excess of curiosity, now for the exhibition ofvanity, now for intemperance of delight in literature; though indeed wewere no more disturbed by their vituperation than by the barking of somany dogs, satisfied with the testimony of Him to whom it appertainethto try the hearts and reins. For as the aim and purpose of our inmostwill is inscrutable to men and is seen of God alone, the searcher ofhearts, they deserve to be rebuked for their pernicious temerity, whoso eagerly set a mark of condemnation upon human acts, the ultimatesprings of which they cannot see. For the final end in matters ofconduct holds the same position as first principles in speculativescience or axioms in mathematics, as the chief of philosophers, Aristotle, points out in the seventh book of the Ethics. Andtherefore, just as the truth of our conclusions depends upon thecorrectness of our premises, so in matters of action the stamp of moralrectitude is given by the honesty of aim and purpose, in cases wherethe 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 inperpetual charity a Hall in the reverend university of Oxford, thechief nursing mother of all liberal arts, and to endow it with thenecessary revenues, for the maintenance of a number of scholars; andmoreover to enrich the Hall with the treasures of our books, that alland 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 allthe students of the before-named university for ever, in the form andmanner which the following chapter shall declare. Wherefore thesincere love of study and zeal for the strengthening of the orthodoxfaith to the edifying of the Church, have begotten in us thatsolicitude so marvellous to the lovers of pelf, of collecting bookswherever they were to be purchased, regardless of expense, and ofhaving those that could not he bought fairly transcribed. 

For as the favourite occupations of men are variously distinguishedaccording to the disposition of the heavenly bodies, which frequentlycontrol our natural composition, so that some men choose to devotethemselves to architecture, others to agriculture, others to hunting, others to navigation, others to war, others to games, we have under theaspect of Mercury entertained a blameless pleasure in books, whichunder the rule of right reason, over which no stars are dominant, wehave ordered to the glory of the Supreme Being, that where our mindsfound tranquillity and peace, thence also might spring a most devoutservice of God. And therefore let our detractors cease, who are asblind 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 themote out of their brother's eye. Let them cease to jeer with satiricaltaunts at things of which they are ignorant, and to discuss hiddenthings that are not revealed to the eyes of men; who perchance wouldhave 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 thebounds of their predecessors, and to infringe established rules ininsolence of licence. Accordingly, with the advice of prudent men, wehave prescribed the manner in which we desire that the communicationand use of our books should be permitted for the benefit of students. 

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

Five of the scholars sojourning in the Hall aforesaid shall beappointed by the Master thereof, who shall have the charge of all thebooks, of which five persons three and not fewer may lend any book orbooks for inspection and study; but for copying or transcribing wedirect that no book shall be allowed outside the walls of the house. Therefore, when any scholar secular or religious, whom for this purposewe regard with equal favour, shall seek to borrow any book, let thekeepers 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 theirjudgment exceeds the value of the book delivered, and let a record bemade forthwith of the pledge and of the book lent, containing the namesof 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 shallbelong to the community of scholars of the said Hall, unless perhapsfor inspection within the walls of the aforesaid house or Hall, but notto be carried beyond it. 

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

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

Moreover, every year the aforesaid keepers shall render an account tothe Master of the House and two of his scholars whom he shall associatewith himself, or if he shall not be at leisure, he shall appoint threeinspectors, other than the keepers, who shall peruse the catalogue ofbooks, and see that they have them all, either in the volumesthemselves or at least as represented by deposits. And the morefitting season for rendering this account we believe to be from theFirst of July until the festival of the Translation of the GloriousMartyr S. Thomas next following. 

We add this further provision, that anyone to whom a book has beenlent, shall once a year exhibit it to the keepers, and shall, if hewishes it, see his pledge. Moreover, if it chances that a book is lostby death, theft, fraud, or carelessness, he who has lost it or hisrepresentative or executor shall pay the value of the book and receiveback his deposit. But if in any wise any profit shall accrue to thekeepers, it shall not be applied to any purpose but the repair andmaintenance 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 havecomposed concerning the love of books; in which we have endeavoured togive the astonishment of our contemporaries the reason why we haveloved books so greatly. But because it is hardly granted to mortals toaccomplish aught that is not rolled in the dust of vanity, we do notventure entirely to justify the zealous love which we have so long hadfor books, or to deny that it may perchance sometimes have been theoccasion of some venial negligence, albeit the object of our love ishonourable and our intention upright. For if when we have doneeverything, we are bound to call ourselves unprofitable servants; ifthe most holy Job was afraid of all his works; if according to Isaiahall our righteousness is as filthy rags, who shall presume to boasthimself of the perfection of any virtue, or deny that from somecircumstance a thing may deserve to be reprehended, which in itselfperhaps was not reprehensible. For good springs from one selfsamesource, but evil arises in many ways, as Dionysius informs us. Wherefore to make amends for our iniquities, by which we acknowledgeourselves to have frequently offended the Creator of all things, inasking the assistance of their prayers, we have thought fit to exhortour future students to show their gratitude as well to us as to theirother benefactors in time to come by requiting our forethought fortheir benefit by spiritual retribution. Let us live when dead in theirmemories, who have lived in our benevolence before they were born, andlive now sustained by our beneficence. Let them implore the mercy ofthe Redeemer with unwearied prayer, that the pious Judge may excuse ournegligences, may pardon the wickedness of our sins, may cover thelapses of our feebleness with the cloak of piety, and remit by Hisdivine goodness the offences of which we are ashamed and penitent. That He may preserve to us for a due season of repentance the gifts ofHis good grace, steadfastness of faith, loftiness of hope, and thewidest charity to all men. That He may turn our haughty will to lamentits faults, that it may deplore its past most vain elations, mayretract its most bitter indignations, and detest its most insanedelectations. That His virtue may abound in us, when our own is foundwanting, and that He who freely consecrated our beginning by thesacrament of baptism, and advanced our progress to the seat of theApostles without any desert of ours, may deign to fortify our outgoingby the fitting sacraments. That we may be delivered from the lust ofthe flesh, that the fear of death may utterly vanish and our spirit maydesire to be dissolved and be with Christ, and existing upon earth inbody only, in thought and longing our conversation may be in Heaven. That the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation maygraciously come to meet the prodigal returning from the husks; that Hemay receive the piece of silver that has been lately found and transmitit by His holy angels into His eternal treasury. That He may rebukewith His terrible countenance, at the hour of our departure, thespirits of darkness, lest Leviathan, that old serpent, lying hid at thegate of death, should spread unforeseen snares for our feet. But whenwe shall be summoned to the awful judgment-seat to give an account onthe testimony of conscience of all things we have done in the body, theGod-Man may consider the price of the holy blood that He has shed, andthat the Incarnate Deity may note the frame of our carnal nature, thatour weakness may pass unpunished where infinite loving-kindness is tobe found, and that the soul of the wretched sinner may breathe againwhere the peculiar office of the Judge is to show mercy. And further, let our students be always diligent in invoking the refuge of our hopeafter God, the Virgin Mother of God and Blessed Queen of Heaven, thatwe who for our manifold sins and wickednesses have deserved the angerof the Judge, by the aid of her ever-acceptable supplications may meritHis forgiveness; that her pious hand may depress the scale of thebalance in which our small and few good deeds shall be weighed, lestthe heaviness of our sins preponderate and cast us down to thebottomless pit of perdition. Moreover, let them ever venerate with dueobservance the most deserving Confessor Cuthbert, the care of whoseflock we have unworthily undertaken, ever devoutly praying that he maydeign to excuse by his prayers his all-unworthy vicar, and may procurehim whom he hath admitted as his successor upon earth to be made hisassessor in Heaven. Finally, let them pray God with holy prayers aswell of body as of soul, that He will restore the spirit created in theimage of the Trinity, after its sojourn in this miserable world, to itsprimordial prototype, and grant to it for ever to enjoy the sight ofHis 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.