The Medieval Library.

It may have been owing to this, or, perhaps, to the need of producing several copies of the same work for use in the schools, or to supply - as in the standard works of devotion and books of legends - the popular demand among the monks, that the wholesale copying of manuscripts in libraries sprang up. Sometimes ten or a dozen copies would be produced at once, either by having one person dictate to the rest or by separating the folded sheets from the binding and distributing among the monks, who each made several copies of the section of perhaps a dozen leaves assigned to him. After a time this work, begun at first only for the use of the library, developed into a regular business, and copies were sold to other libraries or to individuals and this led, in the later middle ages, to precisely the result of all wholesale manufacture —the small plants were driven out of existence, because it was cheaper to purchase books than to keep up a scriptorium or copying department. Finally a few large libraries like St. Gall were doing a large publishing and binding business, and had almost a monopoly of the trade, until it went out of library and into private hands, at which point it belonged to the history of the publishing trade. Under these conditions the librarian was, in fact, librarian-publisher, as in earlier days he had been precentor-librarian.

And in those days keeping the books, like getting them, was harder than now. Moth and rust still corrupt and thieves break through and steal, but in the unheated stone buildings of that time damp and insects were pests which have no parallel in steam-heated, fan-ventilated buildings; and even thieves must be less bold now than in those days, when a ponderous folio of had a hundred-weight had to be chained to its desk. It is true that even in this day folios have been stolen, and that in considerable numbers, from one of our best-equipped libraries, but, after all, free access and the “open shelf” are characteristic of the library of to-day, while the chained book is characteristic of the medieval library. The medieval librarian had, however, still another protection against loss from theft, and one in which the modern librarian trusts as little a in chains. A well-composed curse plainly written in a volume was then counted, and from the spirit of the time now doubt was, a great protection. The librarian who wrote in a book for the pious wish “that he who should take it away from thence should incur damnation with the traitor Judas, with Annas, Caiphas, and Pilate.” No doubt took great comfort in the added security. One librarian, however, seems to have had some compunction about condemning even a book-thief to everlasting damnation, to wit, the library of Christ Church, Canterbury, who limits the power of his curse to this life: “May (he) incur in this life the malediction of Jesus Christ and of the most glorious Virgin, His Mother, and of blessed Thomas Martyr. Should, however, it please Christ, who is a patron of Christ Church, may his soul be saved in the day of judgment.”

In the preparation of his books for use the librarian was accustomed to classify, catalogue, and number for location on the shelves in the order of classification. The typical classification was, first Biblical literature, then the church writers, and then secular writers. While the religious writings naturally exceed the others, as many as twenty per cent, of the books are often classical, and sometimes as many as fifty percent. The catalogues usually followed the order of the books on the shelf, being practically what are known as shelf-lists now, but they were occasionally alphabetical.

One of the most remarkable of such enterprises is a cooperative catalogue of the books of 167 Franciscan monasteries, intended to guide students to the location of works not to be found in their own libraries, but which could be borrowed for them if needed. The book numbers were marked sometimes on the back, but more often on the front or end, since the books generals stood on the shelves back inward, for convenience of attaching the chains. In those libraries where books were not stood upon end at all, but lay flat on the desks as was the case with all the earlier desks, the numbers were on the front side of the cover. In whatever method, desk or shelf was often marked with the corresponding number. In all these matters there is a curiously interesting variety in the