to the catalogues of two libraries of the period when the earliest universities were first rising into existence; the period, that is to say, when so many of the authors known to Bede and Alcuin had been lost in the Danish invasions, but when the voluminous literature to which the Sentences, the Canon Law, the Civil Law, and the New Aristotle respectively gave birth was yet unknown. A comparison of these two catalogues with those of libraries at Cambridge in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries will present not a few points of interest. of the Uni brary. benefactors. It was on a certain seventeenth of November, the feast Foundation of St. Hugh in 1444, that Dr Walter Crome presented to the versity Liuniversity a collection of books designed to increase the slender stores of a new room, just finished and ready for use, erected for the purpose of giving shelter to the recently founded common library'. The library appears to date from the earlier part of the same century, and a Mr John Croucher, who presented a copy of Chaucer's translation of Boethius De Consolatione, seems entitled to be regarded as the original founder. One Richard Holme, who died in Different 1424, appears as the donor of several volumes; many others presented single works; and in this manner was formed, within the first quarter of the fifteenth century, the little library of fifty-two volumes, the catalogue of which we still Two early possess. Next to this catalogue comes one drawn up by Ralph Songer and Richard Cockeram, the outgoing proctors in the year 1473, containing 330 volumes. This later catalogue possesses a special value, for it shews us the volumes as classified and arranged; and we have thus brought The library before us the single room (now the first room on entering the library) where these scanty treasures lay chained and displayed to view, with stalls on the north side looking into the quadrangle of the Schools, and desks on the south side looking out upon the rising walls of King's College chapel. These two catalogues do not include the splendid 1 Two Lists of Books in the University Library. Cam. Ant. Soc. Pub. No. XXII. Communicated by Henry Bradshaw, M.A. See also The Uni- catalogues. building. Thomas benefactor of the uni versity. CHAP. III. addition of some two hundred volumes, made by Thomas PART II Rotheram very shortly after; but the liberality of that eminent benefactor of the university was already conspicuous an eminent in the completion of the library and of the east part of the quadrangle; and the new buildings, bright as they appeared to that generation, with polished stone and sumptuous splendour',' were already evoking those sentiments of gratitude towards the illustrious chancellor, which, two years later, led the assembled senate to decree that his name should be for ever enrolled among those of the chief benefactors of the university. Farly catalogues of the libraries of Peterhouse, The two above-named catalogues alone constitute valuable evidence respecting the literature at this time most Trinity Hall, esteemed at Cambridge, but other and ampler evidence Onsens and remains. It was on Christmas Eve, 1418, exactly eight Hall. years before Gerson drew up his De Concordia, that an Pembroke, St Catharine's unknown hand at Peterhouse completed a catalogue of the library belonging to that foundation. As libraries, in those days, were almost entirely the accumulations of gifts from successive benefactors, the most ancient college had, as we should expect to find, acquired by far the largest collection and possessed no less than from six to seven hundred distin treatises. The library given by bishop Bateman to Trinity Hall has already come under our notice. If to these collections we add a catalogue of 140 volumes presented to the library of Pembroke College in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, one of the library of Queens' College in the year 1'Quoniam ratio humanitasque requirere videtur ut superioribus nobis benefactoribus, etsi non condignas, saltem utcunque congruas referamus gratias, eisque juxta virium exilitatem, ut possumus, meritoria obsequia reddamus, hinc est quod merito cum probitatis tum bonorum operum exhibitione reverendus in Christo pater ac dominus dominus Thomas Rotheram divina miseratione Lincolniensis episcopus ac magnus Angliæ generalis hujusque almæ universitatis præcipuus dignusque cancellarius et singularis patronus tum in honorem Dei, incrementum studii, et universitatis nostræ pro fectum, scholas novamque superius librariam polito lapide, sumptuosa pompa, ac dignis ædificiis perfecerit, eamque, omnibus ut decuit rebus exornatam, non paucis vel vilibus libris opulentam reddidit, plurimaque insuper alia bona eidem universitati procuravit, etc.' De exequiis Thoma Rotheram, Documents, 1 414. 2 This catalogue is still in manuscript: I am indebted to the authorities of Peterhouse for permission to consult the volume in which it is contained. 3 See supra pp. 243, 244. 4 A List of Books presented to Pembroke College, Cambridge, by different PART II. 1472', amounting to 224 volumes,-and one of the library of CHAP. III. St. Catharine's Hall in the year 1475, amounting to 137 volumes,—our data, so far as Cambridge is concerned, will be sufficiently extended for our purpose. of the learning by these A systematic study of these several catalogues and an enquiry into the merits of each author, however interesting such researches might be, is evidently not needed at our hands, but it will be desirable to state some of the general conclusions to be derived from a more cursory view. On referring to the contents of each catalogue it will be seen Illustration that they represent, in much the same proportions, those additions to new contributions to medieval literature which have already afforded so long engaged our attention. Anselm, Albertus, Aquinas, catalogues. Alexander Hales, Boethius, Bonaventura, Walter Burley, Duns Scotus, Holcot, Langton, John of Salisbury, Grosseteste, and Richard Middleton; Armachanus against the Franciscans, Wodeford against Armachanus; the discourses of Reppington, bishop of Lincoln, once a Lollard, but afterwards one of the fiercest opponents of the sect; Historiæ Chronicales, or metrical histories, after the manner of Layamon and Robert of Gloucester, such as it was customary to cite in the college hall on days of festivity;-none of these are wanting, and they constitute precisely the literature which our past enquiries would lead us to expect to find. But besides these, other names appear, names which have Evidence afnow almost passed from memory or are familiar only to respect to those who have made a special study of this period. Again logical stu and again we are confronted by the representatives of that time. great school of medieval theology which, though it aspired less systematically to the special task of the schoolmen,—the reconciliation of philosophy and dogma,—was scarcely less influential in these centuries than the school of Albertus and Aquinas. Divines from the famous school of St. Victor at Donors, during the Fourteenth and Fif- 1 Catalogue of the Library of Queens' College in 1472; communicated by the Rev. W. G. Searle, M.A., late Fellow of Queens' College. Cam. 2 A Catalogue of the original Li- forded with the theo dies of the Hugo of St. Victor, d. 1140. Hugo of St. Cher, d. 1260. Nicholas de Lyra, d. 1340. CHAP. III. Paris'; and preeminently Hugo, 'the Augustine of the PART II. twelfth century,' who sought to reconcile the divergent tendencies exemplified in Abelard and St. Bernard, and who though carried off at the early age of forty-four left behind him a whole library of annotations on the sacred writings. Not less in esteem than Hugo of St. Victor, was the Dominican, Hugo of St. Cher (or of Vienne), whose reputation, though it paled before the yet greater lights of his order, long survived as that of the father of the Concordantists and the author of the Speculum Ecclesiæ. While inferior to neither of these in fame or learning comes the Franciscan, Nicholas de Lyra, who died towards the middle of the fourteenth century in high repute both as a Hebraist and a Greek scholar; in whose pages are to be found, most fully elaborated, the characteristic mediaval distinctions of the literal, the moral, the allegorical, and the anagogic sense of the inspired page,-distinctions which Puritanism, though all contemptuous of medieval thought, reproduced in unconscious imitation,-the familiar commentator of his day, whose Postilla commanded, even down to the eighteenth century, the same kind of regard that in a later age has waited on the labours of a Leighton or a Scott. In contrast to the spirit of the Italian universities throughout this period, we may note the entire absence of the Arabian commentators from the college libraries, and the solitary copy of a treatise by Avicenna and of another by Averröes in the Fewer works university library. In the latter, again, Mr Bradshaw has should ex- pointed out the comparatively small proportion of libri versial theologicales and libri theologiæ disputate, and the observation is nearly equally applicable to the catalogues of the former. The Fathers It is important also to observe how small is the element fectly repre- furnished by patristic literature. Ambrose, Gregory, Jerome, and Augustine, the four great doctors of the Latin Church, Absence of the Arabian commentators on Aristotle. than we pect on logic and contro logy. very imper sented. 1It would not be easy,' observes the archbishop of Dublin (who has ably vindicated the Latin poetry of these ages from the contempt of the classicist), to exaggerate the influence for good which went forth from this institution during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries upon the whole Church.' Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 55. 2 Fabricius, Bibliotheca Lat. Med. et Inf. Etutis. sence of are indeed represented, but only partially, while scarcely CHAP. III. another name of importance appears. The entire absence PART II of Greek authors, and the almost equally entire absence of Entire aball that, in the eyes of the classical scholar, gives its value Greek auto the Latin literature, are the remaining features which it is sufficient simply to point out in concluding these few comments on the learning that nurtured the mind of the Cambridge student at the time when medieval history was drawing to its close. thors. |