Part 9

Tradition is divided both as to the time and the circumstances under which the Alexandrian Library and Museum, viewed as one institution, came to its end. The tradition which gained large credence that its career terminated at the time of the Saracen conquest of Alexandria in 642 A. D., and under the fanatical frenzy of the Caliph Omar, rests upon very questionable authority. The oft-quoted answer of the Saracen Emperor to the importunate appeal of the Alexandrian scholar (Joannes Grammaticus) to spare the Library, that, "If those books agreed with the Koran they were useless; if they did not agree with the Koran they were pernicious; in either case should be destroyed," rests mainly on the evidence of a stranger who lived six hundred years later, is discredited by the best authorities, and is "overbalanced," as says Gibbon, "by the silence of the early and native annalists." Says a writer in the North American Review: "It may have been destroyed during the great riot between the orthodox and Arian factions in 389, when the Serapeum, which is said to have housed it, was burned. It can hardly have had the wasting fate that perhaps befell its Roman rival, and it is certain that Omar's iconoclasm is a myth. With Gibbon's judgment modern historical scholarship concurs: 'The solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years in the confines of Media is overbalanced by the silence of two annalists of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of Alexandria.'"[69] The better conclusion, therefore, seems to be that there was little of the famous Alexandrian Library in existence at the time of the Saracen conquest in 642 A. D., owing to the fact of its earlier demolition, which was begun, at least, in the time of the Emperor Theodosius, when, under the Emperor's permission, Archbishop Theophilus, at the close of the fourth century, led fanatical Christians in the destruction of heathen temples--not sparing the literary treasures of the Library which had been associated with an antecedent heathen patronage.

But, whatever the agencies of destruction, and whenever it was consummated, there is no difference of opinion among antiquarians, historians, and men of letters as to the world's irreparable loss and literary impoverishment when this far-famed Library and Museum (wherein had been gathered and treasured literature from Egypt, Rome, Greece, and India,--with its extensive departments for the business of transcribing literature, "and with every possible advantage which royal munificence on the one hand and learned assiduity on the other, could insure") was destroyed; and the literary accumulations of centuries, including the immense library from Pergamos and inestimably valuable manuscripts of the Bible, were ruthlessly and irremediably wasted.

XIX

CONSTANTINOPLE THE LATER CENTER OF LITERATURE

Our gaze is now transferred from Africa to Europe. As Alexander had given his name to the City on the delta of the Nile, so Constantine has given his to the City on the Bosphorus. Constantinople stood as the capital and metropolis of the East for a thousand years, or from 329 A. D. (the date at which he removed his throne thereunto) on until near the middle of the fifteenth century, when the proud City fell into the hands of the Mohammedans and became in consequence the seat of the Ottoman Empire. When Constantine removed the capital of the Empire from the West he took many elements of intellectual life which had been the proud boast of the City of Augustus with him unto Byzantium; and, in process of time, the pomp, power, and learning of Rome and Alexandria were transferred to Constantinople--supreme in beauty and convenience of location. Constantinople seemed to occupy for more than a millennium of years both a charming and a charmed position. While Rome--for centuries a center and source of literature, having, after the time of Augustus, numerous libraries--together with the capitols of provinces and countries of Europe had been successively occupied by contending armies, Constantinople had remained safe in her commanding position at the portal of two continents and had continued "unconquered and even unassailed." At the fall of the Capital in the East, however, Rome became again the head of the Empire, and its imperial Seat was transferred from the Bosphorus to the Tiber.

Under the favor shown by Constantine at his accession to the ranks of the Christian faith, whatever his motive, distinctively Christian literature was given an honored place in the imperial library; and through his coöperation, at a time when books were relatively scarce and difficult to obtain, several thousand volumes were collected. This collection, made up largely it is claimed of Christian literature, was augmented under some of his successors to the dimensions of a hundred thousand volumes. Furthermore, an efficient librarian had charge of these archives and directed the staff of copyists which were employed therein somewhat as had been the distinction of the Alexandrian Library. A new impulse was added in collecting and copying books by the personal favor of the Emperor--he himself, ordering from Eusebius, the church historian of the time, fifty copies of the Scriptures to be written on "artificially wrought skins by skillful calligraphists" for the use of the churches in and about Constantinople. And it is deemed possible and even not improbable that the Sinaitic manuscript--one of the oldest and best of existing Greek manuscripts--may be a survivor of this number. The library at Constantinople, like all libraries, was exposed to the wastings of time and change but was replenished and renewed through that measure of intellectual vitality which survived in the city on the Bosphorus for a millennium of years.

Besides the imperial library, the churches and religious houses of Constantinople were enriched with collections of manuscripts more or less extensive. And not only in the favored City but in the regions adjacent--in the islands of the Ægean, on Cyprus, and in many other quarters--manuscripts were collected, transcribed, and preserved. (Isaac Taylor.)

Constantinople, while it continued to be the center of learning and literature, was by no means the exclusive center; for the enterprise of collecting and treasuring books was widely disseminated. "No spot," says Isaac Taylor, "was more famed for the production of books than Mount Athos--the lofty promontory which stretches from the Macedonian coast far into the Ægean Sea." And the churches, too, in wide areas, became depositories of books, especially of the Bible or parts thereof, liturgical volumes, and works of devotion. There were also church libraries at Jerusalem, at Rome, and in many other localities. One at Cæsarea is said to have contained, as augmented by Eusebius, the historian, about thirty thousand volumes. Gradually into all these regions--into Crete, Italy, western Europe; and even into the British Isles; into Palestine, Arabia, and northern Africa--numerous monasteries with their collections of books were established and maintained. These religious houses were everywhere peopled by recluses, among whose principal duties was the care for and the transcription of books.

For long periods of time, however, and universally throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, there was, as has already been noted, a great decline in learning and but little interest in books--the exception to this condition being almost wholly limited to the occupants of the religious institutions. It is the record of history that, as civilization lost its energy in wide areas--especially throughout Gaul--intellectual darkness spread over all the country, so much so that there was hardly a layman and only a few among the clergy who could even read. Mighty leaders of state shared in this intellectual desuetude. Even Charlemagne, that great ruler who welded divergent peoples into one body to resist Saracen and savage, and who did much to institute and promote educational movements, lived and died with modicum attainments of technical learning. It is recorded of him in witness of his meager achievements in this direction that "He could read and understand Latin--but how well, perhaps, we had better not too closely inquire; he tried late in life to learn to write, but his progress in that direction did not greatly impress his biographer." Macaulay asserts it of the twelfth century that "There was then, through the greater part of Europe, very little knowledge, and that little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Books were few and costly. The art of printing was unknown."

A number of factors and forces combined to keep alive the feeble and smouldering sparks of learning amidst the wide-spread intellectual gloom of the age. Early and prominent among these was the establishment and subsequent development of the abbeys and cathedral institutions in various parts of the continent and in Britain. Then came the founding of the Benedictines (which flourished from the sixth century on, spreading from Italy westward into France and England and in other directions, and gathering unnumbered devotees--under the threefold vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience--into thousands of establishments) together with the various Orders that arose from the tenth century on--in all of which there were greater or lesser attempts at study, learning, and literature, along with their other and more distinguishing ideals. [The orders and the dates of their respective beginnings were as follows: Carthusians, 1084; Cistercians, 1098; Carmelites, 1156; Dominicans, 1170-1221; Franciscans, 1209-1226. "The two orders," Franciscans and Dominicans, says Thatcher, "furnished all the great scholars of the later Middle Ages."] And toward the close of the "Dark Ages" the movement toward enlightenment, known as the Renaissance, was accelerated in the beginnings of the great universities, the roots of which run down into the soil of the thirteenth century. Prominent among the great universities that date to the thirteenth century and which were located in widely separated regions and among divergent peoples, in England, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the North, were those at Cambridge, Oxford, Naples, Salamanca, Lisbon, Paris, Orleans, and Upsal. In all these there were nascent movements in the direction of literature manifested in the establishment of libraries as well as in the development of learning.

As indicating the extent and the importance of the specific movement toward the establishment of libraries, promoting thus the revival of learning after the long night of the "Dark Ages," we desire to condense the following paragraph from a recent and valuable work: A number of libraries were established in Paris and were available, not only for professors, scholars, and students of the schools, but for those interested in books and literature and duly accredited strangers who came from elsewhere and who would accept the easy conditions of the libraries' protected use. There were libraries also connected with the numerous abbeys of these and of previous and subsequent times. A score or more of these abbeys came, in time, to be located in England, as those at Wearmouth and Jarrow--places forever distinguished for the life labors of the Venerable Bede--in a dozen of which there were fine libraries with large writing rooms wherein books were constantly copied and treasured. In France important collections of books were to be found at Cluny and in many other abbeys. The number of books in all these libraries was constantly enlarged and the libraries enriched from various sources: By the exchange of duplicate books with other libraries; by borrowing from neighboring libraries for the purpose of copying; and by donations of books from private sources and individual donors. As an example of this last mentioned source of increase and enrichment, the library of La St. Chapelle of Paris, founded by Louis IX., was constantly augmented by his donations of the books that had been given to him and which he passed on for the advantage of the library's patrons. Moreover, the constant "wear and tear" of books even when written on parchment or vellum, and notwithstanding the stringent regulations safeguarding their use to legitimate channels, constantly called for the re-writing of worn-out volumes that were passed along from one generation to another.[70]

The Arabian conquests, too--notwithstanding the sore disasters which they at first seemed to threaten--turned rather, through the caliphs' subsequent patronage of learning and science, to the preservation and extension of literature. The Greek manuscripts came to be eagerly sought for by the Arabians and were translated into their own language. Colleges, schools, and libraries, in numerous places, were the tangible and assuring tokens of the subsequent favor of the Arabians toward literature. Bagdad in the far East and Cordova in the far West, with Cairo and Tripoli lying between, became seats of rich developments of science and letters and the depositories of books during the age when Europe was deeply enshrouded in intellectual darkness.[71]

XX

MONASTERIES AND THE MONASTIC INSTITUTION

The roots of the great monastic movement which continued for nearly the whole of the Middle Ages run well back into the early Christian centuries. While the beginnings of Monasticism are involved in uncertainty they probably sprang from exaggerated tendencies on the part of individuals, toward lives of privation, hardship, and exposure, of which there were early numerous examples and conspicuous manifestations. These travesties upon devout character and mere abnormalities of religious devotion were not true products of Christian sentiment and ideals but glaring manifestations of morbid self-assertion. This movement was not conterminous nor contemporaneous with the development of Christianity; it existed apart from and prior to Christianity. There were tendencies and examples in the direction here indicated among the Jewish teachers; and it had a large embodiment in the ancient Buddhist as in the modern Indian systems. The central idea of the early ascetics, ever, was that the body is a clog and hindrance to the spirit of man, and hence the assumption of merit in and through the practice of severe austerities and rigid self-abnegation. There were many gross, horrible, and idiotic applications of this practice in the early stages of Christian history as there are in India to-day. The period of its chief ascendency was in the third and fourth centuries.

The monastic movement spread in the fourth century into the extreme West. "Many of the islands around Ireland and Scotland," says Professor Thatcher, "were occupied by the monks, a large number of whom were hermits. Many monasteries were established. The movement became immensely popular, and within a hundred and fifty years there were hundreds of monasteries in the West and thousands of monks in them."[72] The order of Benedictines (founded by Benedict of Nursia at the beginning of the sixth century) ran its course and flourished for centuries. The order of Benedictines was followed (not superseded) by a succession of orders modeled somewhat after their earlier precurser. This movement extended its existence and its influence also far into the East as well as to the westward. Syria, Palestine, and Arabia--especially in the region of Mt. Sinai--were thickly studded with monasteries and "literally swarmed with recluses." Jerome, who lived well into the first quarter of the fifth century (died 420 A. D.), wrote at Bethlehem, Palestine, "We daily receive monks from India, and Persia, and Ethiopia."

The monasteries, so widely established during the period we are considering, became the schools and training-houses for the clergy--the only schools for a long period of time. And we are told that the rulers in the West encouraged the monasteries to open schools for boys in connection with their houses. The schools of this period, to be sure, would not compare with those of modern times, but they were the best available--in fact, the only schools; and they were not circumscribed to religious instruction. The testimony of Professor Dobschütz is that, "All the great fathers of the church insisted upon classical training; so did Jerome himself and Saint Augustine, not to speak of the great classical scholars in Christian bishoprics in the East. And even in the later centuries, when classical civilisation had gone and was only kept up artificially by assiduous reading, it was the church which maintained the right and the necessity of a classical training for the clergy.... There was a time when there was no reading at all outside the clergy and the monasteries, but this reading was a combination of classical and Biblical. That is the great merit of the medieval church."[73]

The value and the extent of the instruction given in these schools was, for the most part, exceedingly limited, in both range and research. The monasteries were--and continued to be, for long--of far greater significance and service, no doubt, in their relation to literature--to its preservation and also its dissemination--than they were as seats and sources of learning. "If there had not been great abbeys where schools of grammar were established, and where as many books as possible were jealously preserved, perhaps not one Latin writer would have come down to us."[74] Most of the monasteries, especially the larger ones, were provided with a "scriptorium" or a writing-room, where the monks with an inclination to literature and those also who were skillful with the pen were required, in the custom of most monasteries, to devote a proportion of every day to the employment of copying books. The large majority of all the scribes, throughout this entire period of a thousand years, were connected with the churches or the monasteries. By their employment in the writing-room worn-out manuscripts were replaced; borrowed books, transcribed, the copies made therefrom being retained at the return of the borrowed book; and thus in these and in other ways, gradually an increasing number of books found a home in the monasteries.

In the business of transcribing books, as often extensively carried on in many monasteries, several monks would sometimes copy manuscripts at the dictation of a reader and thus a number of copies would be produced at the same time. Each copy thus produced, however, was an "individual" and not a "manifold" or duplicate of the others, as in carbon copies or as printed from a type-plate. Writing at the dictation of another was an ancient custom. It may have been practiced in the transcription of the cuneiform tablets. It is affirmed that Jeremiah, the prophet, thus dictated the writing to his faithful scribe, "And they asked Baruch, saying, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth? Then Baruch answered them, He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book." (Jeremiah 36:17, 18.) It is possible, or perhaps probable, that the fifty copies of the Scriptures which Constantine is said to have ordered to be made for the churches in and about Constantinople, may all have been produced at the dictation of a single reader. In that event, each respective copy, while collectively made by individual monks in the _scriptorium_, would bear its own distinct individuality. The copies thus made at dictation would not be facsimiles of one another or a proof copy of the original, but each copy _would_ preserve a special kinship to all the other copies made under the same general conditions. And this is an important consideration in textual criticism--especially in tracing "family" likeness of certain manuscripts. And so, no doubt, from the _scriptoria_ of the monasteries came the books, or many of them, with which the provincial mansions of the nobility and the private and public libraries were supplied. These manuscripts, made by the monks, were afterwards collected (or many of them were) in the libraries of Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, and elsewhere, as well as those treasured in abbeys and churches.

The monks, who were the principal copyists of the times, fostered distinct traditions of penmanship that led to distinguishing "hands" (page 115). They cultivated, also, not only the science and art of penmanship but the higher art of embellishment and illumination of manuscripts. For this they had both the time and the inspiring motive. From the monasteries of this period issued some of the finest specimens of the book-making industry and art extant in the world. In speaking of the illuminated books of the thirteenth century, Dr. Walsh says that, "Considering the number of them that are still in existence to this day, in spite of the accidents of fire, and water, and war, and neglect, and carelessness, and ignorance, there must have been an immense number of very handsome books made by the generations of the thirteenth century." And, quoting from another author concerning a special manuscript of this period, he says, "Every page is sufficient to make the fortune of the modern decorator by the quaint and unexpected novelties of invention which it displays at every turn of its intricate design."[75]

Allowing as we must--from the evidence--that monasticism possessed many inherent weaknesses and deficiencies, such as these: It withdrew many useful forces from society; it developed indifference for the family and the family life; it isolated religion from relation to and contact with the world; it nourished and incited materialistic aims and ideals under the garb of superior sanctity; it prompted and promoted fanatical zeal for part truths and whole errors; and other and kindred weaknesses and excesses--and yet, with due recognition of its limitations and perversions, its crudities and idiosyncrasies, it remains true, nevertheless, that monasticism, as a system, made many and important contributions, in various directions and for centuries, to the good of mankind, and furnished the most important link in the chain of events which perpetuated learning and literature in an age when, except for so extraordinary provision and guarantees, they must inevitably have perished. The monastic institution supplied, in a special and adequate manner, through the abbeys and monastic houses in which, so to speak, it was domiciled, a safe asylum and depository for the word of God. The common isolation of these establishments, together with the reputed sanctity of their occupants, were double security against the hand of violence and, therefore, a double means of preservation for the literary treasures--including both the Bible and classic literature--made and treasured therein.