BIBLIOMANIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES ***

Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

BIBLIOMANIA

IN

THE MIDDLE AGES

BY

F. SOMNER MERRYWEATHER

_With an Introduction by_ CHARLES ORR Librarian of Case Library

NEW YORK MEYER BROTHERS & COMPANY 1900

Copyright, 1900 By Meyer Bros. & Co.

Louis Weiss & Co. Printers.... 118 Fulton Street ... New York

Bibliomania in the Middle Ages

OR

SKETCHES OF BOOKWORMS, COLLECTORS, BIBLE STUDENTS, SCRIBES AND ILLUMINATORS

_From the Anglo-Saxon and Norman Periods to the Introduction of Printing into England, with Anecdotes Illustrating the History of the Monastic Libraries of Great Britain in the Olden Time by_ F. Somner Merryweather, _with an Introduction by_ Charles Orr, _Librarian of Case Library._

INTRODUCTION.

In every century for more than two thousand years, many men have owed their chief enjoyment of life to books. The bibliomaniac of today had his prototype in ancient Rome, where book collecting was fashionable as early as the first century of the Christian era. Four centuries earlier there was an active trade in books at Athens, then the center of the book production of the world. This center of literary activity shifted to Alexandria during the third century B. C. through the patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the founder of the Alexandrian Museum, and of his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus; and later to Rome, where it remained for many centuries, and where bibliophiles and bibliomaniacs were gradually evolved, and from whence in time other countries were invaded.

For the purposes of the present work the middle ages cover the period beginning with the seventh century and ending with the time of the invention of printing, or about seven hundred years, though they are more accurately bounded by the years 500 and 1500 A. D. It matters little, however, since there is no attempt at chronological arrangement.

About the middle of the present century there began to be a disposition to grant to medi�val times their proper place in the history of the preservation and dissemination of books, and Merryweather's _Bibliomania in the Middle Ages_ was one of the earliest works in English devoted to the subject. Previous to that time, those ten centuries lying between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of learning were generally referred to as the Dark Ages, and historians and other writers were wont to treat them as having been without learning or scholarship of any kind.

Even Mr. Hallam,[1] with all that judicial temperament and patient research to which we owe so much, could find no good to say of the Church or its institutions, characterizing the early university as the abode of "indigent vagabonds withdrawn from usual labor," and all monks as positive enemies of learning.

The gloomy survey of Mr. Hallam, clouded no doubt by his antipathy to all things ecclesiastical, served, however, to arouse the interest o...

Show full text: 537,074 characters