Part 16 (1/2)

CHAPTER IX.

_Old Glas...o...b..ry Abbey.--Its Library.--John of Taunton.--Richard Whiting.--Malmsbury.--Bookish Monks of Gloucester Abbey.--Leofric of Exeter and his private library.--Peter of Blois. Extracts from his letters.--Proved to have been a great cla.s.sical student, etc., etc._

The fame of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey will attract the steps of the western traveller; and if he possess the spirit of an antiquary, his eye will long dwell on those mutilated fragments of monkish architecture. The bibliophile will regard it with still greater love; for, in its day, it was one of the most eminent repositories of those treasures which it is his province to collect. For more than ten hundred years that old fabric has stood there, exciting in days of remote antiquity the veneration of our pious forefathers, and in modern times the admiration of the curious.

Pilgrim! tread lightly on that hallowed ground! sacred to the memory of the most learned and ill.u.s.trious of our Saxon ancestry. The bones of princes and studious monks closely mingle with the ruins which time has caused, and bigotry helped to desecrate. Monkish tradition claims, as the founder of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey, St. Joseph of Arimathea, who, sixty-three years after the incarnation of our Lord, came to spread the truths of the Gospel over the island of Britain. Let this be how it may, we leave it for more certain data.

After, says a learned antiquary, its having been built by St. Davis, Archbishop of Menevia, and then again restored by ”twelve well affected men in the north;” it was entirely pulled down by Ina, king of the West Saxons, who ”new builded the abbey of Glas...o...b..rie[310] in a fenny place out of the way, to the end the monks mought so much the more give their mindes to heavenly thinges, and chiefely use the contemplation meete for men of such profession. This was the fourth building of that monasterie.”[311] The king completed his good work by erecting a beautiful chapel, garnished with numerous ornaments and utensils of gold and silver; and among other costly treasures, William of Malmsbury tells us that twenty pounds and sixty marks of gold was used in making a coopertoria for a book of the Gospels.[312]

Would that I had it in my power to write the literary history of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey; to know what the monks of old there transcribed would be to acquire the history of learning in those times; for there was little worth reading in the literature of the day that was not copied by those industrious scribes. But if our materials will not enable us to do this, we may catch a glimpse of their well stored shelves through the kindness and care of William Britone the Librarian, who compiled a work of the highest interest to the biographer. It is no less than a catalogue of the books contained in the common library of the abbey in the year one thousand two hundred and forty-eight. Four hundred choice volumes comprise this fine collection;[313] and will not the reader be surprised to find among them a selection of the cla.s.sics, with the chronicles, poetry, and romantic productions of the middle ages, besides an abundant store of the theological writings of the primitive Church. But I have not transcribed a large proportion of this list, as the extracts given from other monastic catalogues may serve to convey an idea of their nature; but I cannot allow one circ.u.mstance connected with this old doc.u.ment to pa.s.s without remark. I would draw the reader's attention to the fine bibles which commence the list, and which prove that the monks of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey were fond and devoted students of the Bible. It begins with--

Bibliotheca una in duobus voluminibus.

Alia Bibliotheca integra vetusta, set legibilis.

Bibliotheca integrae minoris litterae.

Dimidia pars Bibliothecae incipiens a Psalterio, vetusta.

Bibliotheca magna versificata.

Alia versificata in duobus voluminibus.

Bibliotheca tres versificata.[314]

But besides these, the library contained numerous detached books and many copies of the Gospels, an ample collection of the fathers, and the controversal writings of the middle ages; and among many others, the following cla.s.sics--

Aristotle.

Livy.

Orosius.

Sall.u.s.t.

Donatus.

Sedulus.

Virgil's aeneid.

Virgil's Georgics.

Virgil's Bucolics.

aesop.

Tully.

Boethius.

Plato.

Isagoge of Porphyry.

Prudentius.

Fortua.n.u.s.

Persius.

Pompeius.

Isidore.

Smaragdius.

Marcia.n.u.s.

Horace.

Priscian.

Prosper.

Aratores.

Claudian.

Juvenal.

Cornutus.

I must not omit to mention that John de Taunton, a monk and an enthusiastic _amator librorum_, and who was elected abbot in the year 1271, collected forty choice volumes, and gave them to the library, _dedit librario_, of the abbey; no mean gift, I ween, in the thirteenth century. They included--

Questions on the Old and New Law.