resident there, but citation from a copy of the full work itself rather than a florilegium, or
collection of extracts, is not always demonstrable.
With the rise of the Carolingian monarchy and especially during the reign of
Charlemagne, new impetus was given to learning, literary culture, books, and libraries.
Charlemagne brought a literary-theological scholar from England, Alcuin, to head the
palace school. Charlemagne and his successors patronized monasteries and their libraries.
The library at the abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, had donations from Charles the Bald
and perhaps Charlemagne himself, as well as an important Greek manuscript of the works
of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite given by Louis the Pious (B.N. gr. 437), who
received it from the Byzantine emperor. Charlemagne favored “standardizing” texts of
Scripture, the liturgy, and canon law, which meant bringing exemplars from Italy, having
them copied, and distributing the copies. The disintegration of the Carolingian empire
and Viking and other raids took a toll on books and libraries, but a revival of studies, and
libraries, came in the late 10th and 11th centuries, although the rarity of book lists from
the period makes reconstruction of holdings difficult. Evidence suggests that the abbeys
of Cluny and Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, among others, had extensive libraries and that they
carefully regulated the lending of their books outside the local community. The letters of
Peter the Venerable make it clear that Cluny lent books and requested loans from others.
Monks also traveled to copy manuscripts: in the late 12th century, the abbot of St. Albans
in England wrote to the abbot of Saint-Victor at Paris to ask if a monk might be sent to
Saint-Victor to copy some of the works of Hugh of Saint-Victor that were not in the
English abbey’s collection.
With the growth of cathedral schools in the 11th and 12th centuries, libraries began to
develop in these institutions as well. Bishops collected books for the library; scholars and
masters bequeathed their personal libraries; patrons donated manuscripts or funds for
copying. While archbishop of Reims, Gerbert of Aurillac (the future Pope Sylvester II)
asked a friend to copy Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum for him, and he sought other classical
manuscripts at Rome. The library of the cathedral of Chartres was the beneficiary of
many bequests of books; ca. 1150, Thierry of Chartres left fifty volumes from his private
library, and John of Salisbury, who died as bishop of Chartres in 1180, left his books to
the cathedral.
The abbey of Saint-Victor, one of the leading schools of Paris in the 12th century,
quickly amassed a significant library through donations and copying. The cathedral of
Notre-Dame, Paris, received the library of Peter Lombard, including his set of volumes of
the glossed Bible (Glossa ordinaria) and Gratian’s volume on canon law.
With the growth of the universities and their colleges, new libraries for masters and
scholars came into being. The library of the Sorbonne, Paris, originated as the library of a
house for poor scholars, established by Robert de Sorbon. Others followed his example of
donating books, and by the 13th century the library had over 1,000 volumes. Recent
detailed analysis of catalogues of the Sorbonne collection gives a new sense of its
development and innovations, such as the division of the library ca. 1292–98 into a large
library of chained books, made up of those books most frequently needed by masters and
scholars for reference, and a smaller library that continued to lend books to individuals.
In 1321, Sorbonne regulations required that the best copies of each work owned by the
college be kept in the chained library; the college also required an adequate pledge be
deposited when a book was borrowed.
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