The libraries of conventual and cathedral schools were often limited to half a dozen or a
dozen volumes, such as a Latin Bible or portions of it, the liturgical books, some works of St.
Augustin and St. Gregory, Cassiodorus and Boëthius, the grammars of Donatus and Priscianus, the
poems of Virgil and Horace. Most of the books had to be imported from Italy, especially from
Rome.
The introduction of cotton paper in the tenth or eleventh century, and of linen paper in the
twelfth, facilitated the multiplication of books.^800
§ 139. Educational Efforts of the Church.
The mediaeval church is often unjustly charged with hostility to secular learning. Pope Gregory
I. is made responsible for the destruction of the Bibliotheca Palatina and the classical statues in
Rome. But this rests on an unreliable tradition of very late date.^801 Gregory was himself, next to
Isidore of Seville (on whom he conferred the pall, in 599), the best scholar and most popular writer
of his age, and is lauded by his biographers and Gregory of Tours as a patron of learning. If he
made some disparaging remarks about Latin grammar and syntax, in two letters addressed to
bishops, they must be understood as a protest against an overestimate of these lower studies and
of heathen writers, as compared with higher episcopal duties, and with that allegorical interpretation
of the Bible which he carried to arbitrary excess in his own exposition of Job.^802 In the Commentary
on Kings ascribed to him, he commends the study of the liberal arts as a useful and necessary means
for the proper understanding of the Scriptures, and refers in support to the examples of Moses,
Isaiah, and St. Paul.^803 We may say then that he was an advocate of learning and art, but in
subordination and subserviency to the interests of the Catholic church. This has been the attitude
of the papal chair ever since.^804
The preservation and study of ancient literature during the entire mediaeval period are due
chiefly to the clergy and monks, and a few secular rulers. The convents were the nurseries of
manuscripts.
The connection with classical antiquity was never entirely broken. Boëthius (beheaded at
Pavia, c. 525), and Cassiodorus (who retired to the monastery, of Viviers, and died there about
Schaff’s Companion to the Greek Testament, p. 120 sq., and Gregory’s Prolegomena to Tischendorf’s eighth critical ed. of the
Gr. Test. (Leipzig, 1884), I. 366 sq.(^800) The oldest manuscript on cotton paper in the British Museum is dated 1049; the oldest in the National Library of
Paris, 1050. The oldest dated specimen of linen paper is said to be a treaty of peace between the kings of Aragon and Castile
of 1177.
(^801) The testimony of John of Salisbury in the twelfth century (c. 1172) is more than neutralized by opposite contemporary
testimonies, and is justly rejected by Bayle (Diction.), Heeren (I. 66), Gregorovius, Neander (III. 150 sq. , Baur (Dogmengesch.
II. 4), and Ebert (I. 525). Gieseler (I. 490 sq.) speaks of "the monkish contempt of Gregory for the liberal sciences;" but he adds
that "the law traditions of his hostility to all literature are not to be fully believed."
(^802) Ep. ad Leandrum, prefixed to his Expos. of Job, and Ep. ad Desiderium, XI. 54 (Opera, ed. Migne, III. 1171).
(^803) The author of this commentary represents it as a device of the evil spirit to dissuade Christians from liberal studies,
"ut et secularia nesciant et ad sublimitatem spiritualium non pertingant."
(^804) The Vatican library, which can be traced back to Pope Nicolas V., is perhaps the most valuable in the world for
manuscripts (e.g. the Cod. B. of the Greek Bible) and important ecclesiastical documents, but also one of the most inaccessible
to outsiders. The present Pope Leo XIII. has liberalized the management, but under the exclusive direction of cardinals and in
the interest of the Roman church (1883).