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epitaph of such men, there were many details given which might serve the purposes of history. In the ancient abbey of Lagny, in the diocese of Paris, was the tomb of its great restorer, Herbert, count of Champagne and Brie, in the time of King Robert, with this inscription,—

"Exempla morum, procerum lux, norma bonorum,

Solamen miseris, exitium sceleris

Gloria virtutis, laus famæ, forma salutis."

Thibauld the Great, the fourth of this name, count of Champagne, who had loaded this monastery with goods, was also buried there in solemn state, in 1152. Moreover, the tombs of founders were often the only memorials of ancient families in existence: each monastery thus prevented from perishing some illustrious name and memory.

In the abbey of Hauterive was found the tomb of its knightly founder, William, count of Glana, whose portrait was pointed out to me in the hall, representing him clad in complete steel. His son, the first abbot, lay buried near him, as Wolfgang Lazius relates in his book, De Migrationibus Gentium. Orderic Vitalis, speaking of the year 1107, says that many great lords of England, Richard of Reviers, and Roger, surnamed Bigod, died, and were buried in the convents which they had founded on their own estates; the latter at Tetford, and the former at Montibourg, in Normandy.* In the abbey of St. Mary, at Longueville, belonging to the monks of Cluny, in Normandy, was the tomb, he says, of Walter Gifford, earl of Buckingham, with this epitaph: "He founded and built this church in which he now rests. This powerful duke was the munificent friend of his country; mighty by his valor, illustrious by his piety, and full of respectful tenderness for monks." In the abbey of Potiere, near that of Molêsme, Dom Martene saw the tomb of its founder, the celebrated Gerard de Roussillon, prince of Burgundy, and of other provinces, who died in 890. But it was not alone in the capacity of founders that the knightly and feudal dead lay buried here. One of the three cemeteries in the abbey of Clairvaux was set apart for the noble strangers who happened to die in that house on their journey; and this provision may account for many tombs which are found within monasteries, that seem only fraught with reminiscences of the chivalrous world. In the abbey of Clair-lieu, Dom Martene observed the tomb of Nicholas de Luxembourg, on which he read, "The knight who lies under this stone lived in high renown."+

"En sens, en pace, en vertu consommê."

The monks had thus around them many tombs of men of knightly fame, to whom, however they still loved to ascribe a pacific character, the epitaphs abounding in repetitions of the same noble soothing words. "Moult piteuse et grand, sage, courtois et plein d'honneur," as one reads on the tomb of Raoul, duke of Lorraine, in the abbey of Beaupré, near Nancy. In monasteries also we find the tombs.

* Lib. xi.

† Ib.

Hock Gerbert und Seinjahrhundert, 104.

of greatest poets. Ronsard lies in the priory of St. Cosma, near Tours, on the left side of the altar: Tasso in the convent of St. Onufrio; Dante with the Franciscans at Ravenna. In fine, it was often within religious houses that those who cultivated a taste for curious researches discovered the tombs of men of dark mysterious fame, who perhaps, for many reasons, could not have had burial elsewhere. Cornelius Agrippa was interred in the church of the Dominicans, at Grenoble, as was in Melrose Abbey Michael Scot, whom some persist in counting with the wizards. The sway of their strong genius, which foresaw this hope, compelled men, studious and learned, to obey their last mandate, who at their burial, round their secret strength, thronged in solemn mourning. These were the tombs about which wild legends were so often sung, like that respecting the grave of Sylvester at the porch of St. John, which used to become damp before the death of a cardinal, and to emit water, so as to flood the place, whenever a chief pontiff was about to die. However, in general, it must be acknowledged all were aliens in such cemeteries, save the holy and the good, whose graves were moistened with the tears of men; as at the funeral of Lord Nicolas, marquis of Est, in 1388, in the church of the Minor Friars, at which more than a thousand persons clothed themselves in black through veneration for his virtues.* These were the graves which acquired such importance in the middle ages, from the opinion which then prevailed, that men could strengthen their hearts and kindle their piety by visit ing them; "for it was felt," as St. Bernard says to the knight templars," that less devotion is experienced often where the living conversed, than where the dead repose." Hence those long affecting pilgrimages to see a tomb, like that of the young Emperor Otho, in the year 1000, to Gnesen, to the grave of the friend of his youth, the holy Adalbert of Bohemia; progress, marked with such a solemn character, undertaken with such earnestness and singlemindedness, when, accompanied by many noble Romans, he entered the city cn foot, bare-headed, and with naked feet; and again repeated, when, after celebrating Easter in the convent of Quedlinburg, where his sister Adelheid was abbess, of whom he took so affecting a leave, he proceeded to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he caused to be opened the grave of his great predecessor and model, Charlemagne. Thus did the heroic dead in the ages of faith fulfil the poet's words:

-We meet again

Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless

Our memory; and whose hopes its light retain

When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain."

By the low vaulted stairs, through which our guide and we did enter these dark precincts, let us now ascend, he first and we following his steps, till on our view the beautiful stained lights of the sanctuary dawn through the broad arch, that, thence issuing, we may again behold the sun.

*Chronic. Estense ap. Murat. xv.

Exhort. Ord Mil. Temp. c. xi.

CHAPTER IX.

OW have we left the church, and pursued the steps of our sage conductor to the library and the scholastic halls, where after brief space we shall be presented to the living, who in this vast sanctuary inherit peace. To the churches from the beginning were confided archives for the holiness of the place secured their preservation. Justinian accordingly prescribes that his laws should be laid up in the holy church with the sacred things belonging to it. In great churches the need for a separate place for the purpose was soon felt; and, at least, in the fifth century, there was a place, as at Nola, set apart with appropriate officers of librarian or chancellor.

The first certain evidence of the existence of a church library, is in a letter of St. Jerome to Pammachius in 394. Soon afterwards St. Augustin speaks of the library of his church in Hippo.* In Rome, Pope Anterus in 238 had made a collection of the holy Scriptures; and mention of libraries is made by Leo the Great, in his letter to the Emperor Leo. Hilary gave books to the church of the Lateran. In the time of St. Gregory the Great, it had already become the custom for remote bishops, whenever they had any difficulty about a book, to apply to the pope. Such requests came to Gregory from Gaul respecting the Gesta Irenai; when his words to the bishop Etherius were, "De eo vero quod ecclesiæ vestræ concedendum ex antiqua consuetudine deposcitis."+ Similar demands. came from Alexandria respecting the martyrology of Eusebius, but he could not find their books in Rome. Martin I. excused himself to the holy Amandas, bishop of Tongres, as he could not give him the desired books, "nam codices jam exinaniti sunt a nostra bibliotheca, et unde daremus ei, nullatenus habuimus." To the bi-hop of Saragossa he says, "that it is impossible to find the Libri Moralium of St. Gregory, out of the multitude of books." At the sixth general council of Constantinople, in 680, the Roman deputies appeared with many writings of the holy fathers, which the pope had given to them. Paul III. was entreated by Pepin to send some Greek books to the abbey of St. Denis, which he found and sent in 757. "We have directed to your excellence what books we could find, an antiphonale and responsale, the grammar of Aristotle, the books of Dionysius, geometry, orthography, and grammar, all in the Greek tongue."‡ In

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*De Heres. nd Quodoultdeum. c. 87. + Epist. ix. 50.

Cenni Codex Carolin. i. 148.

855, Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres, wrote to Benedict III. to obtain a great quantity of books, which he promised, however, punctually to restore.*

In the monasteries from the first, were libraries. Thus St. Augustin speaks of an abbey near Treves. "Coming to a certain house where dwelt some of thy servants, the poor in spirit, in whom is the kingdom of heaven, they found there a manuscript, containing the life of Anthony." St. Gregory the Great also speaks of a book in the monastery of the holy Archangel in Sicily. In the sixth century, the cloisters were the great schools of manuscripts, for St. Benedict requires the monks to practise such arts as were analogous to their state.§ The first splendid instance of a rich monastic library was that of the monastery of Squillace, the gift of Cassiodorus, who had been born there, and who, after collecting a library at Rome as a statesman, continued to search for manuscripts to enrich the collection of his monks, for which he advised them to write out more copies, endeavoring to facilitate their task by composing his book De Orthographia. From the seventh till the eleventh century, this example was followed at Bobbio, Mount-Cassino, Nonantola, la Chiusa, Pomposa, Piscara, and other Benedictine abbeys. Guibert, of Nogent, speaking of the first disciples of St Bruno, says, "Choosing to live in the utmost poverty, they nevertheless collect a most rich library."**

Wordly books, however, were inuch neglected, excepting by Cassiodorus at Squillace, Gerbert at Bobbio, Hieronymus at Pomposa, and by a few others. The libraries of chapters in cathedrals also were extensive. Those of Verona and Milan in the ninth, and that of Vercelli in the tenth century, were very rich collections. In monasteries it was in the twelfth century, above all, that the reformed Benedictines, especially the Cistercians, enriched their convents with books. Yet the zeal of the Italians, says Blume, did not equal that of the French monks, whose maxim was "Claustrum sine armario, quasi castrum sine armamentario,"++ or, as John of Salisbury says, "A cloister without books is a citadel without arms."

In the thirteenth century, the Dominicans and Franciscans surpassed all their predecessors in zeal for writing and collecting books; but towards the end of the fourteenth century, the flourishing period of the spiritual archives drew to its close, and the invention of printing diminished the importance of the monastic libraries. The monks were deprived often of their choicest books. Even Ambrosius Traversari expresses joy whenever a manuscript was given to him which had belonged to a monastery, and he made no scruple in taking from religious houses the books of deceased monks. Thomas Phädrus took from Bobbio a pile of the most important manuscripts, which had originally come from England or Ireland these he removed to Rome, where some have been lately brought to

* Muratori Antiq. vii. 111. 835. + Confess. viii. 6. Epist. viii. 15. § Regul. 58 Cap. de Instit. Divin. Script. Præf. Id. c. viii. e. 15. 30. **De Vita sua, i. 10. + Gaufred. Canonic. Ep. xviii. ap. Martene, Thes. Anec. i.

light by the illustrious Maï. The spoils with which Poggius returned from St. Gall to Italy are well known. The most important manuscripts with which the Vatican had been enriched from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, had all come out of monasteries: many of the books of Bobbio were removed to Rome, Turin, Milan, Naples, and Vienna. Mabillon took at least one manuscript from it to Paris. A worse fate awaited these collections in England; and wherever the modern heresies penetrated, books could have no chance, when even the famous Angervillian library, first collected by Angerville, bishop of Durham, was destroyed with the two noble libraries of Cobham, bishop of Winchester, and that of Duke Humphrey. Weever says, that from Merton College alone a cart load of manuscripts were carried off and thrown away. Libraries as old as the seventh century, like that of Weremouth, to which the abbot Benedict had brought over such a quantity of books from Italy, then perished.

But let us return to happier times, and mark the progress of the monastic collections. Men of all classes contributed to form them. The monks, if Gerbert expresses their sentiments, applied to the work of collecting books, with a view to the peace resulting from study. This learned monk of Aurillac, writing to Eccard, abbot of Tours, says, "that the cause of his undertaking such labor in collecting books in Italy, Germany, and Belgium, was his contempt for the treacheries of fortune, which contempt was the result in him, not alone of nature, but of an elaborated doctrine. Moreover," he adds," in leisure and occupation, we learn by means of books that of which we were ignorant.”* It was to his love of peace that the monk of Croyland ascribes the liberality of the Abbot Richard, in the time of Richard III., to the library of that house, which he enriched not only with books that he purchased, but also with many that were written with his own hand. Trithemius, who was such a great collector, speaks of his own motive thus, " Nothing is pleasanter, nothing more delightful than reading. I have passed nights without sleep, studying the Scriptures, and omitted to take my meals in order to save time for reading,-quicquid in mundo scibile est, scire semper cupiebam." But it is Richard of Bury, who above all reveals what was in the mind of monks, when they applied with such diligence to form libraries. “In books," says this great churchman, every one who seeketh wisdom findeth it. In these, Cherubim extend their wings, and excite the intelligence of the students, and they look from pole to pole, and from the rising to the setting sun. In these, the most high incomprehensible God is contained apprehensibly and adored. In these lies open the nature of celestial and terrestrial, and infernal things. In these are revealed laws by which all policies are ruled, the offices of the celestial hierarchy distinguished, and the tyrannies of demons described. In books I find the dead as if alive in books I foresee the future, in books are manifested the laws of peace. All things else fail with time. Saturn ceases not to devour his off

* Epist. 44.

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