Titchfield

During the rule of the Arabs in northern Africa and in Spain, thousands of manuscripts were gathered together in their chief cities, such as Cairo and Cordova, and many Arabic, Spanish, and Moorish writings have been preserved in the Escorial Library, though a large part of this library was burnt in 1671. with these exceptions the collections of books belonging to the various religious houses were practically the only libraries of early medieval times these collections to begin with were very small so small indeed that there was no need to set apart a special room for them Library buildings were not erected till the 14th or 15th centuries when the accumulation of books rendered them necessary, and those which are found in connection with old foundations will always prove to have been added later.

it is said however that gosbert abbot of st gall in the ninth century who founded the library there by collecting what was then the large number of four hundred books allotted them a special room over the scriptorium but as a rule the books were kept in the church and then as the number increased in the cloisters the cloister was the common living-room of the monks where they read and studied and carried out most of their daily duties the books were either stored in presses though no such press remains to show us upon what pattern they were built or in recesses in the wall probably closed by doors two of these recesses may be seen in the cloisters at worcester in cistercian houses says mr j w clarke to whose reed lecture eighteen ninety four i am indebted for these details this recess developed into a small square room without a window and but little larger than an ordinary cupboard in the plans of clairvaux and kirkstall this room is placed between the chapter-house and the transept of the church and similar rooms in similar situations have been found at fountains bellew tintern netley c the books were placed on shelves round the walls when the cloister windows came to be glazed so as to afford better protection from the weather for the persons and things within the cloister they were occasionally decorated with allusions to the authors of the books in the adjacent presses sometimes carels were set up in the cloister a carel being a sort of pew in which study could be conducted with more privacy than in the open cloister the carel was placed so that it was closed at one end by one of the cloister windows and remained open at the other examples still survive at gloucester the arrangement of the libraries which were subsequently added to most of the larger monasteries in the fifteenth century is unknown as none of the furniture or fittings seem to have come down to the present day either in this country or in france or italy but mr clarke thinks that the collegiate libraries will give us the key to the plan of the monastic libraries since the rules relating to the libraries of oxford and cambridge were framed on those which obtained in the book-houses of the religious foundations from these collegiate libraries we gather that it was customary to chain the books so that they might be accessible to all and yet secure from those who might wish to appropriate them temporarily or otherwise the shelf to which the volumes were fastened took the form of an elongated lectern or desk at which the reader might sit pembroke college and queen's college cambridge had desks of this type which was also in use on the continent in some places the desks were modified by the addition of shelves above or below mr falconer madon in his books in manuscript quotes the following account which he translates from the latin register of fitchfield abbey written at the end of the fourteenth century and which shows the care and method with which the books were kept The arrangement of the library of the monastery of Titchfield is this.

There are in the library of Titchfield four cases, columnae, in which to place books, of which two, the first and second, are in the eastern face.

On the southern face is the third, and on the northern face the fourth.

and each of them has eight shelves gradus marked with a letter and number affixed to the front of each shelf so all and singular the volumes of the said library are fully marked on the first leaf and elsewhere on the shelf belonging to the book with certain numbered letters and in order that what is in the library may be more quickly found, the marking of the shelves of the said library, the inscriptions in the books, and the reference in the register, in all points agree with each other.