The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury
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Richard de Bury >> The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury
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So much we have alleged in defence of the poets; and now we
proceed to show that those who study them with proper intent are
not to be condemned in regard to them. For our ignorance of one
single word prevents the understanding of a whole long sentence,
as was assumed in the previous chapter. As now the sayings of
the saints frequently allude to the inventions of the poets, it
must needs happen that through our not knowing the poem referred
to, the whole meaning of the author is completely obscured, and
assuredly, as Cassiodorus says in his book Of the Institutes of
Sacred Literature: Those things are not to be considered trifles
without which great things cannot come to pass. It follows
therefore that through ignorance of poetry we do not understand
Jerome, Augustine, Boethius, Lactantius, Sidonius, and very many
others, a catalogue of whom would more than fill a long chapter.
The Venerable Bede has very clearly discussed and determined this
doubtful point, as is related by that great compiler Gratian, the
repeater of numerous authors, who is as confused in form as he
was eager in collecting matter for his compilation. Now he
writes in his 37th section: Some read secular literature for
pleasure, taking delight in the inventions and elegant language
of the poets; but others study this literature for the sake of
scholarship, that by their reading they may learn to detest the
errors of the Gentiles and may devoutly apply what they find
useful in them to the use of sacred learning. Such men study
secular literature in a laudable manner. So far Bede.
Taking this salutary instruction to heart, let the detractors of
those who study the poets henceforth hold their peace, and let
not those who are ignorant of these things require that others
should be as ignorant as themselves, for this is the consolation
of the wretched. And therefore let every man see that his own
intentions are upright, and he may thus make of any subject,
observing the limitations of virtue, a study acceptable to God.
And if he have found profit in poetry, as the great Virgil
relates that he had done in Ennius, he will not have done amiss.
CHAPTER XIV
WHO OUGHT TO BE SPECIAL LOVERS OF BOOKS
To him who recollects what has been said before, it is plain and
evident who ought to be the chief lovers of books. For those who
have most need of wisdom in order to perform usefully the duties
of their position, they are without doubt most especially bound
to show more abundantly to the sacred vessels of wisdom the
anxious affection of a grateful heart. Now it is the office of
the wise man to order rightly both himself and others, according
to the Phoebus of philosophers, Aristotle, who deceives not nor
is deceived in human things. Wherefore princes and prelates,
judges and doctors, and all other leaders of the commonwealth, as
more than others they have need of wisdom, so more than others
ought they to show zeal for the vessels of wisdom.
Boethius, indeed, beheld Philosophy bearing a sceptre in her left
hand and books in her right, by which it is evidently shown to
all men that no one can rightly rule a commonwealth without
books. Thou, says Boethius, speaking to Philosophy, hast
sanctioned this saying by the mouth of Plato, that states would
be happy if they were ruled by students of philosophy, or if
their rulers would study philosophy. And again, we are taught by
the very gesture of the figure that in so far as the right hand
is better than the left, so far the contemplative life is more
worthy than the active life; and at the same time we are shown
that the business of the wise man is to devote himself by turns,
now to the study of truth, and now to the dispensation of
temporal things.
We read that Philip thanked the Gods devoutly for having granted
that Alexander should be born in the time of Aristotle, so that
educated under his instruction he might be worthy to rule his
father's empire. While Phaeton unskilled in driving becomes the
charioteer of his father's car, he unhappily distributes to
mankind the heat of Phoebus, now by excessive nearness, and now
by withdrawing it too far, and so, lest all beneath him should be
imperilled by the closeness of his driving, justly deserved to be
struck by the thunderbolt.
The history of the Greeks as well as Romans shows that there were
no famous princes among them who were devoid of literature. The
sacred law of Moses in prescribing to the king a rule of
government, enjoins him to have a copy made of the book of Divine
law (Deut. xvii.) according to the copy shown by the priests, in
which he was to read all the days of his life. Certes, God
Himself, who hath made and who fashioneth every day the hearts of
every one of us, knows the feebleness of human memory and the
instability of virtuous intentions in mankind. Wherefore He has
willed that books should be as it were an antidote to all evil,
the reading and use of which He has commanded to be the healthful
daily nourishment of the soul, so that by them the intellect
being refreshed and neither weak nor doubtful should never
hesitate in action. This subject is elegantly handled by John of
Salisbury, in his Policraticon. In conclusion, all classes of
men who are conspicuous by the tonsure or the sign of clerkship,
against whom books lifted up their voices in the fourth, fifth,
and sixth chapters, are bound to serve books with perpetual
veneration.
CHAPTER XV
OF THE ADVANTAGES OF THE LOVE OF BOOKS
It transcends the power of human intellect, however deeply it may
have drunk of the Pegasean fount, to develop fully the title of
the present chapter. Though one should speak with the tongue of
men and angels, though he should become a Mercury or Tully,
though he should grow sweet with the milky eloquence of Livy, yet
he will plead the stammering of Moses, or with Jeremiah will
confess that he is but a boy and cannot speak, or will imitate
Echo rebounding from the mountains. For we know that the love of
books is the same thing as the love of wisdom, as was proved in
the second chapter. Now this love is called by the Greek word
philosophy, the whole virtue of which no created intelligence can
comprehend; for she is believed to be the mother of all good
things: Wisdom vii. She as a heavenly dew extinguishes the heats
of fleshly vices, the intense activity of the mental forces
relaxing the vigour of the animal forces, and slothfulness being
wholly put to flight, which being gone all the bows of Cupid are
unstrung.
Hence Plato says in the Phaedo: The philosopher is manifest in
this, that he dissevers the soul from communion with the body.
Love, says Jerome, the knowledge of the scriptures, and thou wilt
not love the vices of the flesh. The godlike Xenocrates showed
this by the firmness of his reason, who was declared by the
famous hetaera Phryne to be a statue and not a man, when all her
blandishments could not shake his resolve, as Valerius Maximus
relates at length. Our own Origen showed this also, who chose
rather to be unsexed by the mutilation of himself, than to be
made effeminate by the omnipotence of woman--though it was a
hasty remedy, repugnant alike to nature and to virtue, whose
place it is not to make men insensible to passion, but to slay
with the dagger of reason the passions that spring from instinct.
Again, all who are smitten with the love of books think cheaply
of the world and wealth; as Jerome says to Vigilantius: The same
man cannot love both gold and books. And thus it has been said
in verse:
No iron-stained hand is fit to handle books,
Nor he whose heart on gold so gladly looks:
The same men love not books and money both,
And books thy herd, O Epicurus, loathe;
Misers and bookmen make poor company,
Nor dwell in peace beneath the same roof-tree.
No man, therefore, can serve both books and Mammon.
The hideousness of vice is greatly reprobated in books, so that
he who loves to commune with books is led to detest all manner of
vice. The demon, who derives his name from knowledge, is most
effectually defeated by the knowledge of books, and through books
his multitudinous deceits and the endless labyrinths of his guile
are laid bare to those who read, lest he be transformed into an
angel of light and circumvent the innocent by his wiles. The
reverence of God is revealed to us by books, the virtues by which
He is worshipped are more expressly manifested, and the rewards
are described that are promised by the truth, which deceives not,
neither is deceived. The truest likeness of the beatitude to
come is the contemplation of the sacred writings, in which we
behold in turn the Creator and the creature, and draw from
streams of perpetual gladness. Faith is established by the power
of books; hope is strengthened by their solace, insomuch that by
patience and the consolation of scripture we are in good hope.
Charity is not puffed up, but is edified by the knowledge of true
learning, and, indeed, it is clearer than light that the Church
is established upon the sacred writings.
Books delight us, when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us
inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us. They lend validity
to human compacts, and no serious judgments are propounded
without their help. Arts and sciences, all the advantages of
which no mind can enumerate, consist in books. How highly must
we estimate the wondrous power of books, since through them we
survey the utmost bounds of the world and time, and contemplate
the things that are as well as those that are not, as it were in
the mirror of eternity. In books we climb mountains and scan the
deepest gulfs of the abyss; in books we behold the finny tribes
that may not exist outside their native waters, distinguish the
properties of streams and springs and of various lands; from
books we dig out gems and metals and the materials of every kind
of mineral, and learn the virtues of herbs and trees and plants,
and survey at will the whole progeny of Neptune, Ceres, and
Pluto.
But if we please to visit the heavenly inhabitants, Taurus,
Caucasus, and Olympus are at hand, from which we pass beyond the
realms of Juno and mark out the territories of the seven planets
by lines and circles. And finally we traverse the loftiest
firmament of all, adorned with signs, degrees, and figures in the
utmost variety. There we inspect the antarctic pole, which eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard; we admire the luminous Milky Way
and the Zodiac, marvellously and delightfully pictured with
celestial animals. Thence by books we pass on to separate
substances, that the intellect may greet kindred intelligences,
and with the mind's eye may discern the First Cause of all things
and the Unmoved Mover of infinite virtue, and may immerse itself
in love without end. See how with the aid of books we attain the
reward of our beatitude, while we are yet sojourners below.
Why need we say more? Certes, just as we have learnt on the
authority of Seneca, leisure without letters is death and the
sepulture of the living, so contrariwise we conclude that
occupation with letters or books is the life of man.
Again, by means of books we communicate to friends as well as
foes what we cannot safely entrust to messengers; since the book
is generally allowed access to the chambers of princes, from
which the voice of its author would be rigidly excluded, as
Tertullian observes at the beginning of his Apologeticus. When
shut up in prison and in bonds, and utterly deprived of bodily
liberty, we use books as ambassadors to our friends, and entrust
them with the conduct of our cause, and send them where to go
ourselves would incur the penalty of death. By the aid of books
we remember things that are past, and even prophesy as to the
future; and things present, which shift and flow, we perpetuate
by committing them to writing.
The felicitous studiousness and the studious felicity of the
all-powerful eunuch, of whom we are told in the Acts, who had
been so mightily kindled by the love of the prophetic writings
that he ceased not from his reading by reason of his journey, had
banished all thought of the populous palace of Queen Candace, and
had forgotten even the treasures of which he was the keeper, and
had neglected alike his journey and the chariot in which he rode.
Love of his book alone had wholly engrossed this domicile of
chastity, under whose guidance he soon deserved to enter the gate
of faith. O gracious love of books, which by the grace of
baptism transformed the child of Gehenna and nursling of Tartarus
into a Son of the Kingdom!
Let the feeble pen now cease from the tenor of an infinite task,
lest it seem foolishly to undertake what in the beginning it
confessed to be impossible to any.
CHAPTER XVI
THAT IT IS MERITORIOUS TO WRITE NEW BOOKS AND TO RENEW THE OLD
Just as it is necessary for the state to prepare arms and to
provide abundant stores of victuals for the soldiers who are to
fight for it, so it is fitting for the Church Militant to fortify
itself against the assaults of pagans and heretics with a
multitude of sound writings.
But because all the appliances of mortal men with the lapse of
time suffer the decay of mortality, it is needful to replace the
volumes that are worn out with age by fresh successors, that the
perpetuity of which the individual is by its nature incapable may
be secured to the species; and hence it is that the Preacher
says: Of making many books there is no end. For as the bodies of
books, seeing that they are formed of a combination of contrary
elements, undergo a continual dissolution of their structure, so
by the forethought of the clergy a remedy should be found, by
means of which the sacred book paying the debt of nature may
obtain a natural heir and may raise up like seed to its dead
brother, and thus may be verified that saying of Ecclesiasticus:
His father is dead, and he is as if he were not dead; for he hath
left one behind him that is like himself. And thus the
transcription of ancient books is as it were the begetting of
fresh sons, on whom the office of the father may devolve, lest it
suffer detriment. Now such transcribers are called antiquarii,
whose occupations Cassiodorus confesses please him above all the
tasks of bodily labour, adding: "Happy effort," he says,
"laudable industry, to preach to men with the hand, to let loose
tongues with the fingers, silently to give salvation to mortals,
and to fight with pen and ink against the illicit wiles of the
Evil One." So far Cassiodorus. Moreover, our Saviour exercised
the office of the scribe when He stooped down and with His finger
wrote on the ground (John viii.), that no one, however exalted,
may think it unworthy of him to do what he sees the wisdom of God
the Father did.
O singular serenity of writing, to practise which the Artificer
of the world stoops down, at whose dread name every knee doth
bow! O venerable handicraft pre-eminent above all other crafts
that are practised by the hand of man, to which our Lord humbly
inclines His breast, to which the finger of God is applied,
performing the office of a pen! We do not read of the Son of God
that He sowed or ploughed, wove or digged; nor did any other of
the mechanic arts befit the divine wisdom incarnate except to
trace letters in writing, that every gentleman and sciolist may
know that fingers are given by God to men for the task of writing
rather than for war. Wherefore we entirely approve the judgment
of books, wherein they declared in our sixth chapter the clerk
who cannot write to be as it were disabled.
God himself inscribes the just in the book of the living; Moses
received the tables of stone written with the finger of God. Job
desires that he himself that judgeth would write a book.
Belshazzar trembled when he saw the fingers of a man's hand
writing upon the wall, Mene tekel phares. I wrote, says
Jeremiah, with ink in the book. Christ bids his beloved disciple
John, What thou seest write in a book. So the office of the
writer is enjoined on Isaiah and on Joshua, that the act and
skill of writing may be commended to future generations. Christ
Himself has written on His vesture and on His thigh King of Kings
and Lord of Lords, so that without writing the royal ornaments of
the Omnipotent cannot be made perfect. Being dead they cease not
to teach, who write books of sacred learning. Paul did more for
building up the fabric of the Church by writing his holy
epistles, than by preaching by word of mouth to Jews and
Gentiles. He who has attained the prize continues daily by
books, what he long ago began while a sojourner upon the earth;
and thus is fulfilled in the doctors writing books the saying of
the Prophet: They that turn many to righteousness shall be as
the stars for ever and ever.
Moreover, it has been determined by the doctors of the Church
that the longevity of the ancients, before God destroyed the
original world by the Deluge, is to be ascribed to a miracle and
not to nature; as though God granted to them such length of days
as was required for finding out the sciences and writing them in
books; amongst which the wonderful variety of astronomy required,
according to Josephus, a period of six hundred years, to submit
it to ocular observation. Nor, indeed, do they deny that the
fruits of the earth in that primitive age afforded a more
nutritious aliment to men than in our modern times, and thus they
had not only a livelier energy of body, but also a more
lengthened period of vigour; to which it contributed not a little
that they lived according to virtue and denied themselves all
luxurious delights. Whoever therefore is by the good gift of God
endowed with gift of science, let him, according to the counsel
of the Holy Spirit, write wisdom in his time of leisure (Eccles.
xxxviii.), that his reward may be with the blessed and his days
may be lengthened in this present world.
And further, if we turn our discourse to the princes of the
world, we find that famous emperors not only attained excellent
skill in the art of writing, but indulged greatly in its
practice. Julius Caesar, the first and greatest of them all, has
left us Commentaries on the Gallic and the Civil Wars written by
himself; he wrote also two books De Analogia, and two books of
Anticatones, and a poem called Iter; and many other works.
Julius and Augustus devised means of writing one letter for
another, and so concealing what they wrote. For Julius put the
fourth letter for the first, and so on through the alphabet;
whilst Augustus used the second for the first, the third for the
second, and so throughout. He is said in the greatest
difficulties of affairs during the Mutinensian War to have read
and written and even declaimed every day. Tiberius wrote a lyric
poem and some Greek verses. Claudius likewise was skilled in
both Greek and Latin, and wrote several books. But Titus was
skilled above all men in the art of writing, and easily imitated
any hand he chose; so that he used to say that if he had wished
it he might have become a most skilful forger. All these things
are noted by Suetonius in his Lives of the XII. Caesars.
CHAPTER XVII
OF SHOWING DUE PROPRIETY IN THE CUSTODY OF BOOKS
We are not only rendering service to God in preparing volumes of
new books, but also exercising an office of sacred piety when we
treat books carefully, and again when we restore them to their
proper places and commend them to inviolable custody; that they
may rejoice in purity while we have them in our hands, and rest
securely when they are put back in their repositories. And
surely next to the vestments and vessels dedicated to the Lord's
body, holy books deserve to be rightly treated by the clergy, to
which great injury is done so often as they are touched by
unclean hands. Wherefore we deem it expedient to warn our
students of various negligences, which might always be easily
avoided and do wonderful harm to books.
And in the first place as to the opening and closing of books,
let there be due moderation, that they be not unclasped in
precipitate haste, nor when we have finished our inspection be
put away without being duly closed. For it behoves us to guard a
book much more carefully than a boot.
But the race of scholars is commonly badly brought up, and unless
they are bridled in by the rules of their elders they indulge in
infinite puerilities. They behave with petulance, and are puffed
up with presumption, judging of everything as if they were
certain, though they are altogether inexperienced.
You may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily lounging over
his studies, and when the winter's frost is sharp, his nose
running from the nipping cold drips down, nor does he think of
wiping it with his pocket-handkerchief until he has bedewed the
book before him with the ugly moisture. Would that he had before
him no book, but a cobbler's apron! His nails are stuffed with
fetid filth as black as jet, with which he marks any passage that
pleases him. He distributes a multitude of straws, which he
inserts to stick out in different places, so that the halm may
remind him of what his memory cannot retain. These straws,
because the book has no stomach to digest them, and no one takes
them out, first distend the book from its wonted closing, and at
length, being carelessly abandoned to oblivion, go to decay. He
does not fear to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or
carelessly to carry a cup to and from his mouth; and because he
has no wallet at hand he drops into books the fragments that are
left. Continually chattering, he is never weary of disputing
with his companions, and while he alleges a crowd of senseless
arguments, he wets the book lying half open in his lap with
sputtering showers. Aye, and then hastily folding his arms he
leans forward on the book, and by a brief spell of study invites
a prolonged nap; and then, by way of mending the wrinkles, he
folds back the margin of the leaves, to the no small injury of
the book. Now the rain is over and gone, and the flowers have
appeared in our land. Then the scholar we are speaking of, a
neglecter rather than an inspecter of books, will stuff his
volume with violets, and primroses, with roses and quatrefoil.
Then he will use his wet and perspiring hands to turn over the
volumes; then he will thump the white vellum with gloves covered
with all kinds of dust, and with his finger clad in long-used
leather will hunt line by line through the page; then at the
sting of the biting flea the sacred book is flung aside, and is
hardly shut for another month, until it is so full of the dust
that has found its way within, that it resists the effort to
close it.
But the handling of books is specially to be forbidden to those
shameless youths, who as soon as they have learned to form the
shapes of letters, straightway, if they have the opportunity,
become unhappy commentators, and wherever they find an extra
margin about the text, furnish it with monstrous alphabets, or if
any other frivolity strikes their fancy, at once their pen begins
to write it. There the Latinist and sophister and every
unlearned writer tries the fitness of his pen, a practice that we
have frequently seen injuring the usefulness and value of the
most beautiful books.
Again, there is a class of thieves shamefully mutilating books,
who cut away the margins from the sides to use as material for
letters, leaving only the text, or employ the leaves from the
ends, inserted for the protection of the book, for various uses
and abuses-- a kind of sacrilege which should be prohibited by
the threat of anathema.
Again, it is part of the decency of scholars that whenever they
return from meals to their study, washing should invariably
precede reading, and that no grease-stained finger should
unfasten the clasps, or turn the leaves of a book. Nor let a
crying child admire the pictures in the capital letters, lest he
soil the parchment with wet fingers; for a child instantly
touches whatever he sees. Moreover, the laity, who look at a
book turned upside down just as if it were open in the right way,
are utterly unworthy of any communion with books. Let the clerk
take care also that the smutty scullion reeking from his stewpots
does not touch the lily leaves of books, all unwashed, but he who
walketh without blemish shall minister to the precious volumes.
And, again, the cleanliness of decent hands would be of great
benefit to books as well as scholars, if it were not that the
itch and pimples are characteristic of the clergy.
Whenever defects are noticed in books, they should be promptly
repaired, since nothing spreads more quickly than a tear and a
rent which is neglected at the time will have to be repaired
afterwards with usury.
Moses, the gentlest of men, teaches us to make bookcases most
neatly, wherein they may be protected from any injury: Take, he
says, this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of
the covenant of the Lord your God. O fitting place and
appropriate for a library, which was made of imperishable
shittim-wood, and was all covered within and without with gold!
But the Saviour also has warned us by His example against all
unbecoming carelessness in the handling of books, as we read in
S. Luke. For when He had read the scriptural prophecy of
Himself in the book that was delivered to Him, He did not give it
again to the minister, until He had closed it with his own most
sacred hands. By which students are most clearly taught that in
the care of books the merest trifles ought not to be neglected.
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