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BOOKS AND THEIR MAKERS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

A STUDY OF THE CONDITIONS OF THE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF LITERATURE FROM THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM, A.M.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND

The Knickerbocker Press

The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N. Y.

TO THE MEMORY OF MY WIFE WHO SERVED ME FOR YEARS BOTH AS EYESIGHT AND AS WRITING-ARM AND BY WHOSE HAND THE FOLLOWING PAGES WERE IN LARGE PART TRANSCRIBED THIS WORK IS DEDICATED

PREFACE

IN a previous volume I undertook to describe, or rather to indicate, the methods of the production and distribution of the earlier literature of the world and to sketch out the relations which existed between the author and his public during the ages known, rather vaguely, as classic, that is, in the periods of literary activity in Greece and ancient Rome. The materials for such a record were at best but fragmentary, and it was doubtless the case that, in a first attempt of the kind, I failed to get before me not a few of the references which are scattered through the works of classic writers, and which in any fairly complete presentation of the subject ought to have been utilised.

Imperfect as my study was, I felt, however, that I was justified in basing upon it certain general conclusions. It seems evident that in Greece, even during the period of the highest literary development, there did not exist anything that could be described as a system for the production and distribution of books. The number of copies of any work of Greek literature available for the use of the general public must at any time have been exceedingly limited, and it would probably be safe to say that, before the development of Alexandria as a centre of book-production, no such thing as a reading public existed. The few manuscripts that had been produced, and that possessed any measure of authenticity, were contained in royal archives or in such a State collection as that of Athens, or in the studies of the small group of scholarly teachers whose fame was sometimes in part due to the fact that they were owners of books.

The contemporary writers, including the authors of works treasured as masterpieces through all later ages, were not only content to do their work without any thought of material compensation, but appear to have been strangely oblivious of what would seem to us to be the ordinary practical measures for the preservation and circulation of their productions. The only reward for which they could look was fame with their own generation, and even for this it would seem that some effective distribution of their compositions was essential. The thought of preserving their work for the appreciation of future generations seems to have weighed with them but little. The ambition or ideal of the author appears to have been satisfied when his composition received in his own immediate community the honour of dramatic presentation or of public recitation. If his fellow citizens had accorded the approbation of the laurel crown, the approval of the outer world or of future generations was a matter of trifling importance. The fact that, notwithstanding this lack of ambition or incentive on the part of the authors, the non-existence of a reading public, and the consequent absence of any adequate machinery for the production and distribution of books, the knowledge of the "laurel-crowned" works, both of the earlier poets and of contemporary writers, should have been so widely diffused throughout the Greek community, is evidence that the public interest in dramatic performances and in the recitations of public reciters made, for an active-minded people like the Greeks, a very effective substitute for the literary enlightenment given to later generations by means of the written or the printed word.

In Rome, during the Augustan period, we find record of a well organised body of publishers utilising connections with Athens, with Asia Minor, and with Alexandria, for the purpose of importing Greek manuscripts and of collecting trained Greek scribes, and carrying on an active trade in the distribution of books not only with the neighbouring cities of Italy, of Spain, and of Gaul, but with such far off corners of the empire as the Roman towns in Britain. There are not a few references in the literature of this period, and particularly in the productions of society writers like Martial and Horace, to the relations of authors with their publishers and to the business interests retained by authors in the sale of their books. This Augustan age presents, in fact, the first example in the history of publishing, of a body of literature, produced by contemporary writers, being manifolded and distributed under an effective publishing and bookselling machinery, so as to reach an extensive and widely separated reading public. When the Roman gentleman in his villa near Massilia , Colonia , or Eboracum , is able to order through the imperial post copies of the latest ode of Horace or satire of Martial, we have the beginnings of an effective publishing organisation. It is at this time also that we first find record of the names of noteworthy publishers, the bookmakers in Athens and in Alexandria having left their names unrecorded. It is the period of Atticus, of Tryphon, and of the Sosii. Concerning the matter of the arrangements with the authors, or the extent of any compensation secured by them, the information is at best but scanty and often confusing. It seems evident, however, that, apart from the aid afforded by imperial favour, by the interest of some provincial ruler of literary tendencies, or by the bounty of a wealthy private patron like Maecenas, the rewards of literary producers were both scanty and precarious.

With the downfall of the Roman Empire, the organised book-trade of Rome and of the great cities of the Roman provinces came to an end. This trade had of necessity been dependent upon an effective system of communication and of transportation, a system which required for its maintenance the well built and thoroughly guarded roads of the empire; while it also called for the existence of a wealthy and cultivated leisure class, a class which during the periods of civil war and of barbaric invasions rapidly disappeared. Long before the reign of the last of the Roman emperors, original literary production had in great part ceased and the trade in the books of an earlier period had been materially curtailed; and by 476, when Augustulus was driven out by the triumphant Odovacar, the literary activities of the capital were very nearly at a close.

In the following study I have taken up the account of the production of books in Europe from the time of the downfall of the Empire of the West. I have endeavoured to show by what means, after the disappearance of the civilisation of the Roman State, were preserved the fragments of classic literature that have remained for the use of modern readers, and to what agencies were due the maintenance, throughout the confusion and social disorganisation of the early Middle Ages, of any intellectual interest or literary activities.

In a study of the organisation of the earliest book-trade of Bologna and Paris and of the method under which the text-books for the universities were produced and supplied, I have attempted to indicate the part played by the universities in the history of literary production. In a later chapter I have presented sketches of one or two of the more noteworthy of the manuscript dealers, who carried on, for a couple of centuries prior to the invention of printing, the business of supplying books to the increasing circles of readers outside of the universities.

In 1450 comes the invention of printing, which in revolutionising the methods of distributing intellectual productions, exercised such a complex and far-reaching influence on the thought and on the history of mankind. I have described with some detail the careers of certain of the earlier printer-publishers of Europe, and have been interested in noting how important and distinctive were the services rendered by these publishers to scholarship and to literature.

The concluding chapter sketches the growth of the conception of the idea of property in literature, and the gradual development and extension throughout the States of Europe of the system of privileges which formed the precedent and the foundations for the modern system of the law of literature and of interstate copyright legislation. I have taken pleasure in pointing out that the responsibility for securing this preliminary recognition of property in literary productions and of the property rights of literary producers rested with the printer-publishers, and that the shaping of the beginnings of a copyright system for Europe is due to their efforts. It was they also who bore the chief burden of the contest, which extended over several centuries, for the freedom of the press from the burdensome censorship of Church and State, a censorship which in certain communities appeared likely for a time to throttle literary production altogether. I can but think that the historians of literature and the students of the social and political conditions on which literary production is so largely dependent, have failed to do full justice to men like Aldus, the Estiennes, Froben, Koberger, and Plantin, who fought so sturdily against the pretensions of pope, bishop, or monarch to stand between the printing-press and the people and to decide what should and what should not be printed.

The fact that, during both the manuscript period and the first two centuries of printing, the writings of Cicero were reproduced far more largely than those of any other of the Roman writers, is interesting as indicating a distinct literary preference on the part of successive generations both of producers and of readers. The pre-eminence of Aristotle in the lists of the mediaeval issues of the Greek classics has, I judge, a different significance. Aristotle stood for a school of philosophy, the teachings of which had in the main been accepted by the Church, and copies of his writings were required for the use of students. The continued demand for the works of Cicero depended upon no such adventitious aid, and can, therefore, fairly be credited to their perennial value as literature.

My readers will bear in mind that I have not undertaken any such impossible task as a history of literary production, or even a record of all the factors which controlled literary production. I have attempted simply to present a study of certain conditions in the history of the manifolding and distribution of books by which the production and effectiveness of literature was very largely influenced and determined, and under which the conception of such a thing as literary property gradually developed. The recognition of a just requirement or of an existing injustice must, of course, always precede the framing of legislation to meet the requirement or to remedy the injustice, and the conception of literary property and a recognition of the inherent rights of literary producers had to be arrived at before copyright legislation could be secured.

I have specified as the limit of the present treatise the close of the seventeenth century, although I have found it convenient in certain chapters to make reference to events of a somewhat later date. It has been my purpose, however, to present a study of the conditions of literary production in Europe prior to copyright law, and the copyright legislation of Europe may be said to begin with the English statute of 1710, known as the Act of Queen Anne.

I trust that in the near future some competent authority may find himself interested in preparing a history of copyright law, and I shall be well pleased if the present volumes may be accepted by the historian of copyright and by the students of the subject as forming a suitable general introduction to such a history.

PAGE

PREFACE v BIBLIOGRAPHY xvii

INTRODUCTORY 3

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

d'AUBIGN?, J. H. MERLE. See under "D."

Same, with supplement. 2 vols. Naples, 1789.

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BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT.

BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT.

INTRODUCTORY.

Hodgkin finds it more difficult to understand "why the learned and leisurely provincial of Greece, whose country for nearly a century and a half escaped the horrors of hostile invasion, and who had to inspire them the grandest literary traditions in the world, should have left unwritten the story of the downfall of Rome."

"The fact seems to be," he goes on to say, "that at this time all that was left of literary instinct and historiographic power in the world had concentrated itself on theological controversy, and what tons of worthless material the ecclesiastical historians and controversialists of the time have left us!... Blind, most of them, to the meaning of the mighty drama which was being enacted on the stage of the world ... they have left us scarcely a hint as to the inner history of the vast revolution which settled the Teuton in the lands of the Latin.... One man alone gives us that detailed information concerning the thoughts, characters, persons of the actors in the great drama which can make the dry bones of the chronologer live. This is Caius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, man of letters, imperial functionary, country gentleman, and bishop, who, notwithstanding much manifest weakness of character and a sort of epigrammatic dulness of style, is still the most interesting literary figure of the fifth century."

Sidonius was born at Lyons, A.D. 430. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all served as Praetorian Prefects in Gaul, in which province his own long life was passed. In 472, Sidonius became Bishop of Arverni, and from that time, as he rather na?vely tells us, he gave up the writing of compositions "based on pagan models." In 475, the year before the last of the western emperors, Augustulus, was driven from Rome by Odovacar, the Herulian, the Visigoth king, Euric, became master of Auvergne. Sidonius was at first banished, but in 479 was restored to his diocese, and continued his work there as bishop and as writer until his death, ten years later. At the time of the death of Sidonius, Cassiodorus, who was, during the succeeding eighty years, to have part in so much of the eventful history of Italy, was ten years old. There are some points of similarity in the careers of the two men. Both were of noble family and both began their active work as officials, one of the Empire, the other of the Gothic kingdom of Italy, while both also became ecclesiastics. Each saw his country taken possession of by a foreign invader, and for the purpose of serving his countrymen, each was able and willing to make himself useful to the new ruler and thus to retain official position and influence; and finally, both had literary facility and ambition, and, holding in regard the works of the great classic writers, endeavoured to model upon these works the style of their own voluminous compositions. The political work of Cassiodorus was of course, however, much the more noteworthy and important, as Sidonius could hardly claim to be considered a statesman.

In their work as authors, the compositions of Sidonius are, as I judge from the description, to be ranked higher in literary quality than those of the later writer, and to have been more successful also in following the style of classic models. The style of Cassiodorus is described as both verbose and grandiloquent. In his ecclesiastical, or rather his monastic work, taken up after half a century of active political life, it was the fortune of Cassiodorus, as will be described later, to exercise an influence which continued for centuries, and which was possibly more far-reaching than was exerted by the career of any abbot or bishop in the later history of the Church.

The careers of both Sidonius and Cassiodorus have a special interest because the two men held rather an exceptional position between the life of the old empire which they survived and that of the new Europe of the Middle Ages, the beginning of which they lived to see.

Of the writings of Sidonius, Hodgkin speaks as follows: "A careful perusal of the three volumes of the Letters and Poems of Sidonius reveals to us the fact that in Gaul the air still teems with intellectual life, that authors were still writing, amanuenses transcribing, friends complimenting or criticising, and all the cares and pleasures of literature filling the minds of large classes of men just as when no empires were sinking and no strange nationalities suddenly arising around them.... A long list of forgotten philosophers did exist in that age, and their works, produced in lavish abundance, seem to have had no lack of eager students."

As an example of the literary interests of a country gentleman in Gaul, Hodgkin quotes a letter of Sidonius, written about 469: "Here too were books in plenty; you might fancy you were looking at the breast-high book-shelves of the grammarians, or the wedge-shaped cases of the Athenaeum, or the well-filled cupboards of the booksellers. I observed, however, that if one found a manuscript beside the chair of one of the ladies of the house, it was sure to be on a religious subject, while those which lay by the seats of the fathers of the family were full of the loftiest strains of Latin eloquence. In making this distinction, I do not forget that there are some writings of equal literary excellence in both branches, that Augustine may be paired off against Varro, and Prudentius against Horace. Among these books, the works of Origen, the Adamantine, were frequently perused by readers holding our faith. I cannot understand why some of our arch-divines should stigmatise him as a dangerous and heterodox author."

In summing up the work of Sidonius, Hodgkin points out the noteworthy opportunities for making a literary reputation which were missed by him. "He might have been the Herodotus of mediaeval Europe. He could have given authentic pictures of the laws and customs of the Goths, Franks, and Burgundians ... a full portraiture of the great apostle of the Germanic races, Ulfilas, and the secret causes of his and their devotion to the Arian form of Christianity; and he could have recorded the Gothic equivalents of the mythological tales in the Scandinavian Edda and the story of the old Runes and their relation to the Moeso-Gothic alphabet. All these details and a hundred more, full of interest to science, to art, to literature, Sidonius might have preserved for us had his mind been as open as was that of Herodotus to the manifold impressions made by picturesque and strange nationalities."

It was doubtless fortunate for the literary reputation of Sidonius that his father-in-law, Avitus, came to be emperor. The reign of Avitus was short, but he had time to give to his brilliant son-in-law a position as Court poet or poet-laureate, while it was probably due to the imperial influence that the Senate decreed the erection of the brass statue of Sidonius, which was placed between the two libraries of Trajan. These libraries, containing the one Greek and the other Latin authors, stood between the column of Trajan and the Basilica Ulpia. Sidonius describes his statue as follows:

In the opinion of Hodgkin, the books in these two collections in the Bibliotheca Ulpia may very well have been of more importance to later generations than those of the library of Alexandria. The books from Trajan's libraries were, according to Vopiscus, transported in all or in part to the Baths of Diocletian. Hodgkin understands that, between 300 and 450, they were restored to their original home.

In the year 537 A.D., the rule of the Goths in Italy, which had been established by Theodoric in 493, was practically brought to a close by the victories of Belisarius, the general of the Eastern Empire, and, thirty years later, the destruction of the Gothic State was completed by the invasion of the Lombards. With the Lombards in possession of Northern Italy, and the Vandals, in a series of campaigns against the armies from Constantinople, overrunning the southern portions of the peninsula, the social organisation of the country must have been almost destroyed, and the civilisation which had survived from the old Empire, while never entirely disappearing, was doubtless in large part submerged. A certain continuity of Roman rule and of Roman intellectual influence was, however, preserved through the growing power of the Church, which was already claiming the inheritance of the Empire, and which, as early as 590, under the lead of Pope Gregory the Great, succeeded in making good its claims to ecclesiastical supremacy throughout the larger part of Europe. In its control of the consciences of rulers, the Church frequently, in fact, secured a domination that was by no means limited to things spiritual.

The first period begins with the foundation by S. Benedict, in 529, of the monastery of Monte Cassino, and by Cassiodorus, in 531, of that of Vivaria or Viviers, and continues until the last decade of the twelfth century, when we find the earliest record of an organised book-business in the universities of Bologna and Paris. The beginning of literary work in the universities, to which I refer as indicating a second stage, did not, however, bring to an end, and, in fact, for a time hardly lessened, the production of books in the monasteries.

The third stage of book-production in Europe may be said to begin with the first years of the fifteenth century, when the manuscript trade of Venice and Florence became important, when the book-men or publishers of Paris, outside of the university, had developed a business in the collecting, manifolding, and selling of manuscripts, and when manuscripts first find place in the schedules of the goods sold at the fairs of Frankfort and Nordlingen. The costliness of the skilled labour required for the production of manuscripts, and the many obstacles and difficulties in the way of their distribution, caused the development of the book-trade to proceed but slowly. It was the case, nevertheless, and particularly in Germany, that a very considerable demand for literature of certain classes had been developed among the people before the close of the manuscript period, a demand which was being met with texts produced in constantly increasing quantities and at steadily lessening cost. When the printing-press arrived it found, therefore, already in existence a wide-spread literary interest and a popular demand for books, a demand which, with the immediate cheapening of books, was, of course, enormously increased. The production of books in manuscript came to a close, not with the invention of the printing-press in 1450, but with the time when printing had become generally introduced, about twenty-five years later.

It was in the monasteries that were preserved such fragments of the classic literature as had escaped the general devastation of Italy; and it was to the labours of the monks of the West, and particularly to the labours of the monks of S. Benedict, that was due the preservation for the Middle Ages and for succeeding generations of the remembrance and the influence of the literature of classic times. For a period of more than six centuries, the safety of the literary heritage of Europe, one may say of the world, depended upon the scribes of a few dozen scattered monasteries.

I have not been able to find in the narratives of the life of S. Benedict any record showing the origin of his interest in literature, an interest which was certainly exceptional for an ecclesiastic of the sixth century. It seems very probable, however, that Benedict's association with Cassiodorus had not a little to do with the literary impetus given to the work of the Benedictines. Cassiodorus, who, as Chancellor of King Theodoric, had taken an active part in the government of the Gothic kingdom, passed the last thirty years of his life first as a monk and later as abbot in the monastery of Vivaria, or Viviers, in Calabria, which he had himself founded in 531. Cassiodorus is generally classed by the Church chronicles as a Benedictine, and his monastery is referred to by Montalembert as the second of the Benedictine foundations. Hodgkin points out, however, that the Rule adopted by the monks of Viviers, or prescribed for them by its founder, was not that of S. Benedict, but was drawn from the writings of Cassian, the founder of western monachism, who had died a century before. The two Rules were, however, fully in accord with each other in spirit, while for the idea of using the convent as a place of literary toil and theological training, Benedict was indebted to Cassiodorus. "At a very early date in the history of their Order," says Hodgkin, "the Benedictines, influenced probably by the example of the monastery of Vivaria, commenced that long series of services to the cause of literature which they have never wholly intermitted. Instead of accepting the ... formula from which some scholars have contended that Cassiodorus was a Benedictine, we should perhaps be rather justified in maintaining that Benedict, or at least his immediate followers, were Cassiodorians."

THE MAKING OF BOOKS IN THE MONASTERIES.

Theodoric appointed him Quaestor, an office which made him the mouth-piece of the sovereign. To the Quaestor belonged the duty of conducting the official correspondence of the Court, of receiving ambassadors, and of replying in fitting harangues to their addresses, so that he was at once foreign secretary and Court orator. He also had the responsibility of giving a final revision to all the laws which received the signature of the King, and of seeing that these were properly worded and did not conflict with previous enactments. Theodoric, who had received what little education he possessed from Greek instructors in Constantinople, was said never to have mastered Latin, and he doubtless found the services of his eloquent and scholarly minister very convenient.

Cassiodorus continued to do service as minister for the successors of Amalasuentha, Athalaric, Theodadad, and Witigis, and retired from official responsibility only a few months before the capture of Ravenna by Belisarius, in 540, brought the Ostrogothic monarchy to an end. At the time of the entry of the Greek army, Cassiodorus, now a veteran of sixty years, was in retirement in his monastery in Bruttii . It was doubtless because of the absence of Cassiodorus from the capital, that no mention is made of him in the narrative of the campaign written by Procopius the historian, who, as secretary to Belisarius, entered Rome with the latter after the victories over Witigis.

Cassiodorus must have possessed very exceptional adaptability of character, not to say elasticity of conscience, to be able, during a period extending over nearly half a century, to retain the favour of so many of the successive rulers of Italy and apparently to make his services necessary to each one of them. It is certain, however, that Italy benefited largely by the fact that through the various contests and changes of monarchs, it had been possible to preserve a certain continuity of executive policy and of administrative methods. The further fact that the "perpetual" or at least the continuing minister was at once a Greek and a Roman, and not only a statesman but a scholar, and that he had succeeded in preserving through all the devastations of civil wars and of foreign invasions a great collection of classic books and a persistent interest in classic literature, exercised an enormous influence upon the culture of Europe for centuries to come. The career of Cassiodorus had, as we have seen, been varied and honourable. It was, however, his exceptional fortune to be able to render the most important and the most distinctive service of his life after his life's work had apparently been completed.

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