The character of the collection did not alter materially during the remainder of the fifteenth century. At the death of Sixtus IV in 1484 it had grown considerably in bulk. Instead of 350 Greek manuscripts there were now about a thousand. Still, we note no specially striking additions to the list of early Church writers. Origen, for example, is just as poorly represented as he was under Nicholas V. One important section, however, shows a marked growth. The Bibles, or parts of Bibles, have swelled to the goodly number of fifty-eight.
The examination of this, the most important library of the West in the fifteenth century, teaches us that the main interest of Christian scholars was centred not on the literature of the first ages, but upon the works of the great doctors of the fourth and fifth centuries,—upon the definers and expositors of developed dogma. This was the natural outcome, perhaps, of the long period spent under the influence of Scholastic Theology. But it was also the inevitable result of the condition of things in the headquarters of Greek learning. The Eastern Church had herself forgotten Justin, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus, and regarded Origen with suspicion. We know now that as late as the sixteenth century a Greek Irenaeus, and a copy of the Ecclesiastical Memoirs of Hegesippus were lurking in a Greek island. There they were destined to remain and to perish. Yet, had their existence been known in the time of Nicholas V, it is doubtful whether he and his contemporaries would have been much excited by the announcement. A couple of generations later the case would have been widely different.
The literary treasures of Italy were by no means confined to the Vatican; and, though it would be dreary work to investigate in detail the inventories of all the great collectors, a word must still be said about those of Venice and Florence. At the first-named place Bessarion’s great library was deposited, among whose treasures was at least one volume of extraordinary value for the history of Christian beliefs,—our best copy of the treatise of Epiphanius Against Heresies. Florence was enriched, not only with the beginnings of the Medicean collection, but with the earlier and hardly less precious library of Niccolo Niccoli (d. 1437), which passed to the Convent of San Marco. In the list of the one hundred and eighty Greek manuscripts which that community owned in the last years of the century we note a few names, and only a few, that we did not meet at Rome, particularly that of Justin Martyr. From this Florence copy Pico della Mirandola must in all probability have made his translation of the Cohortatio ad Gentes.
In the Latin collection we find such items as three volumes of Tertullian, all of them copies on paper made from the ancient manuscript which had come into the hands of Cardinal Orsini. Cyprian, Lactantius, and Ignatius too, are there, with of course many of the freshly made versions of Greek books. That of the Letter of Aristeas, so-called, from the pen of Matteo Palmieri, is a welcome variation from the everlasting Chrysostoms and Basils. Literature owes much, indeed, to Niccoli; but Christian literature has specially to thank another of its friends, Lorenzo de’ Medici, for the preservation of that inestimable monument, the unique manuscript of the Miscellanies (Stromateis) of Clement of Alexandria.
We turn now from Italy, the centre of light, to ask what was the condition of affairs in the outer darkness beyond the Alps. In France the work of collecting Greek books had hardly begun in the first half of the fifteenth century. There were; as we have seen, what may be called accidental deposits in two or three places, as at St Denis, and the Abbey of Corbie in Picardy. The papal library at Avignon, which owned more than a hundred and twenty Hebrew manuscripts in 1369, could muster only some half-dozen in Greek-another striking testimony to the statement made above that the former language was far more commonly known in that age than the latter. In 1416 one Greek book had found its way into the possession of the Duke of Berri; but his cataloguers cannot give us any notion of the character of its contents. The famous decree of the Council of Venice in 1311 that the Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean tongues should be taught at all the greater Universities of Europe had remained absolutely ineffective.
With the arrival of George Hermonymus at Paris in 1476 the work of collection and diffusion of Greek literature really began. Hermonymus himself worked as a copyist alike of the Sacred Text and of secular authors. Still it was nothing more than a beginning that the fifteenth century witnessed. The enormous accumulations, which have ended in making the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris the depository of more Greek manuscripts than any other library outside Greece can show, were the work of the two centuries that followed.
Of England not much more remains to be said in the present connexion; and yet, as the history of our progress in this field has been but sparsely investigated, more may be said in this place than a consideration of proportion would perhaps seem to justify. We have rather frequent accounts of the importations of valuable collections of books from Italy. Adam Easton, Bishop of Norwich (who has already engaged our attention), was among the earliest of those who collected in this way. He died in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. Thomas Waiden gave many foreign manuscripts, notable for age and rarity, to the Carmelites of London. John Gunthorpe, Dean of Wells, deposited a precious collection formed in Italy at Jesus College in Cambridge. It is still possible to trace the greater part of the gifts made by William Gray, Bishop of Ely, to Balliol College. Another Oxford College-Lincoln-possesses a manuscript of the Acts and Catholic Epistles in Greek which was given to it in 1483 by Robert Flemmyng, Dean of Lincoln. Flemmyng was another of those who had travelled in Italy: and he is credited with having compiled a Greek dictionary. At Lincoln College is also a copy of the Gospels in Greek which was the gift of Edmund Audley, Bishop of Salisbury, in 1502.
Gone, alas! are the collections, amounting in all to nearly six hundred volumes, which Duke Humphrey of Gloucester gave at different times to the University of Oxford. Gone, too, for the most part is that imported by William Tilley of Selling, Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, the friend of Politian and the patron of Linacre. During the two long visits that he paid to Italy, Selling had brought together a number of books. We have no list of them; but his contemporaries evidently accounted them very choice and precious. The tradition was even current (though we must gravely question its correctness) that among them was a copy of the De Republica of Cicero. They were deposited in the Prior’s lodging on his return and, unfortunately, were never transferred to the main library of the monastery. On the eve of the Dissolution, a royal commissioner-Leighton-and his train were lodged in the building which contained the books: an accidental fire, the responsibility for which is laid by the monks upon Leighton’s drunken servants, burst out> and the treasured library of Selling was consumed. A few survivors are enumerated by Leland-notably a copy of Basil’s Commentary on Isaiah in Greek: a few which he does not name can be traced in our libraries now. Among them must in all probability be reckoned the first copy of Homer whose presence can be definitely traced in England since the days of Theodore of Tarsus.
That copies of the newly-recovered writings of the Latin Fathers and of the new translations from the Greek made their way to England among these various collections is not surprising. Both among Selling’s books, and among those which Bishop Gray gave to Balliol College, we find translations by Aretinus and by Traversari. In Gray’s list Lactantius and Tertullian are also represented. His copy of the Apology of the latter suggests a curious question. It is enriched with marginal notes, which in the opinion of the antiquaries of an older day were due to the pen of a twelfth century critic,—no less a person indeed than William of Malmesbury. But the manuscript which contains them is of the fifteenth century and is the work of a foreign scribe; and the notes themselves afford no clue to their author.
The library of St Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury, again, possessed the Apology of Tertullian; but we can only guess at the date of the manuscript; and a wide range is open to us, since the catalogue in which it is entered was drawn up in the last years of the fifteenth century. It is to be feared that this country did not contribute in any important degree to the stock of new material which was being made available for the world’s use. Poggio’s visit to England was a failure in this as in other respects. Had he been able to explore the libraries of the great monasteries of the West or of the North-Glastonbury, Worcester, and the scenes of Baeda’s activity-he would not have returned empty-handed. Many books lay in hiding there which he would have been glad to secure. In after years we find the English scholars actively