The great book-collectors / by Charles Isaac Elton ... & Mary Augusta Elton.

  • Charles Isaac Elton
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The great book-collectors / by Charles Isaac Elton ... & Mary Augusta Elton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Book of the Gospels on purple vellum, and a Bible with covers of pure gold inlaid with precious stones. John the Precentor, who introduced the Roman liturgy into this country, bequeathed a number of valuable books to Wearmouth. Bede had no great library of his own; it was his task ' to disseminate the treasures of Benedict.' But he must have pos- sessed a large number of manuscripts while he was writing the Ecclesiastical History, since he has in- formed us that Bishop Daniel of Winchester and other learned churchmen in the South were accus- tomed to supply him constantly with records and chronicles. St. Boniface may be counted among the collectors, though he could carry but a modest supply of books through the German forests and the marshes of Fries- land. As a missionary he found it useful to display a finely-painted volume. Writing to the Abbess Eadburga for a Missal, he asked that the parchment might be gay with colours,—' even as a glittering lamp and an illumination for the hearts of the Gentiles.' ' I entreat you,' he writes again, ' to send me St. Peter's Epistle in letters of gold.' He begged all his friends to send him books as a refreshment in the wilderness. Bishop Daniel is asked for the Prophecies ' written very large.' Bishop Lulla is to send a cos- mography and a volume of poems. He applies to one Archbishop for the works of Bede, ' who is the lamp of the Church,' and to the other for the Pope's Answers to Augustine, which cannot be found in the