
The library, Rievaul Abbey
If I was surprised by the size of the chapter houses I’ve seen, I was dumbfounded by the size of the libraries. I had anticipated huge spaces, but they were tiny.
All monasteries had a library, but they weren’t necessarily very large, not to start with, at least. In the early Middle Ages, all of a monastery’s books could be kept in a single cupboard. Eventually, however, they needed a room to themselves. From the end of the fourteenth century in many monasteries, that room had to be quite large. By the end of the Middle Ages, even a fairly small monastery could have 1,000 books. The monastery at Canterbury had over 4,000.
Most of the monasteries I’ve visited recently are Cistercian. As you can see from the photograph of the libraries at Rievaulx Abbey above and Roche Abbey below, their libraries tended to be narrow spaces between the north transept of the abbey church and the chapter house. All Cistercian monasteries were laid out on the same plan, with some accommodation being made for the geography of the site and the size of the monastery, so they all had fairly small libraries.

The Library, Roche Abbey
In monasteries of other orders, the libraries eventually became quite large and there would be additional cupboards of books located around the monastery: in the church, the refectory and the infirmary. Like the dormitories, these larger libraries were often on upper floors.
Books were both valuable and rare, even more so in the early Middle Ages. Before the invention of printing in the fifteenth century, every book had to be written by hand. The books in a monastic library were either copied in the monastery’s own scriptorium or were the gifts of benefactors. The armarius was responsible for both the library and the scriptorium. Monks could borrow books for their own use from the library and there was time set aside each day for them to read. They didn’t read in the library, but, mainly, in the cloister.
Reading was an important activity for a monk. As a minimum, a monastery had books for the offices and some complete Bibles. The libraries typically held individual books of the Bible for personal study. These often had notes or commentaries written in the margins. Works of the Church Fathers (such as St. Augustine, St. Ambrose and St. Jerome) were also held, as were histories; lives of saints; classical texts; books of sermons; meditations; and treatises on medicine and agriculture.
In the thirteenth century, Rievaulx Abbey had 225 books, of which 22 survive. Two catalogues from that time are extant and they list legal works; histories by Bede, Henry of Huntingdon and Eusebius; philosophical works by Cicero and Boethius; books by Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the founders of the Cistercian order; and works by former abbots and monks of the monastery.
Many books from monastic libraries were burned during the dissolution of the Monasteries, although some libraries were just broken up, with the books ending up in private hands. Fortunately, men like Sir Robert Cotton recognised the importance of these books and collected and preserved as many of them as they could. The collection of Sir Robert, his son and his grandson later formed the basis of the British Library.
Sources:
The Companion to Cathedrals and Abbeys by Stephen Friar
Rievaulx Abbey by Peter Fergusson, Glyn Coppack, Stuart Harrison and Michael Carter
Roche Abbey by Peter Fergusson
The Medieval Monastery by Roger Rosewell
April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.
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I didn’t know they destroyed books when they broke up the monasteries.
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Apparently they used some of the pages to light fires. Once they had printed books they didn’t value the hand-written ones.
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Of course. Let’s get rid of this old-fashioned nonsense.
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They were modern men.
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As were the people who got rid of all those old-fashioned carved pews and replaced them with up-to-date ugly ones. It’s so good to remind myself of how much we learn from our mistakes.
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You have to recognise and admit to yourself that it was a mistake, and most of us aren’t that humble.
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All too true.
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I like that there was time set aside for reading every day, I did not know that and imagined them toiling at monkish things 24/7. I feel better for monks now!
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There was a limited range of what they could read, though.
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True that…no thrillers for a start…
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I shouldn’t think they read fiction at all, although some of the histories would have contained a fair bit of fiction. They wouldn’t have known that, though.
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No I guess not…and also as they didnt know wbaout thrillers maybe they wouldnt miss them.
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Some of the romances might have contained thriller elements, although I have to confess that they were missing from the ones I’ve read.
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I’m surprised how small they are too. I always imagine monks toiling away illustrating manuscripts all day, did they have special monks for that?
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They did it somewhere else. I’ll probably do that next week.
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Look forward to it!
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One of our local aristocrats Sir Hans Sloan from Kilinchy, was an avid collector. I know he bequeathed much of this to the nation, they formed the basis of the Natural History Museum and the British Museum, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he was involved with the British Library too. Had fingers in lots of pies that one.
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Those early collectors saved a lot of things that would have been destroyed otherwise.
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Have to ask – did you watch the adaptation series of The Name of the Rose? Excellent Monastic Library themed shenanigans (Not as good as the book, though).
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I did and I enjoyed it. It made me want to read the book again, but I’ll have to leave it a couple of years so that I can forget Rupert Everett’s sneer.
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He does nasty particularly well, I thought.
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He teetered on the edge of charicature more than once, but just managed not to go over.
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Not since my early days has my personal library collection fit into a cupboard, too! Haha. Also, thank goodness for Sir Robert’s foresight!
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Yes, we owe a lot to Sir Robert and his family.
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Destroying monasteries is bad enough but to burn books too especially handwritten is sacrilege. Thank goodness for people like Sir Robert!
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I was listening to a podcast this morning that mentioned some other things that happened to the books, which I won’t repeat. Many of them were sold of on the Continent, where some of them probably remain.
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