] Putnam, George Haven. "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."

[5] Lacroix, Paul. "Arts of the Middle Ages." Our author, however
(_vide_ page 58, _note_), quotes the accounts of the Church of
Norwich to show that parchments sold late in the thirteenth century
at about 1 d. per sheet; but Putnam and other writers state that up
to that time it was a very costly commodity.

[6] Dickens's Mutual Friend.

CHAPTER I.

_Introductory Remarks--Monachism--Book Destroyers--Effects of the
Reformation on Monkish Learning, etc._

In recent times, in spite of all those outcries which have been so
repeatedly raised against the illiterate state of the dark ages, many and
valuable efforts have been made towards a just elucidation of those
monkish days. These labors have produced evidence of what few
anticipated, and some even now deny, viz., that here and there great
glimmerings of learning are perceivable; and although debased, and often
barbarous too, they were not quite so bad as historians have usually
proclaimed them. It may surprise some, however, that an attempt should be
made to prove that, in the olden time in "merrie Englande," a passion
which Dibdin has christened Bibliomania, existed then, and that there
were many cloistered bibliophiles as warm and enthusiastic in book
collecting as the Doctor himself. But I must here crave the patience of
the reader, and ask him to refrain from denouncing what he may deem a
rash and futile attempt, till he has perused the volume and thought well
upon the many facts contained therein. I am aware that many of these
facts are known to all, but some, I believe, are familiar only to the
antiquary--the lover of musty parchments and the cobwebbed chronicles of
a monastic age. I have endeavored to bring these facts together--to
connect and string them into a continuous narrative, and to extract from
them some light to guide us in forming an opinion on the state of
literature in those ages of darkness and obscurity; and here let it be
understood that I merely wish to give a fact as history records it. I
will not commence by saying the Middle Ages were dark and miserably
ignorant, and search for some poor isolated circumstance to prove it; I
will not affirm that this was pre-eminently the age