ll not the lover of
artistic beauty award his praise to the Norman bishop--those massive
columns and stupendous arches excite the admiring wonder of all; built on
a rocky eminence and surrounded by all the charms of a romantic scenery,
it is one of the finest specimens of architecture which the enthusiasm of
monkish days dedicated to piety and to God. Its liberal founder however
did not live to see it finished, for he died in the year 1095, two years
after laying its foundation stone. His bookloving propensities have been
honorably recorded, and not only was he fond of reading, but kept the
pens of the scribes in constant motion, and used himself to superintend
the transcription of manuscripts, as the colophon of a folio volume in
Durham library fully proves.[163] The monkish bibliophiles of his church
received from him a precious gift of about 40 volumes, containing among
other valuable books Prosper, Pompeii, Tertullian, and a great Bible in
two volumes.[164]

It would have been difficult perhaps to have found in those days a body
of monks so "bookish" as those of Durham; not only did they transcribe
with astonishing rapidity, proving that there was no want of vellum
there, but they must have bought or otherwise collected a great number of
books; for the see of Durham, in the early part of the 12th century,
could show a library embracing nearly 300 volumes.[165]

Nor let the reader imagine that the collection possessed no merit in a
literary point of view, or that the monks cared for little else save
legends of saints or the literature of the church; the catalogue proves
them to have enjoyed a more liberal and a more refined taste, and again
display the cloistered students of the middle ages as the preservers of
classic learning. This is a point worth observing on looking over the old
parchment catalogues of the monks; for as by their Epistles we obtain a
knowledge of their intimacy with the old writers, and the use they made
of them, so by their catalogues we catch a glimpse of the means they
possessed of becoming personally acquainted with their beauties; by the
process much light may be thrown on the gloom of those long past times,
and perhaps we shall gain too a better view of the state of learning
existing then. But that the reader may judge for himself, I extract the
names of some of the writers whom the monks of Durham preserved and
read:

Alcuin.
Ambrose.
Aratores.
Anselm.
Augustine.