was borne upon the honorable roll of the benefactors
of the house. Large sums of money and even estates were given for choice
manuscripts and manuscripts were considered worthy gifts for kings. We
have a record of the 12th century in England of fifty marks being paid
for a Bible. This sum of money, taking into account the very great
difference in purchasing power, would represent at least $3000 of the
money of to-day.

As time went on enlightened kings like Alfred of England and the Emperor
Charlemagne patronized and forwarded learning. Laymen, particularly
kings and great nobles, began to collect libraries of their own. The
National Library of France was begun by King John, who reigned from 1350
to 1364, who started it with twenty volumes. His son Charles V brought
the number up to 900. It contained books on devotion, astrology, law,
medicine, history, and a few classics.

The revival of learning in the 14th century, as might be expected, gave
a great stimulus to the production of manuscripts and at the time of the
invention of printing from movable types in the middle of the 15th
century the manufacture of manuscripts was going on rapidly and there
were many great libraries in existence. Matthias Corvinus, King of
Hungary in the 15th century, had a library of nearly 50,000 volumes.
Duke Frederick of Urbino in Italy had one nearly as large. Duke
Frederick had thirty-four copyists regularly employed in his library. It
is interesting to note that this library contained perfect copies of
practically every book known to be in existence at that time. This fact
throws an interesting light on the extent of the world's literature so
recently as 500 years ago. Among the earliest of the libraries formed
outside of monasteries were those collected by the Arabs of North Africa
and Spain. Although some of the early Mohammedan conquerors were
ignorant and bigoted fanatics like the destroyer of Alexandria, the
Arabs, or Saracens as they are sometimes called, as a whole were a
highly civilized people of great culture in art, science, and
literature. They were far in advance of their Christian neighbors and
continued to be so until their final overthrow in Spain by Ferdinand
and Isabella about the time of the discovery of America.

The growth of the universities from the 12th century onward played a
great part in the multiplication of books and the growth of libraries.
Then, as now, the library was the heart of the university. Even m