The Philobiblon
by Richard de Bury
Chapter XVI
That it is meritorious to write new books and to
renew the old
Just as it is necessary for the state to prepare arms and
to provide abundant stores of victuals for the soldiers who
are to fight for it, so it is fitting for the Church
Militant to fortify itself against the assaults of pagans
and heretics with a multitude of sound writings.
But because all the appliances of mortal men with the
lapse of time suffer the decay of mortality, it is needful
to replace the volumes that are worn out with age by fresh
successors, that the perpetuity of which the individual is
by its nature incapable may be secured to the species; and
hence it is that the Preacher says: Of making many books
there is no end. For as the bodies of books, seeing that
they are formed of a combination of contrary elements,
undergo a continual dissolution of their structure, so by
the forethought of the clergy a remedy should be found, by
means of which the sacred book paying the debt of nature may
obtain a natural heir and may raise up like seed to its dead
brother, and thus may be verified that saying of
Ecclesiasticus: His father is dead, and he is as if he were
not dead; for he hath left one behind him that is like
himself. And thus the transcription of ancient books is as
it were the begetting of fresh sons, on whom the office of
the father may devolve, lest it suffer detriment. Now such
transcribers are called antiquarii, whose occupations
Cassiodorus confesses please him above all the tasks of
bodily labour, adding: "Happy effort," he says, "laudable
industry, to preach to men with the hand, to let loose
tongues with the fingers, silently to give salvation to
mortals, and to fight with pen and ink against the illicit
wiles of the Evil One." So far Cassiodorus. Moreover, our
Saviour exercised the office of the scribe when He stooped
down and with His finger wrote on the ground (John viii.),
that no one, however exalted, may think it unworthy of him
to do what he sees the wisdom of God the Father did.
O singular serenity of writing, to practise which the
Artificer of the world stoops down, at whose dread name
every knee doth bow! O venerable handicraft pre-eminent
above all other crafts that are practised by the hand of
man, to which our Lord humbly inclines His breast, to which
the finger of God is applied, performing the office of a
pen! We do not read of the Son of God that He sowed or
ploughed, wove or digged; nor did any other of the mechanic
arts befit the divine wisdom incarnate except to trace
letters in writing, that every gentleman and sciolist may
know that fingers are given by God to men for the task of
writing rather than for war. Wherefore we entirely approve
the judgment of books, wherein they declared in our sixth
chapter the clerk who cannot write to be as it were
disabled.
God himself inscribes the just in the book of the living;
Moses received the tables of stone written with the finger
of God. Job desires that he himself that judgeth would write
a book. Belshazzar trembled when he saw the fingers of a
man's hand writing upon the wall, Mene tekel phares.
I wrote, says Jeremiah, with ink in the book. Christ bids
his beloved disciple John, What thou seest write in a book.
So the office of the writer is enjoined on Isaiah and on
Joshua, that the act and skill of writing may be commended
to future generations. Christ Himself has written on His
vesture and on His thigh King of Kings and Lord of
Lords, so that without writing the royal ornaments of
the Omnipotent cannot be made perfect. Being dead they cease
not to teach, who write books of sacred learning. Paul did
more for building up the fabric of the Church by writing his
holy epistles, than by preaching by word of mouth to Jews
and Gentiles. He who has attained the prize continues daily
by books, what he long ago began while a sojourner upon the
earth; and thus is fulfilled in the doctors writing books
the saying of the Prophet: They that turn many to
righteousness shall be as the stars for ever and ever.
Moreover, it has been determined by the doctors of the
Church that the longevity of the ancients, before God
destroyed the original world by the Deluge, is to be
ascribed to a miracle and not to nature; as though God
granted to them such length of days as was required for
finding out the sciences and writing them in books; amongst
which the wonderful variety of astronomy required, according
to Josephus, a period of six hundred years, to submit it to
ocular observation. Nor, indeed, do they deny that the
fruits of the earth in that primitive age afforded a more
nutritious aliment to men than in our modern times, and thus
they had not only a livelier energy of body, but also a more
lengthened period of vigour; to which it contributed not a
little that they lived according to virtue and denied
themselves all luxurious delights. Whoever therefore is by
the good gift of God endowed with gift of science, let him,
according to the counsel of the Holy Spirit, write wisdom in
his time of leisure (Eccles. xxxviii.), that his reward may
be with the blessed and his days may be lengthened in this
present world.
And further, if we turn our discourse to the princes of
the world, we find that famous emperors not only attained
excellent skill in the art of writing, but indulged greatly
in its practice. Julius Caesar, the first and greatest of
them all, has left us Commentaries on the Gallic and the
Civil Wars written by himself; he wrote also two books De
Analogia, and two books of Anticatones, and a
poem called Iter; and many other works. Julius and
Augustus devised means of writing one letter for another,
and so concealing what they wrote. For Julius put the fourth
letter for the first, and so on through the alphabet; whilst
Augustus used the second for the first, the third for the
second, and so throughout. He is said in the greatest
difficulties of affairs during the Mutinensian War to have
read and written and even declaimed every day. Tiberius
wrote a lyric poem and some Greek verses. Claudius likewise
was skilled in both Greek and Latin, and wrote several
books. But Titus was skilled above all men in the art of
writing, and easily imitated any hand he chose; so that he
used to say that if he had wished it he might have become a
most skilful forger. All these things are noted by Suetonius
in his Lives of the XII. Caesars.
- The Philobiblon
by Richard de Bury
Chapter XV
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