The Philobiblon
by Richard de Bury
Chapter XVII
Of showing due propriety in the custody of
books
We are not only rendering service to God in preparing
volumes of new books, but also exercising an office of
sacred piety when we treat books carefully, and again when
we restore them to their proper places and commend them to
inviolable custody; that they may rejoice in purity while we
have them in our hands, and rest securely when they are put
back in their repositories. And surely next to the vestments
and vessels dedicated to the Lord's body, holy books deserve
to be rightly treated by the clergy, to which great injury
is done so often as they are touched by unclean hands.
Wherefore we deem it expedient to warn our students of
various negligences, which might always be easily avoided
and do wonderful harm to books.
And in the first place as to the opening and closing of
books, let there be due moderation, that they be not
unclasped in precipitate haste, nor when we have finished
our inspection be put away without being duly closed. For it
behoves us to guard a book much more carefully than a
boot.
But the race of scholars is commonly badly brought up,
and unless they are bridled in by the rules of their elders
they indulge in infinite puerilities. They behave with
petulance, and are puffed up with presumption, judging of
everything as if they were certain, though they are
altogether inexperienced.
You may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily
lounging over his studies, and when the winter's frost is
sharp, his nose running from the nipping cold drips down,
nor does he think of wiping it with his pocket-handkerchief
until he has bedewed the book before him with the ugly
moisture. Would that he had before him no book, but a
cobbler's apron! His nails are stuffed with fetid filth as
black as jet, with which he marks any passage that pleases
him. He distributes a multitude of straws, which he inserts
to stick out in different places, so that the halm may
remind him of what his memory cannot retain. These straws,
because the book has no stomach to digest them, and no one
takes them out, first distend the book from its wonted
closing, and at length, being carelessly abandoned to
oblivion, go to decay. He does not fear to eat fruit or
cheese over an open book, or carelessly to carry a cup to
and from his mouth; and because he has no wallet at hand he
drops into books the fragments that are left. Continually
chattering, he is never weary of disputing with his
companions, and while he alleges a crowd of senseless
arguments, he wets the book lying half open in his lap with
sputtering showers. Aye, and then hastily folding his arms
he leans forward on the book, and by a brief spell of study
invites a prolonged nap; and then, by way of mending the
wrinkles, he folds back the margin of the leaves, to the no
small injury of the book. Now the rain is over and gone, and
the flowers have appeared in our land. Then the scholar we
are speaking of, a neglecter rather than an inspecter of
books, will stuff his volume with violets, and primroses,
with roses and quatrefoil. Then he will use his wet and
perspiring hands to turn over the volumes; then he will
thump the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of
dust, and with his finger clad in long-used leather will
hunt line by line through the page; then at the sting of the
biting flea the sacred book is flung aside, and is hardly
shut for another month, until it is so full of the dust that
has found its way within, that it resists the effort to
close it.
But the handling of books is specially to be forbidden to
those shameless youths, who as soon as they have learned to
form the shapes of letters, straightway, if they have the
opportunity, become unhappy commentators, and wherever they
find an extra margin about the text, furnish it with
monstrous alphabets, or if any other frivolity strikes their
fancy, at once their pen begins to write it. There the
Latinist and sophister and every unlearned writer tries the
fitness of his pen, a practice that we have frequently seen
injuring the usefulness and value of the most beautiful
books.
Again, there is a class of thieves shamefully mutilating
books, who cut away the margins from the sides to use as
material for letters, leaving only the text, or employ the
leaves from the ends, inserted for the protection of the
book, for various uses and abuses-- a kind of sacrilege
which should be prohibited by the threat of anathema.
Again, it is part of the decency of scholars that
whenever they return from meals to their study, washing
should invariably precede reading, and that no
grease-stained finger should unfasten the clasps, or turn
the leaves of a book. Nor let a crying child admire the
pictures in the capital letters, lest he soil the parchment
with wet fingers; for a child instantly touches whatever he
sees. Moreover, the laity, who look at a book turned upside
down just as if it were open in the right way, are utterly
unworthy of any communion with books. Let the clerk take
care also that the smutty scullion reeking from his stewpots
does not touch the lily leaves of books, all unwashed, but
he who walketh without blemish shall minister to the
precious volumes. And, again, the cleanliness of decent
hands would be of great benefit to books as well as
scholars, if it were not that the itch and pimples are
characteristic of the clergy.
Whenever defects are noticed in books, they should be
promptly repaired, since nothing spreads more quickly than a
tear and a rent which is neglected at the time will have to
be repaired afterwards with usury.
Moses, the gentlest of men, teaches us to make bookcases
most neatly, wherein they may be protected from any injury:
Take, he says, this book of the law, and put it in
the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your
God. O fitting place and appropriate for a library,
which was made of imperishable shittim-wood, and was all
covered within and without with gold! But the Saviour also
has warned us by His example against all unbecoming
carelessness in the handling of books, as we read in S.
Luke. For when He had read the scriptural prophecy of
Himself in the book that was delivered to Him, He did not
give it again to the minister, until He had closed it with
his own most sacred hands. By which students are most
clearly taught that in the care of books the merest trifles
ought not to be neglected.
- The Philobiblon
by Richard de Bury
Chapter XVI
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