The First Information Revolution

PRINTING PRESSES AND LIBRARIANS INTERPRETED CENSORSHIP AS DAMAGE AND ROUTED AROUND IT.

- JOEL MILLER

IN THE NAME of the Rose, Umberto Eco describes a labyrinthine monastic library large enough to lose oneself in. The novelist didn't mention how many books filled its rooms, but John O. Ward of the University of Sydney worked out some straightforward calculations based on Eco's description of the layout and space. The collection, he concluded, would amount to 85,000 volumes.

The library was the "greatest in Christendom," Eco wrote. But actually, it was far, far bigger. It's not uncommon for a modern American public library to contain so many volumes, but no medieval library possessed that number—nowhere close.

Many early monastic libraries could fit their entire collections (probably just a couple of dozen codices) in a niche in the wall or in a single wooden box. As the centuries mounted, so did the stacks. Industrious monks added to the pile every year, but even then we're talking about relatively few volumes. In the sixth and seventh centuries, for instance, monks in the Latin West produced only around 120 books per year—in total. With such low output, libraries of massive size were unimaginable. In Anglo-Saxon Britain, for instance, they rarely exceeded 60 books.

Maybe we should expect small figures. This was, after all, before Charlemagne's education reforms. But if we jump to the Continent a bit later in the ninth century, as the reformers beavered away and book production climbed, inventory evidence for monastic libraries still underwhelms. Saint-Riquier sported just 256 books; St. Gallen, 264; Murbach, 315; and Reichenau, 415. Even the best libraries were poorly endowed. Lorsch shelved 590 books, and Bobbio, one of the most preeminent of all, housed 666. Perhaps an ominous number, but still far short of what Michel de Montaigne—a single individual, not an entire institution—eventually amassed on his own.