pot where
Christianity--more than twelve hundred years ago--first obtained a
permanent footing in Britain, stands the proud metropolitan cathedral of
Canterbury--a venerable and lasting monument of ancient piety and monkish
zeal. St. Augustine, who brought over the glad tidings of the Christian
faith in the year 596, founded that noble structure on the remains of a
church which Roman Christians in remote times had built there. To write
the literary history of its old monastery would spread over more pages
than this volume contains, so many learned and bookish abbots are
mentioned in its monkish annals. Such, however, is beyond the scope of my
present design, and I have only to turn over those ancient chronicles to
find how the love of books flourished in monkish days; so that, whilst I
may here and there pass unnoticed some ingenious author, or only casually
remark upon his talents, all that relate to libraries or book-collecting,
to bibliophiles or scribes, I shall carefully record; and, I think, from
the notes now lying before me, and which I am about to arrange in
something like order, the reader will form a very different idea of
monkish libraries than he previously entertained.

The name that first attracts our attention in the early history of
Canterbury Church is that of Theodore of Tarsus, the father of
Anglo-Saxon literature, and certainly the first who introduced
bibliomania into this island; for when he came on his mission from Rome
in the year 668 he brought with him an extensive library, containing many
Greek and Latin authors, in a knowledge of which he was thoroughly
initiated. Bede tells us that he was well skilled in metrical art,
astronomy, arithmetic, church music, and the Greek and Latin
languages.[88] At his death[89] the library of Christ Church Monastery
was enriched by his valuable books, and in the time of old Lambarde some
of them still remained. He says, in his quaint way, "The Reverend Father
Mathew, nowe Archbishop of Canterburie, whose care for the conservation
of learned monuments can never be sufficiently commended, shewed me, not
long since, the Psalter of David, and sundrie homilies in Greek; Homer
also and some other Greeke authors beautifully wrytten on thicke paper,
with the name of this Theodore prefixed in the fronte, to whose librarie
he reasonably thought, being thereto led by shew of great antiquitie that
they sometimes belonged."[90]

Tatwine was a great book lover, if not a b