now determined to protect it
with all the powers of oratorial denunciation; but, looking beyond this
veil of prejudice, I am prone to regard them favorably, for their intense
love of books, which they sought for and bought up with passionate
eagerness. Fitzralph, quite unintentionally, bestows a bright compliment
upon them, and as it bears upon our subject and illustrates the learning
of the time, I am tempted to give a few extracts; he sorely laments the
decrease of the number of students in the university of Oxford; "So,"
says he, "that yet in my tyme, in the universitie of Oxenford, were
thirty thousand Scolers at ones; and now beth unnethe[188] sixe
thousand."[189] All the blame of this he lays to the friars, and accuses
them of doing "more grete damage to learning." "For these orders of
beggers, for endeless wynnynges that thei geteth by beggyng of the
forseide pryvyleges of schriftes and sepultures and othere, thei beth now
so multiplyed in conventes and in persons. That many men tellith that in
general studies unnethe, is it founde to sillynge a profitable book of ye
faculte of art, of dyvynyte, of lawe canon, of phisik, other of lawe
civil, but alle bookes beth y-bougt of Freres, so that en ech convent of
Freres is a noble librarye and a grete,[190] and so that ene rech Frere
that hath state in scole, siche as thei beth nowe, hath an hughe
librarye. And also y-sent of my Sugettes[191] to scole thre other foure
persons, and hit is said me that some of them beth come home azen for
thei myst nougt[192] finde to selle ovn goode Bible; nother othere
couenable[193] books." This strange accusation proves how industriously
the friars collected books, and we cannot help regarding them with much
esteem for doing so. Richard de Bury fully admits his obligations to the
mendicants, from whom he obtained many choice transcripts. "When indeed,"
says he, "we happened to turn aside to the towns and places where the
aforesaid paupers had convents, we were not slack in visiting their
chests and other repositories of books, for there, amidst the deepest
poverty, we found the most exalted riches treasured up; there, in their
satchells and baskets, we discovered not only the crumbs that fell from
the master's table for the little dogs, but indeed the shew bread without
leaven, the bread of angels, containing in itself all that is
delectable;" and moreover, he says, that he found these friars "not
selfish hoarders, but meet professors o