curately bounded by the years 500 and 1500 A. D. It matters little,
however, since there is no attempt at chronological arrangement.

About the middle of the present century there began to be a disposition
to grant to mediaeval times their proper place in the history of the
preservation and dissemination of books, and Merryweather's _Bibliomania
in the Middle Ages_ was one of the earliest works in English devoted to
the subject. Previous to that time, those ten centuries lying between the
fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of learning were generally
referred to as the Dark Ages, and historians and other writers were wont
to treat them as having been without learning or scholarship of any kind.

Even Mr. Hallam,[1] with all that judicial temperament and patient
research to which we owe so much, could find no good to say of the Church
or its institutions, characterizing the early university as the abode of
"indigent vagabonds withdrawn from usual labor," and all monks as
positive enemies of learning.

The gloomy survey of Mr. Hallam, clouded no doubt by his antipathy to all
things ecclesiastical, served, however, to arouse the interest of the
period, which led to other studies with different results, and later
writers were able to discern below the surface of religious fanaticism
and superstition so characteristic of those centuries, much of interest
in the history of literature; to show that every age produced learned and
inquisitive men by whom books were highly prized and industriously
collected for their own sakes; in short, to rescue the period from the
stigma of absolute illiteracy.

If the reader cares to pursue the subject further, after going through
the fervid defense of the love of books in the middle ages, of which this
is the introduction, he will find outside of its chapters abundant
evidence that the production and care of books was a matter of great
concern. In the pages of _Mores Catholici; or Ages of Faith_, by Mr.
Kenelm Digby,[2] or of _The Dark Ages_, by Dr. S. R. Maitland,[3] or of
that great work of recent years, _Books and their Makers during the
Middle Ages_, by Mr. George Haven Putnam,[4] he will see vivid and
interesting portraits of a great multitude of mediaeval worthies who were
almost lifelong lovers of learning and books, and zealous laborers in
preserving, increasing and transmitting them. And though little of the
mass that has come down to us was worthy of preservation on its own