and a library of reference.

Thirdly, it is evident that the loan of books to persons in general, on
adequate security, began at a very early date. On this account I have
already ventured to call monastic libraries the public libraries of the
Middle Ages. As time went on, the practice was developed, and at last
became general. It was even enjoined upon monks as a duty by their
ecclesiastical superiors. In 1212 a Council which met at Paris made the
following decree, but I am not able to say whether it was accepted out of
France:

We forbid those who belong to a religious Order, to
formulate any vow against lending their books to those
who are in need of them; seeing that to lend is
enumerated among the principal works of mercy.

After careful consideration, let some books be kept in
the House for the use of brethren; others, according to
the decision of the abbat, be lent to those who are in
need of them, the rights of the House being
safe-guarded.

From the present date no book is to be retained under
pain of incurring a curse [for its alienation], and we
declare all such curses to be of no effect[147].

In the same century many volumes were bequeathed to the Augustinian House
of S. Victor, Paris, on the express condition that they should be so
lent[148]. It is almost needless to add that one abbey was continually
lending to another, either for reading or for copying[149].

Houses which lent liberally would probably be the first to relax
discipline so far as to admit strangers to their libraries; and in the
sixteenth and following centuries the libraries of the Benedictine House
of S. Germain des Pres, Paris, as well as the already mentioned House of
S. Victor, were open to all comers on certain days in the week.

When we try to realise the feelings with which monastic communities
regarded books, it must always be remembered that they had a paternal
interest in them. In many cases they had been written in the very House in
which they were afterwards read from generation to generation: and if not,
they had probably been procured by the exchange of some work so written.
In fact, if a book was not a son of the House, it was at least a nephew.

The conviction that books were a possession with which no convent could
dispense, appears in many medieval writers. The whole matter is summed up
in the phrase, written about 1170, "claustrum sine armario, castrum sine
armamen