y of good work that was
of permanent value could be done in a cloister. A charming picture has
come down to us of the literary activity that prevailed in the Abbey of S.
Martin at Tournai at the end of the eleventh century, when Abbat Odo was
giving an impulse to the writing of MSS. "When you entered the cloister,"
says his chronicler, "you could generally see a dozen young monks seated
on chairs, and silently writing at desks of careful and artistic design.
With their help, he got accurate copies made of all Jerome's commentaries
on the Prophets, of the works of Blessed Gregory, and of all the treatises
he could find of Augustine, Ambrose, Isidore, and Anselm; so that the like
of his library was not to be found in any of the neighbouring churches;
and those attached to them used generally to ask for our copies for the
correction of their own[174]."

The second question cannot be answered so readily. We must begin by
examining, in some detail, the expressions used to denote furniture in the
various documents that deal with conventual libraries.

S. Pachomius places his books in a cupboard (_fenestra_); S. Benedict uses
only the general term, library (_bibliotheca_), which may mean either a
room or a piece of furniture; and the word press (_armarium_), with which
we become so familiar afterwards, does not make its appearance till near
the end of the eleventh century. Lanfranc does not use it, but as I have
shewn that he based his statutes, at least to some extent, on the Cluniac
Customs, and as they identify the library (_bibliotheca_) with the press
(_armarium_), and call the librarian, termed by Lanfranc the keeper of the
books, the keeper of the press (_armarius_), we may safely assume that the
books to which Lanfranc refers were housed in a similar piece of
furniture. Moreover, in Benedictine houses of later date, as for instance
at Abingdon and Evesham, the word is constantly employed.

I pointed out in the first chapter that the word press (_armarium_) was
used by the Romans to signify both a detached piece of furniture and a
recess in a wall into which such a contrivance might be inserted[175]. The
same use obtained in medieval times[176], and the passage quoted above
from the Augustinian customs[177] shews that the book-press there
contemplated was a recess lined with wood and subdivided so as to keep the
books separate.

The books to be accommodated in a monastery, even of large size, could not
at its origin