ed above three hundred volumes, till the unfortunate
fire that destroyed that abbey in 1091. Gale, XV Scriptores, t. i. 93.
Such a library was very extraordinary in the eleventh century, and could
not have been equalled for some ages afterwards. Ingulfus mentions at
the same time a nadir, as he calls it, or planetarium, executed in
various metals. This had been presented to abbot Turketul in the tenth
century by a king of France, and was, I make no doubt, of Arabian or
Greek manufacture.

[514] Parchment was so scarce that none could be procured about 1120 for
an illuminated copy of the Bible. Warton's Hist. of English Poetry,
Dissert. II. I suppose the deficiency was of skins beautiful enough for
this purpose; it cannot be meant that there was no parchment for legal
instruments.

Manuscripts written on papyrus, as may be supposed from the fragility of
the material, as well as the difficulty of procuring it, are of extreme
rarity. That in the British Museum, being a charter to a church at
Ravenna in 572, is in every respect the most curious: and indeed both
Mabillon and Muratori seem never to have seen anything written on
papyrus, though they trace its occasional use down to the eleventh or
twelfth centuries. Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, 1. ii.; Muratori,
Antichita Italiane, Dissert. xliii. p. 602. But the authors of the
Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique speak of several manuscripts on this
material as extant in France and Italy. t. i. p. 493.

As to the general scarcity and high price of books in the middle ages,
Robertson (Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note x.), and Warton in the
above-cited dissertation, not to quote authors less accessible, have
collected some of the leading facts; to whom I refer the reader.

[515] Lest I should seem to have spoken too peremptorily, I wish it to
be understood that I pretend to hardly any direct acquaintance with
these writers, and found my censure on the authority of others, chiefly
indeed on the admissions of those who are too disposed to fall into a
strain of panegyric. See Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. iv. p. 281
et alibi.

[516] John Scotus, who, it is almost needless to say, must not be
confounded with the still more famous metaphysician Duns Scotus, lived
under Charles the Bald, in the middle of the ninth century. It admits of
no doubt that John Scotus was, in a literary and philosophical sense,
the most remarkable man of the dark ages; no one else had his boldnes