Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/261

 UBBARISS

228

UBBARISS

aeventy-two) scholars to Alexandria to make the Greek version required. The work was completed in seventy days, and the translation was read aloud by Demetrius and approved as final.

The " Musseum' (i. e., building consecrated to the Muses), which contained this, the older of the two libraries, seems to have been located within the pre- cincts of the palace, but the other, of later date, was formed in connexion with the temple of Serapis, hence called the Serapeum. Much havoc was wrought among its treasures when Bishop Theophilus made his attack upon pagan worship at Alexandria in a. d. 390, and whatever remained of the library must have perished after the incursion of the Arabs in 641. Al- though Polybius, writing in the second century before Christ, speaks (xii, 27) as though libraries would natu- rally be found m any large town, it is only in the last years of the Roman Republic that we hear much of libraries in Rome itself. At first these collections were in private hands— Cicero, for example, seems to have taken much pains in acauiring booW—but, after an unfulfilled project of Julius Csesar to form a library for public use, C. Asinius PoUio carried this idea into execution a little later by means of the spoils he had obtained in his Illjyrrian campaign 39 b. c. The Em- peror Augustus himself soon followed the same ex- ample, and we hear of the collections both of Greek ana Latin books formed by him, first in the Porticus Octaviae, which he restored about the year 33 b. c. and, secondly, within the precincts of the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, dedicated in 28 b. c. From this time forth public libraries multiplied in Rome under the imperial patronage of Tiberius and his suc- cessors, until they numbered, it is said, as many as twenty-six in all. From allusions in such writers as Ovid, Horace, and Aulus Gellius, it seems probable that these libraries, for example that of the Palatine Apollo, were furnished with copies of books on all subjects, and that as soon as a new work of any well- known writer was given to the world the Roman libraries acauired it as a matter of course. We also know tnat they were administered by special officials, and that they served as places of resort for literary men, while one or more of them — notably the Bibliotheca Ulpia in the forum of Trajan — were tised as depositories for the public archives.

At the time that Christianity appeared upon the scene in Rome, it is interesting to leam from Seneca how firm a hold the fashion of maintaining libraries, either public or private, had taken of Roman society. "What", asks Seneca, **is the use of books and li- braries innumerable, if scaree in a lifetime the master reads the titles? . ., Forty thousand books were burnt at Alexandria. I leave to others to praise this splendid monument of royal opulence. . . . Procure as many books as will suffice for use, but not one for show. . . . Why should you excuse a man who wishes to possess book-presses inlaid with arbor-vits wood or ivory, who gathers together masses of au- thors either unknown or discredited, and who derives lus chief delight from their edges and their tickets? You will find, then, in the libraries of the most arrant idlers all that orators or historians have written — book- cases built up as high as the ceiling. Nowadays a library takes rank with a bathroom as a necessaiy ornament of a house. I could forgive such ideas, if they were due to extravagant desire for learning. As it is, these productions of men whose genius we revere, paid for at a high price, with their portraits ranged in line above them, are got together to adorn and Dcau- tify a wall" (De Tranquil. Animi, ix).

These were the fashions that prevailed in the more cultured circles of the Roman Empire at the time when Christianity began ite life-andndeath stru^Ie with paganism. The use of books, even if attended with a certain amount of shallow affectation, was not A weapon which the Church could afford to neglect.

In itself the accumulated learning of past i^ed was i good influence, and the teachers of the new &ith wen not slow in striving to enlist it on their side. In any case some small collection of books was needed for the church services which seem from the very b^rinning to have consisted in part — as does the Divme Office (3 the present day — of readings from the Old and New Testaments, and from worfi of Christian instruction and edification. In this way every church that was founded became the nucleus of a library, and we need not be surprised to find St. Jerome counselline Pam- machius (Ep. xlix, 3) to make use of these colkcti<mB (ecclesiarum bibliothiBcia fruere), and apparently as- suming that wherever there was a congregation of the faithful suitable books would be available. But thm must, of course, have been certain centres where, on account of their position, antiquity, or the exceptional generosity of benefactors, more important accumula- tions existed. Of these the earliest known to us is the library formed at Jerusalem, principally by Bishop Alexander, about the year 250, and containing, as Eusebius atteste, a number of letters and historioftl documents (Hist. Eccles., VI, xxj. Still more im- portant was the library of Csesarea m Palestine. This was collected by the martyr Pamphilus, who suffered in the year 308, and it contained a number of the manuscripts which had been used by Origen (Jerome, In Titum, III, ix). At about the same period again we hear that, in the persecution which devastated Africa (303-304), "the officers went to the church at Cirta, in which the Christians used to assemble, and despoiled it of chalices, lamps, ete., but when they came to the library [bibliotn€cam]f the presses [oT' niaria] were found empty " (see appendix to Optatus). Julian the Apostate, in 362, demanded that the books formerly belonging to George, the Arian Bishop of Alexandria, including "many philosophical and rhe- torical works and many of the doctnnes of the im- pious Galileans'', should be sent him for a libraiy lormerly established by (Ik>nstantiu8 in the imperial palace (Julian, Epist. ix). On the other hand, when St. Augustine was dying, "he directed that the li* brary of the church and all the books should be care- fully kept for posterity forever", and "he bequeathed libraries to the church containing books and treatises by himself or other holy persons" (Possidius, "Vita Aug.", n. 31). In Rome it would seem that Pope Dainasus (366-384) built a record-office (arckivum) which, besides being the depository of official docu- ments, served also as library and chancery. It was connected with the Basilica of St. LAwrence, on the facade of which was an inscription which ended with the three following lines: —

Archivis fateor volui nova condere tecta. Addere prsBterea dextra laevaque columnas.

Quae Damasi teneant proprium per ssecula nomen.

"V

(I confess that I have wished to build a new abode for archives and to add columns on the right and left to preserve the name of Damasus forever.) It is no doubt this building which St. Jerome refers to as "cliartarium ecclesise Romanse". De Rossi and Lanciani conjecture that Damasus, following the model of one of the great libraries of Rome, which in its turn had imitated the arrangement of the famous library of Pergamum, had first Duilt a basilica dedi- cated to St. Lawrence and then added on the north and south sides a colonnade from which the rooms containing the records would be readily accessible (Lanciani, Ancient Rome, pp. 187-190). WheUier this building did or did not ever strictly deserve tJia name of a literary, we have evidence that Pope Aga- petus (535-36) set about the erection of another buud- ing on the Coelian Hill intended for the keeping of books and aften^'ards known as the Library of St. Gregory. There, at any rate, an inscription was to be leadi in the ninth century speaking of the long amy