Page:Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods.djvu/63

 ancient world were followed; and that private libraries were arranged upon the Roman model in presses, with busts, mottoes, and the like. Such was the library of Isidore, Bishop of Seville (601–636). He was a voluminous writer, and seems to have had a voluminous library, divided, if I interpret the arrangements correctly, among fourteen presses, each ornamented by one or more portrait-busts or medallions with suitable verses beneath them. The series concludes with a notice Ad interventorem, a person whom we may call A talkative intruder:

How useful such an admonition would be in modern libraries, if only it could be enforced!

So late as the end of the twelfth century I find a Bishop who bequeathed his library to a church describing it as "the contents of my press (plenarium armarium meum)."

Gradually, however, other methods came