|
EARLIEST BOOK-DESK.
You will agree with me, I feel sure, that this statute, or similar
provisions extracted from[Pg 36] other regulations, is the source of the
collegiate provisions for an annual audit and distribution of books; while
the reservation of the undistributed volumes, and their chaining for
common use in a library, was in accordance with the unwritten practice of
the monasteries. This being the case I think that we are justified in
assuming that the internal fittings of the libraries would be identical
also; and it must be further remembered that both collegiate and monastic
libraries were being fitted up during the same period, the fifteenth
century.
EARLIEST BOOK-DESK.
When books were first placed in a separate room, fastened with iron
chains, for the use of the Fellows of a college or the monks of a convent,
the piece of furniture used was, I take it, an elongated lectern or desk,
of a convenient height for a seated reader to use. The books lay on their
sides on the desk, and were attached by chains to a horizontal bar above
it. There were at least two libraries in this University fitted with such
desks, at the colleges of[Pg 37] Pembroke and Queens'; and that it was a common
form abroad is proved by its appearance in a French translation of the
first book of the[Pg 38] Consolations of Philosophy of Boethius, which I
lately found in the British Museum[1], executed towards the end of the
fifteenth century (fig. 1).
BOOK-DESKS AT ZUTPHEN.
Fig. 1. Interior of a library: from a MS. of a French translation of the first book of the Consolations of Philosophy of Boethius.
One example at least of these fittings still exists, in the library
attached to the church of S. Wallberg, at Zutphen in Holland. This library
was built in its present position in 1555, but I suspect that some of the
fittings, those namely which are more richly ornamented, were removed from
an earlier library. Each of these desks is 9 feet long by 5 feet 6 inches
high; and, as you will see directly, a man can sit and read at them very
conveniently. I shall shew you first a general view of part of the library
(fig. 2); and, secondly, a single desk (fig. 3).
Such cases as these must have been in use at the Sorbonne, where a library
was first established in 1289 for books chained for the common convenience
of the Fellows (in communem sociorum utilitatem). A description of this
library, based probably on records now lost, [Pg 39]has been given by Claude
Héméré (Librarian 1638-1643) in his MS. history. This I proceed to
translate:
Next: The Library at the Sorbonne
|
