The History of the Library in Western Civilization III: From Constantine the Great to Cardinal Bessarion

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2008), "The History of the Library in Western Civilization III: From Constantine the Great to Cardinal Bessarion", Library Review, Vol. 57 No. 7, pp. 558-562. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530810894121

We are continually reminded of the close links between libraries, history and culture by studies of early libraries and book production such as this. Arguably, this work is more the domain now of cultural and book trade historians, and of scholars in certain fields (like Byzantine history, the growth of early Christian historiography, palaeography, and the history of architecture), than of what we call librarians and information specialists, whose main attention is now on information literacy and internet 2.0, open source and metadata. These things are closer together intellectually and historically than we imagine, but that is another story. Our focus here is the connection between book history and literary culture, a growing field as this work and others (like those of Grafton and Williams (2006), and Eliot et al. (2007) demonstrate).

This third volume in the series on the history of the library in Western civilization (copublished by Oak Knoll, HES & De Graaf, and Kotinos) moves on from the ground examined in the first two volumes – the first on the Greek world from the archival libraries of the Minoans to the library of the Ptolemies, and the second on the Roman world from Cicero to Hadrian (and the start of monumental and private libraries in the Roman empire). Four and five are to follow (on the medieval world in the West and on the Renaissance), and Konstantinos Staikos is involved with all of them. Readers may recognize the name from other publications like The Printed Greek Book: 15th‐19th Century (2004) and The Mirror of the Library (2006, a study of fine press printing), both available from Oak Knoll (see their website at: www.oakknoll.com). It seems almost quaint or sentimental in a pragmatic world to praise this historical series for qualities likely to appeal to a bibliophile, but it is a superbly produced artefact in its own right, lavishly and scrupulously illustrated (with maps, reproductions in full colour, and photographs of sites). There is a deluxe full leather edition (again from Oak Knoll). The Didot and Porson fonts make the typography a joy to read.

An informative preface sets the scene – the Graeco‐Roman book tradition, above all in Constantinople or Byzantium from 330 AD, the interplay between scholarship and libraries and between “classical” scholarship and Christianity (this has a tyrannical side), a moving tapestry extending up to the fall of the city in 1453 and the search by the West for classical manuscripts that led to the Renaissance. In nine vivid and logically organized sections, the story unfolds, starting with book production in the eastern Roman empire and the impact of Christianity and education on libraries. Constantine the Great, in what was called “the Rome of the East”, nurtured an intellectual climate which took on enhanced symbolism with the construction of a new imperial library. Contemporary sources refer to it also as a public library. Julian was taught by Eusebius, the ecclesiastic with such influence on both the church and book production in Caesarea (see Grafton and Williams, 2007), and Julian turned his court into an academy and drove an imperial educational programme that needed libraries. Some scholars and teachers (like Libanius) had their own. Many libraries served not just education but indoctrination – they were “at the serve of Christian education”, established in many places by leaders in the church, and reflecting in some ways the tensions between pagan and religious interpretations for the role of libraries.

Three over‐arching themes, then, emerge from early on in this third volume of the history of the library in Western civilization: the library as political statement, the library as educational resource, and the library as ideological arena. All familiar issues today and we can all think of parallels, even though it is not the intention of this review to indulge in special pleading for the history of the book: the case is already made, although the fate of library history is more ambivalent (and will probably be rescued and resuscitated by the growing impact of book history and cultural history studies, as it should be). Pagan books, like books of magic, were suppressed, the Council of Nicea sought to define heretical books, and numerous heretics were burned along with their books. Book production drew on existing social and commercial structures in that many were copied by slaves and, as a result, book prices were kept low to meet an increasing demand. Shades perhaps today of strategic global production and supermarket discounting? This is a fourth important theme to emerge from this book – how books were produced, copied, disseminated, as well as how they were collected and used.

We have an impressionistic picture of dark ages with pockets of enlightenment (such as imperial and monastic libraries). Conservation understandably emerges as a major challenge to these libraries, not least of all because many of them were on papyrus. Scriptoria specialized in reproducing them on parchment codices. Historians speak of dreadful fires, of precious manuscripts preserved diligently in private collections (like an apocryphal revelation of St Paul), and of popular authors like Procopius whose books were read throughout the empire. Christian writers like Origen wrote many books, including a critical text of the Old Testament in six languages including Hebrew and Greek. Two further themes, then, for us as we take stock of this book: library management (what to do with the rare? what to do with the popular?) and the complex interconnections between intellectual life, book production, and libraries. The book describes some of the important texts produced then and copied later, often with illustrations from them.

We get a rich picture, too, of the distribution of such texts, since we find not just Latin and Greek documents in such libraries but documents also in Arab and Slavonic languages. Pictures of buildings/sites are also provided (some archaeological, some plans from later times). Inevitably, mention is made of the burning of the Serapeum and its library in Alexandria, although it is set in the context of Alexandrian and Egyptian philosophical culture. The view we have of the classical world was, in Byzantium, recontextualized by what the East brought to it, notably complex relationships between Byzantium and Arab culture. Arab culture itself is being re‐evaluated in the English‐speaking Western world, above all for it having indigenous cultural and intellectual ideas and for not simply translating those from classical times. This wash of events cannot ultimately be separated from the growth of empires like the Abbasid Caliphate and from military enterprises like the Crusades. Translation of course is an ideological weapon, and Staikos rightly notes this (in chapter IV). This made Graeco‐Roman libraries in Arab territories particularly resonant of cultural undertones. Private and monastic libraries from the period and place are described, and linked with contemporary controversies and personalities. As with all the chapters, extensive notes are provided.

Historically we then look forward to the Renaissance: booksellers were widespread in Constantinople, we see the dawn of humanism in libraries set up by people like the Patriarch Photius (born about 807 AD) (whose letters and Bibliotheca were published in the seventeenth century) and in textual commentaries. Reconstructions of the libraries of such scholars has remained a persistent theme in book history ever since, as studies of the libraries of writers like Gibbon confirm (opening up that fascinating activity of comparing bibliographical guides and library holdings). The library on Mount Athos was “a Christian city of books” and MSS from it were eventually dispersed throughout Europe and America. For the historian of Byzantium itself, the period from the thirteenth century to 1453, under the Comnenus dynasty, has particular meaning – a time of library building and destruction, of controversies and heresies and of schism. Staikos draws out the evidence of book production and libraries from this dense period, discussing key monastic centres and books held by them. Books were copied (their calligraphy merits study in itself) but also plundered from such libraries in southern Italy and in Greece. In 1204 the Crusaders did to Constantinople's libraries what the German troops did to Louvain in 1914.

Yet – as evidence still has to prove from modern Iraq – libraries recover from disaster: new power blocs emerge after 1204 whose leaders wanted books and the learning they represented. Some rulers were also, almost in the Platonic or Shelleyan sense, also philosophers, such as Theodore II Lascaris of Nicea. Part of the Comnenian empire was Trebizond (in what is now the northern part of Turkey), where scientific inquiry flourished, Persian books translated into Greek and vice versa, and an imperial palace library established. Cardinal Bessarion's encomium on Trebizond (dating from 1436) refers to this library in the acropolis there (he was a great patron of libraries). Libraries from this and earlier (and later) periods are of much interest for their architecture as for their contents and function, and this comes through constantly in the book. Using photographs of external and internal views, Staikos provides a vivid picture of what these libraries looked like or might have looked like. He devotes the whole last (ninth) chapter to the architectural design of libraries, their decoration and equipment: some were modest enough libraries but set in magnificent buildings, others doubled as sacristies or adjoined book‐binderies and scriptoria. Another over‐arching theme for anyone seriously examining book and library history.

Early travellers and collectors (like Robert Curzon, who visited libraries in the Levant and published a book about it in 1849) also described libraries – “Greece and Anatolia were systematically ransacked by collectors looking for artistic and cultural treasures to buy or plunder”. To an extent this was a search by scholars and collectors in the West for “lost” texts and lost manuscripts of classical authors, but many illuminated MSS and codices (like Homer and Hesiod and Aristotle's Poetics) were taken simply for their collectability and saleable value. Ownership and repatriation issues are among several implications of this, but again that is another story. Readers of the book will be interested to hear that early libraries in Cyprus are included here. Then comes that “big” event – 1453 and the Turkish conquest (the focus of chapter VIII). Even before that, however, parchment prices had gone up making books exclusive. Copyists, like freelance editors today, were struggling to earn more, and costs were passed on to customers.

Monasteries, educational institutions, and wealthy individuals continued to be major sponsors of book making, and Staikos recognizes the substantial growth of interest in books at this time and of information about such interest. Controversies like the Hesychast controversy, about the validity of the contemplative life, were catalysts for more writing and production. Many libraries held copies of classical texts like Plato's Timaeus and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. We learn of bibliophiles searching for MSS and building up private collections. Many collections grew up around schools (in the philosophical sense) and groups of literati, even in what are today regarded as quite modest provincial centres. Notoriety of paradoxically encouraged enthusiastic copying, as Luther found later: the pseudonymous Plethon wrote a book of laws modelled on Plato, so politically sensitive that the local patriarch ordered it to be burned. Bessarion himself went to the Peloponnese in 1431 to study there and gathered together one of the finest libraries of Platonic philosophy ever (this looks forward to later volumes in the history series). This in turn triggered interest in Platonic studies in Italy with Ficino and Mirandola and others. As for the capture of Constantinople, it was seen not only as the looting of cultural and artistic treasure, but also as the collapse of Hellenism.

In these ways, then, Staikos maps out that often‐under‐regarded period between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, concentrating on the eastern Mediterranean and what we now call the Middle East. More might and should have been made of the Arab connection but, in all modesty, this is a story that can simply expand for ever. Staikos has kept on track with book production, libraries, and cultural history at the centre, but has also provided a wealth of ideas and visual information associated with these major strands. A book for the scholar and cultural historian, only where there is serious interest in this aspect of history for the librarian, and something for the academic, specialist and private collection. Probably, too, a book worth getting for the series, though the wait might make for impatience.