St. Cronan's copy fell into Loch Cre, and remained
under water forty days without injury. Even fire
could not harm St. Cainnech's case of books.[1] Nor is it
surprising they should be looked upon as sacred. The
scribes and illuminators who took such loving care to make
their work perfect, and the craftsmen who wrought beautiful
shrines for the books so made, were animated with the
feeling and spirit which impels men to erect beautiful
churches to testify to the glory of their Creator. As
Dimma says, they "wrote them for God."
[1] Other instances are cited in Adamnan, book ii., chap 8.
CHAPTER II. THE ENGLISH MONKS AND THEIR BOOKS
"There are delightful libraries, more aromatic than stores of
spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes;
there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there
are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of
Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor
of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is
most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this
passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and
eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and
numbers.
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