Some collections which later were distinctively church
libraries were at first claustral. For convenience' sake we
shall treat all of them as church libraries. The amount of
information on medieval church libraries is surprisingly
extensive, albeit a great deal more must remain hidden
still, for all our cathedral libraries have not been subjects
of such loving scholarship as Canon Church has bestowed
upon the ancient treasure-house at Wells. Still the material
is extensive, and our difficulty in making a selection for
such a compendious book as the present is complicated,
because we often do not find it possible to say whether the
books referred to in the available records are merely service
books, or books of an ordinary character. To evade this
difficulty we must ignore all material relating to unnamed
books, which we cannot reasonably suppose to have been
the nucleus of a more general collection, or an addition to it.
Exeter Cathedral Library was a monastic hoard. It
originated with Bishop Leofric, who got together over sixty
books about sixteen years before the Conquest. His books
were a curious collection: among copies of the classics and
ecclesiastical works were books of night songs, summer and
winter reading books, a precious book of blessings, and a
"Mycel Englisc boc"--a large English book, on all sorts
of things, wrought in verse.
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