[1] Erasmus seems to have seen similar boxes
fixed to the pillars in the nave at Canterbury.[2]
[1] C. A. S. (N.S.), iv. 312.
[2] I have to thank my friend Mr. Tapley Soper, F.R,Hist,S., for
his willing help in sending me information about this library.
Our account of church libraries will appear inadequate if it is
not borne in mind that we do not propose to go beyond the
manuscript age. An excellent account of modern church libraries
is given in English Church Furniture, in this series. Also see
Clark, 257.
Section II
When gifts or bequests were received by a church or
monastery, it was a beautiful custom to lay them, or something
to represent them, upon the altar: "a book, or turf,
or, in fact, almost any portable object, was offered for
property such as land; or a bough or twig of a tree, if
the gift were a forest." King Offa's gift of churches to
Worcester monastery in 780 was accompanied by a great
book with golden clasps, with every probability a Bible.[1]
A gift was made under similar circumstances in c. 1057,
about the time Bishop Leofric was founding the library at
Exeter, when Lady Godiva, the wife of another Leofric,
restored some manors to Worcester, and with them gave
a Bible in two parts.
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