"[4] With such an end
in view Reculfus of Soissons required his clergy to have
a missal, a lectionary, the Gospels, a martyrology, an
antiphonary, a psalter, a book of forty homilies of Gregory,
and as many Christian books as they could get (879).
[1] Martene, Thesaurus, i. 511.
[2] Opera, fo. 1523. Fo. xlvii. 7, Doctrinale juvenum, c. v.
[3] Ibid., c. iv.
[4] Maitland, 200.
With this end in view were chosen for reading in the
Refectory at Durham (1395) such books as the Bible,
homilies, Legends of the Saints, lives of Gregory, Martin,
Nicholas, Dunstan, Augustine, Cuthbert, King Oswald, Aidan,
Thomas of Canterbury, and other saints.[1] With this end
in view the monastic libraries contained a very large
proportion of Bibles, books of the Bible, and commentaries
--a proportion suggesting the Scriptures were studied with
a closeness and assiduity for which the monks have not
always received due credit.[2] A great deal of room was
given up to the works of the Fathers--their confessions,
retractations, and letters, their polemics against heresies,
their dogmatic and doctrinal treatises, and their sermons
and ethical discourses.
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