[1] Other
writers, as Lucan, were appreciated for their didacticism;
Juvenal, Cato and Seneca the younger as moralists. And
some of the religious fell a prey to these evils, inasmuch as
they assessed them at their true value as literature.
[1] Sandys, i. 638-39; see what is said about use of Ovid at
Canterbury.
The classics therefore were accepted. Anselm recommended
Virgil. Horace, in his most amorous moods, was
sung by the monks. Ovid, either adapted or in his natural
state, was a great favourite. In an appendix we have
scheduled the chief classics found in English monastic
catalogues to indicate roughly the extent to which they
were collected and used. A glance at Becker's sheaf of
catalogues will show us that Aristotle, Horace, Juvenal,
Lucan, Persius, Plato, Pliny the elder, Porphyry, Sallust,
Statius, Terence, and especially Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, and
Virgil are well represented. But it must not be supposed
that they were in monastic libraries in excessive numbers.
On the contrary. An inspection of almost any catalogue of
such a library will prove that only a small proportion of it
consisted of classical writings, especially in those catalogues
compiled prior to the time when Aristotle's works dominated
the whole of medieval scholarship.
Pages:
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333