Lending books to brethren in the monastery was conducted according to strict rules, of which those of Lanfranc, based on the Cluniac observances, afford a good example. Before the brethren went into chapter on the Monday after the first Sunday in Lent, the librarian laid out on a carpet in the chapter-house all the books which were not on loan. After the assembly of the brethren, the librarian read his register of the books lent to the monks. Each brother, on hearing his name, returned the book which had been entrusted to him. If he had not made good use of the book, he was expected to prostrate himself, confess his neglect, and beg forgiveness. When all books were returned, others were issued, and a new record made. In some monasteries the abbot would question the monks on the books they had read, to test their knowledge of them, and whenever the answers were unsatisfactory would lend the same books again instead of fresh ones. As a rule only one book was issued at a time, so that the monk had plenty of time to digest its contents. In Carthusian houses two books were lent at a time. Sick brethren were freely permitted to borrow books for their solace, but such books were returned to the library nightly, at lighting-up time.
Among the Cluniacs it was the custom to take stock of the books given out to the monks once a year; while the Franciscans kept a register of their books, and every year it was read and corrected before the convent in assembly.[263]
An excellent example of a stocktaking record made at Christ Church, Canterbury, has been preserved. The inspection took place in 1337. First are recorded the books missing from the two “demonstrations,” as recorded “in magnis tabulis,” _e.g._,
Primo: deficit liber Transfiguratus in Crucifixum, ad quem est in nota Frater W. de Coventre.
Nineteen books were missing from the two “demonstrations,” or displays. Nineteen service books were missing “in parvis tabulis.” No less than thirty-eight books, twenty-eight of them for service, either of the large or the small tables, were wanting: for these deceased brethren had been responsible.[264]
The “large tables” are believed to be boards whereon the borrowers of books had their names and borrowings noted. “I find,” writes Dr. James, “in a St. Augustine’s manuscript a note written on the fly-leaf by a monk, of the books ‘pro quibus scribor in tabula’--‘for which I am down on the board.’”[265] Large tables were in use at Pembroke College, Cambridge; probably they were of a similar kind. “And let the said keeper,”--so the statute runs--“have ready large pieces of board (_tabulas magnas_), covered with wax and parchment, that the titles of the books may be written on the parchment, and the names of the Fellows who hold them on the wax beside it.”[266] Monastic catalogues were sometimes written on such boards. At Cluni, Mabillon and Martène found the catalogue inscribed on parchment-covered boards three feet and a half long and a foot and a half wide--great tablets which closed together like a book.