R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

In that portion of the library which dates back to the days of Lanfranc and Anselm fragmentary survivals are traceable of a learning which had no attraction for the mass of clerics in Bacon’s day. The best example of these is a copy of the treatise of Irenaeus Against Heresies-in all likelihood the only copy then in England. There are indications also of the influence of John of Salisbury in the list of the books bequeathed by St Thomas to his Cathedral; but, as we should expect, this influence is more clearly seen in the presence of certain classical Latin authors than in the province of sacred literature. Coming nearer to the period with which we are chiefly concerned, we notice that Grosseteste has left his mark on the Canterbury Library: copies of most of the texts which he restored to the Latins are to be found in the catalogue. Of Roger Bacon, however, and of his work there is no sign. Not a single Greek or Hebrew book is discoverable. All trace of the learning of Theodore has disappeared. The theologian par excellence is, as always, Augustine: and the other three Latin Doctors are present in great force. For the rest, the Divinity library is made up chiefly of glossed books of the Bible, of “Distinctions,” sermons, the books of Anselm, Alexander Neckam, Peter Lombard, Richard of Preaux, Robert Cursun, Peter Comestor, and the like; while, among the latest accretions, are numbered the works of the great Schoolmen. Thus almost the only aid to the literal interpretation of the Biblical text which the monks of this great House possessed was what they could gather from the works of Jerome. Peter Comestor and Josephus were their teachers in Biblical history; and for the history of the Church they had to turn to Rufinus1 version of the History of Eusebius, to the Tripartite History, and to the numerous lives of Saints.

The state of this one great library must be taken as typical of that of others throughout Europe. Yet, if the darkness was thick, it was already beginning to lift. By means of a recent discovery the present writer has ascertained that in this very library a copy of the books of the Old Testament from Genesis to Ruth in Greek existed early in the fifteenth century. The manuscript, now at Oxford, is of Grosseteste’s date, and was very probably brought by him to England.

There were younger contemporaries of Grosseteste and of Bacon, who carried on the work of the great teachers, and that in no unworthy fashion. At Ramsey Abbey (where the influence of the former may fairly be suspected, for it lay in his diocese) a small band of scholars were in possession of the whole of the Old Testament in Hebrew. They had bought up the libraries of the suppressed synagogues at Huntingdon and Stamford. One among them, Prior Gregory, had furthermore studied Greek: a bilingual Psalter remains to attest the fact. At a somewhat later date the stores of Hebrew manuscripts accumulated by his predecessors enabled Laurence Holbeach, a monk of the same House, to compile a Hebrew Lexicon.

Another great work was set on foot in the second half of the thirteenth century,—a work whose existence is hardly suspected now-a-days. This was nothing less than a literal translation from Hebrew into Latin of the greater part of the Old Testament-clearly a work of English scholars, for all the known manuscripts which contain any part of it are of English origin, and are preserved in English libraries. Of the originators of this enterprise, and of the character of their work, we may look to learn more; but even in our present state of knowledge we can very confidently predicate of them that they owed their inspiration to the influence of one or other of the two great champions of the “original tongues.”

It must not be supposed that for England alone is claimed the honour of having attempted a scientific treatment of the Sacred Text at this time. The principal impulse to study seems to have been given by Englishmen, it is true; but work was also being done outre mer. Before the middle of the thirteenth century the Dominicans of Paris had attempted the task of systematically correcting the text of the Latin Bible. The results, however, were not happy, in the opinion of the man best qualified to judge of them. Bacon is, indeed, unsparing in his strictures. The work had been undertaken without adequate knowledge of the original tongues, and carried on without reference being made to the oldest and best manuscripts of the Vulgate. The consequence is that the Paris “correction,” of which there were two editions, is “the worst possible corruption and destruction of the text of God.” But Bacon was not merely a destructive critic. It was seemingly a friend and correspondent of his own, William de Mara, who eventually compiled a Correctorium based on a sound knowledge of Hebrew. On its composition he spent not less than forty years; and it is believed that he derived material assistance from Bacon himself in the course of his work. The critical labours of which we have been speaking were chiefly concerned with the text of the Old Testament; and it is a noteworthy circumstance that in the fourteenth century the knowledge of Hebrew, and the application of that knowledge to Biblical studies, was far commoner than the knowledge of Greek. It is not difficult to account , for this, so far as Western Europe is concerned. Teachers of Hebrew were, as Bacon tells us, very easily procurable. It is true that he adds that it was equally easy to acquire Greek; but it must be remembered that in the case of Hebrew, books in which the language could be studied, and on which critical and exegetical work could be done, were plentiful. Wherever a community of Jews existed, the Scriptures in Hebrew could be readily obtained. Not so with Greek. The few Greek manuscripts imported into England by Grosseteste, the Greek Gospels which the Byzantine Emperor had sent to St Louis, the two or three volumes at St Denis, were rarities of the first water. The stores of Greek literature in the Basilian monasteries of Southern Italy and Sicily, to say nothing of Greece and of Byzantium, were not yet unlocked. That ancient scholarship to which we owe the Graeco-Latin manuscripts of Southern France, the Laudian manuscript of the Acts that Baeda used, and the famous codices of St Gall, had altogether died. The eyes of a few far-sighted scholars were turned towards the Grecian lands; but as yet they could do no more than look and long.

Still, the truths to which Roger Bacon had given expression were not forgotten. Especially in the ranks of his own-the Franciscan- Order, men were found who realised and acted upon them. Scraps of Hebrew and Greek learning-alphabets, transcripts of the Lord’s Prayer, and the like-are of not infrequent occurrence in manuscripts of Franciscan origin. These may be only straws showing which way the wind sets. More significant is the appearance among the Franciscans of the greatest exponent of the literal sense of Scripture whom the medieval world can show. This was Nicholas de Lyra, who died in 1340. It is not so much because of his learning that he is important, though his knowledge of Hebrew was highly notable; it is rather his attitude, his desire to ascertain what the words of the Sacred Text actually mean, which differentiates him from the ancient allegorists. The same tendency is seen in the work of a far less famous Franciscan of the same generation. Henry of Costessey is the author of a Commentary upon the Psalms which appears to exist in but one manuscript. In this the insistence upon the literal sense, the constant reference to the original Hebrew, and the independence of the writer’s judgment, who is for ever canvassing and contradicting the opinions of Lyra, are such as would have rejoiced Bacon’s heart. For a considerable time the Franciscan Houses at both Oxford and Cambridge must have kept alive the interest in this “New Learning.” We are fairly well informed about the establishment at Oxford; and concerning the Cambridge House we can at least tell who were its teachers of divinity: Henry of Costessey was among them. The Oxford Friars did not, it is true, preserve the traditions of Grosseteste and of Bacon into the Reformation period, for Leland has a sorry tale to tell of the neglected condition of their once noble library. Yet the tradition of learning lingered in the Order; at the beginning of the sixteenth century Richard Brinkley, Provincial of the Grey Friars in England, was a student of Hebrew-he borrowed a Hebrew Psalter from the monks of Bury St Edmunds; and he was moreover the owner of more than one Greek Biblical manuscript: among them, of the Leicester Codex of the New Testament, well known to textual critics.