The same auspicious fate that prompted those bibliomaniacal monks to hide away manuscript treasures in the cellars of their monasteries, inspired Poggio Bracciolini several centuries later to hunt out and invade those sacred hiding-places, and these quests were rewarded with finds whose value cannot be overestimated.  All that we have of the histories of Livy come to us through Poggio’s industry as a manuscript-hunter; this same worthy found and brought away from different monasteries a perfect copy of Quintilian, a Cicero’s oration for Caecina, a complete Tertullian, a Petronius Arbiter, and fifteen or twenty other classics almost as valuable as those I have named.  From German monasteries, Poggio’s friend, Nicolas of Treves, brought away twelve comedies of Plautus and a fragment of Aulus Gellius.

Dear as their pagan books were to the monkish collectors, it was upon their Bibles, their psalters, and their other religious books that these mediaeval bibliomaniacs expended their choicest art and their most loving care.  St. Cuthbert’s ``Gospels,’’ preserved in the British Museum, was written by Egfrith, a monk, circa 720; Aethelwald bound the book in gold and precious stones, and Bilfrid, a hermit, illuminated it by prefixing to each gospel a beautiful painting representing one of the Evangelists, and a tessellated cross, executed in a most elaborate manner.  Bilfrid also illuminated the large capital letters at the beginning of the gospels.  This precious volume was still further enriched by Aldred of Durham, who interlined it with a Saxon Gloss, or version of the Latin text of St. Jerome.

``Of the exact pecuniary value of books during the middle ages,’’ says Merryweather, ``we have no means of judging.  The few instances that have accidentally been recorded are totally inadequate to enable us to form an opinion.  The extravagant estimate given by some as to the value of books in those days is merely conjectural, as it necessarily must be when we remember that the price was guided by the accuracy of the transcription, the splendor of the binding (which was often gorgeous to excess), and by the beauty and richness of the illuminations.  Many of the manuscripts of the middle ages are magnificent in the extreme; sometimes inscribed in liquid gold on parchment of the richest purple, and adorned with illuminations of exquisite workmanship.’’

With such a veneration and love for books obtaining in the cloister and at the fireside, what pathos is revealed to us in the supplication which invited God’s blessing upon the beloved tomes:  ``O Lord, send the virtue of thy Holy Spirit upon these our books; that cleansing them from all earthly things, by thy holy blessing, they may mercifully enlighten our hearts and give us true understanding; and grant that by thy teachings they may brightly preserve and make full an abundance of good works according to thy will.’’