Page:Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods.djvu/39

seven centuries of successful existence before Walter de Merton was moved to found a college; that many of the subsequent founders of colleges were churchmen, if not actually monks; and that there were monastic colleges at both Universities. Further, as we have seen that study was specially enjoined upon the monks by S. Benedict, it is precisely in the direction of study that we should expect to find common features in the two sets of communities. And this, in fact, is what came to pass. An examination of the statutes affecting the library in the codes imposed upon the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge shews that their provisions were borrowed directly from the monastic Customs. The resemblances are too striking to be accidental Take, for instance, this clause, from the statutes of Oriel College, Oxford, dated 1329:

The common books (communes libri) of the House are to be brought out and inspected once a year, on the feast of the Commemoration of Souls [2 November], in pre-