Historical essay on the art of bookbinding/The Catenati
THE CATENATI.
he precaution to enchain in the plainly furnished library-room of the hospitable monastery a prayer-book, a bible, or such a valuable book of reference as the “Tornafolium,” bequeathed in the eleventh century by Archbishop Léger to his cathedral, appears to have been of as little effect as the innumerable papal sentences of excommunication of the time-honored biblioklept.René Boulangé in the “Journal de la Librairie,” and he and the Abbé Valentin Dufour in the “Bibliophile Français,” have written some interesting articles on that ancient custom of enchaining books by the way of a description of the Hereford Library.
The library of the cathedral of Hereford is extant in its primitive state. It contains 236 manuscripts, the most ancient of which is a copy in Anglo Saxon of the four Evangelists, bequeathed to the cathedral by Athelstan, the last Saxon bishop of that diocese (1012–1056). The 2,000 volumes of the library are well preserved. Among them is Wyckliffe’s Bible, luxuriously bound; Gerroni “Opera,” 1494; Hartmani “Chronicon,” 1493; Higden’s “Polychronicon,” with additions by William Caxton, 1495.
Every volume is attached to a chain, of such length that the volume may be placed on a desk near at hand, provided at one extremity with an iron-ring for the insertion of a rod, closing with a padlock on either side of the bookcase. It is on the model of all the ancient libraries of chained books; but the exceptional preservation of the Hereford library is explained by the rigid rules of its management; and also, as the Abbé Dufour aptly insinuates, by the fact that Richard de Bury, the illustrious author of the “Philobiblion,” was canon of Hereford. The custom is as old as the fifth century, and prevailed until the last century, as there is a record of the gift to All Saints Church of Hereford of Dr. William Brewster’s library of catenati in 1715; although that is possibly as exceptional a case as the modern one of a chained directory or dictionary in a public place.
The manuscripts of the Abbey of Saint Victor, in 1308, were attached to desks; the books of Notre Dame of Paris, similarly arranged, were designated in numerical order in the first catalogues. The custom was probably abandoned shortly after the invention of printing, as the catenati of the church of St. Gratien of Tours were a curiosity to Lebrun Desmarettes in the reign of Louis XIV., and scarcer than an uncut Elsevier is in France, a book with the chain-mark of the original catenatus.
These books were not decorated by goldsmiths and enamellers with precious stones and “flower de luce of dyamounts,” nor covered with the enamelled plaques of the town of Limoges, which were of the finest bindings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but they were of as great luxury of solidity: thick boards, leather-covered, massive ornaments, heavy metalled corners, and frequently with an excavation in the interior of the binding for the reception of a silver crucifix, guarded by a metal door.
An estimate of the weight of such a binding may be formed without reference to the volume of the Epistles of Cicero, now in the Florence Laurentian library; Petrarch’s autograph copy of the work, of such ponderous weight that it severely injured his left leg, on which it was habitually made to rest, until the threatened necessity of its amputation compelled his relinquishing the constant reading of his favorite author.
