3 - William's Reading

Summary

ONE OF THE most fundamental prerequisites of the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’ was a dramatic increase in the range and availability of reading matter, both old and new. One need only compare what was available to writers of the eighth and ninth centuries, such as Bede, Rabanus or Alcuin, with the library catalogue of a sizeable twelfth-century abbey to see the force of this. The rediscovery of ancient texts, both pagan and Christian, was arguably the most important facet of this new enthusiasm for reading, for the assimilation of the literature of antiquity supplied a common and assured basis for further advances in knowledge and creativity. In this process an important role was played by the monastic Order, in particular by the larger and longer-established Benedictine communities. This particular monastic contribution to Europe's intellectual development has probably been underestimated, since the twelfth century also saw the end of monasticism as the dominant spiritual force within Christian society, and since the Schools were so clearly becoming the principal environment within which the most considerable advances in knowledge in the most central disciplines were made. This underestimation has applied also to England, where traditional Benedictine culture remained important until the end of the century, and to William, who has a good claim to be regarded as the best-read European of the century.

In this chapter I propose to study, quite simply, what William read, my pattern being Max Laistner's famous article on the library of the Venerable Bede. It is entirely appropriate to take a work on Bede as a model, for, as we have already seen, William himself looked to Bede for instruction in reading and writing.One recalls his reference to Bede's Historia in the prologue to his own Gesta Regum, and it is easy to demonstrate that he was interested in Bede's non-historical writings as well. It is even possible that Bede's reading was to some extent the pattern, or at least starting point for his own. Towards the conclusion of his study, Laistner warned that by Bede's ‘library’ he did not necessarily mean what was on the shelves (or rather, in the cupboards) at Wearmouth and Jarrow. That warning is doubly necessary in considering William of Malmesbury's reading.