Copy 1

Bibliomania in the Middle Ages or, sketches of bookworms, collectors, Bible students, scribes, and illuminators, from the Anglo Saxon and Norman periods, to the introduction of printing into England ; with anecdotes, illustrating the history of the monastic libraries of Great Britain in the olden time / by F. Somner Merryweather.

  • Merryweather, F. Somner (Frederick Somner), 1827-1900.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bibliomania in the Middle Ages or, sketches of bookworms, collectors, Bible students, scribes, and illuminators, from the Anglo Saxon and Norman periods, to the introduction of printing into England ; with anecdotes, illustrating the history of the monastic libraries of Great Britain in the olden time / by F. Somner Merryweather. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    so full as the treatise of the authors themselves, or that in handling of the gospels we have run them over in a method not exactly conformable to the order appointed in the church, let him compose a book of his own; by an inter- pretation of deeper learning, as shall best agree with his understanding, this only I beseech him, that he may not pervert this version of mine, which I hope, by the grace of God, without any boasting, I have, according to the best of my skill, performed with all diligence. Now, I most earnestly entreat your goodness, my most gentle father Sigeric, that you will vouchsafe to correct, by your care, whatever blemishes of malignant heresy, or of dark deceit, you shall meet with in my translation, and then permit this little book to be ascribed to your authority, and not to the meanness of a person of my unworthy character. Farewell in the Almighty God continually. Amen.’* I have before alluded to the care observed by the scribes in copying their manuscripts, and the moderns may deem themselves fortunate that they did so; for although many interpolations, or emendations, as they called them, occur in monkish transcripts, on the whole, their integrity, in this respect, forms a redeeming quality in connexion with their learning. In another preface, affixed to the second collec- tion of his homilies, Atlfric thus explains his design in translating them :— ‘¢ Arlfric, a monk and priest, although a man of less abili- ties than are requisite for one in such orders, was sent, in the days of King Atthelred, from Alphege, the bishop and succes- sor of Atthelwold, toa monastery which is called Cernel, at the desire of Acthelmer, the Thane, whose noble birth and good- ness isevery where known. Then ran it in my mind, I trust, through the grace of God, that I ought to translate this book out of the Latin tongue, into the English language not upon presumption of great learning, but because I saw and heard much error in many English books, which ignorant men, through their simplicity, esteemed great wisdom, and because it grieved me that they neither knew, nor had the gospel learning in their writings, except from those men that under- stood Latin, and those books which are to be had of King * Landsdowne MS. in Brit. Mus. 378, vol. iv.