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Monks and books
have from the outset been close friends. Without
the patient copying of manuscripts in the mediaeval
monastic scriptoria, almost the whole of Greek
and Latin literature would have been lost. |
Books
are part of the very fabric of monastic life: they
are necessary for the Liturgy; they are read aloud
while monks eat their meals in silence; a great
portion of the monk’s day is assigned by
St Benedict to lectio divina and spiritual
reading. During Lent St Benedict says a monk should
be given a book to read carefully from cover to
cover during that particularly holy season of the
year. It was a sign of the priorities a monk was
taught to set for himself throughout the year.
As a result, a Library is generally one of the major
architectural features of a monastic complex. There
is a Latin tag which puts it as follows:
Claustrum sine armentario est sicut castrum sine
armamentario.
(A monastery without a book cupboard is like a camp
without an armoury.)
The link that Benedictine monks made between the
love of learning and the desire for God led to the
part they were to play from the Eighth Century in
the revival of education in the new Europe of the
Middle Ages. The same sense of purpose inspires our
engagement with culture today.
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