Our gaze is now transferred from Africa to Europe. As Alexander had given his name to the City on the delta of the Nile, so Constantine has given his to the City on the Bosphorus. Constantinople stood as the capital and metropolis of the East for a thousand years, or from 329 A.D. (the date at which he removed his throne thereunto) on until near the middle of the fifteenth century, when the proud City fell into the hands of the Mohammedans and became in consequence the seat of the Ottoman Empire. When Constantine removed the capital of the Empire from the West he took many elements of intellectual life which had been the proud boast of the City of Augustus with him unto Byzantium; and, in process of time, the pomp, power, and learning of Rome and Alexandria were transferred to Constantinople—supreme in beauty and convenience of location. Constantinople seemed to occupy for more than a millennium of years both a charming and a charmed position. While Rome—for centuries a center and source of literature, having, after the time of Augustus, numerous libraries—together with the capitols of provinces and countries of Europe had been successively occupied by contending armies, Constantinople had remained safe in her commanding position at the portal of two continents and had continued "unconquered and even unassailed." At the fall of the Capital in the East, however, Rome became again the head of the Empire, and its imperial Seat was transferred from the Bosphorus to the Tiber.

Under the favor shown by Constantine at his accession to the ranks of the Christian faith, whatever his motive, distinctively Christian literature was given an honored place in the imperial library; and through his coÖperation, at a time when books were relatively scarce and difficult to obtain, several thousand volumes were collected. This collection, made up largely it is claimed of Christian literature, was augmented under some of his successors to the dimensions of a hundred thousand volumes. Furthermore, an efficient librarian had charge of these archives and directed the staff of copyists which were employed therein somewhat as had been the distinction of the Alexandrian Library. A new impulse was added in collecting and copying books by the personal favor of the Emperor—he himself, ordering from Eusebius, the church historian of the time, fifty copies of the Scriptures to be written on "artificially wrought skins by skillful calligraphists" for the use of the churches in and about Constantinople. And it is deemed possible and even not improbable that the Sinaitic manuscript—one of the oldest and best of existing Greek manuscripts—may be a survivor of this number. The library at Constantinople, like all libraries, was exposed to the wastings of time and change but was replenished and renewed through that measure of intellectual vitality which survived in the city on the Bosphorus for a millennium of years.

Besides the imperial library, the churches and religious houses of Constantinople were enriched with collections of manuscripts more or less extensive. And not only in the favored City but in the regions adjacent—in the islands of the Ægean, on Cyprus, and in many other quarters—manuscripts were collected, transcribed, and preserved. (Isaac Taylor.)

Constantinople, while it continued to be the center of learning and literature, was by no means the exclusive center; for the enterprise of collecting and treasuring books was widely disseminated. "No spot," says Isaac Taylor, "was more famed for the production of books than Mount Athos—the lofty promontory which stretches from the Macedonian coast far into the Ægean Sea." And the churches, too, in wide areas, became depositories of books, especially of the Bible or parts thereof, liturgical volumes, and works of devotion. There were also church libraries at Jerusalem, at Rome, and in many other localities. One at CÆsarea is said to have contained, as augmented by Eusebius, the historian, about thirty thousand volumes. Gradually into all these regions—into Crete, Italy, western Europe; and even into the British Isles; into Palestine, Arabia, and northern Africa—numerous monasteries with their collections of books were established and maintained. These religious houses were everywhere peopled by recluses, among whose principal duties was the care for and the transcription of books.

For long periods of time, however, and universally throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, there was, as has already been noted, a great decline in learning and but little interest in books—the exception to this condition being almost wholly limited to the occupants of the religious institutions. It is the record of history that, as civilization lost its energy in wide areas—especially throughout Gaul—intellectual darkness spread over all the country, so much so that there was hardly a layman and only a few among the clergy who could even read. Mighty leaders of state shared in this intellectual desuetude. Even Charlemagne, that great ruler who welded divergent peoples into one body to resist Saracen and savage, and who did much to institute and promote educational movements, lived and died with modicum attainments of technical learning. It is recorded of him in witness of his meager achievements in this direction that "He could read and understand Latin—but how well, perhaps, we had better not too closely inquire; he tried late in life to learn to write, but his progress in that direction did not greatly impress his biographer." Macaulay asserts it of the twelfth century that "There was then, through the greater part of Europe, very little knowledge, and that little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Books were few and costly. The art of printing was unknown."

A number of factors and forces combined to keep alive the feeble and smouldering sparks of learning amidst the wide-spread intellectual gloom of the age. Early and prominent among these was the establishment and subsequent development of the abbeys and cathedral institutions in various parts of the continent and in Britain. Then came the founding of the Benedictines (which flourished from the sixth century on, spreading from Italy westward into France and England and in other directions, and gathering unnumbered devotees—under the threefold vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience—into thousands of establishments) together with the various Orders that arose from the tenth century on—in all of which there were greater or lesser attempts at study, learning, and literature, along with their other and more distinguishing ideals. [The orders and the dates of their respective beginnings were as follows: Carthusians, 1084; Cistercians, 1098; Carmelites, 1156; Dominicans, 1170–1221; Franciscans, 1209–1226. "The two orders," Franciscans and Dominicans, says Thatcher, "furnished all the great scholars of the later Middle Ages."] And toward the close of the "Dark Ages" the movement toward enlightenment, known as the Renaissance, was accelerated in the beginnings of the great universities, the roots of which run down into the soil of the thirteenth century. Prominent among the great universities that date to the thirteenth century and which were located in widely separated regions and among divergent peoples, in England, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the North, were those at Cambridge, Oxford, Naples, Salamanca, Lisbon, Paris, Orleans, and Upsal. In all these there were nascent movements in the direction of literature manifested in the establishment of libraries as well as in the development of learning.

As indicating the extent and the importance of the specific movement toward the establishment of libraries, promoting thus the revival of learning after the long night of the "Dark Ages," we desire to condense the following paragraph from a recent and valuable work: A number of libraries were established in Paris and were available, not only for professors, scholars, and students of the schools, but for those interested in books and literature and duly accredited strangers who came from elsewhere and who would accept the easy conditions of the libraries' protected use. There were libraries also connected with the numerous abbeys of these and of previous and subsequent times. A score or more of these abbeys came, in time, to be located in England, as those at Wearmouth and Jarrow—places forever distinguished for the life labors of the Venerable Bede—in a dozen of which there were fine libraries with large writing rooms wherein books were constantly copied and treasured. In France important collections of books were to be found at Cluny and in many other abbeys. The number of books in all these libraries was constantly enlarged and the libraries enriched from various sources: By the exchange of duplicate books with other libraries; by borrowing from neighboring libraries for the purpose of copying; and by donations of books from private sources and individual donors. As an example of this last mentioned source of increase and enrichment, the library of La St. Chapelle of Paris, founded by Louis IX., was constantly augmented by his donations of the books that had been given to him and which he passed on for the advantage of the library's patrons. Moreover, the constant "wear and tear" of books even when written on parchment or vellum, and notwithstanding the stringent regulations safeguarding their use to legitimate channels, constantly called for the re-writing of worn-out volumes that were passed along from one generation to another.70

The Arabian conquests, too—notwithstanding the sore disasters which they at first seemed to threaten—turned rather, through the caliphs' subsequent patronage of learning and science, to the preservation and extension of literature. The Greek manuscripts came to be eagerly sought for by the Arabians and were translated into their own language. Colleges, schools, and libraries, in numerous places, were the tangible and assuring tokens of the subsequent favor of the Arabians toward literature. Bagdad in the far East and Cordova in the far West, with Cairo and Tripoli lying between, became seats of rich developments of science and letters and the depositories of books during the age when Europe was deeply enshrouded in intellectual darkness.71