The ‘Library’ in Benedictine Monasteries

In early medieval monasteries, there were no libraries as we know them today; there were no large rooms where people could read. According to historical documents and sources, books were carefully stored in wooden chests (‘Armaria’ or ‘Arcae’) or in small niches in the walls. *1

Only large abbeys had a room dedicated entirely to books.

A famous plan of a monastery drawn up in the Benedictine abbey of Reichenau, located in Switzerland on Lake Constance, shows the design of a space exclusively reserved for books: the ‘bibliotheca‘.

The plan dates back to 819 and 826 and takes its name from the place where it is kept: the Abbey of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

In the 11th century, Abbot Desiderius had a small space built next to the church in Montecassino. According to Leone Ostiense, who wrote the ‘Chronicle’ of the monastery, this ‘parvula edecula’ was created to store the growing number of tomes that Desiderius had produced.

But where do monks write? The place of writing is the scriptorium.

This environment began to appear regularly in monasteries between the 7th and 8th centuries. During this period, demand for copies of sacred texts and other manuscripts began to grow.

In the aforementioned plan of St. Gallen, for example, below the library, we find a room called ‘sedes scribentium’ (‘the copyists’ room’), where monks worked assiduously on copying manuscripts. The French monk Héric d’Auxerre of Ferrières Abbey, in the 9th century, reports that Abbot Lupus had created a ‘crypt for scribes’, i.e. dedicated to writing.

Despite the differences with modern libraries, medieval Benedictine monasteries already felt the need for a dedicated space to copy and preserve books so that they could be handed down through the ages.