Carolingian libraries
The Carolingian libraries emerged during the reign of the Carolingian dynasty, when book collections reappeared in Europe after a two-century cultural decline. The end of the 8th century marked the beginning of the so-called Carolingian Renaissance countries of Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Sweden and Norway, a cultural upsurge primarily associated with church reform. The reform aimed to unify worship, correct church books, train qualified priests to work with the semi-pagan flock, and prepare missionaries capable of preaching throughout the empire and beyond. This required a comprehensive understanding of classical Latin and familiarity with surviving monuments of ancient culture.
The largest monasteries established schools to teach the fundamentals of the trivium and to study the works of Roman authors, including poets, historians, rhetoricians, philosophers, mathematicians, architects, etc. By the 9th century, a group of Carolingian polymaths had emerged who valued broad learning and associated activities for their own sake. This group was not limited to the capital.
During the Carolingian period, there were no libraries in the modern sense, in particular the special book depositories did not exist. However, there were relatively large collections of tens and hundreds of volumes, mostly belonging to monasteries and city bishops. Catalogues, rubrics and book lists, which began to be created in monasteries from the early 9th century, were needed to help people find their way around the vast number of manuscripts. Private book collections of clerics and laymen also emerged. After the owner's death, they were often transferred to monasteries. Unfortunately, no complete book collection from the Carolingian period has survived to this day.
Size of the library collections
During the 9th to 10th centuries, monastic libraries often contained hundreds of codices, making them the largest in size. Surviving catalogues reveal that in 822, the collection of the Reichenau Abbey included 415 books, while the Saint-Riquier Abbey owned 243 books in 831. Similarly, the library of Saint Gall had 428 accounted books, Lorsch had 590, and the monastery of Saint Salvator in Würzburg had at least 209 codices. At the start of the 10th century, the Bobbio Abbey possessed 666 books, while the Saint Emmeram's Abbey had 513. Although the collections of other significant Carolingian monasteries, such as Fleury, Ferrières, Saint-Denis, Saint Martin at Tours, Saint-Remi, Corbie, and the Abbey of Fulda, were likely of similar size and composition, their library catalogues have not survived.The library of a Carolingian abbey typically consisted of various manuscripts, as demonstrated by the Saint Gall catalogue Breviarium librorum de coenobio sancti Galli, which was composed of three manuscripts written in the 9th century. The Saint Gall library contained 10 codices of Augustine's works, 3 of Ambrose of Milan, and 2 each of Jerome, Gregory the Great, and Bede the Venerable. The Saint Gall library was generally conservative, focusing on the Bible and the works of the holy fathers before Bede. Between 840 and 880, the library acquired approximately 70 new codices, some of which were magnificently decorated. A notable feature of the Saint Gall library was the significant number of Irish manuscripts, with 30 listed in the catalogue. These manuscripts were acquired from outside the monastery, rather than being produced by Irish monks in the monastery's scriptorium.
Bishop's and cathedral libraries were established later than monastic libraries and were unable to match their size and content. In the 9th century there were only 39 books in Cologne, 71 in Weißenburg, 40 in Passau and 42 in Oviedo. Reims, under the care of its bishop Hinkmar, had approximately one hundred books. Salzburg had only 14 books, Augsburg had 50, Lindisfarne had 52, and Cremona had 95 books.
During the Carolingian period, laymen's private libraries emerged, often containing several dozen manuscripts. One of the most well-known is Eberhard of Friul's library, which was precisely listed in his will of 863. The library consisted of approximately 50 manuscripts, primarily focused on educational and religious content, but also including works on military art, jurisprudence, geography and history. The contents of Charlemagne's personal library, on the other hand, are not very well documented. According to the biography written by Einhard, Charlemagne "collected a great number of books". However, there is no further information on the specific contents of his library. It is known that Charles held the works of Augustine, including The City of God, in high regard. Additionally, during meals, he had readings about the history and deeds of the ancients. Donald Bullough attempted to reconstruct the composition of Charlemagne's library and concluded that it was based on educational literature. However, in terms of quantity, it was far inferior to the monastic libraries of both his time and earlier periods, such as the bishop's library of Jarrow under Bede the Venerable.
Catalogues
The initial efforts to catalogue library collections were primarily focused on the practical task of locating manuscripts that readers required and organising a vast collection. This objective was first achieved in the early 9th century at the Reichenau Abbey. The monks created a thematic catalogue and an author's index. The sections of Reichenau's catalogue included De libris canonum, De regulis, De libris homeliarum, De passionibus sanctorum, De libris glossarum, De opusculis Eusebii episcopi, De libris Iosephi, De opusculis Orosii presbyteri, De libris Bedae presbyteri, and others. The compilers distinguished between the text of a work and the number of volumes it was presented in. The Reichenau occasionally described the contents of codices in which many works by different authors were interwoven. Such work was done by the monk Reginbert, who described all the codices he had given to the monastery. The catalogue at Reichenau did not always adhere to a consistent order. For example, the books of Flavius Josephus were listed separately, despite the presence of a designated rubric for them.The catalogues of Saint-Riquier, Oviedo, Bobbio, Lorsch, Murbach, and Saint Gall use similar rubrication and provide more or less detailed descriptions of individual codices. However, most booklists from the 9th to 10th centuries are simply enumerations of titles without any discernible order. It is possible that they were grouped by the names of past and present owners.
Forming of book collections
Books were highly valued for their material worth. They were often given as gifts, inherited, or bequeathed. In the 9th century, it became common for monks to present rulers with books, usually the Bible, which is depicted in many book miniatures from that time. In return, kings and nobles would grant abbeys expensive and lavishly decorated codices, as well as special funds to maintain the books. Emperor Charlemagne gave the monks of Saint-Denis a forest. The proceeds were used by the brothers to make new bindings for their manuscripts. The abbots of Saint Wandrille donated dozens of books to their monastery, which was appropriately recorded in the monastery chronicle. The abbots at Saint Gall, Bobbio, and Saint Emmeram also followed this practice. It was common among secular clergy to bequeath private libraries to monasteries.Monasteries and church pulpits typically had a scriptorium, where manuscripts were produced and some remained on site. The scriptoria were in constant contact with each other, exchanging not only manuscripts but also scribes. Scriptorium staff and scholars often copied books for their own use. Brother Reginbert of Reichenau, one of the famous Carolingian bibliophiles, copied dozens of volumes for himself in this way and later bequeathed them to his native monastery. Abbot Lupus Servatus of Ferrières personally copied dozens of codices for himself and his disciples, including the works of Suetonius. However, personal libraries of intellectuals were rare exceptions. Conversely, the clergy required a large amount of 'working' literature, such as the Gospels, which were essential for worship, homiliaria, antiphonaries, Psalms, collections of sermons, hagiographies, resolutions of councils, and more. These books were in high demand and required numerous copies, making them the primary output of the scriptoriums, where they were copied to order. Customers included private individuals, such as Eberhard of Friuli. It is also known that in the 9th century, Count Conrad commissioned one of the Loir scriptoriums to transcribe the "History of Alexander the Great" by Quintus Curtius Rufus, as recorded in the dedication.
The temporary transfer of manuscripts was primarily characteristic of church libraries due to the cost of obtaining them. In the 8th to 10th centuries, hundreds of manuscripts circulated actively not only within local monastic or ecclesiastical communities, but also over a much wider area. Thus the monks of Saint Gall temporarily gave their books to Reichenau, and the brothers of Saint Vaast gave them to Beauvais. The reverse process also took place: neighbouring monasteries collaborated to restore the libraries of those that had been destroyed by fire or raid. For instance, the Normans completely plundered the Abbey of St Maximine of Trier in 882, resulting in the destruction of its considerable book collection. However, a few decades later, the monastery began to receive manuscripts from various centres in Lorraine and the northern part of the West Francia, such as Metz, Tours, Saint-Amand, Laon, and Mainz. By 1125, Saint Maximine's library contained 150 manuscripts, only a small portion of which were produced in the monastery scriptorium.
Control over the circulation of books in the monastic or ecclesiastical community was ineffective, resulting in the frequent loss or theft of manuscripts. At least five Lorsche codices from the 9th to 10th centuries contain appeals to the reader to return the manuscript to the monastery. The codex of the Antiquities of the Jews, copied at Lorsch in the early 9th century, includes a note indicating that it was issued to Fulda Abbey and safely returned. The "Life of Charlemagne" by Einhard appears in the Lorsch catalogue of 830, but it is no longer present in the three lists compiled before 860. The same fate befell 12 other manuscripts of the Lorsch monastery.