Medieval Cities and Libraries

Libraries in the middle ages.......depends on what culture you look at. In Europe the period was called the Dark Ages for a reason and libraries for the most part fell out of use. Some universities started to found them in the 1100s, but really it did not gain a lot of momentum until the 1500s when the age of learning began. The arabs on the other hand were very good at keeping the ancient texts in libraries and they never suffered the same backward steps to knowledge. China had libraries since ancient times, however only a very few were allowed to go to them until the 1900s.
 

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I'd like to emphasize the Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco) as a great source book, and just great book in general.

I also seem to recall learning somewhere that Chaucer had 73 books at the time of his death and it was one of the largest private libraries known. If I am not mistaken, he lived around 1200 or so.
 


Detailed city maps:

Medieval Cities by Howard Saalman.
Copyright 1968.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-24702

Reproductions of engravings of cities.
Commentary on their developement and evolution.

Worth tracking down a copy.

~~~~~~~~~~
Medieval libraries: a library of 800 books was considered huge

Libraries were often in the hands of either religious orders (since they had a greater tendancy to be literate) or of the nobility (records and such). Scholars possesed books to a degree allowed by their wealth, but part of graduating with a degree entailed *Memorising* large tracts of books and being able to recite them.

I believe that libraries existed throughout the Medieval period, but they could become dispersed. Books were valuable. (They could be considered loot.)

This book isn't about libraries, but is extremely useful. (It also covers the issues of giving books as presents to monarchs...travelling libraries...)

The History of Bookbinding as a Mirror of Society by Mirjam Foot.
ISBN 0-7123-4597-3

Well, that's all the wisdom that I have to offer from my library tonight.

Regards,
Telgian.
 

You might want to flip through Henry Petroski's The Book on the Bookshelf, which is a history of storage methods for books. It's interesting. Really.

Bookshelves as we know them weren't the preferred method 'till quite late. Some of the other methods might come into play if your PCs decide to swipe a few.
 

Sir Edgar said:
Hmmm, so, I still don't know what the naming conventions are for libraries. I guess you don't really need to put one in a medieval city, but if you are going to...

I'm assuming it would have to be named after a big donor or have a generic name like "City Library".

I think GuardianLurker's whole point was that there was no such thing. The were no city libraries. There might be "Lord Athelstane's library," but that's merely a reference to Lord Athelstane's private collection of a few books. There might be the "Roman Catholic Church's library of the Vatican," but that's the name for a collection of religious books owned by the church and not lent to anyone, nor available for public viewing.

If your world is different and there are city libraries, you'll need to make up naming conventions of your own, not look for them in medieval Europe.
 

For libraries (again, meaning "collections of books, " not lending libraries, in the modern sense) of significant size in the year 1000, you need to look to the Islamic world: Cordoba in the west, Cairo, Damascus, and to a lesser extent, Baghdad in the east.

From www.ismaili.net:

It was owing to his [Caliph al-Aziz's] generous patronage that the University of al-Azhar could maintain itself as a unique and distinguished seat of Islamic learning. He also created an almshouse in it for 35 men. Al-Azhar contained a huge library. The royal library of al-Aziz itself contained 200,000 rare manuscripts and an equal number of manuscripts were kept at al-Azhar. It also contained 2400 illuminated copies of Holy Koran. Later, in 436/1045 a new catalogue had been prepared in al-Azhar, listing 6500 volumes of astronomy, architecture and philosophy. When Nasir Khusaro visited Cairo, he had found 317 professors and as many as 9758 students engaged in the study of various subjects in al-Azhar. Marshall W. Baldwin writes in "A History of the Crusades" (London, 1958, p. 102) that, "The intellectual influences of Ismailism on Islam was very great indeed. During the heyday of its expansion, the poets, philosophers, theologians and scholars flocked to the Ismailite centres and produced works of a high order."

A [not-so-detailed] map of 11th century CE Cairo and its environs:
http://www.ismaili.net/histoire/photo/20misr.jpg


edit: I forgot that Tripoli also had a massive library named the Dar al-'Ilm ("World of Knowledge") that the Crusaders ransacked and razed in the early 1100's
 
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Aitch Eye said:
Bookshelves as we know them weren't the preferred method 'till quite late. Some of the other methods might come into play if your PCs decide to swipe a few.

Can you give examples? I'm curious.
 

The most common place to find a book stored in Medieval times was on a podium. Because of the value, they were sometimes chained down. Basically, it was stored in the same place where it was read.

Another side note: In some times and places, historically, reading silently was not common. People read out loud, even if there was noone there to hear them. Being able to read silently might be seen as something supernatural...
 

About.com has a pretty cool collection of maps of medieval city maps in their Medieval Atlas:

http://historymedren.about.com/library/atlas/blatcitydex.htm

Also from About's Medieval History section:

Book, manuscript and printing history:
http://historymedren.about.com/cs/bookhistory/index.htm
and
The keepers of knowledge (monastic libraries)
http://historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aa010798.htm

On a related note, if you haven't checked out these resources:

D20 Scriptorium: The FanCC Netbook of Books
http://www.dcrouzet.net/nbobooks/
and
Ink & Quill : Bastion Press' free D20 supplement
http://www.bastionpress.com/Downloads/ink & quillv1.1.pdf

I highly recommend both sites. Good stuff there.
 

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