Christian library

Bishop Alexander of Jerusalem established a library during his tenure (first half of the 3rd century): this is known from the records of an actual "reader", Eusebius of Caesarea, who mentions some of the works he found there.

"[1] Through these efforts, the library grew to include thousands of volumes, a staggering accomplishment when one considers the labor involved in copying by hand.

Primary collections included all the works of Origen, as well as contemporaries such as Clement of Alexandria, Apollinaris, Justin, Irenaeus, and virtually all the important ecclesiastical writers of the period.

(Twentieth-century archeological discoveries—Phobaimmon and Nag Hammadi, for example–-have indicated that there was a tremendous amount of activity in writing and copying texts, and one library "catalog" from the period lists eighty titles.)

Benedict supported and energized the place of the library in the community by delegating one or two senior brothers to walk on "patrol" at a set hour, to ensure that no one is engaged in idle chatter, rather than being diligent in his reading.

During the succeeding centuries, such libraries played an increasingly strategic role in defending the tradition of learning from decay, pillage, and even disappearance.

Once the Roman occupation ended in the mid-Fifth century, Columba founded the meditation and copying center at Iona off the coast of Scotland.

A century later witnessed the arrival of Augustine of Canterbury, sent to England by Gregory the Great, and this set in motion the establishment of greater conformity to the will of Rome on the part of the English church.

A side-effect of this harmony was a marked increase in monastic library development in England, and a key figure in this maturing was Benedict Biscop of Wearmouth on the North Sea Coast.

In the tradition of Pamphilius and Cassiodorus, Biscop traveled far to get the works he required: "he sought [books] where they were best to be found among the desolate remains of ancient civilization in Italy."

If the later Middle Ages were characterized by the "rescue and preservation" of Christian texts by monastics on the fringes of the world, the Renaissance (14th-17th centuries) was an era of recovery.

The Renaissance brought an appetite more for Greek and Latin classical texts than for Christian works, but the general effect was a positive one for libraries.

It offered not only the prospect of more copies of more volumes being on the market, but made the unprecedented range of available editions a consideration: "the desired classics were appearing in versions more reliable than their predecessors because of the Humanist scholarship, and far more stable once in print than anything the manuscript age could have produced.

In the Low Countries and in England the effect of the Renaissance was somewhat different: Erasmus in Rotterdam was not only a collector in his own right, but brought together the best of the specifically Christian tradition with the emergent humanism of the Continent.

In large measure this had the desired effects of cutting British libraries loose from the literary tradition associated with Rome, and of turning interest toward the Anglo-Saxon church.

There is some evidence that the abrupt "change of fashion" in theological literature and learning brought in by the Henrician Reformation had the curious effect of extracting significant portions of monastic collections from purely religious surroundings.

So quickly did materials intrinsic to the Catholic tradition become devalued (the monarchy was aggressive and quite ruthless in moving the Church in the direction of Protestant humanism) that it was not uncommon for displaced monks, friars and abbots to be able to take with them, gratis, items from monastic libraries.

[6] It was in the spirit of such private generosity that efforts to overturn the Reformation's more destructive impulses that moved Thomas Bodley to help re-establish the library at Oxford.

In this case it appears that literature was made available to keep readers from lapsing into the "easy moral ways" thought to be characteristic of the Restoration era.

He drafted a six-page list of titles to be included, and aimed to set up such a collection for every deanery in England,[7] and appealed for donations of books and money to the aristocracy.

The new idea of a regional, or even a lending library of theological literature was taken even further by a Non-Conformist Scot, James Kirkwood, who proposed the support of such ventures with a property tax.

There is some irony in the fact that, though it removed many of the best divinity students from the academy, this "unorthodox" approach produced more than its share of highly learned pastors, on the strength of the erudition of the "Prophets", the power of example, and perhaps sometimes of the quality of their personal libraries.

It is clear now that by the time the surveys by Beach and Harrington were carried out (1960), a watershed had been crossed, and that demographics of theological education and of church attendance were in the process of rapid change.

Some have relied principally on rapid denominational growth (which generated demand for clergy and brought in funding required from denominations and benefactors); some have prospered from the skill and vision of exceptional library leadership; some libraries have built their reputations on exquisite collections purchased and then donated by private individuals; still others have excelled in cultivating niche collections or services.

The most recent initiative from ATLA has been the ATLAS serials project, which will bring fifty key theological periodicals to market in an alternative, electronic format.

Libraries in Eastern Europe illustrate this vividly: collection priorities in places such as Jena, Rostock and Leipzig could hardly be said to have been favorable to theological research during the years 1945-1990.

Moreover, since the reunification of the two German states, the massive amounts of money and personnel which it would take to bring theological collections back to acceptable standards has not been easy to come by.

Several of the Popes (Leo XIII and Pius XI) have taken a keen and active interest in the library, and great effort and expense has been taken to ensure that the collections not only continue to grow but are well cared-for.

Increasingly, well-financed libraries such as the Vatican's are working aggressively to develop plans for uploading digital versions of some of their treasures (most often archival materials) onto web-servers.

The "Age of Information" is commonly considered as posing a dire threat (or at least a plausible alternative) to the perpetuity of printed texts and paper-based library collections.