The Fountains library was started c.1134/5 by Hugh, the former
dean of York, who joined the abbey as a recruit and brought with
him wealth, furniture and books. The community continued to receive
gifts of books. Henry of Knaresborough donated a book in the
thirteenth century and in 1516 William Peck,
the master of Ripon College in Yorkshire, gave a book to Abbot
Huby; this contained
mostly medical treatises. The community might expand the library
holdings by borrowing and copying books from
other religious houses. An interesting account tells how one monk
of Fountains borrowed the Life of St Godric from the community
at Durham, so that his own monastery might make a copy. Out of
veneration for the holy Godric, the monk wished to illuminate the
text with bright colours, and this skilled artistic work was duly
completed by the cantor (precentor)
in the chapter-house.(35)
Book-binding
The fifteenth-century ‘Bursars’ Books’ records that in
1457/58 2s 3d was spent on binding books.
[Memorials of Fountains III, p. 56]
In the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Fountains library was probably
similar in size to Rievaulx’s,
which held about two hundred books. The library of the great
Benedictine community
at Christ Church, Canterbury, had about six hundred books, and
Fountains’ mother-house of Clairvaux,
in Burgundy, about 340 books.(36) There
is no surviving library catalogue for Fountains, but several of
the community’s books have survived and offer
a fascinating insight to spirituality and learning within the cloister.