CHAPTER VIII

Summary

While in England we were struggling with the difficulties of adapting medieval forms of libraries and bookcases to the ever-increasing number of volumes, a new system was initiated on the Continent, which I propose to call the wall system.

It seems so natural to us to set our bookshelves against a wall instead of at right angles to it, that it is difficult to realise that there was a time when such an arrangement was an innovation. Such however was the case. I believe that this principle was first introduced into a library at the Escorial, which Philip the Second of Spain began in 1563, and completed 13 September, 1584. I do not mean by this sentence that nobody ever set bookshelves against a wall before the third quarter of the sixteenth century. I have shewn above, when discussing the catalogue of Dover Priory, that the books stood on pieces of furniture which were probably so treated; and it is not uncommon in illuminated manuscripts to see a writer's books standing on one or more shelves set against the wall near his desk. Further, in the accounts of the library arranged in the Vatican by Sixtus IV., shelves set against the wall of one of the four rooms are specially mentioned; and in the description of the library of the Dukes of Urbino, it is stated that “the shelves for the books are set against the walls (le scanzie de' libri sono accostate alle mura).”