Library

The Demon Of Scattery.

We value books but also take their existence and abundance for granted. Imagine what it was like. The scriptorium at St Sena's monastery has six handwritten manuscripts hanging in leather satchels:

Luke and John;
Matthew and Mark;
the Psalms;
a life of St Brendan the Navigator - who is supposed to have crossed the Atlantic;
the Life and Rule of St Senan;
a translation from Greek into Latin of Hippocrates the Physician.

Not even an entire Bible. Brigit is keen to read Hippocrates. Once, on holiday in Scotland, we lodged at the Cathedral of the Isles. The library had only theology and church history and a single novel by CS Lewis which I reread in preference to anything else on offer.

Brigit's sacked convent had had Virgil! And we remember that Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, loved the Aeneid, but disliked Greek because he did not understand it.