Scripta manent. On the scientific function of the library

Abstract

The author focuses on the medieval libraries and their scientific functions as well as emphasises their connection with the Church, which – while promoting education in Latin – transmitted many models of antiquity and its inspiring works, for example, those of Aristotle, Plato and Sophocles. Despite the fact the European Middle Ages did not boast large libraries as well-organized as those of antiquity, the library network was relatively dense and grew until the 15th century. Libraries were not merely an addition to scientific and educational institutions, such as schools and churches, they were also an indispensable tool of spreading science, they served as a fount of accessible and well-established knowledge. They were institutions that inspired varies activities promoting humanities and sciences, guaranteeing the continuity of scientific data. Eminent representatives of the Church were able to safeguard classical scientific traditions and bring faith closer to science, including that of pragmatic nature. It was a significant scientific simplification in the late 19th and of the 20th century to pit humanistic and secular Enlightment against the clerical and scholastic Middle Ages. It should be remembered that it was the Middles Ages that rediscovered Greek and Roman antiquity and that it was in the Middle Ages that brought the Greek, Roman and Hebraic cultures together.