Gerard d’Abbeville

In the mid-thirteenth century, conflicts arose at the newly formed University of Paris between secular masters (like Gerard) and teachers from the Franciscan and Dominican orders. These conflicts concerned practical issues – such as competing claims to students and positions of privilege – as well as theological matters, such as the spiritual value of personal poverty. Both sides published quodlibeta, records of disputations made in a question-and-answer format.

In 1269 Gerard held a quodlibet claiming that archdeacons and parish priests were in a higher state of spiritual perfection than members of religious orders. Gerard’s views were criticised by the Dominican Thomas Aquinas in his De perfectione spiritualis vitae (1269-70). This exchange illustrates the lively atmosphere of scholarly debate in Paris in this period. Eighteen quodlibeta of Gerard survive, a record!

In his will Gerard stipulated that his books – mainly theological works, but also philosophical and medical manuscripts – could be freely used at the Sorbonne by all secular students and masters, subtly excluding access to them by his old sparring partners, the members of the mendicant orders. The religious orders, he commented, already had enough. As well as the books, Gerard donated his book cupboard (armarium) and three of his “best chests” to store the library, insisting that the collection was to be inspected yearly and inventorised. Gerard’s stipulations hint at the formalisation of institutional library practices in this period.

Ramon Llull was also a frequent user of the library of Sorbonne. In 1311 he donated a copy of his works to the library and requested that it would be chained to the bookcase; a common but not so subtle way of preventing a book from being stolen.

Where did Gerard get his books?

Many of Gerard’s books belonged to Richard de Fournival (d. 1260), a thirteenth-century poet, medic and astrologer who was Chancellor at the cathedral in Amiens. Richard wrote a catalogue of his books, Biblionomia (now Paris, Bibliothèque de Sorbonne, MS 636), which classified his manuscripts by subject, listing titles which were ‘must haves’ for medieval scholars. These included key works of rhetoric and dialectic: of Aristotle, Boethius, and Cicero, but also of the Islamic philosopher Al-Ghazali (c. 1056-1111) and the Spanish philosopher and translator of Arabic works, Dominicus Gundissalinus (c. 1115-90). Here you can see the opening of Cicero’s De inventione in Leiden, UB, VLQ 103, f. 1r. This manuscript was part of Richard’s collection (Biblionomia, 27), before being included in Gerard d’Abbeville’s bequest to the Sorbonne. Richard’s entry (translated) for this book reads: “[Cicero’s] first book on rhetoric and his second ad herennium in one volume whose sign is the letter C”, the letter indicating the classification of the manuscript in his collection (see Paris, Bibliothèque de Sorbonne, MS 636, f. 9r).

Richard’s collection also included older manuscripts, which were then passed on through Gerard into the Sorbonne’s collection. This copy of Victorinus’s fourth-century commentary on Cicero’s De inventione, for example, dates from the late-ninth century and was copied in a monastery in the Loire area in France.

Libraries and collectors preserved manuscripts, and so texts, which otherwise could have been easily lost. Gerard’s collection gives a sense of what the library of a thirteenth-century college would have looked like, including samples of rhetorical and dialectical works. However, Gerard clearly valued his collection of theological manuscripts far above his ‘philosophical’ works, advising in his will that his medical and philosophical works could be sold if needed to settle his debts! It’s lucky for us that they weren’t…