The Franciscans and Books: Lollard Accusations and The Franciscan Response 1

Abstract

The Middle Ages provide us with a number of theoretical statements about the value of books and libraries to learning and society. They range from brief proverbs—’A monastery without books is like a castle without soldiers’—to full-length treatises such as Richard de Bury’s Philobiblon . What we want to examine here is a series of statements regarding the practical value of access to books and libraries that form part of the litany of criticism aimed at the friars at the end of the fourteenth century, and the formal response of the Oxford Franciscans to these.