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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: in one large room of the Monastery, where their wonderful MS.
of Dante has been already reprinted, and where other fac-simile
works are now in progress.
CHAPTER V.
IGNORANCE AND BIGOTRY.
IGNORANCE, though not in the same category as fire and water,
is a great destroyer of books. At the Reformation so strong was
the antagonism of the people generally to anything like the old
idolatry of the Romish Church, that they destroyed by thousands books,
secular as well as sacred, if they contained but illuminated letters.
Unable to read, they saw no difference between romance and a psalter,
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