In coenobitic monasteries books provided intellectual and spiritual fodder. Provision for internal borrowing had existed from the beginning. St Augustine of Hippo’s Ordo monasterii (c. 397) laid down in article 3 that reading should be pursued from noon until three, when the books should be returned. The Augustinian rule stated that ‘books will be available every day at the appointed hour, and not at any other time’. St Benedict of Nursia laid down in his rule (c. 535–45) that reading was to occupy certain periods of time daily on a set pattern. At the beginning of Lent, reading was given particular emphasis: monks were to receive books and they were to read them right through. The Benedictine rule, widely influential from the sixth century, came to dominate western monasticism from the ninth century onwards, while the Augustinian rule became more and more important from the late eleventh century as it was adopted by many communities of canons and by the Dominican and Augustinian friars.

Gradually these basic provisions were embellished. Since we do not know what elaborations may have been introduced to English monasteries by the tenth-century monastic reformers, our earliest detailed evidence comes from the Constitutiones drawn up around 1077 by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, for the monks of Christ Church, arrangements that probably derive from the customs of Cluny.