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In addition, throughout Europe religious reforms began to take hold and monarchies began to develop. All of these factors combined to shift the locus of learning from rural monasteries to schools within urban cathedrals. Some of these schools eventually developed large and influential libraries. Cathedrals served as the headquarters for the church's bishops and archbishops; they also served as schools where religious training-and some secular training-for priests took place. Unlike monastic libraries, the libraries in cathedrals and cathedral schools were designed for educational rather than inspirational reading. For this reason they contained more secular books than did monastic collections. Universities grew out of these cathedral schools and nurtured the rise of professions such as law and medicine. They also answered the needs of a growing and increasingly literate middle class that demanded greater access to books and information. Members of the new middle class also advocated a wider acceptance of local, vernacular literatures in addition to the universal, Latin-based literature. Libraries responded to these public demands by increasing the size and scope of their collections. The library at the Sorbonne reflected many of these changes. The Sorbonne was established by French theologian Robert de Sorbon in about 1257 as a college of theology for students at the University of Paris. By 1289 its library had issued a catalog containing listings for 1,000 volumes, and many of these volumes contained separately titled works. All but four titles in the catalog were in Latin. The library at the Sorbonne also instituted a set of rules and regulations for library use. To ensure protection for its valuable books, it chained about 20 percent of its collection to shelves that were tilted toward readers at an angle. There, several standing patrons could consult one manuscript at a time, or one patron could consult several manuscripts at a time. By the end of the 15th century the Sorbonne's collection had grown to 2,500 volumes, increasing numbers of which were in vernacular languages. Elsewhere in Europe, library managers also implemented new measures to secure, house, and arrange collections that in many cases had grown to several thousand volumes. FThe Renaissance and Reformation European libraries changed significantly after 1450, when German printer Johannes Gutenberg first began printing with movable type in the city of Mainz. Printing spread so rapidly throughout western Europe that by 1600 new presses had issued approximately 30,000 separate titles totaling about 20 million books. For a time, libraries-like their patrons-continued to favor hand-copied Latin manuscripts. However, between 1450 and 1600 Europe experienced a series of power shifts that greatly influenced the dissemination of printed books to libraries throughout the continent. In addition, many of these books were written in vernacular languages rather than in Latin. During the Renaissance, from about the mid-14th century to the latter part of the 16th century, scholars produced a flood of literature expressing new beliefs about society, religion, government, art, culture, and other subjects. Books and libraries played a central role in the revival of interest in the intellectual heritage of ancient Greece and Rome. Scholars and poets in Italy such as Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio sparked these developments in the 14th century by actively seeking out long-forgotten manuscripts of classical authors and by building small private libraries. However, libraries established during the Renaissance usually contained works from all periods, classical, medieval, and contemporary. Pope Nicholas V established the Vatican Library in the mid-14th century. He appointed as librarian the scholar Giovanni Andrea de' Bussi, who helped make the library one of the world's greatest scholarly collections. Eventually, monasteries declined in importance as the centers of culture, and noble families such as those of Lorenzo de' Medici in Italy and the duke of Orleans in France built extensive private libraries. Italian artist Michelangelo designed and built the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy, to house the Medici collection. French bibliophile Jean Grolier also achieved renown as owner of one of the finest private libraries of the time. In the Hungarian city of Buda , King Matthias Corvinus established an exceptional private collection of about 3,000 volumes. Meanwhile, donations from kings, nobles, bishops, and book collectors helped spur the growth of libraries at the universities in Oxford, Paris, and other European centers of learning. More than 75 universities were founded before 1500 and all had some form of library. See Colleges and Universities: History. During the 16th century the Protestant Reformation also had a major impact on European library development, especially in England. Protestants in England created libraries as repositories of their faith against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1536, when King Henry VIII dissolved the Roman Catholic monasteries in the territory under his control, most monasteries lost their library collections. In addition, because this upheaval took place when new presses were already challenging the manuscript-based librarianship of monasteries, printed texts of Protestant and secular information quickly became more prevalent than the manuscripts from Catholic monasteries. Responses to these new developments generally took two forms. Some locales developed impressive libraries attached to academic institutions. For example, Sir Thomas Bodley, an English scholar and diplomat, established the Bodleian Library in 1598 at Oxford University, and the library formally opened to users in 1602. The original library at Oxford was established in the 1300s, but Bodley took it over to provide proper shelves and to add to the collection. Bodley also arranged for copies of all books printed in England to be deposited at the Bodleian Library. Other sites, especially those with significant commercial activity, used private endowments to establish libraries that served Protestant clergy, schools, and laypeople. For example, Norwich, England, established an endowed library in 1586, and Guildford, England, established one in that same year. Fundamental shifts in economies and political structures throughout Europe during the 16th century forced libraries to assume new practices and responsibilities. Members of the growing middle class benefited from the emergence of capitalist economies during this period. They soon began to demand access to information that could help them solidify and advance their socioeconomic position. Libraries eventually became a central source of information for most Europeans. GEurope: The 17th Through the 19th Century By the 17th century the number of libraries had begun to increase significantly, and the European library was beginning to take on its modern form. The monarchies of emerging nation-states in Europe were eager to publish national bodies of literature that would be housed in large libraries. Several court libraries were founded during this period, and many of these later developed into national libraries. In Germany, for example, Elector Frederich Wilhelm established a library in Berlin that later became the Prussian State Library. In France, the Bibliothèque Nationale also began as a royal library. Zealous book collecting during this period led to the establishment of many great private collections. In England, the activities of book collectors laid the foundation for the establishment of the British Museum Library, which eventually became the British Library. Circulating libraries became popular in France, Germany, and England in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and they helped make books available to the general public. Housed in businesses such as bookstores and grocery stores, circulating libraries rented out books, usually the popular fiction of the day, for a small fee. French physician and librarian Gabriel Naudé laid the foundations for the principles and practices of modern librarianship with the publication in 1627 of his book Advice on the Function of a Library. Naudé wrote that libraries should be well organized and should contain books from all branches of knowledge. He greatly influenced Gottfried von Leibniz, a 17th- and early-18th-century philosopher and mathematician who became a librarian in Hanover, Germany. Leibniz advocated adequately staffed and well-organized libraries that fulfill a social role much like that of a school or church. In the 18th century the establishment of thousands of social libraries in Europe contributed to the rise of public libraries. Groups of investors purchased stock in a social library. These stock purchases provided the money to maintain the library for use by subscribers. Although they were generally somewhat profitable, social libraries were vulnerable to financial downturns in the economy.

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