Tag Archives: Alebrand de Florence

How to Burn the Cotton Library

Collect every medieval manuscript you can get your hands on, the best ones, the really beautiful and important ones. Make a who’s who of the famed and the fabulous and gather them all in, from all over the place, get the bibles of every discipline and the bible too: science, literature, law, medicine, government. Religion. Assemble the works of our ancestors and make them your children. Be the mother of thousands. Be all their daddies.

Die.

Bequeath your collection, vast and priceless, to the state. Forget that the state is not yet accustomed to protecting such treasures, this is symbolism. Make a point and give it all to the nation and not to the monarch, the national body will be your library’s parent and or legal guardian now.

Store the manuscripts in a room right above a fireplace. Directly above. Prefer a temperamental fireplace with a wooden mantle.

Store firewood along the mantle, standing … More