I own a fair number of books, and having moved them three times during the last ten years, I think I have enough of them. It’s not that I consider moving again in the forseeable future, but you never know. I’ll keep to ebooks 🙂
It’s nothing though against the sheer number of old leather-bound tomes in this magnificent library of Admont Abbey.
What my own collection of books lacks in style and splendor, here we have it in abundance. It’s the same story as in Lisbon. Monasteries like this were not meant as modest places of prayer, they were big enterprises and their heads were always second or third sons of high nobility. Basically these were palaces, and just like the palaces of kings and dukes, they were places of immense worldly power. Fair enough that their libraries matched in representative glory 🙂