Although André didn't know what it meant to be so vast and full of sweat, he felt a sense of humility when he walked into this temple of knowledge built with books, just as he felt when he first walked into the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

It was the first time he had seen so many beautifully printed books put together outside of Europe. Although he could not read the square fonts printed on these books, the illustrations in many of them had made him understand that these books were not books of praise to God.

Compared to a country with such a high degree of culture, the British Isles are truly equivalent to a barbarian state that has just escaped from a barbaric life. The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is the largest library in Great Britain, but when Sir Thomas Bodley officially rebuilt it in 1602, he had collected just over 2,000 volumes, less than one hundredth of the number here.

Of course, this is not to say that European culture is too backward, for example, the Kinnige Pavilion shipped to China with more than 7,000 books donated by the Pope at one time. The reason why the first library in Britain can't collect many kinds of books is entirely because of the religious struggles in Europe today.

Unlike in China, in Europe, although the aristocracy had the right to be educated, the transmission of knowledge was always in the hands of the church. In the 11th century, the split between the Eastern and Western Churches led to internal protesters within the Catholic Church. At the beginning of the 16th century, Martin Luther officially announced the emergence of Protestants intent on reforming the church with a "Ninety-Five Theses."

During this century, the rise of Protestant power led to the emergence of the Protestant League of Nobles in Europe. In this era, all ideological struggles will eventually be resolved by force.

Although the Protestants were supported by the lower classes of the European people and some of the aristocracy, in terms of the accumulation of doctrinal academic theories, the Protestant clergy, which had emerged less than 100 years ago, were inevitably weaker than the Catholic Church, which had existed for more than 1,000 years. In this situation, the Protestant clergy naturally used the same method of burning books and pit Confucianism as Qin Shi Huang in the past.

And in the Protestant countries, the most drastic and thorough implementation of this policy was naturally carried out by the British. Before King Henry VIII implemented the Reformation, there were nearly 1,000 monasteries in the British Isles, the oldest of which date back to the 5th century AD.

Because of the long history of these monasteries, they also contain a large number of manuscript books, but after the Reformation of Henry VIII, he closed more than 800 monasteries and burned and destroyed some 250,000 books, many of which have been handed down from Roman times.

Although in the time of Henry VIII, Chinese papermaking and printing had already been introduced to Europe. But before that, books in Europe were elaborately copied on parchment by monastic monks and decorated with gold and silver on the cover, and books were entirely expensive works of art.

In the mid-15th century, such a parchment was worth a house and a small plot of land. Therefore, there are basically no books in the homes of the small nobles, and only the expensive study rooms exist in the homes of the big nobles, and the books are mostly in the single digits.

In 1439, the University of Oxford received a generous donation of 280 volumes from Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of King Henry VI. For the sake of the books, they decided to move the library to a new, larger building in the middle of the university, and named the library after the duke.

Humphrey's Library was the forerunner of Bodleian Library, which was destroyed in the name of the Reformation and was rebuilt by Sir Bodleian.

Henry VIII's Reformation, which laid the foundations of Protestantism in the Kingdom of Britain, was also evident in its cultural destruction of England. However, it is precisely because of this lack of traditional European Catholic cultural education that Britain can now be more open and more accepting of new scientific knowledge than other countries on the European continent.

This is also why, when Andre was sarcastically caricatured by the Chinese who served in his residence, not only did he not become angry, but began to take a great interest in Chinese culture, wanting to see what the culture that made these Chinese proud.

After all, before Sir Isaac Newton was born, Britain was nothing more than a country of hillbillies, pirates and peddlers in the eyes of Europeans, and there was no culture to speak of.

Andre walked between the bookcases, and curiously pulled Li Bo'an beside him to ask about the things he didn't understand, from the content of the books, the price, to the slogans posted on the bookcases, and the tables and chairs placed on the side of the bookcases for people to read and copy, he was greatly surprised by everything called Zhonghua Book Company.

Books here are as cheap as they are in Europe. Although the spread of printing and papermaking throughout Europe transformed books from luxuries used by aristocrats to flaunt their wealth into vehicles of knowledge that could be purchased by ordinary nobles and wealthy families, a book was still equal to a week's salary of an ordinary employee.

If it weren't for the fact that the books were in a script he didn't understand, he would have bought a batch of books to spend his time on the ship. But even so, he plans to get a copy to take back to China as a souvenir of his adventure in China.

When Andre was bent on looking for a book with more illustrations and a more Chinese style, the clerk who passed by him couldn't help but smile and suggested: "If this Western guest wants to buy foreign language books, you might as well come with me, foreign language books are not here." ”

Li Boan glanced at the clerk in some surprise before translating his words to Andre. Andrei was also surprised, and he said with some astonishment: "There are still books in European characters here?" ”

As he walked forward, the clerk said, "There are not many books in Western characters, less than 20 of them, and they are in the next room. ”

Li Bo'an and Andre immediately involuntarily followed, and they were also very curious about what kind of foreign language books were in the capital of the Ming Dynasty. However, both of them thought in their hearts that this was about the goods that some merchant had brought from Europe.

They followed the bookstore clerk through several bookshelves and into another, smaller room. It is also a double row of bookshelves, with a passage for people to walk in the middle, but the bookshelves here are almost half less than those outside.

The clerk who led the way stopped in front of the third row of bookshelves, he pointed to the middle row of books on the shelves and said, "Two guests, take your time, the foreign books are all placed here." ”

After thanking the clerk, André walked over to the bookshelf, took out the books and looked through them. When he got his hands on it, he realized that it was not right, these were not books trafficked from Europe.

He glanced at the name of the book in his hand, "Dictionary of Chinese and Latin Translations", the whole book is not thick, only about 260 pages, but smelling the ink on it, he also knows that this is a new book.

André was stunned at first, but then he looked up at the shelves, and counted them, there were only about 17 books in this row, but none of them were shipped from Europe.

He curiously flipped through the pages in his hand, and found that the Latin words in it were not some nonsense, at least the person who wrote this dictionary had a deep Latin literacy, at least much better than him.

During his lifetime, James I reversed the negligence of previous kings in education and vigorously supported the promotion of scientific research and university education in England.

And the great English dramatist William Shakespeare's plays and poems written in English are full of beautiful literary moods. As a result, the British began to face up to the written language of their own country, and began to promote the use of English in universities, while Latin became an instrumental language for scientific research, and was no longer the everyday language used by the British aristocracy.

Although André could read and write Latin, he did not think that he could use Latin so appropriately to annotate Chinese phrases. He returned to the cover and was surprised to see that the author's name was Nicolas Trigo, who was clearly a European.

Andrei set aside the books in his hand and flipped through all the books on the shelves. Among the 17 books on the shelves are dictionaries of German, Italian, Portuguese, French to Chinese, in addition to a few thin bilingual books, apparently used to further study these European languages.

Nicolas Trigo's name appeared in most of the books, and André thought about it and picked out a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a nearly 300-page book printed in both Latin and Chinese.

When he took these two books and walked with Li Boan to the counter at the entrance, he pretended to ask casually, "Who is this Mr. Nicolas Trigot?" ”

The clerk lowered his head to wrap books for him, and replied without raising his head: "He is a Western monk and an academician of the Daming Royal Academy of Sciences, and his Chinese name is Jinnige..."

Although he learned about Nicolas Trigo's identity from the clerk, Andrei was not happy at all. Kinney was a Jesuit monk and had nothing to do with him as a Puritan. It is estimated that the other party will not speak ill of Britain in front of the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom, which is already good.

Coming out of the bookstore, Andre, who was slightly lost, looked at the busy scene of people coming and going on the street, and he suddenly became comfortable again. When he came to China this time, he not only established formal trade relations with China, but also signed a currency swap agreement for the company with an annual currency swap of 1 million yuan.

On top of that, the Chinese emperor also allowed them to set up a merchant house in Tianjin and send a representative in Beijing to serve as a communication between the two sides. Of course, for himself, it was a good prospect to start the Sumatra Oil Production Company with businessmen appointed by the Chinese emperor.

However, André wanted to establish closer relations with the Chinese emperor in order to protect his own interests and that of the company, since the British East India Company was too weak north of Malacca, and that any rival in the region was stronger than the British. He was concerned that the trade benefits of Britain would be suppressed by other European colonists, just like the British trading houses on Ambon Island.