Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The physical setting
- Part One The medieval library
- Part Two Reformation, dissolution, new learning
- 10 The dispersal of the monastic libraries and the salvaging of the spoils
- 11 Extending the frontiers: scholar collectors
- 12 Matthew Parker’s manuscripts: an Elizabethan library and its use
- Part Three Tools of the trade
- Part Four Libraries for leisure
- Part Five Organisation and administration
- Select bibliography
- General index
- Index of manuscripts
- References
10 - The dispersal of the monastic libraries and the salvaging of the spoils
from Part Two - Reformation, dissolution, new learning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
By
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The physical setting
- Part One The medieval library
- Part Two Reformation, dissolution, new learning
- 10 The dispersal of the monastic libraries and the salvaging of the spoils
- 11 Extending the frontiers: scholar collectors
- 12 Matthew Parker’s manuscripts: an Elizabethan library and its use
- Part Three Tools of the trade
- Part Four Libraries for leisure
- Part Five Organisation and administration
- Select bibliography
- General index
- Index of manuscripts
- References
Summary
Relatively little concrete evidence remains concerning the contents of the English monastic libraries in the years leading up to the major dissolutions of the second half of the 1530s, and the only complete catalogue compiled after 1500 still extant is that of the brothers’ library in the Bridgettine house of Syon (c. 1500–c. 1524). The booklists which do survive, primarily those compiled by John Leland, were selective in nature and throw more light on the interests of the compiler than on the material contained in the monasteries themselves. In his De uiris illustribus, or Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis as it was called by its eighteenth-century editor, Leland included several brief sketches of monastic libraries, and these suggest widely differing conditions from house to house and order to order. For the most part, the Benedictines were singled out for praise, and Leland was lyrical in his evocation of the well-stocked library at Glastonbury, which he visited in the summer of 1533.
At Bath he was impressed by the ancient books which had survived up to his time (Scriptores, 160), and he mentioned that the famous library at St Albans was likewise stocked with ancient books (Scriptores, 166). The cathedral priory at Norwich, he stated, was ‘crammed with good books’ (Scriptores, 247), and he saluted Ramsey as a ‘storehouse of ancient authors’ (Scriptores, 264). St Augustine’s, Canterbury, was described as ‘a rich storehouse of ancient manuscripts’ in spite of a terrible fire in 1168 and later depredations by ignorant monks (Scriptores, 299–301). The library at Abingdon had been neglected, but nevertheless Leland found a particular gem, a copy of Joseph of Exeter’s lost Antiocheis, while rooting through ‘the dust and moths’ (Scriptores, 238).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland , pp. 265 - 291Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
References
‘Philip Hawford, pseudo abbot of Evesham and dean ofWorcester: his will and inventory’, Transactions of theWorcestershire Archaeological Society,NS5 (1928).Google Scholar
, ‘Monastic libraries: 1400–1557’, in and (eds.), The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, III: 1400–1557 (Cambridge) (1999).Google Scholar
, ‘Printed books in English Cistercian monasteries’, Cîteaux: commentarii cistercienses 53 (2002).Google Scholar
, The town library of Ipswich, provided for the use of the town preachers in 1599 (Woodbridge, 1989).Google Scholar
, ‘John Leland and the contents of English pre-dissolution libraries: the Cambridge friars’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 9 (1986).Google Scholar
, ‘John Leland and the contents of English pre-dissolution libraries: Lincolnshire’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 9 (1989).Google Scholar
, ‘Sir Thomas Bodley’s library and its acquisitions: an edition of the Nottingham benefaction of 1604’, in and , Books and collectors (1997).Google Scholar
, ‘“A great gatherer together of books”: Archbishop Bancroft’s library at Lambeth (1610) and its sources’, Lambeth Palace Library Annual Review (2001).Google Scholar
, ‘Religious controversy and marginalia: Pierfrancesco di Piero Bardi, Thomas Wakefield and their books’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 12 (2002).Google Scholar
, ‘Pre-Conquest manuscripts from Malmesbury Abbey and John Leland’s letter to Beatus Rhenanus concerning a lost copy of Tertullian’s works’, Anglo-Saxon England 33 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and , ‘Grammar and arithmetic in two thirteenth-century English monastic collections’, Journal of Medieval Latin I (1991).Google Scholar
, ‘“Cum excuterem puluerem et blattas”: John Bale, John Leland and the ChroniconTinemutensis coenobii’, in and (eds.), Textandcontroversy fromWyclif to Bale (Turnhout, 2005).Google Scholar
, ‘Reformation and reaction at St Albans Abbey, 1530–58’, The English Historical Review 115 (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Print and pre-Reformation religion: the Benedictines and the press c. 1470–c. 1550’, in , and (eds.), The uses of script and print, 1300–1700 (Cambridge, 2004).Google Scholar
, English medieval books: the Reading Abbey collections from foundation to dispersal (Oxford, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Manuscripts surviving from the Austin friars at Cambridge’, Manuscripta 27 (1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Monastic learning and libraries in sixteenth-century Yorkshire’, in (ed.), Humanism and reform: the church in Europe, England, and Scotland, 1400–1643, Studies in church history, Subsidia 8 (Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar
, ‘Community solidarity among Yorkshire religious after the Dissolution’, in (ed.), Monastic studies: the continuity of tradition (Bangor, 1990).Google Scholar
, ‘The dispersal of the library of Christ Church, Canterbury, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century’, in and , Books and collectors (1997).Google Scholar
and (eds.), The annals of St Neots with Vita prima Sancti Neoti, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a collaborative edition, 17 (Cambridge, 1985).Google Scholar
‘Dial M for mystic: mystical texts in the library of Syon Abbey and the spirituality of the Syon brethren’, in (ed.), The medieval mystical tradition: England, Ireland andWales (Cambridge, 1999).Google Scholar
‘The glosses on Bede’s De temporum ratione attributed to Byrhtferth of Ramsey’, Anglo-Saxon England 25 (1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and , The recovery of the past in early Elizabethan England: documents by John Bale and John Joscelyn from the circle of Matthew Parker, Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monographs 13 (Cambridge, 1998) (an annotated edition of Cambridge University Library, MS Add. 7489 and other documents).Google Scholar
‘“Motheaten, mouldye, and rotten”: the early custodial history and dissemination of John Leland’s manuscript remains’, Bodleian Library Record 1 8/5 (2005).Google Scholar
‘John Nettleton, Henry Savile of Banke, and the post-medieval vicissitudes of Byland Abbey library’, Northern History 26 (1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘The need for a guide to the editors of patristic texts in the 16th century’, StudiaPatristica, 17.1 (1982).Google Scholar
‘Herwagen’s lost manuscript of the Collectanea’, in and (eds.), Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae (Dublin, 1998).Google Scholar
, On the abbey of St Edmund at Bury, Cambridge Antiquarian Society Octavo Publications 28 (1895).Google Scholar
and (eds.), Studies in seventeenth-century English literature, history and bibliography (Amsterdam, 1984).Google Scholar
, ‘The migration of manuscripts from the English medieval houses’, Library, 4th ser., 23 (1942–3), repr. in Books, collectors and libraries (1985).Google Scholar
, ‘Medieval manuscripts from Norwich Cathedral Priory’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 1 (1949–53); repr. in Books, collectors and libraries (1985).Google Scholar
, ‘Sir John Prise’, Library, 5th ser., 10 (1955), repr. in Books, collectors and libraries (1985).Google Scholar
, ‘Cardinal Cervini’s manuscripts from the Cambridge friars’, in and (eds.), Xenia medii aevi historiam illustrantia oblata Thomae Kaeppeli OP (Rome, 1978), repr. in Books, collectors and libraries (1985).Google Scholar
, The laboryouse journey & serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes antiquitees geuen of hym as a New Yeares gyfte to Kynge Henry the VIII. In the XXXVII. Yeare of his reygne, with declaracyons enlarged by Johan Bale (London, 1549; repr. Manchester 1895, Amsterdam and Norwood, 1975).Google Scholar
, ‘The Irish “remnaunt” of John Bale’s manuscripts’, in and (eds.), New science out of old books: studies in manuscripts and early printed books in honour of A. I. Doyle (Aldershot, 1995).Google Scholar
and , ‘Malmesbury – Sélestat – Malines: les tribulations d’un manuscrit de Tertullien au milieu du XVIe siécle’, Annuaire des amis de la Bibliothéque humaniste de Sélestat (2003).Google Scholar
‘Medieval Latin poetic anthologies, i: Titus A.xx and Rawlinson B.214’, Mediaeval Studies 39 (1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Thomas Cranmer and the dispersal of medieval libraries: the provenance of some of his medieval manuscripts and printed books’, in and , Books and collectors (1997).Google Scholar
, ‘Reconstructing the medieval library of Bury St Edmunds: the lost catalogue of Henry of Kirkstead’, in (ed.), Bury St Edmunds: medieval art, architecture, archaeology, and economy, BAA Conference Transactions 1994 (1998).Google Scholar
, The Buildwas books: book production, acquisition and use at an English Cistercian monastery, 1165–c. 1400, Oxford Bibliographical Society, 3rd ser., 2 (1997).Google Scholar
and , The early history of St John’s College, Oxford, Oxford Historical Society, n.s. 1 (1939).
(ed.), The itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535–1543, 5 vols. (London, 1906–10).Google Scholar
, ‘John Twyne of Canterbury (d. 1581) as a collector of medieval manuscripts: a preliminary investigation’, Library, 6th ser., 8 (1986); repr. in his Medieval manuscripts in postmedieval England (Aldershot, 2004), IV..Google Scholar
, ‘The dispersal of the monastic libraries and the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon studies. Matthew Parker and his circle: a preliminary study’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 1 (1951).Google Scholar
, ‘The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the formation of the Cottonian library’, in and , English library (1958).Google Scholar
- 6
- Cited by