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15 - Monastic collections and their dispersal

from LITERATURE OF THE LEARNED

By
James Carley
Edited by
John Barnard  and
D. F. McKenzie
With
Maureen Bell
James Carley
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
John Barnard
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
D. F. McKenzie
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Maureen Bell
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Summary

In 1556, one year before the terminus a quo for this volume, John Dee (1527–1608), magus and book collector, composed ‘A Supplication to Q. Mary…for the recovery and preservation of ancient Writers and Monuments’. Appealing to Mary’s piety Dee first regretted the ‘spoile and destruction’ of the monastic libraries which, he pointed out, was still happening even in the time of Reconciliation, books ‘enclosed in walls, or buried in the ground’ and ‘burnt, or sufferd to rott and decay’. To combat this lamentable state of affairs he proposed the establishment of a Library Royal and commissioners who would go about the country retrieving ancient books. Copies would be made and the originals then restored to their present owners if they desired them. Dee shrewdly recommended haste in this endeavour since malicious persons might otherwise hide the books in their possession. Even though immensely sympathetic to a return to the old order Mary did not adopt Dee’s scheme and it foundered, as would all similar proposals over the next centuries.

Two years after our terminus ad quem Edward Bernard’s Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae was published, listing the contents of the large institutional libraries as well as those of private individuals. By this time most of the major collections had been assembled and a stability insured. Subsequently, of course, smaller libraries have been broken up, books moved around, and there have been new finds in England and on the Continent, but the great age of migration of English medieval manuscripts was effectively over.

Keywords

Library Royalgolden age of collectingmedieval English historyAnglo-Saxon historybooksmonastic collectionsworking librariesmonastic libraries
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
, pp. 339 - 348
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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