1 00:00:06,680 --> 00:00:11,280 I've forgotten what the title I gave for the sixth lecture was, 2 00:00:11,280 --> 00:00:17,910 but it was something like the decay and closure of libraries to send you off on a happy note. 3 00:00:20,160 --> 00:00:28,709 The dissolution of the monasteries plays a large role in English perceptions of medieval libraries and has done ever since. 4 00:00:28,710 --> 00:00:32,640 Students began to think about the subject a very long time ago. 5 00:00:34,290 --> 00:00:47,670 Keller indicated in the first edition of Mel B in 1941 that the limit of date is about 1540 for English and Welsh libraries. 6 00:00:48,270 --> 00:00:58,710 And a decade or two later for Scottish libraries, books with inscriptions, etc. dating from the period of the Marian revival are not listed. 7 00:01:00,630 --> 00:01:06,330 He hasn't mentioned dissolution, but Queen Mary did not revive medieval libraries. 8 00:01:06,810 --> 00:01:15,300 She revived a handful of monasteries. The mere mention of 1540 and the dissolution is understood. 9 00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:25,170 Its immediate aftermath locally has an important effect on the preservation of books from the dissolved houses, 10 00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:30,420 the subject of great interest to which I have not devoted time in these lectures 11 00:01:31,440 --> 00:01:36,150 as long as I'm LGB was dominated by books from dissolved religious houses. 12 00:01:36,690 --> 00:01:45,960 There was a close link between the events of 1536, 1540 and the listing of what survived the wreck. 13 00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:55,030 The dissolution has had the blame for our loss of countless medieval books that might otherwise have survived. 14 00:01:55,830 --> 00:02:00,659 But our dashed hopes must be qualified. Nigel Ramsey, 15 00:02:00,660 --> 00:02:06,930 in an essay in 2004 on The Break-Up of English libraries in the 16th century spelt 16 00:02:06,930 --> 00:02:13,860 out reasons why the dissolution came at the worst possible time for libraries, 17 00:02:14,520 --> 00:02:17,010 which was struggling to survive anyway. 18 00:02:19,230 --> 00:02:26,760 The dissolution had only indirect impact on the universities and the religious houses in Oxford and Cambridge disappeared, 19 00:02:26,760 --> 00:02:35,580 including the Benedictine colleges in Oxford. But there was no eager takeover of the books by neighbouring colleges. 20 00:02:36,870 --> 00:02:41,610 Canterbury College ceased to exist when its parent body, the cathedral priory, 21 00:02:42,300 --> 00:02:47,459 surrendered and there was no thought of its continuance in relation to the cathedral. 22 00:02:47,460 --> 00:02:53,220 Re founded as a secular chapter, its recognisable books, that is, 23 00:02:53,220 --> 00:02:59,310 medieval manuscripts from the cathedral that had been assigned to the college were well 24 00:02:59,310 --> 00:03:09,600 represented among leaves used by Oxford Binders to bind modern printed books in Cambridge. 25 00:03:09,630 --> 00:03:12,990 No money was spent on books for the university library. 26 00:03:13,350 --> 00:03:21,179 Between 1530 and 1573, it was in effect, abandoned in 1546. 27 00:03:21,180 --> 00:03:24,600 Seven being found of no use to anyone. 28 00:03:24,600 --> 00:03:28,050 The space was converted into a theology lecture room. 29 00:03:29,910 --> 00:03:39,540 The older university library in Oxford faded away in the same period, almost unvisited after the 1530s. 30 00:03:40,140 --> 00:03:41,760 So the antiquarian bibliography, 31 00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:53,460 John Bell was there some time between 1548 and 1553 hunting for little known medieval works among the neglected books. 32 00:03:55,470 --> 00:04:05,430 Soon after that, Protestant reformers cleared the desks of books, and in January 1556, even the furniture was sold off. 33 00:04:06,450 --> 00:04:11,280 The desks and benches were bought by Richard Marshall, dean of Christchurch, 34 00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:17,550 to set up a college library in the former monastic refectory of Freud's whites. 35 00:04:18,870 --> 00:04:22,020 Marshall was dean only under Queen Mary. 36 00:04:23,040 --> 00:04:25,500 His Catholic views were often to the fore, 37 00:04:26,160 --> 00:04:35,250 and he may have wished to create an old fashioned home for books displaced by more forward looking heads of colleges. 38 00:04:36,330 --> 00:04:44,280 This was perhaps a rear guard action, therefore, rather than an early sign that libraries might recover. 39 00:04:46,200 --> 00:04:53,160 There was much more afoot than to reduce the role of libraries than just the dissolution of the monasteries. 40 00:04:55,050 --> 00:05:04,980 The dissolution happened early in England has focussed on it, a change that was widespread in Europe in the preceding decades. 41 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:13,379 Gallup poll fits in an article entitled Liberty in Utilities Useless Books in Scripture. 42 00:05:13,380 --> 00:05:23,530 Miriam from 1996 spoke of a great perishing of books Bishop Stebbing and also more actively of a great Sir 43 00:05:23,610 --> 00:05:32,130 Stuart Spark a work of destruction in countries that escaped the secularisation of monasteries at this period. 44 00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:40,980 The evidence shows that the flood of printed books was accompanied by a large scale disposal of manuscripts. 45 00:05:42,840 --> 00:05:51,239 Poets put some emphasis on the need for scrap parchment to bind the flood of new books and notes, 46 00:05:51,240 --> 00:05:55,350 also the concurrent binding of manuscripts that were retained. 47 00:05:56,250 --> 00:05:59,790 But binding leaves are a symptom of destruction. 48 00:06:00,390 --> 00:06:04,440 They do not represent the cause of disruption, of destruction. 49 00:06:05,400 --> 00:06:12,810 Scrap parchment, it seems, had a greater value than the same parchment as bearer of manuscript text. 50 00:06:14,750 --> 00:06:18,530 The cause here was simply obsolescence. 51 00:06:19,580 --> 00:06:27,590 The second hand market was allowed 12th and 13th century manuscripts to be sold on had dried up at some point. 52 00:06:28,460 --> 00:06:36,380 We identified the example of William Charities acquiring such books for Leicester around 1480 or 1490, 53 00:06:36,860 --> 00:06:42,860 when he might just as well have bought new printed books 20 or 30 years later. 54 00:06:43,430 --> 00:06:50,090 There is no evidence for keeping the old and ample evidence for the move from manuscript to print. 55 00:06:51,770 --> 00:07:01,160 We have therefore two topics in parallel in the closing years of the 15th century and the first decades of the 16th century. 56 00:07:02,330 --> 00:07:09,170 One is the taking up of printed books in the same institutional settings as had for hundreds of years, 57 00:07:09,170 --> 00:07:17,480 maintained libraries of manuscripts in countries where religious houses were not dissolved at the time of the Reformation. 58 00:07:18,380 --> 00:07:27,820 This transformation happened and would no doubt have been as well attested in England as in France and Italy if religious houses had survived. 59 00:07:27,830 --> 00:07:37,070 Here it is noticeable in English evidence, but we tend to overlook it, in part because libraries have, 60 00:07:37,370 --> 00:07:45,680 since the 17th century, separated manuscripts as old and printed books as part of a continuing tradition. 61 00:07:47,450 --> 00:07:53,209 The practical reason why Care and his colleagues made no search for printed books back in 62 00:07:53,210 --> 00:08:00,710 1930 840 printed books that had belonged to institutions before the dissolution wars. 63 00:08:01,280 --> 00:08:07,280 And is that catalogues of printed books have not usually recorded marks of ownership, 64 00:08:08,300 --> 00:08:17,400 and that the work involved might have meant working along library shelves and opening countless 16th and perhaps 17th century books. 65 00:08:17,480 --> 00:08:26,780 You can't tell from the outside, necessarily. In the process of finding those few that might be relevant, it was not done. 66 00:08:27,710 --> 00:08:33,830 The evidence is therefore under recorded because M LGB only includes printed books 67 00:08:33,830 --> 00:08:40,160 with Monette with medieval provenance when the compilers happened upon them. 68 00:08:42,120 --> 00:08:46,260 The second topic is the cessation of libraries. 69 00:08:47,310 --> 00:08:50,820 The university libraries closed because they were no longer needed. 70 00:08:52,110 --> 00:08:57,120 Cathedrals and colleges that entered enjoyed continuity through the period might 71 00:08:57,120 --> 00:09:03,000 retain their old books alongside new books if they had space and so pleased, 72 00:09:04,470 --> 00:09:11,430 but few did. Libraries disappeared, whether the institution closed or remained open. 73 00:09:13,080 --> 00:09:18,210 No, this is a phenomenon that might be expected as much on the continent as in England. 74 00:09:18,810 --> 00:09:25,200 But I'm not conscious that it has attracted attention and I'm in no position to point to examples. 75 00:09:26,280 --> 00:09:36,030 If, as in England, there was a revival after a gap of 30 or 40 or 50 years, then the gap may have been forgotten. 76 00:09:36,600 --> 00:09:43,950 In places where there was more, especially in countries where monastic institutions simply continued to exist, 77 00:09:44,940 --> 00:09:50,640 it would take close attention to say, whether accessions have more or less dried up. 78 00:09:51,120 --> 00:10:00,630 For a few decades, in the middle of the century, while the old books gather dust until times changed and new books were acquired, 79 00:10:02,670 --> 00:10:08,610 the reason library ceased is because printed books were so much cheaper and so much more easily 80 00:10:08,610 --> 00:10:16,210 obtained that individuals who wanted to know the materials that individuals wanted to read. 81 00:10:17,520 --> 00:10:26,640 No, I'm losing my thread here that individuals individuals who wanted to read could form their own personal studies in the 16th century. 82 00:10:27,840 --> 00:10:37,080 If college fellows could buy what they needed with ease, they had less need to depend on the lending books held by the college for generations past. 83 00:10:38,580 --> 00:10:41,880 They could have copies in the new medium. Lighter. Cleaner. 84 00:10:42,120 --> 00:10:45,490 Easier to consult over time. 85 00:10:45,510 --> 00:10:52,170 The need for libraries re-emerged not because books had reverted to being too expensive, 86 00:10:53,160 --> 00:11:01,200 but because scholarship sometimes demanded that one consult old editions or works no longer available in print. 87 00:11:02,100 --> 00:11:13,200 The accumulation of a third and fourth generation of printing needed libraries not so much to manage the availability of any current work, 88 00:11:13,590 --> 00:11:15,360 but to manage availability. 89 00:11:15,450 --> 00:11:25,410 From generation to generation, the gap between the closure of libraries and the formation of new ones was therefore relatively short. 90 00:11:26,190 --> 00:11:39,390 I've given the dates for Cambridge University Library new acquisitions and in 1530, maintenance lapsed in 1546 seven and purchases restarted in 1573. 91 00:11:40,260 --> 00:11:47,700 Here in Oxford, the lapse was a little later and the revival came only with Thomas Bodley in 1598. 92 00:11:49,620 --> 00:11:54,960 In the meantime, some college libraries were growing apace in the 16th century. 93 00:11:55,350 --> 00:12:02,820 I think Corpus Christi, for example, with its catalogue of 371 books from 1589, 94 00:12:03,660 --> 00:12:10,139 making it a rare example of possibly continuity or at least of revival. 95 00:12:10,140 --> 00:12:16,710 After a relatively short break, although not a medieval college nor a medieval booklist, 96 00:12:17,310 --> 00:12:21,750 this was included in the volume of medieval catalogues for Oxford. 97 00:12:23,460 --> 00:12:30,570 No, I have no pictures today, but a bit of text. 98 00:12:31,650 --> 00:12:36,840 I can show you a couple of pages of printed text to make several points in one go. 99 00:12:38,340 --> 00:12:42,140 These are pages from William Farrell's edition of The Contrary of Cox. 100 00:12:42,150 --> 00:12:47,850 And here he prints an inventory taken two years before the dissolution. 101 00:12:48,180 --> 00:13:00,480 1530 637. It has survived among the rentals and surveys retained in the archive of the Duchy of Lancaster, so not part of the dissolution materials. 102 00:13:01,560 --> 00:13:05,970 Detailed inventory is taken at the time of dissolution are not rare, 103 00:13:06,930 --> 00:13:14,610 but it is very rare to find them into books which formed no part of the commission's brief. 104 00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:24,420 I've highlighted two points here on the left hand page and we're under the heading ornaments of the church. 105 00:13:25,200 --> 00:13:34,230 We see 30 stalls in the choir just above the read books valued at 66 shillings and eight points, 106 00:13:34,650 --> 00:13:40,920 far less than they would have cost to make at the time of the surrender in 1539. 107 00:13:41,780 --> 00:13:51,919 There were 22 cannons beside the abbot at cock Hassan so 30 stalls is not terrific over and the institution was not 108 00:13:51,920 --> 00:14:05,240 to run down the next item in the red box is 54 parchment books in the choir valued again at 66 shillings and £8. 109 00:14:06,050 --> 00:14:10,700 A marginal note given at the bottom. So is too much. 110 00:14:13,660 --> 00:14:19,660 On the right hand page, there is a heading for the library itself, an unusual thing to find. 111 00:14:20,050 --> 00:14:24,670 And three items of valued 52 books in the library. 112 00:14:25,360 --> 00:14:34,940 Five shillings. That's just over a penny per book in old money, six feet of glass, tuppence burfoot, 113 00:14:34,960 --> 00:14:42,430 a shilling and 54 books in the old brief on the cloister side, six shillings and $0.08. 114 00:14:42,730 --> 00:14:50,650 Now that's almost $0.03 per book in old money, but the rate per book does not seem to matter. 115 00:14:51,490 --> 00:14:56,050 The commission's clerk might as well have tempted them and said One penny per book. 116 00:14:56,650 --> 00:15:08,240 The individual values are insignificant. It's particularly interesting to see here that there was a room designated as a library. 117 00:15:08,480 --> 00:15:15,800 It has one window. So this is presumably not a large room fitted out with reading as a reading room with desks. 118 00:15:16,970 --> 00:15:24,440 The rest of the books are still in the room on the side of the cloister where books are presumably being kept. 119 00:15:24,890 --> 00:15:29,540 Since church and Cloister were built at the beginning of the 13th century. 120 00:15:30,260 --> 00:15:35,780 Nothing. Nothing of this survives. No. There's only the chapter house in use as a cattle shed. 121 00:15:38,100 --> 00:15:41,580 The valuation of the books, I say, is almost insignificant. 122 00:15:41,940 --> 00:15:47,100 But the parchment books in the choir are valued at more than a shilling apiece. 123 00:15:48,780 --> 00:15:59,160 Now, we may guess that these included choir books, perhaps some service books, and the relatively high value perhaps suggests large format books. 124 00:16:00,450 --> 00:16:09,060 But service books from a Pre-monsoon retention MP had no second hand value at all in England at this date. 125 00:16:10,410 --> 00:16:17,610 So still guessing. Is this a value based on their scrap value as parchment? 126 00:16:18,840 --> 00:16:22,200 It looks like it, but it seems to me like an awful lot of money. 127 00:16:22,950 --> 00:16:36,059 So in a few lines of inventory, we see a library that is modernised now equipped with a library room and a stock of 100 more printed books. 128 00:16:36,060 --> 00:16:39,080 I think we have to take them as printed books by default. 129 00:16:39,090 --> 00:16:51,809 Parchment is not mentioned. This is a small library for the 1530s, and many an individual would have had more books of insignificant value, 130 00:16:51,810 --> 00:16:56,730 it seems, and Watchmen books with a more significant value. 131 00:16:57,240 --> 00:17:04,210 Speculatively, I say as scrap. From Monk Britain near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. 132 00:17:05,770 --> 00:17:13,239 We have a still more unusual record of 140 books kept by a small group of former 133 00:17:13,240 --> 00:17:19,210 monks of the Priory who continued to live a communal life for 20 years and more. 134 00:17:20,560 --> 00:17:28,180 We may wonder whether the making of the list in 1558 and of the culture in which it was written, 135 00:17:28,900 --> 00:17:35,140 is a sign of the hoping that Queen Mary would renew life at their monastery. 136 00:17:37,580 --> 00:17:47,150 The list is concise, with no second folios in the old style and no place and year of printing that would become the new style of listing. 137 00:17:47,840 --> 00:17:54,830 We have just titles, but these are sometimes distinctive of title pages from printed books, 138 00:17:56,540 --> 00:18:02,960 and there can be little doubt that they were nearly all printed books, almost all in Latin. 139 00:18:03,620 --> 00:18:11,299 There are a few items of in English, all of them printed off the 1500 calendar of shepherds, for example, 140 00:18:11,300 --> 00:18:20,790 of which there were seven London editions between 1506 and 1528, but then none again until 1559. 141 00:18:21,320 --> 00:18:27,200 So the 1558 list must have one of those from the early part of the century. 142 00:18:29,210 --> 00:18:36,410 I might interject here a concern with what I perceive as a discontinuity between what was read in 143 00:18:36,410 --> 00:18:42,590 English language manuscripts and what was printed in English in the early decades of the 16th century. 144 00:18:43,370 --> 00:18:56,790 But I ought to plead ignorance. Impulse by. Most curious to me on the Britain list is an entry for our rural Aurora totem ferry biblio matrix. 145 00:18:56,810 --> 00:19:05,090 Vestibules complex turns the aurora embracing the whole Bible in poetic verse, 146 00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:14,090 which looks to me like the title from a 16th century edition of the late 12th Century Work of Petrus Reger. 147 00:19:15,110 --> 00:19:20,090 But no edition is known to have existed from any date earlier than this list. 148 00:19:21,140 --> 00:19:31,850 So we may have here a unique attestation from South Yorkshire of an edition of an internationally used schoolbook, otherwise totally lost. 149 00:19:33,620 --> 00:19:43,760 Only one work. Britain appears definitely to be in manuscript, and that's a copy of the musical Monachorum of the Yorkshire Carthusian, John Norton. 150 00:19:44,840 --> 00:19:51,739 So here in Britain it seems we have evidence for a modest monastic library on the eve of the 151 00:19:51,740 --> 00:20:00,020 dissolution still held in common by four monks who simply kept the books when pensions 24 years, 152 00:20:00,290 --> 00:20:02,180 20 years before the list was made. 153 00:20:04,010 --> 00:20:12,260 Of course, we cannot swear that there were not also quantities of old manuscripts in the Priory which they chose not to keep. 154 00:20:13,450 --> 00:20:26,060 MLG B shows only a 13th century Bible and the 13th century breviary its calendar Cluny EC and associated with nearby Pontefract, 155 00:20:26,780 --> 00:20:33,320 which was bought by a monk Monk Breton in the early 16th century. 156 00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:38,570 So not a survivor from the long history of the Priory. 157 00:20:40,190 --> 00:20:43,460 Now MGB is a book for medieval lists, 158 00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:53,870 and a list such as that from Monk Breton is really of interest to students of Catholicism on the eve of the Reformation, not to medieval lists. 159 00:20:55,700 --> 00:21:00,020 Sometimes we see the same attitude reflected in our sources. 160 00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:08,930 John Little, one of the five compilers of the first MLG, be edited for the English Historical Review, 161 00:21:09,290 --> 00:21:19,580 a list of works noticed by someone touring some of the religious houses of Lincolnshire and picking up books on behalf of perhaps the King, 162 00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:27,560 perhaps Cardinal Woolsey. The list had in the past been associated with John Leland, the King's Antiquity, 163 00:21:27,980 --> 00:21:34,730 who was known to have toured parts of England between 1533 and 1535 and to have made such 164 00:21:34,730 --> 00:21:42,110 notes as well as for acquiring some of the books for himself and for the King's Library. 165 00:21:44,360 --> 00:21:49,160 These lists from Lincoln should show a plus sign against some titles. 166 00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:56,140 And wherever the plus is used, the book can usually still be found in the Royal Library. 167 00:21:56,690 --> 00:22:02,210 So there's a clear connection between the visit and books taken to the Royal Library. 168 00:22:03,140 --> 00:22:11,300 But at no fewer than 16 out of 32 houses, the visitor recorded no titles. 169 00:22:12,800 --> 00:22:17,959 These include six houses of Friars, five of Austen Canons, three of Gilbert ten canons, 170 00:22:17,960 --> 00:22:22,040 one of Pre-monsoon retention canons, and one of Cistercian monks. 171 00:22:23,210 --> 00:22:29,720 James Carney has directed the list to the summer of 1528 and the purpose to find 172 00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:35,870 books that might aid the King's argument for his divorce from Queen Catherine. 173 00:22:36,650 --> 00:22:45,950 Only once is the word library are used and that of Lincoln Cathedral, where there was nothing worse recording. 174 00:22:46,250 --> 00:22:58,040 The visitor wrote, in varying words, that there were books but nothing but common printed books, or sometimes common or printed books. 175 00:22:58,580 --> 00:23:09,050 Computer res library communities are taking Empresarial literary study to computers, critics said. 176 00:23:09,140 --> 00:23:13,140 Well, communities are t where impressed Sawyer literary. 177 00:23:13,370 --> 00:23:23,510 In booty he sometimes sees that there were printed books or books not to all purpose, which at least implies they were not printed. 178 00:23:24,620 --> 00:23:35,630 Multi sunt Ibid. Library Noam TEMIN av rem pertinent days well community in precis commonly printed for this visitor. 179 00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:48,830 There is a persistent equation between communists usual commonplace and printed, so his lack of interest signals to us that these places, 180 00:23:49,250 --> 00:24:00,380 most of the minor, have no historic collection to interest him, but merely modern books, sometimes sufficient for him to use the word multi. 181 00:24:02,830 --> 00:24:06,180 It's not what we want to hear if we're looking for medieval manuscripts. 182 00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:11,980 But it tells us that small religious houses had modernised by the early 16th century. 183 00:24:13,120 --> 00:24:20,290 It should not surprise us. It seems to have disappointed the visitor as it would have disappointed the compilers had been LGB. 184 00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:29,620 Only two Benedictine houses were visited on this tour and the largest number of titles recorded. 185 00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:39,790 13 was bought and the MP two books were recorded at Friston, a little cell of the Benedictine Abbey of Crowland. 186 00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:44,980 We can't read anything about the Library of Botany from this information. 187 00:24:46,930 --> 00:24:56,860 Places where he records manuscripts may also have had modern collections, but the record focussed on older items and does not tell us. 188 00:24:59,490 --> 00:25:05,550 The positive evidence for the move into printed books is not often readily accessible, 189 00:25:06,150 --> 00:25:14,070 and the best view that we get is at Syon, where the large catalogue of the Brethren library from around 1500, 190 00:25:14,550 --> 00:25:27,360 with nearly 300 overwritten entries from around 1524 shows that printed books were being acquired by the Brethren from as early as 1468. 191 00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:38,790 Mary Beetson, a good medievalist, remarked in her preface that she embarked on her edition with no sense of the bibliographical challenge involved. 192 00:25:39,780 --> 00:25:43,140 She did well, but we now have Gillespie's edition, 193 00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:50,190 which I often think is the most straightforwardly rewarding volume of the corpus of medieval library catalogues. 194 00:25:50,820 --> 00:25:54,360 It's an outstanding catalogue and it's very well presented. 195 00:25:56,170 --> 00:26:02,320 Some hundreds of early printed editions can be recognised mostly from their second folios, 196 00:26:02,590 --> 00:26:08,860 which lead you to an edition rather than to an individual copy, as they would with manuscripts. 197 00:26:10,390 --> 00:26:14,200 And their most common source of editions is Cologne. 198 00:26:15,130 --> 00:26:23,350 This appears clearly enough from the index of Imprints, and if you contrast it with the index of imprints in the libraries of King Henry the Eighth, 199 00:26:23,350 --> 00:26:26,560 you see that his books came for preference from Paris. 200 00:26:30,290 --> 00:26:40,760 The surviving books from Scion. The surviving books associated with Scion, I should say, include a handful still later than 1524. 201 00:26:41,780 --> 00:26:46,490 But these are mostly books that belonged to the Sisters of the Abbey. 202 00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:55,010 For example, a copy of Richard Woodford's Work the Pipe or Tongue of the Life of Pursuit of Perfection. 203 00:26:55,730 --> 00:26:58,190 London Robert Redmond 1532. 204 00:26:58,460 --> 00:27:09,830 And the copy is now Bodley Quarto w2th sold belonged to Eleanor Fetty Place, whom we can identify as a sister of Scion at the dissolution. 205 00:27:11,970 --> 00:27:15,660 A copy of The Tree and 12 Fruits of the Holy Ghost. 206 00:27:15,660 --> 00:27:19,860 London Robert Coupland 1535 Now Cambridge, 207 00:27:19,860 --> 00:27:29,339 Trinity College C 712 belonged to I'm going from a printed report Mart wins Dominar 208 00:27:29,340 --> 00:27:34,620 to Scion and I'm not sure what's implied by her baptismal or her forename, 209 00:27:34,620 --> 00:27:40,050 at least the a sister of the MP and another copy of the same work. 210 00:27:40,350 --> 00:27:47,160 Note Ampleforth belong to Dorothy Codrington, a sister of Scion at the time of the dissolution. 211 00:27:49,510 --> 00:27:53,680 It may be doubted whether these books should have a place in MGB, 212 00:27:54,100 --> 00:28:03,040 since the sisters very lightly kept the books after the dissolution if they were not entered in them LGB However, 213 00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:10,180 I should not have known they had this connection and I wonder whether they could have been found without two vast research. 214 00:28:12,030 --> 00:28:20,100 A curious pair of books which we can associate with the Brethren Library are now in Boston College that are not mentioned in the catalogue. 215 00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:30,690 There's a Bible concordance, all in Hebrew, printed at Venice in 1524 and a Hebrew grammar printed at Basel in 1525. 216 00:28:31,260 --> 00:28:41,880 One carries the name of John Futura, sometime fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, who appears as donor of 75 books in the signed AP catalogue. 217 00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:47,010 So this is a perhaps a follow up. I printed 1524. 218 00:28:47,010 --> 00:28:57,930 It shouldn't be in the catalogue. The other has the name of Bond identified with William Bond donor of 29 books in the catalogue. 219 00:28:58,710 --> 00:29:07,120 Neither of these two books appears. Both persons were still very much alive when the catalogue was drawn up. 220 00:29:07,540 --> 00:29:11,650 Bond died in 1530 future in 1536. 221 00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:20,230 Another book, a Latin commentary on the Pauline epistles printed at Paris in 1528, now at Stonor Park, 222 00:29:20,740 --> 00:29:28,210 is inscribed with the name of John Coppinger, who died shortly before the dissolution as a brother at Syon. 223 00:29:29,290 --> 00:29:30,609 And this has an inscription. 224 00:29:30,610 --> 00:29:44,470 Also pray for William Bond and John Coppinger, good daughter, suggesting that it had been passed to a family member, possibly a sister at Syon. 225 00:29:46,740 --> 00:29:51,600 So these are books from the very end of the monastic tradition, recent printed books. 226 00:29:53,430 --> 00:30:02,300 Scion was a relatively recent foundation with a relatively modern, late medieval collection of books, and it was clearly moving forwards. 227 00:30:03,030 --> 00:30:11,969 Half the library was made up of printed books. A Benedictine house with a large and old library such as Canterbury Cathedral. 228 00:30:11,970 --> 00:30:15,600 Priory was also acquiring printed books. 229 00:30:16,020 --> 00:30:19,350 In this case from around 1470. 230 00:30:20,100 --> 00:30:28,030 But our knowledge of them is close to insignificant, and such knowledge is equally thin for any printed books. 231 00:30:28,050 --> 00:30:30,210 At Canterbury College in Oxford. 232 00:30:32,340 --> 00:30:40,080 Although we have inventories from the early 16th century, the books were mostly the same as had been there for decades, 233 00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:47,910 and those that survived from the college lists are mostly recognised by Marx from the Priory. 234 00:30:49,470 --> 00:30:53,850 And we can associate the books on the college list with books in the priority catalogue. 235 00:30:56,040 --> 00:31:02,630 In both universities, the evidence for the shift from manuscript to printed books is less apparent. 236 00:31:02,730 --> 00:31:15,690 The more might wish and expect. The explanation for this, I suspect, is price colleges old collections still at the beginning of the 16th century. 237 00:31:16,410 --> 00:31:20,370 Colleges retain their old collection still at the beginning of the 16th century. 238 00:31:20,910 --> 00:31:23,920 But fellows were buying books for themselves. 239 00:31:25,620 --> 00:31:33,779 An unusual example of a major donation is more than 200 volumes gifted to Corpus Christi College, 240 00:31:33,780 --> 00:31:42,360 Cambridge and OSU magistrates of Hiram to the use of the Master and Fellows by its former master, Peter Nobbs. 241 00:31:42,870 --> 00:31:52,650 But some date between 1525 and 1542, the college library as such was in abeyance. 242 00:31:53,100 --> 00:32:05,040 But when a new library was fitted out in the 1560s and that's an early renewal, there were then just over 100 books in the six stools of the library. 243 00:32:05,910 --> 00:32:11,340 So that one gift for the former master was double the size of the college library. 244 00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:18,270 The magnificent gift of Archbishop Parker would transform Corpus Christi, his library, 245 00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:24,510 into a treasure house of old and very old manuscripts, many of them from Canterbury. 246 00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:32,520 But that belongs to a different world in which we recognise that medieval books were collected as antiquities. 247 00:32:34,380 --> 00:32:36,720 I have argued the likes of John Geiger. 248 00:32:36,900 --> 00:32:48,810 Burton thought this thought this way a century earlier, but that did not in itself present discontinuity in many college libraries. 249 00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:54,930 The changes in college libraries are, in most cases, pretty obvious. 250 00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,950 For two centuries, roughly 13, 22, 15, 20, 251 00:32:59,190 --> 00:33:07,590 these small institutions had used communal resources to provide students and scholars with sufficient books for their studies. 252 00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:13,230 But in the early 16th century, investment in libraries generally ceased. 253 00:33:13,980 --> 00:33:17,610 Books chained to desks languished. Or worse. 254 00:33:19,410 --> 00:33:27,630 This remembers the time when Leland is knocking at the door of the Greyfriars saying, Let me in, and finding that they've got rid of their old books. 255 00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:36,170 Lending stocks were depleted and not replenished. 256 00:33:36,890 --> 00:33:45,379 And old handwritten volumes on parchment fell into the hands of book binders to be used one or two by folio at a 257 00:33:45,380 --> 00:34:04,490 time in binding modern books and manuscripts before those centuries before intellectual change always present. 258 00:34:05,540 --> 00:34:13,320 But fast moving in the early 16th century coincided with the relatively recent medium of print. 259 00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:20,749 The convenience of paper and significantly lower prices to make old books. 260 00:34:20,750 --> 00:34:24,740 Lumber apparently worth more scrap than for use. 261 00:34:26,690 --> 00:34:30,830 In his catalogue of the few manuscripts held by Clare College Cambridge, 262 00:34:31,580 --> 00:34:38,450 M.R. James emphasised how often it could be said that and I quote this and that college 263 00:34:38,450 --> 00:34:44,180 once possessed a large and interesting library which has now entirely disappeared. 264 00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:50,330 In another catalogue published in the same year, Christ's Later Foundation. 265 00:34:50,810 --> 00:34:57,140 He began, The lament over the lost library has to be uttered as in other cases. 266 00:34:57,290 --> 00:35:07,830 So in that of Christ's college it was a recurring theme peterhouse Glenville Hall and to some extent Penn Brook retained many of the medieval books. 267 00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:12,739 But most colleges did not. The same is true in Oxford, though. 268 00:35:12,740 --> 00:35:23,810 There are some more colleges here still with numbers of medieval books, but in no case a reflection of the size of the late medieval library. 269 00:35:25,790 --> 00:35:36,680 M.R. James did not dwell on the circumstances for the loss of these medieval libraries, but that generally belongs to the early to mid 16th century. 270 00:35:37,310 --> 00:35:42,620 And it was not the result of carelessness, and it was not the impact of dissolution. 271 00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:45,560 It was the result of keeping up to date. 272 00:35:46,940 --> 00:35:55,700 And we may ask why some colleges did not clear out their old and useless books, but kept them for us to enjoy. 273 00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:56,480 No, 274 00:35:56,870 --> 00:36:06,050 those that did keep them would find 40 or 50 years later that they had an advantage in historic collections and by the beginning of the 17th century. 275 00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:12,290 Thomas James's at Clogher suggests that it was already an advantage to make public. 276 00:36:14,570 --> 00:36:19,130 While college libraries had languished, university libraries had closed. 277 00:36:19,790 --> 00:36:26,870 That may reflect the difference in available space or in the presence of a community of fellows. 278 00:36:28,610 --> 00:36:35,210 The libraries of secular cathedrals and of colleges outside the universities rarely fared better. 279 00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:39,420 And the dissolution of the Benedictine Cathedral. 280 00:36:39,420 --> 00:36:47,190 Prioress did not, in most cases, lead to a rich inheritance of manuscripts by their secular successors. 281 00:36:49,110 --> 00:36:55,770 Eight of 16 major medieval houses that survived under new constitutions. 282 00:36:56,460 --> 00:37:04,800 Durham and Worcester are the only ones that stand out as retaining a significant fraction of their medieval books. 283 00:37:06,570 --> 00:37:10,200 And despite the fact that Edward, the six Protestant ministers, 284 00:37:10,470 --> 00:37:18,000 exhorted demons and chapters to build libraries of books for the study of Scripture and Protestant theology, 285 00:37:19,290 --> 00:37:29,490 there is little sign that they did so until the second half of the 17th century, by which time demons and canons were a good deal more prosperous. 286 00:37:31,950 --> 00:37:36,510 The circumstances of intellectual change. New books in a new medium. 287 00:37:36,660 --> 00:37:45,780 And much cheaper availability. Together, we may think with a sense of looking forward, rather than continuing in the old ways, 288 00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:53,730 meant that the older libraries were on the way out with or without the dissolution of the monasteries. 289 00:37:54,960 --> 00:38:03,000 In England, there was no conversion of books to secular use, such as happened in Surrey in 1524. 290 00:38:03,330 --> 00:38:09,510 No policy of sequestration. Such has happened in Sweden in 1528, 291 00:38:09,900 --> 00:38:19,860 where thousands of books were taken off to a former Franciscan convent on an island in Stockholm Harbour and kept for decades 292 00:38:19,860 --> 00:38:26,340 until someone decided that they would be useful in providing wrappers for the attempts produced by government officials. 293 00:38:29,370 --> 00:38:33,240 We are now delighted to recover those binding leaves. 294 00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:40,830 They can be analysed as books, sometimes putting together a good many leaves from an individual book. 295 00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:52,110 And it's been said that they have preserved more evidence of ordinary 12th century liturgical books from England than survives anywhere in England. 296 00:38:55,310 --> 00:38:59,480 It's equally true that in England there was no policy of sale or destruction. 297 00:39:00,740 --> 00:39:09,290 If pensioned former monks or incoming buyers of monastic buildings did not want the books, anyone could have them. 298 00:39:10,070 --> 00:39:16,310 And in some places, we can infer that there were men who, for whatever reason, kept books. 299 00:39:18,170 --> 00:39:21,950 The colossal dispersion was not always immediate. 300 00:39:22,070 --> 00:39:27,290 It's been shown at Canterbury Cathedral, which continued, of course, as a secular foundation, 301 00:39:27,770 --> 00:39:34,040 that books were being removed from the coastal buildings over a period of three generations. 302 00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:42,889 That is part of the story of what lies behind MLG to be something well-treated by care in his 303 00:39:42,890 --> 00:39:48,620 paper to the bibliographical society immediately following the publication of the first edition. 304 00:39:50,580 --> 00:40:00,659 The subject to the paper. The migration of monastic manuscripts reflected that early view of MGP and its formative stages as evidence of 305 00:40:00,660 --> 00:40:08,850 what had belonged to the monasteries and had survived the dispersion and destruction caused by the dissolution. 306 00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:19,170 But in these lectures, I've urged that we should not think of medieval libraries so much in monastic terms, as has been the habit. 307 00:40:20,820 --> 00:40:31,380 It was a habit among 17th century antiquities, and it was reflected in the 18th centuries sneering view of the Middle Ages as monkish times. 308 00:40:31,950 --> 00:40:41,489 But it is misleading. The 14th and 15th centuries have left us ample evidence that the secular institutions, 309 00:40:41,490 --> 00:40:46,650 such as the university colleges, had a large role in the library economy. 310 00:40:48,630 --> 00:40:54,090 When the surviving books are entered into MGB three and become visible online. 311 00:40:54,180 --> 00:41:01,090 Soon, I hope then they will account for 25% of the books listed in the database. 312 00:41:01,110 --> 00:41:03,870 You will remember the table I showed in my first lecture. 313 00:41:05,850 --> 00:41:19,260 If one recalls that there are two universities and 35 medieval colleges and halls providing evidence against some 500 odd religious houses, 314 00:41:20,190 --> 00:41:26,370 then it becomes clear that in the later Middle Ages there was some concentration of books. 315 00:41:26,730 --> 00:41:38,460 In just two terms, the handful of major old libraries of manuscripts around the country were probably making very little difference, 316 00:41:39,390 --> 00:41:46,860 and it would perhaps profit as to profit as little to wonder how much benefit the monks bury 317 00:41:46,860 --> 00:41:54,060 St Edmunds drew from the 2000 volumes they had at the peak of their letter marking system. 318 00:41:54,630 --> 00:42:00,360 We have little sense that they're using them and little sense that they let others in to use them. 319 00:42:02,190 --> 00:42:09,929 The making of a library room at Bury by Abbot Curtis in the 1420s may have meant an early 320 00:42:09,930 --> 00:42:17,910 15th century deaccession of surplus books with training books to desks they were selecting. 321 00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:19,620 They weren't trying to cover the whole lot. 322 00:42:20,850 --> 00:42:30,990 And in many religious houses, the simple decline in the number of religious over the late 14th and 15th century may have been a factor, 323 00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:35,800 not simply indifference to books, but there's only five of us left. 324 00:42:35,820 --> 00:42:37,020 We don't need so many. 325 00:42:39,690 --> 00:42:49,710 If there is widespread evidence that the secular part of the library economy was stronger than the monastic part in the 14th and 15th centuries, 326 00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:58,890 I've tried also to make a case that we've put too much emphasis on the monastic part in the 11th and 12th centuries, 327 00:42:59,580 --> 00:43:07,350 forgetting the extent of a secular book economy and ignoring the evidence for London as a commercial 328 00:43:07,350 --> 00:43:15,930 centre of the book trades already in the late 12th century and perhaps even in the early 11th century. 329 00:43:16,860 --> 00:43:20,090 You may or may not have believed my use of that evidence from should. 330 00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:26,850 I have, I think, allowed myself some time for a little summing up. 331 00:43:28,230 --> 00:43:35,310 In my first lecture, I forecast three points that I intended to be remembered from these talks. 332 00:43:37,020 --> 00:43:42,210 Libraries in medieval England and elsewhere to took many forms. 333 00:43:43,020 --> 00:43:47,490 The abstract medieval library with a definite article is an illusion. 334 00:43:50,470 --> 00:43:57,610 The libraries of medieval England were not static, still less cumulative, but were often changing, 335 00:43:58,420 --> 00:44:03,880 despite the obvious fact that some books remained in the same place for centuries 336 00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:09,580 and found the means to survive for centuries more since the end of the Middle Ages. 337 00:44:10,930 --> 00:44:15,970 And third, we cannot think about libraries without thinking about books, 338 00:44:16,750 --> 00:44:25,810 because in most contexts throughout the period under review, libraries were only one sector of the wider book economy. 339 00:44:28,070 --> 00:44:37,910 In the first week, I spoke about the principle two bodies of evidence books that carry evidence of institutional provenance and documentary records. 340 00:44:38,540 --> 00:44:44,000 We mostly use them in a simple way to discover the provenance of this or that manuscript. 341 00:44:44,450 --> 00:44:48,560 To answer the question, How many books have we from this or that place? 342 00:44:49,340 --> 00:44:56,060 Or to investigate how many copies there were of, say, Grigory, the ninth decree outlaws in medieval England. 343 00:44:58,210 --> 00:45:03,700 The list of IDs provides a fairly ready answer to that one. 344 00:45:04,150 --> 00:45:09,490 There are 295 copies of Gregor of the nine decree files attested by documents. 345 00:45:11,050 --> 00:45:14,080 MGP is not so easy to use. 346 00:45:14,500 --> 00:45:17,709 One could do a full text search on the word decrypt always, 347 00:45:17,710 --> 00:45:23,020 but you have then to separate out different sorts of decree files and commentary on decree files. 348 00:45:23,650 --> 00:45:35,230 But I make the number around 25, and I don't know how many can be cross matched with entries in catalogues unproven and two copies are uncounted. 349 00:45:37,030 --> 00:45:46,180 I'm tempted just to drop in the question how many copies were needed to keep the Canon lawyers of England adequately provided? 350 00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:51,880 I thought 295 provenance copies through medieval documents. 351 00:45:52,810 --> 00:46:01,570 Quite a surprisingly large number, and I wouldn't like to calculate what it represents of the complete supply. 352 00:46:03,730 --> 00:46:16,000 This opens up a huge problem of texts and readers and the meeting of their needs, which in the first lecture I said I should not discuss. 353 00:46:17,350 --> 00:46:17,979 Rather, 354 00:46:17,980 --> 00:46:30,070 I want to encourage you to think how to use MGB and the body of information in the 16 volumes of the corpus so far 20 volumes if it is completed. 355 00:46:30,670 --> 00:46:36,309 To ask more general questions about book provision through libraries of 356 00:46:36,310 --> 00:46:42,550 different kinds over five centuries and having so many of the books themselves, 357 00:46:43,810 --> 00:46:47,350 we can enrich the picture that we form from the documents, 358 00:46:47,770 --> 00:46:59,320 and we can see how many of the books individually came into libraries from personal ownership and post out of libraries into personal ownership, 359 00:46:59,650 --> 00:47:03,190 trade ownership, and the ownership of other libraries. 360 00:47:04,780 --> 00:47:11,379 I want to have made a case that we should be looking for a consistent way of 361 00:47:11,380 --> 00:47:17,230 reading the evidence we have across its breadth and across the long delay. 362 00:47:19,060 --> 00:47:28,180 I don't want to come across as hostile to close engagement and serious thinking about one aspect of the evidence one species of library, 363 00:47:28,540 --> 00:47:32,470 or about short periods of activity or inactivity. 364 00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:40,240 But to do that without attempting a bigger picture leaves us with deficient views. 365 00:47:41,140 --> 00:47:45,940 The Illusory Script Forum of Exeter Cathedral in the mid 11th century, 366 00:47:46,570 --> 00:47:53,020 the prevalent view of monk scribes and the notion of books safely chained in quiet religious 367 00:47:53,020 --> 00:47:58,840 houses for centuries all detract from a real understanding of medieval libraries. 368 00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:06,490 And the way to deal with this is to take a run at it and try to see it whole. 369 00:48:07,210 --> 00:48:16,360 You've patiently sat through two sessions on evidence, two sessions on questionable assumptions, and now two with some kind of narrative. 370 00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:29,580 The end point of the narrative in the 1530s and forties is a gloomy one for libraries, but a successful one for books. 371 00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:36,030 The big picture must be a mosaic, and it is an ancient mosaic. 372 00:48:36,690 --> 00:48:43,770 The scene as a whole is made up of Tesserae that are details, surviving books, entries in book lists. 373 00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:46,770 But the evidence is very patchy. 374 00:48:47,670 --> 00:48:57,480 There are areas where the picture cannot be recovered on English evidence, and there are risks in writing from continental sources. 375 00:48:58,620 --> 00:49:00,510 In the Devil's Gallop yesterday. 376 00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:09,420 I left out whole phases where this or that kind of library can't be talked about because the evidence is just not there. 377 00:49:10,890 --> 00:49:15,630 But it is no good to rely only on the evidence for big Benedictine libraries, 378 00:49:16,140 --> 00:49:22,530 the kind of things edited by M.R. James that appear to tell such a rich story of Latin learning. 379 00:49:23,490 --> 00:49:26,460 For an overview of the medieval libraries. 380 00:49:27,180 --> 00:49:36,059 My recommendation to you in my second lecture was to read some of the full catalogues printed in the corpus. 381 00:49:36,060 --> 00:49:40,290 Now select them by type of institution, by size, by period, 382 00:49:40,890 --> 00:49:50,580 and you'll get types of libraries to progress outwards from that to a wider understanding of the matter actually read. 383 00:49:51,120 --> 00:50:02,370 Then the list of ids available was an out of date pdf from my website or via the MLG B3 website allows a view of what was widely available. 384 00:50:02,790 --> 00:50:15,009 What was not uncommon. What was rare? The very close reader of the list of IDs may notice rare works such as St Catherine's dialogues 385 00:50:15,010 --> 00:50:22,960 in Latin translation appearing only at Syon and in costumes in libraries and not more widely. 386 00:50:23,350 --> 00:50:34,480 That's a significant comparison. The Cos used in writer Dennis Reichel has a similar distribution and so to the work known as Do Not Just Evoke Tunis. 387 00:50:36,190 --> 00:50:45,460 This will not surprise students of late medieval devotional works who will no Carthusian son Brigitte Tynes read this kind of thing. 388 00:50:46,570 --> 00:50:55,690 But it's good to see it confirmed by the absences reported from so many other libraries in such a large index. 389 00:50:58,410 --> 00:51:02,070 Negatives themselves can attract attention. 390 00:51:03,270 --> 00:51:09,240 I feel shy of mentioning this stage of the afternoon vernacular languages. 391 00:51:11,910 --> 00:51:19,620 But in MLG be 96% of the books entered with an institutional provenance are in Latin. 392 00:51:20,910 --> 00:51:25,620 1% in French and 3% in English. 393 00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:33,000 My impression is that we have a considerable number of manuscript books in late medieval English, 394 00:51:33,750 --> 00:51:37,650 and that's without opening up the material in the public records. 395 00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:49,050 Very few of these in English books of the late 14th and 15th centuries have evidence of provenance that would get them into MGP. 396 00:51:50,130 --> 00:51:57,540 They were perhaps all private, but if so, have they defied the odds in surviving? 397 00:51:58,770 --> 00:52:07,650 I tend to believe that there's more chance of surviving through the centuries in a library than if they have to change hands every 20 or 30 years. 398 00:52:10,330 --> 00:52:18,729 They survive much better than aristocratic books in French from England were many of them housed at 399 00:52:18,730 --> 00:52:25,540 least until the 16th century in religious houses that just were not good at marking their books. 400 00:52:27,820 --> 00:52:33,550 I actually do think there is a question to be answered about their survival since the 16th century, 401 00:52:34,030 --> 00:52:39,819 because it's my impression that the libraries that gave safe homes to medieval books in the 402 00:52:39,820 --> 00:52:46,570 late 16th and 17th centuries were not much concerned with late medieval vernacular texts, 403 00:52:47,110 --> 00:52:53,080 which therefore survived in a precarious environment for a very long time. 404 00:52:55,070 --> 00:53:00,830 Before I conjecture that they were in the under tested religious houses of nuns. 405 00:53:01,970 --> 00:53:11,630 I should raise the big question that across the board we do not know in any century the size of the medieval book economy, 406 00:53:13,370 --> 00:53:20,780 and therefore we cannot make any attempt to compute the proportion of that economy represented by libraries. 407 00:53:21,980 --> 00:53:27,620 It is a consideration I think we've neglected and the consequences of various too much 408 00:53:27,620 --> 00:53:34,129 focus on monastic books and on libraries as epicentres of book production in the 409 00:53:34,130 --> 00:53:41,630 early period has masked openness to recognising a book trade that did much to make 410 00:53:41,630 --> 00:53:48,980 works available and helps us to solve the problem of exemplars in the later period. 411 00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:58,610 Libraries always draw on the trade, but often through individuals whom we call donors and they feed the trade with books. 412 00:53:58,610 --> 00:54:11,510 Deaccessioned. This in turn, feeds newer libraries, but the intergenerational turnover in books not owned by institutions has always eluded us. 413 00:54:12,650 --> 00:54:25,850 We do not know how long a book would last outside a library, and we cannot calibrate how how far libraries extended the lifespan of a book. 414 00:54:28,160 --> 00:54:31,969 With printed books, and I'm thinking of 16th, 17th century books. 415 00:54:31,970 --> 00:54:39,290 And later Bradshaw's Paradox says, Oh no, if it were rare, it would be very common. 416 00:54:42,360 --> 00:54:42,870 Did you get it? 417 00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:57,840 We know that libraries have played a vital role in preserving copies of disregarded works that have become truly rare rather than collectable. 418 00:55:00,220 --> 00:55:05,290 The equivalent phenomenon is entirely down to chance with medieval books. 419 00:55:05,830 --> 00:55:14,280 Since there are no libraries in England that are provided the security to preserve rare works across many hundreds of years, 420 00:55:16,120 --> 00:55:23,560 it's down to chance entirely, and most medieval texts were in their own day, rare and becoming rarer with time. 421 00:55:24,460 --> 00:55:34,450 The evidence we have from medieval libraries is vital to any appreciation of what could be found if a reader wanted to find it, 422 00:55:34,900 --> 00:55:40,420 and what was so rare that one could happen across it only by chance. 423 00:55:41,710 --> 00:55:49,570 The slender thread is always tempting, and when working on my collection of Latin writers from the British Isles, 424 00:55:49,570 --> 00:55:55,420 I was going through documents hoping to find really, really rare things. 425 00:55:57,580 --> 00:56:01,720 But the bigger picture is not something to avoid entirely. 426 00:56:02,290 --> 00:56:05,770 However imperfect our attempts at it may be. 427 00:56:26,570 --> 00:56:31,340 Let's just move on behalf of the electors to the lectureship. 428 00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:44,150 I'd like to thank Professor Sharp for giving us an extraordinary glimpse at the libraries in monkish times. 429 00:56:45,530 --> 00:56:59,180 We have drawn such extraordinary riches or riches, drawing such extraordinary riches from the sources of which he is our contemporary master. 430 00:57:00,830 --> 00:57:05,690 Medieval life is a great person and the corpus of medieval library catalogues in particular. 431 00:57:05,990 --> 00:57:16,880 And he's drawn the evidence together and painted a picture of libraries across the in this country, across all these countries, 432 00:57:17,270 --> 00:57:32,070 across an extraordinary period of time, and reminded us of a number of important things that those libraries were not the same at any particular time. 433 00:57:32,100 --> 00:57:41,450 You cannot draw inferences of a particular library at one point in time and expect it to be the same two or 300 years later. 434 00:57:41,840 --> 00:57:50,749 He's reminded us of the changing values of libraries and also reminded us that the dissolution, 435 00:57:50,750 --> 00:58:01,220 that great end point that we've all expected or become used to thinking of was actually not so cataclysmic after all, 436 00:58:02,240 --> 00:58:10,340 and was just a sign of a process that had begun much earlier and was triggered by other 437 00:58:10,340 --> 00:58:17,270 changes in the medieval book economy or perhaps the Renaissance book economy by that point. 438 00:58:19,520 --> 00:58:32,629 But I think the the picture that has been painted for us will enable us to change our view of medieval libraries at that time, 439 00:58:32,630 --> 00:58:39,560 and particular because the two great projects which he has overseen and continues to oversee, 440 00:58:39,890 --> 00:58:51,920 will allow that general picture to be that he's painted, to be tested and re-evaluated by going down into very, very granular evidence. 441 00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:59,580 And that evidence, as Richard has highlighted through the course of the lectures, continues to be built up. 442 00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:10,429 And there are, if you like, data which will continue to be added to those sources, and particularly by Richard's own efforts. 443 00:59:10,430 --> 00:59:15,170 And I think we should pay tribute to him as a project manager. 444 00:59:15,770 --> 00:59:26,570 Projects Fund raise. And his stamina in those activities should be commended by all of us, I think. 445 00:59:27,830 --> 00:59:34,190 So we will look with eager anticipation and I can speak on behalf of the limelight as to 446 00:59:34,190 --> 00:59:40,489 the eventual publication of these lectures and our ability to use those in conjunction 447 00:59:40,490 --> 00:59:48,920 with MGB three and the Corpus to be able to take our understanding of the medieval libraries 448 00:59:48,920 --> 00:59:55,400 of Britain forward into the next future generations of analysis and understanding. 449 00:59:56,900 --> 01:00:04,880 Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in congratulating and thank you, Professor Sharp, for an outstanding series of lectures.