Volume 1

A summary catalogue of Western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

  • Bodleian Library
Date:
1895-1953
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A summary catalogue of Western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Leaving aside the copies of Library lists, the catalogues of Langbaine are of two different kinds, alphabetical catalogues of authors and treatises in collections, and descriptions of all the contents of manuscripts, the volumes being taken in the order in which they stood on the shelves. The Digby and Laud catalogues belong to the first class and the descriptions of the miscellaneous acquisitions to the second. Both the Digby and Laud catalogues were revisions of earlier catalogues and the choice of alphabetical arrangement, which has the great disadvantage that the parts of a manuscript may be widely separated in the catalogue, cannot be ascribed to Langbaine. It was the Library practice for which the precedent was set by the inclusion of manuscripts in the alphabetical catalogue of printed books (1620). Peter Turner had listed the contents of the Barocci and Roe manuscripts with the volumes taken in the order in which they stood on the shelves, and the Library had had an alphabetical catalogue made.^ In his early work on manuscripts Langbaine may have regarded this as a normal procedure. In his copy of Turner’s catalogue of the Roe collection he added letter symbols against the items, which presumably were intended for an index.^ But when he came to deal with a long series of miscellaneous medieval Latin manuscripts there is no trace of any attempt at reducing the descriptions to alphabetical form. He came to recognize more clearly the importance of the manuscript itself. This development is seen in his descriptions of the early numbers of MS. Med. which is an expanded shelf-list giving folio references and in- cipits.^ Rather later he went over the series again, and made another list containing details of material, size, old shelf-mark, and script.'^ To take an example 4 Sermones dominicalesParisiensis inomnes dominicas totius anni; primus est in primam dominicam adventus et incipit Dicite filiae Syon ecce rex etc. In verbis istis habent predicatores mandatum a spiritu sancto ut loquantur et cui loquantur et quid loquantur—[Index ad finem]. The supplement is: 4 (m<(embr) 4^°) S. 5. ii th mediae aetatis. ^ See above, p. xvii. ^ The key is in MS. Langbaine 19, p. 251: ‘Notae th. theol. ph. philosophia, p. poet., m. med., L. leg., G. gram., h. hist., V. varia, e. epistolae, C. critica, r. rhetores, d. dialectica, m. math., b. bellicab ^ MS. Wood donat. 7, pp. i8 fF. * Ibid., pp. 175-90. ® Now MS. Bodl. 782 (S.C. 2603).