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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    I remember how often about five years ago [i.e. 1691-2] you would fall to talking in some such words as these: ‘Nothing would be more glorious to the University, nor more thankfully received by scholars than that the manuscripts in Oxford should be exposed to the view of all by the issuing of a catalogue. . . . One has only to look at the great value set upon the Catalogues of manuscripts which John Mill, Henry Maurice, and others collected for their own use. John Mill is no doubt the Principal of St. Edmund Hall (1685- 1707), and Henry Maurice the Fellow of Jesus, who was Arch- bishop Bancroft’s chaplain (1681-5), a friend of Henry Wharton, and for a short time Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. None of their collections has been identified. The realization of the need for a catalogue of manuscripts is clear enough, but the means by which it was started in Oxford are not well documented. It will be best to begin with an exa- mination of the contents of the first volume of the 1697 Catalogue, which covers the Bodleian collections. They are as follows P Classis I (p. i) Barocci II (p. 35) Roe III (p. 39) Cromwell IV (p. 46) Laud V (p. 77) Digby VI (p. 89) N.E., Super Art. etc. VII (p. 157) Selden VIII (p. 168) E. Mus, Huntington [donat.], Greaves, R. James, Fairfax, Lamb, S. Clarke, Casaubon and Langbaine, Thurston, Hatton — (p. 187) Dodsworth — (p. 235) Leland IX (p. 249) Junius Author of catalogue as given at the beginning of each classis Edmund Chilmead E. Chilmead Gerard Langbaine ‘Non una manus’; descrip- tions of Oriental MSS re- vised by T. Hyde Thomas Barlow, G. Lang- baine, T. Hyde Thomas Lockey, T. Hyde T. Hyde (maxima pars) White Kennett T. Tanner from this version that I translate: cf. P. Simpson, Proof-reading in the i6th, lyth, , and i8th centuries, London, 1935, PP* ^92 f- In the printed version the ‘tu’ of the i letter became ‘viri quidam doctissimi tarn Academiae quam orbis eruditi ornamenta’. ‘ The classes are not indicated in the list of contents at p. ****2.