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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    from the running title in this section of the 1697 Catalogue: ‘Codices MSS. Thomae Bodleii’. The new arrangement was not made for the purpose of putting the manuscripts in a more logical order, but simply to save space by a more minute ranging of the volumes according to size. It is in this order, with some minor changes in the later part of the series, that the manuscripts have been known since. The work was carried out by Owen. He wrote in the volumes not only the new shelf-mark, but also the number assigned to the volume in the 1697 Catalogue. The Picture Gallery had been intended ultimately to be used for housing books. The Tanner and Rawlinson collections were the first manuscripts to be placed there. These two collections, however, were so large that the resources of the Picture Gallery did not long suffice, and in 1789 the Library took over one of the schools in the quadrangle, the Anatomy School on the first floor of the south range. At first the room was referred to as B[iblio- theca] N[ova],^ but in 1794 it was decided to name it the A uctarium. The intention was to bring together in a well-furnished room (the elegant bookcases were designed by Wyatt) the books then accounted most precious in the Library, namely the Bibles and the Greek and Latin classics. It was a fine piece of librarianship in the spirit of the eighteenth-century enlightenment. Sentiment was put aside. Collections that had been kept together for a cen- tury and a half were separated, though it is true that most of them were still known by the name of their donor. Nineteen volumes were selected from the Digby, all the Greek and 106 Latin from Laudian collections. These were then called Digby B.N., Laud Gr. and Laud Lat. Similarly, the manuscripts taken from the Rawlinson collection were called Rawl. B.N. The other manuscripts, however, including volumes from the Fairfax, Hatton, and Tanner collections, lost their identity in the general designation Auct.^ These manuscripts were restored to their original collections, mainly by E. W. B. Nicholson, in the late nineteenth century. The manuscripts taken out of the miscel- laneous series (MSS. Bodley) are still kept together as a collec- tion, known as MSS. Auct. ^ Hence shelf-marks such as Digby B.N. and Rawl. B.N. ^ It was in this way that MS. Tanner 169* (S.C. 9995) escaped Hackman’s catalogue.