Cathedral Library Research Articles

Catalogue of the Law Society's Mendham Collection lent to the University of Kent at Canterbury and housed in Canterbury Cathedral Library. (Completed from the catalogue of Helen Carron and others.) Edited by Sheila Hingley and David Shaw. Pp. cliv + 500 + 16 plates. London: The Law Society, 1994. £125 + postage if outside UK (£12.50 for EU countries, £20

Catalogue of the Law Society's Mendham Collection lent to the University of Kent at Canterbury and housed in Canterbury Cathedral Library. (Completed from the catalogue of Helen Carron and others.) Edited by Sheila Hingley and David Shaw. Pp. cliv + 500 + 16 plates. London: The Law Society, 1994. £125 + postage if outside UK (£12.50 for EU countries, £20 rest of world) from The Law Society, Finance Department, 50 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1SX. 1 85328 265 0 - Volume 47 Issue 1

Catalogue of the manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library. Edited by R. A. B. Mynors and R. M. Thomson, with a contribution on the bindings by Michael Gullick. Pp. xxxiv + 158 + 40 colour plates (numbered 1–18) + 48 b/w plates (numbered 19–86). Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, for the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral, 1993. £120. 0 85991 390

Catalogue of the manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library. Edited by R. A. B. Mynors and R. M. Thomson, with a contribution on the bindings by Michael Gullick. Pp. xxxiv + 158 + 40 colour plates (numbered 1–18) + 48 b/w plates (numbered 19–86). Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, for the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral, 1993. £120. 0 85991 390

The fragments of the homiliaries in Canterbury Cathedral Library MS. Addit. 127/1 and in Kent, County Archives Office, Maidstone, MS. PRC 49/2

The fragments of the homiliaries in Canterbury Cathedral Library MS. Addit. 127/1 and in Kent, County Archives Office, Maidstone, MS. PRC 49/2

MARC catalogues of early‐printed books at the University of Kent

This contribution brings up‐to‐date an earlier article describing a computer‐based catalogue of early‐printed books in Canterbury Cathedral Library. New facilities described include an integrated authority file for proper names, an online catalogue available via the University campus network, and programs for producing type‐set output directly from the computer database. The use made of this software for other similar projects involving early‐printed books is described.

Missing Leaves from Worcester Cathedral Library Manuscript F. 91

Journal Article Missing Leaves from Worcester Cathedral Library Manuscript F. 91 Get access Joyce Hill Joyce Hill University of Leeds Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 38, Issue 1, March 1991, Pages 1–2, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/38.1.1 Published: 01 March 1991

Roger North’sThe musicall grammarian and theory of sounds: Digests of the manuscripts

Abstract The musical essays of Roger North are amongst the most important writings of the eighteenth century on music. To date they have been ill-served by editors, who have been misleadingly selective in presenting his ideas to the modern reader. Edward Rimbault, who first published Memoires of Musik(London: Bell, 1846) from the manuscript in Hereford Cathedral Library, omitted completely the Musicall Grammarian, which occupies folios 1-102 of the same manuscript; Hilda Andrews, in her edition ofThe Musicali Gramarian [sic] (London: Oxford University Press, 1925) also omitted the text of The Musicall Grammarian, and published only the Notes of Comparison between the Elder and Later Musick, and somewhat Historicall of Both, which had been incorporated into the text of the first draft of The Musicall Grammarian in 1726, and separated in the final version of 1728 as a separate essay. The best known edition of North's works, Roger North on Music, edited by John Wilson, (London, Novello, 1959) reproduces more...

More on the ‘Priapeum’ of Jacobus Cremonensis

In 1969 Ian Thomson published the texts of two humanist poems with a selective commentary. One of them, Item 144 of the Toledo Cathedral Library MS 100.42, fol. 233r (henceforth T, following Thomson's designation), which also appears as Item 68 in Cod. Vaticanus Barberinianus latinus 42, fol. 328r–v (henceforth simply B, again following Thomson), is a 20-line work attributed to the lawyer Jacobus Cremonensis salaciously describing an erotic contest between Priapus and the nymph Dione. Although Thomson's article appeared two decades ago, I have only recently come upon it, and wish here, if somewhat belatedly, to reply to several of Thomson's textual and other notes on this Priapic poem.

"Haue Mercy of Me" (Psalm 51): An Unedited Alliterative Poem from the London Thornton Manuscript

It is remarkable that the poem printed here has so long remained unedited and inaccessible. It is the only work contained in the London Thornton manuscript (B.L., MS Add. 31042) not already available, in some version, in print.2 Moreover, the associations of this poem are significant. Haue Mercy of Me is a paraphrase of one of the Seven Penitential Psalms, and thus linked to a longstanding tradition of psalm translation for lay devotional use when scriptural translation was otherwise restricted or banned. Moreover, its verse form is densely alliterative, with concatenation and a twelve-line stanza, known elsewhere in alliterative verse only in Pearl. Robert Thornton, a landed gentleman of fifteenth-century Yorkshire, preserved for us, in his two famous manuscripts-this one and Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91-a valuable record of his literary tastes and pietistic habits.3 The books were evidently designed for private or domestic use and remained within the Thornton family for several generations. Some of the matter would have made edifying reading for the family circle (the pious romances); some had practical application (prognostications of weather, a medical manual); some were probably included for home instruction on the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Many texts, perhaps the majority, seem to have been gathered by Thornton as aids to private meditation or to domestic group devotions.4 The Lincoln manuscript evinces an arrangement of

The Structure of the Exeter Book Codex (Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS. 3501)

Etude codicologique du E. B. Description de la structure du manuscrit en 3 livrets composant le recueil le plus important de poesie vieil-anglaise

The Advent and Nativity Sermons from a Fifteenth-Century Revision of John Mirk's Festial, ed. from BL MSS Harley 2247, Royal 18 B.XXV and Gloucester Cathedral Library 22

The Advent and Nativity Sermons from a Fifteenth-Century Revision of John Mirk's Festial, ed. from BL MSS Harley 2247, Royal 18 B.XXV and Gloucester Cathedral Library 22

Unknown and Unidentified English Polyphonic Music from the Fourteenth Century

Since the appearance of Luther Dittmer's The Worcester Fragments: a catalogue raisonné (1957), and Worcester Additional 68, Westminster Abbey 33327, Madrid Bibl. nac. 192: a facsimile edition (1959), queries have arisen concerning a number of the descriptions, datings and other aspects of his inventory and transcriptions of Worcester Cathedral Library, Add. 68 (hereafter WOc 68). This is hardly the place to go into the many debated and debatable points which emerged (see Bent 1973, 65–6; Hughes 1974, 230). More to the point is the discovery of an unknown fragmentary and textless Sanctus, one barely visible to the naked eye, on the recto of f.bl of fragment xix of WOc 68 (see the revised inventory for this fragment, Table 1). The cathedral librarians, Canons Fenwick and Browning, kindly permitted the transfer of this fragment on a number of occasions to the Hereford and Worcester County Record Office, which is equipped with an ultraviolet lamp. The portion of the Sanctus which survives is a Benedictus for three voices, notated in score format in English discant (ex. 1). The lowest voice corresponds almost exactly with the third Sarum Sanctus, here without the trope Marie filius (Frere 1894, plate 15∗), the chant sounding at pitch and without ornamentation. Thus this composition brings the total number of English discant settings with the chant exclusively as the lowest voice to nine. The notation (the abundance of minims) and musical style (the obvious treble domination and use of sequential patterns in the highest voice) suggest that this work should be dated in the latter half, and probably the final third, of the fourteenth century.

The Catalogues of Lincoln Cathedral library

The Catalogues of Lincoln Cathedral library

A computer‐based catalogue of books in Canterbury Cathedral Library

A project to provide a computer‐based MARC catalogue of the printed books in Canterbury Cathedral Library is described. Particular attention is given to the programs for online data entry and editing and to future plans involving microprocessors.

The contents and affiliation of the scientific manuscripts written at, or brought to, Chartres in the time of John of Salisbury

In the debate over the state of cathedral schools and their displacement as centres of learning by the rising universities, the case of Chartres has, for nearly a century, excited the most attention. Much has been written on, first, whether the activity of several prominent intellectuals of the twelfth century such as Thierry, William of Conches and Gilbert of Poitiers was primarily at Chartres or at Paris; and, secondly, whether the thought of ‘Chartrian’ masters is old-fashioned or open to the profound changes which effected twelfth-century scientific learning. These changes resulted largely from the introduction of works translated from Greek and Arabic during that century. In this paper I try to clarify the situation at Chartres itself by summing up the evidence from the manuscripts known to have been in the cathedral library in the twelfth century of the degree to which this ‘new science’ was received there, and how it was assimilated.

New evidence for the Becket correspondence and John of Salisbury’s letters

No single manuscript containing both the major collections of John of Salisbury’s letters is known to survive, but it seems possible to establish that such a manuscript once existed from the evidence of a fourteenth-century tabula found in Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.8 fols 53-9. There is no indication of when or how this tabula came to Durham; the composite manuscript of which it forms part was not assembled in its present form until after 1500, when the last section was still separate. The tabula contains some four hundred quotations arranged under 235 subject headings running in alphabetical order from Absencia to Penitencia; the remainder is missing. Almost every entry consists of a quotation, a number in arabic numerals, a name or personal title in the dative case or with ad and the accusative, and a brief indication of position; so for example under the heading Exulare the one entry runs bis exulat qui domi exulat 387 archidiacono exon prope finem. The quotations are from letters in John of Salisbury’s collections or from the other Becket correspondence.

“Wee happy heardsmen here”: A Newly Discovered Shepherds’ Carol Possibly Belonging to a Medieval Pageant

“Wee happy heardsmen here”: A Newly Discovered Shepherds’ Carol Possibly Belonging to a Medieval Pageant John P. Cutts Bishop Smith’s part-song manuscript books (altus and bassus only) were first described by James Walter Brownl in 1921 and 1922, but then were lost sight of until very recently2 when they were found to be in the Carlisle Cathedral Library.3 Brown had received the manuscript part-books, compiled c.1637 by Thomas Smith, later bishop of Carlisle, from the widow of a friend with a letter saying “I found the enclosed among my husband’s books, and thought they might be of some interest to you. If so, please keep them; if not, bum them.” Brown remembered his friend claiming to have bought them from an old book stall, and realizing how narrowly they had escaped destruction determined that their proper home was the “Bodleian library in Oxford, where they were copied and ‘sowne together’ nearly 300 years ago.” There they were to have been more readily accessible to students than in the Chapter Library of Carlisle Cathedral where he had first thought of placing them, and where they might easily suffer from days of transition in which the continued existence of Deans and Chapters was itself precarious. The part-books never got to the Bodleian. Brown printed versions of some of the manuscripts’ texts (without music), and among these was what he called a carol “Wee happy heardsmen here”— the subject of this present paper. Brown’s practice was simply to give a somewhat mixed text— modernized spellings occasionally, expansion of contractions, alteration of upper and lower case— dismiss it quickly with a JOHN P. CUTTS, Professor of English at Oakland University, has published extensively on Renaissance literature and music. 265 266 Comparative Drama passing comment, and then proceed to the next. He dealt only with those texts which interested him personally. Many of the items he thus described in 1920-21 were not then known to be extant elsewhere as Brown surmised and as his consultation with E. M. W. Fellowes confirmed. Some items, including the present one under discussion, are still not known (to the best of my knowledge) to have survived in any other manuscript. It is now possible to all intents and purposes for the first time to be able to present an accurate text of any of the lyrics contained in the manuscripts and to relate individual items to the contents of the whole manuscript. The carol “Wee happy heardsmen here” is the eighth item included in both manuscripts, Altus and Bassus, and is one of the few items that is indeed scored only for altus and bassus, which is unfortunate not only because without the top line, treble or cantus, we have no real indication of what it sounded like, but also because very many of the items are actually scored for treble and bass, either with treble and bass written out separately or put together in either of the manuscripts. The text is as follows: Wee happy heardsmen here, may singe & eke reioyce; for Angells bright & cleare, wee saw, &heard their voice, wee saw & heard their voice.4 Glad tidings they vs told; Ye king of all mankind is borne & in cloathes fold; They say wee may him find, They say wee may him find. In Bethlem in a stall, & eke his mother free: Glad tidings to vs all; Yea blessed may hee bee, Yea blessed may hee bee. Come let vs all wth ioy in heart to Bethleem trudge To see yt blessed boy, wch once must bee or judge, wch once must bee or judge. All Haile 6 Christ bur kinge1: All Haile 6 virgins sonne; wee pray thee vs to bring, John P. Cutís 267 In Heauen wth yee to wonne, In Heauen wth yee to wonne. Where wee ye Father may See wth ye Holy ghost: & glorifye alway Him yt of might is most, Him yt of might is most. The carol contains within itself specific stage directions— “Come let vs all wth ioy/ in heart to Bethleem trudge”—marking off the fourth stanza from the first three which relate the singing of the angels and their instructions about the Christ...

The Divjak Letters: New Light on St Augustine's problems, 416–428

A major manuscript discovery of hitherto unknown letters of Augustine of Hippo is a scholarly event whose importance can hardly be exaggerated. It is as though one of the lost books of Livy had suddenly turned up in palimpsest among medieval manuscripts in a cathedral library. For a discovery in similar circumstances, one has to go back to December 1904 when the learned Rev. Dr Karapet Ter-Merkettshian found an Armenian manuscript of Irenaeus' Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching in the library of the church of the Blessed Virgin at Eriwan in Armenia.

Lincoln Cathedral Library at Nottingham University

Lincoln Cathedral Library at Nottingham University

Michael Honywood and Lincoln Cathedral Library

Michael Honywood and Lincoln Cathedral Library Get access NAOMI LINNELL NAOMI LINNELL Canterbury Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Library, Volume s6-V, Issue 2, June 1983, Pages 126–139, https://doi.org/10.1093/library/s6-V.2.126 Published: 01 June 1983

Keyboard Sources in Hereford

Of the twenty or so music manuscripts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries preserved in Hereford Cathedral Library, no fewer than six contain sections devoted to keyboard music — a remarkably high proportion. Although all six contain other music too, this article will concentrate on the keyboard music; and, since the sources are very little known and virtually unrecorded in print, a description and inventory of all the keyboard music will be given here. (A complete inventory of all the manuscripts will eventually be published under the auspices of theRépertoire international des sources musicales (RISM).) The six manuscripts can be divided chronologically into three groups: two from around 1700, two from around 1720 and two from around the 1760s.