The Rare Books & Manuscripts Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Although we have highlighted the loan of four of the eleven manuscripts that have been on loan to the British Library as part of their spectacular Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War exhibition, and although we will be focusing on a few more items individually as they make their way back to the Cambridge, we thought... Continue Reading →
With Christmas almost upon us, before we break for the holidays we present one final feature in our series of blog posts celebrating our manuscripts appearing in the British Library’s triumphant Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War exhibition (but never fear; look forward to more in the New Year!). Our first post focused on Parker's magnificent fragment... Continue Reading →
The Parker Library is proud to be the single largest lender of manuscripts to the British Library’s magnificent exhibition, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War. In a series of blog posts spanning the Christmas holiday and into the New Year, we will shine a spotlight on a selection of the Parker manuscripts currently on display. Our first... Continue Reading →
The Parker Library is proud to be the single largest lender of manuscripts to the British Library’s magnificent exhibition, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War. In a series of blog posts spanning the Christmas holiday and into the New Year, we will shine a spotlight on eight of the eleven Parker manuscripts currently on show, beginning with... Continue Reading →
Plants really don’t move. The majority grow in the same places, look the same, smell the same, and act the same for thousands of years, and this slow evolution is a useful lodestone to help us navigate the shoals of botanical thought, which have changed so dramatically in the past 600 years as to be... Continue Reading →
Encountering a manuscript is a vastly different experience to reading a modern printed edition of the same text. I discovered this when I had the privilege of examining the Ancrene Wisse manuscript (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402) during my internship at the Parker Library. Ancrene Wisse—meaning ‘advice for anchoresses’—is an early thirteenth-century text intended to guide... Continue Reading →
The last six months have borne witness to a period of considerable change here at the Parker Library. Not only has Christopher de Hamel, our former Donnelley Fellow Librarian, retired, but our two Sub-Librarians, Steven Archer and Beth Dumas, have departed in pursuit of new opportunities at Christ Church, Oxford and St. Andrews respectively. Leaving... Continue Reading →
Manuscripts from medieval Scotland are rare. This is the unique copy of a chronicle of Scottish history assembled c.1447-49 for Walter Bower (1385-1449), abbot of Inchcolm Abbey, on the island in the Firth of Forth, north of Edinburgh. The illustration here shows the funeral of Alexander III, king of Scotland 1249-86, who died following a riding... Continue Reading →
The Red Book of Darley is an unusual manuscript- once reputed to perform miracles, it contains both the Old English dialogues of Solomon and Saturn and a liturgical book for what may have been a parish church in Darley Dale in Derbyshire (although was probably at least partially made in Winchester in the 1060s). The text changes between... Continue Reading →
Just as we are getting over the excesses of Pancake Day- or it's related Shrove Tuesday counterparts- seems as good a time as any to reflect upon the manuscript evidence of the early practices of Lent, the Christian season of penance and self-reflection, which begins with Ash Wednesday. Ashes have a number of symbolic applications in Biblical accounts, both in the Old and... Continue Reading →
The Parker Library 