The ancient libraries of Canterbury and Dover : the catalogues of the libraries of Christ Church priory and St. Augustine's abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's priory at Dover / now first collected and published with an introduction and identifications of the extant remains, by Montague Rhodes James.

  • James, M. R. (Montague Rhodes), 1862-1936.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ancient libraries of Canterbury and Dover : the catalogues of the libraries of Christ Church priory and St. Augustine's abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's priory at Dover / now first collected and published with an introduction and identifications of the extant remains, by Montague Rhodes James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    52/658 (page 48)
    which the Dean and Chapter most kindly lent me. The number of the books entered in it is 292, and they are divided in the original into the following classes : A. Books in the Library. Theology 1-131. Canon Law 13 2-151. Philosophy 15 2-192. B. Books in the great chest in the Warden's Chamber. Theology 193-221. Philosophy (with some Canon Law books) 222-292. Four or five volumes at the end are noted as being printed books. There is plenty of evidence in the list that the oldest portions of the Christ Church library were not spared when the selection for the Oxford students was made. To begin with, we find (32nd in the list) the Homilies of Hucarius from the old library: and many other volumes can be identified with more or less certainty with books entered in Prior Eastry’s Catalogue. Collections, too, which one might have thought too sacred to touch were broken into, for two copies of the Digest which had belonged to St Thomas were packed off. The complexion of the whole is late and scholastic ; yet it is redeemed from mediocrity by a fairly copious sprinkling of quite ancient books. What became of it ? I have, as I said, been unable to find a single book belonging to it, and I am therefore reduced to conjecture. It is likely, on the whole, that the books passed into the possession of Henry VIIPs new foundation, though no trace of them is discoverable at Christ Church now. The blood of Hucarius the Levite is, I believe, on the head of the Commissioners sent to reform the Universities in the days of Edward VI. Whole libraries perished before their strenuous efforts both at Oxford and Cambridge. I have no reason to suppose that they showed more mercy to the books of Canterbury College than they did to Duke Humphrey’s collections in the Public Library at Oxford, or to the six or