Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
A strong attachment to education and scholarship very early distinguished the orders of friars established in the thirteenth century. Although Francis of Assisi had made no provision for such activities in the new religious movement which he founded, nevertheless, not long after his death in 1226 the Franciscans had already begun to show a pronounced intellectualist bent. In a sermon delivered in 1229, Odo of Châteauroux noted the influx of scholars into the Order and the prominence of the Franciscans in the Paris schools. Subsequently, some of the finest minds in Europe were converted to the Franciscan style of Christian life; and the enthusiasm and aptitude of the friars minor for teaching became very apparent — transforming them into almost a separate universitas.
1 Moorman, John, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford 1968) 131.Google Scholar
2 Callus, Daniel A., ‘Robert Grosseteste as Scholar,’ Robert Grosseteste: Scholar and Bishop (ed. Callus, D. A., Oxford 1955) 10–11.Google Scholar
3 Little, A. G., Franciscan Papers, Lists, and Documents (Manchester 1943) 62, 131, 227. Little's works are still authoritative for early English Franciscan history. See his ‘Educational Organisation of the Mendicant Friars in England (Dominicans and Franciscans),’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society New series 8 (1894) 49-70; The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford 1892); Studies in English Franciscan History (Manchester 1917); and with Pelster, F., Oxford Theology and Theologians: c. A. D. 1282-1302 (Oxford 1934). See also. Moorman, John R. H., The Grey Friars in Cambridge, 1225-1538 (Cambridge 1952) esp. 19-38; Knowles, Dom David, The Religious Orders in England (3 vols.; Cambridge, 1956-59) I 205-16. For additional information on William of Nottingham, see. Smalley, Beryl, ‘Which William of Nottingham?’ Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1954) 200-38; Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 1921-22) XIV 684.Google Scholar
4 See those used in Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (ed. Ker, N. R.; 2d. ed.; London 1964).Google Scholar
6 Talbot, C. H., ‘The Universities and the Mediaeval Library,’ The English Library Before 1700 (eds. Wormald, Francis and Wright, C. E., London 1958) 78. See also Vleeschauwer, H. J., ‘Libraria Magna et Libraria Parva,’ Mousaion 7 (1956) 18. For a general account of English monastic libraries, see Knowles, , Religious Orders in England II 331-53.Google Scholar
6 James, M. R., ‘The List of Libraries Prefixed to the Catalogue of John Boston and the Kindred Documents,’ Collectanea Franciscana II (ed. Kingsford, G. L. [British Society of Franciscan Studies, X]; Manchester 1922) 37–38.Google Scholar
7 Oxford Bodleian Tanner MS 165 fols. 103-20v; Lambeth Palace MS 594 pp. 40-43 [paginated rather than foliated]. Wharton seemed to believe that the author-list of the catalogue represented books in the Christchurch library. For William Molashe, see Le Neve, John, Fasti ecclesiae Anglicanae: 1300-1541 (12 vols.; London 1962-67) IV 6.Google Scholar
8 British Museum Royal MS 3 D i fols. 106, 110, 108, 109, 107, 111, 112, 233, 234 [folios out of proper sequence]; Peterhouse MS 169 int. I fols. 54v-61; and for printed descriptions of these, British Museum Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King's Collections (eds. Warner, George Sir and Gilson, Julius P. 4 vols.; London 1921) I 76; James, Montague Rhodes, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Peterhouse (Cambridge 1899) 196. Royal 3 D i is a copy of Peterhouse 169.Google Scholar
9 James, , ‘List of Libraries Prefixed to the Catalogue of John Boston,’ 38; also Savage, Ernest A., Notes on the Early Monastic Libraries of Scotland, with an Account of the Registrum Librorum Angliae and of the Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiae of John Boston of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds [Reprinted from the Publications of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, XIV] (Edinburgh 1928) 1-7.Google Scholar
10 The seventeenth-century transcript is Cambridge University Additional MS 3470; an abbreviated version of Boston's catalogue was published by Tanner, Thomas, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica: sive, de Scriptoribus, qui in Anglia, Scotia, et Hibernia ad saeculi XVII initium floruerunt, literarum ordine juxta familiarum nomina dispositis Commentarius … (London 1748) xvii–xli. Richard H. Rouse identified the compiler of the Boston catalogue as Henry of Kirkestede, the late fourteenth-century precentor and custodian of manuscripts at Bury St. Edmunds, ‘Bostonus Buriensis and the Author of the Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiae,’ Speculum 41 (1966) 471-99.Google Scholar
11 Fratris Thomae vulgo dicli de Eccleston Tractatus de Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam (ed. Little, A. G., Manchester 1951) xxix.Google Scholar
12 Ibid. xxix, 34–36.Google Scholar
13 Ibid. xxix, n. 7.Google Scholar
14 Ibid. xxii.Google Scholar
15 Little, , Franciscan Papers, Lists, and Documents 226; Moorman, , History of the Franciscan Order 175.Google Scholar
16 Little, , Franciscan Papers, Lists, and Documents 217.Google Scholar
17 Little, , Studies in English Franciscan History 235–38; James, , ‘The List of Libraries Prefixed to the Catalogue of John Boston,’ 38.Google Scholar
18 James, , ‘The List of Libraries Prefixed to the Catalogue of John Boston,’ 47; and the collated lists of monasteries from the Registrum, the Tabula, and Boston, pp. 49-60.Google Scholar
19 Leff, Gordon, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York 1968) 104.Google Scholar
20 See Beryl Smalley's evaluation of Grosseteste, ‘The Biblical Scholar,’ Robert Grosseteste ed. Callus, 70–97; also her Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Indiana 1964) 266; Moorman, , History of the Franciscan Order 242-43. An excellent account of the Oxford friars is Little, ‘The Franciscan School at Oxford,’ Franciscan Papers, Lists, and Documents 55-71. Note the comment of Adam Marsh, Monumenta Franciscana , eds. Brewer, J. S. and Howlett, Richard [Rolls series, IV] (2 vols.; London 1858-82) I 379. Later friars' libraries tended to show a theological bias, according to Knowles, Religious Orders in England II 342.Google Scholar
21 Savage collated the author-lists (without their works) from the Registrum and Boston in Notes on the Early Monastic Libraries of Scotland 22-25. The Tabula cited the following authors: Albinus (Alcuin); Alexander Nequam; Alcuin; ‘Amasor’ (whom Savage identified as a work of the tenth-century Persian physician, Rasis); Ambrose; Andrew of St. Victor; Angelomus of Luxeuil; Anselm; Arnulf or Ernulf of Rochester; Athanasius; Augustine; Baldwin of Canterbury; Basil; Bede; Berengar of Tours; Bernard of Clairvaux; Boethius; Bruno of Asti; Cassiodorus; Caesarius of Aries; Cyprian; Claudius of Turin; Clement; Didymus of Alexandria; Dionysius the Areopagite; Ephraem Syrus; Hegesippus; Ailred of Rievaulx; Ernald of Bonneval; Hesychius of Jerusalem; Eutropius; Fulgentius of Ruspe; Geoffrey of Clairvaux; Gennadius; Gilbert of Hoyland; Gregory the Great; Gregory of Nazianzus; Gregory of Nyssa; Haymo of Halberstadt; Hugh of St. Victor; Jerome; Innocent III; John Beleth; John Cassian; John Chrysostom; John of Ford; Jordanes; Josephus; Isidore; Julian Pomerius; Julian of Toledo; Lanfranc; Leo I; Martin of Bracara; Maximus of Turin; Methodius of Olympus; Odo of Canterbury (confused with Odo of Cheriton and Odo of Morimund); Origen; Orosius; Palladius (apparently the fifth-century Roman agricultural writer); Papias; Paschasius Radbertus; Patrick; Peter Alfonsi; ‘Peter Babilon’ (identified by Savage as Geoffrey Babion, a late-eleventh or early-twelfth-century scholar of Angers, who was confused with Geoffrey, abbot of Vendôme, an eleventh-century writer of hymns and works on the sacraments); Peter of Blois; Peter the Chanter; Peter Comestor; Peter Damian; Peter of Poitiers (Abelard's Sic et non was attributed to him by all versions of the catalogue); Pliny; Pompeius Festus; Prosper of Aquitaine; Prudentius; Quintilian; Rabanus Maurus; Ralph of Flaix; Richard of St. Victor; Robert of Melun; Rufinus of Aquileia; Sedulius; Seneca; Smaragdus; Stephen Langton; Cicero (Tully); Vegetius Renatus; Vitruvius; Pope Vigilius; Yvo of Chartres.Google Scholar
22 E. g., British Museum Royal MS. 3 D i fols. 1-105. The authors were listed together with their works, at fols. 232rv. The version of the synopsis printed by Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica xli-xliii, was probably edited and augmented by Boston, since it included a number of later commentators. For the friars as biblical scholars, see Smalley, , Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages 264–355.Google Scholar
23 Mynors, R. A. B., Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College Oxford (Oxford 1963) 212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 Harrison Thomson, S., The Writings of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln: 1235-1253 (Cambridge 1940) 122–24; Hunt, Richard William, ‘The Library of Robert Grosseteste,’ Robert Grosseteste ed. Callus, 123-25, 141-45.Google Scholar
26 Hunt, R. W., ‘Manuscripts containing the Indexing Symbols of Robert Grosseteste,’ Bodleian Library Record IV (1953) 241–55.Google Scholar
26 Callus, D. A., ‘The “Tabulae super Originalia Patrum” of Robert Kilwardby O. P.,’ Studia Mediaevalia in honorem admodum Reverendi Patris Raymundi Josephi Martin, Ordinis Praedicatorum S. theologiae magistri LXXum natalem diem agentis (Bruges 1948) 243–70; also Smalley, Beryl, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (New York 1960) 62.Google Scholar
27 Dr. Ralph Collingwode († 1521), archdeacon of Lichfield, gave the copy of the Tabula in British Museum Royal MS 3 D i to the Grey friars of Lichfield, according to a note on fol. 234v . See also Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge 1963) 149.Google Scholar
28 See n. 10 above.Google Scholar
29 For the few details known about him, see Dictionary of National Biography II 885–86; and Knowles, , Religious Orders in England II 271-72.Google Scholar
30 James, M. R., On the Abbey of S. Edmund at Bury [Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo publications, XXVIII] (Cambridge 1895) 34–35.Google Scholar
31 Irwin, Raymond, The English Library: Sources and History (London 1966) 135.Google Scholar
32 British Museum Additional MS 4787 fols. 132-33v. This cited one other catalogue.Google Scholar
33 Mynors, R. A. B., ‘The Latin Classics Known to Boston of Bury,’ Fritz Saxl, 1890-1948: A Volume of Memorial Essays from his Friends in England (ed. Gordon, D. J.; London 1957) 199–217.Google Scholar
34 Pantin, W. A., The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge 1955) 165 ff. Pantin discussed many of the authors cited by Boston.Google Scholar
36 Smalley, , English Friars and Antiquity.Google Scholar
36 For the friars as defenders of orthodoxy against the Lollards, see my article, ‘Lollards and Images: the Defense of Religious Art in Later Medieval England,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (1973) 37.Google Scholar
