A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Merton College, Oxford (review)

Rodney Thomson's record of completion of catalogues of medieval manuscript books is remarkable for the quantity, rapidity, and standard of his achievement: Lincoln and Hereford Cathedrals (both of secular clergy), Worcester (originally monastic), and now Merton College, a much different academic collection, all published within twenty years (1989-2009), and his work on each done in about six. It is only surpassed for Britain by M. R. James and N. R. Ker in their different modes. That is besides Thomson's previous surveys of monastic manuscripts of St Albans and archives of Bury St Edmunds, studies of William of Malmesbury and its scriptorium, and his joint editorship of volume 2 of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain.

In the cataloguing of the three cathedral collections and the college's he did not start from scratch nor work entirely alone. Woolley, Floyer, and Bannister had each produced substantial and detailed catalogues for the cathedrals, and Coxe for the college. Roger Mynors had been making descriptions at Hereford up to the very day of his death, and Michael Gullick subsequently contributed his special knowledge of bindings and script, as also for Worcester Cathedral. For Merton there is Powicke's painstaking examination of the extensive collegiate evidence for the acquisition and circulation of books, important studies by Neil Ker and his chapters in the History of the University of Oxford, revised and augmented posthumously by Malcolm Parkes.

Merton has more medieval manuscript books (c. 320) and more fragments from and still in bindings of printed books than any of the cathedrals, besides strays elsewhere (mostly in Oxford), and only a few not from its medieval collections (which were however much larger at their peak), overwhelmingly in Latin (only a handful containing French or English, three in Greek described here by N. G. Wilson as Appendix A).

The Introduction describes the acquisition of books from the foundation of the college between 1262 and 1274, together with the building of its library, and the distinction between its chained volumes and those circulated amongst the fellows. Thomson rehearses the development of the collections, particularly the exceptional gifts of Bishop William Reed, chosen for the several colleges to accord with their preferred faculties and the numbers of their fellows. From the range of the extant and lost books we can get an unrivalled impression of medieval university studies in England at their height in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and from the rich detailing of provenance (including many pledges and valuations) a sense of the intellectual activity of the fellows, up to and beyond the Reformation period. From the work of the historians of bindings, especially Ker, Thomson charts the continual care of the manuscripts, of which more survive than we might expect.

The format of the catalogue follows that of his previous examples published by the same firm, not very dissimilar from those of Oxford University Press for Andrew Watson's catalogues of All Souls and Exeter and Ralph Hanna's of St John's in recent years, giving descriptions in two columns, with plates as a group, approximately A4 in size. Thomson however puts his analysis of Structure first, rather than Contents, so the relationship of separable parts of each present volume can be grasped. In some cases the representative significance of the whole volume is summarized in a preceding italicized paragraph. The lists of sets of sermons are very compact within the columns. Advantage is taken of citation of repertoires, such as Glorieux, Schneyer, and Sharpe, to economize on bibliographical references for each entry.

Two lists of fragments, first in folders or guard-books and second still in the bindings of printed books, follow the descriptions of whole manuscripts; although based on Ker's (and Pearson's) Pastedowns, fuller details are provided at first hand and the shelfmarks have sometimes changed since his work. Appendix B...