A Bibliographical List by William Woodford, O.F.M.

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST BY WILLIAM WOODFORD, O.F.M. The contents of the libraries of medieval religious houses will always hold a particular fascination for students of medieval history, precisely because they reveal so much about those who read, studied and consulted them.1 Books tell as much about their readers as they do about those who write them. It is remarkable to recall that almost all of the thousands of manuscripts now scattered throughout the western world in public and private collections of many varied kinds were once part of libraries where they had a definite place, a specific importance and a sure identity in the context of a larger whole. These volumes belonged to libraries or particular collections which had a distinct character from the groups or individuals who had formed them, for a library is clearly something more than a place for housing books. A library is a dialogue of minds, a meeting point of past and present that leads on to a future, a birth-place of that most formidable of human powers, the power of thought. It is equally fascinating to discover what books were actually known to a particular writer or schoolman. We discover these usually from the references to sources which a writer gives in the course of his works. Indeed, it is often possible to reconstruct partially the contents of a library from the references to other works given by a writer who was a member of the house where once the books were conserved. In the text edited below from William Woodford's Defensorium Fratrum Mendicantium contra Richardum Armachanum, we are presented with a list of medieval theologians, philosophers and canonists which gives a very good cross section of the writers with whose works 1 B. H. Streeter, The Chained Library (London, 1931); J. W. Thompson (ed.). The Medieval Library (Chicago, 1939, 2nd edition New York, 1957); Thomas Kelly, Early Public Libraries. A History of Public Libraries in Great Britain before 1850 (The Library Association, London, 1966) 13-37, esP· tne bibliography: 35-37; N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain - A List of Surviving Books (London, 1964). 94ERIC DOYLE Woodford was familiar and which may be of some assistance in determining the contents of the library at the London friary.2 Woodford's Defensorium was written about 1395/96 against the eighth book of Fitzralph's De Pauperie Salvatoris which was added to the first seven, it appears, when Fitzralph revised the work at Avignon in 1358/59.3 The Defensorium is conserved at Oxford, Magdalen College Library, 75, fols. ira-i78va and at Cambridge, University College Library, Ff.I.21, fols. ir-26or. The passage we are concerned with here is found towards the end of the work: MS Oxford, fols. I77ra-i78ra, MS Cambridge, fols. 257v-259r. It forms part of Woodford's answer to Fitzralph's contention that the Church was in a far better and much healthier state before the Mendicant Orders were founded. Fitzralph had maintained that prior to the arrival of the Friars the Church had been adorned with miracles, had had a much more serene and peaceful existence and had counted a greater number of learned doctors, scripture scholars and holy men. For the purpose of answering this criticism Woodford compares the hundred years prior to the existence of the Mendicant Orders with the period stretching roughly from the approval of the Franciscans to the middle of the fourteenth century. He presents first of all a list of some of the saints canonized by the Church who had lived during this latter period. Then turning to the assertion that the Church had had a more peaceful existence prior to the coming of the Friars, he concludes that on a comparison of the two periods this 2 On the library of the London friary see: C. L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London... (Aberdeen, 1915), 170-171, 231—235; J. Leland, Collectanea de Rebus Britannicis... (edit. T. Hearne, London, 1774), vol. IV, 49-51; A. Parkinson, Collectanea Anglo-Minoritica... (London 1725), Part 2, 3-4. s See Katherine Walsh, "The De Vita Evangélica of Geoffrey Hardeby OESA (c 1320-1385). A Study...