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Manuscripts in the Antipodes: the origins of the Sydney collections Over the last thirty years, much has been done to publicise the often hitherto unknown riches of the collections of manuscripts, dating from the medieval and Renaissance eras, held in various institutions tiiroughout Australia. T w o major descriptive catalogues have been produced to cover this material: firstiy, the work compiled by K. V. Sinclair,1 which located some two hundred and sixty-four complete Western manuscripts or fragments in Australian libraries overall and, more recently, the listing by Margaret Manion and Vera Vines,2 who described two hundred and fiftythree items. Manion and Vines examined only illuminated manuscripts in their study, while non-decorated material were also included by Sinclair. It is probable, however, that the actual number of manuscript items in Australian collections does not coincide with thefiguresproposed by either Sinclair or Manion and Vines. This discrepancy is due to a number of factors including, firsdy, the difficulty of locating items in private hands. Unless the owners come forward, there is no way of identifying or listing material. I personally have been asked to identify or value material on two occasions, and in neither case was the item listed in eidier of the published guides. Curators of other collections must have had similar experiences. In addition, relocation can occur as the ownership of known items is subject to change. It is virtually certain, for example, that some of the items listed by Sinclair, such as eight of thetenmanuscripts once owned by A. B. Triggs of Yass, N e w South Wales, are no longer in Australia.3 The remaining two items, an antiphonarium and a copy of the Summa metrica bibliae by Theobaldus Trecensis, are now in the State Library of South Australia.4 Secondly, there does exist, however unlikely it m a y seem in a time of straitened budgets, the possibility of making further additions to institutional K. V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969. Margaret M. Manion and Vera F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections, with a Foreword by K. V. Sinclair, Melbourne, London, New York, 1984. 3 Sinclair, Catalogue, pp. 418-21. 4 These items are shelfmarked 096. d. Sp. Symon Library 31. 10. 1945, and 220.47 a. Sp. 31. 10. 1945. PARERGON ns 13.2, January 1996—Text, Scribe, Artefact 184 N. Boness collections. Again, I personally can claim responsibility for four items added to Australian collections since the publication of the Manion and Vines catalogue. These four items now form part of the Rare Books and Special Collections of the State Library of N e w Soutii Wales. They are a breviary of eastern French or Rhineland origin, probably of the fourteenth century, a Flemish book of hours, a copy of La Somme des vices et des vertus, dated 1328, and afifteenth-centuryVenetian compilation of four texts concerned with the martyrdom of St George, the translation of the saint's relics to Venice, and subsequent miracles associated with the saint.5 A third point to bear in mind is that neither Sinclair nor Manion and Vines included in their listings Hebrew or Eastern items, a significant number of which are held in the collections of the University of Sydney at least.6 In any event, those catalogues that n o w exist provide a detailed bibliographical analysis of a surprisingly large body of material: decoration, script, construction, binding have all been studied in some detail, and in many cases information has been given as to immediate provenance. There has been little attempt, however, to look further back, in order to examine how and why such material has come to Australia.7 As Sinclair, Manion and Vines all remark in the introductions to then catalogues, Australia is, after all, an unlikely placetofindsuch items preserved. Numerically, the largest concentration of manuscript material istobe found in Sydney. There are thirty-two items (mostly fragments or single leaves) in private hands, six at St Patrick's College, one at Moore Theological College, thirty-five in the various collections of the State Library of N e w South Wales, and some seventy-five in Fisher...

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