[MR] Parker Library Now on the Web

[E. L. Wimett]

For those who are not aware of it, the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge is one of the most important repositories of early English manuscripts and fascinating historical documents.  Among the important holdings are the St. Augustine Gospels, the oldest illustrated Latin Gospel book in existence (dating from the sixth century) which is traditionally the book on which the Archbishops of Canterbury take their oath of office, the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (yes, that one!), a ninth-century dictionary giving Latin meanings of Old English words, a lot of early monastic books and records, etc.  For those with later interests, I can recall seeing letters from Anne Boleyn and Martin Luther and --- most particularly --- the bill for burning Archbishop Cranmer.  (A wonderful proof for any who doubted it that the level of bureaucracy in which the Society often indulges is period!  It’s in Manuscript 128 which also proves that the government is always slow to pay, even when it is King Henry VIII!)

When I was up at Cambridge, access was limited and exhibitions were looked forward to with great anticipation.  However, now a co-operative effort between Corpus Christi College and Stanford University has put the bulk of the library on line at http://parkerweb.stanford.edu.

While rather pricey subscriptions are required for some of the fancier search and zoom features, the free public access to the manuscripts on the site is significant (you can browse by manuscript number and by title, many titles including the name of the author) and should be a treasure trove for scribes, illuminators, linguists and historians.  (Hint: while you cannot use the zoom function, on most pages there is a link to the “basic” view which brings up an enlarged and eminently readable image of that page which can be printed or copied using Windows 7 sniping tool or a similar capture and copy utility.

I’ve been having fun with this new resource and hope some of you will as well.

Alisoun