The Rare Books & Manuscripts Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Service update: The Parker Library blog as a separate wordpress site is now closed. We are simplifying our online presence. We wish to thank all our past readers and writers, and welcome you to find us through other sites. Parker Library Blog Just like we do, our new blog platform sits inside Corpus Christi College,... Continue Reading →
The college's foundational document has been on display since the start of the year as part of the current 'Town and Gown' exhibition, due to run until March. The historic link with St Bene't's church, attested in this document, is this year celebrated anew in the year of St Bene't's millennium. Edward D.G. (Deo Gracias)... Continue Reading →
One of the great privileges of working in The Parker Library is the opportunity to slowly discover the collections, to spend a few minutes looking at a manuscript whose shelfmark you don't recognise, to talk to readers working on things you've never considered, to share in the excitement of new discoveries, and to learn just... Continue Reading →
Plants really don’t move. The majority grow in the same places, look the same, smell the same, and act the same for thousands of years, and this slow evolution is a useful lodestone to help us navigate the shoals of botanical thought, which have changed so dramatically in the past 600 years as to be... Continue Reading →
As with any historical field, despite the sheer quantity of evidence you may collect, there will always be parts of the past that remain shrouded in mystery. This is of course true for manuscripts; even if we combined all our current knowledge, we will never quite manage to uncover each and every hidden facet of... Continue Reading →
Encountering a manuscript is a vastly different experience to reading a modern printed edition of the same text. I discovered this when I had the privilege of examining the Ancrene Wisse manuscript (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402) during my internship at the Parker Library. Ancrene Wisse—meaning ‘advice for anchoresses’—is an early thirteenth-century text intended to guide... Continue Reading →
As part of my work experience here at the Parker Library I was given the opportunity to do my own research and write it up on a blog post. This was an amazing chance to see what research means practically, and at first I was overwhelmed by the number of books available to look at... Continue Reading →
A heavy oak chest in the Parker LIbrary (Corpus Christi College) was used to store objects left as collateral for loans of money. Its ironwork features the outline of a plant – but no-one knew why. Now a visitor to the Library may have unravelled the meaning of this decorative motif. A visitor to the... Continue Reading →
An illustrated Dutch book on astrology from the early sixteenth century might not be a typical work one would expect to find in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. How would a copy of Tscep vol wonders (Brussels: Thomas van der Noot, 1514) have ended up in the library of an English archbishop?... Continue Reading →
Of all the extant copies of John Hayward’s The Life and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt (1630), the British Library Catalogue maintains that the only copy in England which escaped the cancels to which printer John Lichfield subjected the book, is housed in the Palace Green Library at the University of Durham (Routh Library... Continue Reading →
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