Medieval Manuscripts

The collection of medieval manuscripts is one of the finest of any collection of illuminated ones in Oxford outside the Bodleian Library and includes the 13th century Lectionary produced for the convent of Dominican Nuns zum heiligen Kreuz, Regensburg (MS 49) and the 15th century French book of hours (MS 39), exquisitely illuminated with miniatures by the Master of the Duke of Bedford.


The collection consists of seventy-one Western, five Greek and thirteen Oriental manuscripts, together with a number of fragments. Most are liturgical and devotional; books of hours, missals, breviaries, lectionaries and ordinals. They were given by Victorian benefactors who were influenced by the ideals of John Keble and the Oxford Movement and associated with the College. Included are the bequests of Rev. Charles Edward Brooke who had inherited the liturgical books and manuscripts collected by his brother Sir Thomas Brooke, one of the great bibliophiles of the 19th century, and of Rev. Dr Henry Parry Liddon, one of the founder members of Keble College.



The history of the collection is fully described by Malcolm Parkes in the introduction to his catalogue: The medieval manuscripts of Keble College Oxford: a descriptive catalogue with summary descriptions of the Greek and Oriental manuscripts. London, Scolar Press, 1979.




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