“Canterbury Manuscripts:
A Seminar”

In the Series of Seminars on the Evidence of Manuscripts
The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
(16 December 1989)
Invitation in pdf.

The previous Seminar in the series considered
“Medieval Manuscript Fragments: Their Problems and Challenges”
Parker Library, August 1994

[First published on 30 August 2016]

Focused on the evidence and challenges of medieval manuscripts from Canterbury, this was the last Seminar in the Series on “The Evidence of Manuscripts” organized by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence while the Group was still resident at The Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. September was the last month of the 5-year Leverhulme Trust Research Project based at the Library, with a team of specialists; the term of the Project extended from 1 October 1989 to 30 September 1994. The course and subjects of its research work are described in the detailed Annual Reports to the Leverhulme Trust.  As described among our Publications, the Reports were reprinted and circulated, together with the current Profile (updated as appropriate) of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.

View Toward the Entrance to the Parker Library in mid-1989. Photograph © Mildred Budny.

The specialist research work at the Library had, however, officially begun with the 2-year appointment (1987–1989) of an outside-funded full-time Senior Research Associate (Mildred Budny), dedicated to research on Anglo-Saxon and related manuscripts — emanating naturally from her comprehensive Ph.D. study of the Royal Bible of Saint Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, and applying its holistic methodology to relevant (as well as other) manuscripts at the Parker Library, including those undergoing conservation. Observing the value of such integrated dedication, photography included, to the study of manuscripts archaeologically revealed in disbinding and rebinding, the Librarian and the Senior Research Associate determined to apply to the Leverhulme Trust for outside funding both to continue and to extend this work, next with the full-time employment also of a Research Assistant (to be identified), as well as more photography of the unfolding evidence. The first Seminar in the Series of Seminars on “The Evidence of Manuscripts” took place several months before the Leverhulme Trust Research Project began, and considered “Manuscript Illustrations as Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Life”.

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