Collectanea. First series / edited by C.R.L. Fletcher.

Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Collectanea. First series / edited by C.R.L. Fletcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    71/378 (page 59)
    INTRODUCTION. This catalogue is prol^ibly one of the rolls described in a register of college documents compiled in 1397 as ‘ Rotuli diversi diversorum librorum collatorum Collegio per Adam de Brom, Kylmyngton, Cobildik et alios.’ Of these rolls only one is now in the possession of the college. An account of this is given by the Rev. T. F. Dibdin in his Biblio- graphical Decameron (III. 228), where, speaking in the person of Lysander, one of the imaginary personages in the dialogue, he says, ‘ The same century marked the sedulous love of books which distinguished William of Daventry, the Fourth Provost of Oriel College: and I mention his name in the present place because there is now existing in the same college one of the greatest curiosities of its kind. It is Daventry’s Catalogue of the Collegiate Library, bearing the date of 1349. I believe I am not speaking wide of the truth in designating this catalogue as the oldest now known to exist.’ To this statement in the text Dibdin adds the following note. ‘ The Revd. Dr. Copleston, the present learned and most respectable Provost of Oriel College, furnished me with the fact above noticed. The catalogue here alluded to consisted of a long narrow slip of vellum of delicate texture, and in parts sufficiently fragile. It is called an “ Inventory of the Books of St. Mary’s College,” and is dated only “ xlix,” the millenary and centenary numbers (not very unusual) being omitted. The entry of each title of a book is succeeded by a reference to the first word in the “ second leaf” of the same : and it was from the sagacious tact of a thoroughbred antiquary that Dr. Copleston, on verifying the reference, found the truth or consonance of the whole: namely, that the college was in