Chronologically, the Old Library's collections begin with this manuscript of the Greek Gospels, thought to have been produced around the late 11th century. Written on 218 folio leaves of thick vellum, and decorated with rather crudely drawn initials of blue, red and green, the manuscript belongs to an important class of documents known as lectionaries. A lectionary is a text containing passages from Scripture which have been rearranged into separate sections, or lessons, appointed to be read according to the cycles of the liturgical year. With the advent of scholarly biblical criticism in the nineteenth century, evidence from early Greek lectionaries proved critical in tracing the history of the transmission of the New Testament. The Christ’s manuscript is particularly noteworthy since as well as containing the Gospels in full there are also four passages from the Septuagint version (an ancient translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) and a further four from the Pauline Epistles among the services of the Holy Week. Such remarkable features were documented in 1859 by one of the leading Victorian textual critics of the New Testament, Rev. Frederick Ambrose Scrivener, who described the Christ’s manuscript as ‘a document of singular importance’. A note in Latin on the flyleaf reveals that it was presented to Christ’s College in 1654 by Francis Taylor of Dover, a former student at Christ’s, who was at that time one of the Six Preachers of Canterbury Cathedral.
Books of Hours were compendia of psalms, Bible verses, hymns, antiphons, and prayers for private devotional use by laymen. The typical book of hours was an abbreviated form of the breviary which contained the Divine Office recited in monasteries. It was developed for lay people who wished to incorporate elements of monasticism into their devotional life. However, with their frequently lavish illuminations, ownership of a Book of Hours also became a status symbol for medieval powerbrokers. This is the earliest example of a Book of Hours in the possession of Christ's College. An inscription on the manuscript, which features historiated initials and stylised foliage interlaced with grotesques, drolleries and animals, identifies the former owner as Alice de Vere, Countess of Oxford (d.1312). The manuscript itself was probably produced at a nearby scriptorium in the Fens.
This stunningly beautiful Book of Hours was produced in the diocese of Nantes in Brittany in the first half of the fifteenth century. It contains 16 lavish full-page miniatures, and was evidently commissioned by an extremely wealthy patron. In 2014, this manuscript featured in the Library's 'Sponsor-a-Book' scheme. The generous donation of a Christ's alumnus ensured that this unqiue treasure could undergo a course of thorough conservation, including a complete re-binding. The manuscript has since been completely digitised and can be viewed online by clicking on the link below.
Christ's College was first established as God's House in 1437 by William Byngham, a London parish priest, for training grammar school masters. For more information on William Byngham, see the link below.
Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond and Derby (1443–1509), royal matriarch, was born on 31 May 1443. Later in life, following the death of her third husband, and the accession of her son as King Henry VII, Beaufort turned her energies to good causes. No doubt at the suggestion of her confessor, Bishop John Fisher, she decided to enlarge God's House. In 1505, with a royal charter from the King, the College was re-founded as Christ's College. Lady Margaret has been honoured ever since as the Foundress.
Shortly after receiving its Royal Licence from Henry VI in 1446, God's House was forced to move from its original site as this was needed for the King's new project (what was to become King's College). God's House moved to its present site in 1448 and in the same year received a second Royal Licence. This licence may be regarded as the Foundation Charter. Click below for a list of the Proctors of God's House.
A foundational work in the history of mathematics, Euclid's 'Elements', thought to have been written around 300 B.C., was one of the first texts to be printed following the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-fifteenth century. Thanks to Charles Lesingham Smith (1806-1878), the Old Library is fortunate enough to have a copy of the very first printed edition, produced in Venice in 1482 by Erhard Ratdolt. Ratdolt was active in Venice from 1476 to 1486, and afterwards in Augsburg. In this first edition, he skillfully solved the problem of printing geometric diagrams with a variety of innovations in layout, typography, mixing type and woodcuts.
Published in 1493, the Nuremberg chronicle is one of the most famous incunabula, a term used for books printed in the period up to 1501. Epic in scope, the chronicle describes all of history from creation to contemporary times. It is a truly beautiful item, illustrated by more than a thousand woodcut prints designed in a Nuremberg workshop, and compiled from a myriad of sources by physician and bibliophile Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514). The copy at Christ’s is one of 400 extant examples in Latin. It was presented by Ferdinand Pulton, a Fellow of the College from 1556 to 1557.
Before the advent of wood-block printing, playing-cards were hand-painted and affordable only by the wealthy. Packs of cards at this early period were unlike the standardised packs of today; the names of the cards, the signs and the number in a pack differed one from another. The three 'court' cards of royal characters in English packs of cards still show the court dress of Henry VII’s regin, and the Knave displayed here is a rare survival of a hand-painted court card from the time of Lady Margaret Beaufort (mother of Henry VII and founder of Christ’s College). The other cards date from c.1515. Popular card games in Lady Margaret’s time and throughout the Tudor period included piquet and écarté. The Tudor cards were found in the Muniment Room in Christ’s College during renovation works in the 1960s and now reside in the College Library.
In 1505, Lady Margaret Beaufort refounded God's House as Christ's College. She purchased the manors of Malton and Roydon, and her accounts show a substantial expenditure of £1625 on building work between 1505 and 1509.
This book was given by Christ’s’ patroness, Lady Margaret Beaufort, as part of her donation to the library collection in the college. Lady Margaret was renowned for her piety - throughout her life, her devotional habits were stronger and more numerous than those of a typical medieval lady. To that end, she left a number of religious and devotional books to the library, of which this copy of the ‘Vita Christi’ was one. Though it is a relatively plain book, suited for its intended purpose of aiding the education of theologians, it does contain several woodcut capital letters. The one displayed here depicts a boar playing an early form of bagpipe.
The Old Library holds fragments of early 16th-century wallpaper that date from c. 1509, chronologically quite close to the College's re-foundation by Lady Margaret Beaufort in 1505. The fragments were discovered in late May 1911 when renovations were being carried out to the Master's Lodge. For more information and images, see our blog below
This 1519 New Testament is unusual since it is one of only three known copies printed on vellum rather than paper. Prepared by Erasmus of Rotterdam, this important edition is thought to have been used by Martin Luther in the making of his own German translation of the Bible.
The Complutensian Polyglot Bible was the brainchild of Cardinal Francisco Ximénes de Cisneros (1436-1517), archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain. Fired by a humanist desire to foster study of the original biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew, Cisneros founded a trilingual (Greek, Latin, and Hebrew) university in a small town near Madrid, Alcalá de Henares (or Complutum, as it was called in Latin). It was here that Cisneros set in motion his project to produce a multilingual – or polyglot – edition of the Bible.
Italian mathematician, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci and widely named “father of accounting”, Luca Pacioli (1447-1517) authored the first printed work on algebra in a vernacular language and the first published description of double-entry book-keeping in his Summa de arithmetica. This second edition of one of the earliest printed mathematical texts was intended as a text book for the Italian mercantile classes, and presented the first comprehensive summary of Renaissance mathematics. Adorned with various diagrams, including a demonstration of contemporary finger counting, the work issued a stern warning that a person should not go to sleep until the credits matched the debits. This classic of early-printed mathematics was donated to the Library by Christ’s Fellow and mathematician Charles Lesingham Smith (1806-78).
Considered one of the greatest figures in European art during the Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer originally published his four-book treatise on geometrical forms in German in 1525 under the title Underweysung der Messung, or Four Books on Measurement. This version is a Latin translation published by the famous 16th-century printer Christian Wechel (1495-1554), widely reputed for the beauty of his editions. Packed with exemplary designs applying theoretical geometry to architecture, engineering and typography, Dürer intended the book as an accessible manual for Renaissance craftsmen.
On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres is the seminal work of the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). It offers a heliocentric model of the universe in contrast to Ptolemy’s geocentric system, which had been widely accepted since ancient times. This first edition was printed in 1543 by Johannes Petreius, who was renowned for the high quality of his output.
Bound in beautiful red leather with 84 extraordinary engravings illustrating Dante Alighieri’s epic Divine comedy, this 1544 first edition of Alessandro Vellutello’s (b. 1473) commentary is a real treasure of our collections. Dante’s Divine Comedy was absorbed into the canon of European literature remarkably quickly. Eight commentaries on the poem were published in the 20 years after Dante’s death, a level of critical appraisal usually reserved for classical authors and Scripture. The illustrations that adorn this edition have been lauded “the most distinctive Renaissance renditions of the poem after Botticelli” and Vellutello is said to have "strained his mind, expenses and expended considerable time" having them engraved and published by the renowned printer Francesco Marcolini.
This beautiful first edition is a particularly lavish example of an extremely popular early modern genre, the herbal. Published in Germany in 1557, Kreuterbuch (literally ‘Herb Book’) was compiled by mathematician, botanist and town physician of Frankfurt, Adam Lonicer (1528-86).
This lively English version of Zodiacus vitae, first published in Latin by the Italian poet Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus in 1536, was translated by Christ’s alumnus Barnabe Googe (1540-94) when he was just nineteen years old. Ordered in twelve books, one for each sign of the zodiac, Palingenius’ epic poem offers an overview of established astrological knowledge.
This book, dated 1574, comprises Luther’s translation into German of the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The text is in parallel columns of Latin and German with a number of woodcut illustrations. However, it is the binding which is eye-catching, as it features inset portraits, in colour, of Martin Luther on the front board and Philip Melanchthon on the back. The brown calf is elaborately decorated with gold tooling and includes Latin inscriptions beneath the portraits and the lettering ‘G M N 1581’. Notes inside the volume describe the binding as ‘extremely rare’; it was given to the library in 1934 by Francis Cripps-Day.
Master of Christ's from 1622, Bainbridge donated 30 books to the College Library. According to the ODNB, 'on acquiring authority he developed a taste for its exercise, and would be reckoned a martinet for insisting on a rigorous performance by the fellows of their statutory duties'.
Felix Platter (1536-1614) was one of the foremost pathologists of his time and chief physician in Basel until his death. This work on anatomy for medical students is lavishly illustrated with watercolours and hand-coloured woodcuts.
This edition of Cicero’s 'De officiis' is remarkable for its extensive annotations and inscriptions of ownership, as well as for having been translated by Christ’s alumnus and poet Nicholas Grimald. Written by Cicero in 44 BC, the last year of his life, 'De officiis' has been a profoundly influential work ever since. The text takes the form of a letter from Cicero to his son extolling the virtues of living and behaving well.
Hebraist and biblical scholar, Mede graduated MA from Christ's in 1610. He was later appointed Mildmay Greek lecturer, holding both fellowship and lectureship for the rest of his life. As the ODNB notes, 'He did not marry, and lived modestly in a chamber at ground level beneath the college library.' Whilst the Old Library holds 37 items donated from Mede's own collections, it is his personal account books, kept meticulously during his time as a Fellow between 1613 and 1638, and now safely stored in the College Muniment Room, which stand as his richest legacy, providing an enlightening glimpses into college life during the first half of the seventeenth century.
'Ornithologiae' is the first of a series of books produced by the Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), which together make up his monumental Natural History. The copies at Christ’s are in fine armorial bindings which proclaim in gold letters that the donor was Sir Thomas Widdrington, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, an office he held from 1658 to 1660.
Barnabe Googe (1540-94) never completed his studies, perhaps due to an outbreak of plague in 1556, a year after he came up to Cambridge. He did, however, go on to serve on the fringes of court under William Cecil (1520/21-98) and gained a significant reputation as a translator, as well as a poet in his own right. This charming book is Googe’s second-most popular work. A translation of Conrad Heresbach’s (1496-1576) practical guide to “the whole art and trade of Husbandry, Gardening, and Planting, with antiquitie, and commendation thereof”, the handbook promises advice on everything from “Bees what angreth them” to “Bullocks bitten with a mad dogge”.
Fellow of Christ's from 1573 to 1583 and later bishop of Chichester, Watson donated 71 books to the Library. He matriculated as a pensioner at Christ's in Michaelmas term 1567 and proceeded BA in 1571/2. The following year he became a college Fellow, and was ordained.
Christ’s College alumnus and Church of England clergyman Edward Topsell (1572-1625) is chiefly remembered today as the author of 'The historie of foure-footed beasts' (London, 1607), one of the earliest illustrated zoological treatises to be printed in the English language. In this work, Topsell set out to examine the animal kingdom, drawing on wisdom from the ancient world right up to his own time. His aim in producing such a volume was not merely to entertain and inform; following in the great tradition of the medieval bestiaries, Topsell believed that the natural world illuminated the moral and spiritual order instituted by God, and thus by studying it humans could draw edifying lessons for their own lives.
Richly decorated with beautiful maps and other illustrations, Poly-Olbion by Michael Drayton (1563–1631) is a poem describing travel around parts of England and Wales, divided into thirty songs written in Alexandrine (dodecasyllabic) couplets. Each one has an accompanying commentary explaining some of the references and phrases used. Our copy contains annotations dated to the 1640s, and was owned in the early 1800s by John Hutton (1774-1841), alumnus of Christ’s, who donated 50 Arabic, Persian and Urdu manuscripts to the College Library; his brother Timothy donated Poly-Olbion to the Library after John’s death.
Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire to a wealthy family, More came up to Christ’s in 1631, receiving his B.A. in 1636 and his M.A. in 1639. He was elected to the College’s fellowship in 1641, a position he retained until his death some forty-five years later. Said to have been tall in stature with a serene manner, More is best known as one of the leading figures of the so-called "Cambridge Platonists". Rejecting the traditional scholastic philosophy of Aristotle, this circle of clergymen instead championed the teaching of Plato, as mediated by his medieval Christian commentators, with its emphasis upon reasoning as the route to participation in the mind of God. This concern to demonstrate the rational nature of faith led More and his colleagues to follow keenly - if not always advocate - the 'new philosophy' of men such as Descartes, Galileo and Boyle. Prolific in print, Henry More's countless works are almost all held on the shelves of his alma mater.
This 17th-century manuscript, “Collected 1 November 1620”, is vibrantly illustrated with hand-coloured crests associated with the great and good of the University of Cambridge. Dedicated to the Master of Christ’s at the time, Valentine Cary (d.1626), the volume presents illustrated profiles of each Cambridge College, including the number of Fellows, scholars, servants and officers upon foundation, and a list of former Masters. The entry for Christ’s College lists “one Master, 12 fellowes and fortie seaven scholars, with 6 officers and servants”, when the College was re-founded from God’s House in 1505.
Composed in the first century BC by Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, De rerum natura (‘On the nature of things’) was an impassioned and visionary account of the philosophy of the ancient Greek thinker, Epicurus (341-270 BC). The diminutive copy held by Christ’s dates from 1620, and was printed in Amsterdam by William Janssonius. It features the earliest printed illustration to the De rerum natura, a frontispiece depicting Nature personified and a Sun composed of atoms.
Started in 1623, the College Donations Book records important gifts to the Library until the late 1670s. It includes details of the 39 texts given by Lady Margaret Beaufort, who founded the College in 1505.
Milton was admitted to Christ’s College on 12th February 1625 (or 1624 by the old way of reckoning, where the new year began on 26th March). The admissions book records Milton’s matriculation to the college under the tutelage of William Chappell, the future bishop of Cork. The College Archives hold Milton's entry in the College Admissions Book (Christ’s College Muniment Room, T.1). Translated, the entry reads: "John Milton of London, the son of John, established in the rudiments of literature at St Paul's School under the tutelage of Master Gill, has been admitted a junior pensioner, Feb. 12. 1624 under Master Chappell, and has paid for entry."
Lying incorrectly catalogued for nearly 150 years, this Persian manuscript was thought to be a standard copy of a well-known history. However, in the 1990s, new research revealed that it was the missing third volume of a chronicle covering the reign of the celebrated Safavid ruler, Shah Abbas (1587-1629). It was produced in India by a prominent contemporary Persian bureaucrat, Fazli Khuzani of Isfahan.
Completed in 1632, this codex is an account of the Coptic language in Arabic, with both languages presented in tandem. At one time it was thought to have been lost at sea, explaining the visible water damage.
Thomas Standish was admitted to Christ's in 1648, and raised to the Fellowship only five years later in 1653, a position he held until his death in 1714. Despite such longevity, Peile suggests Standish was something of a non-entity in College life, remarking that 'There is nothing memorable...in his remaining 50 years'. However, he was a bountiful donor to the Library, to which he left most of his books upon his death. Standish's collection included works by Boethius, Hooker, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Bayle, as well as important editions of the Greek and Roman classics, and also works by Rabelais and Moliere. A small stone in the College chapel commemorates this generous benfactor.
Charles Butler’s The feminine monarchie was the first book-length work about bee-keeping in English. Butler’s dedication to and passion for the apiary arts earned him the moniker ‘the father of bee-keeping’. Butler was a champion of spelling reform and this 1634 edition of The feminine monarchie is written in his phonetic spelling. Delightfully, this multiplies the number of bees that feature in the book, as ‘be’ is written ‘bee’.
Official apothecary to King James I, John Parkinson (1566/7-1650) is known as the last of the great English herbalists. The title-page of this mammoth work rather smugly boasts that it exposes “the many errors and oversights of sundry other authors”, containing as it does “a more ample and exact” history of herbs. The Theater of Plants is indeed extensive, detailing some 3,800 specimens, somewhat idiosyncratically ordered into 17 “tribes”, including “Venomous, Sleepy and Hurtful”, and “Strange and Outlandish”. Our first edition of this beautifully-illustrated book is remarkable for containing numerous annotations and pressed plant specimens gathered by an enthusiastic reader.
In 1645/6, Milton published a collection gathering many of his early poems, including ‘On the morning of Christ’s nativity’, various sonnets (in English and Italian), ‘L’allegro’ and ‘Il penseroso’, and also reprinting Lycidas and Comus.
Henry More (1614-87), alumnus and long-time Fellow of Christ’s College, is among the best known of the “Cambridge Platonists”. His 1656 book 'Enthusiasmus triumphatus, or, A discourse of the nature, causes, kinds, and cure, of enthusiasme' suggests that enthusiasm is a branch of melancholy, which “disposes a man to Apoplexies and Epilepsies”.
Robert Boyle's 'Experiments and Observations Touching Cold' (1665) was one of the first studies of ‘coldness’ by an experiential scientist and disproved views held since Aristotle's time that all cold originated from a ‘primary cold’ or primum frigidum, commonly believed to be water. For more on the volume, see our blog below.
The Library holds six first editions of 'Paradise Lost', each with variant title pages. See the link below for our online exhibition curated to mark the 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth.
The first document here is a receipt for £5 paid to Milton by his publisher Samuel Simmons for the right to publish Paradise Lost. The second manuscript is dated 1680, six years after Milton’s death. It records his widow, Elizabeth Milton, releasing her rights over the poem to Simmons for a payment of £8.
This copy of Milton’s second edition of his shorter poems, published in 1673, was given as a gift to William Wordsworth by the Edinburgh antiquarian and bookseller, David Laing. The inscription reads: ‘To | William Wordsworth Esq. | as a slight token of respect | [signed with Laing’s monogram, ‘DL’]’.
Choice and Experimented Receipts is a fascinating example of a medical ‘receipt’ or recipe book. Such manuals of domestic medicine were an extremely popular genre in the early modern period, at a time when the majority of medical care was administered at home. Diverse treatments are offered: from “Wounds or Sores in Man or Beast” cured with “Hog’s grease” to a “cordial water of sweet marjoram” for the “head and the memory”.
The 14th Master of the College, Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688), produced this colossal philosophical work of 1678, 'The true intellectual system of the universe'. Completed in 1671, but only published in 1678, the book was Cudworth’s seminal work, and runs to more than 900 pages. It was intended as the first part of a projected trilogy concerned with the general topic of liberty and necessity.
Like many other 17th century natural philosophers, Joseph Glanvill (1636-80) openly discussed his belief in the existence of witches and other supernatural spectres. Glanvill’s efforts to demonstrate the existence of the immaterial were aided by the Cambridge philosopher and Christ’s alumnus Henry More (1614-87). Together, they sought to apply new methods of science to their supernatural enquiries. This extraordinary volume gathers together their investigations into paranormal happenings, including “speakings, knockings, opening of doors when they were fast shut [and] sudden lights in the midst of a room”.
Dr John Covel, Master of Christ's, kept this volume (Archives D.29) from 1688-1722. The manuscript book, which runs to over 400 pages (further pages are blank), records various aspects of the College's life and history.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close