Manuscripts

Queens’ MS 30

Inventorium omnium et singolarum bonorum Collegi Reginalis Cantebrigie, factum et renovatum ibidem per Andream Dokett, presidentem ejusdem, primo die mensis Septembris, Anno Domini cccclxxij
in Latin
Cambridge, late fifteenth century

An inventory of books gathered at Queens’ Cambridge, commissioned by Queens’ President Andrew Dokett, 1 September, 1472.

Although a muniment rather than an illuminated manuscript, Queens' MS 30 is included here as it details the Library’s original manuscript collection as it existed in 1472. A total of 227 manuscript volumes are listed, all of which would appear to support the College’s principal founding mission ‘the extirpation of heresies and errors, the augmentation of the faith, the advantage of the clergy and stability of the church’. Included are sermons, anti-Wycliffe literature, as well as numerous commentaries by Thomas Aquinas and Church Fathers such as Gregory and Augustine.

The letters on the outer corners of each opening indicate the same lettered arrangement of shelving that exists in the Old Library today (please see the tops of the cases). In the fifteenth century, the cases would have been shoulder height, with many of the books chained to them.

The need to accommodate the new printed books of the Humanist Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation saw the complete loss of Queens’ Library's medieval collection. Extant library itineraries indicate that by 1580 none of the 227 volumes listed here remained at Queens’. Nevertheless, some volumes from Queens’ original Library collection are believed still to exist elsewhere in Cambridge: four in the University Library, six in Caius College and one at Corpus Christi. A further one, Peter Lombard’s Sentences, has been found in Winchester College library.