The Lincoln Cathedral Library is a library of

Lincoln Cathedral Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln Minster, or the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln and sometimes St Mary's Cathedral, in Lincoln, England, is a Grade I listed cathedral and is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Lincoln. Constructio ...

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

, England.

Collections

As well as a reference collection of c.10,000 items, there are 260 mediaeval manuscripts, including works of theology, canon law, devotional books, music and literature, and the following: *Text of the

Venerable Bede Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...

*Lincoln's Chapter Bible - commissioned for the new cathedral by Nicholas,

Archdeacon of Huntingdon The Archdeacon of Huntingdon and Wisbech is a senior ecclesiastical officer in the Diocese of Ely. The archdeacon is responsible for some clergy discipline and pastoral care in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon and Wisbech. History The Archdeaconry ...

in the late 11th century *The fifteenth-century "Thornton Romances" found in the

Lincoln Thornton Manuscript The Lincoln Thornton Manuscript is a medieval manuscript compiled and copied by the fifteenth-century English scribe and landowner Robert Thornton, MS 91 in the library of Lincoln Cathedral. The manuscript is notable for containing single versio ...

- includes the earliest written account of the death of King Arthur, and was a source for the poet

Thomas Malory Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author of '' Le Morte d'Arthur'', the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend, compiled and in most cases translated from French sources. The most popular version of '' Le Morte d' ...

's ''

Morte d'Arthur ' (originally written as '; inaccurate Middle French for "The Death of Arthur") is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Rou ...

''. *''

Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God The ''Eliot Indian Bible'' ( alq, Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God; also known as the ''Algonquian Bible'') was the first translation of the Christian Bible into an indigenous American language, as well as the first Bible publishe ...

'' (aka: ''Algonquian Bible'') was the first Bible printed in the Americas in 1663. The English

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...

missionary John Eliot produced a translation of the

Geneva Bible The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into English, preceding the King James Version by 51 years. It was the primary Bible of 16th-century English Protestantism and was used by William Shakespear ...

into the Indian

Massachusett language The Massachusett language is an Algonquian language of the Algic language family, formerly spoken by several peoples of eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts. In its revived form, it is spoken in four communities of Wampanoag people ...

. The devotional books include an illuminated

Book of Hours The book of hours is a Christian devotional book used to pray the canonical hours. The use of a book of hours was especially popular in the Middle Ages and as a result, they are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscrip ...

which is small enough to fit into a pocket.

History

Pre civil war

In the mediaeval era the manuscripts were kept in a chest or cupboard, and scholars came from great distances to consult them. By 1422 a new,

chained library A chained library is a library where the books are attached to their bookcase by a chain, which is sufficiently long enough to allow the books to be taken from their shelves and read, but not removed from the library itself. The practice was usua ...

had been built over the east walk of the

Cloister A cloister (from Latin ''claustrum'', "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church, commonly against a ...

, adjoining the

Chapter House A chapter house or chapterhouse is a building or room that is part of a cathedral, monastery or collegiate church in which meetings are held. When attached to a cathedral, the cathedral chapter meets there. In monasteries, the whole communi ...

. Three of the mediaeval reading desks and one bench survive in the Mediaeval Library, which was built to accommodate around a hundred manuscripts.

Wren Library

Michael Honywood Michael Honywood D.D. (1597 – 7 December 1681) was an English churchman, Dean of Lincoln from 1660. Honywood was a bibliophile and he founded and funded the Lincoln Cathedral Library. Life He was sixth son and ninth child of Robert Honywood of ...

was made

Dean of Lincoln The Dean of Lincoln is the head of the Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral in the city of Lincoln, England in the Church of England Diocese of Lincoln. Christine Wilson was installed as Dean on 22 October 2016.

at the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, with the huge task of repairing the fabric of the cathedral, ravaged by the Parliamentarian soldiers during the Civil War. General repairs took him until 1674, when he was finally able to begin his cherished project of providing a new library building with £780 of his own money on the site of the ruined north cloister. Honywood commissioned the design from

Sir Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches ...

, who also supervised throughout, as is indicated by a page which survives in the Cathedral collections, setting out the prices for painting and gilding, and written and signed by Wren. The external Tuscan Doric

colonnade In classical architecture, a colonnade is a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building. Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curv ...

of the exterior is serenely classical yet the inside is full of Baroque features: advancing and receding planes and cornice, which give interest to a long, narrow room; and the ''

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

'' marbling. Through removal of the added paint layers some of the original marbling has been revealed; where it has not been revealed (due to expense and conservation concerns) a reproduction marbling has been painted over the layers. The terms laid out in the contracts for the building specified that the building should be completed in two years. He bequeathed his 5,000 books (including one of only 250 manuscript versions of

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

's ''

Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''magnum opus' ...

'') to the Dean and Chapter - these are still in the building built for them. Lincoln is one of only two surviving Wren libraries; the other is the

Wren Library The Wren Library is the library of Trinity College in Cambridge. It was designed by Christopher Wren in 1676 and completed in 1695. Description The library is a single large room built over an open colonnade on the ground floor of Nevile' ...

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

, designed by Wren in 1676. Displayed under the staircase leading to the Library is a Roman mosaic discovered in the cloister in 1793.

References

Bibliography

''Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library'' Rodney M. Thomson;

Boydell & Brewer Boydell & Brewer is an academic press based in Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, that specializes in publishing historical and critical works. In addition to British and general history, the company publishes three series devoted to studies, edition ...

(1989)

External links

Cathedral Library websiteLibrary ExteriorExterior imageLibrary interior
{{Authority control

Library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

Cathedral libraries Academic libraries in England Buildings and structures in Lincoln, England Libraries in Lincolnshire Christopher Wren buildings