Richard Sharpe, , Hon. (17 February 1954 – 22 March 2020) was a

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historian and academic, who was

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

of Diplomatic at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

and a fellow of

Wadham College, Oxford Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road. Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...

. His broad interests were the history of medieval

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and

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. He had a special concern with first-hand work on the primary sources of medieval history, including the practices of

palaeography Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...

, diplomatic and the editorial process, as well as the historical and legal contexts of medieval documents. He was the general editor of the ''Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues,'' and editor of a forthcoming edition of the charters of King Henry I of England. (Staff profile on former website with links to some publications.)

Biography

Starpe studied at St Peter's School, York and then took his BA at

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

, studying Classics for Part I of the degree and then Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic for Part II, where he studied with, amongst others,

Simon Keynes Simon Douglas Keynes, ( ; born 23 September 1952) is a British author who is Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon emeritus in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Trinity Colleg ...

, Kathleen Hughes and Michael Lapidge. He graduated with a first in 1977, and published his first book, a history of

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the same year. Sharpe stayed in the ASNaC department for his PhD, on Latin-language Irish hagiography, which was the basis for his 1991 ''Medieval Irish Saints' Lives: an introduction to 'Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae'''. From 1981 to 1990, Sharpe was an assistant editor of the ''

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources The ''Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources'' ("DMLBS") is a lexicon of Medieval Latin published by the British Academy. The dictionary is not founded upon any earlier dictionary, but derives from original research. After decades of ...

''. As the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

's 2018–2019 Lyell Reader in Bibliography, Sharpe delivered that year's Lyell Lectures on the topic of "Libraries and Books in Medieval England: The Role of Libraries in a Changing Book Economy". He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2003, and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2018. In 2020, he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the

Medieval Academy of America The Medieval Academy of America (MAA; spelled Mediaeval until c. 1980) is the largest organization in the United States promoting the field of medieval studies. It was founded in 1925 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The academy publishes ...

Publications

;Books as author * * * * * * * * *

References

Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford British medievalists English palaeographers 1954 births Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Fellows of the Royal Historical Society Members of the Royal Irish Academy 2020 deaths Surtees Society {{UK-historian-stub