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A view of the Library in 1574.
The Schools Quadrangle, showing Rotherham's eastern front, with
library above. From Matthew Parker's presentation copy to the University
Chancellor, Lord Burleigh, of his Catalogus cancellariorum, 1574.
The Reformation saw the University Library, in common with all
other English libraries, despoiled and ignored at turns. Part of
its premises was reclaimed for lectures, 'since in its present condition
it is useless', as books were borrowed and not returned, vandalised
for their illuminations, or allowed to rot as representative of
obsolete disciplines. By 1557, only 175 volumes remained of the
approximately 600 it had boasted after the Tunstal benefaction.
Cuthbert Tunstall, De arte supputandi libri quattuor
(London, 1522). This presentation copy on vellum bears Tunstall's
gift inscription. The title-page border shown here is based on a
design by Holbein.
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600 years of
Cambridge
University
Library
8 October 2002 - 15 March 2003
Admission free
We know from the earliest surviving catalogue that 122 volumes
were on the shelves by 1424; the gifts of senior members of the
University, for the use of their peers. These were chiefly Latin
manuscripts on theology and, in smaller numbers, canon law, logic,
grammar, medicine, moral and natural philosophy. As such, they covered
the essential medieval University curriculum. Absent were books
on music, arithmetic and geometry, although these were statutory
studies, and literature of all kinds. Cambridge University was late
to embrace Renaissance learning; the first Greek texts did not arrive
until 1529 as the gift of Cuthbert Tunstal, Bishop of London.
For
him was lever
have at his
beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in
blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes rich,
or fithele,
or gay sautrye
Geoffrey Chaucer
(1340?-1400)
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