State Library of Victoria Medieval Manuscripts Online

The Ascension of Christ, historiated initial ‘C’, Italy, 15C

(State Library of Victoria, RARES 096 IL I)

The State Library of Victoria in Melbourne holds 27 medieval and renaissance manuscripts. Last year the SLV finished digitising nearly all of its manuscripts along with five manuscripts held by the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

The digitisation scheme stemmed from an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project, which involved a number of activities, including the digitisation of the manuscripts in the State Library of Victoria and select manuscripts from the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, together with the development of on-line links with other manuscript collections in Australia and New Zealand and the contribution of research findings to manuscripts in these collections as appropriate. The project is spearheaded by Professor Margaret Manion, whose team is creating detailed entries on each manuscript which are being uploaded into the catalogue records. A full list of participating individuals and institutions is provided in each of the detailed entries.

The project followed on from the SLV's highly successful 2008 exhibition 'The Medieval Imagination', which brought together manuscripts from collections in Australia, New Zealand and Cambridge, UK, and saw over 100,000 people pass through its doors. Some of the notable SLV manuscripts displayed and now digitised include: an early thirteenth-century copy of Ptolemy's Almagest with astronomical diagrams and translated from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona; a mid-eleventh-century manuscript of Boethius's De musica (the oldest known book in Australia); a fifteenth-century illustrated copy in English vernacular prose of Guillaume de Deguileville's The pilgrymage of the Lyfe of Manhoode and The pilgrymage of the Sowle; and a lavish fifteenth-century manuscript comprising three works (including the Scriptores historiae Augustae) commissioned for Lorenzo de Medici and still in its original binding.

As a way of promoting these manuscripts, I have listed them below with links to the digitised versions (title hyperlinks), catalogue records, many of which include provenance information, and the detailed descriptions completed to date. References cited in the records refer to:

Margaret Manion and Vera F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections (Melbourne: Thames and Hudson, 1984)

K. V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1969)

Bronwyn Stocks and Nigel Morgan (eds.), The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand (South Yarra, Vic: MacMillan Art Pub., 2008)

And now the manuscripts!

State Library of Victoria
1. Boethius; Anon. [sometimes called Pseudo-Hucbaldus], De musica; Musica enchiriadis [and] De organo, Northern Italy, eleventh century
Catalogue record
Description

2. Petrus Comestor; Stephen Langton, Historia scholastica; Expositio litteralis in historiam scholasticam [and] Exposito moralis in historiam scholasticam, 1200
Catalogue record

3. Epistles of St. Paul with the Glossa ordinaria by Anselm of Laon, Central Italy (Gaeta), ca. 1200
Catalogue record
Description

4. Ptolemy, Almagest, translated from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona, Northern Italy (the Veneto?), ca. 1200–1225
Catalogue record
Description

5. Psalter-Hours, Use of Liège, Latin and French, Southern Netherlands (Liège), ca. 1270–1279
Catalogue record

6. Vulgate Bible (Leviticus) with the Glossa ordinaria of Walafrid Strabo, France (Paris), perhaps first quarter of the thirteenth century
Catalogue record
Description

7. Antiphonal (fragment), Central or Northern Italy, late thirteenth or early fourteenth century
Catalogue record
Description

8. Statutes and treatises on medieval English law, Latin and Law French, ca. 1300
Catalogue record
Description

9. Antiphonal-Hymnal, Dominican use, with excerpt of De musica of Jerome of Moravia, France (Paris), 1335–1345
Catalogue record

10. John of Gaddesden, Rosa Anglica, England, fourteenth century
Catalogue record

11. Flavius Josephus, De bello judaico libri VII: Latin translation attributed to Rufinus of Aquileia, Spain (Catalonia), 1400
Catalogue record

12. Forty-nine illuminated and historiated initials from Italian manuscripts (cuttings), Italy, fourteenth and fifteenth century
Catalogue record
Description

13. Giles of Rome, Archbishop of Bourges, De regimine principum, France, 1429
Catalogue record

14. Guillaume de Deguileville, The pilgrimage of the lyfe of the manhode; and, The pilgrimage of the sowle, England (Lincolnshire), ca. 1430
Catalogue record 
Description

15. Book of Hours (fragmentary), France (Besancon), ca. 1430–1440
Catalogue record

16. Eutropius; Paul the Deacon, Scriptores historiae Augustae and Breviarium ab urbe condita; translations and additions by Paul the Deacon; Historia Romana by Paul the Deacon, Italy (Florence), ca. 1479
Catalogue record

17. Book of Hours, Use of York, Flanders (Bruges), ca. 1470–ca. 1490
Catalogue record
Description

18. Book of Hours, Use of Paris, France (Paris), ca. 1490
Catalogue record
Description

19. Book of Hours, Use of Rome, Southern Netherlands, ca. 1490
Catalogue record

20. St. Jerome, Commentaries on Isaiah, Netherlands (Roermond, Limburg), 1497
Catalogue record

21. 16. St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Augustini opera, fifteenth century
Catalogue record
Description

22. Liber Obsequialis, Use of Constance, and Breviary (fragment), Latin and German, Southern(?) Germany, (1) fifteenth and (2) early twelfth century
Catalogue record
Description

23. Pontifical, for the Bishop of Mirepoix, France, ca. 1500–ca. 1520
Catalogue record

24. Liber antiphonarius Romanus, 1566
Catalogue record


Art Gallery of Ballarat
1. Eadmer (d. 1124?); Bede, Life of St Wilfrid and extracts from Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, Northern England, 1150
Catalogue record

2. Pontifical, with excerpts from the Summa theologia of St Thomas Aquinas and the Regula ad inveniendum principium lunae (added 1451), Italy (Veneto or Emilia-Romagna), ca. 1350–1380
Catalogue record

3. Calendar and medical diagrams, Northeast England (Durham?), ca. 1400–1420
Catalogue record

4. Book of Hours, Use of Rome, Italy (Florence), 1450
Catalogue record

5. Prayer Book, Southern Netherlands, ca. 1544
Catalogue record

Update: Australian & New Zealand Rare Book Summer School

The application form/ flyer for the 2014 Australian & New Zealand Rare Book Summer School is now available. There is also an online application form.

Classes will run from 10 to 14 February. Please see my earlier post for course descriptions.

The sessions on architectural books and natural history illustration will be held in the State Library of Victoria. Caren Florance's class on hand-press printing will be taught at the Ancora Press studio, Monash University (Caulfield campus). 

Applications will close on Friday 16 December 2013. Courses will proceed if sufficient applications have been received by Friday 6 December 2013. 

For further information, please email: rbss[@]slv.vic.gov.au.

Eyewitness Letter to the Capture of Ned Kelly Surfaces After 133 Years

The Victorian bushranger Edward 'Ned' Kelly is one of nineteenth-century Australia's most well known and controversial figures. His exploits in Victoria and southern New South Wales, which culminated in the siege at Glenrowan (late June 1880) where Kelly and members of his gang donned make-shift body armour to deflect police bullets, have seen Kelly labelled an outlaw and murderer by some and folk hero by others.

Now, after 133 years, a letter containing an eyewitness account of Kelly's dramatic capture during the siege has been donated to the State Library of Victoria by the descendants of its author – Scotsman, Donald Gray Sutherland.

What makes this letter particularly interesting is that it offers a new perspective. According to the historian Alex McDermott, unlike previous accounts, which were written either by government officials or Kelly sympathisers, Sutherland was 'an everyday bank teller from Oxley, a little town near Glenrowan, and [was] not on the side of the Kellys and ... not on the side of the police'.

[From the State Library of Victoria website]

The letter addressed to Sutherland’s family on 8 July 1880 proclaims ‘… the Kelly’s are annihilated. The gang is completely destroyed…’. It continues describing Kelly’s famous armour and the gunshot wounds that finally brought him down.

‘He was wounded in 5 or 6 places, only in the arms and legs – His body and head being encased in armour made from the moule (sic) boards of a lot of ploughs. Now the farmers about here, have been getting their moule boards taken off their ploughs at night for a long time but who ever dreamed it was the Kellys and that they would be used for such a purpose. Ned’s armour alone weighed 97 pounds. The police thought he was a fiend seeing their rifle bullets mere sliding off him like hail. They were firing into him at about 10 yards in the grim light of the morning without the slightest effect. The force of the rifle bullets made him stagger when hit but it was only when they got him in the legs and arms that he reluctantly fell exclaiming as he did so I am done I am done.’

Sutherland enclosed a lock of hair from Kelly’s horse with the letter, noting in the postscript, ‘The hair enclosed is from the tail of Ned Kelly the famous murderer and bushranger’s mare. His favourite mare who followed him all around the trees during the firing. He said he wouldn’t care for himself if he thought his mare safe.’

Sue Roberts, CEO and State Librarian described the donation of the letter as extremely generous and a significant addition to the Kelly story.

‘This letter is a very personal account of events that have become part of Australia’s folklore. We are delighted that Mr Sutherland’s family chose the State Library of Victoria as caretaker for this remarkable document. It will join Ned's armour, Jerilderie Letter and other important items in our Kelly collection – one of the largest and most significant in the world.’

The letter will be on display in the State Library’s Changing Face of Victoria exhibition from Monday (14 October). It is also available online with a full transcript via the State Library website.

Conference 'Love and Devotion: Persian Cultural Crossroads'



A royal picnic (detail), from ʿAttar, Intikhab-i Hadiqa, c 1575

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS. Canonici Or. 122, fol. 4v

Registration is still open for "Love and Devotion: Persian Cultual Crossroads", a three-day conference coinciding with the State Library of Victoria exhibition "Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond".

"This cross-disciplinary conference will explore cultural convergences in literature, art and architecture, history and philosophy from the time of Firdausi in the early 11th century to the present day, within the various Persian empires, Ottoman Turkey, Mughal India and Europe .... Distinguished international guests and Australian specialists will explore themes including Persian ideals of love and devotion as expressed through the arts, intersections with the west, and the contemporary legacy".

The conference runs from 12 to 14 April. Among the keynote speakers are:

~ Charles Melville (University of Cambridge): "The 'Arts of the Book' & the Diffusion of Persian Culture"

~ Stefano Carboni (Art Gallery of Western Australia): "Illustrated Talismans in the Bodleian Kitab al-Bulhan"

~ Zahra Taheri (Australian National University): "Women in Rumi's Spiritual Circle"

~ Mammad Aidani (University of Melbourne): "Authenticity & the Act of Devotion & Friendship in the Poetry of Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi"

~ Barbara Brend (independent scholar, London): "The Khamsa of Nizami & the Khamsa of Amir Khusrau: Some Similarities & Differences Reflected in Their Illustrations"

A full list of speakers and paper abstracts can be found here.

The exhibition website offers a wealth of educational information, an events list and multimedia, including an image gallery and poetry readings. The site is well worth a visit if you are unable to make it to Melbourne.