Search results for ""Author Michael Gullick""

Collection of 277 litle-known medieval manuscripts, second only in number to Durham; special strengths are scholastic theology, biblical studies and sermons 13c-15c, and early music. Worcester Cathedral Library contains 277 medieval manuscripts, the largest number of any English cathedral except Durham. Most of them belonged to the pre-Reformation Cathedral Priory and date between the eleventh and late fifteenth centuries. The collection has never been adequately catalogued before, and is consequently little known; much of the contents of the books, their physical features and history, is here described for the first time. The libraryis rich in late medieval theology and sermon-literature. Many of the books are important because of their connections with Oxford University, and constitute a valuable source for the history of studies there after c.1300. The Worcester monks tended to annotate and write their names in their books, and some seventy of them are identified. Great treasures are the Worcester Antiphoner, and the fragments of early polyphonic music, some newly-discovered and described for the first time. About half the books are in their medieval bindings, including the second-oldest intact Anglo-Saxon binding. These are described individually, and the history of binding at the Cathedral Priory traced, by Michael Gullick. The rest of the Introduction is devoted to the history of the books and library to the early 1600s. There are indexes of incipits and of manuscripts other than those catalogued, as well as a general index.R.M. THOMSON is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Tasmania; MICHAEL GULLICK..Other Cathedral library catalogues; Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library and Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library.

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Edition of important documents from one of the major monastic centres of medieval England. In the wake of the Conqueror's ravaging of the North in the course of the rebellion and Danish invasion of 1069-70 the devastated city of York had to be largely rebuilt. The Conqueror himself contributed a major new abbey built in the west of the city, no doubt in a spirit of penitence for the wasting of the city and county carried out by his troops. The community's origins were not straightforward. It had begun in the early 1080s as a struggling monastic settlement on the ancient site of Lastingham on the North York Moors under its charismatic leader, Stephen. Around 1085 the community was adopted by the king and translated to the western quarter of York, to a site which had previously been the "burh" of the earl of Northumbria. The Conqueror made a creative use of the new Norman elite of Yorkshire to endow and secure the new abbey, an enterprise adopted and extended by his son William II Rufus in 1088. By the end of Abbot Stephen's term of office his abbey had absorbed a remarkable number of land grants from a variety of greater and lesser aristocrats across the North and East Ridings, as well as spawned two daughter houses in Cumbria. This new study uncovers in meticulous detail the manoeuvres of the king, the abbot and the aristocracy of Yorkshire as each looked to make spiritual and political capital out of the grand new royal foundation.

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