The Library is delighted to announce the start of the Manuscripts for Medieval Studies project. The project will seek to research, catalogue, conserve, digitise and share 16 medieval manuscripts of international research significance.
The project is part of the newly launched Virtual Trinity Library Programme. Its outputs will be presented in the Library’s Digital Collections platform, allowing us to share our collections with communities around the world, to catalyse research and educational dissemination on a global scale, whilst ensuring the preservation of our collections for generations to come.
The Library is digitising apocalypse manuscripts like there’s no tomorrow. The Dublin Apocalypse (TCD MS 64) contains the Latin text of the Book of Revelation, heavily decorated with 73 vibrant miniatures, and you can now see the Final Judgement in gold and vivid colour on our Digital Collections.
IE TCD MS 64, folio 31r
The imaging of this volume was completed to coincide with a one-day symposium based on the Dublin Apocalypse, taking place in the Neill Lecture Theatre of the Trinity Long Room Hub on Friday, 1 February 2019 from 9.45am. The event will draw together experts in their fields to discuss multiple aspects of the Dublin Apocalypse and its broader context. Attendance at what is sure to be an fascinating event is free but registration is essential at https://dublinapocalypse.eventbrite.ie.
IE TCD MS 64, folio 6r
Nigel Morgan, Professor Emeritus of the University of Cambridge, will discuss the iconography of the manuscript through an art historical lens. Michael Michael’s and Frederica Law-Turner’s papers will cast light on the Ormesby Psalter and delve into the East Anglian school of manuscripts. James T. Palmer, of the University of St Andrews, will study the circulation, interpretation, and use of the Book of Revelation in the Middle Ages.
Bernard Meehan, former Head of Research Collections and Keeper of Manuscripts at the Library of Trinity College Dublin will recount the curious story of how the manuscript arrived at the College through an unusual deal between the Board and a former Provost. Finally, Laura Cleaver, Ussher Lecturer in Medieval Art in Trinity, will address early-twentieth century facsimiles of the text and their impact.
So, if you’re seeking a friend for the end of the world or simply interested in one of the Library’s medieval treasures, please join us for insightful discussion and some free coffee.
Photo of the Gwynn family taken in the Provost’s Garden, Trinity College, June 1934. Included are the following more well-known members. Back row: Aubrey Gwynn SJ ( 5th from L), Rev. RM Gwynn (6th from L), Maj. Gen. Sir Charles William Gwynn (4th from R); middle row: Stephen Gwynn (4th from L), Edward Gwynn (Provost) (3rd from R).
John Gwynn, (1827-1917). Regius Professor of Divinity, Trinity College (1888-1907). He was also a mathematician, a scholar of old Irish, and a Syriacist. He edited the seminal edition of the Book of Armagh (TCD MS 52).
An exhibition showcasing highlights from the Gwynn family papers will be on display in the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin from 11 January to 1 March. The Gwynns are an extraordinary family who have had a long and distinguished association with the university since the early 19th century. They counted among their number a Provost, Vice-Provost, the first Lady Registrar, several Scholars, professors and Fellows, as well as numerous alumni. They excelled academically in the areas of Old Irish, Syriac, classics, theology, mathematics and engineering. On the sports field they showed themselves to be gifted rugby and cricket players, playing at both university and national level. Such was their success in various areas of College life that the university was at one point dubbed ‘Gwynnity College’. Their achievements outside College, in Ireland and abroad, were no less impressive, in politics, in military engagements and in exploration.
Highlights of the exhibition include: a letter written by the Young Irelander William Smith O’Brien to his daughter Lucy (wife of John Gwynn) from Van Diemen’s Land in 1850; a watercolour sketch of the Donegal countryside from Lucy Gwynn’s album; a letter from Maude Gonne McBride to Edward Gwynn congratulating him on his appointment to the Provostship of Trinity College in 1927; a letter from Charles Gwynn to his nephew John David Gwynn describing the Battle of Gallipoli; and photographs of various members of the family on and off campus.
John Gwynn’s son Lucius (1873 – 1902), playing cricket in College Park. He was a Fellow of Trinity College and talented cricketer. The buildings of Nassau Street can be seen in the background.
Edward J Gwynn (left) and others enjoying a cricket match in College Park.
The papers were generously donated to the Library of Trinity College in 2016/17 by several of John Gwynn’s great-grandchildren. Many of the present generation of the family retain strong links with the College, as academics and alumni. The Library is very grateful to them for making the decision to transfer the collection to the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library. Its contents, including correspondence, diaries, photographs and legal documents, would be of enormous research interest to academics and students alike. The documents cover a vast range of subjects: Irish nationalism, Irish education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the history of Trinity College, Protestantism in Ireland, the First World War, the 1916 Rising, the geo-politics of West Africa in the late nineteenth century, and much more besides. Once catalogued, the collection will be available for general consultation.
The exhibition is curated by M&ARL, in conjunction with colleagues in Digital Collections and the Preservation and Conservation Department.
The Library is home to a unique collection of around 450 medieval Latin manuscripts, spanning a period of 800 years. Until now, the catalogue has existed solely in hard copy but it has been taken from the shelves of the reading room and made globally accessible online through our Manuscripts and Archives online catalogue, available. You can search specific manuscripts by title, reference number or any keyword relevant to your area of interest – or simply search for the phrase ‘medieval manuscripts’ to have a browse.
TCD MS 52, folio 32v
The most effective way to illustrate the scope of this project is to provide some insight into the array of items that come under the umbrella of Trinity’s Latin manuscript collection. Perhaps the most well-known group consists of seven Early Irish Christian manuscripts dating from Ireland’s golden age of faith and culture. Among the seven are the Book of Armagh (TCD MS 52) and the Book of Kells (TCD MS 58), which are among the most famous manuscripts in Ireland and, in the case of the latter, the world. All seven of these manuscripts have now been conserved, fully imaged and are available freely online through the Library’s Digital Collections.
The medieval collection includes luxuriously illuminated Books of Hours, confessors’ handbooks, psalters and bibles, to name but a few. The Book of Kells may be the most magnificently decorated Insular manuscript in existence but does it have a plate-spinning dog? No.
TCD MS 35, folio 17v
TCD MS 632 presents a kind of fifteenth-century classical handbook for medieval readers. Through articles, diagrams and maps, the book accounts for multiple aspects of classical study including mythology, geography and history. These small circular diagrams represent the rivers of the classical world. The larger infographic here relates to the length of time it takes individual planets to orbit the earth (the word terra is marked in the centre). The seven zones of the earth (including the arctic and temperate) are illustrated on folio 108r, identifying which zones are habitable and which are not. There is also a brief note beneath the diagram referring to the nine Muses of Greek mythology.
TCD MS 632, folios 107v-108r
TCD MS 10994, folio 1r
This charming fellow situated inside the large letter Q of TCD MS 10994, likely depicts Michael of Belluno in Italy; the named scribe of this manuscript. The text serves as a guide for confessors, a list of sins and omissions committed by society, including (but not limited to) boasting, dancing, fighting, superfluous drinking, cursing, gluttons who eat too quickly, men in curled wigs, women who indulge in cosmetics and listening to arousing music.
Other standout examples include the Ricemarch psalter, a Latin text of Welsh origin in an Irish style, and the Dublin Apocalypse (TCD MS 64, pictured below), a fourteenth-century manuscript depicting the Final Judgement in gold and vivid colour that is simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. This particular illustration is the horseman of war, identifiable by his fiery red horse and his big ol’ sword.
If you would like to learn more, here is a quick and shameless plug for our Illuminating the Middle Ages online exhibition which went live in January of this year, available at the following link.
Detail of Æthelflæd glass from the West Window of Chester Cathedral, by WT Carter Shapland, 1961.
12 June 2018 marks the eleven-hundredth anniversary of the death of the remarkable Æthelflæd: daughter of King Alfred the Great, Lady of the Mercians and – to her Viking foes – ‘most famous Saxon queen’. Her impressive reputation and unique position in Anglo-Saxon England are recorded in two medieval sources housed in the Library, one English, one Irish. Both stand as testament to her enduring legend at home and abroad.
Diagram of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms identified as making up England (Essex, Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia). The kingdoms appear as petals with Mercia appearing bottom left. TCD MS 496, ff. 127v-128
The eldest child of Alfred the Great (d.899) and Eahlswith (d.902), Æthelflæd was born into a fragmented England: Alfred’s Wessex was one of a number of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in turbulent co-existence with the constantly encroaching Viking Danelaw. Alfred, it seems, intended each of his children to play important roles in furthering his aim of uniting the English kingdoms against the Danes, and this was to be achieved through a variety of means: through political power, through property, through strategic marriages, and through religious influence. However, Alfred’s contemporary biographer, Asser, describes a society that did not promote female leadership: ‘The West Saxons do not allow a queen to sit beside the king, nor to be called a queen, but only the king’s wife’. This makes Æthelflæd’s achievements all the more startling.
It is not known where Æthelflæd grew up, although she was possibly raised with maternal relatives in Mercia rather than Wessex. Her marriage to the Mercian ruler, Æthelred (d.911), was a strategic power-play for both her father and husband. Despite being a princess of Wessex, she did not officially graduate to becoming Queen of Mercia, rather she was merely designated the wife of the Lord of Mercia in recognition of Alfred’s overlordship of that kingdom.
Statue of Æthelflæd with her foster son and future King of England Æthelstan, Tamworth Castle grounds, Edward George Bramwell, 1913.
From 910 the Mercian Register of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles records her rise to prominence, possibly due to the fact that her husband became gravely ill at this time. On his death in 911 she assumed the leadership of Mercia apparently uncontested and was identified as ‘Myrcna hlœfdige’ – Lady of Mercia. The language is important, as this was the precise equivalent of Æthelred’s habitual title of ‘Myrcna hlaford’. This indicates that the Mercian rulers’ assembly did not draw any distinction between her authority to rule and that of her husband’s. She led the Mercians so successfully that on her death in 918, her daughter, Ælfwynn, was also accepted as her successor (albeit for only six months). The uncontested transference of power from one female ruler to another was unprecedented, and it would not be repeated for another six-hundred years, when the English throne passed from Mary I to Elizabeth I in 1558.
Annals of Ulster containing the entry for the year 918. TCD MS 1282 f.46v
Æthelflæd was both a warrior and a builder, planning and leading military campaigns against the Danes, whilst also extending her father’s policy of establishing a series of fortified towns or burhs. She either rebuilt or founded the county towns of Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, Chester, Shrewsbury, Warwick, and Stafford. Militarily, she was a smart tactician, and just before her death the Danes of York indicated that they were ready to surrender to her. By this point the extent of the lands under her influence was rivalled only by the realms of her brother Edward the Elder Burhs and the King of the Scots, Constantín Mac Áeda (d.952).
Æthelflæd in the Library
Genealogy of Alfred, roundels containing the names of Alfred, Edward and Elfleda (Æthelflæd) TCD MS 496 ff.129v-130r
Ætheflæd appears in two sources in the Manuscripts & Archives section of the Library. She is profiled in an early-fourteenth-century diagrammatic genealogy of the kings of England, ‘Summary chronicle of English history from Beorhtric’s accession (AD 786) to Edward I’s (AD 1272)’ (TCD MS 496). This contains the family tree of Alfred in which she appears in one roundel, with genealogical lines linking him to his children Edward and Elfleda (Æthelflæd). The accompanying inscription reads:
Elfleda sapientissima filia eius cum aliis quattuor
Æthelflæd the wisest daughter of [Alfred] with four others.
And, beneath the circle:
Ista Elfleda omni mulierum sapientissima dicebatur, que multum[?] fratrem suum regem ab regnum suum gubernandum per sapientam suam instruxit. Haec nupsit comiti Edredo.
This Æthelflæd was called the wisest of all women, and through her wisdom greatly instructed her brother the king on the governance of his kingdom. She married count Edred [Æthelred].*
The annals of Ulster’s (TCD MS 1282 f 46v) record of Æthelflæd’s death in 918 also reflects her status:
Eithilfleith, famosissima regina Saxonum, moritur
Æthelflæd, most famous Queen of the Saxons, died.
‘Eithilfleith, famosissima regina Saxonum, moritur’ from the Annals of Ulster record for 918 TCD MS 1282 f.46v
The inclusion of the death of an Anglo-Saxon royal in the Irish annals may have been due to Ӕthelflӕd’s position as an opponent of the Norse-Gael leader Ragnall Ua Ímair (d.920/921), one of the Vikings expelled from Dublin in 902. The fragmentary Annals of Ireland, (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 5301-5320) also suggest that she allied herself with Constantín Mac Áeda, King of Scotland, against Ragnall at the Battle of Corbridge in Northumberland in the year of her death.
Neither her father Alfred’s nor her brother Edward the Elder’s deaths are recorded in the annals, but Æthelflæd is referenced in Irish and Welsh sources as a most famous Saxon Queen. Although this title was not technically correct, the scribe’s singling out of Æthelflæd in such a way is in clear recognition of her unique position and the importance of her achievements from an opponent’s perspective.
The Library’s online exhibition, ‘Transmitting the Anglo-Saxon past’ provides further examples of Anglo-Saxon history manuscripts from the Library’s collection.
The Anglo-Saxon world will become the focus of a major exhibition ‘Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms‘ at the British Library from October 2018.
