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From Durham to Dublin: the journey of two fifteenth-century books

We recently received an enquiry from Dr Ian Doyle, former Keeper of Rare Books at Durham University Library, about two printed books from our collections with an intriguing provenance. The volumes form parts two and three of a six-volume set of a Latin Bible with the commentary of Nicholas de Lyra (c. 1270-1349), printed by Johann Froben and Johann Petri de Langendorff in Basel in 1498. Our two volumes, at shelfmark FF.dd.4-5, are recorded as having once been connected to a cell of Durham’s Benedictine cathedral priory of St Cuthbert by evidence of an ownership mark belonging to a monk of one of its religious houses.1 The volumes bear the inscription of Christopher Wyllye, monk of Durham, transcribed here from the first leaf of FF.dd.5: Liber dompni Xtoferi Wyllye monachi Dunelmensis.

Liber dompni Xtoferi Wyllye monachi Dunelmensis

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