Author Archives: Clare Hills-Nova

The Ariège Collection

Giles and Lisa Barber at their home in Lescure (Ariège)
Giles and Lisa Barber at their home in Lescure (Ariège)

When Giles Barber retired from his post as Taylor Librarian in 1996, he moved with his wife Lisa to Charlbury and they shortly also acquired a holiday house in the far south-west of France, in the département of the Ariège. La Mandro, in the commune of Lescure, very soon became their main residence, and they immersed themselves in local life, became involved in a whole variety of activities – and they collected books.  Their large collection of books on the Ariège and nearby areas of France has now been donated to the Bodleian by Lisa Barber, who writes:

We loved this area of France and anything published about the Ariège was of interest: its geographical situation in the central Pyrenees bordering Catalonia, life in the past in this region, the architecture of its many old churches, travellers’ descriptions, the painters who had worked in the region, and works both by and about its writers.

Included in this collection are a number of books on and in Occitan, and in particular on the Gascon language, spoken in Lescure in former days and still by a few of the older generation. In the collection one can find the three studies by Jean-Pierre Laurent (2002) (by profession an anaesthetist) on the dialects of Massat, the Séronais, and Aulus.

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Three dialect studies by Jean-Pierre Laurent (2002)

His information was carefully collected over many years from local people of an older generation (This and all further references are to be found in the bibliography at the end of this blog). Christian Duthil (2009) wrote on the language of the Ariège, while the dialect of Toulouse is studied by Jean Séguy (1978). Place-names of the area can be explicated by reference to two books by Bénédicte and Jean-Jacques Fénié (1992, 1997).

Abbé Grégoire, Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française. 1794 (Reprinted 1995)

Modern interest in these languages aims to preserve them but of great consequence was the effort to suppress them and the collection includes a reprint of a 1794 work by the Abbé Grégoire (1995) on the necessity of suppressing the dialect and ensuring that French became the standard language of communication. The Abbé’s efforts were not entirely successful and the anthologies of Gascon literature and folklore by Gaston Guillaume (1941) and Joan-Francés Bladèr (1966) contain some of the literary texts composed in the languages of the region.

There is also a fairly rare first edition of Belina, poema de tres cantas by Miqueu Camelat (1962).

Local history was one of our prime interests and our collection includes studies (of varying academic levels) of many small communes of the Ariège as well as of the larger and better-known towns. Paul Pédoya collected together all his own memories and that of others of his village of Montseron (2005), while Georges Olive wrote up the traditions of one area of the town of Saint-Girons: the Baléjou (1993). Christiane Miramont studied and wrote about the mills along the Lens valley (2005), the glass-blowers of the Volvestre (2003), and the somewhat turbulent life of Bruno de Ruade (1999).

Saint-Girons-les-Eaux (Ariège) : sources thermales Audinac; grande source chaude. Saint-Girons: 1948

Saint-Girons is the nearest town to Lescure and Giles himself wrote a book (2004), which maps out much of the history of the town through a study of its street-names. These range from the medieval Rue du Bourg to streets named after heroes and heroines of the Resistance.  We picked up many other books about Saint-Girons, including the optimistic Saint-Girons-les-Eaux (1948), the record of a doomed attempt to turn Saint-Girons into a spa town. The hopes for this scheme were based on an idea to reroute the natural mineral waters of nearby Audinac which had been studied by Michel Dubuc in his work of 1882, of which we found a 1997 re-edition. An abandoned incomplete building at the end of a side street in Saint-Girons bears witness to the disappointed hopes of the promoters of the scheme.

Picture of the rotunda in Saint-Girons in Giles Barber’s book: Giles Barber Les Rues de Saint-Girons: les noms des rues et des édifices de la ville à travers les âges, leurs origines, ainsi que ceux des quartiers, hameaux et lieux-dits avoisinants 2004

A photo of this building, a rotunda, appears in Giles’s book along with an account of the failed project.

Saint-Lizier, next-door to Saint-Girons, boasts two cathedrals, one now a museum that was the see from the Middle Ages until the Revolution, and the present one, a beautiful medieval former parish church with wall-paintings and a lovely cloister. The collection includes a number of works on Saint-Lizier and one might pick out two more unusual books: the account by Pierre Assémat (a lawyer of Pamiers) of the confraternity, membership of which was obtained by going on pilgrimage to Compostella (2007) and Ortet’s history (2004) of how the Palais des Évêques of Saint-Lizier was turned in the nineteenth century into an “asile d’aliénés” (in modern parlance a psychiatric hospital but more akin to the English “lunatic asylum”).

Photograph of the bell-tower of Noguès in Lescure from Lisa Barber’s ‘Notre Dame du Clocher et le Clocher de Noguès à Lescure (Ariège)’, Mémoires de la Société archéologique du Midi de la France, LXVII (2007), 135-44

About our own commune of Lescure we acquired from Richard de Meritens de Villeneuve, the author, the collected biographies of all those escurois who fought in the First World War (2006). Looking further back into the history of Lescure, I researched and wrote up the history of a church in Lescure (2007) and an offprint of this is included in the collections (as are others of my researches into medieval funeral slabs in the area).

Another English inhabitant of the Ariège, Scott Goodall, has been instrumental in setting up the commemorative annual four-day climb up and over the Pyrenees into Spain, in honour and remembrance of those who escaped that way from German and Vichy France during the Second World War, and both the English and the French versions of his book about this have joined the collection (2005).

Saint-Lizier, Saint-Girons, and Lescure are all in the western area of the Ariège called the Couserans, quite distinct from the eastern part which was the Comté de Foix, the difference felt by all local people and visible in such works here as J. de Lahondès (2001). Foix is still the préfecture (the rough equivalent of the county town) and houses the departmental archives, fully and competently described and listed by the current archivist, Claudine Pailhès, in her guide to the archives of Ariège published in1989. She has used these archives and other sources to write and publish a number of excellent books on the region (see bibliography below).

In this eastern area of the Ariège are found the Cathar sites of Montaillou and Montségur and one cannot live long in the area without hearing about these medieval heretics and the Albigensian crusade. Nowadays the places and buildings associated with them have been turned into tourist attractions. As much nonsense as good scholarship has been written about them. Our collection contains several books on the Cathars and also the careful study of the other side of the picture edited by Laurent Albaret (2001).

Copy of Chronique sur Rennes-le-Château : Marie d’Etienne, le trésor oublié (1998)by Germain Blanc-Delmas, dedicated to Lisa and Giles Barber by the author

Another book to look at an unusual side to matters is the often hilarious account (1998) by Germain Blanc-Delmas of his childhood in Rennes-le-Château, where his father was Mayor. Long before either the Da Vinci Code or the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, stories woven around the abbé Bérenger Saunière and his imagined discovery of a treasure beneath the stones of the present village led to incursions of illicit treasure seekers, who would hire a holiday house for a season and proceed to dig up the floors and tunnel out from there.Blanc-Delmas with a group of other young lads happily sabotaged these efforts and devised tricks and frights for the night-time diggers, while his father battled to stop the streets of the village from collapsing due to the subsidence caused by the tunnels.

Catherine Bahoum and Monique Garcia, Le Mystère du guide foudroyé – une aventure de Sherlock Holmes, Collection « Plume de Pin », Pau, 2002

 

 

Looking westwards along the Pyrenees, one finds the stirring account of Hugues-Alexandre Roy (1870) and several books by or about Count Henry Russell, that eccentric explorer of the mountains. This area also inspired a new Sherlock Holmes story by Catherine Bahoum and Monique Garcia (2002).

One may be surprised to find in the collection books on hydro-electricity, the explanation being that Aristide Bergès, “le père de la houille blanche” was born and brought up in Lorp (the next town to Saint-Lizier) where his family had a paper-mill. The Livre d’Or du centenaire d’Aristide Bergès (1933) contains two extra photographs interleaved and is a copy from the family. Their mill is now a museum of paper and printing, named after its famous son. Giles took part in its activities and also researched the splendid funeral monument to Bergès in Toulouse. An offprint of his article is included in the collection.

Livre d’Or du centenaire d’Aristide Bergès (1833-1904), Lancey, 1933

Auguste Déjean Les Indésirables, drame social pathétique en vers, en 6 actes, 10 tableaux et une apothéose, Saint-Girons : Imprimerie Vergé-Doumenc, 1925

We of course collected a number of books on local printing and publishing: a work by Louis Lafont de Sentenac (1899 reprinted 1998) and a work by Pierre Fournié (1980) as well as some of the works themselves, for instance a work by Auguste Déjean (1925) entitled Les Indésirables, drame social pathétique en vers, en 6 actes, 10 tableaux et une apothéose. One would love to find reviews of this production in the local press of the time (if indeed it was produced). Of our modern time, one finds in the collection a complete run of the very local annual periodical Vent du port, based on the area of Salau and its high pass between the Ariège and Catalonia, the scene of an annual joint gathering, the Pujada al port de Salau.

 

Gaston Caster Les Routes de Cocagne : Le siècle d’or du Pastel, 1450-1561, Privat, 1998

We collected a number of books on Toulouse, on its history, its architecture, its artists, and also a book by Gilles Caster (1998) detailing the main source of Toulouse’s great wealth in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: woad, whose southern French name is pastel. It was the trade in pastel that provided the riches used to build the splendid hôtels which are still the architectural glory of the centre of modern Toulouse.

The plant and animal life of the area feature also in the collection, with for instance John and Mavis Midgley’s preliminary account of the herbarium of Adrien Faure de Fiches (2013) (a fuller publication is in hand and will follow), and various items on transhumance (the seasonal migration of people and livestock between summer and winter pastures) such as the work by Jean-Louis Loubet (2010).

The collection is very wide-ranging, and one cannot list everything here. For anyone with an interest of any kind in this area of southern France, it is well worth exploring further.

Bibliography

Les Inquisiteurs : Portraits de défenseurs de la foi en Languedoc (XIIIe – XIVe siècles), ed. Laurent Albaret, Toulouse : Privat, 2001.

Livre d’Or du centenaire d’Aristide Bergès (1833-1904), Lancey, 1933.
Saint-Girons-les-Eaux 1948.

Assémat, Pierre, Sur le chemin de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle : les pèlerins confrères de Saint-Lizier, 1533-1710 : la quête du salut, préface de Mgr Marcel Perrier, évêque de Pamiers, 2007.

Bahoum, Catherine and Monique Garcia, Le Mystère du guide foudroyé – une aventure de Sherlock Holmes, Collection « Plume de Pin », Pau, 2002.

Barber, Giles Les Rues de Saint-Girons: les noms des rues et des édifices de la ville à travers les âges, leurs origines, ainsi que ceux des quartiers, hameaux et lieux-dits avoisinants 2004.

Barber, Lisa ‘Notre Dame du Clocher et le Clocher de Noguès à Lescure (Ariège)’, Mémoires de la Société archéologique du Midi de la France, LXVII (2007), 135-44.

Bladèr, Joan-Francés, Contes de Gasconha, prumera causida, Saint-Etienne : Lo libre occitan, 1966.

Blanc-Delmas, Germain Chronique sur Rennes-le-Château : Marie d’Etienne, le trésor oublié, Toulouse : Envolée, 1998.

Camelat, Miqueu Belina, poema de tres cantas, Sorgas – Institut d’estudis occitans, 1962.

Caster, Gilles, Les Routes de Cocagne : Le siècle d’or du Pastel, 1450-1561, Privat, 1998.

Lahondès, J. de, Les Eglises des pays de Foix et de Couserans, Lacour ré-édition, 2001.

Meritens de Villeneuve, Richard de, Lescure et ses poilus, des bancs de l’école à la croix de bois, Alliance, 2006.

Déjean, Auguste Les Indésirables, drame social pathétique en vers, en 6 actes, 10 tableaux et une apothéose, Saint-Girons : Imprimerie Vergé-Doumenc, 1925.

Dubuc, Michel Les eaux minérales d’Audinac (Ariège) 1882.

Duthil, Christian L’Almanac patoues de l’Ariejo : un almanach en occitan. Foix : Cercle occitan Peire Lagarde, 2009.

Fénié, Bénédicte and Jean-Jacques Toponymie gasconne, Editions Sud-Ouest, 1992.

Fénié, Bénédicte and Jean-Jacques Toponymie occitane. Editions Sud-Ouest, 1997.Fournié, Pierre L’Imprimerie toulousaine au XVe siècle, Toulouse, 1980.

Goodall, Scott Le chemin de la liberté : histoire et randonnée dans le Couserans.

Goodall, Scott The Freedom Trail, following one of the hardest wartime escape routes across the central Pyrenees into Northern Spain, Inchmere, 2005.

Gouy-Gilbert, Cécile & Jean-François Parent, De la houille blanche à la microélectronique : réflexions sur le patrimoine industriel de l’Isère, Lancey, s.d. (vers 2000).

Grégoire, Abbé   Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française. 1794 (Reprinted 1995)Guillaume, Gaston Anthologie de la littérature et du folk-lore gascons, no 3 : Florilège des poètes gascons (des troubadours aux temps modernes). Bordeaux : Delmas, 1941.

Lafont de Sentenac, Louis Les Débuts de l’imprimerie dans le comté de Foix, Lacour ré-édition, 1998 ( of the Foix 1899 edition).

Laurent, Jean-Pierre Le Dialecte de la vallée de Massat : grammaire, dictionnaire et méthode d’apprentissage, 2e edn, 2002.

Laurent, Jean-Pierre Le Dialecte gascon d’Aulus, Grammaire et dictionnaire, suivi de Histoire chronologique des vallées du Garbet et d’Ustou, 2002.

Laurent, Jean-Pierre Les dialectes du Séronais – La Bastide-de-Sérou, Castelnau-Durban, le Mas-d’Azil. Grammaire et dictionnaire, suivi de : Le Séronais, histoire exemplaire d’un pays occitan, 2002.

Loubet, Jean-Louis Un site remarquable dans le Haut-Couserans : Goutets. Contribution à une connaissance du milieu montagnard et de son organisation pastorale, Nîmes : Lacour, 2010.

Midgley, John and Mavis L’herbier d’Adrien Faure de Fiches (2013).

Miramont, Christiane Au fil de l’eau, au fil du temps : les moulins de la vallée du Lens (Ariège – Haute-Garonne), 2005.

Miramont, Christiane Bruno de Ruade, évêque de Couserans, 1999.

Miramont, Christiane Le commerce du verre soufflé dans le Volvestre Ariégeois aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles : les gentilshommes-verriers et les paysans porteurs de verres, 2003.

Olive, Georges Si le Baléjou m’était conté : chronique d’une famille et d’un quartier en Couserans. 1993.

Ortet, André Un asile d’aliénés – Saint-Lizier 1811-1969, Cazavet, 2004.

Pailhès, Claudine L’Ariège des comtes et des cathares, Editions Milan, 1992.

Pailhès, Claudine Du Carlit au Crabère : Terres et hommes de frontière, Foix : Conseil général de l’Ariège, 2000.

Pailhès, Claudine Guide des Archives de l’Ariège, 1989.

Pailhès, Claudine Histoire de Foix et de la haute Ariège, Toulouse : Privat, 1996.

Pailhès, Claudine D’or et de Sang : Le XVIe siècle Ariégeois, (catalogue d’une exposition), Archives départementales, Foix, 1992.

Pédoya, Paul Autrefois Montseron : la vie – les travaux – les fêtes – l’artisanat, l’histoire – les coutumes – les traditions, 2005.

Roy, Hugues-Alexandre Les Contrebandiers du Val d’Aran, aventures d’un commis-voyageur en Espagne 1870, new. ed. 1998.

Séguy, Jean Le Français parlé à Toulouse, 3rd edn, Privat, 1978.

Jean Cocteau in Oxford

Jean Cocteau, by Juliet Pannett (Photo credit: James Legg)

On Tuesday, 12 June 1956, Jean Cocteau wrote in his diary: ‘Je rentre de la cérémonie – très émouvante.’ The occasion was the conferment on the multi-faceted poet (‘omnis Minervae poeta’) of an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford. As the Public Orator had proclaimed, ‘praesento vobis Parisiacae urbanitatis specimen, Ioannem Cocteau, poetam Francogallorum Academiae adscriptum paremque dignitatem apud Belgas adeptum, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Litteris.’ Cocteau was proud of his membership of the French and Belgian Academies and of his honorary degrees, and he was particularly attached to what he habitually referred to as his ‘honoris causa’ from Oxford.

Cocteau's sketch of himself with his Oxford degree (Photo credit: David Thomas)

Cocteau’s sketch of himself with his Oxford degree (Photo credit: David Thomas)

In 2014 the Library acquired a volume of Cocteau’s verse, a copy of his Poésie 1916-1923.

Unremarkable in itself, it is simply a late printing (1947) of a work first published in 1925. What distinguishes it, however, is the fact that on the half-title Cocteau has written a dedication, ‘à Jean Seznec / amicalement / Jean Cocteau / 1956’. And he has pencilled underneath one of his typical drawings of a poet’s head crowned with a wreath of laurel leaves.

Jean Cocteau Poésie 1916-1923 (Paris: Gallimard, 1947): Half title page, with Cocteau's sketch and dedication to Jean Seznec (Photo credit: James Legg)

Jean Cocteau Poésie 1916-1923 (Paris: Gallimard, 1947): Half title page, with Cocteau’s sketch and dedication to Jean Seznec (Photo credit: James Legg)

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Cocteau’s letter to Seznec (Photo credit: James Legg)

Envelope adddressed to Seznec in Cocteau's hand (Photo credit: James Legg)

Cocteau’s letter (and envelope) to Seznec (Photo credit: James Legg)

 

Loosely inserted in the volume is an autograph letter, in its original envelope addressed to Professor Seznec, who was Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at Oxford from 1950 to 1972. The letter adds to the rich documentation surrounding Cocteau’s honorary degree.

The story begins at the end of December 1955 when an Oxford University student, Michael Smithies, called on Cocteau at his house in Milly-la-Forêt. ‘Il m’a semblé,’ Cocteau wrote in his diary, ‘que Smithies venait tâter le terrain pour un voyage à Oxford où je serais nommé docteur honoris causa.’ The following March, Cocteau received a letter from Dr Enid Starkie, the indefatigable and irrepressible Reader in French at Somerville, inviting him to give a lecture at Oxford and suggesting that she might be able to persuade the University to confer on him an honorary degree.

Enid Starkie, by Patrick George (Oil on canvas, 66 x 54 cm) Collection: Somerville College, Oxford (Image: Public Catalogue Foundation/BBC Your Paintings)

Enid Starkie, by Patrick George (Oil on canvas, 66 x 54 cm) Collection: Somerville College, Oxford (Image: Public Catalogue Foundation/BBC Your Paintings)

Cocteau was enthusiastic. Enid had promised nothing but Cocteau’s eyes were firmly fixed on the ‘honoris causa’ and he began to suggest that without the doctorate there could be no lecture. Enid duly set to work and handbagged her way through any resistance that might have been shown by the university authorities. ‘I won, in the end,’ she said later to Cocteau’s biographer, Francis Steegmuller, ‘but don’t ask too closely how it was done … I could only use my influence and my prestige to get him the doctorate. That is what got it for him.’ Cocteau was delighted. ‘J’aimerais faire à Oxford quelque chose d’exceptionnel,’ he wrote in an undated letter in the Taylorian’s collection of manuscripts, but he added, somewhat surprisingly, ‘ce petit voyage d’Oxford m’effraye’. His lecture, on ‘La Poésie ou l’invisibilité’, began to take shape (it would be published later in the year as Le Discours d’Oxford) and on 23 May he sent Enid a sketch of himself in cap and gown, with measurements. The following day he wrote to Professor Seznec the Library’s newly acquired letter, giving details of his arrival in Oxford with ‘l’amie et le fils adoptif’, that is, his patron, Madame Alec (Francine) Weisweiller, and Edouard Dermit, who were to accompany him. Cocteau hopes to meet Seznec that first evening to discuss the programme of his stay in Oxford and the letter concludes: ‘Il est inutile de vous dire avec quelle joie j’accepte votre invitation.’

A colourful report in the issue of Picture Post for 30 June 1956 describes Cocteau fizzling through the foyer of the Randolph Hotel ‘like an elderly Puck, wrapped around in a leaf-green cloak’ and being met ‘in a cloudburst of French by a brilliant little lady wearing scarlet slacks, beret and duffle coat’. Enid had a hard day on that Monday, 11 June. A Board meeting in the afternoon was followed by W. H. Auden’s inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry, a post she had with characteristic energy fought for him to get, then a party for Auden in New College, and, finally, a party for Cocteau given in her ground-floor flat at 41 St Giles’. Cocteau recorded the latter event as: ‘Visite chez Enid Starkie, en kimono et saoule’!

The special meeting of Convocation (the other honorand that day was the geographer Jules Blache, Rector of the University of Aix-en-Provence) took place on Tuesday, 12 June. Enid met Cocteau that morning dressed in her beloved approximation of a French sailor’s outfit, much to Cocteau’s amusement, if not consternation: ‘Enid est charmante, éprise de la France et du français qu’elle enseigne. Mais elle boit … Quelle n’était pas notre stupeur, le matin de mon discours, de la voir arriver en matelot français, avec le béret à pompom, la vareuse, le pantalon à pont et le barda sur l’épaule.’ Lunch was held in New College and, after the ceremony, there was a garden party at the Maison Française. Other lunches and dinners were to follow, with Maurice Bowra, Isaiah Berlin and others, and a visit paid to the Ashmolean.

IMG_9407-ResizedCocteau delivered his lecture in the Taylorian on Thursday, 14 June at 5 p.m. He was introduced by Professor Seznec, and Enid, Cocteau noted with obvious relief, was now ‘en robe et toque de docteur’! The lecture was received with what Cocteau describes as ‘un tonnerre d’applaudisse-ments’, an expression of affection, warmth and enthusiasm, which, Maurice Bowra assured him, had not been the case with either Gide or Mauriac. Cocteau’s one complaint was that students appeared to have been deliberately kept at arm’s length. ‘De ce voyage,’ he says. ‘me reste une amertume, celle d’avoir été séparé des élèves par les maîtres’, but what could he do, when he was pushed around like a pawn on a chess board? Enid, he thinks, must have kept them at bay on the pretext that they would tire him. In any case, exhausted, he retired to London to the relative calm of Claridge’s Hotel.

Mixed emotions, then, but, in spite of being made fun of when back in Paris (‘On ne songe qu’à me ridiculiser, à plaisanter mon costume’), he retained an affection for Oxford and for his honorary doctorate.

MS.8o.F.129

Jean Cocteau on Oxford: MS.8o.F.129 (Photo credit: David Thomas)

In a scribbled note added to the manuscript of an address he gave to a student audience, a few years later, which the Taylorian also has in its collection, he wrote, in answer to a questioner in the audience who had asked if he was proud of any of the honours which had been bestowed on him in his life: ‘Oui, un seul – c’est d’être docteur Honoris Causa à l’université d’Oxford’.

David Thomas
Former French and Italian Literature and Language Librarian, Taylor Institution Library (1971-2004)

Further reading
Jean Cocteau Le discours d’Oxford (Paris: Gallimard, 1956) Shelfmark: L/N.3028.A.1
Jean Cocteau Le passé défini: journal 8 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1983-2013) Shelfmark: L/N.3432.A.1 – L/N.3432.A.8. Vol 5 covers the years 1956-1957 Shelfmark: L/N.3432.A.5
Jean Cocteau Poésie 1916-1923 (Paris: Gallimard, 1947) Shelfmark: Arch.8o.F.1947(3)
Joanna Richardson Enid Starkie (London: John Murray, 1973) Shelfmark: TAY.2.D.STA
Francis Steegmuller Jean Cocteau (London: Macmillan, 1970) Shelfmark: L/N.3720.A.2

A Manuscript of Magna Carta at the Taylor Institution Library

In this year of Magna Carta, in which new discoveries are being announced with some regularity (such as the discovery of an early copy at Kent County Council Archives, and Winston Churchill’s plan to give away a copy held at Lincoln Cathedral), we are pleased to announce that the Taylor Institution Library also has a copy of Magna Carta!

Image 1: Magna Charta (Oxford, Taylor Institution Library, MS. 8° E 1) Late 17th-century binding, Oxford, 8.6 x 6.5 cm. (Photo credit: Sjoerd Levelt)

Its existence was first noted, shortly after acquisition, in a letter in Notes and Queries of October 1878, written by Dr Heinrich Krebs, Librarian of the Taylor Institution Library. In his letter, Krebs posed a question regarding a recently acquired manuscript which, judging from his wording, was an unusual addition to the collection:

‘Can any of your readers aid me in ascertaining the genuine character and probable date of a very curious and ancient Latin manuscript on vellum concerning the “Magna Charta,” which has been recently acquired for the Taylorian Library at Oxford? It is of the smallest size (only 3 inches by 2 ½), and contains 214 leaves, three empty ones not included. … Owing to its many abbreviations and minute characters this manuscript is by no means easy to read, and it would require collation with a printed text, if such could be found, to become fully intelligible.’

Krebs seems to have been more comfortable with printed books than manuscripts, and the manuscript quite evidently fell outside his expertise. Help was forthcoming, however, in a somewhat dismissive reply, published one month later, by a regular contributor to Notes and Queries:

‘The collection of law tracts beginning with Magna Charta, such as that described by your correspondent, is not of uncommon occurrence either in manuscript or print. It has been often printed from Pynson’s time downwards. Good perfect copies, as is the case with most of the old law books, may often be had for a small price.’

Dr Fiona Whelan helped me identify the author, who signed with the initials J. C. J., as Rev. John Cohen Jackson (c. 1827-95), schoolmaster, editor of the Astronomical Register, and avid book collector (who regularly offered his manuscripts for sale, too). Richard Pynson, to whom Jackson referred, was one of the earliest printers of English books and known particularly as a printer of legal statutes; the reference, then, was meant to say that there was really nothing special about the Taylorian’s manuscript, that the text had been around in print for as long as English laws had been printed, and good copies were so common in manuscript form that it really was not worth much. The tiny fourteenth-century manuscript was not going to add anything to our knowledge of thirteenth-century English law.

MS. 8° E 1 (Oxford, Taylor Institution Library), fol. 14r.

MS. 8° E 1 (Oxford, Taylor Institution Library), fol. 14r.

Not entirely surprisingly, the Taylor Institution Library Magna Carta led a mostly dormant existence. There are, however, some reasons that make this little book worth a re-examination. These reasons are, as Jackson suggested, not to be found in the medieval Latin text, which is an unremarkable collection of English laws, including an abbreviated version of Magna Carta as confirmed by King Edward I, but in what happened with the manuscript in the late seventeenth century, around the same time that it received its current binding. On the final leaves, which had remained empty up to this point, a reader made some notes about the contents of the book. Interestingly, the notes focus exclusively on two of its texts: the Magna Carta, and its companion document, the Charter of the Forest. The author of the notes clearly had an interest in legal matters, as well as probably some training; the notes constitute a brief discussion of the version of Magna Carta contained in the manuscript, copied directly from Sir Edward Coke’s Institutes, the principal seventeenth-century commentary on English common law. (‘This statute of Magna Carta is but a confirmation or restitution of the Common Law as in the statute called Confirmatio Chartarum anno 25 E.1. … [It] has been confirmed above thirty times and commanded to be put in execution’.)

3

MS. 8° E 1 (Oxford, Taylor Institution Library), fols. 213r-214v, added notes

According to a note on a front flyleaf in the current binding, in 1705 the manuscript was owned by James Mickleton. James Mickleton the Younger (1688-1719) was a member of a family of lawyers, and he inherited the collection of manuscripts first established by his grandfather, Christopher Mickleton (1612-1669). James would go on to greatly expand the collection, but he died under suspicious circumstances, in 1719, drowned in the Thames, leaving behind significant debts. His books were sold off and eventually came into the hands of Col. William Wasey (d.1817). His son, George Wasey, advised by Sir Henry Ellis of the British Museum, presented the entire collection to the Bishop of Durham, Shute Barrington, who subsequently divided the collection between Bishop Cosin’s Library in Durham and the Inner Temple Library in London. It appears, however, that George Wasey did not part, at this point, with the Magna Carta manuscript; instead, he wrote his name below James Mickleton’s, and kept it for himself.

MS. 8° E 1 (Oxford, Taylor Institution Library), front board and flyleaf, ownership marks

MS. 8° E 1 (Oxford, Taylor Institution Library), front board and flyleaf, ownership marks

This little book, then, and the collection from which it stems, are witnesses to an interest in historical manuscripts by seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century lawyers (an interest also exemplified by Sir John Selden, whose bequest was the largest single gift to the Bodleian Library in the seventeenth century); and an interest in Magna Carta among a more general readership in the nineteenth century. Entirely ignoring all the other contents of the manuscript (such as the Statute of Winchester, the Statute of the Exchequer, and the Statute of Wards and Reliefs), these readers were interested in only one text – and it’s the same text that keeps us all busy in this year of celebration.

MS. 8° E 1Oxford (Taylor Institution Library), fol. 175r, Charter of Wards and Relief

MS. 8° E 1Oxford (Taylor Institution Library), fol. 175r, Charter of Wards and Relief

Sjoerd Levelt, former Library Assistant, Taylor Institution Library (2014-2015)

Futurism, Fascism, and the Art of War

Futurism, Fascism, and the Art of War
by Michael Subialka
An Avant-Garde Book Display and Lecture at the Taylor Institution Library, 29 April 2015
Sponsored by the Somerville College History Society, the Jesus College J.R. Green Society, and the Taylor Institution Library[i]

1 Futurist Books in the Taylor Institution Library (Photo Credit: Oliver Johnston-Watt)

1 Futurist Books in the Taylor Institution Library (Photo Credit: Oliver Johnston-Watt)

Just over a hundred years ago (26 April 1915), Italy signed a secret treaty, the Patto di Londra (the London Pact, also called the Treaty of London). This backroom deal committed the young Italian nation to switch alliances and declare war on its former ‘friends’, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany – a major shift since Italy had been allied with these central powers since 1882. The result was that, more than half a year after the Great War began and following months of high-stakes diplomatic bargaining, Italy entered the fray alongside a group of new allies from the Triple Entente, including Britain, France, and Russia. This about-face in foreign policy might seem surprising, but it was rooted in longstanding Italian nationalist sentiments brought to a boiling point by a deliberate campaign of popular cultural provocation. While many contributed to this campaign, none did so in a more brazen and non-traditional way than the Italian Futurists.

In a book display and lecture held on 29 April 2015 at the Taylor Institution, we had a chance to unearth the library’s collection of rare, original Futurist materials. These works of innovative written and visual form offer an unusual insight into the cultural politics of an avant-garde artistic movement dedicated to fostering renewal but also violence, struggle, and war.

‘There is no longer any beauty except the struggle. Any work of art that lacks a sense of aggression can never be a masterpiece. […]/ We wish to glorify war— the sole cleanser of the world […].’[ii]

Understanding the Futurists use of art to pursue their political activism requires thinking more about the movement itself. The Futurists were a group of radical innovators in multiple artistic media, but they all shared an association with one key figure, the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944). He was a French-trained former Symbolist who, in 1909, determined to launch art in a new direction. ‘With this aim in mind,’ he wrote in one manifesto (the preferred genre of the movement), ‘we have taken upon ourselves the propaganda of courage against cowardice of epidemic proportions, the creation of an artificial optimism against a chronic pessimism.’[iii] His idea was to transform Italian society – its culture, its politics, and its national character – renewing it for the modern world. He and his Futurist collaborators envisioned a new Italy that would be industrialized, technologically-enhanced, and internationally aggressive.

These aims make it clear that the Futurists fit squarely in the category that one prominent historian, Emilio Gentile, has dubbed ‘modernist nationalism.’[iv] The Futurists sought to unify a love of modern technology (automobiles, airplanes, electric power plants, bombs…) with a project of national spiritual revival. The result was an aesthetic of energy, dynamism, movement, multiplicity, and an obsession with war. This project was realised not just in writing but across media, from the theatre, visual arts, and film to unexpected areas like fashion design.

The Futurists’ nationalism encompassed two main military projects: war against Austria-Hungary and colonial expansion in Africa. The former was a project shared widely by a group called the Irredentists. Italian irredentismo was the belief, prominent from the time of the unification movement (the Risorgimento of the 1850s and 60s), that certain lands were truly ‘Italian’ (ethnically, linguistically, culturally) but had never been integrated into the nation. Reclaiming these territories required launching a war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire: ‘And even when classical irredentism seemed exhausted and dormant among the Italian people, we Futurists took steps to stimulate and reinforce that national sentiment, supported by those just aspirations that are generally recognized today.’[v]

5 Display of Futurist original editions, including Marinetti’s Distruzione, 1911 (Photo Credit: Nicola Gardini)

5 Display of Futurist original editions, including Marinetti’s Distruzione, 1911 (Photo Credit: Nicola Gardini)

The second project, African colonialism, was likewise rooted in late 19th century aspirations. Under the government of Francesco Crispi, Italy had established a colonial presence in East Africa (Eritrea) and fought a (failed) war to conquer Ethiopia. In the early 20th century, the Futurists were obsessed with the continuation of these projects. As early as 1909, Marinetti wrote, in French, a shocking novel set in an exoticised, Oriental Africa, Mafarka le futuriste (Mafarka the Futurist). In it, he imagines an Arab warlord who subdues four armies of black Africans, becoming ‘master of Africa’. The book’s overt racial stereotyping is shocking now, but what was shocking to its contemporary French audience were the prolonged, explicit depictions of violent rage (think Homer) together with pornographic descriptions of nude bodies, sex, and rape (think De Sade).

The book was banned in France, but the Futurists’ fantasy of African conquest (and their exoticised racial stereotyping) remained a consistent element of the movement.

This fantasy took on renewed life in their support of the effort to oust the Ottoman Empire from Libya. In 1911 and 1912, Italy fought and won a colonial war with this aim, and the Futurists were actively involved. Marinetti was a correspondent from the front lines, and his new style of poetry, the parole in libertà (free-word poems), was well-suited to the fervid recreations of Italian bellicosity that enchanted him from this colonial campaign.

It is thus not as surprising as it might at first seem that the Futurists ultimately aligned themselves with Mussolini and the Fascist movement in the period following World War I. In 1919, Marinetti spoke alongside Mussolini at a gathering in Milan that marked the foundation of the Fasci di Combattimento. In 1929, he became a member of the newly-founded Accademia d’Italia – a complete about-face for the former radical who had espoused a hatred of professors and the ‘mummified’ past. This alignment with Fascism was well-suited to the political programme of the Futurist movement – its colonial, nationalist/patriotic, and interventionist tendencies.

11 The Taylor Institution's original edition of L'Italia fascista in cammino, 1932 (Photo Credit: Michael Subialka)

11 The Taylor Institution’s original edition of L’Italia fascista in cammino, 1932 (Photo Credit: Michael Subialka)

Both a radical avant-garde movement transforming art and an unsettling mix of proto-Fascist and Fascist nationalist ideologies, the Futurists may intrigue us precisely because of the problematic way that they move between artistic innovation and political extremism. It is this mix of forces that Walter Benjamin has famously analysed as typical of both the Futurists and fascism more broadly, their ‘aestheticization of politics.’[vi]

Michael Subialka
Powys Roberts Fellow in European Literature
St Hugh’s College, Oxford
10 May 2015

[i] The book display was curated by Oliver Johnston-Watt (Somerville College) and Joel Nelson (Jesus College) and co-ordinated by Clare Hills-Nova (Italian Literature and Language Librarian, Taylor Institution, Bodleian Libraries). Dr Oren Margolis (Somerville College) provided logistical support and the idea for the event. Dr Michael Subialka lectured on ‘Futurism, Fascism, and the Art of War’.
[ii] FT Marinetti, “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism,” in Critical Writings, ed. and trans. Günter Berghaus (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006), 14.
[iii] FT Marinetti, “Electric War: A Futurist-Visionary Hypothesis,” in Critical Writings, 225.
[iv] Emilio Gentile, “The Conquest of Modernity: From Modernist Nationalism to Fascism,” trans. Lawrence Rainey, Modernism/Modernity 1.3 (1994): 55-87; 60.
[v] FT Marinetti, “The Meaning of War for Futurism,” in Critical Writings, 240.
[vi] Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility. Second Version,” in Selected Writings III, 1935-1938, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002): 101-33; 122.

(Poster design: Lydia Pryce-Jones)

 

Martin Luther at the Taylor Institution Library

Ornate title page of a Luther Sermon

Ornate title page of a Luther Sermon

Martin Luther was one of the most important figures in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. His famous 95 theses, (possibly) posted on the gates of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg almost 500 years ago, were  “trending” all over Europe within a few weeks of their original publication. In fact, he was a master of the communications technology of his day, quite possibly inventing the pamphlet as a means of communicating beyond scholarly circles, and using his prolific writing and the public support it generated to enormous effect. Small wonder then, that undergraduates studying his work today value the opportunity to see and touch the printed material that fuelled the Reformation.

The Taylor Institution Library is fortunate to have a large collection of Luther pamphlets and other publications. These were acquired in the 1870s on the recommendation of Friedrich Max Müller, the second Professor of Modern Languages at Oxford. Many of them came from Heidelberg University, which at the time was disposing of duplicates. Because of this history, we are able to offer them as teaching copies, and, with supervision, undergraduates are allowed to turn the pages, feel the paper, and as a result, gain a sense of how contemporary audiences encountered Luther’s writings.

Two groups of undergraduates recently had this experience at the Taylorian, guided by their academic supervisors, who have kindly allowed me to use my notes as the basis of this blog. The first group, from the History Faculty, had already studied the texts on display in translation. They noted the differences in the quality of the paper and print between volumes, the elaborateness of some title pages compared with the sparseness of others.

Plain title page of a Luther Sermon

Plain title page of a Luther Sermon

Unbound short pamphlets were not widespread until Luther made the form his own. Printers flocked to Wittenberg, which soon became a centre of printing, in large part due to the flow of content from Luther. Some specialised in printing his hymns, others in Bibles, while still others printed his pamphlets.

Another area of interest for this group was the network of buyers, sellers and producers of pirated copies which meant that Luther’s ideas spread so quickly across Europe. The average number of copies of a pamphlet printed at that time was about 1000. An initial print run of one of Luther’s pamphlets would be about 4000, and would be sold out in days. This was a money spinner to rival that of the printing of indulgences, which had been a steady income until Luther challenged the practice. However, as the selling of the pamphlets was illegal, it was often printers’ wives who were the undercover sales people.

The second group, students of German from the Modern Languages Faculty, looked at the same texts, but with a different focus. First of all they studied the title pages. Some of them were fairly plain, but others had allegorical meaning relating to the text inside, and their meaning would have been “read” by contemporaries along with the text.

Allegorical title page showing the vine (Christ) providing a protective shelter over the idyllic society beneath, where lions and bears are living alongside rabbits, deer and lambs. Luther’s text calls on Christian nobility to take responsibility for building a Christian society.

Allegorical title page showing the vine (Christ) providing a protective shelter over the idyllic society beneath, where lions and bears are living alongside rabbits, deer and lambs. Luther’s text calls on Christian nobility to take responsibility for building a Christian society.

One of the texts, Widder die hymelischen propheten: von den Bildern vnd Sacrament [1525] was written by Luther in response to the destruction of images in churches, which had been orchestrated by a former follower, Karlstadt. In it, Luther highlights the importance of images as an educational tool for those who are unable to read, and also points at the illustrations in his own publications, which were used by those bent on destroying images. Luther considered that hypocrisy. Luther himself valued images greatly, and used them in many publications. He was close friends with Cranach, a court artist, and this association with secular authority gave the publications prestige.

Images in Luther’s Passion of Christ, which were designed in Lucas Cranach’s workshop. Cranach was the leading artist of the Reformation

The group also considered the sheer quantity of Protestant writings. Luther wrote by far the most of all the reformers, but he was not alone in writing, and Catholics who resisted the reformation were unable to compete. They were partly hampered by writing in Latin, which was not accessible to such a wide audience. There was also a danger that in responding to a particular challenge from the reformers, they would have to give at least an outline of the reformers’ ideas, which could give them further publicity.

Finally, the undergraduates looked at a Luther Bible. They studied the title page, to see whether it gave any clues as to the nature of the Bible. They noted the handwriting on the facing page, which gives a list of births, showing that the Bible was being used as a family bible in the 17th Century. They noted that the book was printed in Lübeck.

Title page of 1533 Luther Bible 1

This is in fact Luther’s Bible printed in Low German, and it predates Luther’s Saxon German Bible by a few months. It was prepared by Bugenhagen, sometimes called the second apostle of the North, who helped Luther with the translations for the Saxon German version, and then translated the whole thing to Low German, beating Luther to publication by a couple of months. This Bible is particularly important because its place of publication is a Hansa town, with all the trading and travel links that implies. This Bible travelled around the Baltic, and was influential in many translations into neighbouring languages.

All the undergraduates were extremely enthusiastic about this opportunity to encounter the texts as they would have been seen by contemporary audiences, and felt it had added a new dimension to their studies.

Getting to interact with archival material is, in my opinion, essential to any form of study to do with the sixteenth century, however cursory or superficial, and I felt that our visit at the Taylorian was a turning point in my Special Subject this term. Whilst online resources are invaluable for studying Lutheran texts, much is lost in online scans, and I feel that it’s a real privilege to have access to original texts, something which really makes it worthwhile to study somewhere like Oxford. (Max Long, undergraduate student.)

Several students discovered new things about the library – they were unaware that we had rare books, or that it was possible for undergraduates to request to see them. The seminar leaders were enthusiastic about being able to use the library’s collections to engage their students, and are actively looking for other opportunities to run similar sessions in the future.

As a librarian, I was delighted to see such enjoyment and enthusiasm being generated by our collections. It is a privilege to be able to offer that experience, and a reminder that we are far more than a museum of treasures. It was also a privilege to be able to be present at these seminars, and I would like to thank Dr Madeleine Brook of the Modern Languages Faculty, and DPhil Candidate Edmund Wareham of the History Faculty for making them possible, and for allowing them to become the subject of this blog.

IMG_0077-CutEmma Huber, Subject Consultant for German, Taylor Institution Library

Further Reading

Chrisman, Miriam Usher. Lay culture, learned culture : books and social change in Strasbourg, 1480-1599. New Haven : Yale University Press, c1982.

McKim, Donald K., ed. The Cambridge companion to Martin Luther . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Pettegree, Andrew. Reformation and the culture of persuasion . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Pettegree, Andrew. The book in the Renaissance . New Haven, Conn. ; London : Yale University Press, c2010.

Scribner, Robert W. For the sake of simple folk : popular propaganda for the German Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1994.

Texts viewed by the undergraduates:

Martin Luther, Ain Sermon geprediget zu Leiptzigk auff dem schloss am tag Petri vnnd Pauli im xix. Jar (Augsburg, 1519)

Martin Luther, Ein Sermon von dem elichen Stand vorendert vñ corrigiret (Strasbourg, 1519)

Martin Luther, An den Cristlichen Adel deütscher Nation: von des Christlichen standes besseru[n]g  (Augsburg, 1520)

Martin Luther, De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae (Wittenberg, 1520)

Martin Luther, Von der Freyheyt eynisz Christen Menschen (Wittenberg, 1520)

Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Passional Christi vnnd Antichristi (Erfurt, 1521)

Martin Luther, Widder die hymelischen propheten : von den Bildern vnd Sacrament [etc.] (Wittenberg, 1525)

Martin Luther, Wider die hymelischen propheten von den Bildern vnd Sacrament (Nuremberg, 1525)

Martin Luther, Wider die mordischen vnd reubischen Rotten der Pawren (Nuremberg, 1525)

De Biblie: vth der vthleggine Doctoris Martini Luthers yn dyth düdesche vlitich vthgesettet, mit sundergen vnderrichtingen, als men seen mach (Lübeck, 1533-4)

The Sayce Bequest: Michel de Montaigne

February 28th was the the birthday of the French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) and so now is a good time to consider a collection of books which The Taylor Institution Library received not so long ago – the Sayce bequest. Back in the summer of 2013 the Taylor Institution Library received a collection of 285 rare books (mainly French but some in other languages) from the personal collection of the scholar and Oxford don, Dr Richard Sayce, after the death of his wife, Olive Sayce, in March 2013.

Richard Sayce (1917-1977) taught at Oxford since 1947. He became a Fellow of Worcester College in 1950 and Fellow Librarian of Worcester College in 1958. He would hold these posts right up to his death at the relatively young age of 60.  He is mostly remembered as a Montaigne scholar and this academic focus is reflected in this collection of books. He compiled a comprehensive bibliography of early editions of Montaigne, completed after his death by David Maskell: A descriptive bibliography of Montaigne’s Essais, 1580-1700 (Oxford, 1983).

Olive SayceHis wife, Olive Sayce, another Oxford scholar but who specialised in German medieval poetry, wrote a touching memorial of her husband’s life. R.A. Sayce, 1917-1977: a memoir (Oxford, 1983) recounts his early life on the Welsh Borders (the name Sayce derives from ‘Sassanach’), his travels during the Second World War (in the course of which he found India ‘too hot’ but found Persia more congenial even to the extent of learning Persian), how they met – in the Senior Staff Room of the Taylor Institution (‘not one of the most romantic places!’).

There are about 285 books in Richard Sayce’s antiquarian collection. Fourteen of them were published in the 16th century, 128 in the 17th century, 123 in the 18th century and the rest in the 19th and 20th centuries. Like many of the scholars’ collections which have come to the Taylor Institution Library it is very much an intentional collection. Each book purchase was a deliberate act and the collection as a whole not only reflects the personality and interests of the man who collected it but also the man at the centre of the collection – Michel de Montaigne.
Richard Sayce was a man who loved and valued books. Olive Sayce records that he made one of his last book purchases shortly before his death. At the centre of the collection are works by and relating to Montaigne. There is an early edition of Montaigne’s Essais published in Lyons in 1593 (SAYCE.8).

This was the next edition to be published after the edition of 1588 – one of the copies of which was personally annotated by Montaigne himself and is known as the ‘Bordeaux edition’. The Taylorian already had the second volume of this 1593 edition in our Special Collections (containing Book III of the Essais) so it is good that we now have a complete set.

After that edition the Sayce Collection contains editions published in 1600, 1602, 1604, 1608, 1617, 1619, 1640, 1649, 1652, 1669, 1677, 1695, 1724, 1725, 1754 and 1776 – many of them recorded among other editions in A descriptive bibliography of Montaigne’s Essais, 1580-1700.

Richard Sayce’s own copies are recorded in the card-indexes in the archive in Worcester College with his initials RAS. It is interesting that the 1695 edition of the Essais in the Sayce collection does not appear to be recorded in the bibliography. It is also perhaps unfortunate that the bibliography ends with the year 1700 as there are a number of 18th century editions of Montaigne that also deserve to be recorded in a bibliography. Scope for a sequel, perhaps?

Montaigne’s Essais are his personal reflections on different aspects of human life. They are based on his own experience and thinking. They are down-to-earth and full of common-sense, making use of many quotations and a vigorous and vivid style. Whatever the subject they always come back to one man’s personal experience – that of Montaigne himself. Montaigne discusses himself with an objectivity and honesty which is surprising and revealing and also the very method of the Essais. The Essais contain many allusions and quotations from the classics, some of them from books contained in the Sayce collection such as Plutarch, Seneca, Cicero, Tacitus etc. Latin authors are quoted in the original Latin. Some of these works are to be found in the Sayce Collection in early editions. The ideas contained within the quotations are then refracted through Montaigne’s own mind and experience to reveal much that is new and original. As we read the Essais we have a remarkable sense of getting to know Montaigne as a person – as a wise friend.

"De l'Institution des Enfants" in Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne (1695. SAYCE.106)

“De l’Institution des Enfants” in Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne (1695. SAYCE.106)

Montaigne himself had a library of some 1000 books and this would have been considered a large collection at the time. Only about 101 books survive. Pierre Villey, in his Les sources et l’évolution des essais de Montaigne, listed 271 books which are known to have belonged to Montaigne. How many of those 271 books are represented in the Sayce Collection? Certain of the major works are there (although not the actual copies and probably not the actual editions which Montaigne owned). The Sayce collection boasts early editions of Plutarch’s Vie des hommes illustres t.1-2 (1565) (SAYCE.9-10) and Les morales de Plutarque (1575 and 1594) (SAYCE 11-12) both of which were in Montaigne’s library, according to Villey. Montaigne mentions having Plutarch in the French in one of his essays and this would have been the Amyot translation which we also have in the Sayce Collection. Some of these could have been the actual editions which Montaigne owned but we do not know this. Montaigne owned a copy of Gellis’s Circe and an early edition of this can be found in the Sayce Collection (1600) (SAYCE.61). Les diverses leçons de Pierre Mexia, owned by Montaigne, is also present in the Sayce Collection (1616) (SAYCE.87).

Bodin, Jean. Les six livres de la république de I. Bodin Angevin (3rd ed., 1578. SAYCE.3(OS))
Bodin, Jean. Les six livres de la république de I. Bodin Angevin (3rd ed., 1578. SAYCE.3(OS))

Editions of Caro’s De le lettere familiari del Commendatore Annibal Caro (SAYCE.4) (1591) are in both collections.

The historian Jean Bodin is represented in Montaigne’s library by J. Bodini methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem while in Sayce’s collection there is a translation Les livres de la république de I. Bodin  (1578 (3rd ed.) (SAYCE.3(OS)).

The History of the Jews by Josephus Flaviuswas present in Montaigne’s library and a later edition (1676) is in the Sayce Collection (SAYCE.64-69b) .

 

 

However, to see a library which actually contains 10 volumes from Montaigne’s original personal library and many more books which would have been likely to have been in his library you will need to go to Cambridge to the Montaigne Library assembled by the scholar and financier Gilbert de Botton. Recreating Montaigne’s library was not the main aim of the Sayce collection which aims above all at placing Montaigne in context as well as following up Sayce’s own interests.

SAYCE.240One of the travel books in the collection (and travel books are a feature of the Sayce collection) is the one describing a journey which Montaigne undertook to Italy: Journal du voyage de Michel de Montaigne en Italie : par la Suisse & l’Allemagne en 1580 & 1581. The manuscript of this travel journal was only discovered in 1770 in the Château de Montaigne 178 years after his death. The main purpose of the journey was for Montaigne to cure the pain of his kidney stone at thermal resorts. One of Richard Sayce’s final projects had been to undertake Montaigne’s journey afresh (in a car rather than a carriage), visiting all the places which Montaigne had visited. The photographs that he took of this recreated journey are in the Worcester College archive. Sayce’s  two 1774 editions of this work in the collection must be among the earliest editions of the jorunal.

The items in the collection closely related to Montaigne include his translation of Theologia Naturalis by Raymond of Sabunde (1385-1436). We have two editions of Montaigne’s translation: (1611) (SAYCE.120) and (1640) (SAYCE.121). Montaigne’s father asked Montaigne to translate this work and the first edition of the translation was published in 1568, one year after his father’s death. One of Montaigne’s essays is entitled ‘Apologie de Raymond Sebond’. The work argues for the possibility of the revelation of divine truth through nature as well as the Bible. It is above all the natural and the spontaneous which come through in the Essais with their characteristic digressions.

There is a wealth of other books in the Sayce collection – many of them related in one way or another to Montaigne and his times and others of them reflecting Sayce’s own interests but we will leave discussion of them to a later blog. If you feel like commemorating Montaigne’s birthday by reading something by or about Montaigne and/or Richard Sayce, here is a short list to enable you to do so.

Nicholas Hearn, Subject Consultant for French Literature and Language

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bakewell, Sarah How to live,or, A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (London, 2011)
Bodin, Jean Les six livres de la république (1578) (SAYCE.3(OS))
Caro, Annibal De le lettere familiari del Commendatore Annibal Caro (SAYCE.4)
Ford, Philip The Montaigne library of Gilbert de Botton at Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2008)
Gelli, Giovanni La Circe (1600) (SAYCE.61)
Maskell, David A descriptive bibliography of Montaigne’s Essais, 1580-1700 (Oxford, 1983)
Mexia, Pedro Les diverses leçons (1616) (SAYCE.87)
Montaigne, Michel Essais (Lyons, 1593) (SAYCE.8)
Montaigne, Michel Journal du voyage en Italie (1774) (SAYCE.237-239)
Montaigne, Michel Journal du voyage en Italie (1774) (SAYCE.240-242)
Plutarch Vie des hommes illustres t.1-2 (1565) (SAYCE.9(OS))
Plutarch Les morales (1575) (SAYCE.11) (OS)
Plutarch Les morales (1594) (SAYCE.12)
Raymond of Sabund Theologia Naturalis (1611) (SAYCE.120)
Raymond of Sabund Theologia Naturalis (1640) (SAYCE.121)
Richard Sayce Archive (Worcester College)
Sayce, Olive R.A. Sayce, 1917-1977: a memoir (Oxford, 1983)
Villey, Pierre Les sources et l’évolution des essais de Montaigne (Paris, 1908)

Unpacking Sir Robert Taylor’s Library

2014-09-RobertTaylor-TayBookplate
Most readers at the Taylor Institution Library, where the study of Modern European Literatures and Languages began in Oxford, are unaware that they owe the founding of their discipline at the University, as well as that discipline’s Library and the beginnings of its extensive research resources, to a prominent 18th century architect. Still less do they realise that this architect’s own library has survived, and that it is housed in the very building that bears his name: Sir Robert Taylor (1714-1788).

Left: Taylor Institution Library, Bookplate, Sir Robert Taylor’s Library Collection (after 1849)

Similarly, many an architectural historian – with the notable exception of Sir Howard Colvin (1919-2007), in A biographical dictionary of British architects, 1600-1840 – has been unaware of the survival of Sir Robert’s library in Oxford. Indeed, one recent viewer of the collection surmised that the collection’s generally good state of preservation might have been due to its negligible exposure. It seems likely that, up to 2014, the 300th anniversary of Taylor’s birth, his books had seldom been consulted since (and possibly before) their presumed arrival at the newly built Taylorian in the mid-19th century. Walter Benjamin described unpacking his books after two years of darkness; the darkness that befell Sir Robert Taylor’s books lasted around two centuries. Clearly, in 2014 it was time for the collection to receive greater attention. In Sir Robert’s anniversary year, therefore, a selection of works from his collection was shown in a temporary exhibition organised and discussed by architectural historian Dr. Matthew Walker. (For podcast, click here [takes several seconds to load].)

S(c) Taylor Institution; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundationir Robert Taylor (1714-1788), architect of the Bank of England as well as designer of many fine town and country houses, died a very rich man, leaving some £180,000 of which £65,000 was ultimately allocated to the University of Oxford “for erecting a proper Edifice … for establishing a Foundation for the teaching & improving the European Languages”.

Right: William Miller(?), Sir Robert Taylor (ca. 1782/1783) (Taylor Institution]

A legal dispute regarding this bequest delayed the foundation of the Taylor Institution and ensured that its building was completed, by C.R. Cockerell (born the year of Taylor’s death — 1788-1863), only in 1844. The Library opened early in 1849.

2014-09-TayBldg-C19thImateAbove: The Taylor Institution, University of Oxford (Architect C.R. Cockerell, 1841-45)

Sir Robert’s decision to bequeath such a large sum to establish a centre for the study and teaching of European languages has never been satisfactorily explained but it seems likely that he was influenced by his journey to Rome in 1742. There, and en route to that city, he would have needed to negotiate the various languages spoken and read by the many artists, architects, patrons and others he encountered. Certainly, the books Taylor owned were not just in English.

It is not known whether Taylor acquired his foreign language books (mostly in French or Italian, with a few in German or Latin) while travelling or, rather, acquired them after he had established his architectural practice in London. With some notable exceptions, his library (comprising some 70 volumes) is a typical example of a mid-18th century English architect’s library representing, like its owner, the transition from Palladianism to Neo-Classicism. The earliest work in the collection is an Italian Renaissance architectural treatise (Scamozzi 1615 [see image below]) by the architect who completed a number of Andrea Palladio’s unfinished projects.

Fairly standard works in Taylor’s collection include those on Classical architecture (Vitruvius, trans. Perrault 1673 [see image above]; Stuart & Revett 1762 [see images above and below); on Italian Renaissance architecture (e.g. Palladio, translated by Isaac Ware 1738 [not illustrated: Shelfmark ARCH.TAY.35]); and on 17th and 18th century English architecture (e.g. Isaac Ware, The Designs of Inigo Jones and Others (London, 1735) [not illustrated: Shelfmark ARCH.TAY.70]), including the only text to include a design of Taylor’s (Campbell 1715-1725 [see image below]).

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Above: James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated, Vol. 1 (London, 1762) [Shelfmark ARCH.TAY.68] (One of the large format, fold-out pages)

Yet the collection also contains some publications that would have been slightly less representative of the typical 18th century architect’s library. Most notable is the magnificent, large format 17 volume set, in remarkably good condition, of works by the Italian architect and printmaker, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). The set includes his Le Antichità Romane (1756 [see image below]) as well as the compelling Carceri d’invenzione (begun 1745, first published 1750 [see image below]).

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Above: G.B. Piranesi, Le antichità romane (Rome, 1756) [Shelfmark ARCH.TAY.44-47]

Ostensibly antiquarian explorations of Rome’s classical remains, Piranesi’s images are not based on the faithful observation and precise measurements found in other such studies (e.g. Desgodetz 1682 [see image below]).
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Left: Antoine Desgodets, Les edifices antiques de Rome (Paris, 1682) [Shelfmark ARCH.TAY.24]

Rather, they are almost an anticipation of the Romantic, Gothic or even Post-Modern imagination, showing dramatic, sometimes disturbing scenes comprising heavily overgrown ruins; or gigantic subterranean vaults dominating tiny human figures, with terrifying machines and staircases leading nowhere. While Piranesi was extensively collected by the English, including architects, Taylor’s library shows his predilection for this artist-architect.

The history of the collection between Sir Robert’s death and the opening of the Taylor Institution Library 61 years later remains unclear. One book in the collection – the 3rd edition of William Chambers’ A treatise on the decorative part of civil architecture (London, 1791 [not illustated: Shelfmark ARCH.TAY.14]) – was published three years after he died and it’s possible that his son, Michael Angelo (1757-1834), acquired it; certainly, its presence indicates that some attention continued to be paid to the collection. Sir Robert seems not to have had his own bookplate and the only evidence of the collection’s origin is an early Taylor Institution Library bookplate, “Ex legato Roberti Taylor, Militis, Fundatoris”, added to each volume.

It’s also clear that the architect’s entire collection did not survive 100% intact. In terms of his book collection, the library of his near contemporary, the architect Sir William Chambers (1723-1796), comprised 140 items, twice the size of Sir Robert’s collection as it arrived at the Taylorian. More indicative of the collections’ limited survival is the fact that very few of Taylor’s own designs survived, and none of the three volumes now at the Taylorian that do contain designs includes architectural plans or elevations in his hand.

2014-09-RobertTaylor-ChimneypieceThe Taylorian possesses one small volume comprising decorative designs, some hand coloured, of rococo chimney pieces (in rather poor condition); one very large volume of mounted drawings, most of them for funerary monuments and not necessarily in Taylor’s hand or of works by him; and one manuscript “textbook” on geometry, “mensuration” and perspective.

Left: Robert Taylor Chimneypiece n. 8, Sir R. Taylor’s Designs (bound ms., 1750s?) [Shelfmark ARCH.TAY.2]

 

Clare Hills-Nova, Italian Literature and Language Librarian, Taylor Institution Library, Bodleian Libraries

Further reading

Daniel M. Abramson, Building the Bank of England: money, architecture, society, 1694-1942 (London, 2005) [Sackler: Shelfmark NA6245.G72 L633 ABR 2005]

Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking my library” (first published in Die literarische Welt,1931) Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York, 1969) [Sackler: Shelfmark PN75.B25 BEN 1992]

Marcus Binney, Sir Robert Taylor: from rococo to neoclassicism (London, 1984) [Taylorian: Shelfmark TAY.2.A.1]

“The European languages”: a selection of books from the Taylor Institution in commemoration of the death of Sir Robert Taylor, 27 September 1788 (Oxford, 1988) [Taylorian: Shelfmark TAY.3.D]

Howard Colvin, A biographical dictionary of British architects, 1600-1840 (London, 1978); 4th ed. (New Haven & London, 2008) [Sackler: Shelfmark NA996.C6 COL 2008]

D. J. Gilson, Books from the library of Sir Robert Taylor in the Library of the Taylor Institution, Oxford : a checklist by David Gilson (Oxford, 1973) [Taylorian: Shelfmark TAY.3.C]

John Harris & Malcolm Baker, “Taylor, Sir Robert (1714–1788)” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) [Bodleian: Shelfmarks B3.101 (LRR) and S.DNB (U. Cam.) Online ed., Jan 2013 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27077; Sir Robert Taylor (1714–1788): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27077]

Jill Hughes, “Taylor Institution Library” Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland, Österreich und Europa. Ed. by B. Fabian (Hildesheim, 2003) [Online ed., http://www.b2i.de/fabian?Taylor_Institution_Library]

J. Watkin, ed., Sale catalogues of libraries of eminent persons, v. 4: Architects (London, 1972) [Sackler: Shelfmark Z988 SAL 1971]

Photography

BBC-Your Paintings (Public Catalogue Foundation)
Vicky Brown, Visual Resources Curator, History of Art Department, University of Oxford
Nick Hearn, French & Russian Subject Consultant, Taylor Institution Library
James Legg, Taylor Librarian, Taylor Institution Library
Other Taylor Institution Library staff members