This blog post by Elin Crotty (Archive and Library Assistant, New College) spotlights some of the special collections material at New College Library, and explores the connections between our manuscripts, art, and published texts.

You may have heard of Julian of Norwich from an introductory English Literature course, or from a more specialised study of religious persons in the Middle Ages.[1] Julian, also known as Juliana, was a fourteenth-century anchoress at St Julian’s Church, Norwich – that is, she went into seclusion and was willingly walled into a cell in the church, with only a cat for company.[2] Her works, Revelations of Divine Love, are commonly viewed as the earliest English language writing that can undeniably be attributed to a woman. Revelations focusses on Julian’s visions (sometimes referred to as “showings”) of Christ during an illness, and she provides theological interpretation for some of the meaning behind her experiences. The work exists in two forms; the “Short Text”, which was written shortly after her illness, and the “Long Text”, which underwent many more versions and revisions.

Figure 1: Julian of Norwich, Grace Harriet Warrack, Methuen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

We do not hold a copy of Julian’s “Short Text” in the archives at New College – our collections are quite impressive, but sadly the original manuscript is lost.[3] The “Long Text” also only exists through copies, which were made by sixteenth and seventeenth century nuns. Versions are currently held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (MS Fonds Anglais 40), the British Library (MS Sloane 2499 and MS Sloane 3705), Westminster Cathedral (MS 4 (W)), and a few other partial copies and extracts also remain.[4] There was not a printed version of either the short or the long text available until 1670, when Serenus Cressy, a Benedictine monk, published a copy in Paris. This was reissued in 1843 and 1864, and the text began to become more well-known with the 1901 publication of a modern English version by Grace Warrack. This version featured an illustrated title page by the artist Phoebe Anna Traquair.

You may be asking by now, what does this actually have to do with the New College Library collections? Well, ongoing improvements to the archives catalogue have recently brought MS CRE out in the Funk Reading Room. It’s a manuscript copy of the Long Text, but all it not quite as it seem here. Rather than being a copy of another manuscript, MS CRE is a wonderful example of a published book that was then copied entirely back into a manuscript format. This may have been done as an exercise of devotion (given the religious topic), or perhaps for more practical purposes such as saving cost and practicing italic calligraphy.[5] The scribe – unknown to us – carefully copied the format of the title page and printing details, as well as clarifying annotations that would have been printed in the margins. There is an inscription ‘Jean Thomas’ on the front flyleaf opposite the title page, and some twirly pen trials where a past reader scribbled away with no discernible purpose. Unfortunately, we’ve no way of knowing whether Jean wrote the book themselves, or if they were a former owner at some later date. It has laid paper with clear chain lines and a distinct watermark. The quarto volume is half bound, with fairly basic materials; the boards are cardboard and show signs of previous repairs.

Figure 2: Pages from MS CRE. New College Library Special Collections, University of Edinburgh.

MS CRE is not the only copy of Revelations in our collections, or our only link to the history of the text. We also have tJG4JUL 1901, which is a copy of Warrack’s 1901 edition.[6] Art commissioned by Grace Warrack is all around us at New College, as Warrack gifted the stained-glass windows in the Library Hall. The artist who designed and created them, Douglas Strachan, spent over 20 years working very closely with Warrack. Warrack was averse to featuring depictions of suffering and evil in the biblical scenes, which may be why it took so long to plan and implement the windows.[7] At that time, the Library Hall was positioned elsewhere in the New College, and the beautiful stained glass adorned the High Kirk of the Free Church of Scotland.

Figure 3: Left: Gen.852, f.3r. Heritage Collections, University of Edinburgh. Centre: MS WHY 42, f.2r. New College Library Special Collections, University of Edinburgh. Right: Window 10 of Library Hall.

Additionally, further creations by the artist Phoebe Anna Traquair can be found in both the New College Library collections and at the Centre for Research Collections, in the Main Library. Our item is a beautiful presentation piece that sits within the collection MS WHY (Papers of Rev Prof Alexander Whyte (1836-1921)), which was given to Prof. Whyte in 1898 by the Young Women’s Class, to congratulate him on his appointment as the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Only the first few pages of the volume are illuminated, and the rest of the text is a list of signatures. The Traquair work at the Centre for Research Collections is known as Gen.852. It is a book of reproductions of the beautiful medallions painted on the walls of the Song School, St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh, 1897.[8]

If you would like more information about the New College Library Special Collections, or to book a research appointment in the Funk Reading Room, please email us at heritagecollections@ed.ac.uk. We are open to all; new and experienced researchers, staff, students, and members of the public – anyone with a desire to explore our collections is more than welcome to get in touch. The Heritage Collections team would be thrilled to support your research and provide expert curatorial advice. You can find links to our catalogues and further information on accessing our collections on our webpages.

Post written by Elin Crotty, Archive and Library Assistant (New College)

[1] For a very thorough overview, see Markham, Ian S. The Student’s Companion to the Theologians, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=7103732.

[2] Julian is sometimes referred to as the patron saint of cats, or as the original “cat lady”. Here’s a podcast by Dr. Jesse Njus and E.H. Lupton, which explores the connection between anchorites and cats in more detail. Njus and Lupton. ‘Episode 5: Hermits and Anchoresses’ in Ask a Medievalist. 14 May 2020. Notes accessed 20 November 2024 via http://askamedievalist.com/2020/05/14/episode-5-hermits-and-anchoresses/

[3] The only known copy of the short text is British Library, Add MS 37790, which dates to around 1420. https://www.umilta.net/tablet.html

[4] Possibly the most comprehensive resource for exploring the various manuscripts of Revelations is Julia Bolton Holloway’s ‘Julian of Norwich, her Showing of Love and its contexts’. Published in The Tablet, 1996. Accessed online 20 November 2024 via https://www.umilta.net/tablet.html

[5] Whilst writing this blog post, I went down a wonderful rabbit hole trying to find out how much a book like Revelations would have cost in 1670. The answer is, it really depends – on the covers and binding, on the size of the type and the volume, on the materials used, and on the size of the print run. This article by David McKitterick has information about an upper-class family’s account books and purchasing habits for their library in the early to mid-17^th Century. The books they purchased were anywhere between just a few pence and several pounds per volume – that’s from less than a fiver up to several hundred pounds in today’s money. McKitterick, David. “‘Ovid with a Littleton’: The cost of English books in the early seventeenth century”. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vol. 11, no. 2, 1997, pp. 184–234. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41154865. Accessed 20 November 2024

[6] You can read more about Grace Warrack and tJG4JUL 1901 in this blog post here: The woman behind the windows at New College Library | New College Librarian. There are several notes between Warrack and the New College Librarian interleaved in the pages.

[7] If you’d like to know more about our amazing windows, please visit the reception desk in the Library Hall and pick up a leaflet. You can also see another of Strachan’s windows in the Martin Hall at New College – catch a glimpse on the School of Divinity website here: https://exhibition.div.ed.ac.uk/martin-hall/

[8] The full catalogue entry is available here: https://archives.collections.ed.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/219