I’m delighted to be able to report that all 278 items in the Paterson Bible Collection at New College Library are now catalogued online. This collection turned up a number of surprises for us along the way, not least the number of items that are not Bibles. In a previous blog post about this collection, I mentioned how it represents the life and work of its collector, John Paterson (1776–1855) a Glasgow trained missionary for
the Congregational Church, who served throughout northern Europe.
We were intrigued by this 1727 Book of Common Prayer (PAT 215) because of its fine binding with a fish and crown design. We haven’t discovered the significance of this design and would be interested if anyone could tell us?
We loved the beautiful illustrations in this book (PAT 216) in Danish and Latin on the Sami and Finnmark fylke (1767). Perhaps Paterson acquired this book in the early years of the nineteenth century, when he worked with the Swedish and Finnish Bible Societies translating the Bible into Finnish, Icelandic, Sami, Samogitian, and Swedish.
We were surprised by the graphic woodcut illustrations in De sanctorum martyrum cruciatibus by Antonio Galliano, (1660, PAT 224). This is a manual of methods of torture, persecution and martyrdom faced by the early Christian marytrs.
The cataloguing of this collection was made possible by the generous donation of the Rev. Dr Robert Funk.
Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity & Janice Gailani, Funk Projects Cataloguer