John Knox and the Scottish Reformed Kirk

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At 4pm today, Tuesday 19 May, in the Assembly Hall, Prof Jane Dawson will address the General Assembly on the topic of John Knox, following publication of her recent biography. Prof. Dawson’s new book is on display in the Funk Reading Room and in the main display case we have early printed books from the time of John Knox selected by Prof. Dawson to illustrate key themes about his ministry and the development of the Scottish Reformed Kirk from 1560 onwards.

Knox, John. Sermon on Isaiah. London, 1566. New College Library LR1/7

Knox, John. Sermon on Isaiah. London, 1566. New College Library LR1/7

This sermon by Knox was preached on 19 August 1565, in St Giles’ Kirk where Knox was minister and is the only full text of one of Knox’s sermons to have come down to us. It was printed because Knox had been given a temporary preaching ban having offended King Henry [Lord Darnley and husband of Mary, Queen of Scots] by Knox’s pointed use of the Old Testament story of Ahab and Jezebel.

tUR 77 1596

Psalmes of David [Henry Charteris ] 1596 New College Library tUR 1596

The ‘Psalm Buik’. This metrical Psalter was used by the Reformed Kirk after the Scottish Protestant Reformation and this volume comes from the end of the sixteenth century because multiple editions were produced to satisfy demand. John Knox’s congregation in Geneva had started the project [1555-9] and it had been further developed in Scotland after 1560. Psalm singing played a central role in Reformed worship and in the lives of ordinary Scots, especially those who could not read but could sing and so remember the words of the psalms.

Knox, John. An Answer Geneva, 1560. LR1/7

Knox, John. An Answer Geneva, 1560. LR1/7

Knox’s ‘Answer’. This was Knox’s longest book and dealt with the doctrine of predestination. It was published in Geneva in 1560 after Knox had returned to Scotland. Following the lead of John Calvin on predestination, Knox refuted an anonymous author who had championed free will. As was common practice, Knox challenged each of his opponent’s arguments in turn – this makes the book long and not an easy read!

*With thanks to Prof Jane Dawson for this blog post text*

Christine Love-Rodgers – Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

‘Edinburgh’s Guilty Avenues’ : horrible histories from the New College Library Archives

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A guest post from Eleanor Rideout, New College Library Helpdesk Assistant

The grisly find of a letter written in William Burke’s blood, on show as part of this weekend’s Festival of Museums, reminded me of one of my favourite items in the New College Library manuscript collections.

Letter from George Charles Smith to Thomas Chalmers, 19 August 1835 New College Library CHA 4.243.5

Letter from George Charles Smith to Thomas Chalmers, 19 August 1835 New College Library CHA 4.243.5

CHA 4.243.5 is a letter dated 19 August 1835 containing a contemporary use of the verb ‘burking’ and lurid descriptions of the most deprived areas of Edinburgh:

“Only to look down many of your closes and courts and alleys, is enough to satisfy anyone that more suitable places, for robbery, uncleanness, murder, or Burkings of any kind, cannot be found in the world”.

Rev. Dr Thomas Chalmers, [1843?]. Calotypes Collection, University of Edinburgh.

 
The letter is titled ‘Edinburgh’s Guilty Avenues’ and was sent to Thomas Chalmers, the first Principal of New College. His papers are one of the most significant collections held by New College Library. Chalmers had a wide range of interests and a considerable number of correspondents but as a public figure he also attracted much unsolicited mail from those seeking support for their own ideas. 

The sender, George Charles Smith, was not a regular correspondent, but was clearly a very zealous evangelist. According to his DNB entry, he was known as Boatswain Smith due to his involvement with maritime missions and he was also passionate about improving the morals of port cities.

Interestingly, the DNB does not mention his time in Edinburgh but this letter shows he spent some time here.He writes to Chalmers to:

“entreat that you will kindly devote your attention to the state of the poorest, the meanest, and vilest of the population of Edinburgh…I have considered that their Habitations are disgusting, unhealthy, and horrible. Your national custom of so many Families occupying one House cut up into Floors or “Flats”, as you term them, is to an Englishman surpassing strange.”

Sadly no response is recorded. Given Chalmers’ evangelical beliefs and published schemes for poor relief, perhaps he would not have been pleased to have it suggested that he had not gone nearly far enough. However, in his last years he did establish a campaign for social reform and religious instruction in the West Port area of Edinburgh. Hopefully Smith was pleased to hear of it.

Eleanor Rideout, New College Library Helpdesk Assistant

Researching the Church of Scotland at New College Library

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NEW COLLEGE 12.7-MThe General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 2015 will take place between 16 and 23 May 2015. Staff and students continue to have access to New College and New College Library as normal, but as there may be an additional security presence at the entrance to New College we advise carrying your UoE staff/student card with you at all times.

At this time of year we expect to welcome visiting ministers and members of the Church of Scotland community to New College Library, often to research and reflect on the topics of business at the General Assembly.

For research into current issues in the Kirk, the Reports of the General Assembly are held in Stack II at sLX 50 B, side by side with the Principal Acts of the General Assembly at sLX50 AB.  Documentation from the last five years of the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly is also available free to download from their website at http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/about_us/general_assembly – recent membership and documentation for Church of Scotland Councils, committees and departments is also available from their website.We continue to collect the daily papers and proceedings of current General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland. The Church of Scotland Yearbook is also available, in Stack I at BX9076 Chu. The Church of Scotland magazine, Life and Work, has current issues on display in the current periodicals section in the Library Hall, with older bound volumes held downstairs in Stack II at Per L. When tracking down information about ministers, the Fasti ecclesiae Scoticanae remains a key tool, available at Ref. BX9099 Sco. in New College Library Hall.

For researchers interested in the historic Kirk, the Acts of the General Assembly are available from the seventeenth century onwards in Special and General Collections copies. New College Library’s print collections includes the collections of the former General Assembly Library, and also the Edinburgh Theological Library. This means that New College Library holds Church of Scotland accounts, orders of service, aids to devotion, Books of Discipline, Books of Common Prayer, publications of individual committees such as the Church and Nation Committee, and publications by groups such as Panel on Doctrine, Science, Religion & Technology. For those more interested in the Church of Scotland abroad rather than at home, we hold appeals, annual reports and archives relating to Church of Scotland missions.

University of Edinburgh users can access Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland, 1560-1618 and Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1638-1842 online via British History Online. Seven volumes of Hew Scott’s original Fasti ecclesiae Scoticanae are also available digitally to UofE users. Finally, Gale Newsvault provides University users with access to The Home and Foreign Record of the Church of Scotland.

Christine Love-Rodgers – Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Jewish scholarship on display at New College Library

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Babylonian Talmud. Sulzbach,1766. Folio, in 12 volumes

Babylonian Talmud. Sulzbach,1766. Folio, in 12 volumes. Longforgan Collection.

In celebration of the public lecture on The Bible and the Mishnah by Professor Shaye J D Cohen, Harvard University on Tuesday 5 May, we currently have Jewish texts from our Special Collections on display in New College Library.

This Babylonian Talmud is part of the Longforgan Free Church Ministers Library, an extremely well preserved example of a Manse library which came to New College in the 1960s. It is currently being catalogued as part of the Funk Donation projects. As well as this 12 volume Babylonian Talmud, works by Maimonides and Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi ha-Cohen are evidence of the importance of Hebrew scholarship to the Scottish Church.

Seder Ṭohorot Mishnayot mi-Seder Kodashim im perush / ha-Rambam. Venice : Daniel Bomberg, 1528.

Seder Ṭohorot Mishnayot mi-Seder Kodashim im perush / ha-Rambam. Venice : Daniel Bomberg, 1528. New College Library Dal-Chr 58

This image is from Maimonides’s commentary on the Mishnah which was one of the first to be published. It is part of the the Dalman-Christie Collection, which was transferred to New College Library in 1946 from the Church of Scotland Hospice in Jerusalem. This collection was recently catalogued as part of the Funk Donation Projects.

Mischna, sive, Totius Hebraeorum juris : rituum, antiquitatum, ac legum oralium systema. Amsterdam : Gerardus & Jacobus Borstius, 1698. New College Library Dal-Chr 45

Mischna, sive, Totius Hebraeorum juris : rituum, antiquitatum, ac legum oralium systema. Amsterdam : Gerardus & Jacobus Borstius, 1698. New College Library Dal-Chr 45

This is the frontispiece from one of the volumes in this six volume set of the Mishnah with text in  Hebrew and Latin. It also contains commentaries of Maimonides and Bertinoro in Latin. New College Library holds copies in both the Dalman-Christie and the Longforgan Collections.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Rare New College Library book is an international success

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Perush ha-Torah / leha-Rav rabenu Mosheh bar Nahman ... [1514]

Perush ha-Torah / leha-Rav rabenu Mosheh bar Nahman … [1514]

 A rare and early commentary on the Pentateuch from New College Library has just arrived back in Edinburgh, after travelling all the way to Latvia to be part of the exhibition “1514. The Book. 2014“. New College Library staff worked together with exhibitions, museum and conservation staff from Library & University Collections to ensure that the volume has a safe journey. The exhibition was held until April 2015 at the National Library of Latvia. It included 80 books drawn from the collections of 18 different European libraries with rich collections of sixteenth-century publications. They were all published in 1514, a year of great change, 60 years after Gutenberg and on the cusp of the Reformation in Europe.  Opened by two presidents – Latvian HE Andris Berzins and Austrian HE Heinz Fischer, the exhibition received more than 101,200 visitors over the year, including other political leaders of EU countries such as Angela Merkel. 

This work,  Perush-ha Torah, is just one of the early works of Jewish scholarship in the Dalman-Christie collection of Hebrew books, which was recently catalogued as part of the Funk Donation Projects at New College Library.  The Dalman-Christie Collection was transferred to New College Library in 1946 from the Church of Scotland Hospice in Jerusalem.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

New digital access to Divinity theses collection

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New College Theses

I’m delighted to announced that nearly two hundred and fifty theses dating from 1921-1950 from the New College Library collection are now available online in the Edinburgh Research Archive, part of the Divinity Dissertation and Thesis Collection. While later theses are held in 2 copies, one at the Main Library, we believe that New College Library holds the only copy of theses from this early period.  The New College Theses collection was catalogued online in 2012 as part of the Funk Projects.

The digitisation project was managed by Gavin Willshaw, Digital Curator in Library & University Collections, who explains : “We worked with the digitisation company Restore to digitise 250 unique theses from New College – these are now available open-access for anyone to download at: https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/133“
The theses are fully searchable on the ERA platform but also discoverable via Google, making New College scholarship accessible to a much wider audience.
The collection includes a wide variety of research topics, such as Comparison of Chinese and Hebrew wisdom, as exemplified in the Book of Proverbs … [1933] by Elizabeth G.K. Hewat, or The Christian Inscriptions of North Africa … [1943] by Ian Thomson Gillan. Do you recognise any of the authors? We’d love to know more about what happened next to these Divinity alumni.
  • Gavin Willshaw, Digital Curator
  • Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Divinity student book recommendations now available

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All these books (and more) were recommended by Divinity students and are now available to University of Edinburgh Library users – more details on the library catalogue. 100+ book recommendations from Divinity students have been received over since August 2014, via the student recommendation form on the Library website.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

 

Easter Greetings from New College Library

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New College Library is open as usual for semester time over the Easter period, see Library Opening hours for more detail. When visiting, take a moment to look at our Special Collections display, which currently features a 1637 Book of Common Prayer written for the use of the Church of Scotland, edited by Archbishop William Laud, open at the readings for Easter Day. We also have on display a 1602 New Testament, open to show a map of the Holy Land and the beginning of St Matthew’s Gospel.

In the Funk Reading Room display case, you can see a selection of more modern titles relating to Easter.

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Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

 

 

 

Unwrapping the Martin Hall Collection

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This January we began cataloguing work on the MR Collection from New College Library’s Special Collections. This sequence contains much early and rare material, and carries the shelfmark MR because at one time these books were housed in the Martin Hall in New College.

Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

We were really excited to find this lovely item, Historia apostolica illustrata : ex actis apostolorum et epistolis Paulinis. Published in seventeenth century Geneva, the author Louise Cappel writes about the works of the apostles, and Paul in particular. What’s immediately striking about it is that it is covered with a vellum wrapper (waste parchment) with beautiful manuscript lettering.

Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

While further research is required on the wrapper, it appears to be a medieval liturgical text. The back cover (pictured) is in honour of St. Nicholas, with his name appearing in the line with the musical notation.

Christine Love-Rodgers – Academic Support Librarian, Divinity

Paul Nicholas – Funk Cataloguer

Elizabeth Lawrence – Rare Books Librarian

 

 

 

Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology now on trial

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New on trial for University of Edinburgh users from 3 March to 31 March is the  Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology.

The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology is the replacement for the Dictionary of Hymnology produced by John Julian in 1892, with a supplement in 1907.

It is an essential reference resource for scholars of global hymnody, with information on the hymns of many countries and languages, and a strong emphasis on the historical as well as the contemporary. It includes articles on individual hymns, authors from many countries, hymnals, organisations, and themes, as well as information on hymn tunes and their composers. Covering a multitude of hymn traditions from around the world, it is ecumenical and international.

You can access the trial via the link at : http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-trials. Please give us your feedback as this is a key part of making a case to subscribe to resources like this.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – School of Divinity