Tag Archives: Church of Scotland

Keeping the faith in wartime

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A short New College  Act of Remembrance will take place on Friday 9th November at 1pm at the War Memorial in the corridor leading to the Assembly Hall.

Church of Scotland – Committee on Aids to Devotion. Special Services issued during the Great War 1914-1919. New College Library Pamphlets Collection X.X.h.1.1-14

This item from New College Library’s Pamphlets Collections was recently catalogued as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects. It is a collection of Church orders of services and guides for public prayer in a family or school setting. All the pamphlets date from the First World War Period, ending with a form of Divine service for Remembrance Day on the eleventh of November.The pamphlets and their binding are flimsy and utilitarian but their content bears witness to the cost of war for those at home as well as those out on the front.

Pamphlet X.X.h. 1/2 Form of prayer for schools in time of war, includes the text:

“Throw the shield of Thy protection over all who have gone forth to fight our battles by land or sea or air. We especially remember those near and dear to ourselves.”

Happy Birthday New College Library

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Seventy six years ago on the 8th of October, New College Library, Edinburgh, was formally opened to students and staff in its current building, the former Free High Kirk. The earth under the church floor had been excavated to allow the three stackrooms below the Library Hall.

The New College Archive preserves this original admission ticket to the inauguration ceremony, as it also preserves the suggestions books, committee minutes and account books of the business of New College Library since its foundation back in the 1840s.  The ticket bears the arms of Edinburgh University on the left and the Church of Scotland’s burning bush emblem on the right. This represents the union which had been effected in  January 1935 of the Church of Scotland’s  New College with the University’s Faculty of Divinity in the New College building.

New books at New College Library, Edinburgh – October

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New College Library has a regular display of new books at the far end of the Library Hall, close to the door to the stacks.

Currently in the display is Christian faith and the welfare of the city : essays for Alison Elliot / edited by Johnston McKay (New College Library BV625 Chr).  This collection of essays, which includes a number of contributions from staff at the School of Divinity, marked the sixtieth birthday of Dr. Alison Elliot, first woman Moderator of the Church of Scotland.

You can see an regularly updated list of new books for New College Library on the Library Catalogue – choose the New Books Search and limit your search to New College Library. Here’s a quick link to new books arriving in the last few weeks. A word of caution – some of the books listed here may still be in transit between the Main Library (where they are catalogued) and New College Library, so not on the shelf just yet.

Historic record of Jewish festivals at New College Library

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It’s September 16 and the beginning of Rosh Hashanah,  the Jewish New Year festival. Rosh Hashanah customs include sounding the shofar, or ram’s horn trumpet, and eating apples dipped in honey – a symbol of the wish for a sweet new year.

New College Library holds an interesting volume of  prayers and devotions for Ashkenazi Jewish festivals,  Maḥzor ḥeleḳ rishon, published c. 1699  in Sulzbach  in the Rhineland where medieval Jewish communities settled. The book still has some of its original brass studs and brass clasps intact.

This book is part of the Dalman-Christie collection of Hebrew books, which was recently catalogued as part of the Funk Cataloguing 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. With thanks to our Hebrew Cataloguer, Janice Gailani, for sharing details of this item.

Maḥzor ḥeleḳ rishon [1699] New College Library Dal-Chr 14

New College Library Archives

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An image from the New College Archive of New College Library as it appeared in 1946

Did you know that New College Library holds significant collections of archives and manuscripts?

These  collections include the papers of Thomas Chalmers, J.H. Oldham, James S. Stewart and Norman W. Porteous.  Hidden among the older archives are gems such as the  last speech and testimony of the covenanter James Renwick (1662-1688).  The Archives also include a New College Archive which includes group photographs of students and staff, and of the New College buildings.

Recently added to our collections are the papers of Rev Tom Allan (1916-1965), Rev. Professor Alec Campbell Cheyne (1924-2006), Rev. Professor John McIntyre (1916-2005), and the Very Rev Professor James Whyte (1920-2005). The listing of these papers was funded by a generous bequest from the estate of Rev. Professor Alec Campbell Cheyne .

See the New College Archives web page to find out more.

Treasures of New College Library : The Dumfries Presbytery Library

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The Dumfries Presbytery Library is a collection of sixteenth and seventeenth century books that was first documented in 1710, with the acceptance of a substantial donation of books from Dr John Hutton. It was used as a lending library, for the ministers of Dumfries, for which records survive in a ledger in Dumfries’s Ewart Library. Titles are marked : “Ex libris bibliothecae presbyterii Dumfriesiensis”

In 1884, the decision was made to transfer the collection to the General Assembly Library in Edinburgh, following a gale that damaged the roof of the presbytery house letting in rain that soaked the books. With this transfer, at least some of the books were marked by the ownership stamp of the Library of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland : the symbol of the burning bush surrounded by the words “Bibliotheca Ecclesiae Scoticanae”.

In 1958 the General Assembly Library was transferred to New College Library, and the books of the Dumfries Presbytery Library were dispersed by subject as part of the New College Library collection. In 1962, New College Library came under the governance of Edinburgh University Library,  and in 1965 John Howard took over as New College Librarian. He took a particular interest in the Dumfries Presbytery Library and he reassembled c. 1500 volumes from the collection in their original pressmark order as a Special Collection.

In the summer of 2012, a project has begun to catalogue the Dumfries Presbytery Library online in its entirety. This project is one of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library.

Researching the motherhood of God

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The School of Divinity at New College hosts a colloquium on June 7, 1:00 – 4:30 on Women, Language, and Worship in the Church of Scotland – see the blog or facebook page for more details.

 In 1984, a report was submitted to the General Assembly by Anne Hepburn,  president of the Women’s Guild, which explored how God might be referred to as a Mother figure as well as a Father in the New Testament, and the implications for gender inclusive language within the Church. New College Library holds this report in the Reports of the General Assembly (at  sLX 50 B) and it was also reprinted separately as a volume in its own right (at pRQ 20 MOT, New College Library). The report received a hostile reception, which was widely reported in the Scottish and National Press.

New College Library holds substantial collections of order of service books and hymnbooks, which researchers can access to see if the 1984 report did have an impact on Church practice. These include the Hymnology Collections as well as the fourth edition of the Church Hymnary (2005),  on the shelf at New College Library at Ref. BV431 Chu.

Treasures of New College Library : the Pamphlets Collection

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 “… but that religious pamphlets, especially if they had a shade of allegory in them,  were the very rage of the day.”[1]

In the days before radio, television and instant news pamphlets allowed theological debate and comment to be carried on in cheap, portable and accessible print. New College Library has an exceptional Pamphlets Collection with over 30,000 items. Spanning the development of the Scottish Church from the time of the Reformation to the present century, the sermons, theological debates and reports of Church government and discipline which are contained in this collection are a reflection of the parallel development of Scottish history, and of the establishment and disestablishment of a national Scottish Church.

The Church of Scotland’s lament. Pamphlets Collection, New College Library B.c.4.28/9

  “The Church of Scotland’s lament over the Pride of Her Ministers, with their Top Wiggs, and Long Gravates …” is just one example of the Pamphlets in this collection. Dating from the 1700s, it is a humorous poke at a well to do Church of Scotland minister, with the writer contrasting the minister’s comfortable existence with the struggles of the Covenanters in times past.

As I write the 2012 General Assembly is in full swing, and many Church of Scotland ministers are coming and going – but I haven’t spotted any wigs or ‘Gravates’  (cravats, I think). Nevertheless comment, discussion and criticism of the Church’s activities will be just as much in the news as when this pamphlet was written.

This pamphlet  is newly catalogued online as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library, which has enabled the cataloguing of over 12,000 pamphlets. 

[1] Hogg, James The private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner (London: A.M. Philpot Ltd., 1824)

 

Scotland’s Methodists

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I’ve had two enquiries in the last few weeks about Methodists in Scotland, from individuals researching their family history – it seems to be a hot topic!

Fortunately New College Library  recently received Scotland’s Methodists 1750-2000 by Margaret Batty, as a donation from the author. It’s just been catalogued and is available at BX 8285 Bat. On reference, we also have  Oliver A. Beckerlegge’s United Methodist Ministers and their Circuits 1797-1932, and enquirers able to visit the library can browse the shelves of church history books at LC class BX, and in the old UTS sequence, LX, which contain other titles about Methodism. 

Much useful information on researching Methodist individuals can be found on the website for the Methodist Archives at John Rylands University, Manchester e.g  http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/searchresources/guidetospecialcollections/methodist/using/indexofministers/

Archives relating to the Methodist Church in Scotland are also held by the National Archives of Scotland http://www.nas.gov.uk.

Following in the footsteps of the New College Librarian

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Spent some time this morning sculling through the New College archives looking for correspondence about some of the New College Special Collections, the Dumfries Presbytery Library and the Longforgan Free Church Ministers’ Library. There’s a fascination to leafing through the thin typewritten sheets that measured out the business of New College Library over the decades. One envelope contains the daily diary notes of the New College Librarian for the autumn term (no semesters then) of 1965 – jottings and tick lists of meetings about the finances, measuring up the space needed for new periodicals, noting library staff who’ve gone home feeling ill.  Other letters are handwritten enquiries to the Librarian, and his replies –  “Dear Miss Grant, I have very little to tell you about the revival of the use of the saints names as dedications of Church of Scotland Parish Kirks …” this said, the letter went on to give a full page of information. My life as a librarian is measured out in e-mails, with paper letters like these occasionally lurking at the fringes.