Cut it out!

I have been making my way through the manuscripts collection in an effort to identify material, see what conservation needs there are and generally acquaint myself with the collections. This week I have been struck by the quantity of material from the 1600s, which has, of course, come about as a result of the Covenanters. While a good proportion of the manuscripts are sermons there are a few which are copies of letters or the last words of Presbyterian martyrs.

My heart was in my mouth when I opened one such volume (ref. MSS NOT) and found that in several places pages had been cut out. As I went through the notebook in search of the name of the person who had carefully copied down sermons by Laurence Charteris and James Good, Latin tracts and proclamations, my heart resumed its usual position when, quite unusually, I found an explanation for the missing pages:

“Nota: I lent this book to Mr Samuel Nairne when he was passing his tryalls for the Ministrie which he keept four years & some more; & when removed from the parish of Moonzie and went to Arroll, he tooke the booke with him; And all the thankes I got was the cutting out of thir leaves as is to be seen in the following part hereof Which was neither done lyke a Gentleman nor a Minister. Whereupon I ame resolved here after to take heed to whom I lend the use of my booke, especially of a manuscript.”

Author's explanation for missing notebook pages.

Author’s explanation for missing notebook pages.

While the notebook’s author is as yet unknown, the reference to Samuel Nairne dates it to around 1690 and one can assume that the author was living in the parish of Moonzie or nearby.

The inside cover of the notebook tells us that it was later owned by a James MacGregor. However, at another point in the notebook, where Samuel Nairne had been busy with a blade, James wrote the following:

 “Fhuair Seumas McGriogair an leabhar so am Peairt am Bliadhna ar Tighearna 1778 ar son 2sc[illin]”
Translation: “James MacGregor bought this book in Perth in the Year of our Lord 1778 for 2 pence.”

Not only does this give us more about the provenance of the book but also shows that James MacGregor was literate in Gaelic.

James MacGregor notes when and where he bought the notebook (ref. MSS NOT)

James MacGregor notes when and where he bought the notebook (ref. MSS NOT)

Missing pages can be frustrating and sometimes even heartbreaking but for our unknown Fife scribe their absence was clearly just plain annoying: annoying enough to write about it.

Kirsty M Stewart, New College Collection Curator

Information on Samuel Nairn from Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae , vol 5, p 169: SAMUEL NAIRNE, M.A. ; ord. before 22nd July 1690 ; trans, to Errol 12th Jan. 1692.

 

Treasures of New College Library – Andrew Melville’s Bible

Knox 3

Biblia sacra utriusque Testamenti … [1529]. New Collegel Library, Knox 3.

One of the pleasures of being a librarian is the serendipity of discovering something special on the shelves whilst engaged in looking for something completely different. Whilst looking at materials about the Congregational Church in New College Library’s Special Collections recently, I came across this sixteenth-century Bible on an adjacent shelf. Manuscript notes attribute it to be ‘Andrew Melville’s Bible’, and the title page is certainly signed “A. Melville.”

John Knox Loan 3vr

This item is part of a small collection which at one time was housed at John Knox House in Edinburgh, although our provenance documentation records the ownership as being Church of Scotland.

Born on 1 August 1545 Andrew Melville (1545–1622), theologian, Biblical scholar and Presbyterian leader, had a scholarly career as Principal of Glasgow Unviersity and Principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews University. He followed in the footsteps of John Knox as a defender of Reformation and Presbyterian principles, which at times set him in opposition with King James I of England and VI of Scotland.

James Kirk, ‘Melville, Andrew  (1545–1622)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18543, accessed 24 July 2014]

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

John Calvin – Works and Correspondence now available online

By Flemish school (Unknown) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. On permanent display in Espace Ami Lullin of the Bibliothèque de Genève.

John Calvin 1509-1564. By Flemish school (Unknown) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
On permanent display in Espace Ami Lullin of the Bibliothèque de Genève.

Newly available to University of Edinburgh users is the online version of the Works of John Calvin, including the Institutes of the Christian Religion. This is the edition of the Institutes translated by Ford Lewis Battles and  published by Westminster Press in  1960. Also included are Calvin’s  Tracts and Treatises (3 vols.), translated by Henry Beveridge, originally published by the Calvin Translation Society (Edinburgh) in 1851,and Letters of John Calvin (4 vols.), edited by Dr. Jules Bonnet, translated by David Constable, originally published in 1855-57.  This online version complements the many printed editions of Calvin’s works which are available at New College Library.

Online access for University of Edinburgh users  is available via the Past Masters Database – see http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-a-z under ‘P’.

This resource was purchased for the forthcoming Calvin in Context course at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh.

A puzzle of Presbyterian history

Notes on the Presbyterian church in New Zealand. By P. B., fl. ca 1860. New College Library – Special Collections. P.f.14/24

Today the School of  Divinity welcomes Dr Hugh Morrison, a visiting Fellow from Otago, who is speaking at the World Christianity Research Seminar on “Doing religious history ‘down under:’ challenges and opportunities in the New Zealand context.”

A recent challenge for the the Funk Cataloguing Projects here at New College Library was this nineteenth century pamphlet, “Notes on the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand”. Little is known about this item or its author, P.B. From clues within the pamphlet we have garnered that the writer was active in the 1860s and the item was probably published in Scotland.

The union catalogue of UK research libraries, COPAC, lists New College Library as the only known location in the UK for this pamphlet

Early twentieth-century Christianity in Korea

With Tommy Tompkins in Korea by Lillian H. Underwood, (Edinburgh 1905). New College Library sMS1 UND
Korean Sketches by Rev. James S. Gale, of the American Presbyterian Mission, Wunsan, Korea. sMS 1 GAL

The School of Divinity’s World Christianity seminar series  continues with  “No Neutrality for Brutality”: The Missionary Position on Indigenous Resistance Movements in Colonial Korea, 1910-1919 by Han Kang-Hee.

These two books from New College Library’s stacks give us contemporary views of Korea by missionaries, and describe their engagement  – or otherwise – with Korean culture.

With Tommy Tompkins in Korea by Lillian H. Underwood is an attempt to describe the everyday life of a Western boy living in Korea “… Hoping that this book may serve to show the contrast, between the family of a happy little western boy, and the poor children born in the dark, so that the hearts of the readers may ask, “How can this be changed?”

Korean Sketches by Rev. James S. Gale, aims to give an idea of the Korean life and character, and is well illustrated with photographs and drawings. The original publishers’s flyer still in the book describes it as “A Missionary’s Observations in the Hermit Nation”.

Israel, the Assyrians and a shoemaker’s gift

The sacred and profane history of the world connected : from the creation of the world to the dissolution of the Assyrian Empire …, and to the declension of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel …/ by Samuel Shuckford, D.D. Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty, George the Second. ; Revised … by James Creighton. Philadelphia, 1824.
New College Library [Special Collections] Z.2152

At todays’ opening seminar in the Divinity Biblical Studies Research Seminar series, the speaker is Dr Carly Crouch, Lecturer in Hebrew Bible, University of Nottingham, on “Israel and the Assyrians”.

On that note, here’s an ambitious work of history from New College Library’s Special Collections that covers the Assyrian Empire and  “the declension of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel”. Written by Samuel Shuckford in the eighteenth century, this edition was published in the nineteenth century and is the first American edition of this work.

What interested me the most was in fact the label inside the book (well, I am a librarian), which states:

“Presented to the Free Church of Scotland, by Thomas Aikman, shoemaker, a native of Scotland, near Sterling [sic], a citizen of the United States of America since 1794 – a member of the Presbyterian Church in full communion for more than fifty years. Burlington, N.J., 1844.”

With this provenance, the book must have been donated to New College Library as part of the first appeal for books that came with the founding of New College as the College for the Free Church of Scotland after the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843.  It shows that Thomas Aikman, an emigrant of humble background, was following religious affairs in his homeland closely and that the principles behind the founding of New College were close enough to his heart for him to donate this book.

This book is part of the ‘Z’ Collection, currently being catalogued as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library.