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📘 De Bury's unfinished library

You open a book that names its own last day. Finished, it says, in our manorhouse of Auckland on the 24th day of January, in the year of our Lord 1344, the fifty-eighth year of our age being exactly completed. The man signing it is Richard

4
lessons
~20 min
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Adults
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What you’ll learn

  1. The manor at AucklandPlace de Bury as Edward III's tutor and Bishop of Durham, and date the Philobiblon from its own colophon rather than from a later birth-year.The book finishes itself at Auckland on 24 January in the fifty-eighth year of his age. Thomas and the DNB give the offices, the April 1345 death, and Petrarch's unanswered letter about Thule.
  2. What the books are allowed to sayHear Chapter I's kindness and the clerical lock together, and treat Chapter XVII as evidence about how a manuscript is actually handled.Books teach without a rod. They also call falling into laymen's hands bitterer than death. The dripping nose is not a joke. It is a handling rule.
  3. How a chancellor collectedState de Bury's method from Chapter VIII: office as access, gifts, monasteries, mendicant hunters, foreign stationers, and a manor workshop.Manuscripts, not moneyscripts. The aumbries opened because a chancellor could requite a man well or ill. Paris is where the purse-strings came undone.
  4. The hall that is still a blankKeep Chapter XIX's lending rules, keep the unnamed Hall, and refuse to upgrade a plan into a proven Oxford founding.Five keepers, three to lend, a pledge, a dash where the name should be. Tonight, read the rules of a library you actually use.

Questions this course answers

What does the Philobiblon's own colophon actually date?

The closing note dates the treatise to the manorhouse of Auckland on 24 January 1344, the fifty-eighth year of his age exactly completed, the eleventh year of his pontificate drawing to an end. Thomas reads the year, with Lady Day as New Year, as 24 January 1345. The hall is not named there.

Match the source to what it can actually carry

The colophon dates the book. Chambre gives the rooms. Petrarch gives the unanswered question. Chapter XIX gives rules for a house it will not name.

Put de Bury's public path in the order the lives support

Thomas and the DNB agree on the sequence: Bury and Oxford, tutor to Edward, bishop at the end of 1333, chancellor 1334, death at Auckland on 14 April 1345. The colophon places the book in the last winter.

How many keepers must agree before a book may be lent under Chapter XIX?

Chapter XIX: five keepers; three and not fewer may lend for inspection and study. A unique copy does not go outside the walls except to Hall men, or for inspection inside.

In your own words, why is the blank in '——— Hall at Oxford' a fact you should keep, not a defect to smooth over?

Chapter XVIII states a resolve. Chapter XIX still writes a dash where the hall's name should be. Thomas himself says the scheme may never have been carried out. That gap is the lesson.

When a later writer says de Bury founded a library at Oxford, what is the honest move?

Thomas records the traditional sending of the books to Durham College and then undercuts it: executors sold volumes, Chambre is silent, the scheme may never have been carried out. The rules remain. The founding does not.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • Richard de Bury, The Love of Books: The Philobiblon, trans. E. C. Thomas, from the 1888 Kegan Paul text. Project Gutenberg ebook 626, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/626 ; Wikisource validated text, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Love_of_Books:_the_Philobiblon_of_Richard_de_Bury . Prologue: poor scholars; the name Philobiblon. Ch. I: books as masters without rod or ferule. Ch. IV: books fall into the power of laymen, more bitter than any death. Ch. VIII: books easier than money; aumbries opened; mice and worms; manuscripts not moneyscripts; Paris purchased with mud and sand; mendicants as hunters; stationers in France, Germany, Italy; copyists on the manors. Ch. XVII: dripping nose, straws, flowers, grease, laity unworthy. Ch. XVIII: resolve to found a Hall at Oxford and put the books in common. Ch. XIX: five keepers, three to lend, pledge exceeding value, no unique book outside, annual audit from 1 July to the Translation of St Thomas; grant to scholars living in ——— Hall at Oxford. Colophon: finished at Auckland, 24 January 1344, fifty-eighth year of his age exactly completed, eleventh year of his pontificate drawing to an end.
  • E. C. Thomas, preface to The Love of Books (the condensed preface printed with the translation). Richard de Bury so called from Bury St Edmunds, son of Sir Richard Aungerville; Oxford; tutor to Prince Edward of Windsor; Bishop of Durham at the end of 1333, king, queen, and King of Scots present; Chancellor 1334, Treasurer 1336; died Auckland 14 April 1345, buried Durham Cathedral. Petrarch at Avignon, probably 1330. Chambre: more books than all the other English bishops; books about the bed-chamber. Durham College / Trinity site: practically founded, Hatfield carried the scheme; traditionally the books went there until the dissolution, then Duke Humphrey, Balliol, George Owen. Thomas's caution: executors sold at least some books; British Museum (now BL) Royal 13 D. iv. 3, John of Salisbury, bought back from the executors; Chambre silent on an Oxford library; possibly the scheme was never carried out. First printed Cologne 1473, Speyer 1483, Paris 1500; first English edition Thomas James, 1598–9. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Love_of_Books:_the_Philobiblon_of_Richard_de_Bury/Preface
  • Mandell Creighton, 'Bury, Richard de (1281–1345)', Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, vol. 8. Son of Sir Richard Aungerville; named from Bury St Edmunds; Oxford; tutor to Edward of Windsor; bishop of Durham by papal provision at the king's request, end of 1333, consecrated at Chertsey, king, queen, King of Scots present; Chancellor 1334, Treasurer 1336; died Auckland 1345, buried Durham Cathedral. Chambre's books and table-reading. Petrarch, Epist. de Rebus Fam. iii. 1: vir ardentis ingenii nec literarum inscius, abditarum rerum ab adolescentia supra fidem curiosus; asked about Thule; promised to write from home; never answered. Lending rules said to follow practice including the Sorbonne. First printed Cologne 1473. Traditional dispersal of a Durham College library at the dissolution. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Bury,_Richard_de
  • J. W. Clark, The Care of Books, as quoted in Thomas's preface, p. 142: Durham College, maintained by the Benedictines of Durham, supplied with books from the mother-house; subsequently a library was built there to contain the collection bequeathed in 1345 by Richard de Bury. Cited here as the tradition Thomas then qualifies, not as proof the bequest arrived.
  • Richard de Bury, Philobiblon, first page of the Speyer edition, Johann and Conrad Hist, 1483. The second printed edition after Cologne 1473. Wikimedia Commons scan, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_first_page_of_Richard_de_Bury%27s_Philobiblon,_Speyer_edition_1483.jpg

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