Bodleian Library Friends’ NEWSLETTER Winter 2013/14 – Winter 2014/15 RICHARD OVENDEN BECOMES BODLEY’S LIBRARIAN ichard Ovenden is Bodley’s Librarian, Rthe senior executive of the Bodleian Libraries, and the 25th person to hold the title. He has previously held positions at the House of Lords Library, the National Library of Scotland, and at the University of Edinburgh, where he was Director of Collections, responsible for integrating the Library, the University Museums, and Art Gallery. In 2003 he became Keeper of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, then Associate Director, and latterly (from 2011) Deputy Librarian, at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. He is also Director of the Bodleian’s Centre for the Study of the Book and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford. He is professionally active in the sphere of libraries, archives, and infor- mation science, being a member of the Board of the Legal Deposit Libraries, the Expert Panel of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and the Chairman of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) between 2009 and 2013. He is a Trustee of Chawton House Library, the Kraszna Kraus Foundation, and sits on the Advisory Panel for Libraries and Archives of the Church of England. Richard is author of John Thomson (1837–1921): Richard Ovenden, holding Elizabeth I’s copy of Plato’s complete works in Greek (photo: Nick Cistone) Photographer (1997), and writes on the his- tory of libraries, the history of the book, and the history of photography. He is a WESTON LIBRARY OPENS TO READERS Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. n September 2014 the Bodleian’s new researchers of special collections since last IWeston Library welcomed its first September. An official opening is planned Professor Richard McCabe, FBA book – a beautifully bound copy of Plato’s for March 2015. The newly renovated build- Chairman of the Friends of the Bodleian complete works in Greek, which was ing will accommodate new and existing given to Elizabeth I by the Chancellor of facilities, including improved conservation the University of Oxford in 1564. To cel- laboratories and support for digital scholar- ebrate the occasion, a bagpiper heralded the ship. Special Collections materials began book’s arrival and Lord Patten of Barnes, moving into the restored building from the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, early September 2014 and will continue for visited the Library and placed the book on some time. the shelf. The much-anticipated Weston Library Richard Ovenden has been opening in phases to readers and Bodley’s Librarian ACQUISITIONS ‘THE CHASTYSING OF GODDE’S CHILDREN’ ith significant help from the Friends using translated Latin materials developed the natural centre for further study on the Wof the Bodleian, the Library has been to support the canonisation of Birgitta of text. successful in acquiring an important Middle Sweden. Oxford also has the world’s largest con- English manuscript at auction. Written in Eleven manuscripts containing full centration of scholars working on mater ials northern England in the mid-15th cen- versions or close derivatives are already of this kind. Current members of the English tury, it contains ‘The Chastysing of Godde’s known: many have close textual and Faculty are leaders in the field of ‘vernacular Children’ and other mystical treatises. codicological links to English Charterhouses theology’, with particular expertise in stud- The text, composed around 1390, cir- or to the Birgittine House at Syon. The ies of heterodoxy, contemplative writing, culated widely amongst a cosmopolitan emergence of this new manuscript is of and didactic and devotional texts; several also readership in the late Middle Ages in real significance to scholars of medieval work closely on Carthusian and Birgittine England, and is an important witness vernacular literature and thought. Of books and on London metropolitan book to the growing vernacular appetite for particular interest is its collocation in this production. The Library is particularly advanced spiritual guidance. It provides us copy with other devotional texts which grateful to Vincent Gillespie, J. R. R. Tolkien with unprecedented evidence for the cir- were known to have appealed to a shared Professor of English Literature and Language culation and appropriation of continental, audience of nuns and devout laity; the book and Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, for his near-contemporar y mystical writings in therefore becomes an important witness to powerful inspiration and advice in the England, as well as affording us insights into this complex reading community. Of the acquisition of the manuscript. the on going popularity of earlier medieval existing versions, five are already in Oxford. native devotional material. It also offers one Taken together with the Bodleian’s world- Dr Martin Kauffmann of the earliest vernacular guides to discern- class manuscript holdings of other Middle Head of Early and Rare Collections and ing true contemplative visions from false, English religious texts, this makes Oxford Tolkien Curator of Medieval Manuscripts The newly acquired manuscript of The Chastising of God’s Children, open at the beginning of its chapter list. (MS. Don. e. 247, fols. 14v –15r) THE PAPERS OF CHARLES STUART DE ROTHESAY harles Stuart de Rothesay was educated ambassador at the courts of both the King of task of sourcing provisions from as far afield Cat Eton, Oxford, and the University of the Netherlands and Louis XVIII of France. as Syria and Constantinople. Other letters Glasgow. He entered the diplomatic service From 1815 to 1824 and again from 1828 he include political and military intelligence in 1801. After appointments in Vienna and was ambassador in Paris. He died in 1845 at reports. The distribution of funds to those in St Petersburg, he undertook a liaison and his home, Highcliffe Castle, Christchurch, need was also dealt with by Stuart. Consular intelligence-gathering mission in Spain from Hampshire. letters refer to matters of trade, the English 1808 to 1810. In 1810 Stuart was appointed The archive, recently acquired with the community in Lisbon, and individuals who minister at Lisbon, where he joined the help of the Friends of the Bodleian, com- had fallen foul of the Portuguese authori- Regency Council set up to govern Portugal prises approximately 680 letters, including ties. The acquired collection is important in after the Portuguese royal family had fled informal letters to Stuart from high-ranking documenting Anglo-Portuguese relations to Brazil. During the period when Portugal military officers in the field, often giving very in the crucial theatre of Britain’s war with was the base of allied operations aimed at immediate accounts of operations against Napoleon. aiding the Spanish insurgents and driving the French. More formal military commu- the French from Iberia, Stuart was, with nications show Stuart’s involvement in the Mike Webb Lord Wellington, with whom he worked administration and supply of the British and Curator of Early Modern Archives closely, one of the most powerful figures in Portuguese armies. Reports to the minister and Manuscripts the peninsula. His later diplomatic career from embassies and consulates around the saw him serve during the ‘hundred days’ as Mediterranean demonstrate the complex AN ACCOUNT OF THE PREMIÈRE OF GLUCK’S LE CINESI arly in 2014 a grant from the Friends of Schloss Schlosshof an der March near script predates them both and has the Ethe Bodleian enabled the Library to pur- Vienna, the resi dence of the imperial field advantage of being an eyewitness account. chase a contemporary manuscript account marshal Joseph Friedrich, Prince of Saxe- It also reports the reaction of the royal party of the events surrounding the première of Hildburghausen. The royal party included themselves and, together, the three accounts the opera Le Cinesi (The Chinese Ladies) by the Emperor Francis and Empress Maria enable a more accurate and rounded picture Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1714- Theresa, and no expense was spared in the to emerge of this extraordinary occasion. 87). An important and influential figure in efforts to impress them. The manuscript was also the subject of a musical history, Gluck is now best-known The significance of Le Cinesi goes beyond Lunchtime Lecture delivered to the Friends for various popular vocal and instrumental the work itself. The narrative is about oper- by Professor Michael Burden, Professor in excerpts from his opera Orpheus ed Euridice, atic styles, so it is effectively an opera about Opera Studies and Dean of New College, among others. opera. The Chinese ladies of the title are of during Michaelmas 2014. Le Cinesi is a one-act ‘componimento noble birth and alleviate the boredom of drammatico’ to a libretto by Metastasio, their existence by play-acting and debating first set by Antonio Caldara in 1735. Gluck’s the merits of the various different operatic Martin Holmes setting was commissioned in 1754 for the styles currently in vogue. Alfred Brendel Curator of Music Collections glittering festivities surrounding a four- Two published descriptions of the event day visit of the Austrian royal famil y to exist, but this previously unknown manu- LUCY HUTCHINSON’S COPY OF GUARINI’S IL PASTOR FIDO iovanni Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor great philosophical-theologica l poem De boys. John Hutchinson gave her this little GFido, 1589, was highly influential for Rerum Natura (ed. Hugh de Quehen, 1996) volume inscribed with their names in Italian English literature, both in the original and and then of her ambitious biblical para- form, as Lucia and Giovanny. They may have in Richard Fanshawe’s translation as The phrase Order and Disorder; or, The World Made read it aloud together (neither would have Faithfull Shepherd, 1647. Time was, on the and Undone, printed anonymously in 1679 needed a translation) as they read other liter- other hand, that Lucy Hutchinson (1620- and long unidentified (ed.