Cromwell Manuscripts

This material is held atBodleian Library, University of Oxford

  • Reference
    • GB 161 MSS. Cromwell 1-27
  • Dates of Creation
    • 11th-16th century
  • Language of Material
    • Ancient Greek (to 1453), Modern Greek (1453-), and Church Slavic or Old Slavonic or Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian or Old Church Slavonic.
  • Physical Description
    • 27 shelfmarks

Scope and Content

Manuscripts collected by Cromwell, consisting of twenty-five Greek and two Slavonic manuscripts. The manuscripts are chiefly Patristic and include sermons and lives of saints.

Administrative / Biographical History

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), Lord Protector, was Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1 January 1651 till his resignation on 3 July 1657. Details can be found in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Access Information

Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card (for admissions procedures see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/specialcollections).

Acquisition Information

Cromwell presented the bulk of the collection to the Bodleian in 1654. MSS. Cromwell 15-16 and 27 were given to the Library in 1727.

Note

Collection level description created by Emily Tarrant, Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts.

Other Finding Aids

Full descriptions, in Latin, are in Henry O. Coxe, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae pars prima recensionem codicum Graecorum continens (Oxford, 1853; reprinted with corrections, 1969).

Brief one-line descriptions, with shelfmarks and short titles, are in Falconer Madan, et al., A summary catalogue of western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford which have not hitherto been catalogued in the Quarto series (7 vols. in 8 [vol. II in 2 parts], Oxford, 1895-1953; reprinted, with corrections in vols. I and VII, Munich, 1980), vol. II, nos. 276-99, and vol. V, nos. 27676-8.

The illuminated manuscripts in this collection are described in detail in I. Hutter, Corpus der Byzantinischen Miniaturenhandschriften. Oxford Bodleian Library, 4 vols. (Stuttgart, 1977-82).