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- Our collections of manuscripts, archives, and rare books are famous the world over, with our earliest manuscript and archive treasures dating from the 11th century.
- More manuscripts survive from the medieval library of New College than from that of any other Oxford or Cambridge college, and we hold what is probably the finest collection of medieval manuscripts of any of the Oxford colleges.
- Our archives contain evidence of college endowment, administration, and finance from the outset, and our earliest documents are 11th-century title deeds.
- New College Library holds more incunabula (fifteenth-century European imprints) than any other undergraduate college at Oxford, and a very rich collection of other early printed books.
- Greek Book of Prophets (early 13th century), New College Library, Oxford, MS 44
- Anglo-Norman Apocalypse (1300–1310), New College Library, Oxford, MS 65
- Wycliffite Psalms (mid-15th century), New College Library, Oxford, MS 320
- Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia (1544), New College Library, Oxford, BT3.187.1(2)
- Hermann von Wied, Simplex et pia deliberatio (c. 1545), New College Library, Oxford, MS 136
- Christopher Saxton, Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales (1579), New College Library, Oxford, BT1.47.9
Wycliffite Psalms (mid-15th century), MS 320
This manuscript is bound before a portion of William Caxton’s The Golden Legend (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, 8 Jan. 1498[/99?]), hitherto unreported. Two Latin prayers conclude the manuscript, and at the end of the writing there is ‘By William Huchen’ in the red ink of the rubrication, showing that the writing and decoration were done by the same man.
Hermann von Wied, Simplex et pia deliberatio (c. 1545), MS 136
The first part of this volume is an incomplete manuscript translation into Latin, by King Henry VIII’s librarian Wouter Deleen, of the German printed book which follows it, Hermann von Wied’s Einfältiges Bedenken, worauf eine christliche, im Worte Gottes gegründete Reformation . . . anzurichten sei (Bonn: Laurenz von der Mülen, 1543). The whole is bound into a spectacular gold-tooled binding, by the so-called Flamboyant Binder, intended for the library of Henry VIII.
Saxton, Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales (1579), BT1.47.9
Produced in 1579, this is the first atlas created of any country. It contains 35 maps, all bearing the arms of Elizabeth I and Thomas Seckford, Christopher Saxton’s patron. Our copy was first owned by John Savile, the older brother of the Elizabethan scholar and courtier Sir Henry Savile, who founded the Savilian Professorships in Geometry and Astronomy, both of which are attached to New College.
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