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- Our collections of manuscripts and rare books are famous the world over, with our earliest 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.
- New College Library also holds more incunabula (fifteenth-century European imprints) than any other undergraduate college at Oxford.
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.
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