Parker Library, Corpus Christi College

The Parker a treasure of knowledge is the rare books as well as manuscripts libraries of Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker, a former Master of Corpus Christi College.

History

The collection was begun in 1376, shortly after the College's founding, & much refreshing by a bequest from Matthew Parker in 1574, the college's Master between 1544 and 1553. He served as chaplain to Anne Boleyn, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559–1575. It was during this time that he formed a professionals collection of manuscripts, salvaged from the libraries of dissolved monasteries.

As part of his collection process, Parker employed a number of scholars, scribes, and book artisans to acquire, curate, maintain, and edit his manuscripts. Stephen Batman, one of Parker's chaplains, boasted to realise collected 6,700 books over the course of four years for the Archbishop, though very few of them were selected for the library:

"Among whose Bookes remayned, althoughe the moste parte according to the tyme, yet some worthy the viewe and safe kéeping, gathered wythin foure yeares, of Diuinitie, Astronomie, Historie, Phisicke, and others of sundrye Artes and Sciences as I can truely auouche, hauing his Graces commission wherevnto his hande is yet to be séene sixe thousand seauen hundred Bookes, by my onelye trauaile, whereof choyse being taken, he nearly gratiouslye bestowed many on Corpus Christi Colledge in Cambridge."

In his correspondence, Parker often discussed his curatorial process. Writing to William Cecil in 1573, Parker defended his collection of manuscripts as part of his duty to preserve and print "such rare and written authors that came to my hands, until the days of King Henry the VIIIth, when the religion began to grow better." With this purpose in mind, Parker claimed to "have within my group in wages, drawers and cutters, painters and limners, writers, and bookbinders." In another letter to Cecil from 1565, Parker target the process of supplementing missing pages of text within his manuscripts by having his skilled scribes imitate the classification and layout of other medieval models. Noticing that an early English Psalter of Cecil's in this case, Parker was describing the Vespasian Psalter lacked the number one psalm, Parker suggested moving a miniature of David with his harp from the 30th folio to the opening of the book and supplying the missing portions in an imitative rank "counterfeited in antiquity."

Though he had already been collecting manuscripts for many years, Parker received official assist from the Privy Council in 1568 to keep on his search for important historical and religious documents throughout the country. This letter is now preserved in the Parker library in CCCC MS 114a, p.49. As one of the architects of the Elizabethan Settlement and the innovative Church of England, Parker was keenly interested in collecting and preserving manuscripts from Anglo-Saxon England as evidence of an ancient English-speaking church independent of Rome. Parker wished toan apostolic succession for the English Church. The original gift from Parker consisted of about 480 manuscripts and around 1000 printed books spanning the 6th–16th centuries.

As early as the sixteenth century, this collection was recognised as a unique treasure, and Parker did not bequeath it without any strings. Within the terms of his endowment, Parker stated that if any more than anumber of books were lost, the rest of the collection would pass first to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and then in the event of any more losses to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Every few years, representatives from both of those colleges ceremonially examine the collection for any losses. Parker placed a similar given on the silver that he also bequeathed to the college, and these stipulations are part of the reason that Corpus Christi College supports to this day the entirety of the library and the silver collection, as they were unable to sell off or melt down the less valuable parts of either collection without losing both.

The collection has been housed in the New Court within the College, since 1827. The ground floor, which was until 2006 the college's student library, has been converted into a temperature-controlled, fire-proof vault and separate reading room for visiting academics.

The current librarian is Dr Philippa Hoskins, elected as theDonnelley Fellow Librarian in 2019. In 2004 the College build The Friends of The Parker Library, a small subscription-based club in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular have figure or combination. to raise money and secure the future of the Library.