A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library (review)

It is still not widely known that the cathedral church at Worcester houses one of the best-preserved book-collections to have survived from medieval England. [End Page 89] There are few churches, colleges, or schools of medieval origin whose early libraries are more complete—amongst the cathedrals, only Durham has more pre-Reformation books—and none which displays the same remarkable degree of continuity, retaining books or fragments of books dating from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries in the same room (above the south aisle of the nave) which has stood for over six hundred years. The majority of the medieval books now in the collection were those copied, compiled, or otherwise acquired by the monks of the Benedictine priory that served the cathedral until 1540. But there is also an important group of manuscripts that came to the collection from other medieval institutions nearby, notably the Cistercian abbey at Bordesley and the mendicant convents at Chester, Hereford, Shrewsbury, and Worcester. The collection as a whole cannot be distinguished for the antiquity, beauty, or rarity of its books. But it does reveal the whole variety of texts—homilies and meditations, academic textbooks, Latin literature, preaching aids and sermons—which shaped the intellectual culture of religious communities across the Middle Ages.