A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College, Oxford, founded in 1314, still holds over seventy of the manuscripts it acquired during the medieval period, plus a few that were given in later years. In the first category is a splendid series of eighteen illuminated volumes of biblical commentaries which are a monument of the fifteenth-century Oxford book trade, and among the later acquisitions are several famous books: a copy of Suetonius' Vitae Caesarum owned and annotated by Petrarch, and two magnificently illuminated fourteenth-century psalters. This is the first catalogue of the Exeter manuscripts to be published since that of H. O. Coxe in 1852 which, although good for its time, no longer meets the needs of modern scholars. It is preceded by an Introduction on the history of the library based partly on evidence in the manuscripts and partly on information in the extensive series of Rectors' Accounts. Manuscript fragments now in the Library are also described, as are the few former Exeter manuscripts which have strayed to other libraries.