Cotton Library

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The Lindisfarne Gospels is but one of the treasures collected by Sir Robert Cotton.

The Cotton or Cottonian library was the library compiled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571 - 1631), antiquarian and bibliophile. Cotton's library was just that: the books, manuscripts, coins and medalions he had collected in his personal estate. Cotton amassed his collection by gathering up the books and artifacts freed up by the dispersal of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Consequently, his collection is the single greatest resource of literature in Old English and Middle English we have. We owe Beowulf, Pearl, and the Lindisfarne Gospels to Cotton's collection.

The leading scholars of the era came to use his library. Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, James Ussher and others came to use his works. Upon the foundation of the Bodleian Library, he made a substantial contribution.

The Cotton Genesis was all but destroyed in the Ashburnam House fire.

His grandson, Sir John Cotton, gave the rest of the library to the nation of Great Britain. The library went first to Essex House, the Strand and then to Ashburnham House, Westminster. On 23 October 1731, there was a fire in Ashburnam House, and many manuscripts were lost, while others were badly singed (about a quarter of the collection was either destroyed or damaged). The librarian, Dr. Bentley, escaped the inferno clutching the Codex Alexandrinus under his arms, a scene witnessed and later described in a letter to Charlotte, Lady Sundon, by Robert Friend of Westminster School. Fortunately, copies had been made of some, but by no means all, of those works that were lost.

Robert Cotton had organized his library according to the corner and shelf of a book. He had busts of the various Caesars in his library, and his scheme worked by Caesar-Shelf letter-Volume number from end. Thus, the two most famous of the manuscripts from the Cotton library are "Cotton Vitellius A.xv" and "Cotton Nero A.x." In Cotton's own day, that meant "Go to the bust of Vitellius, top shelf (A), and count fifteen over," for the monstrarum librarum of the Beowulf manuscript, or "Go to the bust of Nero, top shelf, tenth book" for the manuscript containing all the works of the Pearl Poet. In the British Museum, these two priceless books are still catalogued by these call numbers.

The Cotton library is now part of the British Library.

Selected Manuscripts

• Augustus
• *ii.106 Magna Carta: Exemplification of 1215
• Caligula
• *A.ii "A Pistil of Susan" (frag.) (probably by Huchoun)
• *A.xv Easter Table Chronicle
• Claudius
• *B.iv Cotton Genesis (fragmentary)
• Cleopatra
• *A.ii Life of St Modwenna
• Domitian
• *A.viii: Bilingual Canterbury Epitome (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle F)
• *A.ix fragment of the Bilingual Canterbury Epitome (ASC H), futhorc row
• Faustina
• *A.x Additional Glosses to the Glossary in Ælfric's Grammar
• Galba
• *A.xviii Athelstan Psalter
• Julius
• *A.x Old English Martyrology
• *E.vii Ælfric's Lives of Saints
• Nero
• *A.x Pearl
• *D.iv Lindisfarne Gospels
• Otho
• *A.xii Battle of Maldon (destroyed in 1731)
• *B.x Mary of Egypt (fragmentary)
• *B.x.165 Anglo-Saxon rune poem (destroyed in 1731)
• *B.xi.2 fragment of the Parker Chronicle (the Winchester Chronicle)
• *C.i Ælfric's De creatore et creatura
• *C.v Otho-Corpus Gospels (fragmentary)
• Tiberius
• *A.vi Abingdon Chronicle I (ASC B)
• *A.xiii Worcester cartularies
• *B.i Abingdon Chronicle II (ASC C)
• *B.iv Worcester Chronicle (ASC D)
• *B.v Labour of the Months
• *C.ii Bede, Ecclesiastical History
• Titus
• *D.xxvi Ælfwine's Prayerbook
• Vespasian
• *A.i Vespasian Psalter
• *D.xiv Ælfric's De duodecim abusivis
• Vitellius
• *A.xv Nowell Codex (Beowulf, Judith)

Literature

• Colin G. C. Tite, The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton, Panizzi Lectures 1993, London (1994).
• Christopher J. Wright (ed.), Sir Robert Cotton as Collector, London (1997).

External links

• http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/chartwww/antiquaries.html

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