Return to Conservation Projects list

Conservation at the Bodleian Library on Radio 4

John Waite recently recorded an extended interview about conservation at the Bodleian Library with David Howell, Nicole Gilroy and Andrew Honey for a radio documentary entitled Protected by Faith. The programme will be broadcast on Thursday 17 December, 2009, from 11.30 am - 12.00 noon on BBC Radio 4.

The interview began with a discussion of the recent conservation of two very different manuscripts, a medieval illuminated parchment manuscript, MS. Laud misc. 740, and MS. Don. e. 7, a fair copy, in Jane Austen's hand, of her earliest works.

John Waite then asked how conservators approach items with a religious significance. An important example in the Bodleian collections is the Shikshapatri (Bodleian MS. Ind. Inst. Sansk. 72), a small manuscript in Sanskrit and Gujarati. The Shikshapatri is an example of the type of Hindu literature known as Dharmashastra or rules of ethical conduct for day-to-day life, and it holds a central place in the religious life of followers of Swaminarayan. The manuscript was given by Swaminarayan to Sir John Malcolm, the Governor of Bombay, on 26 February in 1830 and was later given to the University of Oxford. The manuscript holds such significance for the followers of Swaminarayan, a Hindu sect with 70,000-100,000 followers in the UK, that the library receives hundreds of requests by followers to have 'darshan' of (pay religious reverence to) their holy manuscript. The interview discussed how this manuscript is safely made available to pilgrims by conservation staff. (Note: Darshan has been temporarily suspended during the project to refurbish the New Bodleian Library and it is planned that the manuscript will go on public display for more prolonged periods in the new exhibition space once the library is re-opened.) For images, see the Bodleian Library digital image collection, "Masterpieces of the non-Western book"

The conservators also discussed two manuscripts of St. Anselm in Bodleian collections. Anselm is arguably the most significant theologian and author ever to hold the office of Archbishop of Canterbury. Commemorating his death in April 1109, the Bodleian Library's Centre for the Study of the Book hosted a day convened by Richard Sharpe, of the History Faculty, University of Oxford, at which several significant Anselm manuscripts were examined and discussed. Following the colloquium two manuscripts in need of conservation were selected for treatment. MS. Bodl. 271 is an important early copy of Anselm's collected works from Christ Church, Canterbury; it includes the Monologion, Proslogion (famous for its 'ontological proof' of the existence of God), Cur Deus Homo, and other texts, and was probably compiled shortly after Anselm's death. A second part, also Anselmian, was added in the 15th century, when the manuscript gained its current binding. It was given to the Bodleian in 1616.

MS. Auct. D. 2. 6 is a composite volume, containing three separate 12th-century illuminated texts: a liturgical calendar from St. Albans, a Psalter from Winchester, and a copy of Anselm's Prayers and Meditations (read today by a wide public in the Penguin Classics translation by Sister Benedicta Ward SLG), with an important series of illustrations. The three parts seem to have been combined by the time the manuscript belonged to the Benedictine nunnery of Littlemore near Oxford, in the later Middle Ages. It was given to the Bodleian in about 1672. The work on these two manuscripts will start in January 2010.