Weapons of Mass Destruction and Archbishop Cosmo Lang

Archbishop Cosmo Lang

The phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ is one with which we are all too familiar. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 it found its way to the forefront of topical conversation. Today, with North Korea making threatening noises, the phrase is again making headlines. It may be surprising for some to discover, not only how old the term is, but that it was likely to have been used in public for the first time by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang.

Lang, who was Archbishop between 1928 and 1942, is probably best remembered today for his involvement in the abdication crisis. However, he has also left an indelible mark on the English language. In a sermon preached on 26 December 1937, entitled ‘Christian Responsibility’ (LPL ref: Lang 271 ff. 286 – 293), Lang emphasised the importance of individual moral responsibility within ‘the vast machine of modern civilisation’ (LPL ref:Lang 271 f. 287) and discussed with sadness a seemingly elusive peace. He was speaking in the wake of Japan’s invasion of China and the civil war in Spain was raging. It was an uncertain, turbulent world in which few believed that the fragile peace left following The Great War could be maintained.  In the sermon Lang reflected on the conflicts in China and Spain and asked, ‘Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?’

It is often stated that Lang’s use of the phrase was a direct reference to the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by the Luftwaffe in April 1937 in support of Franco.  However, Lang does not make direct reference to the bombing of Guernica but instead refers to ‘the manifold misery brought by war to Spain and to China’. Nevertheless, the civilian slaughter at Guernica must have been on Lang’s mind and has in any case become emblematic of the destructive power of modern warfare.

Lambeth Bible and Maidstone Bible to be re-united

Isaiah being sawn in two. Lambeth Palace Library MS3 f198v

The Lambeth Bible, a giant illuminated Bible of the mid-twelfth century, is one of the finest examples in this country of Romanesque book illustration and one of the greatest treasures of Lambeth Palace Library, where it has been since 1610. The second volume of the Bible, separated from it during the sixteenth century and only identified in 1924, is now at Maidstone Museum.

By kind permission of Maidstone Museum, and in conjunction with Christopher de Hamel’s lecture to the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, Who commissioned the Lambeth Bible?, both Bibles will be on display in the Great Hall of Lambeth Palace, offering an historic opportunity to see the two manuscripts together for only the second time since the Reformation.
Lecture (for Friends of Lambeth Palace Library): 3pm, Tuesday 4 June, in the Great Hall, Lambeth Palace SE1 7JU

Viewing:
Wednesday 5 June at 11am, 12 noon, 2pm and 3pm
Thursday 6 June at 11am, 12 noon, 2pm and 3pm

Viewing on these two days is free and open to all, but please book in advance, giving your name, contact details and choice of day and time. Access at these times only via the main Gatehouse of Lambeth Palace (opposite Lambeth Bridge), where a register of names will be kept.

To book a viewing, email: LibraryFriends@LambethPalace.org or tel: 020 7898 1263.

To join the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, please see the Library’s website:
http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/files/friends_leaflet_2013_low.pdf

Sponsored by the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library

www.lambethpalacelibrary.org

Society of Saint John the Evangelist records go ‘live’

The first batch of material from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE) collection is now catalogued and available via the National Church Institutions’ Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue.

A religious community for men, the SSJE was founded in Oxford on the 27^th December 1866 by Richard Meux Benson and existed for more than 150 years before its work in Britain ended in 2011. Missionary work overseas was a central aim of the Society, with professed members, all of whom adhered to monastic vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience, working with lay members in conducting overseas missions, particularly in South Africa and India.

The Society’s properties in Oxford and London were open to both clergy and lay people as places of retreat and for quiet contemplation, and Fathers of the Society preached in churches all across England. Their workload in this respect was quite heavy. For example, in 1948, when the Fathers numbered just four, they preached at over 100 individual churches (and several times at a number of them).

Records now available include those about how the Society and its members were governed, minutes from the meetings of the General Chapter and several committees, records from the London Houses of the Society and those created by the Trust Association formed to manage the properties owned by the Society.

The early release of this material is aimed at maximizing access to a collection which is being catalogued as part of a project due for completion in late November 2013.

Cataloguing LPL’s (not only) Greek manuscripts

Hebrew annotation in the Octateuch MS 1214

For the last ten years Lambeth Palace Library and the Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway, have been engaged in a fruitful collaborative partnership. Lambeth has been pleased to welcome students to annual Greek Palaeography workshops using the collection of fifty-three Greek manuscripts acquired during the four centuries since the Library’s foundation. This palaeographical work led to an exhibition of some jewels of the collection for the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies in London in August 2006 and the production of the first complete inventory of the collection. Now, thanks to a very generous grant from the A.G. Leventis Foundation, work has started on a detailed analytical catalogue. According to Dr Christopher Wright, one of the research team, the project has made discoveries that cast light on the diversity of cultural communities and interactions across linguistic and religious boundaries in the Byzantine Empire, where most of these codices were produced.

Dr Israel Sandman has assisted the project team by examining Hebrew annotations in the Octateuch MS 1214, which was copied in 1103 for the Byzantine governor of Cyprus by a scribe named John Koulix, who described himself in his colophon as a foreigner and whose surname may indicate that he was of Russian origin. It has been found that most of the Hebrew annotations mark the beginnings of the Scriptural passages read in sequence in synagogues on the Sabbath through the course of the year. Palaeographical analysis suggests that the notes were added by members of the Jewish community in the Byzantine world, probably in the 15th century. Thus it seems that this manuscript, though originally produced for a Greek Orthodox imperial official, later passed into Jewish liturgical use. Such use was compatible with Jewish law, Greek being the one permitted alternative to Hebrew for the Torah reading.

Recently further cross-cultural connections have come to light in MS 1179, a Gospel book probably produced in the 11th century. The sequence numbers of its quires have been identified as Armenian numerals, indicating that the codex was bound by an Armenian, either originally or in some later rebinding. This element of the manuscript’s history may also be reflected in annotations which have been added in the margins at various times, including prayers for the protection of the individuals who wrote the notes and for the souls of others. These are written in Greek, but the standard of language is generally very poor, sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility, which may indicate that those who wrote them were not native speakers, while two of those commemorated appear to bear specifically Armenian names. The use of the Gospels in Greek suggests that the owners of the codex did not live in the Armenian lands but in the migrant communities to be found in many places across the Byzantine Empire. Such communities were an important presence on both sides of the Sea of Marmara, which may help to explain the manuscript’s eventual acquisition by the Greek monastery of the Holy Trinity on the island of Chalke in that sea, where it was purchased in 1800/1.

Gresham Lecture -The Historic Collections of Lambeth Palace Library

Our Librarian and Archivist, Giles Mandelbrote, gave a Gresham College lecture entitled The Historic Collections of Lambeth Palace Library on Wednesday, 20 March 2013, at the Museum of London. The video of that lecture is now available.

Religious Archive Group Conference

View of London from Lambeth Palace (including Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral): print by Joseph Constantine Stadler after Joseph Farington, 1795

Lambeth Palace Library will be represented at this year’s Religious Archives Group (RAG) conference by the Librarian and Archivist, Giles Mandelbrote, and the Library’s Senior Archivist,  Dr Rachel Cosgrave. Declan Kelly, the Director of Libraries, Archives & IT for the National Church Institutions, will also be attending. The conference will take place on Friday 26 April 2013 at the London Metropolitan Archives and is entitled Localism in Religious Archives. The programme includes speakers on archives across a range of religious denominations in London and elsewhere.

RAG, which is chaired by Dr Cosgrave, is a voluntary association for those interested in the collection, preservation and use of religious archives, and personal papers of religious leaders. It also hosts an email discussion list and current projects include involvement in a support plan for religious archives, in alliance with The National Archives, Archives and Records Association and other partners.

A turn-up for the books

Daniel Cellarius. Speculum orbis terrarum (Antwerp, 1578). One of the recovered books.

The latest issue of The Spectator (13 April 2013) contains a long article by Professor James Carley about a remarkable group of books which has miraculously found its way back to Lambeth Palace Library after many decades.

Early in 1975 the Lambeth Palace Librarian noticed a troubling gap on the shelves where some important books had been kept. The books could not be found and a search of the rest of the Library showed that this gap was not unique. On examining the card catalogue it was discovered that the catalogue cards for the missing items had also been removed. This made it difficult to ascertain exactly what was missing but it was thought that around sixty items had been removed from the Library. The police were informed and the bookselling community notified. None of the books was recovered, however, and the trail went cold.

Over thirty-five years later, in February 2011, the newly appointed Librarian, Giles Mandelbrote, was contacted by a solicitor who was dealing with the estate of the culprit, who had recently died. The solicitor had received a letter containing a full confession and giving the location of the books. In a London attic the Librarian and a colleague discovered not 60 books but around 1,400 individual titles. The recovered books included numerous rare and important volumes, many of which were beautifully illustrated. A large proportion of the books had belonged to the libraries of the Elizabethan and Jacobean archbishops John Whitgift, Richard Bancroft and George Abbot and had been part of the Library’s original foundation collection in 1610.

This important group of books has come back to Lambeth Palace Library where it is being catalogued and where our team of conservators are repairing the damage that had been done in trying to remove all traces of the original provenance of the books. They will soon be available for consultation by scholars.

Read the full version in the online Spectator. Professor Carley has also written a picture essay about this for the April edition of the BBC History magazine.