RENAISSANCE MAN:

THE RECONSTRUCTED LIBRARIES OF EUROPEAN SCHOLARS, 1450-1700

Series One: The Books and Manuscripts of John Dee, 1527-1608

Part 2: John Dee's Manuscripts from Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Publisher's Note

“Renaissance Man” seeks to make available the actual volumes – printed and manuscript – that made up the libraries of some of the great European scholars in the period 1450-1700.

It does so without duplicating the work already done in the filming of English printed books listed by Wing and Pollard and Redgrave.  This project focuses on:

• Copiously annotated volumes which tell us much about the reading habits of scholars of this period
• Books printed on the Continent of Europe which necessarily do not feature in STC;

• Unique manuscript volumes owned or written by the collectors.

The project begins with the reconstructed library of John Dee (1527-1608), whose wide range of interests and great learning amply qualify him as a Renaissance Man.  The reconstruction is based on Roberts & Watson’s John Dee’s Library Catalogue published by the Bibliographical Society, London, in 1990.

John Dee is remembered as a mathematician, pioneer of navigation, alchemist, adviser to Elizabeth I, leading advocate of experimental science, magician, and as one of the most learned men of his day, possessing a most magnificent library.  He moved in esteemed circles and was variously sponsored and consulted by the Dudleys, the Sidneys, Sir Edmund Dyer, Walsingham, the Earls of Bedford, Derby, Leicester and Pembroke, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir William Pickering, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth I, Emperors Maximilian II and Rudolf II, M. de Monluc, Ortelius, and Prince Laski.

His preface to the first English edition of Euclid’s Elements in 1570 had an immense influence on the growth of the study of mathematics and on the use of mathematics in areas as diverse as land measurement and stagecraft.  Mathematics were also central to his advocacy of a positivistic scientific method, gaining knowledge through the accurate measurement and recording of repeatable experiments.  Dee’s manuscripts show that he was heavily influenced in this by the teachings of Roger Bacon, but Dee was able to reach a broader audience due to the power of the printed word.  His mathematical fame also rests on his reform of the English Calendar, and the fact that he was trusted with this task is testimony to the high regard that his contemporaries had for him.

In his Preface to the Elements of Euclid, Dee also championed the use of vernacular language to explain scientific theories which was instrumental in allowing learning to spread beyond the universities.

His importance in the fields of Geography, Hydrography and Navigation is best illustrated by the fact that he numbered amongst his friends and teachers Pedro Nuñez (the Portuguese Cosmographer Royal who was appointed Dee’s literary executor), Gemma Phrysius (the Flemish mathematician, cosmographer, and cartographer who taught Dee at the University of Louvain), Gerard Mercator (a fellow pupil of Phrysius), Abraham Ortelius, Oronce Finé and Christopher Saxton (who visited Dee at Manchester College).  Furthermore, during his long period of service for the Muscovy Company, Dee was himself responsible for the technical instruction of Richard Chancellor, Martin Frobisher, John Davis, Stephen and William Borough, Arthur Pet, Walter Raleigh, and probably, but not certainly, Francis Drake.  Dee was involved in the opening of mining ventures in England and in the planning of early settlements in Virginia.

Dee’s work in the fields of Alchemy, Astrology, and Magic brought him both prestige and notoriety.  Elizabeth I made frequent demands on his services and Dee’s skills were called upon, at Robert Dudley’s suggestion, to name the most favourable day for her coronation.  The Queen visited his library following his return from travels to Padua, Venice, Urbino, Pressburg and Antwerp (including a meeting with Conrad Gesner) and gave help to enable him to replace volumes which had been stolen whilst he was away.  As Dee’s books and manuscripts show, he became a fervent advocate of Paracelsus and was largely responsible for introducing Paracelsian ideas into England.  However, the distrust of magic and scepticism at his claims of talking to angels led to a degree of ridicule and disgrace during the reign of James I.

John Dee was also one of the first advocates of a national library, as his Supplication to Queen Mary in 1556 witnesses.  He proposed the gathering and copying (where volumes had to be returned) of books and manuscripts held by British owners and a series of purchasing expeditions to the Continent to enable British scholars to benefit from the new scholarship and learning that was a central part of the European Renaissance.  In the absence of any royal enthusiasm for such a project he set about creating his own library of printed works and manuscript volumes.  What he created was the largest private library in Elizabethan England with particular strengths in the fields of Alchemy, the Americas and the Indies, Astrology, Astronomy, Botany, Cabbala, the Fine Arts, Geography, Hebrew texts, History, Language and Literature (especially Continental literature), Logic, Magic, Mathematics, Medicine, Mining, Natural Philosophy, Navigation and Discovery, and Neo-Platonist texts.

Major authors featured include: Albertus Magnus, Alkindi, Aristotle, Roger Bacon, Cardano (whom Dee met in Southwark), Cicero, Copernicus, Dastin, Euclid, Ficino, Oronce Finé, Galen, Geber, Grosseteste, Hermes Trismegistus, Hippocrates, Jordanus, Bonus Lombardus, Ramon Lull, Pico della Mirandola, Antoine Mizauld, Sebastien Muenster, Paracelsus, Proclus, Ptolemy, Rasis, Strigelius and Tritheim.

The library was unlike those of contemporaries in its size, ambition and in the relatively small number of volumes devoted to Theology or Law.  It was notably up to date and reflected his desire to combine the best of ancient learning with the latest scholarship.  It was frequently consulted by his closest friend, the poet and courtier Edward Dyer, and by Raleigh, Leicester, the elder and younger Hakluyt, Thomas Digges, William Camden, William Bourne, Thomas Harriot, Robert Record, and Dee’s pupil, Sir Philip Sidney.

It is important to note that books printed in English or in England make up less than 6% of the printed volumes in the library – underlining the fact that the study of Early English Books can provide only part of the overall picture of Renaissance culture.

Dee’s library is an excellent source to explore in order to understand the mental framework and cultural context of English Renaissance writers, statesmen, scientists and explorers.

It will provide an important resource for those studying:

• Literary and Cultural studies
• The watershed between Magic and Science
• Seventeenth Century Book and Manuscript Culture
• The importance of early Arabic thinkers to the development of Modern Science
• The History of Mathematics
• The History of Geography and Exploration
• Intellectual History
• The History of the Book
• Reception Theory & Renaissance Reading habits
• Neoplatonism, Hermeticism & Paracelsian Science

The structure of Dee’s Library and of this project

Dee’s Library consisted of 2,292 printed volumes and 199 manuscript volumes according to his library catalogue of 1583.  This can be increased to c.2337 printed volumes and c.378 manuscript volumes if we add in materials known to have been in his library but not included in the 1583 catalogue.  Unfortunately, the library was dispersed both before and after his death, with the result that a reconstruction of his library involves tracking down his books and manuscripts in both private and public ownership around the world.  To date, some 344 manuscript volumes (91% of the original number) and 327 printed volumes (14% of the original number) have been traced in just over 50 libraries worldwide.

The first stage of this project is the bringing together on microfilm of these widely scattered, surviving manuscripts and annotated books.  All of these volumes have unique characteristics, so there is no overlap with any existing microfilm project.  This first stage will make approximately 9 parts.  Guides will provide details of the contents of all of these volumes.

The second stage will be to select representative editions of the other works known to have existed in Dee’s library.  This will be screened carefully to exclude volumes published in commonly available microfilm projects.  Our guides will detail which volumes have been excluded (with reasons – and references to their location in other projects where possible) as well as giving details of all volumes included.  This second stage will make approximately 4 parts.

The finished publication will provide Renaissance scholars with a detailed picture of Dee’s Library and will grant access to those texts which have hitherto been most difficult to consult.

The project will enable a more balanced view of Renaissance culture by providing copies of texts not previously covered by major microfilm projects.

In particular it will highlight the importance of the circulation of manuscript texts in the Renaissance period.  It also provides a practical way to supply copies of the most frequently consulted continental books.

The project will provide insights into reading habits in the period and into the remarkable character of John Dee.  He was, in Roberts and Watson’s words, “an owner, reader and persistent and detailed annotator of books over a very wide range of subjects.”

Part 1 of this project made available the large collection of manuscripts formerly in John Dee’s Library and now at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.  This second part makes available the considerable collection of John Dee manuscripts now at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  Together with the Bodleian Library manuscripts in Part 1 these represent c.40% of the total number of manuscripts known to have been in Dee’s Library.

These include medical texts, works on the spheres and on spirits, romances, saints’ lives, commentaries, grammars, and texts on astronomy, geometry, music theory, numerology and rhetoric.  It is not surprising that there are also a large number of volumes concerning Hermetic Philosophy, the Occult and Alchemy, as many of the key works in this area were only circulated in manuscript.

Arabic and Classical authors are all well represented in a list which includes Aegidus, Albumazar, Almanser, Althazen, Aquinas, Aristotle, Roger Bacon, Boethius, Walter Burley, Bernard of Clairvaux, Guido della Collumna, Euclid, Eusebius, Geber, Gregory, Grosseteste, Hermes, Hippocrates, Robert Holcot, Homer, Alanus de Insulis, Jordanus, Kratzer (in his autograph), Ramon Lull, John Lydgate, Albertus Magnus, Nicolaus, Ortolanus, Wilhelmus Parisienis, Pseudo-Archimedes, Pseudo-Aristotle, Pseudo-Lull, Ptolemy, Richard Rolle, Johannes de Rupescissi, Albert of Saxony, Statius, Urso, and Richard of Wallingford.

Volumes of particular interest in Part 2 include:

Ms 101 Works of Haly ibn Ridwan, Almanser, Ptolemy, Hermes and Bethen, and a commentary on Ptolemy.

Ms 125 A heavily annotated volume concerning Alchemy, the Occult, and Hermetic Philosophy, featuring Roger Bacon’s Speculum Secretorum, and other texts by Galfridus de Vino Salvo, Albertus Magnus, Hermes, Geber, Nicolaus, and others.

Ms 135 An account of the causes and cures of illness and the only known text of Sydracon – a 13th Century Chanson de Geste.

Ms 149 A heavily annotated volume containing the works of Roger Bacon and Aristotle.

Ms 191 A list by Dee of books owned and borrowed.

Ms 220 A 15th Century text of Adam Carthusianus’ Treatise of the 6 masters, the 12 prophets, and other works, and Rolle’s The Boke of the Crafte of Dyinge and A treatise of gostely battaile.

Ms 224 A 12th and 13th Century composite volume containing Boethius’ Arithmetica and Musica and Euclid’s Geometrica.

Ms 232 A 13th Century manuscript of Grosseteste’s Le Château de l’amour and the Life of St Mary of Egypt.

Ms 237 The lives of St Katharine and St Margaret, John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady and an English translation of The Pilgrimage of the Soul.

Ms 254 An Almanack for 1583 by Dee and 3 letters from Walsingham to Dee.

Ms 255 A commonplace book with miscellaneous notes by Dee including pedigrees of King Philip of Spain, the Indian prince Altabalipa, the kings of Mexico, and Queen Elizabeth I, presumably for use in casting horoscopes.

Ms 283 Various works on the astrolabe and astronomy, Euclid’s Optica, and texts by Ptolemy, Pseudo-Aristotle, and Gregory the Great.

The final reel of this second part contains an annotated printed volume of John Dee’s now held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC (the only Dee volume at this Library).  The volume is a collection of works by Iamblichus, Synesius, Psellus, Ficino and others, originally published in 1516.

Dee’s library can be used for far more than the study of Dee himself.  It provides evidence of the interdisciplinary and multicultural approach to learning in the period and provides an excellent starting point for any investigation of the contemporary appreciation of magic, the sciences, exploration and discovery, mathematics, neo-platonism and the influence of all of these on the literature of the period.

Supporting Comments

“The Renaissance Man project is an exciting development which will prove of inestimable value to scholars of the Renaissance concerned with the circulation of texts and the uses made of them, with printing and publishing history, or with the intellectual background of individual scholars.”

Dr Elisabeth Leedham-Green

Deputy Archivist, and Fellow, Darwin College, Cambridge

“There are few seventeenth-century figures of whom it can be said that the books they had owned and written were almost immediately studied not only in England and in Western Europe but in Russia and America.  That could be said of John Dee in 1630, and the attention that he commanded then is no less widespread today.”

Julian Roberts and Andrew Watson

writing in John Dee’s Library Catalogue (Bibliographical Society, London, 1990)

“These projects will be of immense benefit to Renaissance scholars.  To start making known through Private Libraries in Renaissance England the contents of libraries belonging to individual people and then, by complementing this series through Renaissance Man, to make available copies of the more significant books and manuscripts owned by certain well-known people, is a marvellous service.”

Laetitia Yeandle

Curator of Manuscripts, Folger Shakespeare Library

“Any library of more than a few hundred volumes must be considered remarkably large for the sixteenth century ...  In 1582, the University Library at Cambridge only had about 451 books and manuscripts.”

Peter French

Discussing Dee’s library in John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London, 1972)

“The whole Renaissance is in this library.”

Frances Yates

Discussing Dee’s library in Theatre of the World (London, 1969)

“When it was catalogued in 1583 Dee’s Library was Elizabethan England’s largest – and for scientific subjects at least – most valuable collection of books and manuscripts …  The  collection was the result of an extraordinary commitment and energy in the preservation, collection, and management of textual information and as such it is central to an appreciation of both Dee’s life and the period in which he lived.  It is not only a monument to Dee’s scholarly interests and achievements; it is one of the great monuments of English Renaissance culture.”

Dr William H Sherman

writing in ‘A Living Library’: The Readings and Writings of John Dee (PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1991)

<back