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The Library of Saint Alban’s English College Valladolid: Censorship and Acquisitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Michael E. Williams
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Extract

The English seminary of St. Alban Valladolid in Spain has an up to date theological library with books in both Spanish and English. As an establishment dating back to 1589 it also possesses many books of antiquarian interest. The older books belonging to the college owe their present arrangement to Edwin Henson. During World War II as Rector he was for several years the only permanent resident in the college and he spent much of his time cataloguing and indexing the archives and library. There are two rooms: the eighteenth century style Biblioteca or Big Library with 6765 volumes and the smaller enclosed repository known as the Pigskin Library (Biblioteca de Piel) containing 2881 volumes.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , May 2002 , pp. 132 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2003

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References

Notes

1 E.C.V. Serie II Legajo 16 p. 92.

2 This is an imperfect latin version.

  • (a)

    (a) Instead of original title page there is inserted a printed page ‘registrum hujus operas libri cronicarum cum figures et ymaginibus ab initio mundi’ and below is written in pen ‘In luce edita anno Dni 1492’.

  • (b)

    (b) Folios VI, VII, CLXXXIII recto, CLXXXIIII verso, CCXCVII, CCXCVIII are not printed but written in hand following the style and replicating the printed pages. The same holds for the final page which is not numbered but in fact is folio 300 verso.

  • (c)

    (c) Between folios CCLXVI and CCLXVII there are inserted 5 unnumbered folios ‘De Sarmacia regione Europe. De Regno Polonie et eius initio.’

  • (d)

    (d) Several pages are blank, presumably these should contain full page engravings.

  • (e)

    (e) The final page gives 1493 as the date of completion of the work.

3 The works bound together are:

  • (a)

    (a) Summa utilissima dialectice Oxoniensis. 9 logical treatises (34 folios) ‘Exacta nobili in civitate Hispaleñ impensis largissimis Laza ri de Gazanis viri optimi. Arte quoque precellenti Ioannis Pegnicer de Nuremberga alemani’. 1503.

  • (b)

    (b) Preclarissimi viri Gualteri Burlei . . . super artem veterem Porphyrii et Aristotelis expositio (95 folios) no date or place.

  • (c)

    (c) Opera Moncagate in Logica. Super Isagogis Porfirii commentaria (27 folios) Commentaria ad categoras Aristotelis (52 folios). Super sex Principias Gilberti Porretani commentaria (22 folios). Venetiis 1494 in officina Magistri Petri Cremonensis.

  • (d)

    (d) Tractatus de primo et ultĩo instati excellentissimi artiu~ et medicine doctoris Magistri Menghi Blauchetti Faventini (30 folios) Impresse Ferrarie Per Magistrům Laurentium de Rubeis de Valentia et Andrea” de Grassis de Castronovo socios 1492.

The ‘visus mark’ only appears on the first page i.e. treatise (a) above. Another incunabula B3630 containing the works of Boethius, printed Venice 1492 would appear to have been acquired from the Jesuit college at Palencia after the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits.

4 PI 198 is a similar collection of treaties printed cir. 1520 and includes works of Albert the Great and Bradwardine. This has no ‘visus’ mark.

5 For Benjamín Ruiz see E.C.V. Serie II L 3 under ‘Bluet’. Also The English College Madrid C.R.S. 29 p. 32In. Ruiz is a Spanish version of Wright. Benjamin Wright was an Englishman resident in Spain and connected with the Jesuits.

6 Juan de Pineda S.J. was at one time associated with the English colleges at Seville and Valladolid and was engaged in work for the Inquisition. José Luis González Novalin, ‘La Inquisición y la Compania de Jesus (1559–1615)’ Anthologia Annua 41, pp. 83–97. Martin Murphy, St. Gregory’s College Seville 1592–1767, C.R.S. 73, pp. 15, 117.

7 C.R.S., 73 refers to the involvement of the English Jesuits in the censoring of books in 1606 Seville.

8 As well as the censor’s markings P2261 carries the inscription in ink ‘We be three Lancashire lads’. Could this be a reference to the Veles incident of 1635? See M. E. Williams, St. Alban’s College Valladolid, pp. 44–45.

9 Holt, G., English Jesuits 1650–1829 C.R.S., 70, p. 266 Google Scholar under ‘Wilkinson’.

10 T. McCoog, English and Welsh Jesuits 1555–1650, C.R.S., 75, p. 288.

11 William Sankey was also responsible for the censoring of a copy of the second folio of Shakespeare’s plays which the Valladolid college once possessed. This was sold in London in 1928 by Maggs Brothers for £1000. E.C.V. Legajo 507. In The Times of London 10 & 11 April 1922 there are two articles on this copy of Shakespeare by Sir Sidney Lee. Par, Alfonso, Shakespeare en la Literatura Española (Madrid 1935)Google Scholar refers to Otto Kastner as the purchaser.

12 For an account of the change in the administration of the college: M. E. Williams, St. Alban’s College Valladolid, pp. 71–95 and ‘St. Alban’s College Valladolid and the events of 1767’, R.H. 20 (1990), pp. 223–238.

13 Williams, M. E., ‘Philip Perry Rector of the English College Valladolid (1768–1744)’; R.H. 17, (1984), pp. 48–66 Google Scholar. Also article in forthcoming New Dictionary of National Biography.

14 Perry presented a copy of Butler’s Lives to the Library (B3892-B3903). This was the 1756 edition. Shepherd made a gift of the 1779 edition (B2720-B2731). B2732 is Butler’s posthumous Moveable Feasts and Fasts. A Spanish translation of Butler’s Lives came out 1789–1791. There is no copy of this in the college library, but there is one in Valladolid at Santa Cruz.

15 In E.C.V. there is a letter from Perry to Bolton his agent in England February 22 1772 and letters to Bishops Talbot and Hornyold April 6 1771 and April 24 1772, concerning the transfer of books to Spain. Also B.A.A. C682 and C683. B6016 is Strype’s Memorials of the Most Reverend Father in God, Thomas Cranmer.

16 It is the 1687 edition of Campion’s work. The Valladolid copy of Fisher’s Spiritual Consolation is not recorded in Allison & Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter Reformation, vol. II.

17 B1301 is Shepherd’s copy of D. Joannis Mabillon Praefationes et Disputationes (Trent 1724).

18 Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time (1995) gives an account of English antiquarians of the seven teenth century. For antiquarian interests among Roman Catholics: Williams, J. Anthony, ‘Change or decay? The Provincial Laity 1691–1781’ in Duffy, E. (Ed.): Challoner and His Church (1981), pp. 27–54 Google Scholar, G. Scott, Gothic Rage Undone (1992) pp. 145–170, Gooch, L., The Religion for a Gentleman R.H. 23, (1997), pp. 543–568 Google Scholar, Murphy, M., ‘A Jacobite antiquary in Grub Street: Captain John Stevens (c.1662–1726)’, R.H. 24, (1999), pp. 437–454 Google Scholar.

19 Further Hearne editions include B1500 Textus Roffensis, B1957, B1958 The Annals of the Priory of Dunstable, B3599 Rerum Anglicorum scriptorum veterum.

20 Before Perry went to Spain he had shown Challoner the MS of his Life of Grosstete. Challoner considered that it would not be edifying for English Catholics because it spoke of Grosstete’s contention with the Pope and called attention to the abuses in ‘the supreme ecclesiastical power’. When he was in Spain Perry rewrote the Introduction he had written to the Life defending his mention of the abuses in the Church and pointing out that Our Lord himself had said there would be scandals in the Church and the enemy would sow tares among the good corn, that although he seems sometimes to be asleep the Lord is in the barque of Peter and will calm the storm. ‘The evil therefore is not in opposing open abuses, for how could they be remedied unless laid open? Nor is the evil in relating them, for this is justified by the pen of the inspired writers who relate the misconduct . . . The evil then is in the manner and intention of laying open or relating such abuses. Men of God have done both with a vigorous but humble zeal, with a view to see them corrected and in this they did a good and necessary work. Others have ripped them up with an intention only to expose the sovereign pastors of the Church.’ See Williams, M. E. ‘English Manuscripts in Scottish Archives’ The Innes Review XXXIV (1983), pp. 93–95 Google Scholar.

21 E.C.V. Serie III Legajo 2 and 4.

22 M. Defourneaux, Inquisición y Censura de Libros en la España del siglo XVIII (version española de J. Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras. Salamanca 1973). For the situation as it affected St. Alban’s E.C.V. Legajo 169.

23 According to A.G.S. Estado 6988 a similar gift was made to the British Museum and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

24 Perry could not avoid some involvement. One of the students had a copy of Messengui’s Expositon de la doctrine crétienne. This book had been condemned by Clement XIII as Jansenistic and harmful to papal authority. Charles III refused to publish the papal condemnation in Spain but the Inquisitor General did publish it. Perry seems to have been more afraid of the possible harm to the reputation of the college among Catholics in England should they leam of its presence, than to the damage it might do to the students. He ordered that the book should be kept in the rector’s study. M. E. Williams, St. Alban’s College. Valladolid, pp. 102–106.

25 Bolton to Perry September 22 1772. E.C.V. Perry Correspondence.

26 These may be the 22 volumes of Ceillier that Alban Butler bought for 143 livres in Paris for Perry when he was resident at Hassop before his appointment to Valladolid. Butler to Perry August 18 1762, E.C.V. Perry Correspondence.

27 Hernandez, F. M. & Hernandez, J. M., Los Seminarios Españoles en La Epoca de la Ilustración (Madrid 1973)Google Scholar.

28 Williams, M. E., The Venerable English College Rome. A History 1579–1979 (1979), p. 84 Google Scholar.

29 J. T. Rhodes, Ushaw College Library (1994).

30 Long after Perry’s death, John Lingard was in communication with the rectors of the English and Scots colleges in Valladolid concerning documents in the Spanish archives at Simancas. The rector of the English college was Thomas Sherburne who for a time governed the college from his parish in England at Kirkham not so v ery far from Lingard at Hornby. The rector of the Scots College was Alexander Cameron who was a nephew of Alexander Cameron the Vicar Apostolic and whose book-plate is to be found in the Perry manuscripts now held in the Scottish Catholic Archives in Edinburgh. The Innes Review XXXIV (1983), pp. 93–95. For Lingard see Jones, Edwin, The English Nation, The Great Myth (2000), especially pp. 188, 193, 194Google Scholar.