Library Newsletter Easter 2022

St John’s College Library Newsletter L

EASTER 2022

VOLUME 5, ISSUE 3

Learned societies and lists: awards, prizes, medals and lectures

Every year, as Biographical Assistant, I monitor announcements from numerous prestigious learned societies such as the Royal Society, British Academy, and Royal Society of Edinburgh, to check for any Johnians who have been elected to Fellowships, or who have had their achievements recognised through awards and prizes.

Such monitoring enables me to keep abreast of Johnians who are at the forefront of their fields, and greatly adds to the historical value of College records. Information is routinely fed through to the Master, and other College departments, for congratulation and dissemination. While the scope of monitoring to date has been UKcentric, increasingly I am searching international announcements from bodies such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the European Molecular Biology Organisation.

Some years ago, a list of Johnian recipients of the Royal Society’s Royal Medal was added to the website, followed thereafter by the Copley Medallists, and the Bakerian Lecturers. Johnian recipients of the Royal Medal included Sir Joseph Larmor for his contributions to mathematical and physical science. The College’s prestigious Larmor Awards for students who excel academically and contribute to the life of the College, are named after Sir Joseph Larmor. Sir Roger Penrose, another Johnian and a Nobel Prize laureate, received the Copley Medal for his contribution to the mathematical physics of general relativity and cosmology. He also created what has become known as the Penrose tiling pattern – an example of which forms the flooring of the main entrance to the Library. The Royal Society’s foremost lectures in the physical sciences are the Bakerian Lecturers – and to date, fifteen Johnians have delivered them.

During the 2020-21 academic year, a further premier award was added to our monitoring list and added to the College website, namely, the Croonian Lecture. In addition, we have discovered that the Royal Society awards many diverse prizes besides the Royal Medal, and these, too, have been added to the website.

Every year I am adding to the website the names of Johnians who have won prestigious awards. The Biographical Office is heavily reliant on Johnians providing information for our records, so please let us know of any more societies or awards that we might add.

Paul Everest, Biographical Assistant

Special Collections spotlight – MS D.6 ‘The Psalter of Robert de Lindesey’ This June, Kathryn McKee and I of the Library will be presenting an online lecture to members of the Peterborough Cathedral community about a manuscript once owned by an abbot of Peterborough, but now part of the manuscript collection held here at St John’s College in the Old Library. The manuscript (’MS D.6’ to give it its official reference number) is roughly 800 years old and is beautifully illustrated with scenes from the Bible on bright gold backgrounds applied so smoothly that the pages glow in the light when the book is open.

We do not know all of the history of MS D.6 before it came to the College, but we know that it was once owned by an abbot of Peterborough Cathedral because he very helpfully wrote his name in the book: *Psalterium Abbatis Roberti de l..d..ye glosatum* (The glossed Psalter of Abbot Robert de Lyndesey). Robert de Lyndesey was the abbot of Peterborough Cathedral from 1214 until 1222, and in his role as abbot, he would have been in charge of the community of monks that lived at Peterborough Cathedral and who followed a daily timetable of prayer, work, and collective worship. The word ‘Psalter’ is a technical term for the Book of Psalms, which is a section of the Bible that contains religious songs and prayers, many of which either praise God or ask God for aid. The Psalms were an integral part of monastic life as monks would recite the entire Psalter each week (all 150 Psalms!) in their private prayers and in their acts of collective worship. The Psalter was the subject of detailed study by Christians during the Middle Ages both because the lyric format of the Psalms meant that their complexities and allusions often only became clear through careful rereading of the text, and because although the Psalms were written centuries before the birth of Jesus, it was believed that some foreshadowed his life and future significance. Our MS D.6 is a ‘glossed’ Psalter, which is a term related to the word ‘glossary’ and means that the manuscript contains notes and commentaries alongside the Psalms to help readers to understand the text. The beautiful illustrations and the gold decoration in the manuscript

reflect the importance of the text in the lives of the people who made and used these books.

Kathryn and I will be discussing the significance of the manuscript, and how it came to the College, and much more besides in our talk on the evening of the 16th June, but in the meantime, the manuscript itself has been fully digitised and can be viewed on the College website: https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/manuscripts /medieval_manuscripts/medman/D_6.htm

Images: (Left) MS D.6, f. 31v, an illuminated letter ‘B’ at the opening of the first word Beatus (‘Blessed’) of the first Psalm.

(Right) MS D.6, f.87r, an illuminated and historiated letter ‘S’ depicting the story of Jonah who was swallowed by a big fish, but survived and returned to share the message of God.

Sarah Gilbert, Medieval Manuscripts Cataloguer For comments on this Issue, and contributions to future Issues, please contact Janet Chow. Email: jc614@cam.ac.uk; Tel: (3)38662

‘Or fetch me back that cloud again’ They have the internet on computers now, as Homer Simpson observed when The Simpsons was of cultural value; and I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but they have pictures on the internet. A picture, the saying goes, is mightier than four hundred swords, so jamming up the web’s floppy drives with sweet pictorial content is surely a good move.

Huge thanks to Katie, Jess and Sarah, who have yet to work in the Library outside a pandemic and hadn’t participated in one of these events before. They were bright, approachable and informative.

Were it not bound to rob me of one of the more interesting parts of my job, I’d push for those qualities to be requisites.

I called the exhibition ‘The Elements of an Old Library’ because it had elements in it and I am clever. But the event reminded me that the Old Library isn’t just made up of books and shelves and a floor: it’s a place of awe, curiosity, discovery, people, conversation, people, I said that, um, a floor, and shelves, and books.

Certainly the capacity to undertake said jamming was of much value during the lockdowns of the last couple of years. In the absence of physical exhibitions, we went online. One of the few positives of the pandemic was its highlighting of the demand for, and people’s ability to supply, more broadly accessible events.

Moving forward, it is hoped that the Library will make all events hybrid where feasible.

Still, the problem with the internet being full of images of interesting items is that people get used to them. However beautifully we photograph a medieval manuscript or a Victorian snapshot album, when you look at the reproduction you’re looking at a reproduction; you’ve not seen the object any more than a quick image search for ‘topical celebs’ means you’ve seen Billie Eilish, or Dante Alighieri, or Berk from The Trap Door.

So, we were delighted to open the Upper Library to the public on Saturday 9 April for the Cambridge Festival, with an exhibition loosely themed around the four classical elements. We didn’t, given COVID concerns, take the usual approach of throwing open the doors and letting the visitors pour in: instead, 125 places were available over five sessions. In the circumstances, this felt like a huge number. And the day was a happy one: visitors seemed absorbed, and had good questions.

The online version of ‘“Weigh me the fire”: The Elements of an Old Library’ can be viewed at https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/weigh-mefire-elements-old-library Image: The qualities of the elements, from MS E.4, 11th–13th century.

Adam Crothers, Special Collections Assistant

Upcoming exhibition on space and time It’s tradition that the Library Graduate Trainee curates an exhibition using material from the Old Library’s Special Collections. But with 50,000 early printed books to choose from, not to mention the many collections of personal papers and manuscripts, it’s hard to know where to begin.

I decided to take inspiration from one of my favourite Working Library displays so far, which was on the topic of science fiction. In my research for that, I was struck by the number of Johnians who had been fascinated with science and space – not just as fiction writers, but as researchers and educators. The College itself was home to its own observatory between 1765 and 1859, a wooden

structure which was built on the roof of Second Court and which was overseen by Johnian astronomers like William Ludlam, Rev. Thomas Catton and John Couch Adams.

Reflecting the interests of the early modern university and later private collectors and donors, the College’s Special Collections also include a large selection of books on science and astronomy. The early modern printed collections will form the primary basis for the in-person exhibition, but alongside there will also be an accompanying online exhibition which will provide the additional context of some medieval scientific thought. In true sci-fi fashion, I have chosen ‘space and time’ as my general theme: the exhibition

will take a journey through both as it traces developments of ideas about time, tracked in the collections of St John’s. The exhibition area’s longcase clock – which is actually an astronomical regulator designed by London clockmaker, John Shelton – will have its day in the spotlight!

The development in understanding the mechanisms of space and time is an interesting case-study for how science was

changing over the period in question. Scientists and other thinkers continued to refine their knowledge, drawing on the work of previous scholars, but also pushing boundaries. It’s interesting to reflect on this progress and to consider how the ways that we think about space and time have (or haven’t) changed since then, and which modes of thought – like medical astrology – people came to treat with increasing scepticism even during the early modern period.

The Exhibition runs from 17th June in the Library Exhibition Area and will be open Monday to Friday, 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. excluding bank holidays.

Image: A Zodiac Man, showing the influence of the signs of the zodiac on the human body, from MS K.26, a 14th-century Psalter.

Jess Hollerton, Graduate Trainee

Brutal reality: how the British justified extreme imperial violence It’s a precarious privilege to stand on a pedestal: recent controversies surrounding the statues of British imperialists, such as Cecil Rhodes, in our civic spaces prove as much. In March 2022, Harvard History Professor Caroline Elkins weighed into public debate about Britain’s imperial legacy with the publication of an unflinching new history of the British Empire. Her novel approach (reflecting broader shifts in political culture) is to tell imperial history through what she sees as its salient feature: extreme violence. Legacy of Violence is accordingly a chronicle of appalling brutality, for in their efforts to advance their imperial interests the British employed fecal and water torture, castration, sodomy with broken bottles and vermin, forced marches through landmines, shin screwing, electrocution, fingernail extractions and mass public executions.

Elkins’ aim is not chiefly to detail violent incidents, but to prove the centrality of violence to British imperial doctrine. The British justified extreme violence to themselves, she argues, through the ‘ideology of liberal imperialism’, which managed to integrate liberalism’s stress on ‘self-reliant, rights-bearings individuals’ with sovereign claims over peoples to whom such rights were denied (12). The British navigated this paradox through a narrative of benign reform: it was the ‘White Man’s Burden’ to shepherd backward races into the modern world (13). Those who resisted were quelled with what Elkins terms ‘legalised lawlessness’ (129),

the system whereby Britain spread the rule of law, but in the face of rebellion suspended and amended legislation, loopholed its way out of human rights agreements and destroyed official records, ensuring that wayward subjects could be ferociously brought into line.

When Britons were polled in 2014, nearly 60% of respondents agreed with the statement: ‘the British Empire is something to be proud of’ (660). Elkins’ decision to focalise British imperial history through its violent episodes is a deft strategy for countering assumptions of imperial benevolence. It also muffles selfjustificatory comparison (‘the French were far worse’). The magnitude of her meticulous archival research, as she traces the circulation of personnel and methodologies of suppression ‒ always with Whitehall’s complicity ‒ across two centuries and four continents, presents a formidable challenge to anyone inclined to dispute her claims. That said, the scrupulous doggedness with which Elkins shores up her argument surely makes Legacy of Violence, at 875 pages, daunting for the general reader. Those unfamiliar with the subject should begin with the lucid introduction and epilogue, and it is here that Elkins makes her most salutary point: that liberal imperialism lives on in Britain today, not least through racial attitudes and visions of Empire 2.0.

Legacy of Violence will no doubt spark debate, and has already received criticism from scholars whose erudition rivals Elkins’ own (see The TLS, 15 April 2022). Nevertheless, Elkins has sounded a supremely authoritative note in the clarion call for Rhodes to fall.

Anna Plumridge, Fellow in English