In the middle of a day of frenetically taxi-driving kids around assorted South Cambridgeshire villages, I managed to sneak in a brief cultural interlude. I cycled into Cambridge with my friend Helen and spent a lovely hour admiring the manuscripts in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi - on display as part of the Open Cambridge weekend.
This beautiful elephant was painted in around 1300. The artist has almost certainly never seen an an elephant, working from descriptions he's heard - probably not even first hand. Hence, the rather fanciful trunk, and the hooves. In another elephant drawing of the same period, it is claimed that elephants had no leg joints, so if they fell over they couldn't right themselves.
Another MS in the library shows a more realistic elephant drawn from life - the first ever elephant in Britain, presented to Henry III and kept in the Tower of London in 1255. Sadly, the poor animal was fed on meat and lived for only four years.
About the Parker Library...
"The Parker Library's holdings of Old English texts account for a substantial proportion of all extant manuscripts in Anglo-Saxon, including the earliest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (c. 890), unique copies of Old English poems and other texts, and King Alfred's translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care. The Parker Library also contains key Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts ranging from the Ancrene Wisse and the Brut Chronicle to one of the finest copies of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. Other subjects represented in the collection are theology, music, medieval travelogues and maps, apocalypses, bestiaries, royal ceremonies, historical chronicles and Bibles. The Parker Library holds a magnificent collection of English illuminated manuscripts, such as the Bury and Dover Bibles (c. 1135 and c. 1150) and the Chronica maiora by Matthew Paris (c. 1230-50)"
Can you squeeze an elephant into an adventure? I must get organised with Open CAmbridge - shame these libraries won't let dogs in then I could kill two birds with one stone ;0)
September 13th, 2011
Leave a Comment
Sign up for a free account or Sign in to post a comment.
