Christopher Francis Rivers de Hamel FSA FRHistS (born 20 November 1950) is a British academic librarian and expert on mediaeval manuscripts. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and former Fellow Librarian of the Parker Library. His book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is the winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for 2016 and the Wolfson History Prize for 2017.
Christopher de Hamel was born on 20 November 1950 in London, England. [1] At the age of four he moved with his parents to New Zealand, where he was educated at King's High School, Dunedin, and graduated with an honours degree in history from the University of Otago. [2] [3]
He was subsequently awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree by Oxford University [4] for his research on 12th-century Bible commentaries. [5] His thesis was titled "The production and circulation of glossed books of the Bible in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries". [6] He has been awarded honorary Doctorates of Letters from the University of Otago [3] and from St. John's University, Minnesota.
Between 1975 and 2000 de Hamel worked for Sotheby's in its Western Manuscripts Department. [7] He was elected as the Donnelley Fellow Librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in 2000, [3] and elected a member of the Roxburghe Club the following year. [8]
He held the 2003–2004 Sandars Readership in Bibliography. [9] He delivered the 2009 Lyell Lectures at Oxford University on the subject of "Fragments in Book Bindings". [10] In 2017, his then-newly-published Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, and won both the £40,000 Wolfson History Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. [11]
De Hamel has written a number of historical works within his field of expertise: [12]
An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers and liturgical books such as psalters and courtly literature, the practice continued into secular texts from the 13th century onward and typically include proclamations, enrolled bills, laws, charters, inventories, and deeds.
Western calligraphy is the art of writing and penmanship as practiced in the Western world, especially using the Latin alphabet.
The Codex Amiatinus is considered the best-preserved manuscript of the Latin Vulgate version of the Christian Bible. It was produced around 700 in the northeast of England, at the Benedictine Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in the Kingdom of Northumbria, now South Tyneside, and taken to Italy as a gift for Pope Gregory II in 716. It was one of three giant single-volume Bibles then made at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, and is the earliest complete one-volume Latin Bible to survive, only the León palimpsest being older. It is the oldest Bible where all the biblical canon present what would be their Vulgate texts.
The St Augustine Gospels is an illuminated Gospel Book which dates from the 6th century and has been in the Parker Library in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge since 1575. It was made in Italy and has been in England since fairly soon after its creation; by the 16th century it had probably already been at Canterbury for almost a thousand years. It has 265 leaves measuring about 252 x 196 mm, and is not entirely complete, in particular missing pages with miniatures.
The Roxburghe Club is a bibliophilic and publishing society based in the United Kingdom.
Richard Ovenden is a British librarian and author. He currently serves as the 25th Bodley's Librarian in the University of Oxford, having been appointed in 2014. Ovenden also serves as the Director of the Bodleian Library's Centre for the Study of the Book and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College. Ovenden is a trustee of the Chawton House Library and vice-chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation. In 2009, he was elected third chair of the Digital Preservation Coalition, succeeding Ronald Milne and Dame Lynne Brindley in a post he held until 2013. and returning in 2015 to the honorary position of President of the DPC. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2015. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, having been elected in 2008.
Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell was an English museum curator and collector. From 1908 to 1937, he was director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. He was knighted in 1934.
The Parker Library is a library within Corpus Christi College, Cambridge which contains rare books and manuscripts. It is known throughout the world due to its invaluable collection of over 600 manuscripts, particularly medieval texts, the majority of which were bequeathed to the college by Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker, a former Master of Corpus Christi College.
Samuel Sandars was an English bibliographer, barrister and university benefactor.
Jonathan James Graham Alexander, FBA, known in print as J. J. G. Alexander, is a medievalist and expert on manuscripts, "one of the most profound and wide-ranging of all historians of illuminated manuscripts".
The Panizzi Lectures are a series of annual lectures given at the British Library by "eminent scholars of the book" and named after the librarian Anthony Panizzi. They are considered one of the major British bibliographical lecture series alongside the Sandars Lectures at the University of Cambridge and the Lyell Lectures at Oxford University.
The Sandars Readership in Bibliography is an annual lecture series given at Cambridge University. Instituted in 1895 at the behest of Samuel Sandars of Trinity College (1837–1894), who left a £2000 bequest to the University, the series has continued to the present day. Together with the Panizzi Lectures at the British Library and the Lyell Lectures at Oxford University, it is considered one of the major British bibliographical lecture series.
The Lyell Readership in Bibliography is an endowed annual lecture series given at the University of Oxford. Instituted in 1952 by a bequest from the solicitor, book collector and bibliographer, James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell. After Lyell's death, Keeper of the Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Richard William Hunt, writing of the Lyell bequest noted, "he was a self-taught bibliophile and scholar of extraordinary enthusiasm and discrimination, and one who deserves to be remembered not only by Oxford but by the whole bibliographical world."
Kathleen L. Scott is a codicologist specialising in 15th-century English manuscripts. An independent scholar, she is associated with the University of Massachusetts.
Nicolas John Barker is a British historian of printing and books. He was Head of Conservation at the British Library from 1976 to 1992.
David John McKitterick, is an English librarian and academic, who was Librarian and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
The Simon master was a manuscript illuminator who lived in 12th-century Paris and later moved to St Albans during the time of Simon (1167–1183), Abbot of St Albans, after whom he is named by art historians.
Sir George Frederic Warner, FBA, FSA was an English archivist; he was Keeper of Manuscripts and Egerton Librarian at the British Museum from 1904 to 1911.
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World is a 2017 book by historian Christopher de Hamel that explores the European medieval world through an in-depth study of 12 illuminated manuscripts. It won the Wolfson History Prize in 2017.
Anthony Robert Alwyn Hobson, FBA was a British auctioneer and historian, specialising in the history of books.
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