A University historian has played a key role in the launch of a new online project to share and investigate Rochester Cathedral’s library collection.
Dr Jayne Wackett, of the University’s School of History, worked with the cathedral’s library to develop a new bi-monthly online feature, known as Leafing through the Library.
The first instalment of Leafing through the Library was published on 1 March and features an article on Textus Roffensis, written by broadcaster and historian Michael Wood.
The article describes how the Textus Roffensis book was written at Rochester Cathedral in Old English and Latin almost one hundred years before the Magna Carta in 1122-24. Some of the laws it records stem back a further four centuries to the year 600, from the first Christian kingdom in Kent.
Among these laws were a softening of the death penalty to remove those under the age of fifteen, and a series of compensation tariffs for third person injuries whereby a front tooth is worth six shillings and a thumb is worth twenty.
Leafing through the Library will feature digital images from Rochester cathedral’s library to accompany articles examining the content, context and significance of a wide variety of books.
The new venture will provide easier public access to ‘wonderful hidden gems’ and put their historical significance into context, as well as offering ideas and explanations of the symbolism and meaning of their images and text.
Other books to feature in the Leafing through the Library commentaries will be, amongst others, Henry VIII’s Great Bible, one of only thirty-five copies of the 1662 Sealed Book of Common Prayer, a 1744 navigation atlas and Isaac Newton’s observations.