‘So that the Fellows of our College may persevere to be of one mind inwardly and to be more closely united in mutual charity . . .’: The Annual Liveries of Fellows and Scholars of Medieval New College

Christopher — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 13:47:31 +0000

‘So that the Fellows of our College may persevere to be of one mind inwardly and to be more closely united in mutual charity . . .’: The Annual Liveries of Fellows and Scholars of Medieval New College

Timothy Hallett

Issue number

(2025): 23

Notes category

Livery

William of Wykeham

New College history

New College, Oxford, possesses some of the most extensive and detailed accounts of any medieval collegiate foundation in Oxford and Cambridge. Amongst the 58 account rolls made by early wardens or bursars between 1376 and 1529 we find regular allocations of cloth, and sometimes furs, given as annual livery to the academic �鶹app established by William of Wykeham. Medieval accounts can be used in combination with the founder’s statutes and surviving pictorial evidence to gain insight into the reasoning behind academic livery, the vendors who supplied cloth and furs, costs and quantities of cloth and furs, the design and colours of academic livery, plus rules on the attire which was also prohibited to members of the college.

The college porter ejects a youth, in distinctly unclerical garb, who is not a member of the college.
New College Archives, Oxford, NCA 3584

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

23NCN2 (2025) Hallett on Liveries.pdf1.02 MB

The Mappa Mundi in Oxford, New College, MS 274 and the Aristotelian Theory of Elements

Christopher — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 19:11:38 +0000

The Mappa Mundi in Oxford, New College, MS 274 and the Aristotelian Theory of Elements

Alfred Hiatt

Issue number

(2023): 20

Notes category

One of several intriguing features of MS 274 is the map of the world that appears prior to the manuscript’s copy of the first nineteen books of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. It was clearly designed to express the Aristotelian theory that only the known world, comprising Asia, Europe, and Africa, protruded above the ocean, in opposition to theories that proposed the possibility of antipodal lands beyond and beneath the known world.

World map in a 12th-century English manuscript of Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio
Trinity College Library, Cambridge, MS R.9.23, f. 60v [detail]
© The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College Library, Cambridge

20NCN2 (2023) Hiatt on MS 274.pdf365.62 KB