York Minster

An Archbishop’s dream (735 – 852 CE)

More than 1,200 years ago some of the most important scholars in the Early Middle Ages started a chain of events that were to give birth to the most important Library in Europe outside of Rome. King Egbert, who was a disciple of the Venerable Bede, the father of English history, received the archbishop’s Pallium in 735 CE. He had a dream of turning York into a significant learning centre.

A school would be the first step towards his dream. The international reputation it later achieved had to do not only with the liberal arts taught there, but with the important collection kept in its brand new Library thanks to the passion of Archbishop Ethelbert (767-780), successor of Egbert. The new archbishop had a sheer love for books and travelled as far as Italy and France to get books to copy in York.

In the late 770s it was time to hand the task of looking after the Library to someone younger and more energetic. Archbishop Egbert appointed his very close friend Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus, better known as Alcuin. The scholar, who would later become one of the architects of the Carolingian Renaissance, presided over York Minster Library from c. 778 to 781.

Alcuin’s catalogue of the Library included 40 authors featuring many of the Church Fathers and classic names that shined in the ancient glory of Greece and Rome: Pompeious Trogus, Pliny, Aristotle, Cicero and Virgil. Book requests were made much after Alcuin’s departure to Frankland in c. 852, on the eve of a war.

Candles extinguished (852 - 1414)

There were rumours coming from abroad. Some said that the present terror of the world were warriors and sailors who never surrendered, who never stopped until getting all the booty they could carry. In 793 the rich monastery of Lindisfarne was burned down to ashes. In 866, the feared warriors were heading towards York. When the city was taken by warriors, known as Vikings, York Minster and its Library were completely destroyed. Buildings can be reduced to ruins, candles can be extinguished. But ideas survive.

Some books belonged to the Minster and were kept within it, like Bibles and books of prayer, but there was not an effective Library as Europe’s centre of learning moved from Britain to France. Thomas de Bayeux (d. 1100), the first Norman archbishop of York, provided his new and magnificent Minster with some books but York was not included in any of the eleven Yorkshire libraries of Henry of Kirkstead’s 14th century Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiae. Candles still had to wait before they could light another Minster Library.

Tacking into the wind (1414 – 1809 )

In the decades prior to the 16th century, the few books used in the Minster were kept in a chest or perhaps a cupboard. In 1414, Canon John Newton bequeathed his collection of manuscripts in at least 40 volumes, catching the momentum of what E.A. Savage called the “age of Library building”. The present York Minster was about to be completed after 250 years of ongoing works and the Chapter finances looked suddenly sound. The conclusion was obvious: Archbishop Ethelbert’s dream was back.

The new building was attached to the Minster’s South entrance and accessed by a spiral staircase. The collection kept growing stronger with new acquisitions of books that were to be used in the Minster’s liturgy, with the best copies secured by a chain but allowing certain books to be borrowed. By 1536 the number had reached 193 books just before the shadow of the Reformation appeared: then donations stopped, Catholic books were removed and manuscripts were sold or replaced by printed copies.

Archbishop Tobie Mathew (1606–1628) was an eager book collector, even if that meant keeping books that he himself had banned as a member of the Council of the North. His collection included 3,000 volumes when, in 1629, his widow donated it to the Minster. The Minster Library had to accommodate them in 13 bays and Canon Timothy Thurscross was the one responsible for cataloguing these new additions. He took it as a penance for his past simony: every day from 6 to 10am in the merciless York winter with no fire for comfort.

More donations followed and Precentor Thomas Comber realised the need for a more effective organization. In 1707, he introduced the first regular income for the Library: a mandatory donation from every newly appointed Canon or dignitary in the Minster. From 1716 to 1820, more than 1,200 loans were registered by 179 different borrowers. Laurence Sterne (author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy) was one of the regular users

In the pale moonlight ( 1810 – 1944 )

It started to look obvious that the collection of nearly 8,000 volumes was struggling in its Minster home. In 1810 the idea arose of refurbishing an old 13th century archbishop’s palace in Dean’s Park, its home nowdays, and shortly thereafter the collection was moved. The collection looked very good after Edward Hailstone bequeathed 10,000 volumes to the Library in 1890 but the accounts did not; a new source of income was found in the lease of a Minster property to take over the mandatory donation but the expenses proved too hard to tame: the deficit mounted to nearly £800 just before the 20th Century started.

In the 1920s the only income topping the Library’s accounts was £200 a year: just enough to open the premises two mornings a week and pay the staff salaries. Just over 200 books were borrowed a year and the old Library, founded more than a thousand years ago, seemed destined to a prolonged and irreversible decline. And it still had to receive one final blow.

The chief architect in charge of the Minster suggested to the Chapter that urgent funding was needed in order to prevent an immediate collapse of the building. There were no funds at hand and the architect’s shadowy forecast was enough to convince the committee to turn their attention to the Library. Many old books were sold to raise money for the planned repairs, including a 1519 Erasmus’ New Testament, in what was one of the darkest episodes in the Minster’s history. The exploitation of this collection was not even used for a restoration work that proved not to be as urgent as initially thought and many considered the episode to be the last of a saga that started in 735 CE. But dreams die hard: against all the odds, the Library’s finest hour was still to come.

Growth and change (1945-1997)

Ironically the £20,000 from the book selling ended up in the new Library Fund that started in 1945 and allowed the collection to expand again. In the 1960s the north wing was added in order to ensure the preservation of the Hailstone collection; in 1963, thanks to the impulse of Dean Milner-White, a second extension served as reading room and in 1965 the accomodation in the lower hall was doubled. With the second extension in 1970, suddenly the old Library was shining again.

The 1960s also saw the new alliance with the new founded University of York, keen on historical and academic resources available in the Minster Library. Today, that alliance is stronger than ever. The Service Level Agreement between the University and the Dean & Chapter ofYork includes a seconded University member of staff, co-joined cataloguing facilities, and guaranteed free usage to all students and staff.

In 1998, the available space was doubled thanks to a £1m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to open a new reading room with disabled access, a special collections room and a state-of-the art conservation studio. All that happened before the sunrise. Nobody was ready for what the sunset was about to bring.

For Tomorrow (1998 – 2008)

In the years following the completion of the Alcuin Wing the whole future of the Library came under scrutiny and there was a very difficult period from 2003 when it was by no means certain what shape or size the Library's function would be in the  Minster's life. Happily, we are now in a period of development and growth, as the resources of the Minster are called upon to be part of the York Minster Revealed project.

Today’s library is sustained by numerous contributors with the main support it receives from the Dean & Chapter of York. In 2007, it boasted more than 5,000 usages in the busiest year since records started and nearly 4,000 books were borrowed. An archivist, a conservator, a librarian, three full-time assistants and over three dozen volunteers try to keep the finest Cathedral Library in Britain in good shape. And also try to keep an old archbishop’s dreams alive.

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Largely based on C.B.L. Barr: York Minster Library, from A History of York of York Minster edited by G.E. Aylmer and Reginal Cant, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1977.

Period 1998-2008 based on Internet press research and personal witnesses.