Along with the gift of the Bible, Christianity passed on to the world a uniquely convenient means of transmitting the written word, by popularising the codex --- the book in the form in which we now think of it --- with pages we can turn.
The scrolls of the ancient classical world, on which the gospels and other Christian writings were first set down, were awkward to use and transport, confronting the reader seeking to verify an accurate reference or simply find a passage with an unwieldy length of papyrus or parchment to unroll. The small booklets, already used for small-scale note-taking and other secular purposes, were adopted by second-century Christians who realised their value, when stitched together, for transmitting the Scriptures in portable form. The codex rapidly took over from the roll as the normal format even for the grandest of books, with the result that the very word `volume' (from volumen, a roll), implies something quite different today.
The Scriptures, the Liturgy of the Church, and the works of commentary or meditation upon the Scriptures were the foundational Christian books. Early manuscripts were comparatively plain and lacking in decoration. Such is the Codex Bezae in Cambridge University Library, an incomplete manuscript of the New Testament dating from about the year 400, with the Greek and Latin texts facing one another. Written in a utilitarian uncial script (a kind of rounded capital) with minimal decoration, its place of origin has been variously put as Beirut, Egypt or the Rhone Valley. It was associated with the Church of St Irenaeus in Lyons before it was eventually presented to Cambridge University by the Calvinist Theodore Beza in 1581.
With the growth of imperial, royal and noble patronage of the Christian Church, manuscripts increased in splendour. The famous gospels in Corpus Christi College Library upon which Archbishops still take their oath may well have been brought over to England by St Augustine of Canterbury in the late sixth century. The splendid illustrations in classical style would have served to impress new converts among the subjects of King Ethelbert of Kent. Even more splendid amongst manuscripts of the early Middle Ages were the gospel books given to great abbeys and other churches by ecclesiastics and princes, where magnificence of script and illumination matched the sacred splendour of the words, the honour of the altar upon which they might be kept, or indeed the secular status of the individual who presented them to the Church.
Developing in parallel with such major works were liturgical and devotional manuscripts, at first rather workaday, but gradually increasing in elaboration of script and decoration, such as the Book of Cerne in Cambridge University Library, which contains extracts from the Passion narratives of the four evangelists, together with an important collection of private prayers, apparently associated with a ninth-century Bishop of Lichfield. By the end of the thirteenth century, Great St Mary's had its own working collection of over a dozen liturgical service books for the use of the clergy.
The practical needs of the Church fostered the development of new methods of layout and new types of script. The great twelfth-century glossed books of the Bible set out the scripture text prominently on the page, on widely ruled lines. The commentary or gloss was set out on narrower lines, usually in the proportion of two narrow to one wide text line. Decorated and illuminated initials (that is, making use of gold or silver) not only enhanced the appearance and value of the work but were used to order the layout and clarify the meaning of the text. With the rise of the schools and universities, further layouts were developed and new faster and highly abbreviated scripts were used to copy works of biblical commentary or canon law in bulk.
The University Church of St Mary by the Market was used for University ceremonies and, like other town churches, for the witnessing of legal documents. Close at hand were the stationers' shops, selling parchment; it was probably here that students could rent sections of text to take away and copy, part at a time. For, while splendid manuscripts both secular and sacred would continue to be made, books had become the unexotic commodities of academic life. With the invention of printing, the ideas of the Reformation would have an even greater ease of propagation amongst the people at large. Literacy would grow in response to this, and manuscripts, other than compilations by private individuals, would become obsolete.
But the elucidation of the text of the Scriptures continues as never before as scholars continue to work with originals and facsimiles, and the codex is transmitted on CD Rom and the Internet.
These ancient books are normally made available only to those scholars who need to see them, by special application. But the Codex Bezae (MS. Nn. 2. 42) and the Book of Cerne (MS. Ll. 1. 10) are currently on exhibition to the public with other treasures in the new Exhibition Gallery at Cambridge University Library until 24 October. The Fitzwilliam Museum also has a permanent display of particularly fine manuscripts.
As a new year begins, this issue of Majestas takes a look at literature and publishing.
In terms of the Christian Faith, it would be hard to overestimate the importance of the written word to our belief in a God whose Word ``made his dwelling among us''. The primary text is of course the Bible, and, as each new generation of Christians discovers, its power to speak of God, and God's way with us in Christ, has in no sense diminished. But much of the vitality of the faith also shows itself in the tireless energy of believers to write about their understandings and experiences of God and to offer them to others. The history of one of the most important Christian publishing houses, SPCK, is explored in an article by Sheila Cameron. It is significant that the biggest specialist bookshop in Cambridge is still the one that now bears SPCK's name on King's Parade.
The other side of the picture is the influence the incarnate Word has had on the printed word. The importance of the Bible to the development of the printing press is well known and has a particular poignancy in a city that boasts of the oldest printing house in the world. But the influence on technology goes back a long way before that. Jayne Ringrose, in the front-page article, explains the crucial role played by the Bible in leading people to adopt the codex, or book, in place of the manuscript as the principal medium for the written word. The picture that emerges of the Church in the past as a masterful innovator in the field of infomation technology raises important questions about how churches will use the electronic forms of communication (like CD Roms and the Internet) that are increasingly gaining a foothold today. In a world in which the instant global communication of ideas is becoming ever easier, the quality of the content offered must become a more and more significant factor. This is not just an issue of good design and presentation. It a matter of confidence in the truths that Christians bear witness to, and in their relevance and appeal for all people.
For any word to recover its meaning, it has ultimately to make the transition back off the page or screen. Privately this involves reading. Publicly it involves performance. In this connection David Hollier recalls the career of one of the University's most well-known figures and his connection with the Arts Theatre --- George `Dadie' Rylands. The Church has long understood the power of theatre in communicating the meaning of the written word. Our week-by-week worship, our liturgy, is almost entirely a performance of the Word. Just about every word spoken draws its origin from the scriptures. At the Parish Communion, the procession of the Bible into the midst of the people for the Gospel reading is itself a symbol of its purpose, making the Word flesh.
A series of talks on International Debt and World Development is being jointly run by Great St Mary's and the Harambee Centre for Development Education (who have an office in St Michael's) this autumn. All sessions will take place on Sunday evenings, in St Michael's, Trinity Street beginning at 8pm (except on 15th November).
All are invited. The full programme is as follows:
The August break this year took the Parish Choir, plus five from the Girls' Choir, to Bristol. Practice and Evensong at the cathedral became focal points of the day, with Choral Eucharist on the last Sunday before departure. Day trips were arranged to Bath, Wells and Weston-super-Mare, as well as local excursions to the Clifton Suspension Bridge and other places of local interest (picture below).
In all, a very happy and successful week, setting the standard for the action replay at a similar venue next year.
Choral Evensongs on Monday evenings at 6pm recommence on 12th October. The Choir comprises members of the University and others.
A choir from St Lamberti's Church, Hildesheim, Germany will be visiting GSM at the end of October. They will be singing, with the Parish Choir, on Sunday 25th October.
The Harvest Supper is taking place in St Michael's Hall on Saturday 10th October, beginning at 7.30pm. Tickets (£3.50 adults, £2.50 children) are available from the Church Office now (01223 350914).
Harvest Festival is Sunday 11th October. The preacher at the Parish Communion will be the Revd Geoffrey Pearson, who is the Chaplain to People at Work in Cambridge.
The Confirmation Service, with the Bishop of Huntingdon, will take place on Wednesday 28th October at 7.30pm. All are warmly invited.
Please remember in your prayers those to be confirmed: Barry Heafield, Martin Dixon, Ben Walsh, Rosie Parker, Jessica Pares Landells, Rebecca Hyde, Charlotte Lynn, Alicia Kearns, Eleanor Helps, Rebecca Atkinson, Cherry Wynn-Williams.
A Reqiem Mass, with the reading of names of the departed, is taking place on Monday 2nd November at 7.30pm in GSM. Names can be added to the list in church.
Thank you to all the children who sent in entries in the Junior Majestas summer colouring competition. The winners were Alex Wingfield (under 8) and Ben Hubbard (8-11). All entries have been acknowledged.
Can you discover the location of this object in Cambridge? Bring or send the answer, and your name and address, to Majestas, Great St Mary's, Cambridge CB2 3PQ, by 30th September. The first correct answer drawn out will win a book token for £10.
The image in the August/September issue is a sundial on St Botolph's Church.
Sheila Cameron traces the history of one of the leading Christian publishing houses.
Earlier this year the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge celebrated its tercentenary. By Christmas, Cambridge University Library will have acquired the Society's complete printed and manuscript archives, currently in the process of being transferred from its London headquarters. This means that soon there should be a copy in the UL of every SPCK publication ever issued --- some 40,000 in all.
Three hundred years ago, on 8 March 1698, five men met at Lincoln's Inn to make preparations for the departure of one of their number, the Reverend Thomas Bray, Rector of Sheldon and later of St Botolph's, Aldgate, for the colony of Maryland, to ensure that work he had begun would be continued in his absence. It is recorded that they were anxious to combat ``the growth of vice and immorality threatening to engulf the nation... greatly owing to the gross ignorance of the principles of the Christian religion'', and they decided to found a society which would support the Church of England by raising funds for schools and by producing and distributing Christian literature. The SPCK began to publish immediately, deciding at its second meeting to print and distribute Mr Keith's Narrative and Catechism, a pamphlet concerning a celebrated dispute among the Quakers of Pennsylvania.
So was launched one of the most successful religious publishing ventures ever. From the outset, in an environment in which the book trade was dominated by the twin pillars of printer and bookseller, the Society assumed a role approaching that of the modern publisher, financing and ordering print runs and acting as distributor. By 1712 subscribers were contributing between £2 and £10 a year and there were 80 London members. In the decades following, the Society commissioned and distributed many books and tracts for the poor, addressing every social and moral issue of the day and often targeting specific classes of reader such as servants, prisoners, innkeepers and schoolmasters. The Bible and Book of Common Prayer were regularly printed and distributed from 1705 onwards, and the first popular edition of the Bible in Welsh was issued in 1714. Overseas affairs were always a concern of the Society, and its interest in Danish Lutheran missionary work in India led to the publication of a Tamil New Testament in 1714 and the start of a long tradition of foreign language publishing. Materials in Arabic, Armenian, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish and Swedish quickly followed.
In 1832 the SPCK set up an Education and General Literature Committee to revise its range of publications, followed by a Foreign Translation Committee in 1834 and a separate Tracts Committee, with the aim of producing materials for all classes of society and not just the poor. Children's literature was given high priority, and several thousands of story books were published between 1840 and the late 1930s. There was also a keen Victorian market for illustrated periodicals, and the Society met this demand with several long-running titles.
Works of history and topography featured prominently in the Society's 19th-century list, as did popular scientific works with a Christian emphasis, in response to the secularisation of thinking and the challenge to orthodoxy. One title, Robert Ellis's The Chemistry of Creation, went into several editions from 1850 to enable ``the lover of nature... to trace in its varied and beautiful chemical phenomena the work of Him who is perfect in knowledge and excellent in working''. James Clerk Maxwell, regarded as the greatest physicist of his age, was commissioned to write Matter and Motion for the Society's Manuals of Elementary Science series in 1876. Zoology, botany, geology and astronomy were also represented in the SPCK list.
In the 1930s, the Depression forced the SPCK to specialise in
theology and worship materials. Currently the Society publishes
around 70 titles a year under three Christian imprints, SPCK, Triangle
and Lynx Communications, and a general imprint revived in 1973,
Sheldon Press. Children's literature and educational resources remain
important and are produced in many languages, as are teacher training
materials. SPCK authors are recruited from all denominations and
reflect a wide range of churchmanship. Since 1980 the Society has
published The Alternative Service Book, continuing its tradition of
publishing The Book of Common Prayer. The bi-monthly journal Theology
continues the periodical tradition. Rising to the challenge of the
1990s, the Society has recently established a website at http://www.spck.org.uk where
new publications are advertised (including currently Frazer Watt's
Science Meets Faith).
David Hollier explores some of the many bookshops in Cambridge and finds out their origins.
For hundreds of years Cambridge has been a city of booksellers and publishers. William de Nessefylde (1309) is the first bookseller known by name, although stationarii, agents of the University, were in place before that date to supply books to students and to act for those selling books.
Walter Hatley, bookseller and bookbinder, was also Parish Clerk of Great St Mary's, certainly from 1500 to 1504. At this time the Stourbridge Fair was held in Cambridge and booksellers from London and other parts of the country brought their books to sell in Booksellers' Row. In 1534 Henry VIII granted the University the right to nominate three printers and sellers of books to print books approved by the Chancellor and to sell them in the University and elsewhere. Nicholas Sperynge, Garret Godfrey and Segar Nicholas were appointed. In 1545 shops, including several booksellers and binders, were built at the west end of Great St Mary's. In 1587 Thomas Bradshaw was allowed to rebuild them against the wall and west window of the church. They were finally demolished in 1767.
No. 1 Trinity Street claims to be the oldest bookshop site in Britain. Books have been sold there since 1581 when the Poor Law Lists of this parish show that William Scarlett was living there. It may be that the bookbinder Sperynge lived there from 1505 to 1546 as the church's Parish Book of 1537 records the paving of the street ``on the church side towards the goodman Speryngs'', and so it may have been a bookshop as early as 1505. John Nicholson, nicknamed `Maps', (whose portrait is in the University Library) began his business near King's College gate and when he died in 1796 he was succeeded by his son who moved to 1 Trinity Street in 1807. He was followed by Thomas Stevenson who became Mayor of Cambridge. In 1845 Daniel and Alexander Macmillan bought the business but the publishing department was transferred to London in 1863 and became an independent firm. Robert Bowes joined his uncles Daniel and Alexander in 1840 and from 1863 to 1896 the shop was run as
Macmillan and Bowes. Robert Bowes' son George joined him in 1897 and the name Bowes and Bowes continued until Cambridge University Press opened its showroom and bookshop there in 1992.
G. David's bookshop in St Edward's Passage started as a market stall in 1896. David Asplin (great-grandson of the founder, Gustav David) explained: ``The market stall carried on and the shop opened in the early part of this century. It was where the Arts Theatre is now --- that was the original, very big shop. About 1945 we took the present shop and the other one closed. Then we took another one in 1953 and that ran until about five years ago, when we had to move out because of the redevelopment of the theatre.'' There are about 8,000 volumes in the shop and the stock comes from auctions, book fairs, other dealers and private sellers. A first edition of Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) was on the shelves at £2,400, but David Asplin said: ``One we had earlier in the year was a second folio of Shakespeare and that was £15,000.'' Brian Collings, Neil Adams and David Asplin now run the shop.
Ian Alister remembers buying at Gustav David's market stall as an undergraduate, but since 1981 he has run a bookstall on the market on four days a week, although the stall sold records for a few years because Alister & Garon are partners in the shop at 70 King Street. Hugh and Christine Hardinge run a bookstall on the market on Tuesdays (paperbacks) and Thursdays (secondhand and antiquarian books).
William Heffer (1843---1928) started a small general shop at 104 Fitzroy Street in July 1876, adding to the family income he earned as a Proctor's `Bulldog' and a college waiter. He was a devout churchgoer and was superintendent of the Sunday School. As business increased he took over 105 Fitzroy Street, a shop was opened in Petty Cury (1896), one in Sidney Street (1903) and then one in Trinity Street (1970), where 200,000 books are currently displayed. On 5th September Nicholas Heffer, William's great-grandson and now chairman of the company, announced that the firm with its eight shops was up for sale, ending a family connection which has lasted 120 years.
As well as Dillons and Waterstone's, there are also The Haunted Bookshop in St Edward's Passage and The Book Shop in Magdalene Street. John Ruskin said there were ``books of the hour and books of all time''. Whichever readers are looking far, there are plenty of booksellers in Cambridge.
Few people can claim two successful careers in a lifetime but that is what Sybil Marshall has achieved.
She was born and brought up in a Fenland village --- a Fen tiger, which is becoming a rare species. Sybil recalled:
``I was a smallholder's daughter from the absolute depths of the Fens and had a father who was completely uneducated. He left school when he was nine but educated himself. He read to me from the day I was born. By the time I went to Ramsey Grammar School I was acquainted with about six of Dickens's novels (I'd had them all read to me), utterly at home with Huckleberry Finn (and anything else by Mark Twain that Dad could get hold of), W.W. Jacobs and so on. I was really primed for literature.''
Unable to go on to university because a scholarship was not available, Sybil became a qualified teacher and she was soon running the one-teacher village school at Kingston, near Toft. Here for eighteen years she put into practice her ideas for integrated education --- an amalgam of activity and traditional teaching which linked school subjects instead of introducing them separately. She has referred to this as her ``symphonic method'', and later it formed the basis of her book Experiments in Education which became the handbook of students training as Primary School teachers.
Of present-day education she said: ``If they want `Education, Education, Education', it has to be the education of the intellect, it must be education in technology (because otherwise they would feel that they were letting the global economy down), but they must have the education of the spirit as well, and that comes down to the quality of the teacher.'' By spiritual she means anything which touches feeling or emotion such as a poem, a piece of music or a beautiful painting, or seeing Ely cathedral against a dawn sky: ``...it's an absolute uplift. I get out of bed to look at it every time there's a lovely dawn.'' A.S. Neill, a pioneering educationist who went on to found Summerhill School in Suffolk, wrote in similar vein in A Dominic's Log in 1915:
``I want to help them to find an attitude. Most of the stuff I teach them will be forgotten, but an attitude remains with one throughout life.''
From Kingston School Sybil gained an Extra-Mural Board bursary to read English at New Hall, Cambridge. She became involved in the training of teachers as Lecturer in Education at Sheffield University and then as Reader in Education at the University of Sussex, and so she may agree with her long-time favourite author Mark Twain, who wrote: ``Training is everything... cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.''
She said: ``The things that matter most of all are the three P's --- not play, puppets and plasticine; but professional teachers, practioners in the classroom and, most of all, the personality of the teacher.''
In 1965 Sybil devised Picture Box, a television programme for Primary Schools, and she was the programme adviser and wrote the Teachers' Notes until 1989.
After retiring from lecturing, she wrote her first books about life in the Fens --- The Silver New Nothing, Fenland Chronicle and A Pride of Tigers. Her Everyman's Book of English Folk Tales won the Angel prize for literature and she also wrote The Chequer Board, a book of short stories. Her first novel, A Nest of Magpies, was published when she was eighty and she went on to write Sharp Through the Hawthorn and Strip the Willow. In her study there is a photograph of the ceremony when she received an honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of Sussex.
She is optimistic about the future of books: ``I don't think we're ever going to be able to do without books. I don't think CD Roms and things like that are ever going to replace them. There will always be absolute bibliophiles. The actual dilemma I'm in at the moment is that my publishers objected to my book being too long, so they've chopped it into two. This one that I'm on was to be my swansong. It is about Charles I in the Fens in the five days between leaving Oxford in the middle of the night on 27th April and giving himself up at Southwell on 5th May.'' He is said to have travelled on the Ouse to Ely and on to Huntingdon, but Sybil said: ``He was a fool but he wouldn't have gone straight into Cromwell country if he could possibly have avoided it. Dad had worked it out for himself a long time ago: Charles came through our Fen and went off at Little Gidding. I said to my Dad when I was ten, `I'm going to write a novel about that one day', and that's what I'm doing.'' The story reveals what happened, and in her study Sybil has a Cavalier's sword and a Cromwellian shot which her grandfather found stuck in the wall of a church. Sybil enjoys recalling poems and her love of poetry is reflected in the title of her new book --- Ring the Bell Backwards. It will be published by Penguin in April 1999.
A Fenland tiger overcomes hardship and disappointment and doesn't give up, as Dr Sybil Marshall's life as a teacher and author has shown.
Dr G.H.W. Rylands CH CBE MA, Fellow of King's College, is an institution, if not a legend, at Cambridge University.
`Dadie' Rylands, as he is widely known, came from Eton to King's as an undergraduate in January 1921 and became a Fellow in 1927. He served the college as Dean (appointed in 1930), Bursar (1939), College Lecturer and Director of Studies. He was a University Lecturer in English Literature. The English Tripos was reconstituted around 1932, and he wrote (in Dick David Remembered) in 1994: ``English Literature had become a respectable discipline. Most colleges looked askance, reluctant to elect a Fellow to teach it --- a luxury they could not afford. Consequently I had taken pupils from half a dozen colleges by the time I retired.''
Whilst writing the dissertation for his Fellowship (``Words and Poetry''), Dadie worked for Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press and so became another link between Bloomsbury and King's. His rooms in the Old Lodge were decorated by Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey often visited. In Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Dadie was the host at the luncheon described at the beginning of the book.
Dadie's greatest contribution has been to drama and the theatre in Cambridge, London and beyond. From his first term at King's when he played Electra in Aeschylus' Oresteia he was the centre of the dramatic life of Cambridge. Maynard Keynes presented the Arts Theatre to a theatre-less Cambridge in 1936 and on his death Dadie became Chairman of the Trust from 1946 to 1982. It is not surprising that the rebuilt Arts Theatre has introduced Dadie's Bar (in St Edward's Passage). He directed John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft in Hamlet and The Duchess of Malfi in London and he became a Governor of the Old Vic.
In an address as Chairman of the Arts Theatre Trust at the launch of the Cambridge Theatre Club in 1953, Dadie said: ``Look to the future. That is the theatre's motto. The drama is of itself ephemeral, fleeting, precarious; reputations wax and wane overnight; a West End triumph is a flop on Broadway --- and vice versa. Every night in a thousand theatres and halls and social clubs and Women's Institutes the curtain rises and falls; and every performance is a new creation... As Wordsworth said of his dear Duddon:
`Still glides the stream and shall for ever glide:Do not dam the stream so as to make television hum; do not harness the power to one end.''
The Form remains, the Function never dies.'
Dadie lives in Maynard Keynes' rooms at King's and will celebrate his 96th Birthday this month. We wish him a happy birthday --- and many more encores.
By David Hollier
By Dr Lynne Broughton
The splendid wooden eagle lectern was given in 1867 by William Hattersley, churchwarden.
It is a free interpretation of the many late-medieval eagle lecterns, most of them made of brass, surviving in our parish churches. The symbolism of the eagle is complex. It represents St John the Evangelist, as on the Majestas. It was thought proper to John because his Gospel sees most clearly into the divinity of Christ, as the eagle supposedly was able to gaze directly at the sun.
Histon church has an almost life-size lectern-figure of St John with his eagle. The Evangelist is looking down at a scroll as if writing or reading his Gospel; on his shoulder the eagle, as it were his spirit, gazes up towards the light which is Christ, the `Sun of Righteousness' (see Charles Wesley's hymn `Christ, whose glory fills the skies'). It is St John's Gospel which refers to Christ as the light.
When he became old and decrepit, the eagle would fly straight towards the sun, which would burn away the deposit of age and renew his youth. This is a biblical idea; for instance, [Psalm 103:5] has: ``thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.'' It was used from early Christian times as a symbol of resurrection, both the resurrection of Christ and that of the righteous Christian.
The globe beneath the eagle represents the world from which he is rising, as he gazes at the divine nature of Christ. It also represents the world to which the Gospel of the divinity of Christ is to be preached, for the Gospel, like the Church whose task is to proclaim it, is turned in two directions --- toward Christ and toward the world that Christ has redeemed.
This article forms part of a series describing our Church building.
All events take place in Great St Mary's unless otherwise advertised.
Unfortunately, this has not made it to the HTML version yet.
Since this is the same from issue to issue, we have included a single copy of it on the site, as our Who's who at GSM page.
Majestas is edited by Robert Avery, Sheila Cameron, David Hollier, Philip Oswald (proofs) and John Sturdy (HTML) and published by: Great St Mary's The University Church, Cambridge CB2 3PQ, Tel (01223) 350914, Fax (01223) 426555.
Please contact the editors at the above address.
The deadline for the November edition of Majestas is 5th October. Please submit copy to the Church Office.
For further details of the parish, including the regular service times, please see the GSM home page.