Richard Aungerville

Seal impression of Bishop Richard Aungerville

Richard de Bury (actually Richard de Bury ) (* 24. January 1281 or 1286 / 1287 at Bury St. Edmund's in Suffolk , † 14. April 1345 in Durham ) was Bishop of Durham was from 1333 to 1345. De Bury royal court official and envoy , Priest, teacher, promoter of education and author, but especially he became known as a collector of books and the author of the first work on bibliophilia .

Life

Born the son of Sir Richard Aungervyle near Bury St Edmunds in the county of Suffolk and raised first by his uncle, then taught at a grammar school in the Seven Liberal Arts , he was after graduation at Oxford where he studied philosophy and Studied theology, royal diplomat and lord chancellor under Edward III. whose tutor he had once been. He probably met Petrarch in Avignon in 1333 , where he went twice, in 1330 and 1333, as envoy Edward III. had traveled and was influenced literarily by him. Appointed Bishop of Durham since 1333 against the vote of the chapter by Edward III, he was often on his behalf on diplomatic missions on embassy trips that took him several times to Scotland, but also to the continent, where he was Emperor Ludwig IV in 1338 Encountered Koblenz . After 1342 he withdrew from political life and concentrated on his diocese and building his library , some of which was dispersed soon after his death in 1345, and some after the dissolution of Durham College at Oxford by Henry VIII . Of the only two manuscripts that have been identified, one is after the editor and translator Ernest C. Thomas British Museum , Roy. 13 D. iv. 3 with the works of John of Salisbury , the assignment of the other, Oxford, Bodleian Library , Laud. MS. Misc. 264, with the writings of Anselm of Canterbury and others, may be due to confusion with Richard of Wallingford , abbot of St Albans Abbey , caused by an ambiguous formulation in the article on the latter in volume 48 of the Dictionary of National Biography of 1896.

Philobiblon

In his book Philobiblon , which he wrote in 1344 (first printed in Cologne 1473), he praises the value of books in an artistic Latin full of enthusiasm and imagination and explains why they must be loved. He complains about their disregard and about destructive wars. He describes his searches, his discoveries, the prices of the books, his studies, his idea of ​​a reading culture and shows how a library should be organized. He writes, among other things, that "books are the real wealth of the world, a divine gift of which one can never get enough, indispensable for those who are in search of truth, knowledge and wisdom". In books you would find the dead as if they were still alive. He immortalized his great love for books as follows:

Books, you are golden containers filled with manna; Rocks from which honey gushes; Udders brimming with the milk of life, inexhaustible storerooms; the stream of paradise divided into four, which refreshes the human soul and wets and drinks the thirsty spirit; fruit-laden olives, Engaddi wines ; Fig trees that do not suffer from bad harvests; burning lamps, always to be carried in your hands.

Works

• Philobiblon in The Latin Library
• Liber Epistolaris (Ed. By Noel Denholm-Young, Oxford, 1950)
• Philobiblon, seu De amore librorum . Printer of Augustine, De fide (= Johann Solidi?), Cologne 1473. ( digitized version )
• Alfred Hartmann (Ed.): Richardus de Bury, Philobiblon or the love of books. Swiss Bibliophile Society, Bern 1955 (Latin-German)
• Ernest C. Thomas (Ed.): Richard de Bury, Philobiblon. The text and translation , with a foreword ed. by Michael McLagan, Blackwell, Oxford 1960, Barnes & Noble, New York 1970
• Carlo Carena (Ed.): Richardus de Bury, Philobiblon. La passione per i libri (Archivi di arte antica). Allemandi, Torino u. a. 2006 (Latin-Italian) ISBN 978-88-422-1243-0

literature

• Timothy Reuter: Richard Aungervyle of Bury. In: LThK ³ 8, 1168.
• Timothy Reuter: R. de Bury. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 7, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-8907-7 , Sp. 817-818.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Powicke & Fryde: Handbook of British Chronology. Second Edition, London, 1961, p. 221
2. ^ Powicke & Fryde: Handbook of British Chronology. Second Edition, London, 1961, p. 84
3. ↑ Richard de Bury (Richard Aungerville) The Love of Books The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY EC THOMAS, Introduction, The bishops books, note 3
4. ^ Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, "Richard of Wallingford". In: Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 48, 1896, p. 206: "Man of learning though he was, Richard (of Wallingford) is said to have given Richard de Bury [qv] four valuable manuscripts belonging to the abbey as a bribe, and to have sold him thirty-two others (ib. ii. 200). On the other hand, Laud. MS. Misc. 264, in the Bodleian Library, which contains some of the works of St. Anselm, was presented by Richard (of Wallingford ?, addition not in article) to the abbey of St. Albans. " [1] To Oxford, Bodleian library, laud misc. 264 cf. Bodleian Quarto catalogs, Vol. II Laudian manuscripts, p. 220 : Codex membranaceus, in folio, ff. 129, sec. Xiv., Binis columnis bene exaratus; quondam eccl. S. Albani ex dono Ricardi [de Wallingford, addition in the catalog] ab-batis, postea Johannis Barkham.

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Aungerville in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Richard Aungerville in VD 17 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Louis de Beaumont	Bishop of Durham 1333-1345	Thomas Hatfield
John Stratford	Lord Chancellor 1334-1335	John Stratford