Christian and I spent the morning tagging along with Aengus’s second year medievalists in the university’s special collections library, the Cadbury Research Library. Despite the name there was unfortunately no chocolate to be eaten, but instead there were other goodies for us to get our teeth into. We looked at a couple of medieval Books of Hours, a pre-reformation prayer book in English (yes!) cordiform maps, and a tiny little printed book of the Danse Macabre amongst other delights. Christian sniffed and stroked the vellum while I was a little too excited by the abbreviations and palaeography. But the very best thing of all was a huge facsimile copy of the Cantigas de Santa María. Wow. What a treat to see the Cantigas up close and personal, without leaving our cosy little campus.
