03 Dec 07

A snowball fight depicted as 'Occupation of the Month' in one of the books to be displayed

The Bodleian Library’s historic Divinity School will open its doors to the public for a special one-day event to mark the Christmas celebrations on 6 December 2007. The event includes the display of two Tudor decorative embroidered bindings and four Renaissance manuscripts.

Gifts exchanged between Tudor monarchs and their subjects on New Year's Day were symbols of loyalty and patronage. Rich offerings such as jewels and money, manuscripts and printed books were very common gifts to the sovereign, their contents carefully chosen and often splendidly bound.

The first decorative binding covers a book translated and written out by Princess Elizabeth for her stepmother Queen Katherine Parr as a gift for the New Year 1544-45. The binding displays Katherine Parr's initials worked at the centre of each cover within a knotwork pattern of gold and silver braid on a blue background, with pansies stitched over padding in the corners. The joined 'K' and 'P' exactly reproduce the monogram habitually used by Queen Katherine at the end of her signature: this personal echo may help to confirm the natural inference that the binding was also Elizabeth's own handiwork.

The second embroidered binding covers the ‘Geneva Bible' in English, printed by Christopher Barker in London in 1583.  The book was presented to Queen Elizabeth I by its printer as a gift for the New Year 1583-84. The binding, which has been described as the finest of all surviving Elizabethan embroidered bindings, shows a design of Tudor roses embroidered in gold, silver and coloured silks on crimson velvet; when presented to the Queen it was further adorned with seed pearls. The other two New Year royal gifts are the Astronomical rules presented by Nicolaus Kratzer to King Henry VIII for 1 January 1528/9, with an illuminated initial by Holbein, and a sermon translated from Italian into Latin and written out by Princess Elizabeth for her half-brother King Edward VI as a gift for 1 January 1547/8 or 1552/3.

The other two manuscripts are a Tudor pattern-book, showing a design for mistletoe dated from the 1520s, and a 16th-century French Book of Hours, a collection of text providing liturgicl material for each hour of the day,  showing a snowball fight as the 'Occupation of the Month' for December in the lower margin.

The display will be on show in the Divinity School which will offer free admission to all visitors for the entire day.  Also, the Bodleian Library Gift Shop will offer 10% discount on all the range in store. The exhibition will be open from 9.30 am to 6.30 pm and the new Gift Shop will have extended opening hours from 9 am to 7 pm.