Casaubon Manuscripts

Casaubon's Greek manuscripts, including correspondence.

Isaac Casaubon, famous as a classical scholar, was born at Geneva in 1559 and was professor of Greek there from 1580 to 1596, when he was made professor of languages and letters at Montpellier University. He removed from Montpellier to Paris in 1599-1600, and in 1604 was appointed keeper of the Bibliothque Royale. After the murder of Henri IV in 1610 and upon receipt of an official invitation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, he settled in England, where he died in 1614. He visited Oxford the year before his death, and spent a fortnight reading in the Bodleian Library. Further details are given in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card (for admissions procedures see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/specialcollections).

Collection level description created by Emily Tarrant, Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts.

Full descriptions, in Latin, are in Henry O. Coxe, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae pars prima recensionem codicum Graecorum continens (Oxford, 1853; reprinted with corrections, 1969).

Brief one-line descriptions, with shelfmarks and short titles, are in Falconer Madan, et al., A summary catalogue of western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford which have not hitherto been catalogued in the Quarto series (7 vols. in 8 [vol. II in 2 parts], Oxford, 1895-1953; reprinted, with corrections in vols. I and VII, Munich, 1980), vol. II, nos. 3947-3967.

Casaubon's papers were collected and preserved after his death by his younger son, Meric Casaubon, DD and prebendary of Canterbury. Meric Casaubon died in 1671 and bequeathed his father's journal or Ephemerides to the chapter library of Canterbury Cathedral, and the bulk of the remainder of his father's papers, including six volumes of Adversaria, to the Bodleian Library, but they were not received until 1673.