An original 12th century text is part of this deposit (ms38535). It is a leaf taken from one of a group of patristic homiliaries intended for public reading, produced in the middle years of the 12th century in central Italy. It was probably originally in a Danish private collection which was broken up from the 1980s onwards.
The collection contains papers relating to the varied academic interests and pursuits of this distinguished academic from ca. 1973-2002. They include manuscript and typed research and bibliographical notes, notebooks, copies of articles and extracts from printed works, texts of articles and chapters, files of lectures and papers given, offprint publications by Bullough and others, publishing projects, correspondence with fellow academics, copy palaeographical texts, postcards, photographs and slides. They cover Bullough's academic specialism in topics of medieval history and also his personal interest in postcards and architecture. There are files on Italian topography, cities and urbanisation, town plans and cathedral sites as well as papers from an International Conference in honour of Donald Bullough on his 70th birthday, held in St Andrews in June 1998. This conference resulted in the publication of JMH Smith (ed.), Early medieval Rome and the Christian West : essays in honour of Donald A. Bullough (Leiden, 2000).
Bullough was an authority on Alcuin of York, an early medieval scholar, brought up and educated in the cathedral community of York. In 767 he became master of the cathedral school where he had a seminal influence on the young clerks, who included future archbishops. His fame spread and the Emperor Charlemagne invited him to join his court. Alcuin went on to fashion Charlemagne's educational and religious policy which had long-lasting effects on European culture.