The Astrik L. Gabriel Universities Collection

This collection reflects the scholarship energy, and resourcefulness of Professor Gabriel during his tenure as director of the Medieval Institute. Along with his writing and teaching, Professor Gabriel created a unique research center in his chosen field of specialization: medieval universities. He built a very impressive collection of books and journals complemented with an extensive vertical file filled with offprints and photocopies of hard-to-find articles and pamphlets covering all aspects of medieval education. This is supplemented with numerous file cabinets containing Professor Gabriel's notes on medieval colleges (especially the Parisian colleges) and an exhaustive bibliographical file of all medieval students of Hungarian origin.

These items alone would make an enviable research center but what makes this collection especially valuable and unique are the microfilms of about two thousand medieval manuscripts representing libraries from Alcald to Zagreb. About half of these materials are cartularies, statutes, matriculation lists, expense accounts and other documents directly related to the study of medieval universities. A majority of the medieval schools is represented but the Paris materials are the most extensive. The other half of the collection contains microfilms on a variety of topics. Many are university related works, such as sentence commentaries, lecture notres, and treatises on the liberal arts. The most valuable microfilm is a copy of Stephen Langton's Quaestiones (Chartres, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 430). This manuscript was destroyed in the Second World War, and as far as we have been able to determine, our two negative films are the only surviving copies. There are also many manuscripts microfilmed in Eastern European libraries, most notably Budapest, Dubrovnik, Prague, and Zagreb. There is currently a project underway to create an online inventory of these microfilms. We hope to have the portion of the inventory devoted to manuscripts from Parisian libraries completed in 2001.

The Sorbonne in the Seventeenth Century, from Octave Gréard,
Nos adieux à la vieille Sorbonne. Paris : Hachette, 1893.

The diversity and thoroughness of the Astrik L Gabriel Collection on Medieval Universities is a tribute to the scholarly efforts of Professor Gabriel. he has spent many years investigating and explaining all aspects of medieval university life. Through his efforts future generations of medievalists will be able to better understand what Professor Gabriel, following his medieval predecessors, affectionately calls the universitas scholarum et magistrorum.

Academic dress at Cambridge, from Gradus ad Cantabrigiam.
London: Printed by Thomas Maiden for W.J. and J. Richardson, 1803.

For information about the collection contact Marina Smyth.