Richard de Bury was an English bishop and statesman, who is remembered as a scholar and a lover
of books who authored the Latin autobiographical text Philobiblon, describing his love of manuscripts and his passion for collecting them.
Richard was the son of Sir Richard Aungerville,
and is occasionally known by that surname, but he
came to be called de Bury because of his birthplace at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. He was educated at Oxford, became a Benedictine, and was
appointed tutor to the young prince of Wales, Edward of Windsor, son of King Edward II and
Queen Isabella. He apparently supported Isabella’s
actions to depose her husband and put her son on
the throne as Edward III, and after that occurred
in 1327, Richard was appointed to a number of
important offices, including bishop of Durham in
1333, lord chancellor of England in 1334, and lord
treasurer in 1336. He also served the king on
diplomatic trips to the court of Pope John XXII at
Avignon in 1330 and 1333, and on the earlier trip
he seems to have met PETRARCH. He was also a
leading figure, particularly in his later years, in England’s peace negotiations with Robert the Bruce
of Scotland and with King Philip of France. Worn
out by a prolonged illness, Richard died at his
manor at Aukland and was buried in Durham
Cathedral.
One of Richard’s most lasting contributions to
English culture was his founding of Durham College at Oxford. To the library of Durham College,
he bequeathed his large collection of books, and
one of the purposes of his Philobiblon was to give
some direction to those charged with managing
the library at the college. He also addresses himself to contemporary clergy, and as bishop tries to
instill in them the love of books and of learning
that was his own passion. At the same time, he
wished to explain why he himself had spent so
much of his life and fortune in amassing what was,
for his time, a huge collection of manuscripts.
Richard wrote at least two other works—
his Epistolae Familiarium and Orationes ad
Principes—but is remembered primarily for the
Philobiblon. That text was first printed in Cologne
in 1473, and subsequently was published in Germany, in France, and in England in 1598. It was not
translated into English until 1832. As for Richard’s
book collection, it remained intact at the Durham
College Library until Henry VIII dissolved the college in the 16th century, after which the library was
broken up and scattered.
Bibliography
Bury, Richard de. The Philobiblon. Introduction by
Archer Taylor. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1948.
———. Philobiblon. Text and translation by E. C.
Thomas, edited and with a foreword by Michael
Maclagan. Oxford: Published for the Shakespeare
Head Press by B. Blackwell, 1960.