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Thomas Bodley


Sir Thomas Bodley (March 2, 1545 – January 28, 1613), was an English diplomat and scholar, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Biography

Thomas Bodley was born at Exeter in the second last year of the reign of Henry VIII. His father, John Bodley, was a Protestant merchant who went to live abroad rather than stay in England under the Catholic regime of Mary. The family (and the ten year old Nicholas Hilliard, who had been attached to the household by his parents, friends of Bodley) eventually settled in Geneva where Thomas received his early education. He attended lectures given by John Calvin and Theodore Beza, and attended services led by John Knox. He learned Greek from Mattheus Beroaldus and Hebrew from Antoine Chevallier. The study of these languages remained enduring passions for Bodley throughout his life.

After Mary's death in 1558 and the accession of Elizabeth, the family returned to England, and Bodley entered Magdalen College, Oxford to study under Lawrence Humphrey. In 1563 he took his B.A. degree, and was shortly afterwards admitted as a Fellow to Merton College. He began lecturing at Merton and in April 1565 he was formally appointed as the college's first Lecturer in Ancient Greek, a post that was subsequently made permanent. He served in many college offices and in 1569 was elected as one of the University's junior proctors, and for some time after was deputy Public Orator. Leaving Oxford in 1576 with a licence to study abroad and a grant from his college of £6. 13s. 4d., he toured France, Italy, and Germany, visiting scholars and adding French, Italian, and Spanish to his range of languages.

On his return he was appointed gentleman-usher to Queen Elizabeth and he entered Parliament as member for Portsmouth, and represented St Germans in 1586. In 1585 Bodley was entrusted with a mission to form a league between Frederick II of Denmark and certain German princes to assist Henry of Navarre, the future Henry IV of France. He was next dispatched on a secret mission to France; and in 1588 he was sent to the Hague as minister, a post which demanded great diplomatic skill, for it was in the Netherlands that the power of Spain had to be fought. The essential difficulties of his mission were complicated by the intrigues of the queen's ministers at home, and Bodley repeatedly asked to be recalled. He was finally permitted to return to England in 1596, but finding his preferment obstructed by the competing interests of Burghley and Essex, he retired from public life, and returned to Oxford.

As he had married Ann Ball in 1587 (a widow of considerable fortune and the daughter of a Mr Carew of Bristol) he had had to resign his fellowship at Merton, but he still had many friends there and the college gave a dinner in his honour in the spring of 1598. G. H. Martin speculates that the inspiration to restore the old Duke Humfrey's library may have come from the renewal of his contact with Henry Savile and other former colleagues at this dinner. Once his proposal was accepted he spent the rest of his life devoted to the library project. He was knighted on April 18, 1604. He died in 1613 and was buried in the choir of Merton College chapel. His monument of black and white marble complete with pillars made from books and allegories of learning is placed on the western wall of the north transept of the chapel.

The Bodleian Library

Bodley's greated achievement was the foundation of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. He determined, he said, "to take his farewell of state employments and to set up his staff at the library door in Oxford." In 1598 his offer to restore the old library was accepted by the university. Bodley not only used his private fortune in this undertaking, but induced many of his friends to make valuable gifts of books. In 1611 he began its permanent endowment, and at his death, the greater part of his fortune was left to it.

Publications

Bodley wrote his autobiography up to the year 1609, which, with the first draft of the statutes drawn up for the library, and his letters to the librarian, Thomas James, was published by Thomas Hearne, under the title of Reliquiae Bodleianae, or Authentic Remains of Sir Thomas Bodley, (London, 1703, 8vo).

References

  • Martin, G.H.; Highfield, R.L. (1997). A History of Merton College. Oxford: OUP, ch.8. ISBN 0-19-920183-8. 
March 2 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

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  • 986 - Louis V becomes King of the Franks.

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  • 1077 - Walk to Canossa: The excommunication of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor is lifted.

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Motto
Dieu et mon droit   (French)
"God and my right"
Anthem
No official anthem specific to England — the anthem of the United Kingdom is "God Save the Queen".
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Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states. It usually refers to international diplomacy, the conduct of international relations through the intercession of professional diplomats with regard to issues of peace-making,
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Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in England is second in size only to the British Library.
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Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 (2001 census). It is home to the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
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Exeter

Arms of Exeter City Council
Exeter ()
|240px|Exeter (

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Henry VIII
King of England, King of Ireland, Prince of Wales

Reign 22 April1509 – 28 January1547
Coronation 24 June 1509
Born 28 May 1491(1491--)
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Protestantism encompasses the forms of Christian faith and practice that originated with the doctrines of the Reformation. The word Protestant is derived from the Latin protestatio meaning declaration
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Mary I (18 February, 1516 – 17 November, 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 6 July1553 (de facto) or 19 July 1553 (de jure) until her death on 17 November, 1558.
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Nicholas Hilliard

Self-portrait, 1577
c. 1547

Died 1619
London
English
Portrait miniatures

Elizabeth I, James I

Isaac Oliver

Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1547 – bur.
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Geneva (pronunciation /dʒənivə/; French: Genève /ʒənɛv/, German: Genf
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John Calvin (July 10, 1509 – May 27, 1564) was a French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation and was a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology.
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Theodore Beza (Théodore de Bèze or de Besze) (June 24, 1519 – October 13, 1605) was a French Protestant Christian theologian and scholar who played an important role in the early Reformation.
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John Knox (c. 1514 – 24 November 1572) was a Scottish clergyman and a leader of the Protestant Reformation. He was born a peasant and educated at the University of St Andrews.
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Ancient Greek refers to the second stage in the history of the Greek language[1] as it existed during the Archaic (9th–6th centuries BC) and Classical (5th–4th centuries BC) periods in Greece.
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Matthieu Brouard (d. 1576) was a minister and professor of philosophy at Geneva. He is also known as Matthieu Brouart and (in Latin) as Mattheus Beroaldus. He taught Greek to the young Thomas Bodley and was the father of Béroalde de Verville.
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Hebrew}}} 
Writing system: Alefbet Ivri abjad 
Official status
Official language of:  Israel
Regulated by: Academy of the Hebrew Language

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Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England, France (in name only), and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. She is sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess
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Magdalen College (pronounced IPA: /ˈmɔːdlin/ "maudlin") is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million.
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Lawrence Humphrey (or Laurence Humfrey) (1527? - February 1, 1590) was an English theologian, who was president of Magdalen College, Oxford, and dean successively of Gloucester and Winchester

Biography

Humphrey was born at Newport Pagnell.
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Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and
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Proctor, an English variant of the word procurator, is a person who takes charge or acts for another. The word proctor is frequently used to describe someone who oversees an exam or dormitory.
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Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England. Its roots can be traced back to the early medieval period. In a series of developments, it came increasingly to constrain the power of the monarch, and went on after the Act of Union 1707 to form the main basis of
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Portsmouth is a city of about 189,000 people located in the county of Hampshire on the southern coast of England. The administrative unit itself forms part of the wider Portsmouth conurbation, with an estimated 442,252 residents within its boundaries, making it the 11th largest
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St Germans was a rotten borough in Cornwall which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons in the English and later British Parliament from 1562 to 1832, when it was abolished by the Great Reform Act.
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Frederick II
King of Denmark and Norway

Born 1 July 1534(1534--)
Died 4 March 1588 (aged 55)
Buried Roskilde Cathedral
Predecessor Christian III

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