ABSTRACT
The 12th-century Bury library catalogue, inscriptions in books recording Bury ownership, and palaeographical evidence, have enabled scholars to identify well over sixty surviving manuscripts as the acquisitions of the monks of Bury St Edmunds Abbey from the time of their foundation until the second half of the 12th century. Most of them are datable to the 9th and 10th centuries, and hence must have been acquired from elsewhere since they predate Bury's foundation, and a large proportion are continental in origin. It is possible to demonstrate, using the evidence of scribal and artistic collaboration, that almost all the manuscripts listed in the Bury library catalogue which still survive were produced at Bury. Just a tiny handful can be shown to have been produced outside the Bury scriptorium. The copies of patristic and medieval biblical commentaries and theological treatises produced at Bury from the late 11th century onwards display an impressive degree of uniformity in certain practices of book production.
