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What is the Liber Vitae?
What is the Liber Vitae?
Believed to date from 1031, the Liber Vitae (the 'Book of Life') of New Minster and Hyde Abbey is a fascinating medieval register that documents daily life at New Minster and subsequently at Hyde Abbey up to the 1530s. The original Liber Vitae survives and is kept in the British Library in London.
What's included in the Liber Vitae?
What's included in the Liber Vitae?
Art & Illumination: including a full-page miniature of King Cnut and his second wife, Queen Emma of Normandy, standing either side of a golden cross they have presented to the New Minster altar. This is the only surviving manuscript picture of Cnut.
Lists of Names: thousands of names including Kings and Queens, Bishops, abbots, and monks of the community, lay brethren, and benefactors. People listed were remembered in the monastery's prayers.
Charters, Historical and Foundation Records: the record of Edward the Elder’s acquisition of land at Winchester from Bishop Denewulf, and the history of New Minster from its establishment through to its consecration, pre-Conquest charters, the 1070 grant by William the Conqueror.
Relic Lists describing which holy relics were kept by the monastery.
Lists of Saints' Resting Places identifying where important saints were buried.
A Gospel Lectionary containing Gospel readings arranged for the church calendar.
Later Additions including The Will of King Alfred, 14th century post-visitation injunctions made to the Abbot of Hyde by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, 'For the Better Government of Hyde Abbey' (1386/7), and A Short Account of Hyde-Abbey, with a table of the Liber Vitae contents added by Thomas Astle, 25 March 1771.
A replica of the Liber Vitae has been on display at recent Hyde900 events. The original was loaned by the British Library for a 'Treasures of Hyde Abbey' exhibition marking the 900th year since the foundation of the Abbey.
This exhibition reunited some of the treasures of Hyde Abbey for the first time since its dissolution in 1538 - the Liber Monsterii de Hyda (a record of Hyde Abbey’s links with the Anglo-Saxon royal family and charters recording their gifts of land), the Liber Vitae, a 13th century Abbot of Hyde's crozier from the Victoria and Albert Museum and a breviary and psalter from the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, were displayed together with finds from excavations in the local area.
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