Indenture referring to books in the common chest
Cambridge, 1363

Cambridge University Archives, from CUR 1.2.1

This listing of the contents of the common chest (cista communis Universitatis Cantabrigensis) was compiled on the Wednesday after the feast of St Denis by the incoming and outgoing University proctors. Before the creation of specific spaces for book collections, it was common practice to store books with other valuables. The chest in question here contained, among other items, four books of canon law and one of theology, the latter representing a guarantee deposited against a loan.

Captions were pragmatic and aimed to enumerate and identify the objects. For instance, the designation of the second item, ‘Item tabula iuris in paruis quaternis ex legato M. Simonis de Roiston’, is so generic that, though it was possible to identify the manuscript, it is impossible for us to identify the text. In general, more precise information is provided concerning the name of the donor and the material condition of the manuscript. In the citation above, for example, in quaternis (as opposed to liber for all the other items) indicates that this manuscript was kept in unbound quires (collections of folio pages that would only later be bound).