Making Do? Musical Participation in an Early-Tudor College

This chapter addresses Corpus Christi College’s trilingual library. By 1545, trilingualism in different forms and to greater or lesser degree had become manifest in several places in continental Europe. In England, the same trends were already visible at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where John Fisher had insisted on lectures not only in Greek but also in Hebrew, the latter supererogatory. In Oxford, Laurence Humphrey in about 1566 established a public Hebrew lectureship at Magdalen College. As Hebrew grammars, dictionaries, and concordances poured from the printing presses, the majority intended for a Christian readership, Hebrew literacy grew. The chapter then looks at the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew manuscripts in Corpus Christi College’s trilingual library.