The Henry Bradshaw Society is a British-based learned society "founded in the Year of Our Lord 1890 for the editing of Rare Liturgical Texts".
It is one of four hundred or so national and local learned societies in Great Britain that have issued texts, books and articles especially regarding both religious and secular history. Many were founded in the nineteenth century and constitute a monument to the vigour and energy of Victorian intellectual and cultural life. The majority of these societies have been dependent upon the members' subscriptions to finance their publications, and their spirit is one of generous devotion and loyalty towards the preservation and appreciation of the local or national heritage to which they are variously dedicated.
One of the models for the Henry Bradshaw Society was the Durham-based Surtees Society, formed in 1834, which in turn received assistance from officers of the Bannatyne Club. The Surtees Society also influenced the successful Camden Society, named after the antiquarian William Camden (1551-1623) and which began publishing in 1838.
The foundation of the Henry Bradshaw Society was also linked, more by overlapping interests than organizational models, to an entity known variously over the years as the Cambridge Camden Society, the Ecclesiological Society, the St Paul's Ecclesiological Society, and currently once again the Ecclesiological Society. In the 1879 the Ecclesiological Society, after a decade or so of limbo, was re-established in London as the St Paul's Ecclesiological Society, a significant role in this event being was played by Dr John Wickham Legg (1843-1921), a medical man turned liturgist who in 1888 had published with the Cambridge University Press an edition of the 1535 Breviary of Cardinal Quiñonez,
As to Henry Bradshaw (1831-1886), after whom the Society was named, he was for a score of years University Librarian at Cambridge, much interested in early printing and in the development of techniques of exact bibliographic description. This latter passion had led to his close familiarity with the contents of many European libraries, where he had also taken note of early English liturgical manuscripts.
An initial meeting to plan the new Henry Bradshaw Society took place in London on July 3, 1890, after which provisional subscriptions were solicited. The general meeting to inaugurate the Society took place at 3 o'clock on Tuesday, November 25, in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey. A committee was finalized and a programme of publications worked out.
The promised subscribers including many Anglican bishops and other dignitaries, but also Léopold Delisle of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Mons. Antonio Maria Ceriani of the Ambrosian Library, Milan and others Catholics such as W.H. James Weale, Edmund Bishop, Dom Aidan Gasquet, the abbé Louis Duchesne, and Dom Hildebrand de Hemptinne, then abbot of Maredsous. The first volumes were to be printed in 500 copies and at the next meeting the Council fixed the individual subscription rate as 12 guineas (£12.12s).
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By the end of the century some 19 volumes had been issued, three of which contained an edition of the Westminster Missal, given to the abbey by Abbot Nicholas Lytlington, abbot 1362-1386, and builder of the Jerusalem Chamber, where the Henry Bradshaw Society was publicly launched.
Other editions were of the Coronation rites of King Charles I, The Martiloge in Englysshe , the Antiphonary of Bangor (from the Ambrosian Library), the Tracts of Clement Maydeston, the Winchester Troper, the Martyrology of Gorman (from the Royal Library, Brussels), the Missal of Robert of Jumièges (from Rouen public library), the Irish Liber Hymnorum (from Trinity College, Dublin), the Rosslyn Missal (from the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh), the Coronation Book of Charles V of France (Cottonian Ms. Tiberius B.VIII), the Missale Romanum, printed in Milan in 1474 and the fifteenth-century Processional of the Nuns of Chester. I.
Although the Society fell into something of a slump after the Second World War, it was revived with some vigour in the 1980s. The latest volume to be issued, in 2009, is numbered 118.
Among its principal honorary officers at the present time are the Right Reverend Abbot Dom Cuthbert Johnson, OSB, President, Professor Michael Lapidge, Chairman of Council, Mr Peter Jackson, General Secretary and Dr Bernard Moreton, Treasurer.
The Henry Bradshaw Society's website, which lists all the volumes, is actively updated: http://www.henrybradshawsociety.org