The following excerpt is from Nick Ward’s article “Paul Nelles Delivers the 2017 Lyell Lectures at Oxford University“.
In the 2017 Lyell Lectures, Paul Nelles enters the social and material world of the Vatican Library in the late sixteenth century. At the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation, the library gradually adapted to its new role as an instrument of papal policy and hub of ecclesiastical reform. The lectures locate the Vatican Library within a constellation of new state-sponsored collections in early modern Europe. Framed around the vibrant fresco cycles that graced the new library quarters constructed under Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590), the lectures visit specific episodes in sixteenth-century cultural history to probe the dynamic of script and print within the space of the Vatican Library. Particular attention is given to the individuals, practices, and working tools that intersected with libraries in this period.
The first Lyell Lecture, Libraries, Space, and Power will be delivered on Thursday, 4 May 2017 at 5pm in the Lecture Theatre, Weston Library, followed by a drinks reception at 6.15pm in Blackwell Hall.