Obituary: Oxford University professor Richard Sharpe

IF any scholar could bring back to life the holy men and scholars of the Middle Ages it was Richard Sharpe.

Sharpe, professor of diplomatic at Oxford University since 1998, who died on March 21 of heart failure, was a man of enormous energy.

He poured this into writing and editing books and articles (over 210 and still counting) that threw light on all aspects of these men – saints and sinners alike.

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He was equally energetic outside his study: in Who’s Who he listed ‘working out’ among his hobbies, and his gym sessions were so strenuous that he once broke a leg without at first realising it.

The son of Dorothy (née Lord), a pharmacist, and John Sharpe, a butcher, Richard was born in Accrington, Lancashire, on February 17, 1954.

From St Peter’s School, York, he went on to study classics and Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Even as a boy he studied original documents about the Scottish Hebridean island of Raasay.

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His two-volume book, Raasay: A Study in Island History (1977), was published about the time he graduated.

His first job, in 1981, was as assistant editor of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin in Oxford.

To ensure that his command of Latin, he made himself read nothing but Latin for a year.

His promotion to Oxford’s Readership in Diplomatic (charter-scholarship) and a fellowship at Wadham College in 1990 allowed his research abilities to flower.

Though an inspiring teacher, he had only limited duties, which gave him time to maintain a flow of publications about Celtic Scotland and Ireland as well as to run two major medieval research projects.

One project became his life’s work: to put at our fingertips the key information about all the books and their contents that were known to every clerk, monk or friar in medieval Britain.

With precision and clarity, he brought these books to three-dimensional life in a wholly original way. For him, they were not just catalogue titles but living texts, with origins and histories traceable back to their first authorship.

His method was systematic, producing monographs and editions on each aspect of the medieval books.

Most are definitive works of reference, like A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540 (1997), so unassumingly titled but 900 pages long.

One is short and provocative — Titulus (“Title”, 2003), defining the nature of medieval texts.

The biggest, a publication of all extant medieval library catalogues, already runs to 18 volumes (and will soon be 24). These had their own editors, but Richard’s stamp as general editor is clear on every page.

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Sharpe had acute political antennae, in the academic as well as public spheres.

He felt as strongly about contemporary issues as those of the past, and invested time accordingly.

Within the university he served as Junior Proctor (2000) and in the British Academy he became chair of its Medieval Section.

He was also quick to see that the formation of the Liberal Democrats was a game-changer that accorded with his own views.

He was twice elected a Lib Dem city councillor for the Central Ward in Oxford, winning the seat in 1987 with a majority of just eight over his Labour opponent.

Following Margaret Godden’s loss of her seat, he also led the Lib Dem group on the city council.