Mrs Anne P. Fuller, Professor Leonard Boyle, OP (General Editor) and Professor Jane Sayers (member of the CPR Consultative Committee) at an event in 1994 to mark the centenary of the Calendar of Papal Registers series and the publication of Calendar of Papal Registers, Papal Letters relating to Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XVII, Part I, Alexander VI, Lateran Registers, Part 2, 1495–1503 edited by Mrs Fuller.
On the occasion of the posthumous publication of the second part of the calendar of letters in the Lateran Registers for Pope Leo X, the Irish Manuscripts Commission would like to publish a note on Mrs Fuller’s huge contribution to the Calendar of Papal Registers, Papal Letters series.
Anne Peregrine Fuller was associated for many years with the Calendar of entries in the Papal Registers, Papal Letters series, from which she had retired before her death at the age of 77 on 19 March 2023.
Anne Peregrine Dobson, was born in London (Hornsey) on 13 June 1945, the only child of John Henry Dobson and his wife Eve. She attended Leeds Girls’ High School and later in London, she attended The Lady Eleanor Holles School, Hampton, firstly as a boarder then as a day-girl. She took her A levels (in History, Latin, and English Literature) there in 1963. Those A levels won her a place to read history at Westfield College, University of London.
Following her Finals she was awarded one of the University’s Research Studentships and embarked on a PhD course. Having enrolled as a postgraduate, and, as a student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, she chose, as the subject of her thesis ‘The Artistic Patronage of the church of Santo Spirito, Florence, in the 15th and 16th centuries’. She did not finish the thesis but the experience of working on such a highly ramified subject more than equipped her for work on Papal Registers. In particular, the palaeographical skills she had acquired reading notarial files in the Archivio di Stato, stood her in good stead when it came to deciphering the crabbed hands of the curial officials. Her first job in 1970 was a temporary lectureship at the Open University which involved, inter alia, writing a course unit on Machiavelli.
When the Irish Manuscripts Commission took over the publication of the Calendar of Papal Registers (CPR) series from the Public Record Office in the 1960s, one of its first tasks was the appointment of researchers to continue the work begun by William Bliss (d. 1911) and continued by Jesse Twemlow (d. 1950). Michael Haren, appointed in 1969, was to continue from the point where Dr Twemlow’s work ended. In the summer of 1972, the British Academy agreed to support the project by employing a second editor to work alongside Mr Haren, and Dr Leslie Macfarlane, University of Aberdeen, was given the job of recruiting a suitable person for this task.
It was reported to the Irish Manuscripts Commission in September 1972 that Dr Macfarlane had identified Mrs Anne P. Fuller at the Department of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews as a suitable scholar to do the work. She was interviewed by Professor Leonard Boyle, OP, then General Editor of the CPR series (d. 1999), and appointed to begin work in October 1972. Her contract was repeatedly renewed over the following decades funded by research awards from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust. In recognition of her work, she was appointed a Research Fellow and Editor in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
Over a period of more than 30 years she produced the following volumes:
- Vol. XVI, Alexander VI (1492–1503), Lateran Registers, Part 1 (1492–1498) (1986)
- Vol. XVII, Part 1, Alexander VI (1492–1503), Lateran Registers, Part 2 (1495–1503) (1994)
- Vol. XVII, Part 2, Alexander VI (1492–1503), Vatican Registers (1492–1503) with missing letters from other sources (1998)
- Vol. XX, Leo X (1513–1521), Lateran Registers, Part 1 (2005)
- Vol. XXI, Leo X (1513–1521), Lateran Registers, Part 2 (2024)
All her calendars are works of impeccable scholarship, with extraordinary attention to every detail and a meticulous apparatus. In the case of some of the volumes, she looked beyond the Vatican Archives and collected missing letters from a wide range of other archives and libraries, throughout Italy and beyond. She also prepared the indexes of each volume, both of names of persons and places and, in most cases, of subjects (she was not responsible for the subject index of the present volume). These again are of extraordinary breadth, accuracy and comprehensiveness, and are of great usefulness to scholars.
The other area in which Anne Fuller made an important contribution was in marketing the series. Though occupied with the editing, Anne was not unmindful of the historical importance of the project. From her knowledge of the CPR’s history Anne knew that the project would celebrate its centenary in 1994 (or thereabouts) and she persuaded the Public Record Office to put on a Centennial Exhibition at Chancery Lane. Also at her suggestion the dustjacket of the centenary volume was a glossy bright blue and carried a little known portrait of Alexander VI. The dustjackets of her subsequent volumes were similarly designed.
Researchers are very much in her debt for the very high standard which she set in her work on the Calendar of entries in the Papal Registers, Papal Letters series.