One of the most spectacularly suitable memorials to the great and the good in Oxford must be that of Sir Thomas Bodley (1545-1613) in Merton College Chapel.

The baroque black-and-white alabaster monument was carved by Nicholas Stone, master-mason to James I and Charles I, with pillars made of marble books.

But what, I wondered, would Sir Thomas have thought of the now not uncommon sight of a an iPad sharing a table at the library named after him (the Bodleian, of course) with a vast tome that once upon a time must surely have been anchored to its desk by a chain? Intrigued and astonished, yes; bewildered, probably not.

For he was a career diplomat and linguist, a true European, interested in the dissemination of knowledge across borders. He retired in 1598 and dedicated the rest of his life to rebuilding the university library.

It certainly needed rebuilding, too. He said at the time: “In every part it lay ruined and waste.”

Most of the destruction had occurred in the reign of Edward VI when commissioners in the name of religion had burned, sold, thrown out, or given away the contents of the library to such an extent that only a “great desolate room” remained. In 1556, the University even sold the shelves.

Bodley offered to “bring back the library to its proper use, and to make it fitte, and handsome with seates, and shelves and deskes”.

He came from a Devon Protestant family which had been forced to flee the country at the start of the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary. His early education was at Frankfurt and Geneva; but on the accession of Elizabeth the family returned to England and he went up to Magdalen College in 1559. After taking his degree he became a Fellow of Merton — which, incidentally, has Oxford’s oldest library, complete with chained books — where he lectured on Greek and natural philosophy. Then, in 1583, he was summoned to London to serve the Crown. He was sent on missions, sometimes secret, to destinations including the Netherlands, Germany and France — though it seems he always hankered to get back to Oxford and start the work that was to make him famous.

He wrote in his autobiography: “I concluded at the last to set up my Staffe at the Librarie dore in Oxon; being throwghly perswawded, that in my solitude, and surcease from the Commonwealth affayers, I coulde not busie myself to better purpose.”

The first university library had been housed in a room above the Congregation Room at the University church of St Mary the Virgin — but it had had a precarious existence. It consisted largely of books donated by Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester from 1317-1327. When the bishop died, his relatives pawned the books to pay debts and funeral expenses. They were soon redeemed, though, and deposited in Oriel College. Then in 1337, the University vice-chancellor decided the books were University property — and scholars took them away by force and put them back in the room at St Mary the Virgin.

The room proved inadequate when Duke Humfrey of Gloucester, younger brother of Henry V, gave a collection of books and manuscripts to the university; so a larger room was assigned to them over the Divinity School which was then being constructed. The duke died in 1447 and so never saw the library named after him, which was not completed until 1488. Only a very small part of Humfrey’s collection has found its way back to the Bodleian after the ravages of Edward’s reign, though one book (The Epistles of Pliny) contains his autograph.

Historian Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) wrote that Duke Humfrey was the founder of the library; Bodley, the re-founder; and Edward VI the confounder. Certainly, though, Bodley set about his work with skills that any modern businessman would recognise and even imitate. For instance, he initiated the fundraising idea of sponsorship. He created a Benefactors’ Book, bound in vellum and displayed prominently, in which the names of anyone donating anything worthwhile was written down for all to see. He also negotiated an agreement with the Stationers’ Company whereby the company agreed to send the library a copy of every book entered in their register.

But the Bodleian was never a ‘lending library’ in the modern sense. Even Charles I, when resident in Oxford, was refused permission to read a book off the premises; and the same went for Oliver Cromwell.

Perhaps Bodley would have seen the electronic revolution as a way of allowing scholars and others to gain information without removing precious books. But his Merton memorial would hardly be the same if those pillars were composed of electronic reading devices set in stone.