Robert Curzon, 14th Baron Zouche

Robert Curzon, 14th Baron Zouche (16 March 1810-2 August 1873), was a notable Victorian English traveler, travel writer, and diplomat, active mainly in the Near East. He is perhaps best known for acquiring some of the most important early Bible manuscripts from Eastern Orthodox monasteries.

Curzon was the son of the Hon. Robert Curzon, younger son of Assheton Curzon, 1st Viscount Curzon, and his wife Harriet Anne Curzon, 13th Baroness Zouche. He was educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford. In his Visits to Monasteries in the Levant [1849] , he described and justified his takings. He visited Mount Athos in 1837, and at the Monastery of St Paul, he recounts how the abbot said 'We make no use of the old books, and should be glad if you would accept one,' upon which he took two, including a fourteenth-century illuminated Bulgarian gospel, now in the British Library.

Lord Zouche succeeded his mother in the barony in 1870. He died in August 1873, aged 63, and was succeeded in the title by his son Robert.

External links

* [http://www.sots.ac.uk/conferences1998.html abstract of SOTS conference paper: Dr David Lane (Mirfield): ‘Compulsive Acquisition: Robert Curzon and his manuscripts’: Robert Curzon (1810-1873) - fuller information]

References

*1911