![]() Manuscripts are words written down, but they impart far more than sentences. A little of this mystery still clings to their pages: when Mr de Hamel takes the Gospels of St Augustine (pictured) to a service in Canterbury Cathedral he notices that its leaves are so light they flutter and hum in time to a hymn, “as if the sixth-century manuscript…had come to life”. Half of the works here were written between the sixth and 11th centuries, when Vikings ruled the waves and men had names like Ecgfrith and Ceolfrith. To touch a manuscript is to touch another world. Jeanne de Navarre’s “Hours”, before Goering got it, was made for the 14th-century French queen and later owned by Baron Edmond de Rothschild. When one New York bookseller was asked to explain in a few sentences who buys such objects, he replied, “I can tell in two words: the rich.” These books, patricians of parchment, have circulated in European society at the very highest level for centuries. “It is easier,” says Mr de Hamel, “to meet the pope or the president of the United States than it is to touch the ‘Très Riches Heures’ of the Duc de Berry.” ![]() All are closely guarded, spending their days in climate-controlled confinement and travelling in bomb-proof cases. Like many celebrities, some are tastelessly glitzy, gleaming with gold and studded with jewels. The 12 works he writes about are, he explains, superstars of vellum. Mr de Hamel is an unashamed manuscript groupie. In “Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts” Christopher de Hamel, fellow and librarian of the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, reminds readers why this was such a thrilling discovery. This was the “Book of Hours” made for a French queen, Jeanne de Navarre. ![]() It was not a brick, but a medieval manuscript (the word means “written by hand”.) The second was one of the most famous manuscripts ever made: a prayer book for a medieval queen that had fetched a record-breaking price at Sotheby’s in London in 1919. That initial diagnosis proved incorrect, though.
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