Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts

July 15, 2017
A palaeographer's fascinating investigation of medieval culture.A former librarian of Parker Library at Cambridge and cataloger of illuminated manuscripts for Sotheby's, de Hamel (Fellow, Corpus Christi Coll., Cambridge; Bibles: An Illustrated History from Papyrus to Print, 2011, etc.) brings extensive expertise to his meticulous examination of 12 celebrated manuscripts created from the sixth to the 16th century. For the author, each is a portal to the medieval world, revealing the lives and times of the societies that produced them. Most are religious, and not all were illuminated--i.e., embellished with sparkling, eye-catching gold. Some selections, such as the eighth century Book of Kells--"the most famous and perhaps the most emotively charged medieval book of any kind," de Hamel says--and the Hours of Queen Jeanne de Navarre, from the 14th century, may be the most familiar to readers. For each artifact, de Hamel describes his journey to find it, his experience in the library or archive where he examined it, its physical details (size, material, orthography, binding), provenance, readership, iconography, and, of course, content. In the Gospels of St. Augustine, for example, he finds the words laid out "by clauses and pauses." "It is an arrangement prepared primarily for reading aloud," he adds, "which comes from a time of oral culture when most of the audience for the Scriptures was illiterate." The author deems the illustration of the Virgin and Child in the Book of Kells "dreadfully ugly," probably resulting from "inherited tradition" rather than the artist's shortcomings. De Hamel explains the particular script of the Morgan Beatus, a collection of interpretations of the Apocalypse from the 10th century, by tracing the history of Latin writing, beginning in ancient Rome. Although most manuscripts were religious, the author includes the lusty lyrics of the Carmina Burana, from the 13th century, later "set to music by Carl Orff," and one of two 14th-century copies of The Canterbury Tales, which represents "nearly everything that is reasonably knowable about the original text." The book is sumptuously illustrated with color plates. A rare, erudite, and delightfully entertaining history.

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Starred review from August 7, 2017
De Hamel, a renowned British authority on medieval manuscripts, reveals his devotion to his trade in a glorious book about 12 documents, including the Gospels of Saint Augustine (late sixth century) and the Hengwrt Chaucer (ca. 1400), that surpasses its title’s promise. Despite the somewhat obscure subject matter, de Hamel pulls readers in with his unmistakable passion for every facet of these handcrafted treasures. “I want to know who made them and when and why and where,” he writes. De Hamel travels to far-flung archives, waits for guardians to produce a book and lay it on the reading table, and then he pauses a moment to absorb the splendor before gently opening. He sensually describes the feel of vellum pages, the joy at discovering bits of marginalia, and the frustration of trying to discover what an erasure has hidden. De Hamel details each document’s idiosyncrasies while contextualizing its time and place of creation. The author shares his adventures with wry humor. For instance, his first attempts to see the Codex Amiatinus (ca. 700) were refused, though he learns that in Italy “the word ‘no’ is not necessarily a negative.” He also shares his befuddlement during a visit to the “bewilderingly infinite” Getty Museum in Los Angeles. De Hamel’s delightful book is bound to inspire a new set of medievalists. Color illus. Agent: Caroline Dawnay, United Agents.

September 15, 2017

Librarian de Hamel (Corpus Christi Coll., Cambridge Univ.; A History of Illuminated Manuscripts), a leading authority on medieval manuscripts, has produced a veritable feast for the mind, in this work that fleshes out the lives of 12 manuscripts. The works are organized in chronological order, beginning with the St. Augustine Gospels (sixth century) and concluding with the Spinola Hours (16th century). Content includes gospels (The Book of Kells), astrological works (The Leiden Aratea), music (Carmina Burana), and Canterbury Tales (The Hengwrt Chaucer). High culture flows from every page, as de Hamel interweaves the histories of these medieval artifacts with the lives of the people that intersected with them. The author also includes autobiographical details from his extensive experience with these rare and irreplaceable collections, including his meeting with Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop Rowan Williams. The writing style is delightfully tangential, leading readers through the episodes and turns of hand that led to each manuscript's preservation through the centuries. The many full-page color facsimiles of the items are simply stunning. VERDICT Scholarly yet personal, this book treats medievalists, art historians, bibliophiles, and other interested parties to the closest equivalent of a seat in the great archives. A beautiful book about beautiful books.--Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA

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Starred review from September 1, 2017
Centaurs and dragons, Vikings and Crusaders, popes and Nazisthe adventures of a paleographer can carry him or her far. As a distinguished expert on medieval manuscripts, de Hamel invites his readers to share his remarkable experiences with a dozen fascinating medieval texts. These experiences begin in the carefully monitored reading rooms where qualified patrons examine valuable old books, rooms including those found in Cambridge's Parker Library, Copenhagen's Royal Danish Library, and St. Petersburg's National Library of Russia. But the 12 medieval manuscripts de Hamel studies in these twenty-first-century rooms transport readers across the centuries to the cloisters where learned monks wrote the Latin texts and gifted painters illuminated them with stunning gold and scarlet images. After detailing the processes that created these manuscripts, the narrative traces the often-tangled eventsroyal and ecclesiastical intrigues, political ruptures, institutional jealousies, and commercial calculationsaccounting for their current locations. Interested general readers will appreciate de Hamel's lucid treatment of the themes and literary techniques that mark these manuscripts as cultural milestones between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. But they will marvel at the lavish reproductions of the masterful calligraphy and dazzling illuminations that have long made the manuscripts irresistible to collectors. A must-read for anyone who values the history of the written word.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)