Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts

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Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. Christopher de Hamel has turned a lifelong obsession with ancient literature into a book that critics are comparing to A History of the World in 100 Objects and the wonderful The Hare with Amber Eyes.

The book, created in Italy in the sixth century, reputedly accompanied St Augustine on his 597 papal mission to convert the English to Christianity. Encountering an original medieval manuscript is in some ways like encountering a famous person, says De Hamel. Sumptuously illustrated, Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts is a journey to some of the world’s greatest collections, from Copenhagen to Florence, Munich to St Petersberg. A former librarian of Parker Library at Cambridge and cataloger of illuminated manuscripts for Sotheby’s, de Hamel brings extensive expertise to his meticulous examination of 12 celebrated manuscripts created from the sixth to the 16th century…The book is sumptuously illustrated…A rare, erudite, and delightfully entertaining history. Parker, likewise, did not see papal purple as a dangerous sign of recusancy, and, indeed, saw a holiness in Augustine.Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is a captivating examination of twelve illuminated manuscripts from the medieval period. As he introduces us to twelve star manuscripts in their sanctuary homes, these complex creations emerge as major players in the great game of ideas and power. Indeed, Ethiopia converted to Christianity in the fourth century AD, when the Ark of the Covenant – the Old Testament casket lined with gold to accommodate the two tablets bearing the 10 Commandments – was allegedly transferred there from southern Egypt.

Christopher de Hamel's exploration of medieval manuscripts - a dozen peaks from St Augustine to Chaucer and beyond, gorgeously and copiously illustrated - is itself an extraordinary book, a work of scholarship and history salted with the author's excitement as he conducts us among the great libraries of Western civilization. For a person with no training in manuscript study who would like to know what it’s all about, I could recommend nothing better than reading at least one chapter of this 632-page book, pausing over its many beautiful color illustrations. In this, he succeeds brilliantly, producing a truly wonderful book in the process – wise, entertaining and informative. Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World is a 2017 book by historian Christopher de Hamel that explores the European medieval world through an in-depth study of 12 illuminated manuscripts.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.