Ancient Easter Pages Return To Canterbury

The Guardian (UK) ^ | 3-26-2005 | Stephen Bates

[blam]

Ancient Easter pages return to Canterbury

Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent
Saturday March 26, 2005
The Guardian (UK)

A 1,000-year-old manuscript outlining readings for Holy Week has been returned to Canterbury Cathedral after five centuries, just in time for Easter. The double-page spread, called a bifolium, which was part of a devotional book owned by the cathedral in the middle ages, was recently bought for £7,000 from a London bookseller who had found it in Germany.

The cathedral has two further pages from the same book, which may be all that survives. Its travels over the last 500 years are unknown, but the pages were probably preserved by being stitched into a book cover at the time of the Reformation.

Heather Forbes, the cathedral's archivist, said: "We already have pages from this lectionary containing the standard series of readings for Christmas Day and the feasts of St Stephen, St John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents and the first Sunday after Christmas. Until recently this was thought to have been the only section to have survived." The pages come from an extremely rare 11th-century book, probably written by a scribe in Bavaria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. Each reading is introduced by an initial letter decorated in gold and silver on a blue or green background.

The archivists believe the book was probably dismembered at the time of the Reformation.

The Christmas pages seem to have remained at Canterbury, but no one knows how the Easter pages ended up in Germany. Cressida Annesley, who works in the cathedral archives, said: "It is a significant find and a happy coincidence to have found the pages."

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

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[ValerieUSA]

I wonder if this bifolium is an example of illuminated script. Sounds as if it is, but it doesn't say so.

[SunkenCiv]

I found nothing just now in a brief perusal of the www.archbishopofcanterbury.org which (it seems like) should have something. But of course, there's some AB's statement about how our destruction of the environment is going to destroy society.