Posted on 11/10/2014 6:04:09 AM PST by marshmallow
TEOLO, Italy — Scattered around the steel table of a monastery in the Veneto region of Northern Italy are manuscripts, one with green, red and intensely blue medieval miniatures of dragons, another adorned with ornate leaves culminating in golden flowers.
A monk gently lays an off-white leather book on the table, and opens it at a long letter A drawn in red ink, the start of a paragraph in gothic letters.
“I never thought I would have had these in my hands,” said the Rev. Pierangelo Massetti, responsible for the restoration laboratory at the Praia Abbey, near Padua. “St. Francis wrote this poem. And this text may be the foundation of the Italian language, the first text ever known in vernacular.”
New Yorkers will see it soon, as Father Massetti and his collaborators are finishing restoring 13 medieval manuscripts of the 19 artifacts from the Sacred Convent of St. Francis in Assisi, before their departure for the United States on Monday.
Leaving Italy for the first time in 700 years, the documents will be shown at the United Nations headquarters Nov. 17-28, and then be open to the public in Brooklyn Borough Hall until mid-January in an exhibition, “Friar Francis: Traces, Words and Images.”
The signature of the saint of the poor and neglected, who inspired Pope Francis to choose his name, is nowhere to be seen. Historians agree that he most likely dictated his writings, but certainly his hand touched the papal bulls that in the 1220s registered the pope’s messages to the order.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
TRUE treasures.
Yes. We should pause to reflect on what real riches are.
And they are going to the United Nations in NY??? Doesn’t seem right.
In the long run... for lack of an immediately better way to say it... Francis will be around and these manuscripts will return to the dust.
Beyond its physical elements, Time is the most stubborn prejudice.
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