'Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts' is a beautifully produced book with gorgeous photos of twelve famous illuminated medieval manuscripts from the late 6th century to the early 16th century. The author, Christopher De Hamel, traveled to various libraries in Europe and North America after having received permission to examine specific ancient books. Photos of the libraries are included, too.

De Hamel traces the history of these manuscripts, and in doing so he also reveals medieval history. The fragile parchment pages of early biblical books were delivered from ancient Christian Rome to small, newly established rudimentary churches and monasteries in Ireland, England, France, Spain, Denmark, Italy and Germany. Monks diligently copied and recopied these pages delivered from Rome, some adding original details of local life on blank pages or they recopied the included drawings and stylized decorative calligraphy from Rome using local gold and paint to make more books.

These unknown monks possessed various levels of artistic and calligraphy skills, and they had to use local animals and materials which sometimes were not of the best quality, but without their efforts to recreate religious hymns, songs, poetry, a book or two of what we now call the New Testament, church calendars, inventory, accounting lists, monastery land purchases and building contracts, much historical information about people, places, technology, travel routes, patrons, and early versions of Bible stories would not be known. Copyists had their own style, too, so even while most monks making books were often anonymous, the original monastery or church could be identified by an era's usual customary style of artwork in that time and place. Also, a letter discovered in, for example, an Italian monastery might describe a certain early manuscript delivered to a pagan Ireland by a certain church official or monk, allowing dots to be connected by current historians and researchers. The Church kept meticulously records of what manuscripts were delivered where. Some original manuscripts were expected to be returned after having been copied by borrowers in other lands.

As the art of literacy leaked out into European society from the Church (whose members originally guarded the skill of reading and writing for themselves only), more of these beautiful hand-written books were demanded by wealthy secular readers. Many of the later medieval texts show the artistic improvement of drawing and painting techniques of text illuminations over the earlier texts, and are also easier for historians to trace owners backwards in time from the current owners. In the middle and late medieval periods, aristocrats, kings and queens had personalized Gospels, hymnals, poetry, Hours and Psalters made up for them. These bejewelled books moved from country to country with royal marriages, wars, disputes of succession and the passing of the power of aristocrat houses to rich merchants. These manuscripts had real jewels in the illuminations and calligraphy! Plus, they no longer were entirely religious or Biblical texts, but we're books of poetry or ancient Greek and Roman literature.

I was blown away, gentle reader, by the wealth of historical information professionals have been able to glean from these ancient books. It isn't just about the written text material, drawings or calligraphy. I had no idea.

Through diligent research, many professional organizations and interested individuals throughout history have also managed to recreate almost complete copies of some of these manuscripts by tracking down an early medieval recopied page here or there.

One of the fascinating bits of information I learned was why books are made into rectangular shapes. The manuscript format was developed from papyrus scrolls which were folded over into square-shaped 'codexes'. The folding over and hinging format was invented in the late Roman Empire. Papyrus began to be folded over and over, and over again, with pages hinged on their inner edges with writing on both sides for Christian liturgy and legal texts - easier to re-read and study. Codex manuscripts became common in the third and fourth century in Rome. Because of the way papyrus is made, in squares, the folding over and over for manuscripts reproduced the square shape. When the Roman Empire fell, the papyrus trade from Egypt also collapsed. So, animal skins were substituted. Mammals are rectangular, gentle reader, and when their skins are folded, they retain a rectangular shape. When paper began to be used, scribes were used to folding and cutting animal skins to this shape. Thus, our books today are rectangular.......omg. I need a moment.

Included are:

The Gospels of Saint Augustine
The Codex Amiatinus
The Book of Kells
The Leiden Aratea
The Morgan Beatus
Hugo Pictor
The Copenhagen Psalter
The Carmina Burana
The Hours of Jeanne de Navarre
The Hengwrt Chaucer
The Visconti Semideus
The Spinola Hours

Christopher De Hamel has catalogued many many illuminated manuscripts. He is a fellow of Corpus Christie College, Cambridge, and he was a librarian at the college's Parker Library where a collection of the earliest manuscripts in history are kept. Sotheby's has employed him as their manuscript expert.

The book has hundreds of photos, so a List of illustrations is included. There is an extensive Bibliography and notes section. An Index of manuscripts and of people are also in the back of the book. Everybody who was anybody in history owned an illustrated manuscript for a time! There may be a million fragmentary and entire manuscripts in private collections, libraries and museums. They are all a marvel to me, gentle reader - 2,000 years of, however imperfectly written or restored or rescued, a wonderful window into the past of recorded history. However, no worries prospective reader - the author only describes twelve of the most famous manuscripts and their history in a completely well-written manner for the general reader. Beautifully.