Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts

Product Information

Instead of guiding our own exploration of these beautiful objects, his book has to serve as a substitute for the real thing. billion years old, all those trillions of years in the excerpt occur only in the fertile imagination of the book's author.

I also appreciated the author’s observations of libraries and places visited to encounter the protagonists, I. In Aramaic-speaking Jerusalem at that time, tables neatly laid with plates and rolls of bread were not known. An extraordinary book, a work of scholarship and history salted with the author’s excitement…It is full of delights, as well as surprising reminders of the shifting ground of knowledge. Part travel book, part detective story, Christopher de Hamel introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, collectors and the international community of manuscript scholars, showing us how he pieces together evidence to reach unexpected conclusions. Perhaps most important in discussing this magnificent work is to assure you that the overarching erudition is rendered clearly and with great kindness to you, his companion.An extraordinary and beautifully illustrated exploration of the medieval world through twelve manuscripts, from one of the world’s leading experts. Illuminated Anglo-Saxon translations of the Bible (of which Northumbria’s Lindisfarne Gospels is the oldest to have survived) at times encouraged antisemitism. A glorious book…de Hamel pulls readers in with his unmistakable passion for every facet of these handcrafted treasures….

I am a happier and fuller person because this fine man took me on his Grand Tour and told me so many marvelous things. 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. Christopher de Hamel’s learned adventures amid some of the West’s greatest manuscript treasures effortlessly outclass Eco’s The Name of the Rose in elegance and excitement. The idea for the book, which is entirely new, is to invite the reader into intimate conversations with twelve of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to explore with the author what they tell us about nearly a thousand years of medieval history - and sometimes about the modern world too. When not awed by the sheer scope of his expertise or absorbed by his concerted efforts to decipher script or dissect scripture, we are diverted by his light flourishes and witty evaluations.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 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. With scholarly elegance, Christopher de Hamel opens the door and invites us to join him for the intellectual expedition of a lifetime…This is an endlessly fascinating and enjoyable book. 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. 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. Parker, likewise, did not see papal purple as a dangerous sign of recusancy, and, indeed, saw a holiness in Augustine.Christopher de Hamel is the author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, winner of both the Wolfson History Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. The author of the book is Christopher de Hamel, fellow and librarian of the Parker Library of Corpus Christi, Cambridge. Christopher de Hamel introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, collectors and the international community of manuscript scholars, showing us how he and his fellows piece together evidence to reach unexpected conclusions.

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.The review both brilliant and entertaining was among the very best to appear in this newspaper in my fifteen years of subscription.