![]() ![]() “Mary Wellesley is a born storyteller and The Gilded Page is as good as historical writing gets. Mary Wellesley explores the lives of medieval manuscripts, and the men and-importantly-women who made them, with deep learning and unmistakable love.”- Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves “ The Gilded Page is a delight-immersive, conversational, and intensely visual, full of gorgeous illustrations and shimmering description. “Wellesley’s subject matter holds an irresistible hook, for not just historians but anyone who loves reading.”- Library Journal Her taste is not for ‘the sanitised, ordered blandness of the modern edited text.’”- Daily Telegraph “To Wellesley, books are objects, tangible things, a million miles away from Kindles, which are inert. Few people have described the experience so eloquently. The range is remarkable.” - The Spectator “Fascinating information. Wellesley writes about creators, authors, scribes and parchment makers. Manuscripts establish a personal bond across the centuries between her and the men and women who made them. “This book is an expression of love… Sublimely conceived and beautifully written…”- Gerard DeGroot, The Times (UK) “Thanks to Wellesley’s expertise and passion for her subject, we practically hear the voices of the scribes and artists who produced these rare relics of the Middle Ages.”- Christian Science Monitor “This history of medieval illuminated manuscripts vividly evokes the corporeality of objects that, in a museum display, can seem almost ethereal… Highlighting instances in which texts about women were radically recentered on men, Wellesley offers a nuanced glimpse of the shifting nature of the written word.”- New Yorker "Exactly the sort of engaging, ambitious works of scholarship that serious readers want to know about.”- Michael Dirda, Washington Post, "12 books I should have reviewed last year: A critic’s lament” “A historian examines the origins and maintenance of famous manuscripts, revealing the pivotal work of binders, scribes and dedicated women in keeping the work of many celebrated writers and thinkers from ruin.”- New York Times This is a sensational debut by a wonderfully gifted historian.” -Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets and The Templars ![]() “Mary Wellesley is a born storyteller and The Gilded Page is as good as historical writing gets. ![]() Rich and surprising, it shows how the most exquisite objects ever made by human hands came from unexpected places. The Gilded Page is the story of the written word in the manuscript age. Scholar Mary Wellesley recounts the amazing origins of these remarkable manuscripts, surfacing the important roles played by women and ordinary people-the grinders, binders, and scribes-in their creation and survival. Other works by the less influential have narrowly avoided ruin, like the book of illiterate Margery Kempe, found in a country house closet, the cover nibbled on by mice. Many have survived because of an author’s status-part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer’s writing, for example, is because he was a London-based government official first and a poet second. Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. “A delight-immersive, conversational, and intensely visual, full of gorgeous illustrations and shimmering description.” –Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves Most of the religious manuscript materials included in this digital collection are unique of their kind.A breathtaking journey into the hidden history of medieval manuscripts, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the ornate Psalter of Henry VIII In addition to the surviving examples in secret police archives, some confiscated religious manuscripts were transferred to museums of atheism or anti-religious exhibitions popular in some socialist countries. ![]() Few such religious manuscripts survive in secret police archives today as most of them were destroyed by the secret police following the completion of operations and the conclusion of trials. The secret police often confiscated religious manuscripts and registered them within criminal files which were later stored in archives. Handwritten copies of religious hymns, poetry, prophecies, homilies, heavenly letters, magical letters of happiness, as well as music scores and handwritten copies of religious books circulated within communities when published materials were not available. Religious manuscripts were actively searched out by the secret police and used as incriminating evidence against believers. ![]()
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