Travelogue meets high scholarship in a hugely enjoyable series of encounters with the west’s greatest manuscript treasures One day in 1858, a British naval cutter sailed into the harbour of Paxos in the Ionian islands, then part of the immense British empire. There disembarked from the boat William Ewart Gladstone, one the most celebrated statesmen in all that vast dominion, and to receive him, among a host of imperial officials and local magnates, was the Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Paxos, in full canonicals. Gladstone knelt before him, reverently lifting his head to receive the episcopal blessing. His eminence bent ecclesiastically down to bestow it – and bonk, the heads of the two great men collided. I have always enjoyed this little episode, as one of the few moments of comic relief in imperial history, and I am happily reminded of it by the book under review, which is a huge, immensely learned exposition on the subject of medieval illustrated manuscripts. The subject may not be as wide as the Pax Britannica, but it is far older – the most venerable surviving manuscripts, we are told, being at least 1,000 years old – and is almost as far-flung: there are apparently at least a million medieval manuscripts still extant in places as far-flung as Dunedin and Zagreb, Chicago and Lima and Tokyo. Continue reading...
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