MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MANUSCRIPTS is an examination of twelve key manuscripts from the medieval period. These texts are not just objects of scholarly curiosity. In the world before Guttenberg, the hand-written manuscript was the sole means of the written transmission of knowledge. All we knew of culture, religion, history, art, and science from the fall of the Roman Empire to the high Renaissance was contained in these volumes.

Christopher De Hamel travels the globe to visit these hand-made treasures and expertly unlocks their mysteries for us. In so doing, he introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, and collectors. He traces the elaborate journeys which these exceptionally precious artifacts have made through time, shows us how they have been copied, who has owned them or lusted after them (and how we can tell), how they have been embroiled in politics, how they have been regarded as objects of supreme beauty and as symbols of national identity.

From the earliest book in medieval England to the incomparable Book of Kells to an early edition of the Canterbury Tales, these texts tell a story of intellectual culture and art over the course of a millenium. In many ways, de Hamel’s book is a history of the medieval world in twelve manuscripts.

Part travel book, part detective story, part conversation with the reader, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MANUSCRIPTS allows us to encounter some of the greatest works of art in our culture to give us a different perspective on history and on how we come by knowledge.