Bibliothèque Municipale d’Epinal
On my first day at Les Imaginales, a pair of librarians came up and invited me to visit the Epinal Library. What I didn’t realize — they may have mentioned it and I just missed it — was that they were giving us a private tour of the rare books room.
It was amazing. One of the true highlights of my trip to France. My interpreter Lionel, an author himself, was as awestruck as I was. Especially when they brought out the first book. If I’m remembering right, this was from the 8th century.
The next one wasn’t quite as old…being from the 9th century. This Gospel of Saint Mark was a youthful 1200 years old.
The cover is metal and ivory. I’m not sure what kind of jewels those are. The circular areas on the corners were for holding relics. Here’s a glimpse of the interior:
You can see the full set of photos on Flickr. (Or you may have already seen them on Facebook.) It was such a wonderful experience. My thanks to everyone at Bibliothèque Municipale d’Epinal for their time and generosity.
I’ll end with a map of Michigan from one of the books that was “only” a few centuries old. Michigan sure looked different in the old days…
Avilyn
May 25, 2017 @ 12:56 pm
That is pretty incredible! Thanks 🙂
Hellianne
May 30, 2017 @ 3:31 pm
Oooooo, I’m jealous! My previous dream career was to get a doctorate and become a professor of Medieval lit. It’s been ages since I had access to really old books.
The one consolation I have is that since I left academia, many libraries have digitized at least some of their manuscripts. So even if I do miss out on the rather special experience of working in a rare books room, I can now view books from libraries all over the world without leaving my sofa. Yay for old book nerdery!
Eric
June 6, 2017 @ 5:05 pm
It might or might not be as good, but you might see if you can get to this one sometime, https://libwww.freelibrary.org/programs/rarebooks/