Six pages missing from one of the most popular religious works of medieval England have been rediscovered in an archive in Brighton and reunited with the rest of their manuscript, now held at Yale University. The discovery also sheds new light on the book’s later ownership by Sir John Gage, a prominent Tudor courtier involved in Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.
Researchers Katie Walter of the University of Sussex and James Wade of Girton College, Cambridge, identified the pages as part of a fifteenth-century copy of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Their findings are published in Notes and Queries.
The six parchment pages are held at The Keep, an archive in Brighton, England, while the manuscript from which they became detached is now some 3,500 miles away in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The connection had escaped notice for decades.
A medieval manuscript hiding in plain sight
First page of The Keep Fragment, showing the beginning of Chapter 34, on the Raising of Lazarus. Courtesy of The Trustees of the Firle Estate Settlement and the University of Sussex.
The story of the missing pages can be traced back to 1929, when the Gage family deposited 46 boxes of documents with the Sussex Archaeological Society. Among the papers in one of the boxes was a fragment of Middle English prose, although it was omitted from the contemporary list of the box’s contents.
By 1978, scholars had identified the fragment as belonging to a copy of Nicholas Love’s Mirror. It subsequently appeared in a scholarly list of surviving manuscripts of the work, but confusion over its location and catalogue description meant later researchers were unable to find it.
When the Gage papers eventually moved to The Keep in 2013, the fragment went with them. Although it had been catalogued, it was not explicitly identified there as part of Love’s Mirror. As Walter and Wade explain in their study, the pages effectively remained hidden in plain sight for decades.
Their investigation ultimately led them to Takamiya MS 20, a digitised manuscript at Yale. There they found a gap between two gatherings where the Brighton pages belonged. The researchers were able to connect the fragment through the missing text, physical characteristics and handwriting.
The surviving fragment consists of six pages, although its outer folio is missing. It contains the end of Chapter 33, dealing with the virtues of contemplative living, and approximately the first two-thirds of Chapter 34, concerning the raising of Lazarus.
The pages measure about 29.5 by 21.5 centimetres and generally contain 36 lines of text. Chapter 34 opens with a three-line blue initial accompanied by red penwork decoration, while annotations appear in red and blue in the margins. Walter and Wade also found several scribal mistakes that were apparently never corrected, suggesting that this particular copy shows little evidence of intensive reading.
A medieval bestseller
Dr Katie Walter and Dr James Wade in The Keep archive, Brighton, with the fragment of Nicholas Love’s early 15th-century Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Credit: Courtesy of the University of Sussex.
Nicholas Love produced his English translation and adaptation of the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ around 1409. It offered English readers an account of the life of Christ at a time when the Church was deeply concerned about vernacular religious writings associated with the Lollards.
“In the early 15th century, having bible translations in English could get you killed,” Walter says. “Nicholas Love’s translation offered a safe alternative. It was considered orthodox and circulated with the seal of approval of Archbishop Arundel, the outspoken opponent of the Lollards.”
The Mirror proved enormously successful. Sixty-five manuscript copies survive today, an unusually large number for an English work of the fifteenth century. William Caxton also printed an edition in 1486.
But the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century dramatically altered the context in which Love’s work was read. Passages defending oral confession to a priest and Catholic understandings of the sacraments became increasingly contentious during the English Reformation.
“65 copies of Love’s text survive today. That’s a lot for a 15th-century manuscript but so many could have been destroyed in the Reformation,” Wade says. “It shows how popular it was, but it also shows how a work that became suspicious and dangerous for some could also be valued and preserved by others.”
Intriguingly, the newly identified pages fit into the Yale manuscript shortly before a passage dealing with oral confession to a priest.
The mysterious connection to Sir John Gage
Portrait (unattributed) of Sir John Gage. Credit: Courtesy of The Trustees of the Firle Estate Settlement.
The manuscript also has an important connection to Sir John Gage (1479–1556), one of the more successful courtiers of Henry VIII’s reign.
Gage’s signature appears on the final folio of the manuscript. It is the last in a series of names that may represent earlier readers or owners, including two religious women. Walter and Wade suggest in their study that Gage possibly acquired the manuscript around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, although exactly how it came into his possession remains unknown.
“The fact two possible owners before Gage were religious women suggests the manuscript might have been in a monastic house before it came into his possession,” Walter says. “The dissolution of the monasteries led to the destruction of many books but others were taken and then circulated through informal networks. Considering Gage’s active role in the dissolution, it’s very possible he acquired the book during this chaos.”
Gage’s connection is particularly intriguing because of his own role in the Dissolution. As his influence at Henry VIII’s court increased, he was given responsibility for organising the dissolution of religious houses in Surrey, Kent and Sussex, including taking stock of monastic property and determining how those assets would be disposed of for the Crown.
“One possibility is that John Gage went to a monastic library and brought it home,” Wade says. “Another is that someone else smuggled it out, and it briefly circulated from hand to hand until Gage acquired it. The key thing is – he kept it safe when he was meant to destroy books precisely like this one.”
Gage nevertheless remained Catholic during the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century. His manuscript of Love’s Mirror remained in the possession of his family for centuries.
“We often associate this period with book burning and destruction, so this manuscript’s story goes a bit against that grain,” Walter says. “It reminds us that people were also rescuing, valuing and caring for books.”
From Sussex to Japan and Yale
At some point between Gage’s acquisition of the manuscript and its rebinding in the nineteenth century, the six pages became separated from the rest of the book. Crucially, however, they remained among the Gage family papers.
The paths of the fragment and manuscript finally diverged in the twentieth century. The fragment remained with the Gage archive in Sussex, while the manuscript itself was sold at Christie’s in 1976.
It was purchased by Toshiyuki Takamiya, a Japanese scholar and collector of medieval manuscripts. In 2017, Yale University acquired Takamiya’s collection, bringing the manuscript to the Beinecke Library, where it became known as Takamiya MS 20.
Takamiya MS 20 fol. 01r – Yale University Press
Nearly half a century after the manuscript travelled to Japan, and centuries after its six pages became detached, Walter and Wade have now established that the two pieces belong together.
Their discovery restores part of the history of a medieval bestseller while revealing the complicated fate of Catholic books during the English Reformation. “It makes us think about the integrity that underlies subterfuge,” Wade says. “There was a lot at stake for John Gage to perform tasks at court, but then secretly preserve the very thing that he’s meant to destroy.”
The article, “Nicholas Love’s ‘Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A missing fragment from Takamiya MS 20 in the holdings of The Keep’,” by Katie Walter and James Wade, is published in Notes and Queries.
Top Image: Pages 8-9 of The Keep Fragment, showing thread binding, from Chapter 34, on the Raising of Lazarus. Credit: Courtesy of The Trustees of the Firle Estate Settlement and the University of Sussex.
Six pages missing from one of the most popular religious works of medieval England have been rediscovered in an archive in Brighton and reunited with the rest of their manuscript, now held at Yale University. The discovery also sheds new light on the book’s later ownership by Sir John Gage, a prominent Tudor courtier involved in Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.
Researchers Katie Walter of the University of Sussex and James Wade of Girton College, Cambridge, identified the pages as part of a fifteenth-century copy of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Their findings are published in Notes and Queries.
The six parchment pages are held at The Keep, an archive in Brighton, England, while the manuscript from which they became detached is now some 3,500 miles away in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The connection had escaped notice for decades.
A medieval manuscript hiding in plain sight
The story of the missing pages can be traced back to 1929, when the Gage family deposited 46 boxes of documents with the Sussex Archaeological Society. Among the papers in one of the boxes was a fragment of Middle English prose, although it was omitted from the contemporary list of the box’s contents.
By 1978, scholars had identified the fragment as belonging to a copy of Nicholas Love’s Mirror. It subsequently appeared in a scholarly list of surviving manuscripts of the work, but confusion over its location and catalogue description meant later researchers were unable to find it.
When the Gage papers eventually moved to The Keep in 2013, the fragment went with them. Although it had been catalogued, it was not explicitly identified there as part of Love’s Mirror. As Walter and Wade explain in their study, the pages effectively remained hidden in plain sight for decades.
Their investigation ultimately led them to Takamiya MS 20, a digitised manuscript at Yale. There they found a gap between two gatherings where the Brighton pages belonged. The researchers were able to connect the fragment through the missing text, physical characteristics and handwriting.
The surviving fragment consists of six pages, although its outer folio is missing. It contains the end of Chapter 33, dealing with the virtues of contemplative living, and approximately the first two-thirds of Chapter 34, concerning the raising of Lazarus.
The pages measure about 29.5 by 21.5 centimetres and generally contain 36 lines of text. Chapter 34 opens with a three-line blue initial accompanied by red penwork decoration, while annotations appear in red and blue in the margins. Walter and Wade also found several scribal mistakes that were apparently never corrected, suggesting that this particular copy shows little evidence of intensive reading.
A medieval bestseller
Nicholas Love produced his English translation and adaptation of the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ around 1409. It offered English readers an account of the life of Christ at a time when the Church was deeply concerned about vernacular religious writings associated with the Lollards.
“In the early 15th century, having bible translations in English could get you killed,” Walter says. “Nicholas Love’s translation offered a safe alternative. It was considered orthodox and circulated with the seal of approval of Archbishop Arundel, the outspoken opponent of the Lollards.”
The Mirror proved enormously successful. Sixty-five manuscript copies survive today, an unusually large number for an English work of the fifteenth century. William Caxton also printed an edition in 1486.
But the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century dramatically altered the context in which Love’s work was read. Passages defending oral confession to a priest and Catholic understandings of the sacraments became increasingly contentious during the English Reformation.
“65 copies of Love’s text survive today. That’s a lot for a 15th-century manuscript but so many could have been destroyed in the Reformation,” Wade says. “It shows how popular it was, but it also shows how a work that became suspicious and dangerous for some could also be valued and preserved by others.”
Intriguingly, the newly identified pages fit into the Yale manuscript shortly before a passage dealing with oral confession to a priest.
The mysterious connection to Sir John Gage
The manuscript also has an important connection to Sir John Gage (1479–1556), one of the more successful courtiers of Henry VIII’s reign.
Gage’s signature appears on the final folio of the manuscript. It is the last in a series of names that may represent earlier readers or owners, including two religious women. Walter and Wade suggest in their study that Gage possibly acquired the manuscript around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, although exactly how it came into his possession remains unknown.
“The fact two possible owners before Gage were religious women suggests the manuscript might have been in a monastic house before it came into his possession,” Walter says. “The dissolution of the monasteries led to the destruction of many books but others were taken and then circulated through informal networks. Considering Gage’s active role in the dissolution, it’s very possible he acquired the book during this chaos.”
Gage’s connection is particularly intriguing because of his own role in the Dissolution. As his influence at Henry VIII’s court increased, he was given responsibility for organising the dissolution of religious houses in Surrey, Kent and Sussex, including taking stock of monastic property and determining how those assets would be disposed of for the Crown.
“One possibility is that John Gage went to a monastic library and brought it home,” Wade says. “Another is that someone else smuggled it out, and it briefly circulated from hand to hand until Gage acquired it. The key thing is – he kept it safe when he was meant to destroy books precisely like this one.”
Gage nevertheless remained Catholic during the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century. His manuscript of Love’s Mirror remained in the possession of his family for centuries.
“We often associate this period with book burning and destruction, so this manuscript’s story goes a bit against that grain,” Walter says. “It reminds us that people were also rescuing, valuing and caring for books.”
From Sussex to Japan and Yale
At some point between Gage’s acquisition of the manuscript and its rebinding in the nineteenth century, the six pages became separated from the rest of the book. Crucially, however, they remained among the Gage family papers.
The paths of the fragment and manuscript finally diverged in the twentieth century. The fragment remained with the Gage archive in Sussex, while the manuscript itself was sold at Christie’s in 1976.
It was purchased by Toshiyuki Takamiya, a Japanese scholar and collector of medieval manuscripts. In 2017, Yale University acquired Takamiya’s collection, bringing the manuscript to the Beinecke Library, where it became known as Takamiya MS 20.
Nearly half a century after the manuscript travelled to Japan, and centuries after its six pages became detached, Walter and Wade have now established that the two pieces belong together.
Their discovery restores part of the history of a medieval bestseller while revealing the complicated fate of Catholic books during the English Reformation. “It makes us think about the integrity that underlies subterfuge,” Wade says. “There was a lot at stake for John Gage to perform tasks at court, but then secretly preserve the very thing that he’s meant to destroy.”
The article, “Nicholas Love’s ‘Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A missing fragment from Takamiya MS 20 in the holdings of The Keep’,” by Katie Walter and James Wade, is published in Notes and Queries.
Top Image: Pages 8-9 of The Keep Fragment, showing thread binding, from Chapter 34, on the Raising of Lazarus. Credit: Courtesy of The Trustees of the Firle Estate Settlement and the University of Sussex.
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